They walked for several hours along the edge of the slope, but it only became steeper, the further they went.

The journey was mostly tense and silent.

"You don't recognise this place at all?" Yaris whispered to Ollie.

Ollie shook their head, "I never came this deep. As far as the orchard, maybe, once or twice, but never further."

Yaris let out a slow breath. "Alright. We can't not find a way up, the only thing we have to worry about is how long it's gonna take us."

Jump-touch stared upwards as she walked. The ceiling was lower here, and the huge light-giving crystal spars were fewer and further between, giving the whole place a dim feeling.

She kind of liked it, it was cosy, and the air smelled of clean stone, now that they were away from the fire. The smell like a piece of freshly split slate, the scent of the Mountain on a cold summer morn.

To one side of her was the slate, and to the other vegetation, and together they trod a narrow path between the two. Almost an animal path, or the sort she and Feather-paw would wear between the trees during their winters in the valley.

There was no copper here, but the whole place still felt dead. Silent. No birds sang in the trees and no insects chirped in the grasses. There was no wind or weather or people shouting. Not even-

Jump-touch paused. That last one wasn't actually correct, because there was a distant ripple of water, from somewhere off to their left. She just had to listen out for it, tilt her head in the correct way.

"Shrike?" She nudged him gently. He was walking, for now. He had tried to ride in her Heart, crammed between bookcase and box, but it had only taken him a few minutes to give up.

"I hear water," she whispered to him, as he looked at her curiously. She didn't know why they were all whispering, but she was going along with it. "We need water, right?"

Shrike tilted his head to listen, before slowly nodding. "It could be dangerous," his voice was so quiet. "There might be monsters nearby."

They had been watching out for monsters this whole time, but apart from one large scrape on the ground, there had been no other signs. She was starting to feel like all this suspicion was a bit silly. Surely if there were monsters out there, she'd be able to hear them?

Shrike signalled to Yaris, and after a whispered conversation, the group started moving towards the sound of water, away from the grey slope and into the scrub.

The ground was more unstable here, scattered with small rocks and pebbles. Shrike had to lean on Ollie's arm to avoid slipping, and most of the humans almost took a tumble at least once.

The bushes had thorns in, which tore at her clothing until she eventually gave up and hoisted the skirt up around her waist, tying it into a knot.

"Flints," Eim said, pointing at the ground. "A cool rock, you can use them to start fires."

She knew the sort of rock, she had a piece of it in her fire-starter kit, after all, but she'd never known it had a name. Humans, they really did have words for everything; she still wasn't sure if she liked that or not.

Even Slate, the most ubiquitous of stones up on the Mountain was simply 'flat grey stone' in Given Tongue.

Unwanted, her boon defined it for her.

'A flint is a type of rock. It can be knapped to have sharp edges and used as a basic tool.' it supplied.

What on the Mountain does that mean?

She enquired deeper, frowning as the bushes scraped and tore at her legs.

Knapping. To make a sharp edge on a piece of flint.

What even was that, why not say chipped or knocked, or shaped? It was circular!

Jump-touch huffed as she stepped over the flints, and determined to forget that word even existed. Humans. Too many words for things which didn't need them.

Knapped, really. What were they thinking.

"Whatever you're grumbling about," Yaris said in a voice so quiet even Feather-paw would have struggled to hear it. "Hush. We're coming up now on the water."

Jump-touch did her best to walk quietly, touching her heels to the floor and rolling on the balls of her feet, but it was difficult with the messy ground and the dragging brush.

Eim gave her a look, then startled. "For Stone's sake, Jump. Put some shoes on. You're gonna step wrong and cut yourself and you'll bleed out before I can get near you."

She didn't want to tell him that she'd grown up on a mountain of stone, and she knew how to not cut herself, so instead she experimented, summoning one of the shoes from her heart, directly onto her raised foot.

It sort of worked, except, she'd summoned the wrong one. Why were they sided!

"It's to make them more comfortable," Eim whispered, rolling his eyes and watching as she balanced on one foot, trying to get the shoe off. "Come here, you're going to injure yourself."

She stuck her tongue out at him, succeeded in pulling the shoe off, and only nearly ended up on her arse.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Yaris looked back a the clattering, her voice a hiss. "Whatever circus act you two are performing over there, I'd appreciate it if you could stop." She had her sword in one hand now, and Eim's hammer in the other. "Both of you come here. Jump, stay back, and put your shoes back on, how did we not-" She let out a long breath through her nose. "Never mind, the rest of you come with me. Shrike, stay at the back."

Mean, she thought. Meanie meanie. Why do I have to stay behind? It was me that heard the water.

But she did only have one shoe on, and she didn't have any sort of weapon. She didn't want to fight, didn't know how to fight, was too small to fight- But she wanted to be useful!

Would Ink-worm have come with them, if she'd asked? They hadn't liked the other humans at all, and it had taken her a long time to calm them down after Yaris had appeared, but maybe if she'd tried...

They were created by a human, right? The… The Old One or whatever they kept calling him? An-jel had mentioned it, and Shrike once? The human who made the dungeon, or fought the dungeon, or found it?

She looked at Shrike, as she laced up her other shoe. He was standing alert, leaning on his cane and watching as the others went on ahead, peering over the waist-high vegetation. As she looked in the same direction, she realised with a start, that the plants here were alive. Not just alive, but actively growing and thriving.

Was this where Ink-worm had come from? How had they gotten up the slope, anyway? They had tried to explain to her how they moved through the dungeon, but it had been almost impossible, with their limited time and language.

