“Oh. So that’s what an avalanche is like,” Kaz said, sounding almost fascinated as he got up while Rhenor tried to get rid of some of the snow covering up the cavern entrance, hoping that would get some light inside the cave. He was only semi-successful, but at least he could make out Kaz’s shape now. Rhenor would have to start a fire, anyway, so they could light torches, but if he couldn’t even see where the kindling was, that would be very difficult.

“You’ve never seen an avalanche?” Rhenor asked if only to force Kaz to scramble to come up with an explanation for that. Avalanches weren’t that uncommon here, though they usually weren’t quite this close to the villages.

Rhenor momentarily paused as he realized it could have reached the village, but almost immediately he rejected that idea. They were quite a while away from it, too far for the snow to get to it. However, this had been clear proof that Kaz wasn’t lying about the earthquakes. Rhen hadn’t thought of avalanches being a side effect of them, but he should have.

“No, I haven’t,” Kaz replied, not bothering to explain that. He still seemed utterly fascinated by it, though. “Quite dangerous, aren’t they? I mean, I’ve heard about them being dangerous, but I suppose I just always assumed the stories were exaggerated.”

“They aren’t.”

Finally pushing his arm through the layer of snow, Rhen sighed in relief. It hadn’t been as bad as he’d assumed, which was good, because it meant that if they survived whatever this cavern had in store for them, they could leave this place after. Though he supposed the tremors could, and probably were going to set off more avalanches still. Rhen decided not to think about that too much.

He put his bag aside and pulled out a few thin twigs with dried-out leaves, knowing those would catch fire more easily, and they didn’t need a proper fire, anyway. Just enough to light a torch. He put the twigs on the ground and took out the flint and steel he had brought with him. He scratched the two rocks against each other a few times, producing sparks but not enough to set fire to the wood.

Annoyed, Rhenor glared, putting a bit more force than necessary into it as he tried again. Immediately, he had to jump back at the huge spark it produced. He stared at the rocks in his hands with confusion for a moment, but he had to go without questioning it as the fire quickly started to die down, not having enough fuel to sustain itself.

Rhen quickly lit a torch using the still burning tinder and, stomping out the twigs, he raised the torch, looking around the relatively low stone walls of the cavern. Despite the low ceiling, a couple of bats seemed to have taken offense at being disturbed from their rest and flew farther into the darkness, their wings rustling.

Rhenor looked over at his companion, who had a look of delight on his face. Was he happy about seeing bats of all things? Before Rhen could comment on it, the ground trembled again, this time a bit more. No avalanche followed at least, but Kaz’s smile had disappeared off his face.

“We should, um, probably go,” Kaz said, pulling his cloak more tightly around himself. “I’m not sure where exactly what we are looking for is, so it might take a while to find.”

Rhenor nodded, slinging his bag over his shoulder again, and setting off, heading downward. He kept his free hand on the jagged wall, looking up at the cave formations above them.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Rhen asked. The farther they got the more narrow the cave seemed to get, and Rhenor really hoped it wouldn’t get much worse because he wasn’t confident he’d manage to fit through.

“Uh, I’m not sure,” Kaz replied from where he was walking behind Rhen. Rhenor wished he could see his face, so he could more easily recognize if he was being lied to. “Not exactly, anyway. I heard there was some magical artifact in this cavern, so I...inferred that was what was causing those earthquakes.”

Naturally, just as they were mentioned, the ground shook again. Rhen stopped, grabbing onto the wall to steady himself for a moment before the shaking passed.

Kaz’s explanation did seem to make sense. Sort of. But it also created further questions.

“You heard about it?” he repeated, and Kaz sighed.

“Well, not exactly. I actually read about the artifact, and then I heard a rumor about this cavern being dangerous, and, well,” Kaz said, chuckling. “It’s always magic, isn’t it?”

Rhenor froze and looked back at Kaz with shock. Kaz himself was staring back at him with confusion.

“You can read?”

That was definitely not normal and only served to make Kaz’s claims that he was from a neighboring village even more ridiculous. Not that there was a need for that at this point, but still. Rhenor could read as well, but that was only because he was from a large town, and there it was much more common and useful than out here in the wilderness, days away from any major settlement.

