Chapter 163: Bridge

Aegis and his party stepped forward into the tunnel leading out of the Ruins of Belmiure. Much like the tunnel they’d used to enter the cavern, the road was paved with broken obsidian blocks under their feet from wall to wall. It was odd for Aegis to hear the sound of Snowflake’s talons tapping on the stone, but not being able to see him walking beside him due to Pyri’s invisibility spell.

The tunnel didn’t go on for long before it opened up into a new wide cavern, and the road beneath their feet transitioned into an obsidian block bridge not unlike the bridge that they’d used to cross over the Red River. Under this bridge, however, was nothing but darkness.

Strangely, there was a slight glow of light in this cavern, though from where it originated was hard to tell. Even without the light from Pyri’s cinderbolts, it was possible to faintly see the opposite wall of the cavern, the entirety of the bridge that spanned it, and the bottomless void beneath them with the black mist of the abyss waiting a few dozen meters below to catch anything that fell.

The sound of the wind howling through the tunnel from one end to the other dominated their ears, making it difficult to hear anything else. There were occasional, short moments of reprieve from the sound of the soaring wind where things quieted down, but they were few and far between.

The cavern spanned far onwards to their left and right without visible ends in those directions, and had an open, bottomless pit below. The cavern walls on the side of the bridge they stood on, as well as on the opposide side of the cavern, were jagged and covered in sharp rocks that jutted out from them. There was no ceiling, but rather a point where the wall opposite slanted upwards to meet the wall of the cavern on their side of the large chasm in front of them, giving the cavern the appearance of an upside down V shape.

There also wasn’t only one bridge - as Aegis and the others panned their view left and right, there were multiple structures of varying make that spanned across the chasm. None of them looked in very great condition. They appeared to be coming out of other cavern tunnels from Belmiure, carrying forward obsidian block bridges, but the other bridges were hardly still in-tact, with chunks missing and some broken apart half-way across the chasm.

The light that allowed them to see all of this had its source become apparent the longer the party took in the view. It was coming from insect-like creatures that Aegis had spotted clinging onto the high ceiling of the cavern. They had long translucent, veiny wings on their backs, six spine covered legs, and large, lengthy abdomens that were giving off feint glowing light.

As he’d spotted a few, he watched as occasionally the abdomens of the creatures would flare up and release a bright white flash of light before settling back down into a dull glow. In that time, it allowed him to spot the [Underrealm Glowbug - Level 120] floating above their heads.

The flash caused the others to start noticing them. There were a lot spread throughout the cavern - not just on the walls but also hanging off the bottom and sides of the various bridges extending across the chasm.

“Whoa, fantasy fireflies.” Darkshot whispered with wide eyes as the others watched a few more of the bugs flash bright.

“Why’re they hanging out here?” Rakkan asked.

“Must be something they like to eat that exists in this cavern, I guess.” Aegis shrugged.

“Maybe they like eating the people who try crossing these bridges.” Pyri grinned mischievously, which got her a nasty stare from Darkshot.

“They’re really pretty.” Lina said with a big smile of wonder, which Aegis turned to see. She hadn’t even noticed Aegis staring at her as she looked up, completely mesmerized by the glowing bugs, and her smile was contagious to Aegis.

“So, I guess we just cross this bridge? And watch out for big evil firefly attacks?” Darkshot asked as he squinted to try and see what was on the opposite side. “Oh, wait.” He paused, getting everyone’s attention. “There’s a lot of Dark Elves on the other end of this bridge.” He pointed forward. The bridge was long, nearly half a kilometer, so it was hard to see it, but once everyone focused their eyes they spotted the silhouettes of the humanoid figures on the side of the bridge opposite them.

“Hm.” Aegis scratched his chin as he thought about the circumstances. “I doubt those guys would let us through without causing any problems.” He thought out loud as he carefully looked around at other possible options. He spotted a broken bridge on their left, roughly 100 meters away, that had a giant section missing in the middle, making it unusable. It lead into a tunnel not unlike the bridge they stood on, though, and there was a narrow ridge extending out of the wall that allowed travel between the bridges.

“Let’s take that bridge.” Aegis pointed at it.

“That bridge has a big hole in it.” Darkshot sighed.

“Yeah, but we’ve got a gryphon.” Aegis shrugged.

“You aren’t worried that the bridge’s structural integrity is compromised?” Pyri asked him skeptically.

“Nah, look.” Aegis motioned to several glowbugs that were scurrying around along the underside of the broken bridge. “It can hold those big glowbugs, so I bet it could hold us. Just don’t do any stomping or anything.” Aegis shrugged. He took lead, moving to the left side of the bridge nearest the wall and stepping through a broken opening in the bridge's railing that lead onto the narrow ledge.

