Jonathan panicked. It was all he could when he was confronted with the possibility of being buried alive. Even though he could feel his pulse start to race, both the dwarves he was with were maddeningly calm. Indeed - as he could only pick up every tenth word they might have been talking about the rail schedule or an engine repair. It didn’t seem to bother either one of them that what might have been their only exit back to the lit tunnels of the salt mine was permanently closed and that they were doomed. Instead they just knelt down and started to draw diagrams in the dust while they discussed a plan.
Eventually Erkom turned to Jonathan. “Well Jon - here’s how things are gonna go. First we'll check this floor to see if there are any other spurs that take us west, and if there aren’t then we’ll all climb the fissure to the next floor and repeat the process.”
“The fissure?” Jonathan asked, confused. “What’s that?”
“Didn’t ye even look at the map lad?” Erkom grumbled. “It’s a part of the salt formation, and the reason they closed off this side. It goes up, intersecting several other natural cavern systems. It’s almost certainly where the troll came from, and it was too hard to monitor when this side of the formation got tapped out, so they just walled it off, but if the Troll was able to get through this section of that barrier before the cave in then there’s a good chance that some of the other parts might not be looking so hot either.”
“That sounds great,” Jonathan smiled, suddenly thrilled that there was at least a ray of hope.
“Well - great might be putting it a touch strong lad,” the dwarf stood up and stretched. “If a troll was able to survive this deep then only the ancestors themselves know what else is living in there now, so it might not be such an easy path, but it might be our only one.” At a nod from Erkom both dwarves started walking down the tunnel and Jonathan had to rush to catch up.
The tension of their initial foray into the cave was gone now that the troll had been taken care of, but all of the darkness gave Jonathan plenty of shadows to jump at as they went. The dwarves seemed completely nonplussed to be hundreds of feet underground with no obvious way out, but Jonathan was sure that no human - not even a miner would feel the same way. That thought actually gave Jonathan some pause. Were there even any human miners in the empire? In his father’s domain the humans were free to farm and graze but all the mineral rights belonged to the kingdom below by treaty. It was something that Marcus had chafed at regularly, complaining loudly to his father about how he could feel the rich reins of tin and silver that were just out of reach, but Lord Shaw had never budged on the issue. If that was the case in Dalmarin then might it not be the case throughout the rest of the empire? And if it was then why would there be such a thing as a human miner?
He shrugged. It was an interesting question, but one that didn’t relate at all to their quest to find a way out, so he refocused his attention on the dwarves as they methodically went down the passage. Part way down they passed what had to be the fissure and stopped for a minute. “See that Jon?” Erkom asked, pointing at it like it would have been possible for him to miss it. “That’s what plan B looks like.” It was a dark void that went both up and down so far that the light couldn’t reach the end of it. Somehow Jonathan had expected more, but it was just a deep hole in the ground. The walls were rough granite, and it didn’t look like climbing it would be too much of a challenge.
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Jonathan said, trying to sound casual. Climbing a stone wall sounded like fun, but trying to imagine himself doing it he couldn’t help but think about the bottomless void that would be below him the whole time. He took a step back involuntarily which made the dwarves laugh, but they said nothing about it. They just started moving again. After that Jonathan wasn’t sure if their short conversations were mean spirited jokes at his expense, or just conversations about the conditions of the passage ahead, but he decided that he didn’t want to know bad enough to ask. With the troll gone his moment in the sun was over and he was back to being a burden. No amount of fire could make this situation better, so just like the trip down here with Boriv he’d just be dead weight until they got back to the prison compound.
If they got back to the prison, he corrected himself. So far it wasn’t looking very good, he had to admit. The first two cross tunnels they checked still had very sturdy stone walls in place that didn’t even show signs that it’s mortar was loosening. It wasn’t until they reached the end of the tunnel they were exploring that Jonathan had started to worry. “I thought there was supposed to be one more,” Jonathan asked nervously when they reached it.
“I said there should be one more Jon. Should be. I only saw the map the once though. Yer lucky that I remember as much as I do.” Jonathan could see the frustration in Erkom’s eyes, but the dwarf was trying not to let it show. Instead he patted Jonathan on the back before he turned around and started heading the other way. “Look on the bright side - today ye get to free climb yer way to the next level - how many of yer friends will ever get to say the same?” Jonathan swallowed hard but followed him back. Risking death for a chance that they weren’t going to starve to death or suffocate was hardly something to brag about. If he told Claire about it she’d box his ears for being so foolish.
