She slept warm and comfortable that night, although the constant light level was strange and disconcerting. Team Nine had given her a bedroll and some blankets, and once they were all bundled up into a pile, it made a quite serviceable bed.

She experimented the next morning by sending the whole lot to her Heart, where it appeared in a pile in the corner.

No, I want them folded and neatly put away, I want my blanket hung on the wall to cover the void, and I want the bedroll rolled up like it was when I got it.

She focused on it as they ate breakfast, and more as they walked deeper into the dungeon, moving the pile around in her mind but never quite managing to get it folded and put away.

Her eyes aching, somewhere around mid-morning if what her stomach telling her was right, she finally gave up. If I can move things, why can't I fold them, I'll get you, blanket!

Head aching, she looked around instead. She hadn't even known this world below existed. She'd never heard anyone mention it before she'd come here, but all the humans she'd met so far had been focused on it.

Yet they didn't live down here, where everything was bright and quiet and there was no weather to mess things up.

The Earth People- not the same as the Mud People- lived their lives underground, or so she thought, but the only one she'd ever met had been an above-ground trader.

"Does everyone know that this exists?" she asked at one point.

"That what exists?" responded Yaris, distracted.

"The uh, Dungeon. Is that what this place is called, or is that only the bit where we got in?"

Eim waved his arms in the air and sped up, walking ahead, while Ollie trailed back.

"You didn't even have a Spur near where you live, not one?" They asked.

She shook her head. "Maybe it's because we were very high up? Nobody ever mentioned it to me at all. Is this everywhere?"

"If you were living somewhere mountainous," Shrike joined in, "then it's possible you were too high up for the spurs to surface. The dungeon exists mostly below ground, roughly half a-" a unit of distance she couldn't comprehend- "and rarely above that. In fact, you can tell where sea level is by how close to surface the Dungeon is. That's why we had to abandon the coastal cities."

She thought about that as they carried on walking; Ollie heading up front with Yaris and Shrike falling back, occasionally stopping to inspect an interesting piece of flora or fauna.

The cavern was narrowing around them now, changing from the wide open cavern it had been when they entered and into a series of narrow valleys and corridors, and the moss on the floor was starting to thin, giving way to bare stone.

She hadn't seen any monsters yet, although she had been told to look out for them. There had been the shrill cry of a giant bird once in the distance, and there were still placid pink slimes everywhere, but nothing she would classify as dangerous. The slimes couldn't be monsters, they were... Mushrooms or rather mobile plants, maybe fish, at best.

Shrike pulled himself away from inspecting a large, violently green caterpillar as thick around as her arm, and came to walk beside her.

"Our next quest is to make it to the next stairway down and verify it's still there and intact. Sometimes the dungeon moves about and the stairs collapse, or move."

"Why stairs?"

He blinked at her, "huh?"

"Why are there stairs down, and not," she frowned, "ramps I guess, or just a big hole. It seems unnatural."

"The whole dungeon is unnatural, I keep forgetting you know nothing about it. The Dungeon was created out of magic, almost a millennia ago now. We travel through it and cull the monsters to leech the magic out, so that it doesn't take over the surface too, but we've never managed to destroy it."

"But we're losing." Eim had rejoined the group, and the path had narrowed enough now that they were all walking together.

"Don't tell her that-"

"We're losing. The dungeon rises, only by a centimetre or two every year, but it is rising. When it was first created it was almost a kilometre underground, now we're having to abandon some of the low-lands, and there's talk about having to plant new cities up in the mountains within the next few decades. Every year it takes another water source."

"Eim-" Shrike said, a warning tone in his voice, but Eim carried on.

"They're already recruiting for builders and architects, back in Resper; escorting them through the easy levels. Maybe in a few years the site of your remote village will be where we're all living."

"That's enough, leave the kid alone," Yaris broke in, "we know you're pissy, don't take it out on the rest of us."

Jump-touch's head span, trying to work out the meaning of all the new words and jobs and measurements and the fact that the humans might want to move to the Mountain. No, they'd be weird about it. They'd- they'd kick out all the kobolds and hide when the harpies came to trade and try and shave the single Earth people trader, to make them look more human.

She shuddered. No, it was fine, the Mountain would reject them, would send them home with rolling thunder, their tails between their legs.

I wish I had a tail.

She focused on where they were going, instead. The copper veins in the walls had faded away until almost nothing, and the trees and plants were unable to flourish in the tight corridors. Colour was provided now by spots of green and brown lichen, rough under her fingers as she ran her hand along the walls. The ceiling was almost impossibly far above them now, but the path they were walking was so narrow that the teenagers were having to travel almost single file.

Jump-touch was thinking about her dictionary, quietly mouthing or sounding out different words to herself, when there was a shout from Yaris up ahead.

"Come on," she shouted, as they pushed forward through the narrow corridor. "It opens up! You're gonna wanna see this!"