He did his best to not look down and walked forward along the ledge. On his left was the jagged wall of the cavern, and on is right was a straight drop down into the darkness of the abyss. The narrow path he walked upon was uneven and barely one and a half meters wide.

Lina was the only one to follow Aegis without any hesitation, followed by the sound of Snowflake’s invisible feet. Rakkan, Darkshot, and Pyri all threw each other apprehensive stares while Darkwing cooed anxiously, but eventually they relented and followed behind Aegis.

Multiple times on their journey across the narrow ledge, Aegis had stepped on a loose section and it broke off, the stone crumbling beneath his feet and plummeting down into the abyss below. But he managed to shrug it off with an awkward, uncomfortable laugh and regain his footing, thanks to Lina grabbing his back and holding him up.

“Are you, like, secretly a thrill seeker?” Darkshot called out to him from the back of the group, after the third near-death tumble. “An adrenaline junky?” He added mockingly.

“No, this is just the best way. C’mon, we’re almost at the bridge.”

“Did I ever tell you about my fear of heights?” Darkshot added.

“I think I picked up on that, yeah.” Aegis replied.

“Are you doing this to punish me for something?”

“No…” Aegis hesitantly replied as he pondered it. “Well, maybe. You did marry my mom.”

“Fair enough.” Darkshot grumbled back, causing Lina and Pyri to chuckle. Aegis reached the broken bridge and was able to climb up over the railing from the ledge to get on top of it, followed by Lina and the others shortly after, without anyone falling.

The first thing Aegis did was look down the tunnel on his left side, from whence the Bridge came, but not far into the tunnel he could see that it had caved in and was covered with large jagged rocks and boulders that had fallen down from the ceiling.

“Let’s hope it’s not caved in on the other side as well, or this’ll be pointless.” Aegis commented as he eyed it.

“It’s not. I can see better thanks to tracking.” Darkshot replied as he squinted across the way.

“Okay, good. Let’s go.” Aegis began walking forward across the bridge.

“Whoa, hold up.” Darkshot held up his hand to stop him. “I thought we were flying across.”

“We are, when we get to the broken part. We’ll take turns flying over the gap with Snowflake.” Aegis replied, and Snowflake let out a squawk which let everyone know where exactly the invisible gryphon was currently standing.

“Why not just fly from here? I don’t trust this bridge.” Darkshot said apprehensively.

“Would you feel safer if we crossed the bridge with you on Snowflake’s back?”

“Very much so, yes.” Darkshot nodded.

“Fine, hop on Snowflake, the rest of us will walk across.” Aegis rolled his eyes and motioned him to Snowflake, who screeched lightly.

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“Thank you.” Darkshot sighed with relief as he walked towards the sound of Snowflake’s noises, accidentally bumping into him. “Can you drop the invisibility spell, though?” Darkshot turned to Pyri.

“No way, too risky. It’ll blow our cover if one of the other Dark Elves see us.” Pyri replied.

“Seriously?” Darkshot groaned. “Fine. Fine.” He grumbled while feeling around for Snowflake’s saddle. Eventually he found the spot to sit on, and with great difficulty, settled down onto the invisible back of the gryphon as the others had already began walking forward across the bridge. Once he was settled, Snowflake began trotting forward behind the others.

“This is arguably way worse.” Darkshot mumbled nervously as he looked down, seeing nothing but the floor of the block bridge despite him knowing there was a gryphon saddle between his legs. Darkwing let out another nervous coo, causing Aegis to look back at Darkshot and see him riding on the air.

“Heh. That looks funny.” Aegis chuckled, causing Rakkan and Lina to look back and chuckle as well.

“Way to hold up the Darkshot image there.” Pyri joined in.

“Yeah, yeah, everyone laugh at the guy who’s afraid of heights. We’ll see how you guys feel when we face your fears.”

“Who says we’re afraid of anything?” Aegis asked.

“Everyone’s afraid of something.” Darkshot replied. The group continued forward a long while without any issues, but as they neared the broken section of the bridge, there were a few ominous rumbling sounds coming from the blocks beneath their feet, mixed in with the tapping of glowbug feet beneath the bridge.

It wasn’t until they got just 5 meters away from where the bridge was broken that suddenly, from the destroyed section of the bridge, a large glowbug head poked its way up over the side. Seeing it, the group became startled and froze in place. They watched as the antenna above the creatures large, bulging black beady eyes wiggled around as if sniffing the air.

