“What the heck?!” Viola’s jaw dropped in shock. She stood in the entrance to a rather bizarre room. Simply stated, the room was a massive cavern, but it was far from what one would call normal for a cavern. Sure, the freaky fungus providing lighting to the place was odd enough, but that wasn’t what caught the bunny girl’s attention about the room. No, there were much more strange things about this place, things that had no business being down here.
Her emerald eyes flitted around the place, jumping from oddity to oddity, the absurdity of the room taking her in. The walls and floor were normal enough. The other things, though, were a completely different story. The perplexed bunny girl walked over to one of the things that just felt wrong to her, a fireplace. That is right. There was a literal fireplace down here.
Viola stopped a few feet from the thing, feeling its warmth. A raging fire danced within it, crackling as it did so. The bunny girl tilted her head to the side, studying the structure more closely. Try as she might, she found no smokestack. However, smoke did not pour into the room from the fire. It wasn’t that it lacked smoke, but the smoke appeared to be absorbing into the very stone above the flames.
The orange-haired bunny girl turned her attention to the red recliner that had been positioned in front of the fireplace. Compared to the fireplace and its magically vanishing smoke, the chair looked to be mundane, but why was it here? Viola leaned over nervously to take a closer look at the article of furniture. She couldn’t find anything off about it. It looked like a regular recliner that happened to be red. Perhaps it was just the tunnel wandering speaking, but the normal-looking chair looked awfully inviting about now.
“Why do I feel like sitting in this thing would be a bad idea? It looks so comfy though. Maybe just a… No, don’t do it. Something feels very wrong about this place. Wait! Could this be some kind of mimic? That would explain the comfy look, wouldn’t it? Could the fireplace be one too?”
Viola took a step back as she pondered, her tail twitching nervously. Comfy looking or not, sitting down only to get her butt bit did not sit well with her. Actually, she shivered at the thought. Being reduced to food was really something she’d prefer to avoid.
“Wait! Is it just me, or have there been quite a few attempts to eat me since I got isekai’d to Asha?” Viola pondered her own question for a moment, thinking back, her right hand going to her chin. “There was that rock toad that bit my leg. That situation was more embarrassing than anything else though. I totally overreacted there. Then there was the whole Ri Sal thing. Slimes truly are terrifying. I hope we lost her, but somehow, I doubt we’ve seen the last of her.”
***
“She’s so cute when she’s lost in her own world,” Eks thought, her white tail swishing to and fro as she looked at the bunny girl. Viola, for her part, was still lost in thought, staring at the red recliner, her bunny ears twitching occasionally. Eks giggled to herself before turning away from her girlfriend, her red eyes scanning the room. There were a lot of candles in this place, like a ridiculous amount.
“Maybe I overdid the candles a bit,” the cat girl mused to herself. “Who am I kidding? They help set the mood. Can’t go wrong with too many candles. It’s not like it looks like some sort of arcane altar or something.” The color drained from her face. “It totally looks like some sort of arcane altar, doesn’t it? Less candles next time.”
Recomposing herself, Eks glanced back to her girlfriend, finding the girl to still be lost in thought. The cat girl returned her attention to the rest of the room. Apart from the obscene amount of candles that were seemingly placed haphazardly around the place, there was also a large heart-shaped bed. The bed was covered with a silky red sheet. A goofy grin found its way to the cat girl’s face when her crimson eyes found the bed, her white cat ears twitching gleefully.
“Time to get ready for the main event!” The blue-haired cat girl dashed across the room towards the bed, her greaves sounding against the rock floor. She eagerly bounded up, landing on the bed, the mattress bouncing with the impact. She grinned contently, sitting on her heels for a moment before twisting around to look at her girlfriend. The girlfriend in question was still preoccupied with staring at the recliner. “Seriously, Vi! Cute girl in bed! Hello!”
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Eks frowned at the obvious lack of attention she was getting. “I-I’ll just have to get her attention!” The cat girl twisted around, taking a position on her side, striking a sexy pose. “Hey, Vi! Care to join me!” If there had been crickets in here, Eks was sure that she could have heard them. Viola showed no response to the statement, clearly being too absorbed by the chair in front of her. “Y-You have to be kidding me! Nothing! I’m being shown up by a freaking chair!”
“Hey, Vi! Over here!” The cat girl was outright yelling now, her face going a bit red. Her words seemed to finally do it, snapping her girlfriend out of whatever she had been in. The bunny girl’s ears gave another twitch, and she turned away from the red recliner. Eks gave a sigh of relief. As hard as it was to believe, she actually had been starting to get jealous of a chair. How ridiculous was that?
***
Viola gasped as she took in the view before her. Her girlfriend was laying sexily on what looked to be a heart-shaped bed, but was it really a bed? “Get off the bed mimic,” she stated just loud enough for Eks to hear. Well, her words weren’t really that quiet since there was a good amount of distance between the two of them. However, the bunny girl did not want to set off what she had convinced herself were a bunch of mimics. Nervously, she placed her right hand on the handle of her sheathed sword, ready to draw it at a moments notice.
Her breaths picked up a bit. “Relax. This isn’t a problem yet. There’s time. Eks will just get off the thing.” She glanced back at the fireplace and recliner, noting their positions. “Okay. There are three of them. No problem. Wait a moment!” Her emerald eyes widened as the sheer amount of burning candles in the room dawned on her. “T-There’s so many.” “H-Hurry and get off. It isn’t safe.”
“Mimic? Not safe? Wait! You think this is some sort of trap?!”
“Of course it is. What else could it be? Wait! Why do you look like you want to cry?!”
“No reason. You’re right. This is so a trap,” the cat girl slouched over dejectedly before climbing off the bed, its mattress sifting under her as she moved. The bunny girl tensed up with each movement of the mattress, clearly expecting it to try to eat her girlfriend. Eks pouted as she walked across the rock floor, saddened by the turn of events. She had such high hopes for this, but Viola seemed to think that they had walked into some kind of mimic den.
As her girlfriend reached her, Viola pivoted from side to side, green eyes jumping uneasily from presumed mimic to presumed mimic. Her hand was still at the ready on the handle of her still-sheathed weapon, and her bunny ears and tail displayed nervous twitches. The sight of her was just plain ridiculous.
“Let’s just go. There’s an exit over there,” Eks said in defeat, gesturing towards the side as she did so.
Viola glanced in the direction the cat girl had reference and smiled at the sight of the tunnel. The bunny girl took another glance about the room, taking in the sheer magnitude of the presumed mimics. “There’s a lot of them, but I think we can make it!” Having convinced herself, she grabbed Eks’s hand, earning a surprised gasp from the cat girl before proceeding to pull her into a run.
“Almost there,” she thought as the pair neared the exit. “Just need to get around these final candle mimics.” She began an evasive weave around the candles, Eks eeping in confusion as she got yanked around by the utterly pointless maneuver. The pair passed the threshold and reached the safety of the tunnel.
“That was close.” Viola breathed a sigh of relief. “Wait! Why do you look mad?!”
“Did you really have to yank me around like that?” the red-eyed cat girl chastised.
“S-Sorry. I-I didn’t want you to get eaten.” Tears started to well up in the bunny girl’s emerald eyes. “I’m just glad you’re okay!” Viola threw her arms around Eks, hugging her.
Eks smiled at the contact, returning the embrace. She leaned forward and gave the bunny girl a quick peck on the lips, eliciting a slight blush. “Shall we continue?” she asked, gesturing down the tunnel. Viola took Eks’s right hand in her left and gave a nod. Hand in hand, the two began heading down the tunnel under the soft light of the overhead fungus.