Kaz flashed Rhen an awkward smile. “Um, yes?”

Rhenor just turned away again and kept walking. “And you are still insisting on being from a nearby village?”

There was only the sound of Rhenor’s footsteps for a while before Kaz started walking again, rushing to catch up.

“Um, also yes?”

Rhenor let out a laugh. Despite the situation, Kaz’s ‘attempts’ at lying were very amusing to him. Though he wasn’t even sure why he didn’t mind that much that Kaz was keeping a lot of things to himself. Possibly because he seemed so incredibly unthreatening. Rhenor would usually be suspicious of him because of that itself, but he didn’t think Kaz could lie to save his life.

“It’s...t-three villages over?” Kaz tried again, stammering. “Should I stop? I should stop.”

Rhenor laughed harder, the sound bouncing off the stone ceiling. Well, he hadn’t expected to have a good laugh today. What a delightful surprise.

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Finally, the narrow corridor started to widen, and though Kaz did start walking next to Rhen as soon as it was physically possible, he was keeping his head down, his cheeks red. That sight just made Rhenor want to start laughing again, but he managed to keep it to a half-hidden grin.

“You…” Kaz spoke up again, pausing. “You have a nice laugh.”

Rhenor turned to him, bewildered. “What?”

“Wait! Stop!” Kaz suddenly yelled out, pushing a hand against Rhen’s chest and making him come to a halt. Frowning, Rhen opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, but Kaz was already talking. “See that stone you’re about to step on? Don’t, uh, do that.”

Rhen looked where the other man was pointing, only then noticing the aforementioned stone. It was surprisingly small, but very noticeable when pointed out like this. A round, smooth thing in a sea of crude rock and dirt.

“A trap?”

“Yes,” Kaz confirmed, crouching down to study it. “I wonder what it would have done.” He sounded a bit too excited about this for Rhen’s tastes. “Nevermind, let’s not spring it, huh?”

“Yes, better not,” Rhenor muttered to himself. “Did you know about this?”

At that Kaz sprung up, something like outrage on his face. “Of course not! I would have warned you. All I expected were magical traps. Not something this crude.”

Rhenor scowled. “How exactly did you think I’d manage to succeed here without you, originally?”

Kaz chewed on his lip as he folded his arms over his chest. “Well, um, I would have warned you ahead of time, of course.” He sighed. “I’m just not used to going out adventuring like this. I’m more of a, um, a scholar.”

That was utterly unsurprising. At least it explained some things.

“But having said that, this has been quite interesting so far.” The fascinated tone was back.

“We’ve barely done, or seen anything,” Rhen pointed out, but Kaz shook his head as he looked around.

“Exactly. Just imagine how exciting it will be to experience more of this.”

Rhen decided not to say anything to that. He didn’t want to ruin Kaz’s enthusiasm when it seemed so genuine. They walked for a bit longer, the cavern path slowly growing wider and wider until finally, they reached a massive space, so large Rhenor’s torch had no hope of illuminating the ceiling. That itself unnerved him more than a little.

“Oh my gods, this is incredible,” said Kaz, grinning ear to ear. Rhenor had no idea which part the other man was referring to because, aside from the size, this seemed fairly similar to the other parts of the cavern they had seen so far. Although, that may have been due to the low visibility. Maybe this space would be awe-inspiring if Rhenor could actually see it.

Since using his eyes was mostly pointless unless he walked from one side of the place to the other and remembered every detail, he tried listening instead since there was something making noise in here. He quickly figured out that it was the sound of rushing water—a stream, then. Rhenor couldn’t see it, no matter how much he squinted into the darkness, though.

And then he heard something much, much worse. Growling. Followed by barking. Wolves, it had to be. He could almost make out their feral eyes, a hungry twinkle in the dark.

“Get behind me,” Rhenor told Kaz firmly, grateful that the other man immediately obeyed. Rhen threw the torch on the ground, towards where the snarling and barking was coming from, finally revealing the wolves.

There were three of them, beginning to circle him and Kaz, which wouldn’t have been too bad for two people. If both of them could fight.

