Stirring and rousing from sleep, Zilian stretched his arms and legs, hearing his joints pop back in place while letting out a complimentary yawn. He felt much better, but at the same time ached. The cold hard ground of the cave was unforgiving. Zilian sat up straight, checking on Erica and their new found friend Sarri who still were soundly asleep, making him the first to wake up.

That's a first. He remarked to himself, usually he would sleep the whole morning away until someone roused him, namely Erica.

Yesterdays turn of events took a hefty toll on him. He was already tired from the journey and even more so from the rescue, not to mention the lost time by over passing the shortcut they were supposed to go through. However, he reminded himself that there would have been nobody to save Sarri if they had gone the right way. Not that he really cared at this point, he would had left her after meeting her in person.

The girls stirred, they would be awake any minute now. He decided to take another quick survey of the cave they had found themselves in, from this point it led down into a drop to what sounded like a stream on the bottom. The drop itself was too steep and slick to climb down, since they exhausted all the rope they made, which meant the only option was to go back.

Zilian ran back up to the cave once was entrance, searching their ticket out of this hole. When he and Erica had first heard Sarri call for help, there was another entrance to the right. The main entrance was blocked off with huge chunks of rock but the other tunnel was wide open.

Stepping at mouth of the second tunnel, he felt an incline as well as a small breeze. Wherever air comes from, an entrance could be found. He made way back to share his discovery, seeing that Sarri was already up chugging water from her canteen. Erica stretched herself out on the ground,squinting with tired eyes as she checked her surroundings.

"You came back? Thought you gave up on us, kinda wish you did." Sarri muttered in her breath. She spoke lowly but not enough for him not to hear her, unsure whether she meant him to hear it or not he decided not to let her get on his nerves again.

"I think our only choice of getting out of here is going back through this tunnel, then to a different tunnel that goes up." He remarked hopefully.

"You mean that you came back to tell us that you found out you can't leave without us?" She contended.

"You are getting on my nerves! I didn't have to pull you up from that death pit." He retorted while pointing finger aggressively towards her.

She retorted back and pushed him away as if he were garbage, "And I didn't need to accept your help either, you disrespectful young mule! That's no way to treat a woman."

"If you even can consider calling yourself a woman. More likely a thorn on my thumb."

"Zilian, calm down." Erica emphasized.

Zilian calmed down a bit, but he still was puffed up clenching his fists.

"You said the other tunnel leads out?" She clearly was trying to change the subject. Zilian forced himself calm down, they would not be getting anywhere by arguing.

"Maybe. I only checked a bit inside of the other tunnel, there was a breeze leading up. Wherever it leads, it should be out of here."

"Then what are you waiting for? You’re just wasting our time wanting to start arguments, you have problems kid." She stood and slapped her sack in place.

Zilian barked, "You're the one who started it! And I am not the ones with problems! And my name is Zilian!"

"Whatever kid." She rolled her eyes, all the while grinning.

Zilian shut his mouth up before he had another fit of outbursts. Deciding on that he will just pack up and go, his stomach growled loudly as he was packing the blankets away. Erica and Sarri turned their heads at him, his face went red in embarrassment because he has not had anything to eat since morning yesterday.

"Maybe we should get breakfast first." Erica suggested.

Sarri retorted, "Excellent idea, except for I don't have breakfast little lady. Unless you are offering me some."

Zilian face palmed in despair, This is a divine punishment, isn’t it?

~---~

"So when I looked at it, I knew right away it was pure gold. There was a problem, want to guess what it was?" Excitement was emphasized in almost every syllable from Sarri.

Erica replied, "It was too heavy?" She listened and participated in this woman’s conversations, obviously having no interest in her topics noting from her tone. However, regardless it all, she indulged the woman’s ego.

"Nah, only one time when an ore we found was too heavy. The problem we had was one of our own double crossed us, but that ended badly for him. I was suspicious of his loose relations with rivaling spelunking guilds, I saw him go meet up with them when we went back to the nearest village to get ourselves restocked to pull the gold out. Good thing I did too, if I hadn't mentioned it to our overseer, we wouldn't have left him there right there and then. We rushed back to the gold, used our worn out pickaxes. And when they broke, we pulled on the thing with our bare hands. In less than an hour, we got it loaded in our cart. We rode to the other town on the opposite direction just when we have heard the horses of the guild closing in. We had a narrow escape, but escape we did!"

Sarri had not quit talking ever since they started their trek into the uncharted tunnels. Zilian felt like they had been stuck here for days, and basing it off that logic he guessed they had only been a couple of hours. Sarri talked and talked and talked about all of her spelunking adventures, that is if you could call them as such. What Sarri called an adventure was to Zilian the start of another head aching argument.

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

Finally! Zilian thought to himself, no more stupid stories.

"Now," Sarri responded, "you reminded me of the story of the ore so heavy we couldn't lift it. Well, it was a warm afternoon..."

Agh! He screamed in his mind, his fingers ached to yank his ears from their place and toss as far away as humanely possible. He did not know how much more of this he could take, he tugged on his hair in frustration. Sarri and Erica could not see his reaction because he was a few steps behind them. Sarri insisted she knew how to navigate through the caves way better than them, which he begrudgingly permitted her the lead. In the end, he got stuck pulling the horse through a nearly pitchblack cave. Erica held a torch they had made out of solid piece of wood and wrapped in clothe, and again Sarri somehow convinced Erica to take hold of it.

The walls around them spread open, and they entered a cavern with several tunnels leading into all sorts of directions. The cavern irritated Zilian.

"Agh!" He screamed, the other two looked at him, "We've been here already! Look!" He pointed to his left at the path that led straight down from where they had started.

