"Littletooth!" Iris's sharp voice echoed through the caves.
She could still hear the slapping of his feet against the marble, and could sense him just within the range of her awareness ability. Abby used a tentacle to hold the lantern out in front of Iris, but it was of little use in the twisting and winding caves. She ran with the flat of the great sword's blade balanced on her shoulder, as it was the only way she could manage the weight while sprinting. Abby kept a tentacle wrapped around the hilt just above her hand for extra support, to ensure the blade didn't accidentally slip against Iris's neck while she ran. After a few turns down narrow tunnels, Iris found herself and Abby standing in something that was not quite a tunnel, but not quite a cavern.
It seemed several -- perhaps dozens -- of tunnels ran parallel alongside one another, forming deep trenches that waved and wiggled together along their length. Ancient waters had long since carved away the walls that once separated the tunnels, but the remnants of those walls still persisted in the form of well-worn columns that were thin in the middle and broad where they met ridges along the top and bottom of the cave, outlining the boundaries that had been there long ago.
The formations created countless rounded windows into the caves beyond, each layer growing dimmer until the final windows she could see opened only into darkness. The ceiling above was nearly twelve feet high, and the bottom ridges of marble that lined the trenches came up to her abdomen and left much unseen to either side.
"Littletooth!" she called out again, her voice echoing several times over across the darkness, punctuating the great distances the cavern reached beyond the light.
Abby pointed a tentacle to her left, and Iris didn't hesitate to follow it. She blipped onto a ridge and peered into the next trench over before blipping across it and repeating the process. She crossed several trenches before she sensed Littletooth in the next one over, thrashing about with something in his mouth as if playing with a toy.
She blipped into the trench beside Littletooth's, crouched low and stayed quiet while she counted down from five on her fingers and pinpointed Littletooth's exact location on the other side of the ridge. When her last finger folded, she blipped behind Littletooth and a mass of tentacles descended upon him. He was scooped up despite his gnashing and whining, the tattered cloak he was ripping apart drifted to the ground, and he was promptly dumped into the void.
Grumbling tones emanated from the bag as it cinched itself shut, leaving Iris alone in the darkness. She thought she sensed something move, but it was faint and blurry like a gentle breeze. A few seconds later, the bag opened just enough for a single tentacle to rise out of the void with the lantern and once again bathe her surroundings in light.
"We gotta do something about this running away habit," Iris said to the tentacle now hovering overhead, "before he gets himself hurt."
Affirmative sounds came from the bag.
With the sword still balanced on her shoulder, Iris crouched down to pick up the cloak he had been playing with, only to find it wasn't there. She stood and spun around, but it was nowhere to be seen, and she was certain it had dropped the ground when Abby picked up Littletooth.
"Did you grab that cloak?" she asked.
Negative sounds came from the bag, and the tentacle reached out to pan the lantern around in search of it.
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"It was right here," Iris said, staring a spot on the ground, "I felt a breeze while you were in the bag, but it wasn't strong enough to carry away a whole cloak."
Confused sounds came from the bag.
"Yeah, it doesn't matter," she agreed, even as she continued looking around for it, "let's get back to camp."
Iris blipped back across the approximate number of trenches she remembered blipping across, and stopped in the trench she hoped was the one she had entered through. When she looked to either side, however, she saw nothing but more cavernous formations, and not the solid tunnel she had emerged from.
"Uh, Abby?" she asked, "any idea how to get back?"
The tip of the tentacle which held the lantern pointed out in a direction, then curled back as if uncertain. The tentacle swung around and pointed again, but once again withdrew a second later. The lantern swung a few more times before Abby gave up and emanated negative tones from the bag.
Iris sighed, "okay, so we're lost in a cave. What's another classic Iris fuck up, right?"
Abby brought the base of the lantern down to conk on top of Iris's head, further crinkling her hat.
"Hey!" she yelled, waving her free hand to bat away the tentacle while her other carefully balanced the sword on her shoulder.
With no other directions to follow, Iris began walking down the trench. If nothing else, she was rather certain she hadn't gotten turned around, and was at least walking back in the direction they had originally emerged. Sooner or later, even if she wasn't in the exact right trench, she would find the edge of the cavern.
After only a few minutes of walking, however, she was quickly losing her confidence. Each section of cave was indistinguishable from the last, and she couldn't shake the feeling that she wasn't moving at all. Soon she began to question if she had chosen the right direction after all, and if she should turn around and go the other way instead. Frustrated, she decided to take a break.
"I'm starting to think we're in a bad situation," she sighed, resting the great sword against a ridge before sitting on the ground beside it and leaning back against the ridge herself.
Abby said nothing.
As she sat there, she surveyed her surroundings. It was all still just cave, with no identifiable landmarks or indicators of direction to speak of. She doubted she would even be able to orient herself in the same direction again if she closed her eyes and spun around. Searching her mind of solutions proved fruitless, and she began to worry she would need to be rescued.
"Don't think bad thoughts, Iris," she said to herself, taking off her hat so she could gently thump her head against the marble. Memories of her past mistakes prowled on the edges of her mind like wolves howling outside a cottage at night.
Somewhere in the cavern, a pebble bounced across the floor of the cave. Iris shot her eyes towards Abby's tentacle, which twisted towards her as if looking back. Then they both looked in the direction of the pebble.
"Got any other ideas?" she asked.
Negative tones came from the bag.
Iris nodded silently, returned her wizard hat to her head, and climbed to her feet. With the great sword balanced on her shoulder, she set off in the direction she had heard the pebble drop. The caves were eerily quiet, the only sounds were her boots on the marble and the only movement was shifting shadows cast by her lantern's light across the columns.
Something moved in the trench to her left -- faint and breezy, like before. Iris kept walking, pretending she hadn't noticed it. It passed by again, this time in the trench to her right, and she brought her other hand to the hilt of her sword. More tentacles slowly squirmed their way out of the bag, careful not to leave any space for Littletooth to squeeze out, and soon hovered all around her as she walked.
A pebble flew towards them from the darkness, but Iris sensed it coming. She reached out with her off hand and blipped it into her palm, rolling it between two fingers and holding it up to the light. It seemed, by all means, to be a simple marble pebble. Another pebble emerged from the darkness, aimed directly at the lantern, but Abby quickly jerked away to dodge and it instead bounced off the ridge to their right.
Iris tossed the pebble aside and spoke loudly, "if this is a joke, it isn't funny."
Silence.
"Stop playing and show yourself."
Further down the trench, at the very edge of the lantern's light, a figure emerged from the darkness -- shrouded in the cloak Littletooth had found, and wielding a large slab of marble in the vague shape of a great sword which it balanced on its shoulder.