Titus floated a small sliver of crackling white light above his outstretched palm as he pushed aside the hanging roots and vines to enter the cave. The floor was a root of the old stump that led down into the cave and wound around the crooked corridor as it descended into darkness. Victoria followed behind him, inspecting every inch of the cave with her auravision as they slowly moved deeper. Behind her was Autumn, who leaned side-to-side to peer around her companions and get a look at what was up ahead. Next was Iris, trudging along with a hand on the wall for support, and at the rear was Eli, watching Iris carefully in case she stumbled and he needed to catch her.

The cave was narrow, and the humid air hung still disturbed only by their passage and the occasional drips of water from the ceiling. Much of the cave walls and ceiling consisted of hard stone, but patches of soft black soil frequently interrupted it. After a short distance, the root veered to the side and borrowed through one of those patches of soil, forcing the party to continue on across a floor of loose, jagged rocks. Besides the large root they had walked along as they entered, the cave also contained the smaller roots of many other plants of trees, which dangled from the ceiling like organic stalactites and often needed to be pushed aside or ducked under.

They moved at an agonizing pace as they navigated the uneven rocks. After nearly twenty minutes of painstaking traversal they came across a sudden drop in the cave floor. It was a vaguely circular opening in the floor of the passageway that led to blackness below. Though the passageway they had been following opened up slightly around the border of the opening, it was otherwise a dead end.

Titus side-stepped part way around the opening and planted his heels on the minimal space available between the walls and the edge the drop off. This made room for Victoria and Autumn to filter in and do the same on the other side, leaving Iris and Eli to huddle in the passageway to compete for angles to see into the opening. Titus held out his hand and gently twisted it over to drop the floating light into the hole. It slowly drifted down, temporarily plunging the party in almost-darkness as it passed into the space below. For a moment, all that was revealed was a glossy black and completely flat surface, then the light dipped into the surface. The bright white light was immediately dimmed to a faint, muted glow barely able to puncture the blackness of the water.

"Are we sure about this?" Titus asked as he floated the light back up to his hand.

"At this point, we're committed," Eli said, "I don't like it either."

"Alright, you first then," Titus said, pointing at the hole.

"You should go first," Eli said, "you have the light."

"No, I should go last," Titus countered, "the light's more important up here so everyone can see where the hole is."

"The hole is the whole floor--"

"Guys!" Autumn hissed, then gestured to Iris, "Iris is cursed."

Eli twisted in the cramped space to give an apologetic to Iris, who was standing right beside him. She looked unbothered, and then disappeared. There was a splash, followed by sounds of sloshing water.

"It's not so bad down here," Iris said, "the water's fine."

Eli angrily rolled his eyes at her recklessness, and then jumped down the hole after her. His boots splashed into the water, and he continued sinking until it was above his knees. He let out a series of high pitched screams and gasps as he shuffled around in the darkness, looking in vain for somewhere he could climb out of the water.

"It's not fine!" he shouted back at the others, "it's freezing."

"Oh, sorry," Iris smiled apologetically in the direction of Eli even though it was too dark to see him, "feels fine to me, must be the curse."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Autumn dropped down next, sucking in a sharp, ragged breath as she was submerged past her waist in the chilly water. Victoria drifted down through the hole in mist form and did not rematerialize her body, instead opting to hover over the water like a fog. When Titus dropped down, he held a stern, stoic expression for as long as he could until he finally cracked and sucked in a short, quivering breath.

"That's," he faltered as he fought to control his breathing, "really cold."

They were in another narrow tunnel, except this one was filled wall-to-wall with calm, almost still water, though they could see faint signs of a current where the water met the wall, and could fill a slight push from the slowly moving water now when they stood still. The submerged portions of their bodies completely disappeared from view only an inch or two below the surface of the water, even with the bright magical light penetrating it. The walls of the tunnel were stained black about a foot above the waterline, implying the water level was sometimes higher than it currently was. The tunnel continued in either direction until the light faded into blackness, and there were no discernible differences to the naked eye between either direction.

"Well, now which way?" Titus asked.

The mist of Victoria drifted in front of Titus, catching the attention of everyone looking towards him, then twisted around him and weaved through the group, ensuring that everyone saw her before she began drifting away down the tunnel.

"Alright, that way I guess," Titus said.

Progress was once again agonizingly slow. The adventurers were plenty strong enough that wading through the water wasn't all that difficult at first, but the icy temperature bit at their muscles and unstable rocks often slipped and rolled beneath their feet. After another twenty minutes of trudging through the tunnel, they were all developing aches and desperate for relief.

"Aw man," Autumn groaned suddenly.

"What is it?" Eli asked attentively.

"I just realized we're probably all cursed now," she replied.

"What do you mean?" Titus asked.

"The water's pitch black. I bet it's full of that haunted soil, it's probably cursed all of us by now."

"Calm down," Eli dismissed her, "we're fine. The water's only black because it's stained with ash from the great fire. There's probably a whole layer of the stuff beneath the ground somewhere."

"Oh," Autumn said, sighing with relief. Then her eyes widened, "what if the ash is where the ghosts come from?"

Eli stopped and looked back at her, then looked away for a moment while he thought about it, "don't think about it, let's keep moving."

After nearly half an hour of trudging through water, the cramped tunnel opened up into a wide room with a twenty foot tall ceiling. They finally found respite in the form of a beach of grey sand on one side of the slow moving cave river, backed by an enormous pile of crumbled stone which appeared to have fallen from the ceiling above some time ago. The sand of the beach was fine like dust and sparkled under Titus's light, and the beach was dotted with rocks that had tumbled down from the rock pile behind it.

The party members each collapsed unceremoniously on the beach, sprawling out limply and breathing heavily as they dripped onto the sand. Victoria rematerialized from the cloud of mist, completely dry and appearing much better off the rest of them, and started inspecting their surroundings.

"Iris," Eli called out without looking over, "how we doing?"

"That sucked," she replied.

Eli let out a curt laugh, "I meant the curse."

"Oh," Iris said, "does anyone else hear whispers?"

No one said anything for a moment, and Titus and Autumn exchanged a glance.

"No," Titus said hesitantly.

"Yeah, me neither," Autumn added, propping herself up on her elbows to look over at Iris.

"Good, okay," Iris said, the nervousness obvious in her voice, "well, I do. I'd say that sums up about how I'm doing."

Eli solemnly climbed to his feet, not eager to end his rest so soon but not willing to prolong it while Iris's curse progressed, "Vic, how close are we?"

"Not far," she replied, scanning the top of the rock pile with her auravision, "there's an opening behind those rocks, near the top, we should be able to dig it out pretty easily. We're almost there, I can feel the aura stronger than ever."

"Can you tell what it is yet?" he asked.

"It's--" she hesitated, "it feels like a lot of things. I don't want to speculate."

"I get it, but it kind of feels like the rest of us are going in blind."

"I'd rather that than me tell you a guess that turns out wrong, and you go in with the completely wrong idea."

A small rock tumbled down from the top of the pile, picking up speed as it bounced and rolled until it ultimately tumbled down the beach and splashed into the water. All eyes turned towards the rock pile, and a larger rock moved aside and rolled down onto the beach, revealing a small, dark opening to a passageway beyond. An arm reached out of the darkness.