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Foolish or not though, it was their only option, and once they arrived back at the void, they decided Jonathan was going second. Because he was the only one without a light. That way when it was his turn to climb there would be one dwarf on this level and one on the next to light his way. Erkom went first because his climb in near darkness would be the most challenging. The dwarf didn’t make it look hard at all though. Instead he spent a couple minutes gauging a path and filing away handholds and footholds for the way up, and then once he was done he flashed up the face like it was nothing but a child’s game in just over a minute. The dwarf clearly had plenty of experience at this sort of thing, but all Jonathan had was some illicit tree climbing with the village boys when his father wasn’t around.
“Alright Lad,” Erkom yelled from the next level, as he pointed his light downward toward the rock face. “Your turn.” Jonathan swallowed hard, trying to remember the way that the dwarf had just gone before he realized that even if he used the same footholds, he’d need a completely different set of handholds to reach the top.
Jonathan stood there a moment longer, then reached out over the void and crawled out onto the rock face hand over hand. Once the path was clear above him he started to climb, relying on the sense of touch more than the sense of sight to find hand holds as he advanced up the wall a step at a time. Jonathan made no attempt at speed. Instead he moved at a snail's pace, one slow step up the wall at a time. Once he froze for half a minute when some grit on a foothold almost made him slip as he pushed off it, and another time he had to backtrack when he could find no easy handhold within reach. One eternity later he was pulling himself up on the lip of the next level with Erkom’s help. The guard followed them up as soon as Jonathan was clear, and he had little time to rest before they started off again.
This time though, things were a little different. The tunnels were still just as empty, and all the fixtures were equally absent. This time there was a dampness to the air after a few hundred feet of walking in the dark, and then wisps of spider web on the wall. Almost as soon as Jonathan noticed them Erkom commented, “Looks like we ain’t alone here lad - be extra careful now.”
Jonathan agreed with that knowledge, but he was hardly sure what to do with it. Unlike the two dwarves that each carried a loaded brand, he had nothing but his fists to defend himself. Well - his fists and fire, but as they continued on the second weapon became increasingly less useful. The ancient wood of the supports and the increasingly common spiderwebs looked very flammable. Indeed, the spiderwebs continued to multiply, and though they had been shredded down the middle so they had no issue walking through them, after another hundred feet it looked like the only thing holding this rickety old passage together was the webbing itself.
Jonathan was sure that the troll had come this way, but after they saw the half-devoured carcass of a giant spider at one of the tunnel intersections, it was confirmed. He had no idea if that was good or bad news though. The dwarves didn’t linger around the body - they just continued on, finally coming to a stop at the edge of a small body of water. “This wasn’t on the map,” Erkom complained, casting his light around the room.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Jonathan asked as he took it in. There was a small crevasse in this room that was like the cousin to the last one they’d climbed through. This one was small enough that he could probably chimney climb it. Size wasn’t the only difference between them though. Water dripped down this one, pooling into a depression in the floor before a small stream took the excess and flushed it down the bottom part of the crevasse. As the light beams traced the walls they left phosphorescent wakes behind as the moss and fungus that filled the room started to glow.
“Where am I going?” Erkom repeated. “Lad - never question a dwarf’s stonesense - it’s libel to get you a beating for your trouble.” Jonathan ignored the dwarf though, taking the room in. It was alien, but also sort of beautiful in a way. The stalagmites and walls were covered with moss, and in some places large albino mushrooms the height of a dwarf sprang up around the pool. In the water there was life too. He could see small eyeless schools of fish down there, and his mouth watered at the prospect.
Jonathan briefly wondered if that is what had sustained the spider, but a quick search of the remaining webs revealed the mummified remains of bats. For a moment the human forgot everything else and simply marveled at the scene. Here they were, hundreds of feet below the surface, and there was a whole ecosystem that until the troll appeared looked to have been entirely self-sufficient. It didn’t care what happened with the rest of the world. It just was.
The dwarves were less entranced, and after a quick search for danger they just tasted the water to make sure it was safe, and then after they decided it was, they drank their fill. Jonathan was about to join them when he heard a few rocks skittering down the cave wall before coming to rest on the floor near the back of the cave. That was enough to make him freeze and turn towards the sound like he could will his eyes to see through the darkness and see whatever lay beyond. Even after the spider and the troll had devoured everything they could get their hands on, could there still be something alive in here with them?