The next several hours were uneventful. After a few minutes of awkward silence, Lethelin had sat back up again but would not look anywhere near his face. Mitchell had to bite his tongue not to tease her further but he got the sense that now was not the time. There was a tension about her that he didn’t think had anything to do with the teasing and he didn’t want to push his luck. Instead, he moved the conversation on to safer topics, which she seemed to appreciate, and after a little bit she seemed to shrug off the embarrassment and was more or less back to her old self.

Allora’s condition had not changed and Mitchell tried to console himself with the fact that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. She still wasn’t breathing, but neither was she getting cold and stiff. Her body remained warm but unresponsive to any stimuli. Water poured into her mouth simply pooled there. When he placed an ear to her chest, he heard no heartbeat. He tried not to let it show but he was very much freaked out. Still, as long as she wasn’t getting all corpsified and gross, he wouldn’t give up hope. The fear that they were too late was like ice in his veins but he refused to let it win.

It drove Mitchell nuts that he was so helpless in this situation. Mitchell knew how viruses worked and he thought he knew most of the major ailments a person could suffer, but he had no frame of reference for this. Grey’s Anatomy had no episodes with a mysterious illness that drained all color out of someone and then turned them into some sort of white-eyed mana-sucking zombie.

Lethelin, still not fully recovered from her icy trip to Death’s door, opted to sleep, albeit fitfully. Mitchell wanted to sleep as well but they’d been pulling guard shifts for weeks and he didn’t feel comfortable with both of them unconscious, even if they were trapped in here. Something might happen and he wanted one of them awake when it did. So, while she curled up under the furs and began her cute little mouse snore, he pulled out his spell book and started going over the fire bolt spell, hoping to have it locked in when the time came to use it again. Not for the first time he wished for a simple wand, a little hand waving, and a special word to cast a spell, but real magic was not so easy. That thought gave him a chuckle.

“Real magic!” he told himself and marveled once again at how quickly he’d adapted to the new reality.

Hours passed. Mitchell had become so proficient with the mage light spell that he didn’t even have to think about it when he recast it. The rune form snapped instantly into his mind and, with a flick of his wrist, he sent it above his head. Lethelin awoke and looked around bleary eyed for a moment as if she’d forgotten where she was. He watched her rub the sleep from her eyes and pull her long, delicate fingers through her blood-red curls trying to tamp down the bed head.

“Anything?” she asked him finally, her voice still raspy with sleep.

“No,” he told her. “I checked outside a little while ago and there’s no change.”

Lethelin made a face like she wanted to swear but controlled herself. Instead, she picked herself up, went out to find a crack to relieve herself in, then joined him back in the tent.

“Get some sleep,” she told him around a mouthful of smoked meat that she’d plucked from their provisions pack. “I’ll wake you if anything changes.”

Mitchell rubbed his own eyes and merely nodded. As he lay down and pulled the still-warm furs from Lethelin’s body he watched her sit next to Allora and brush some of the elf’s hair out of her face.

“She cares about Allora, too,” Mitchell said to himself and it was a comforting thought. He knew they were going to need each other if they were going to survive.

***

Mitchell awoke some hours later to a dark tent. Lethelin must have heard the change in his breathing and called out.

“Are you finally awake?”

“Yeah,” he told her, trying to shake the sleep from his thoughts. “Did something happen?”

“No, I’ve just been sitting in the dark for hours,” she replied, her voice tight with tension. “Your light went out a little after you fell asleep.”

Mitchell grinned sheepishly as he sat up and cast the mage light again, bathing the small tent in a weak silvery glow.

“Thank you!” she said, squinting at even that dim illumination.

She looked haggard and tense but, when he asked her about it, she just wobbled her head. He crawled over to sit next to her and pulled her into his arms. She resisted at first, but then allowed herself to be held before finally relaxing into his chest. She was trembling.

“What’s wrong, Leth?”

“I don’t really like confined spaces,” she said after a few deep breaths. “I really want to get out of here!”

Her voice quavered at the repressed anxiety.

“It’s like I can feel the mountain pressing down on me. I didn’t mind it so much when we were just camping and we had a way out but now we’re stuck here!”

Her hands grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and he could hear the panic rising in her voice.

“You went to sleep and the light went out and it was dark and I was alone with a warm corpse and I couldn’t get out and the mountain was crushing down on us and… and…”

Her breath started to heave as the fear she’d been keeping clamped down began to rise to the surface and a strangled sob burst from her throat.

