A pained groan broke the silence of the cavern as Arcturius rose from his slumber.

“Gods that hurts.” Arcturius brought his hands to his head as pain wracked his body.

It felt like something had bathed his entire body in the fire poison of the Eros forest frogs. Pain shooting from one section of his body to the next, trying to escape. He tried to lift himself up and grunted as more waves of pain flowed through him, but they were quickly lessening.

‘No matter how confused I am, I have to scope out my surroundings and detect any threats.’

His father’s lessons from growing up quickly flooded into his head. He needed to figure out his situation. He still clasped his sword in his hand. As a true warrior, his father had trained him from a young age to never let go of his weapon even in the direst of emergencies.

‘Good.’ He wrapped his fingers around the weapon tightly. He turned his head to confirm it was actually a sword in his hands and then blinked. ‘Light?’

He didn’t have night vision.

Arcturius moved his head slowly through his surroundings, cautious not to trigger any residual injuries, and quickly spotted the source of the light that shone over him. A cluster of white crystals stuck to the wall, shimmering with a bright light and illuminating the small chamber he was resting in.

‘How did I get here?’ Arcturius tried to recall the last thing he remembered, but all he could think of was the long drop into the earth. ‘No… there was something else.’

He vaguely remembered a brief flash of rainbow light that had popped up beside him during his descent. But in his panic and with his injuries he hadn't been able to view it closely. Whatever it was, maybe it had something to do with why he was still alive.

‘Not just alive, but in perfect health as well.’ Arcturius suddenly realised the pangs of pain keeping him down had subsided as though there had been nothing wrong with his body.

Arcturius lifted his shirt and stared at his chest in astonishment. He distinctly remembered being kicked by the hostile creature, and it wasn’t a light kick either. It was enough to have at least shattered some of his bones and it had caused him to fly into the crevice. He had also hit his head and body against the rocks during his fall, and finally his body had slammed into the ground from a height that should have killed him. At the very least he shouldn’t even be able to move, most likely for the rest of his life.

There wasn’t even a single bruise to prove the traumatic events that he’d experienced were real.

Then he heard something that made him forget the crystals and injuries completely. He crouched low and grabbed his sword tightly as he turned to face the sounds. It was a soft billowing of air that seemed to puff every couple of seconds into the air. The sound of breathing.

In the ground in front of him was the familiar shape of a tiny wolf.

‘So you survived.’ Arcturius kept his thoughts to himself so that the sleeping wolf wouldn’t wake.

He lowered his sword as he drew closer to the pup. It was fast asleep and clearly uninjured just like he had been. Now was the best chance he was going to have to strike at it.

He brought his hands to the pup and wrapped his fingers slowly around its neck. He wasn’t sure how it had survived the fall, but he couldn’t risk it trying to finish him as he slept. But as he began to squeeze down a thought crossed his mind and he hesitated. He remembered the events that led up to the two of them falling down here together. Then, he slowly began to move his hands away and let the sleeping pup continue to dream.

It was a necessity, not compassion, that had stopped him from ending the wolf’s life. Before he’d fallen to the surface magic had engulfed them and hid the corrupted landscape from their view. But this pup had sensed the invisible enemy approaching before either of them had. He knew the pup was dangerous, but he feared illusions and enemies that he couldn’t detect more than just a couple of little bite attempts.

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Arcturius lifted himself up and moved away from the pup, gazing further down the cavern and narrowing his eyes as he tried to use the limited light to detect any threats.

‘If nothing ate me while I slept then hopefully that means there’s nothing dangerous here.’

Arcturius frowned as the thought crossed his mind. His father would have belted him for thinking like this in such a dangerous situation. The fall had trapped him in an unknown area, with enemies possibly lurking around every corner. He wasn’t going to survive by staying still, he at least needed to get the lay of the land.