“Relax, it’s not a hostile creature. It shouldn’t attack us of we don’t hit it first.” Aegis tried to calm everyone down, but this didn’t help much once the glowbug showed interest in Aegis and his party, and climbed the rest of the way up onto the top of the broken bridge, walking towards them. Up close, they could see the creature was the size of a large horse, and it continued forward towards them without any fear or hesitation.

The group remained completely still, including the invisible Snowflake, and watched as it approached Aegis first. It wriggled its tiny antennae around Aegis and nonchalantly brushed them up against his face, rubbing the soft fuzzy hairs against his cheeks. Once it had, it turned to Rakkan and began doing the same thing.

“I think he’s just saying hello.” Aegis shrugged as he watched it finish with Rakkan and move on to Lina. Only then did he notice that Lina looked absolutely petrified with fear. As the glowbug rubbed its hairy antennae against Lina’s cheeks, her eyes went wide and her skin went pale, and it wasn’t long before she couldn’t bear it and shadowstepped away with a high pitched squeaking sound.

Her disappearance startled the glowbug and it hopped backwards before spreading its wings and buzzing away from the group.

“Hahaha.” Darkshot began laughing, holding his stomach. “See? I’m not the only one scared of things. Lina’s scared of the cute lil friendly bug.”

“Oh give it a rest.” Pyri rolled her eyes at Darkshot as Aegis ran to Lina, who’d shadowstepped back behind Darkshot and Snowflake.

“Are you okay?” Aegis asked her.

“Yes…” She replied with an embarrassed sigh. “Those hairy antennae were just really creepy.”

“I thought they were kinda cute.” Rakkan shrugged.

“You okay to keep going?” Aegis said as he leaned in and eyed her carefully. Without thinking, he’d moved his face incredibly close to hers, and seeing him so close, staring at her with his concerned eyes quickly put a shy smile on Lina’s face.

“I’m okay.” She nodded back.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” she smiled wider.

“Okay.” Aegis replied as he pulled back away from her for a moment, and the two stared at each other. A smile quickly grew on Aegis face as he recalled the squeaking noise she made. “That was a pretty loud squeak.” He mumbled mockingly, to which she shook her head at him. As she did, he glanced back to see that Darkshot, Rakkan and Pyri were all looking away from them, staring at the gap between their side of the bridge and the opposite side. Aegis used this short moment to quickly turn back to Lina and kiss her. “Was kinda cute.” He winked, causing her face to glow bright red.

“Don’t make fun of me.” She pouted as he turned away with a chuckle and walked back towards the others.

“Alright Darkshot, since you are already on Snowflake, you oughta cross first.” Aegis declared as he walked right up to the edge of the bridge.

“Really? I think it’d be safer of Pyri went first, with her fly spell.” Darkshot suggested.

“How about we go together at the same time. Just to be safe?” Pyri smiled at him. Darkshot looked between Pyri, Aegis, and Rakkan who all stared at him expectantly.

“Yeah. Okay. Fine. Darkshot can overcome his fears, no problem.” Darkshot cleared his throat and straightened his back. “Ready when you are.” He nodded to Pyri.

“Okay. See you all on the other side.” Pyri waved to the others before tapping her own shoulder and casting fly on herself. As she lifted up off of the bridge and began soaring forward, the others could hear the sound of Snowflakes large wings begin flapping, though still unable to see them.

A moment later, Darkshot lifted up into the air and began soaring across the chasm towards the other side of the broken bridge.

“Oh shit, oh man. Does he really have to be invisible for this?” Darkshot exclaimed as he inadvertently looked down and saw as though he was riding on thin air above a bottomless pit, leading into the dark abyss below. “Oh fuck me. Fuck this. Oh fuck all of you.” He shouted as Snowflake flapped elegantly after Pyri across the chasm. He could faintly hear Rakkan and Aegis holding back laughter from behind him as he did. “Just you wait, I’m going to find out what you guys are afraid of, and you’ll regret laughing.” He snapped angrily at them.

Luckily, the gap in the bridge wasn’t very large, and with less than 20 seconds of flying, Snowflake landed on the opposite side where Pyri was already waiting.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Pyri said to him, seeing him pale and covered with sweat.

“Yeah, right. No problem.” Darkshot replied between heavy breaths.

“You’ll have to hop off Snowflake though, so he can go back and get the others.” Pyri added.

“Oh. Right.” Darkshot nodded as he hesitantly, and very slowly, climbed off the back of the invisible Snowflake, stumbling slightly as he took the final steps off of him. With a final squawk, Snowflake lifted off to retrieve the others, and it wasn’t long before everyone had made it across the broken bridge to the other side, Aegis being last.

