“Is She gone?”

Cara tried to reply to Dayton’s rasping question, but found her mouth had dried to dust. She tried to swallow, coughed, and managed to croak, “Yes. I think.”

She turned back to face the prostrate Acolyte, and the sword she still held in her left hand flashed orange up the long blade to the hilt to be swallowed by the nearly black lacquered metal of the finger guard.

Shocked, Cara bobbled the weapon and almost dropped it on the floor. “Oh, gods above and below, that wasn’t a dream.”

“No, I don’t think any of that was.” Dayton had his forehead pressed so hard to the floor, Cara was certain the flagstone had etched gravel lines into his skin. “We’re still alive. I’m too cold to be dead. I think I wet my trousers.”

Cara might have laughed, if she didn’t know that she needed to change out her own clothes for similar reasons.

Dayton slowly picked up his head and began to shake when he saw the dagger glint in the torchlight. “Where… where did you get that?”

“She gave it to me.” Cara cleared her throat again and forced herself to speak the goddess’s name. “The Morgana gave it to me.”

It was only respectful, after all, to use the name of the person who gave you a gift.

“That’s the Nightblade! The Morgana’s own weapon!” Dayton scrambled to his feet and looked torn between reaching for the sword and keeping his distance.

Cara’s reserves of patience had been zapped by the otherworldly encounter, and she didn’t much care for the look of stunned awe on her marque’s face. “I don’t care if it’s her kitchen knife at this point. I just want to get out of this dungeon and back into the sunlight.”

She thrust her torch at Dayton, motioning for him to take it. “Hold this while I find the other torch you decided to throw at the table? It’s a miracle the tablecloth didn’t combust.”

Dayton obeyed, watching Cara as she strode forward to pick up the sputtering spare that had, indeed, rolled perilously close to the feast table.

He squinted, trying to see the night feast that had been so vividly outlined just moments before. But the spider webs may as well have been bricks, for all they let a mortal see the dishes and dinnerware beneath their shrouds.

It was a dead place once more, bare of movement or light save that they made themselves.

Cara tilted the torch head into the flame of Dayton’s, careful not to let any flaming pitch fall onto her hand or his sleeve. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

Cara began to march forward, the now-spitting torch held high to light the way in front of her as best she could. Dayton scrambled to catch up, bowing at the slumped horned figure that could only have represented Cern as he half-ran toward the bobbing light that was Cara.

“Where are you going? The tunnel’s the other way,” he said as soon as she was in ear shot. “And so are our things! The packs, the trunk! We need those!”

Cara sighed at that last bit and turned to face her charge. “Fine. We go back for those, but I want to be through this tomb before night falls. I don’t think it’s a place to linger.”

The trip back to the surface seemed to take less time than the initial journey, though that may have been due to Dayton’s lack of interest in the tunnel’s pictograms.

Soon they emerged, blinking, into the swamp-day sunlight. It had moved in the time since they’d been below, and the trees’ shadows nearly touched the shaded tunnel entrance.

The kaprid baby had curled atop Dayton’s trunk, its talons hooked into the straps, eyes closed in bliss as it basked in a temporary sunbeam.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Cara made a face while Dayton’s back was turned, but her tongue was tucked back behind her teeth by the time he turned to ask for help putting on the trunk.

In a few moments, packs were settled across backs, baby monsters pressing their luck traveling with a newly armed Hero were perched on the groove between the marque’s neck and shoulder, all wet pants were changed, and they were ready to proceed once more.

Cara took a deep breath of swamp air—and proceeded to turn back the way they had come, back toward the underground tunnel and the abandoned feast hall.

“What are you doing?” Dayton yelped, making the kaprid squeak in protest as he jerked backward.

Cara sighed. “Did you see the amount of pricker bushes on either side of this monstrosity of a pyramid? There’s a reason no one’s discovered this entrance, as far as I can tell—because it’s ringed ‘round with natural thorns and probably quagmires to boot. We might’ve found a way around it, had we not wasted part of the afternoon leaving our bags here or staring at old pictures on rocks.