“It’s crushing us, Mitchell! We’re going to die crushed by a mountain. No air, can’t move! We have to get out!”

“Hey hey, shhh, it’s going to be okay,” Mitchell said, trying to soothe the panicked thief. He took her head in his hands and forced her to look at him. Her wide green eyes were swimming in pools of tears that had begun to streak down her dirty face and she looked like a rabbit about to bolt.

“We’re going to get out. I don’t know how yet, but we will, okay,” he told her. “Look at me. Breathe with me. Look at my eyes and breathe. In and out, in and out.”

Mitchell began to take deep breathes which she struggled to match at first, but then she found his rhythm. They stayed like that as she calmed down.

“We’re going to get out. Say it with me,” he commanded her.

“We’re…” she swallowed and sniffled. “We’re going to get out.”

“We’re going to see the sky again.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“We’re going to see the sky again,” she repeated, a little more strength in her voice this time.

“And do you know why we’re going to get out?”

She sniffed again and wobbled her head. Mitchell released her and pulled his hands through her hair and then cupped her chin in his hand.

“Because I’m too pretty. I’m just too pretty for Stollar to let me die.”

He gave her a big grin, trying his best to summon Tom Cruise, despite not looking anything like him. Risky Business had been one of his dad’s favorite movies and Mitchell had snuck the DVD off the shelf plenty of times in his teenage years to admire Rebecca De Mornay.

“You…? What?”

Lethelin was so caught off guard by his words that it had the desired effect shocking her out of the dark hole her thoughts were dragging her into.

“You are not that pretty,” she said finally, laughing and he could see a little of the tension leave her shoulders.

Mitchell pulled her in close and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Yes, I am,” he told her with a wink. “Let me get cleaned up a little and we’ll try again.”

“Don’t let the light go out!” Lethelin said, a note of panic returning to her voice.

“I won’t,” he told her.

He overcharged a mage light spell as much as it felt like it would allow and cast it at the top of the tent, giving her plenty of light and started trying to clean himself up as best he could in these conditions.

Outside in the cavern he found that there was enough water dripping through cracks in the rock that, with some patience and a lot of shivering, he could approximate a sponge bath. The icy water was far from pleasant but the grime was worse. With a lot of hissing and curses, he scrubbed himself as best he could in the icy rivulets running down the cave wall and bolted back inside, shivering and covered with goose flesh.

“Can bathe if you don’t mind the cold,” he told Lethelin, hardly able to speak due to the shivering wracking his whole body.

Her eyes were wide as she took him in trying to put on a fresh pair of clothes.

“I’ll pass,” she said after watching him struggle to work his fingers to pull up his pants and giggled. “I didn’t know lips could turn that shade of blue.”

He dressed hurriedly and pulled out another fire stone, warming the tent up by several degrees and after several minutes he finally stopped shivering enough to eat some food. Lethelin fidgeted and he saw her glancing at the tent walls several times, but she was doing a good job of keeping her panic contained. He kept the mage light burning at all times.

On the fourth recast, he noticed something different about the spell. When he channeled the mana it felt…sloppy. Like the mana flow was fuzzy around the edges. Usually when he cast his spells, the power felt clean and precise. He cast it again.

“Strange,” he said as the feeling of dissonance persisted.

“What?” Lethelin asked.

“When I cast the mage light it feels off. Like something is wrong with the mana flow. It’s never happened before.”

“When’s the last time you changed the stone?”

Mitchell opened his mouth to speak then realized what was going on. He groaned and chuckled.

“Revos told me I would know when the stone had degraded too far. I haven’t had to change any of the stones so far. I only know three spells and they aren’t very strong.”

Mitchell reached over to where his ikas, the pouch that stored his replacements, was sitting next to his bag. He pulled out a fresh bloodstone and swapped it for the old one in his sevith. He’d practiced the movement as he’d been instructed and it was a simple process of popping the degraded stone out and the new stone in. He examined it in the light.

“It looks fine,” he told her.

Under the naked eye Mitchell couldn’t detect any imperfections in the gemstone but he could certainly feel it when he’d cast the spell.

“What do people do with the old ones?”

“Usually they throw them away,” Lethelin said.

“Really?”

“They’re not good for much. I’ve seen people claim that if they are ground up and mixed with potions they have more magical powers but that’s old fish guts if you ask me.”

“Some of these would be worth money back on my world,” he said.

“Why? I thought your people didn’t have magic. What would they use them for?

“Jewelry, mostly.”

Lethelin grunted.

