“The cave smells awful,” complained Dirk as we continued deeper into it. “How did you not mention this smell?”

“I never went in the cave,” scoffed Turk. “What kind of fool would go into a cave by themselves?”

I found myself agreeing with both of them. This cave smelled horrible and we had smelled some pretty awful things in our time in this world. Turk was smart though for not going into the cave alone. There were too many small crevices to hide and attack from in this cave.

“Move your light further ahead and keep it closer to the ceiling. I do not want it on top of us and giving our position away to anyone who might be in here.”

Turk grunted and I watched as his green ball of light moved about thirty yards ahead of us and hovered a little higher off of the ground. It was dark in here and our eyes did little in the complete absence of light. Turk’s light made it so we could see fairly well and none of us needed to worry about holding a torch either.

“You three should learn to be quiet,” whispered Vreek. “Your voices are echoing off the walls and anything in here would easily hear you before they saw our light.”

Once again Vreek, the know it all was correct. We were being foolish and not using our brains. Had this been a stealth game we would have failed the mission already for being too loud. I hated that I always seemed to miss the easy stuff.

Telling time was almost impossible but at some point, Dirk held up his hand and we all stopped. He crept forward and I struggled to keep him in sight in the darkness. A moment later he waved us to come forward and we all saw what he had noticed.

The floor of the cave was strewn with bones. There were a variety of sizes and after I picked up a skull I knew what we had just found.

“Goblin,” I whispered.

Vreek nodded and started looking through the bones that were closest to us. He picked up a few ones and eventually made his way back to where we were all crouching.

“Goblin and orc bones,” he whispered. “There should be more bones if this was the entire camp. Do you want to keep searching deeper or should we leave while we can?”

The problem with being in charge is that everyone wants you to make a decision. Especially when it might end with everyone ending up dead.

“How long can you keep that light of yours?” I asked Turk.

“Almost forever. Once cast it uses almost no power to keep it around. If I have to get rid of it and recast it, I could probably do a hundred without any problems.” Turk seemed to be smiling as he bragged about himself. “That spell is really one of the easiest that I learned. I think all of you could probably learn it too fairly quickly.”

Knowing that as long as Turk was ok we would have light gave me enough hope that things would be ok.

“Let’s go on for a bit longer. If things look bad we can leave. I want to figure out why all of these bones are so far back in here.”

As we moved deeper into the cave the smell got worse and worse. I actually thought it might be more rank than the main camp was.

Dirk held up his hand and we stopped. He motioned that he saw something with his eyes and he moved off along the edge of the cave and I lost him from sight. Standing there for what felt like forever motioned for Turk to watch behind us. Finally, Dirk appeared a bit ahead and was dragging something toward us.

“What is that?”

Vreek shook his head as we both watched Dirk slowly get closer to us.

“It looks like a snake skin,” whispered Turk.

“But that thing looks like it is at least ten feet long and is massive,” I replied. I remembered stories of anacondas in different parts of the world that were big but seeing what Dirk was dragging made me wonder what could be in this world.

When Dirk made it back to us he let go of the skin he had been dragging. It was well over twelve feet long and was at least three feet wide at the end he was dragging. It got thinner towards the end.

“Any idea what this is from?” I asked Vreek.

Vreek shook his head and bent down to inspect the shedded skin. After touching it for a moment, he stood back and rubbed his nose.

“This is the smell that we are smelling. This thing smells awful!”

Dirk nodded and motioned behind him.

“There are two more just like this up ahead. I was not sure if they were alive which is why I went to scout. There is more than one of these things.”

I shuddered, and I saw that everyone seemed to smile when I did. I hated snakes. The way they felt on your skin. Those eyes and that tongue. Thinking about all those things made me have another slight tremor across my whole body and I saw Vreek shaking his head in disappointment.

“You afraid of snakes?”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Yes,” I answered, " Is there anything you are afraid of?”

Vreek paused and rubbed his chin for a moment before whispering.

“Just the countless ways I think I will die because of how you act.”

Dirk snickered out loud, and the sound echoed through the cave. Vreek shot Dirk a look and Dirk quieted down.

“Are we still going to go deeper?”

“We have to,” I pointed out. “We have found the remains of what must have been part of the camp but there are no weapons, no armor, nothing. Just bones. We have to keep looking.”

“Zolb is right,” Vreek admitted. “I am not sure any are still alive but we need to find out what happened to all of them and their stuff.”

Both boys nodded and we started following the cave again.

“What is that glow?” asked Turk when we started to reach a bend in the cave.

Up ahead was a light blue glow that was barely noticeable but Turk could always see better than the rest of us.