He crouched low and tried to move as stealthily as he could through the cavern. The crystal’s glow was constant but quickly stopped providing a means of sight as he shuffled a few meters away from them. He sighed in defeat and moved back towards the pup. If he couldn’t see then it would just be foolish to walk through the darkness.

He had to make light.

Arcturius turned towards the cluster of crystals and eyed them hungrily. They were the only source of light in this entire area, and he needed to move them. He clasped his fingers over one of the longer crystals and tried to pry it from its place in the rock, but it wouldn’t budge. It would take tools far stronger than his hands to break them free.

Arcturius brought his sword up to his eyes his brow furrowed as he thought of a plan. He could try to use the edge of the sword to chip off the rocks around the crystals and free one. It was the only tool he kept on him.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘That would just be stupid.’

Light was important, but his weapon was the second thing that would keep him alive. He didn’t even know if the sword could chip the rock. If he accidentally broke or damaged it beyond use then he would be as good as dead if he ran into anything hostile.

He looked around and frowned. There was nothing that could help him. In fact, the entire area was a dead end, with only one path leading out into darkness. The other sides around him were all solid stone walls that he could see weren’t easy to break through, not that he would want to.

‘How did I get here?’ The thought crossed his mind again.

There was no hole in the ceiling, so this clearly wasn’t the place where he’d fallen down. But he probably hadn’t been in any condition to move here if his memory was correct. So clearly something had brought him into this dead-end and next to the crystals. Maybe even the same thing that had healed him of his injuries.

‘The pup?’ Arcturius narrowed his eyes as he scanned the creature from top to bottom. ‘No.’

There didn’t appear to be anything abnormal about the creature. It was just an ordinary wolf pup. He could see the injuries on its eyes, a deep crimson pulsating grimly under the crystals’ light. The cuts hadn’t healed alongside the other injuries pup would have gotten from falling.

*Clatter*

Arcturius turned with eyes wide and his sword in front of him as he heard something falling onto the ground. His eyes quickly moved from the pup to the walls and then on to the ground, where an object was rolling around as though someone had dropped it.

‘Strange...’ It was the same long crystal he’d tried to dig out earlier.

Arcturius approached it carefully, eyeing the surroundings for any movement. The crystal had been wedged firmly into the rock, and he doubted his tugging had caused it to loosen. But the proof was in front of his eyes, the crystal had dislodged cleanly from the wall.

Arcturius approached the crystal warily but stopped a couple of feet away from it. Then without warning, he struck out at the air and weaved his sword through every corner of the room. But after a few seconds he stopped the barrage and took a deep breath. He couldn’t help but think of the invisible creature that had snuck up on him on the surface. The surroundings definitely weren’t big enough for something of that size to have dodged all of his strikes.

‘Okay.’ Arcturius picked up the crystal, keeping his sword at the ready. ‘It’s better than nothing.’

The crystal’s light was bright enough that he could see a few feet in front of him, but if there was something beyond that he’d be in a lot of trouble. Arcturius kept it in front of him as he crouched low and moved forward.

The passage slowly opened up as he walked further. It was a single corridor with the odd hole here and there, but after a few meters of walking, Arcturius came across something different.

It was a mass of blood and gore.

Arcturius shivered as he looked up and saw the entrance of a hole leading up into parts unknown. He moved to the gore to examine it.

There was no doubt about it, this was where he had fallen. It was deep enough underground that the light of the surface wasn’t shining through the hole, and Arcturius didn’t know how long he’d fallen for. But one thing was clear, a splatter of this size meant that his injuries were too intense for him to move around.

It confirmed his suspicion that something had dragged him to the crystal, and they had healed him of injuries.

Arcturius took one last look at the gore on the floor and moved past it. He didn’t have time to get queasy over healed injuries. Then he froze as he heard a sound on the edge of his senses. It was the shuffling of flesh against the rock.

And it was coming from above him.

‘Shit.’ Arcturius lifted his head up just in time to see something large jump down towards him.

He’d forgotten to check the hole in the ceiling for enemies.