“As it is, the only way to get anywhere clear of this blasted place will be to go straight through it.” Cara rolled her neck and flexed her fingers. “We’ll need to get started now, if we want to find a decent place to camp before night falls.”

“But I didn’t see an exit!”

“I’m surprised you saw anything, with your face glued to the floor. Trust me, Dayton. We can get through it.”

Now I’m the one talking the Acolyte into entering sacred space, instead of the other way around, Cara thought as Dayton peered over her shoulder, more than a little anxious.

She sighed. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Nothing happened the first time, did it?”

Dayton eyed the dagger in her hand with skepticism. “No, but…”

Cara propped her free hand onto one hip and cocked her head at him. “No buts. Now relight my torch with yours, please, and let’s get going before the light goes completely outside.”

He cast one last look behind him, toward the green-tinged light, before giving himself up to the darkness of the tunnel and the small pool of light cast by his torch.

When they got to the feast hall again, Cara didn’t linger on the threshold, instead striding straight into the room as if she knew exactly where she was going.

Dayton strained to see through the thick darkness, but the torches only picked up the shadowed shapes of wall hangings and solid stone.

“Uh, Cara? Where are you going?”

Cara didn’t stop at Dayton’s query, merely continuing to steadily make her way to the opposite end of the feast table. The throne there was empty—it seemed She had left after granting the favor of an audience to the hapless couple. “There’s an exit this way.”

“How do you know?”

In response, she turned to face Dayton and lowered her torch so that it rested between them. “Watch the flame.”

“What does that—wait, it’s bending toward me!”

Cara nodded. “There’s a breeze blowing from this direction toward the way we came in—and where there’s a space for air, there’s a space for people.”

Dayton, slightly reassured, followed after Cara, letting her lead them further into the room. They came to the end of the feast table without further mishap or triggering of divine traps. He refused to turn back to face the front of the antlered figure, seated behind them in the darkness, not even to see if he was outlined in that violet glow that still threw dark spots across his vision.

Cara, meanwhile, had lowered her torch to examine the edge where wall met floor. “Ah! There.”

She twitched a heavy tapestry, stitched with some dark design that neither could discern, to reveal a gaping maw of black yawning behind it. “Not so secret a door, after all. I wonder why they covered it like that.”

Dayton almost shoved her aside in his haste to escape the room. “Less wondering, more moving.” His toe found the back side of a step. He began to climb the stairs as quickly as the trunk strapped to his back and the darkness hovering outside of his torch’s light would let him.

Cara followed behind him, taking care that her dagger didn’t catch on the tapestry. “I would’ve guessed you’d be less frightened of meeting gods, Dayton,” she observed, then added with a wicked edge, “especially considering you were the one pushing us to enter this place at all. If we’d done things my way, we’d have been further away and without any sort of close encounters.”

“You don’t know the stories I do,” Dayton said. “If you did, you’d be scared, too.”

“Still, the next time we see an old crumbly place with weird symbols, we go around. Agreed?”

“Agreed, though I’ll probably feel differently tomorrow.” Cara didn’t see him shrug, but she heard it in his voice. “It will most certainly make for better reading of the old tales next time I’m being forced to study the ballads. Did you see how the food just… came back to life on the table?”

Cara smiled beneath her torch’s halo. Dayton’s scholarly bent was reasserting itself, as shock and fear began to fade into the comforting recesses of memory. “Yes, I saw.”

“And She spoke to you. You!” Cara couldn’t decide if Dayton was insulted to have been ignored by the goddess he’d worshiped and studied, or elated to have been able to observe without the pressure of having to respond to divine queries. “How did you know about the Feast of Thanksgiving, by the way?”

“Dayton, really.” Cara rolled her eyes. “Everyone celebrates the Feast around this time of year, not just you religious folks. We were just about to smoke the last of the inn’s pigs for winter and the celebration when you came to visit.”

He stumbled on the next step. “Damn. Are you sure this is the way out?”

“Positive,” Cara said through gritted doubts.