“Some of them are pretty, I guess, but they’re a tool for the casters. Making them into simple jewelry would be a waste.”

Mitchell couldn’t really argue with her. They were just rocks, after all. Their value was arbitrary. He thought about the diamond trade and how the companies that controlled the mining used artificial scarcity and clever marketing to create demand for a stone that actually existed in abundance and was essentially worthless.

Mitchell tried to keep her talking so she wouldn’t focus on what was outside the tent. He asked her about Varset and her mother. He wanted to ask her just what had gotten her into a life of crime but see seemed to dodge that question so he let it go.

“If we survive, would you like to come back to Earth with me?” he asked her suddenly.

The question startled her.

“You’re not going to stay?”

“No, I mean just for a visit. And to let my parents know I’m not dead. I think you’d like it there. And you could meet my mom, dad, and sister. And,” he added, “it’s where we came from. Humans, I mean.”

Lethelin went quiet for a moment.

“You want me to meet your parents?”

“If you want. You and Allora. When she’s better.”

Lethelin blushed a little and looked down at her fingers.

“Okay.”

“And, also there’s—”

Mitchell cut off as there was a sound from outside. They both jerked to attention.

“What was that?” Lethelin asked, her long stiletto seeming to materialize in her hand from some extra dimensional space.

“Marvin or Tammi?” Mitchell offered, though he didn’t think so.

The yulops had been mostly calm since they’d gotten into the cave. They didn’t care about the opening being sealed as long as they got their food and water. He readied an arcane bolt spell in his mind, keeping the mana just ready to cast.

They heard it again. A sniffing sound. Fast and inquisitive. The flaps of the tent started to ruffle like someone—or something—was trying to find the opening. There was a chuffing noise, not unlike a dog sniffing through the covers looking for its toy. Then, at the bottom of the tent flaps, a small snout poked through, about the size of his palm. From the little that he could see, it was some sort of scaled beast, reddish blue in color. Once its nose was through it stopped and then it inhaled deeply, its nostrils flaring. Then it chirped, almost like a bird. There was a scabbling sound and then it pulled its body through the small opening it had found and sat up on its hind legs.

“What the fuck is that?” Mitchell asked, unsure if he should fire or not. He looked over at Lethelin who looked equally perplexed. Her blade was at the ready but she made no move to attack it.

The creature looked like a small dragon. It was just over a meter long from snout to the tip of its tail and it was indeed covered in red and blue iridescent scales that glistened in the silvery mage light. Its eyes were large in its head, almost comically so, and they were gold with slitted black pupils. Its wings were pressed tightly to its back and they looked supple and soft, almost like a bat’s wings. It had wickedly sharp black needle-like claws on its paws but as it sat up on its back legs it didn’t look threatening. It looked…pleased with itself. It chirped at them again in a self-satisfied manner, and extended its head forward towards Mitchell who was the closest. With its neck fully extended it tilted its chin up and closed its eyes.

“I think it wants you to pet it or scratch it or something,” Lethelin said.

“Should I?”

The thief shrugged, looking from it to him and then back.

As the silence stretched it seemed to do a little jig on its back feet in anticipation and then one eye cracked open staring at Mitchell. It chirped again, more insistently this time.

“Okay…” Mitchell said, unsure if he was about to lose a finger.

Slowly he began to extend his arm toward the creature. It saw and shut its eye again and the back legs began what Mitchell could only describe as a happy dance.

Mitchell placed two fingers under its chin and scratched. The scales, while firm, were surprisingly pliant. As he scratched the thing began to almost purr and a shudder rang the length of its sinuous body. When it decided it had had enough, it pulled away and then spun in a little circle before diving for the opening where it burrowed through the tent flaps to the outside.

Mitchell, hand still extended, looked back to Lethelin who stared back at him with her eyebrows raised.

“At least it didn’t try to eat us,” she said at last.

“Do you have any idea what that was?”

“No,” she offered apologetically.

“I thought dragons were big.”

“They are,” Lethelin confirmed. “The ancient ones are huge. The stories say they could be fifty or sixty meters long. I’ve never seen one, though. I—”

The creature chirped again from outside, then there was a pawing at the tent flaps. This time its full head poked through and it looked at both of them, its large golden eyes probing. It chirped again, then retracted its head.

“I think it wants us to go outside,” Mitchell said.

Lethelin shifted uncomfortably but nodded.

“After you,” she said.

Mitchell grabbed his scabbard just in case, then crawled out of the tent opening.