The crevice in the wall was just wide enough to pass though.
They were flat here, matching in thickness
and in angle to form the opening. Chloe examined a broken part of IT,
the stonework had fractured off, revealing the fossilised tubular structure inside.
From under her feet a hexagon of white light appeared. She jumped back, the
light disappearing and re-appearing under her feet when she landed. Chloe had
stopped laughing, stopped frantically moving and stood still in silence. When
she moved the light moved to her next step, the hexagon always the same size
and uniformly arranged. As the three passed into the cavern beyond she was
given a wide birth. Squawks from birds pierced the darkness. Humid air passed
around them, the once solid ground had given way to nearly a foot of mud. All
around them lay thin uniformly green trees, stems as thick as bamboo. Eryn
tried to burn their way through, since none of them had a large enough sword or
pole-arm. He placed his fingertips together and a ring of fire adorned his
head. He reached in with just his fingers and pulled out flame after flame,
firing it at the dense vegetation in front of them. The fire curled around the
trunks, around the bushes and tall grass, channelled upwards till it dissipated
into the ceiling. The birds shrieked and fluttered away. So too did the light
that came from behind the crystal panel in their breasts and the room, still
teeming with noises, fell into darkness. Eryn was not to be deterred. He
followed the pinpricks of light dashing across the cavern ceiling, slowly but
surely carving his way through with his one handed blade
In the middle of the darkness the
sword clashed against metal. The echo silenced the entire cave. Chloe swiftly
moved to the coattails of Eryn and huddled in close, Lily appeared to be taking
this in her stride. This place frightened
her, a fact the others would never see. Eyren wrenched his sword from the depths
in front of him and pulled it towards him. It was covered in metallic threads,
and with enough force, razor sharp. Eryn pulled at the threads and in turn
himself and his sword were pulled forward. A whisper of bone and metal
chattering together rose up from in front of them. Within moments a swarm of
spiders funneled down the sword and
scattered themselves among the group. Chloe shrieked trying to brush the scarab
sized arachnids from her. Lily was all too keen to use her dagger, but in this
darkness she was more pruning than killing. Eryn dropped his sword and placed
his finger tips together and threw fire at the nest. Chloe spun frantically in
disgust and horror, slicing herself multiple times of the metallic webs draping
over the plants. The horde however did not last long, their attacks were ineffectual,
in fact their homes were more harmful than they were. The last strides of
cavern swamp had only two sets of feet. Chloe had climbed up onto Eryn’s
shoulders for ‘protection’ although Eryn did not see it that way. The mud gave
way back into solid stone and once more the walls of the rooms could be seen.
The center of this cave had a rocky outcrop; a large nearly spherical boulder.
This room seemed much safer than
the horrors of the one before so Chloe approached without caution. The boulder
started to stir, dirt and rocks and dust fell to the floor. A golden light
etched straight lines like a welder, on the boulders surface. It was splitting
apart, the sound of stone grinding on itself caused Eryn’s hairs to stand on end.
He tried to get Chloe to move back but she refused. The boulder was now twice
the size of her, barely short enough to fit under the cavern roof. It’s arms
folded out from the centre, after its legs and a smaller round bounder
protruded from the top. The latter two deep set holes near the top. It swung at
her throwing her to the wall and then slowly moved onto the others. Their senses
now sharpened from the previous room they lunged their own attack back. The
stone body of the creature made every blow deflected and painful . Lily tried
to concentrate on the creature, focusing her thoughts of decay and death onto
it. From her mind's eye a bloodied skeletal arm flew and smashed into dust
against the creature, it stumbled backwards with the distinct crack of stone.
She repeated this again, and again, with it constantly trying to attack, and
successfully doing so. The last hand that touched the creature grasped onto the
smaller boulder on top. Under its palm
the stone split, till its cracks reached every part and it to, like
living things, crumbled into dust.
Its destruction opened up a small
passage. Chloe’s light had gone from white to amber during battle and now to
now red as she entered. A little hazy after concussion she mentioned that there
was a man standing on a pillar to the far right of them. Lily corrected her,
the pillar was hollow with mineral slivers showing the liquid contents inside and
the creature Chloe was referring was not standing. It was in fact a writhing mass of tentacles
and teeth. It’s myriad of eyes blinking along the sides of its tentacles. It
was pulling up creatures that had somehow fallen into the vat. Most were
smaller, most likely wandered over from the underground swamp. The rate that it
fished and devoured its prey left the group very uneasy, and after the previous
fights decided to keep to the opposite side of the cave. There were multiple
vats in here, although non contained any life. Eryn’s nose started to bleed
upwards, dotting the cavern roof. Lily sighed and offered her condolences. He
looked at her defiantly, although clearly panicked. With Chloe’s eyes closer to
the ground to avoid any further conflict she noticed a small snaking mound
leading to a square boulder. With a dagger she tapped at it, knocking away some
of the dust.
A straight line following the sides of the
rock revealed itself. Chloe tried to clear it up by running her blade along the
sides, scraping away the past. The front of the rock broke off almost
instantly. Inside lay three floating glass vials whose contents was a pearlesant
purple liquid constantly moving. She took this as a sign of a cure in her desperation
and downed the liquid without hesitation. Her headaches stopped, her completion
returned and her nosebleed stopped. She whispered over to Eryn who drank as
well. He took the last vial and along side, an apparently a genuine fossil, an
ammonite with a flat, warm base. Lily in the meantime had found a portion of
the room where rubbish had piled up from where it had dropped from the ceiling.
She threw a shard of metal up and instead of clinking and falling back down, it
passed straight through, never to return. This was perhaps the only place
matching the same description as where they had come in, so, without much option
left she hauled herself up. An immense
pressure closed in on all sides, a pain she could hardly stand. With the last
amounts of effort she reached back down into the cave. Chloe saw the dangling
hand, still moving and tried to scream. Eryn had covered her mouth while
pointing at the tentacle creature slowly moving away from its perch, and
heading towards them. There was nothing for it, she grabbed the hand with her
left and tightly grasped Eryn with her right.
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