As a group, the other four of them hurried forward, eager to be out of the confined space.

Oh.

Wow.

Jump-touch stared out, across what she could only describe as a ravine. A vista.

The view stretched out ahead of them, as far as she could see, crags and valleys and a whole world lit by unceasing crystalline light. As she stepped forward to get a better look, a hundred spans below she spotted see a trickle of blue water.

Down there it may be a raging river, from up here it may as well have been a single line of thread.

In the distance, there was a shadow she thought might have been the opposite wall, but it was far too distant for her to tell.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

She didn't have words for it. It was beautiful. It was like being home, on the rare days when the clouds cleared away, and you could see forever.

"Is this what they meant when they said stairs?" Ollie whispered, uncharacteristically quiet. Jump-touch glanced away from the sight and over at them, "makes me wanna jump," they shrugged.

Yaris looked alarmed, "don't jump you idiot, you have a sewing class, not a flying one!"

"It does look like a tapestry," Eim joined in, staying well back from the edge, "maybe you can sew the sides shut and we can cross."

Ollie rolled their eyes at them both. "I'm not gonna jump, it just makes me want to jump." They shuffled back from the edge, "see, not jumping."

"I might be able to get a slow-fall spell at some point," Shrike sounded far away as he stared out over the abyss. "If we make enough money then the Stone will let me buy it, or maybe we'll find an appropriate Card."

"Is that how your class works?" Eim glanced at him, "you have to buy your spells? It would explain..." He trailed off, staring out over the view for a moment, before shaking himself and finding his train of thought again. "Surely there's better choices than that, if you're going to pay for a spell."

Shrike shrugged, his gaze fixed straight ahead, "it would be nice to not die if I fall off something."

Ollie grinned, "Slow Fall sounds like great fun. You could do something really bad and then get sentenced to execution by being thrown off a cliff, and then laugh as you sail to the bottom. It would be hilarious!"

The other four all turned to stare at them.

"Does that happen?" Jump-touch finally asked. Do humans really do that?

Shrike glanced at her, his expression a little lost. "Rarely. You'd have to do something truly heinous, like commit serial murder, or… Or things you're not old enough to know about."

She narrowed her eyes at him, but he didn't elaborate further, and after a moment's thought she decided she didn't want to know after all. Human things.

Yaris waved a hand, and after a last moment's reflection on the view, they all started to trek along the edge of the cliff. Jump-touch noted that both Eim and Shrike kept one hand against the wall, despite the wideness of the path.

Jump-touch sidled up to Shrike, "how old are you, anyway? I'm not good at… Telling human ages."

He was sweating again, she noticed. Should she point it out to Eim? He could do another round of healing and pain relief, right?

"Almost seventeen. My birthday's next week." His words were clipped, and she got the impression he wasn't paying attention to her.

Ollie looked round, "Stone's Blessing, we've brought an old man with us, no wonder you need a walking stick."

He reached out to whack them with it, but staggered at the sudden weight on his knee, letting out a series of quite interesting swear words as he did, and Jump-touch found herself trying to catch him, along with Yaris.

"See," he was visibly sweating now, "that's why I need a slow-fall spell. Fuck this. Fuck."

He slid down to the floor with Yaris's help, breathing heavily as the others crowded around him, ending up with his eyes squeezed shut and his head gripped between his knees. "Never been great with heights."

"You should have said something," Yaris said, looking at Eim, who had one hand on the back of Shrike's neck and the other against the wall, "we could have taken an inward route."

"I didn't want to slow us down more," Shrike's voice was muffled from its place between his knees, "that would have added days onto our journey."

"And you having a massive fear of heights isn't slowing us down?" Eim snapped.

Oh. She had grown up on the top of a mountain, able to see for days, this was nothing new to her. She had been enjoying the view, knowing the ground was safe beneath her, but these humans had grown up on the plains, in the lowlands.

She should have realised it sooner.

Greed, something whispered in her ear, and Jump-touch winced.

Ollie looked over at her in curiosity, then out over the vista, their hands in their pockets, "you doing okay, kid?"

"I can put you in my H- [Pocket Zone]," she squeezed the words out, finally not being interrupted for the first time in two days. "You can sit there and feel better and come out when we get where we're going, it'll be safe and warm and there's-" she hesitated, "ok. The walls are weird, but it's not like they're tall, they're just weird, and you can probably hang a blanket over them or something. Eventually I'm gonna build up proper walls so I don't have to look at… them, but..."

She trailed off as she realised the others were staring at her.

"What?"

"You can store people in your skill? And they're not frozen, and they don't run out of air?" Yaris was speaking slowly and clearly, enunciating each word in a way she rarely bothered with.

"Is that… Unusual?" she hedged. The Stone itself had told her it was, she knew it was, but she had withheld information from them, and the urge was to blame it on ignorance. Pretend she hadn't known.