“Good. Let’s walk very carefully across the rest of the bridge, it’s not much further now.” Aegis commented after landing. He hopped off of Snowflake’s invisible back and glanced to his right, in the direction of the intact bridge that they’d avoided crossing.

They were somewhat closer now and able to see more clearly the silhouettes of the numerous Dark Elves that were guarding the bridge, all adorned in dark iron armor wielding longbows, longswords, and spears, though intricate details couldn’t be made out. It didn’t seem as though the group of Dark Elves had noticed them, though, or their shouting. The sound of their activity had been drowned out by an ever present howling wind that passed through the cavern.

Aegis took the lead, continuing forward across the bridge slowly and carefully, with the others trailing behind him, and it wasn’t long before they reached the opposite end and found themselves staring into a tunnel leading out of the cavern.

“That’s it?” Rakkan asked as they stepped into the tunnel and continued forward.

“First cavern we’ve entered where everything didn’t try to kill us.” Pyri added.

“Why do you both sound disappointed?” Aegis turned to stare at them curiously, and they both shrugged back innocently. He shook his head disapprovingly at them while pulling out his map of the underrealm to check it. “According to the map, we’ll be entering the cavern with the City of the White Tree. It’s in the middle. The cavern is otherwise mapped out to be blank, empty space.” Aegis said as Rakkan and Darkshot walked forward to look over his shoulder at the map curiously.

“Empty space?” Rakkan asked.

“So, no landmarks? But look how big the cavern is, it’s bigger than the Belmiure ruins cavern.” Darkshot pointed it out as he wagged his finger at the two locations on the map.

“Yep. That’s the cavern’s name right there, but they wrote it in the ancient language.” Aegis pointed at the label on the upcoming cavern.

“The Plashrim labeled it, uh… I guess it loosely translates as ‘Horrifying Wasteland’.” Rakkan said apprehensively.

“The Iuonok guy said we should watch out for patrols, and creatures beyond our wildest nightmares.” Lina added nervously.

“Great. Time to find out just how dark and sadistic this game’s developers truly are.” Pyri replied as Aegis put the map away back into his inventory.

“I don’t know, we’ve already seen some pretty messed up stuff. Acid ooze, evil statues, undead monsters, giant void ants… creepy dark mist monsters, and dragons…” Aegis began listing off all of the dark creatures he’d encountered thus far, counting them out on his fingers. “Oh, the raid boss, with the sharp maw and those tentacles was pretty creepy, too.”

“Aegis, Aegis, Aegis…” Darkshot shook his head condescendingly at Aegis and gently placed his hand on his shoulder. “You are new to fantasy games, so you have no clue. But don’t worry, there’s still way worse stuff out there. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll find one that you’re scared of.” Darkshot grinned mischievously.

“Hah, I doubt it.” Aegis replied confidently.

“I wouldn’t be so sure…” Pyri replied with a tilt of her head and raised brows. “As your mom, I do know there is one thing you are afraid of, and there are certainly monsters like that in these games.”

“Wait.” Darkshot’s eyes lit up with interest, while Rakkan’s and Lina’s lit up with curiosity. “I knew it, so is there something he’s afraid of?” Darkshot asked Pyri eagerly. “What is it?”

“Mom.” Aegis groaned at her.

“I won’t tell. Let’s just hope we never see it. The last time we did, he ran to his bedroom and hid under his covers.” Pyri pulled her lips in.

“Oh man, I hope we encounter it.” Darkshot rubbed his hands together eagerly.

“You realize we’re in a party, right? We’re on the same team?” Aegis scowled at him.

“Yeah? So? Maybe I just want to be a good guy and help you overcome your fear. You know, like how you just helped me overcome my fear of heights.” Darkshot smirked.

“Oh, so you’re not afraid of heights anymore?” Aegis asked him skeptically.

“Yup. Flying over a bottomless void on an invisible gryphon did the trick.” He replied.

“Watch out!” Rakkan shouted suddenly, stopping Aegis and Darkshot from continuing forward and walking off of a cliff. They stopped at the last moment, not realizing the sudden drop in front of them as the tunnel they were traversing had come to an end and opened up into a new, gigantic cavern, with a drop of roughly 20 meters from their tunnel down to the ground level.

“Oh fucking shit!” Darkshot shouted in a panic, stumbling backwards and landing on his bottom.

“Yup, definitely cured.” Lina chuckled and held her hand out to help him up.

“You better hope there’s no more hairy antenna monsters here.” Darkshot grumbled back as he took her hand and let her help him up, while Aegis, Pyri and Rakkan looked forward into the cavern ahead.

“Whoa…” Aegis’ jaw dropped in disbelief at the view before him.