“Turn out yours but be ready to get another up if I tell you or you feel we need one.”

When Turk’s green light went out, we could still see up ahead where the blue glow was. Only the part that we were in was dark. With that blue glow, we could still see enough to move without stepping on any rocks that littered the floor.

Creeping to the bend we looked around the corner and saw the cave opened up into a massive chasm that had multiple paths leading down into different parts of it. All along the wall was bluish veins of something that was pulsing.

“Bioluminescence,” whispered Dirk.

“Bio what?” asked Vreek.

“In our world, there are bugs and other things that can create light in dark places. We call those types of creatures Bioluminescencent.”

Vreek shrugged and pointed to the paths.

“Which way do you want to go?”

Turk started to walk forward and when I tsked he turned back and held his hand down to silence me.

“Let him scout Dad,” Dirk whispered, "It is what he does.”

Trying not to sigh at being told to hush by my son, I slowly followed Turk as he walked up to the first split in the path. He bent down and flicked around in the dirt on the floor of the cave and shook his head.

Standing up he pointed to the next set that was a good fifty yards along the path that ran along the wall on our right. When he got to the next fork he repeated what he had before. He stayed bent down and looked back at us and motioned for us to come to him.

“Look here,” Turk pointed to the marks in the dirt. “Orc and goblin tracks and what looks like a snake slithering going this way. They definitely went this way but I cannot tell how many traveled this way.”

Moving to the edge of the fifteen-foot-wide pathway I glanced over the side and realized that this chasm was easily over half a mile deep. The blue glow continued all the way down the chasm. I tried instead to follow the pathway along the cavern but it had to be over a quarter mile across.

Standing at the edge I could feel a breeze blowing upwards. While it made no real sound it felt warm and humid and carried that awful smell with it.

“Can you see how far down this path goes?”

Turk shook his head no.

“It is too deep and too long,” replied Turk.

“That’s what she said,” joked Dirk.

Both Turk and I groaned. Part of me was surprised Dirk had waited so long to use one of his favorite comments.

“What did who say?” asked Vreek.

Dirk started to laugh and he covered his mouth as he held back the noise.

“I’ll tell you later but for now we need to follow this path. Who do we want on point?” I replied.

“I’ll do it,” replied Turk as he pulled his bow off his back and readied an arrow. “Want me to shoot first or what?”

“Let’s see how far we can get without fighting. I’d rather know what we are up against before we possibly fight something.”

Vreek nodded and for a moment I felt like he approved of my judgment for once.

We had circled almost halfway around as we went down the path and we could now hear noises drifting up from below us. It was impossible to tell just yet what was being done down there but we knew someone or some group was engaged in something. There was a steady tapping as if rocks were being hit with a pick-axe.

The deeper we went the hotter it became and the more humid it got. The path got slicker and we made sure to hug the wall for fear of going over the edge if we slipped. We also had gotten to see up close the larva that was feeding on the mold and fungus growing on the wall from the moisture and heat. They were the ones giving off the blue light as they slowly ate.

When we had gone over a full circle in length, Turk held up his hand and crouched down as he slowly moved to the edge of the path. The sounds we had heard the first time were louder now and we could hear the occasional voices rising up from inside the cavern. One of the alternate routes that had split off earlier had gone above our heads about one hundred yards earlier and ended in a sharp slide to the open chasm. I knew we were all thankful we had not gone that way as it would have been a bad way to end things.

Turk motioned for us to come and pointed over the edge.

Down below about a quarter mile from us were shapes moving around on what we guessed was the floor of this cavern. They seemed to slither around by how they swayed and I saw Turk’s eyes wide as he watched what was below.

Moving back we gathered close and Turk finally spoke.

“Those are snake men! They have the bottom of a snake and different tops. Some looked human and some looked like goblins. They look to be at least ten feet tall based on the height and angle of what I saw.”

“Snake men,” I repeated. “Vreek do you know anything about these things?”

Vreek shook his head no.

“There are many things I have no knowledge of. These glowing worms and those snake creatures are things I have never heard of.”

I tried to remember what we had seen before in shows or movies or in video games. Often I knew they were fast and ill-tempered but outside of those few points I knew most would easily guess, I had no idea.

Motioning for Turk to get back to moving, I wondered if we should eat the last heart we each had. Poison might be a real possibility. I would hate to use it though and not need to. Who knows when we might be able to replace them?

As we started moving around the edges the sound of conversations became louder. I could not make out what the snake creatures were saying but it seemed to be a lot of shouting and yelling from the tone of it.

Rounding the last bend, I saw Turk stop and turn back slowly and come to us.

“Dad, I can hear orcs down there!”