"We already took three of these tunnels and they all lead right back here, there has to be a simple way out of here." He grow hot in anger.

Sarri contended, "You are the one who first planned to follow the breeze, so I followed the breeze and we keep on ending here."

"Yeah, and you're the one to go with the breeze. All you did was take us to that slit in the wall that we can't even slide our bodies through." He returned angrily.

"Zilian, let's not start this again." Erica pointed out. Ever since they were trapped here, she seemed to have been calm. Which also irritated him, everyone else was fine with this but him.

"Come on, we need to get to Greyus. We should be there tomorrow!"

"Then let's work on a way to get out of here rather than arguing, again." Her reasoning struck him.

Zilian sat down to relax, Sarri following his lead, while Erica went to check the tunnel that led to the small slit in the wall. Suddenly he heard noise coming from all directions in the cavern as a deep rumble reverberated against the stone walls. His eyes widened in fear, and before he could warn Erica The earth shook aggressively for a third time. Rocks fell all around as they broke away from the ceiling, and the tunnels one by one were sealed up by the rubble.

He ran to aid Erica, but a rock stopped him in his tracks as it smacked him in the back of his head. He stumbled to the ground and as he fell he saw the tunnel Erica was in, losing her footing and falling as the entrance closed up in front of her. The world drifted into darkness as he went unconscious.

"Ow..." Zilian groaned.

Sitting up straight and looking around him, he found the surroundings were all blurred and hazy for a while until his eyes could focus again. He pressed on his pounding head and grunted in pain, Sarri was helping him sit up against the wall.

"Take it easy kid, you got hit hard on your head. Got a big bruise but it doesn’t look too bad; I would put some ointment on that though." She remarked.

"How long was I out?" He asked.

She answered, "Just five minutes."

He jolted up ignoring the pain on his head, he remembered the closed up tunnel that Erica was trapped in.

He tried pulling all the rocks out of place while he called for her, "Erica! Can you hear me?"

"Yes Zilian, loud and clear." She answered.

“Are you hurt?” He prayed that she was not trapped under a pile of stones.

“No, I am fine. Just some small cuts and bruises. How about you? Sarri said something about being out cold.” He could hear the hint of worry. He sighed, relieved that nothing had happened to her.

"Never mind me. You think you can pull the rocks out of the way? I will work on this side at the same time."

Sarri came next to Zilian to help pull on the rocks, he could hear from the other side rocks tumbling, Erica was digging through. They kept on getting rocks out of the way as he asked himself, how much of the ceiling could have fallen? His hands scratched on the rocks he tugged at while Sarri pulled out as pulled on the bigger ones, until finally they opened a hole so they could see Erica again. The hole however was not big enough, just barely big enough to stick a hand through it.

"Good, now let's make the hole wider." Sarri ordered.

Zilian for once agreed with her without a complaint. Erica and Sarri worked on digging the hole wider, while he grabbed onto the bigger rocks from below to make some of it fall down. Dust and dirt sprayed in the air, forcing Erica into a coughing fit.

"You ok kid? " Asked Sarri, she seemed genuinely worried for her.

Erica replied, "Yeah, just need something to drink."

"Yo useless, get my pack in give her my canteen." Ordered Sarri.

He ran to Sarri’s pack and grabbed her canteen, then handed it to Sarri who proceeded to pass it on to Erica through the hole, and her taking a few sips. Neither of them had had water since yesterday afternoon, so Erica would have been very thirsty by now.

"Come on kid, while she's resting we’ll widen this for her."

Zilian without complaining he put himself back to work and taking no note of time, the hole was wide enough for Erica to squeeze through.

"That's good, I can slide through I think." Erica stated.

Zilian stopped and stood back to let Erica through, Sarri held her by the arms to tug her out. Erica tried to squeeze in it, but it apparently was still too tight of a fit. Sarri pulled on her harder to force her through the small hole.

"Ow! Ow! Ow! You're hurting me Sarri." Erica cried.

She stopped tugging, "Sorry, guess we'll have to make it wider."

Erica slid back inside and dug again, Zilian and Sarri continued digging from there side making the hole slowly wider and wider. Sarri pulled on a slate of rock, if she could get this rock out Erica would then fit through. Sarri pulled on it harder, her face went red. Zilian helped pull on it with the little space that there was left. The slate slid an inch then by another inch, until finally with one last haul, both Sarri and Zilian fell onto their backs. Instead of the hole staying in place, more debris from the ceiling fell down.

"No!" Zilian tried to pull on the much larger stones, however, this time none of them would budge.

"Zilian, Sarri, Go on without me." Erica voice echoed from behind the debris.

"We are not going to leave you Erica." Zilian called out.

"I am not asking you to leave, go on ahead in the cave. Look for help, then come back. No use for us all to die."

Erica’s logic was sound, but he could not stand to leaving a friend behind. Especially after his promise to Farame and Charlee.

Sarri called to Zilian, "Let's go, we need to find another way to get her."

"Where can we go? Aren’t the other tunnels are blocked too?"

She pointed up to where there was once a stone ceiling, "We can go through there, use these fallen stones and boulders as steps to get into a different cave system over us."

Erica called from behind the rock, "Do that, I'll see if we missed something behind here. Maybe I'll have a lucky break."

Without waiting for his reply, Zilian could hear her running through the tunnel on the other side. So like her, she won't listen to me, he thought. Seemed like he had no choice but to stick to this plan, so Sarri grabbed onto the horse and guided it up the pile of rubble. Zilian grabbed his sack and followed after her, wishing Erica the best of luck.