"Hey, Tony."

"What"

"Mind if I ask a little question?"

"Well I do mind, but that won't stop you... so go ahead."

"It's about what you're doing. I don't wanna spoil the fun, but it's really a-"

"Hey, you know, it's not me doing this, it's us!"

"It's only 'us' because I don't have any hands to slap you, or legs to get away. I mean, I'm a fucking ring! I didn't have any say in this!"

"Then shut up if you can't change it anyway. I need to concentrate!"

"About that... You do realize it's a bad idea to sneak into an old, haunted cave that could very well collapse any moment?"

Silence followed these words. The young man named Tony, hidden in the dark of the cave, frowned while trying to think up a reason why it indeed was necessary to do this. He failed to find an acceptable one though, and every passing second only helped to prove the voice coming from the ring hanging around his neck right.

"See, I told you this dare is stupid. Now get your ass outta here."

"I won't. We won't. I'm not gonna turn around after crawling through this hole for an hour!"

Tony moved on, trying not to slip on the uneven and wet stones while stuffing the ring under his t-shirt, ignoring its loud and angry protest at spending time pressed against his sweaty chest.

Holding one hand close to the wall, he pointed the flashlight at the darkness ahead, hoping to find something. A wall, specifically.

His class had spent almost two full days in the small camp near the Prayon Mountains until a group of curious and bored boys stumbled upon the mossy entrance to what was called the "Little Slip" by the natives. Since then, it had been an ongoing quest kept secret from the teachers for any pupil to discover the end of the 'little' cave, which was anything but that.

The reason Tony was determined to end this game today - or rather tonight - was Bennett Clearwater. Handsome, sweetly innocent and tipsy whenever in the presence of girls. Absolutely detestable to Tony since he overheard him talking to the ring and instantly labeling him a freak.

It wouldn't be so bad if not all of the girls and most of the boys stood behind him like a looming wall of public doom, and Tony had planned to evade becoming the official outcast of the school as long as possible.

Besides, what could happen to him inside an old cave? Even if it was haunted, Tony's life wasn't exactly spirit-free.

His unusual companion had been the beginning of that. Never did he think that the black, dull ring he found next to a broken Disney cup and a collection of banana stamps would start talking to him after he picked it up.

But it did, and after the initial shock and denying, he ended up becoming friends with 'Black'. He wasn't a spirit though, but he had refused to tell him anything more about himself. Not who he was, how he came to be a ring, why he was laying in the trash. Especially not the last one.

The only thing he knew was that Black was some kind of guardian, as he had proposed to guard Tony if he would wear him always around his neck. Life as a ring must have been pretty monotonous for him.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Since then, Black had helped him a few times when spirits tried to do anything funny to him, and Tony had come to realize how many of those invisible, condensed shapes of energy were floating around them all the time. Not entirely malicious, just being there, evasive and diverse like thoughts.

Because of this, Tony felt in some ways secure inside the cave, even though the darkness frightened him.

It became clear very quickly after their short talk that this wasn't the case at all. The last thing Tony saw before suddenly loosing consciousness was a kind of crack in midair followed by a blinding light. He wanted to scream, but his voice was stuck, and as silent as it appeared, the flash disappeared again.

The next morning, the teacher was walking down the tents, making sure everybody was awake to go to breakfast, when she noticed the empty, red sleeping bag in the corner of tent four. Not giving it much thought, she shrugged it off as one of the guys going to the bathroom and continued her control while yawning widely. It was a beautiful day, all sunlight and warm grass, and the trip to the mountains today would hopefully be just as peaceful as right now.

It wasn't until midday that Ms. Beddel became worried and asked about Tony, and not until evening that one of the pupils could be convinced to talk about the little "game" they had created during their stay.

The next days were hectic and bad with the camp members searching frantically through the cave together with the natives, and the pupils standing together silently, growing even more frightened with every hour that passed, and with every man that exited the cave with the same desperate look he had when he went inside.

The makeshift search team couldn't find Tony, and gave up after a day, calling in the local police to help.

The police gave up combing through the cave after almost three days, and started searching the surroundings, looking just as helpless as they all felt. What was supposed to be a fun summer trip ended up becoming every teachers worst nightmare.

They didn't find him.

Not that day the police talked to Ms. Beddel before driving off, not after the class had boarded the bus, not after they arrived at home.

A month later, a police officer accidentally spilled his coffee on the report of a missing person, one Tony March, that he was supposed to archive together with a few other fruitless cases. He curged about the extra work.

Almost half a year later, native boys near the Prayon mountains told nosy tourists the story of the young boy that went inside the "Little Slip" and never came back out.

And somewhere, laying on the ground, a young man with tussled brown hair, a dusty, blue shirt and a pair of trousers looking as if he crawled through a cave opened his eyes, only to find himself surrounded by dense forest.