At the back of the group, Eim was the last to disappear into the bushes, in a strange mirror of the situation with the fire snakes up above. "You think they'll be okay?" She found herself whispering to Shrike, but he didn't answer, tense and still, the magic coiling within him, ready to strike.

She wondered how it worked. What it felt like, to cast a spell, but she couldn't ask yet, shouldn't ask yet. He was obviously concentrating very hard. How did even her own magic work?

Twenty, thirty paces up ahead, Eim's head appeared above the brush, next to a huge green spiky thing covered in purple flowers, and he gestured for them both to follow.

That meant it was safe over there, right? He still wasn't speaking, but if they were being called, then there shouldn't be monsters, right?

"Jump," Shrike sounded tired as he whispered to her. "You're completely silent, and I can still hear you asking questions. Please stop."

"Well how am I meant to learn things if I can't ask!" She hissed back, "like- like-"

She caught his look, and smartly shut up. It wasn't fair!

The leaves here were cool against her skin, but the cover was thinning, and a couple of minutes later the group was standing on the banks of what she thought of, derisively, as a brook. Not even wide enough to be called a stream, barely up to her ankles in depth, and bedded with treacherous-looking pebbles.

It had a good flow though, heading in the same direction they were, and the water was Mountain clear and clean, not a touch of silt or dirt in it.

Yaris and Ollie already had wet faces and fronts, and a moment later Jump-touch was handing out bowls. Really, couldn't they have waited?

At least their hands would be cleaner now.

****

That 'night' they camped near the stream, far enough away that they hoped no monsters would be attracted by their presence, close enough that, if she listened, Jump-touch could still hear the lap of the water.

They didn't light a fire, instead sitting together, eating cold rations and drinking ice-cold water from the newly refilled jugs in her Heart.

"Jump?" Yaris asked, staring at the spot where a fire should have been.

"Mm?"

Yaris frowned before she spoke.

"You haven't met many humans, have you?"

She shook her head, "only you guys, really, and the people from the guild."

Yaris nodded, and once again silence filled the 'night'.

****

They slept for a few hours, and then set out once again, long before when her body was telling her morning should be.

"We're rested enough," Yaris justified it, even as everyone in the party looked half-shattered. "We don't want to stick around one place too much. We've been lucky so far, but that luck won't hold if we stay in place."

"There should be more monsters around here," Eim added quietly. "Even if this is only level two, there should be some."

There had been no tracks by the brook, no movement in the bushes and no sounds during the night, but somehow that was making everyone more on edge, not less. A tension in the air, waiting to break.

The area around them now made her feel a little homesick. As they returned to the slope and carried on their journey, the flints had transitioned to slate, and the greyness of the place had something of the Mountain about it. If only there had been a sky, and not a ceiling above her. If only there was wind.

That was the main thing that set it apart from home. The lack of wind. On the Mountain, there was always wind, the only way to escape it was to go indoors, sealing the shutters and doors tightly behind you. The kobolds packed the gaps of their houses tight with goat dung, hair and bits of fibre, but sometimes even that wasn't enough, and with all the portals sealed, it made for a very dark home.

Here it was deadly still and silent, so quiet it was making her ears pop.

She patted one ear, and then the other, and then tried holding her nose for a minute. That was supposed to help, right? Somebody had told her that once, but she couldn't remember-

"What're you doing?" Shrike asked blearily, still half asleep next to her.

"My ears popped, like there's going to be a storm. But I don't think there's any storms down here."

He squinted at her, and then put a hand over one of his ears. "Not mine. Eim?"

Up ahead, Eim didn't hear them.

"Maybe it's the level," she mused to him. "It made my head feel all weird for the first day."

She was still trying to push the magic into her Heart, but it didn't seem to be making much, if any, difference, but it gave her something to do.

I wish I knew why the walls wobbled. This thing needed to come with instructions.

"Shrike," she asked, switching her Boon back on.

He waved a hand at her in a way that she assumed meant "just ask your question."

"Shrike, are you gonna use your skill?"

He looked at her, uncomprehending, "my skill?"

"The summoning one."

He stared at her for a long moment. "No, Jump. I'm not."

She made a noise in the back of her throat, "but what if you could summon a bird or something, a friend that would help us find the way out?"

"Even if I was going to use it, which I'm not, I don't know how it works." He took a moment to yawn. "It could give me a whole process to choose what I get, or it could just pull randomly from the ether. From the place monsters go when they die. What if I ended up with a monster that needed to eat to live, we're already low on food. Or what if it gives me a baby that I need to raise, which won't be 'useful' for a long time? It's not worth the risk."

Wow, he's thought a lot about this!

She hummed.

"A people I knew back home, they were all summons-"

He turned to her with wide eyes, and she carried blithely on.

"-and they were lost, looking for a home, so they came to our village."

The kobold thing was out, Yaris obviously knew, and she was so tired of pretending.

Not that she'd been doing a very good job at pretending anyway, but it was the thought that counted, right?

"We let them stay for a while, and then they moved on. But they weren't unhappy to be alive. Confused, sure, and it took them a long time to become people, but they were happy they got to live. They wouldn't have ever wanted to not live."

Shrike opened his mouth, shut it again, and then shook his head.

Jump-touch stared around as they walked. The landscape was just familiar enough to tug on her heart, but just strange enough that it weirded her out. There was something wrong about it.

"I don't know how to respond to that," he said finally. "I'm still not going to use it, though."

She nodded, and they walked on together.