{-Llewel-}
“This map says there’s a smaller entrance this way,” he said. “It’ll take us to where they should’ve made camp quicker than the main opening.” He paused and turned to Myr. “We’re back in the mountains again. I know the workers shouldn’t be around here, but tell us if you get another headache, okay?”
She just nodded.
As they got closer to the smaller entrance, Tinath remarked, “This must’ve been the way the adventurers went, too. There’s a couple of footprints—they wouldn’t have lasted this long unless we were supposed to follow them.”
“We were supposed to wander this way, then?” Zetai mumbled, looking around the rest of the area. There were only trees and brief glimpses of wildlife; the five of them were probably the only ones there. “I didn’t think there were any other signs towards where we were supposed to be heading.”
“It is involved in the quest area,” Reynneak said. “If players got stuck anywhere else, most of them would probably end up finding this eventually.”
“All it means is that we know that we’re going in the right direction.” Llewel stepped a bit closer to the entrance but, seeing how quickly it turned dark, glanced at Zetai. “You can lead the way, it should be more or less a straight path. I’ve got the map so someone else has to hold the torch.”
Reynneak took one out of the party inventory and handed it to her. Without even a bit of nervousness—in that possibly-brave, possibly-headstrong way of hers—Zetai gestured for them all to follow her into the cave.
Knowing that this had to be where they were supposed to be, they all seemed on high alert; looking out for signs that the adventurers had been there or what kind of danger they might’ve run into. For better or worse, though, this looked nothing more than an average cave. If any of them thought there was something special about it, none of them drew attention to it.
“We’re almost to the end of it,” Llewel announced. “We should be entering the rest of the cave system soon.”
“Looks like there’s more footprints here, too,” Zetai pointed out. “This has to be the right direction.”
A few more minutes of walking confirmed it. They were greeted with the somewhat eerie sight of a completely set up camp, with nearly everything exactly where it was supposed to be. Aside from the fact, of course, that there was no one there.
Myr stepped a bit closer to the camp. “Do you think they just left for a little while..?”
“If they did, it was definitely for a lot longer than they meant to,” Tinath remarked. She casually wandered over to one of the bags and looked through it. “This is all maps and journals—not the kind of thing I’d assume they’d just leave behind.”
“Do you see anything in there that might suggest where they might be now?” Llewel asked, glancing at Tinath. His own quick look around the cave didn’t immediately call anything to his attention; just a bunch of adventuring supplies. They didn’t look like they’d been abandoned—at least, not in a rush. More like… they just walked away, knowing they’d be back to get them later.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
She looked through the bag a little more, then to a few of the things around it, before declaring, “Doesn’t look like anything interesting is in here. I guess I could check the maps, in case there’s any suspicious-looking circles or x’s or something?”
By then, Reynneak had walked over to the other side of the cave and was looking around the other pathways. “I don’t think you’ll need to do that. There’s more footsteps over here.”
“That should lead back outside,” Llewel pointed out after studying the map again.
Zetai shrugged. “They wouldn’t be there if we weren’t supposed to notice them. Besides, we don’t have anything else to go off of over here—it’s as good of a place to check as anything else is.” She started over there and, with just a quick gesture for the rest of them to follow her, she went to follow the footsteps.
Tinath followed her pretty quickly, though Reynneak first glanced at the twins before trailing behind her. Llewel knew they wouldn’t get lost and figured it was probably likely nothing bad would happen if they got separated for a few minutes, so he didn’t rush joining them.
“You’ve been quiet,” he mumbled. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
Myr nodded, slightly. She stepped closer to him. “Do… you think something bad happened to them..?”
“We’re not going to know until we find them—which we will do, I’m confident in that. I don’t think Zetai understands the concept of giving up and none of us wants to go back to Elena saying we couldn’t find them. She said that they got distracted by anything shiny that they saw—for all we know, that’s the only thing that happened to them.”
“This is because of us, isn’t it?”
He hesitated, which he quickly recognized was the thing she was hoping he wouldn’t do. “Of course it isn’t.”
“But Nankohm is making more runes because of us, aren’t they? And if they’re making more runes, then more rune beasts are going to be drawn to them—to places they aren’t normally found. People who wouldn’t have come across them normally wouldn’t be prepared to face them then. People who could get hurt—”
“This isn’t something we had a say in, I can assure you that much. If we had, I would confidently say that it’s our fault if something happens. But it’s not. We didn’t know that this was happening and we definitely weren’t the ones who did it. Everyone else would see that.”
She really didn’t seem reassured.
“Well, if nothing else,” he tried as the only other thing he could think of, “I don’t think anything serious can happen to them. Elena mentioned that they were involved in other things—I’m guessing it’s stuff that wouldn’t happen without them. Nothing can happen to them, if not just because it’ll be too complicated if something did otherwise.”
He gently took her hand and began guiding her to where the others went; there was nothing more he could do, so there was no point in staying there. She didn’t budge.
“We need to catch up with the others,” he said softly. “Sooner or later they’re going to think something happened to us if we’re not with them. You’re not going to feel any better about this unless you’re willing to do more than just guess, alright?”
Slowly, she made the first step to follow him. “I… guess you’re right. Maybe it’s not as bad as I think it will be…”
Then she let him guide her to where the others had left. Reynneak was waiting about halfway through the tunnel; he didn’t say anything to them, but gave a comforting smile before trailing behind the twins.
Zetai didn’t actually seem to have realized that they weren’t right there, though she noticed when the three returned. “We found a few more footprints over here,” she explained, gesturing them over. “We didn’t know what the cave system was like, though, and Tinath decided we didn’t have the time for getting lost in a maze.”