Now with full bellies, the girls sat in silent contentment for a bit.
“We have perhaps an hour before Realmspace throws us out,” Squishy pointed out. “I believe it would be wise if we return to reality now instead of later. We should conserve as much magic as possible for nightfall, should the cave become unbearably cold.”
“Hold my hand, we’re going back to the cave. Squishy told me we should.”
“Wait, Addie, what? Why?”
Addie reached forward and grabbed onto Nettal’s hand. “Hold your breath!”
“Ahh!!! Wait!”
“HOLD your breath!” Addie shouted in Nettal’s ear.
Addie sucked in a ginormous breath, and she saw that Nettal did, too. Then, she plunged everyone back out into reality.
The darkness of the cave blinded Addie, but more importantly, it blinded Nettal. So, using her spatial sense, Addie held Nettal’s hand tightly while she ran further down into the cave, away from the poisoned air created by their cooking fire. Squishy did something similar for Lotty, wrapping his tail around one of Lotty’s front legs to guide him.
Addie ran as much as she possibly could, but soon she started seeing stars in her vision from running so hard without breathing.
Nettal tugged on Addie’s arm hard, halting her instantly. The tug jarred Addie’s shoulder joint, and she almost tripped and fell. With a gasp, Addie released the breath she had been holding while trying to regain her balance. She somehow managed not to fall, but it was close.
Everyone stood still in the cave, panting to catch their breath. Addie put one hand on her knee and the other on the ground to help her sit down.
Still breathing heavily, Nettal marched over to Addie’s sitting spot. She towered over Addie with a stern face, reminding Addie of Auntie.
“You can’t just do that!” Panting between words, Nettal sucked in another breath, “Next time you have to warn me!”
She tried not to laugh, since Nettal was shouting at the wall right next to Addie instead of directly at her. Addie bit her cheek and waited for the amusement to fade. Then, she summoned a few soul flames in her palm to light up the area. Nettal instantly turned to face Addie correctly.
“I did warn you, though? I told you to hold your breath. And I said we were leaving Realmspace.”
“Yeah, like way too all of a sudden!” Nettal glared. “Remember, we promised to work together to get home? Can we please talk about plans before suddenly yanking people around with magic?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Nettal sighed, “It’s fine.”
Addie turned her head to the right and looked down the pathway out of the cave. “The poison air will make it hard to leave. Do you want to go exploring?”
“How is that going to help us get home?” Nettal asked as she crossed her arms.
“Well, maybe those furry people can help us,” Addie suggested. “The last one didn’t seem that scary.”
Nettal grimaced, “It might be a better option than wandering around in the snow.”
“Also, if night has already fallen, we will not want to leave the warmth of the cave,” Squishy added.
“Good point,” Addie said to both thoughts, “Then let’s explore!”
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From behind, Lotty’s hooves clacked against the cave floor.
“When you said explore, I thought it was going to be a lot more interesting than this,” Nettal complained as they walked past yet another stalactite.
Addie frowned, “I thought so too.”
They had been walking down the tunnel for forever, and yet absolutely nothing exciting had happened. It had just been a whole lot of cave, and a whole lot of black-colored rock as they slowly descended into the earth. Addie trailed her hand against the cave wall, and her fingers met smooth slightly damp stone. There had been more than a few puddles down here collecting what was presumably melting snow water from up on the surface. Addie would flash burn the puddle for just a second to boil it, then after it cooled everyone got to have a drink. Luckily, they hadn’t had any issues with poisoned air. Probably she wasn’t burning anything except her own magic. They would have to be careful if they wanted to make a cooking fire again.
“Hey, what’s that?” Nettal pointed off into the distance.
Addie squinted her eyes but didn’t notice anything too strange. It felt like they had done this before. Maybe Nettal had better eyesight than Addie?
“I can’t see anything.”
“Here, turn off the fire for a sec.” Nettal nudged Addie’s arm.
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She let the arm drop, and the soul flames also went out. It took a bit for Addie’s eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness, but as they did, she thought she could see something glowing way off in the distance.
“How could you see that? I couldn’t see it until just now.” Addie stopped walking and tried to make out what she was looking at.
“Is it, a mushroom?” Nettal asked herself. “A really giant mushroom?”
To Addie, it just looked like something way off in the distance glowed an off-blue color.
“Let’s get closer,” Nettal grabbed onto Addie’s hand and started pulling her forward.
Since she couldn’t see as well as Nettal, Addie focused and extended her spatial sense to only be in front of her. She pumped more magic into it, and let the cone of awareness extend out as far from her body as she could.
“I can see it now, too,” Addie said. Well, as long as she used her spatial sense. “It is a mushroom,” she said aloud, agreeing with Nettal.
“Big glowy mushroom. Think we can eat it?” Nettal asked.
Something about wild mushrooms stood out in Addie’s mind, but she couldn’t quite place what was special about them.
Nettal turned her head to look behind herself at Lotty. “Oh wait, never mind. Lotty says we should never eat random mushrooms.”
Oh, that’s what it was. Her dad used to tell Addie to never eat wild mushrooms when they went camping. The realization thrummed in her soul, and another tiny shard of her soul shell slid back into place. With it came a feeling of relief; that was two shards in one day! She was going to get better in no time.