I never considered the air. She thought about it. It might be a bit thin, because it was a kobold room, and kobolds needed to breathe less than the stupid humans, who were used to the thick air all the way down here on the ground, but it should be fine, right?

"Have you tried it yet?" Yaris was watching her, still with that odd tone in her voice.

I wish I could ask, she thought, ask them to explain what they're thinking when they talk to me, because I don't understand. They use so many different facial expressions and they never move their arms and they change their tone all the time.

But it would be rude to ask, because humans didn't talk to each other. Instead, they kept their thoughts in their head and then betrayed you by unravelling your hair and forcing you to wash when you didn't need it. She huffed out a breath, suddenly annoyed.

"Not yet, I only got it yesterday." She put extra emphasis on the word, trying to imitate how the others spoke.

Shrike still had his head between his knees, two hands on the back of his neck.

Ollie was looking out over the view again, "you could have carried him like luggage for us?" She couldn't read their voice either, but that wasn't unusual, she never could. Mountain help her; she was still having an internal debate with herself over if they were a boy or a girl.

"He didn't want to be carried," she stepped away from the group, eyeing up the path they'd come down. "You're the ones that made him walk this far, not me."

"Hey," Eim took a step towards her, "if you'd told us-"

"Stop!" Yaris stood up, her arms spread wide, making her seem even bigger than she usually did. "We're on the edge of a fucking cliff, Eim. Shrike's having a panic attack, and all you two can do is snip at each other?"

Ollie took a step back towards the wall, and Eim gave Yaris a glance. "Look, all I'm saying is-"

"Eim, shut up, please."

He huffed, taking a step towards Yaris.

"All I'm saying is," he wasn't quite shouting yet, "that you never would have got this far without me. I fight, I heal, and without me your mage is a cripple. That a common warrior, a child novelist, a seamstress-"

"Oi!" Ollie butted in, but Eim ignored them.

"-never would have even made it to the Orchard. You want my help to get further, then stop berating me every time I make a valid complaint. Stop hitting me with your bloody cripple-stick and-"

Ollie was squaring up to him now, hands in their pockets and too close to the edge, but the words had stopped making sense.

Jump-touch stared out over the vista, watching that ribbon of blue thread.

This was a fight, the humans were fighting.

Kobolds never fought between themselves. Arguments, disagreements sometimes, but never fights.

What should I do?

And more importantly: Where do I go, if they decide to attack me?

She could scale the cliff if it came down to it. She was pretty sure they wouldn't be able to follow her with their big stupid human bodies, and either up or down, there were plenty of handholds. Down looked more difficult, but up didn't lead anywhere, only towards the ceiling.

She could hide in her Heart, and even take Shrike with her, but then she wouldn't know what was happening outside, and she didn't think she could move it. What if the group was waiting for her when she came out, or what if the Stone had lied, and they could follow her in there somehow, using their own skills?

I want to go home.

But you can't go home.

She realised at some point she had crouched on the ground, back against the wall and hands over her ears. Across from her Yaris and Eim were squaring up like two stags, Yaris over a head taller and more muscular than Eim, but the boy looking fierce and angry, his face almost the same colour as his hair.

Ollie had circled around the two and was speaking quietly to Shrike, but they looked up at Jump-touch's look, meeting her eyes.

She shuffled over on all fours, unwilling to stand right now. That would only make her more noticeable to the two shouting humans.

"Put him in your Heart," Ollie said quietly as she approached, "that's what you call it, right?"

She nodded, "But I've not used it-"

"If you think it's fine, then it's probably fine. Shrike, let her do it."

The boy mumbled something, but his voice was too muffled to hear over the shouts and posturing from the other two. She had tuned out what they were shouting a while back, and she didn't feel like trying to work it out now.

"I'm going to calm them down, once you've got him somewhere safe," Ollie's voice was quiet, and their face serious for maybe the first time since Jump-touch had met them, "alright?"

She nodded, then bit her lip. "Don't let them hurt you? I can hide you too if you want."

They blinked, and then laughed quietly, "don't worry kiddo, they're angry at each other, not at me. And I don't think it's going to come to blows either way. I'm just worried that one of them is gonna slip and fall if they don't knock it off."

Ollie reached out and gently nudged Shrike towards her, before rising up, one hand on the wall. "Just look after him," they said, heading towards the two fighters.

As she laid a hand on Shrike, Jump-touch realised her lip was starting to hurt. She was lucky she didn't have sharp teeth, like most kobolds. They had always been somewhat of a disappointment.

"I'm gonna put you in my, uh, [Pocket Zone], it's safe, but I don't know if you can get out on your own, you can use the blankets while you're in there if you want?"

She never had managed to fold them up.

As Shrike shrugged her hand away, there was a resistance from her skill, and then as he disappeared, she felt herself fall.