17 | Underground

Eli curses his own foolish decision to head down the mountain as they make their way back up. Heading downhill at top speed was irritating enough, and he wonders how long before Klia simply refuses to keep walking at full speed for days on end. Right now, it is her brother driving her forward, but small children cannot be so unbreakable.

With luck, they will catch up soon.

Elijah Jyce

the Reaper, the Unknown, the Elder

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11/23 Buds | 4/10 Roots | 1/5 Filaments

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Stems

Bladewielder (15)

As he expected, killing weaker creatures does little to grow his strength. It was not on his mind when the deed was done, but at least now he knows.

Before they left the village entirely, he took a quick sweep through the remaining intact houses and found nothing but dust and the occasional bone.

Luckily for Klia’s legs and Eli’s entire body, it is only a little longer going back up than down. Soon enough, they have returned to the place where the path reaches the river. Eli pauses, refilling his water skin and splashing his face, inspecting the area. He hopes, if they eventually follow the river, they will find signs of the Unknowns. They are not small, after all, and have to cause destruction eventually in a forest with moss and ferns and fallen logs.

Worse yet, it is late afternoon. Along the river, Eli hopes there will be more places to hide for the night—rocky outcroppings and fallen logs. Mumbling to himself but unwilling to bed down, not when they’ve lost an entire day, he takes Klia’s hand and begins to lead her upriver.

She stops, frowning up at him again, gazing out at the river as she had before.

“What is it?”

She shrugs, then hands him the notebook without writing anything in it, creeping up to the water’s edge. Eli hates to stand here, vulnerable and wasting even more time, but he is not the one with a magical connection to the boy. He grinds his teeth and waits. When he can wait no longer, he joins her, setting his heavier pack aside to spare his shoulders, and squints at the river as she is. He sees nothing of note.

When she heads into the water, Eli grabs her shoulder with a sudden jump of his heart. Order only knows what dwells in the deeper parts of the water since the corruption of the magic. Besides, she’s small enough the current may take her.

“What are you after, girl?” he asks.

Gazing up at him, she points out along the opposite bank of the river. For a moment, Eli thinks she’s spotted something in the undergrowth he’s missed, but her finger is pointing too low. A moment later, he spots a darker section among the boulders of the opposite bank. It is not quite reached by the water, but a small trickle of a stream disappears into it.

A hole?

No, a tunnel down.

Intellectually, Eli knows there must be underground caverns in these mountains, as there often are in this section of the world. They are sung of in songs, once carved by dwarves long before the existence of humans. At least, such go the myths. Eli had given his monastery and the surrounding areas a cursory look for them but found no trace. Across the little river, it is difficult to tell if this is truly what the shadowy spot is, but his mind is running away with him.

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“Stay,” he tells Klia, handing her book back and finding the fallen log he used to cross the first time. It is not quite stable and a little unsteady beneath his already shaky legs.

I need to find myself a walking stick.

On the opposite shore, he edges up to the gap among the pebbles, leaning on one of the boulders. It goes much deeper than he anticipated until darkness takes away any vision. Glancing up at the fading sun, he wonders if this is a wise idea, for a place to hide from the night forest, or a place monsters dwell with no shield for anyone who ventures in.

Either way, they will need to go down if Klia believes this is what they must do.

There is no other reason she would’ve pointed out this place, if not for the magic which ties her to her brother.

Crossing back, Eli retrieves his things and helps the girl along the log. Immediately, she tries to head down, and Eli stops her, tapping her notebook.

“You’re certain he’s down there? Such places may be more dangerous than the woods in the night. If we are to go down, we must be certain.”

With neater handwriting than he expects from a girl of less than ten, she writes, I can hear his heartbeat again since we are closer. They don’t like the sun.

Eli lets out a long breath, his pulse quickening against his ribs. The bit about his heartbeat is not so surprising—Eli figured there had to be some physical connection of she knows where to find him—but the bit about the sun is less expected.

He squints at her. “How do you know they hate the sun?”

He’d checked back on her while he was speaking to Marden, she hadn’t moved from her spot, and there was no way she could’ve heard such soft voices.

Sun burns them.

Something vile raises in Eli’s throat, and he swallows it down. “Who told you such things?”

Her eyebrows pucker in thought, then she taps her chest.

“You told yourself?” Eli says, despite how silly the words sound.

She nods, then points down into the cavern, and to the paper where she wrote, I can hear his heartbeat again.

These children will be the death of me, Eli thinks, not very bitterly, and nods. “Very well, wait here a moment, I am going to go down first.”

Fastening his sickle to the back of his pack, he eases down the rocky gap in the earth, careful of the tiny stream of water. It is not so near the rest of the river that he believes it in danger of flooding. Besides, it appears to be quite vast, if the clatter of the tiny pebbles he knocks down is any indication. The hole is not much wider than Eli, but he doesn’t scape his shoulders getting down. A stable shelf of rock greets him, as well as the familiar scent of damp stone which has never seen sunlight.

Not much light is to be had down here, but enough of it is left so he can see the outline of a vast cavern reaching far into the earth.

“Alright,” he whispers to himself. If nothing else, there should be places down here where they might hide from the night.

Gently, he helps Klia down onto the rocky outcropping, glancing over the edge at the sharp drop below. The edges are ripply with rocky textures, easy enough for an old man and a little girl to walk down, but he’s going to keep a tight grip on her, anyway.

Not trusting the tunnels to shelter them from monsters when he doesn’t even know what kind of creatures dwell down here, Eli makes his way down as quickly as possible, until Klia tugs on his hand and points at a section of the wall where a tunnel leads off. When he glances down, she nods rather seriously. Eli hesitates at the entrance of the new tunnel, realizing how well and truly lost they will become if they venture further into this place. Leaning his hand against the stone, he feels the damp cold of it, water trickling down from the river or somewhere else.

“If we follow these tunnels until we find Thistle, you won’t be able to lead us back out, will you?” he asks as gently as he can.

Klia’s eyes turn up to the top of the tunnel—which appears remarkably like an ancient door, Eli now realizes—then back into the vast of the tunnel and the hole they crawled through, before shaking her head. Her bottom lip trembles.

“I didn’t suspect so,” he mumbles, more to himself than to her. “And you’re sure we’re following the correct path?”

Nodding, she pulls out her booklet and writes, Stronger, pointing down this dim tunnel. Eli nods. He is in over his head, as he’s been the past few days, but it is considerably worse with this new development. He was never enough for such a situation, less so now he has gathered so many decades.

What other option do we have?

Leaning into the edge of the tunnel, he finds it not as dark as he was anticipating. They are still close to the surface and running parallel to it for a long ways. Cracks of light are let down. Still, Eli returns tot he surface long enough to gather a few small logs he can use as makeshift torches. They will not last long once the darkness is complete, but they are better than nothing.

If Thistle were with them, he could likely light the way, Eli considers.

If Thistle were with them, they would not be going down. Foolish boy.

Taking one of his dullest knives he is less worried of ruining, he scratches a mark into the stone of the door, ensuring if they come back this way, he will know which way to turn. On every bend they take from now on, he will do as such. He has packed away quite a bit of food, between his own stash, what’s left of the rodent, and what he gathered from the abandoned shop. Water doesn’t seem as if it will be terribly difficult to find down here, but he will be vigilant.

We have little option other than to abandon the boy, he thinks, and this he will not do.

Keeping tight hold of Klia, he takes the first tunnel with little sunlight.