Only, like, ten thousand more to go.
“Wow, it’s a lot brighter than I thought!” Nettal exclaimed.
She was right, too. The mushroom wasn’t just bright, it was huge. It was easily taller than Addie, and the cap spanned across the entire width of the cave. The mushroom flesh undulated slowly. The brightness of its glow went up as the mushroom expanded, and the glow got dimmer as the mushroom contracted— almost like it was breathing. It lit up the entire cave, even when the glow was at its darkest.
They didn’t stay staring at it for too long. Squishy mentally nudged Addie through their bond, prompting her to continue forward. Nettal followed along right after.
“Addie,” Nettal sounded nervous, “Can you send Ember to scout out ahead?”
That was actually a good idea.
“Sure,” Addie agreed easily.
Since she had been paying attention to all of the conversation thus far, Ember flew out of Addie’s soul all on her own. She quickly swept through the area, and then continued on further down into the darkness.
The mushroom, which was now behind them, lit up the cave so well that Addie didn’t need to keep her soul flames going, so she let them go out. She never had to relight them either, the deeper into the cave they went, the more those mushrooms started to appear. At first, it would just be one or two of those huge ones, but as they continued forward more variations of glowing mushrooms started to appear. There was blue glowing moss covering the walls and stalactites, giant mushrooms every fifty paces, and tons of little tiny and more normal-sized brown and red mushrooms interspersed throughout the cave floor. Baby glowing blue mushrooms were also here and there, especially near those small puddles of water that occasionally showed up.
The gentle clacking rhythm of Lotty’s hooves started to go quiet as the ground became covered in moss, muting the sound. The sudden silence as they walked forward felt strange after she had gotten so used to hearing those hoofbeats.
“What is this place?” Addie asked.
Nettal didn’t respond, but Addie hardly noticed. Everyone was too focused on admiring the scenery as they walked past.
Soon, some pieces of broken down cave started coming into view. It looked like the rubble had long since been overgrown with glowing moss, though.
Addie glanced over the piles of rubble with her spatial sense as they walked, interested in how the moss grew so stubbornly even without any dirt.
Something about the rubble seemed a bit odd to Addie, but it didn’t quite register what exactly was off about it at first. She figured it out pretty quickly though once they kept moving. The occasional piles of rubble didn’t look natural. If anything, they reminded Addie more of the bricks used in ovens and fireplaces.
Then, the girls came upon an entire wall of crumbling bricks, and Addie noticed something else too. The bricks weren’t the same color as the cave stone. In fact, they almost seemed to dimly glow blue, too. At least, the bricks that weren’t halfway broken and crumbling. The wall only blocked off part of the walkway, so the girls easily walked around it.
“Woah. Did people used to live here?” Nettal wondered aloud.
“Maybe they still live here. Like that fuzzy man.” Addie ducked slightly to walk underneath and through a hole in another wall, grabbing the top of the hole slightly as she maneuvered.
Ember came flittering back, sending images of more broken-down buildings ahead. She hadn’t gone any further though because Addie’s theory was correct. Some of these ruins were still inhabited by those furry people.
“Ember says there are more of those furry people ahead,” Addie informed the group.
Nettal gulped. “Are they dangerous?”
Using the soul bond, Ember sent an image of the dwellings and the people. None of them carried weapons. The group of two hundred or so furry people just looked to be living like anyone else would. Some of them had little gardens with some of the brown mushrooms Addie had seen earlier. Most of them were sitting around working on something or another, baskets woven with mushroom fiber, some string-looking things that might have been jewelry. A lot of the furry people were watching a group of children as they played in some puddles.
“I don’t think they are dangerous,” Addie said tentatively. “At least, they don’t have any weapons. I don’t see any magical creatures either, so they might not have any bonds.”
“Huh.”
Then, both girls heard a loud whooping sound, exactly like the scream that one furry man had made when he ran off in terror.
“Why are they doing that?” Nettal tugged on Addie’s sleeve.
Ember flitted back out of Addie’s soul unprompted and came back swiftly after she checked on the situation, taking no more than a handful of seconds.
“It looks like one of the children playing got hurt. They aren’t moving, just lying on the ground with their eyes closed. There’s blood.”
The second Addie mentioned blood, Nettal dashed out of their hiding place in the ruins and sprinted into the settlement.
“Wait!” Addie tried to reach forward and call out, too late.
Slowly, Addie walked out to try and follow Nettal. Now, all of those furry people were whooping, not just the one adult from before. Nettal ignored them, and instead, her eyes started glowing a fierce green as she activated her magic. She kneeled down next to the child’s head, and she placed one palm over its head. She closed her eyes, making the glowing stop.
Addie watched in real-time as the adults all started screaming right at Nettal, some of them walking dangerously close just before backing away again. They didn’t seem willing to interfere for some reason. Addie walked right up next to Nettal— she and Squishy were ready to defend her if needed.
The whooping quieted as the obvious wound on the child’s head began to close, and the blood stopped pouring out. The distressed eyes from the adults turned curious and hesitant, instead of outright angry. Addie took that as a good sign.