As quickly as he could, Rhenor drew his bow, and grabbing an arrow, he nocked it, aiming it right between the eyes of the closest wolf. He knew they would all attack as soon as he fired, but he had no choice. And so he let the arrow fly, already throwing his bow away and drawing his knife as the arrowhead split the wolf’s skull.

And then the two remaining wolves were on them, teeth and claws trying to slash and cut as much as possible. This wasn’t Rhen’s first experience with wolves, however, and he knew how to dodge while also delivering some strikes of his own.

He’d finally managed to slash the beast’s snout when a pained cry came from behind him. Rhen whirled around, seeing Kaz back into a corner, holding his right arm to his chest while the wolf attacking him was about to pounce again.

Gritting his teeth, Rhenor ran towards them, striking before the animal had time to switch targets, and burying his knife in the wolf’s back, killing it instantly. He didn’t get any time to celebrate, though, because soon the last wolf caught up with them and attacked before Rhen managed to turn around.

Crying out as the wolf sunk its teeth in Rhen’s left hand, he gritted his teeth and stabbed the knife into the wolf’s throat, ending its existence as well.

Rhenor fell to his knees, breathing hard, the pain in his hand somehow getting more intense now that it was no longer being pierced by wolf fangs. Not feeling up to standing just yet, Rhenor reached out for the torch which thankfully hadn’t gone out and was within reach, so he could inspect the damage.

He couldn’t see much through the blood, but the injury didn’t seem too major. Taking a deep breath, he tried moving his fingers, pleased to see that aside from the movement being accompanied by blinding pain, everything seemed to be okay.

“Uh, sorry,” said Kaz, looking anywhere but at Rhenor. “Are you okay?”

“I will be,” Rhen replied, pulling his knife out of the wolf. “Are you?” He should have asked that earlier, given that Kaz had been injured during the scuffle.

“Um….”

“Show me,” Rhenor said, raising the torch. Kaz sighed, his shoulder slumping, and proceeded to show Rhenor his arm. It was in a similar state as Rhen’s hand, albeit the wounds seemed deeper. “Come on, there’s a stream around here somewhere, we should clean the wounds.”

Kaz seemed to blanch at the idea of putting water anywhere near his injured arm, but he didn’t argue with Rhen at all. As they both rose to their feet, Rhenor berated himself. Why hadn’t he thought to bring bandages?

They followed the sound of the rushing water, which turned out to be quite a ways away from the direction they had arrived, and therefore was a much larger stream than Rhenor had thought. But that was for the best, he supposed.

The stream turned out to be quite wide and full of large rocks. Rhenor stuck his hand in it before he could think about it too much, hissing. He hadn’t gotten himself injured in a while. Damned wolves.

Deciding that it was enough, Rhen took his hand out of the freezing water and used his cloak to try to stop the bleeding. His hand would be useless for the rest of this, but at least it was his left hand. With Kaz, it was his right forearm that had been bitten, so moving it would hurt, but it shouldn’t limit him beyond that.

This whole time Kaz had only been watching him and the flowing water, and he didn’t seem all that willing to follow through with this. Rhenor wanted to tell him to do it anyway, but the stern look he was giving Kaz seemed to do the trick. Kaz rolled up his torn-up sleeve, fully revealing the bleeding puncture marks, wincing and grimacing through the whole thing, and then he crouched down, his arm hovering just above the stream.

Rhenor sighed, about to push Kaz’s arm in the water himself, but as he was putting down the torch, Kaz finally did it on his own, whimpering and doing his best to hide his pained face from Rhenor.

“You’re not used to pain, are you?”

Rhenor hadn’t thought he’d said that in a mocking tone—his intention had been quite the opposite—but Kaz just looked even more embarrassed now. He didn’t answer and just shook his head. Not that he needed to do even that.

“That’s enough,” Rhenor told him, trying to sound gentle. Putting the torch aside, he walked over to Kaz and used the sleeve of the man’s tunic as a makeshift bandage. It was already a bit blood-stained, but it would be better than nothing.

He looked at his own injury, pleased to see the bleeding had slowed considerably. It still hurt quite a lot of course, but stopping the bleeding was the most he could hope for in these conditions.

“Do you need to rest?” Rhenor asked, but Kaz was shaking his head even before he’d finished talking.

“No, no, I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”