Part 1

The next morning, our journey across the tunnels began anew. Dull black walls, ceiling and floor surrounded our group as the sound of the crackling fire and our steps were the only things that filled the emptiness of those walls. In that monotony, dictated by the constant rhythm of my companions' breaths and the slowly increasing inclination of the tunnels, I started to lose concentration. My thoughts bounced back and forth between the strange dream I had the night before and the whereabouts of my family. I hoped not to be noticed by those around me, I knew very well that a member’s mood could possibly influence the entire team. But I was found out a couple of hours after lunch. I was hopeful that the shadows cast by the torches would hide me, but my brother did not fall for that.

“Is everything ok, Raph?” He whispered to me while slowing down his steps in order to stand close enough for me to hear.

“Mhh? Oh- yes, yes, don’t worry about it I’m just….tired, I guess” I replied, diverting my eyes as much as I could from his line of sight.

“Really?-” Asked him with a tone full of doubt “- If you say so then it’s fine but remember that I need you to be ready in case something happens. Without your magic, I’m not sure whether the others would survive”

“You’re right-” I said with enough voice to talk comfortably without making the ones behind me aware of the context of my words. Lucas had already fastened his steps so whispering was useless “-My mind’s nowhere but here. There’s been something bugging me ever since last night…You see, I had a dream, a strange one. It was too lengthy to tell you all about it but the troubling thing was that I met a girl. No, more like I talked with a woman. I relived one of my memories, the time that I got this scar-” I sad while slightly brushing over my left eye with two fingers “- The thing is…she knew my secret. A secret I never told anyone about, and I mean literally anyone…I don’t know if I’m scared, surprised or just shocked…I woke up right after that conversation”

“Mhhh-” Replied Lucas as he took a moment to consider my words. He didn’t look back at me, he just kept walking in front of the group, dictating the pace “- so you have secrets that you hide even from me, uh? Come on, spill the beans! What’s that secret?”

“I won’t tell you shit! How can it be a secret if I were to tell you as soon as you asked? Plus you have secrets yourself and I don’t think you’ll ever want to tell me what happened at the house you were before coming to us, am I right?”

“Point taken, hahaha!-” Laughed Lucas loud enough to send an echo through the tunnels “- But seriously though-” He said after catching his breath “- If it’s a secret you haven’t told anyone and someone in YOUR dreams talked about it, isn’t just like you telling yourself the secret?”

“What do you mean?” I asked perplexed.

“You can’t control your dreams, right? I heard it somewhere, what was it like?... Oh right! It was something about your mind running free in your sleep. I heard that dreams are just a mixture of your memories so probably it was just that. A dream is nothing but a dream, right?”

“Oh…If you put it that way…I guess I really am tired…to be this worried about a dream”

“Haha, right? So just try to sleep during breaks too, it might help you get rid of that tiredness!” Cheerfully suggested my brother as his steps seemed to acquire a bit of jump. Being able to act like the older brother he is seemed to put him in an awfully good mood.

[Still…what about the question she asked. “Are you really sure that’s your only name?”...I don’t get it. It’s not like I can use my old name anymore. That body has been dead for years now…Actually, now that I think about it, what happened to my old body?]

Part 2

I didn’t notice it at first but I began to when it was already pretty much clear to everyone. The tunnels were growing larger, wider, big enough for a whole carriage to pass through. Dinner was slowly approaching and my stomach began calling out for food when our group began speaking about it. Not only did the tunnels grow larger but the floor was now flat, there was no inclination and it didn’t seem there would be for quite the while since it had been a couple of hours since we began walking on flat ground. We discussed whether we took a wrong turn somewhere and found fault in each other's insight but none suggested turning back. The days inside the darkness of the tunnels required too high of a toll for any of us to suggest prolonging that silent torture.

It was in that atmosphere, full of bitterness and discord, that a strange sensation began tingling my skin. I had stopped looking for threats continuously since it consumed too much energy and the only things we found in the past days were rats and spiders. A grave error I realized in hindsight. I ignored the feeling, pushing it aside as superfluous. It was only minutes later that a sound, too strange and uncommon for the sounds I had heard ever since entering the dungeon, began lightly tickling my eardrums. A constant light sound sliding on the walls and floors of the numerous tunnels. Lucas too reacted to it and gripped the sword more firmly. The others seemed to not perceive the danger.

I concentrated and tried scanning the place through natural mana. Then a screech. Loud enough to form numerous echoes throughout the tunnels. After the first, a second followed, then a third and fourth until all I could hear were screeches. I pulled out my wand and unsheathed the dagger.

“GET A GRIP!-” I shouted while pulling Namisatto closer to me “- WE ARE SURROUNDED!”

I barely had time to finish my sentence when cracks began forming on the walls. The light of the torches shone brightly over them, casting shadows carrying fear and anxiety. With an explosion of dust and fragments of rock, the cracks opened. From inside them, a platoon of creatures I had never seen swarmed out. Two meters tall and very thin insect-like creatures surrounded us in a matter of seconds. They had long necks and horizontally stretched heads, much like a mantis. Their lower body was plumped with its biggest feature being the eight spider-like legs that moved like snakes on the cold, black stone. The upper body was very thin and still as if it was composed solely of bones. From it, four long arms armed with scythes of exoskeleton protruded.

The screeching stopped as soon as the creatures completed the encircling. They seemed to test us, scan us, probably searching for the weak link like most animals instinctively do. We were no different. Us five, with our backs against each other, were getting comfortable with the weapons in our hands and looking for a way to break the encirclement, even though no one said a word.

“They are nearly blind-” I whispered for a group to hear “- Their eyes are completely white. If we fight in the darkness we’ll lose”

“Then what do we do? We only have three torches!” Answered Ros stretching his neck towards my ears.

“Lucas-” I asked with complete seriousness in both my tone and my expression “- can you cut them?”

“Can’t be sure ‘bout it-” Replied my brother, testing out the weight of his sword in his hand “- I’d need to try it out first. They look cuttable though!”

“That’s good enough-” I replied with a wicked smile “- I’ll give you a chance to test it… You guys, if Lucas gives you word, join in the fight, if not stick close to each other…and for the love of god, don’t you dare die”

A silent nod, followed by “mhh”s and “uh uh”s, was my companions' way of replying to me. Everyone seemed on edge. It was understandable, this was their first encounter with a monster for some of them. Lucas, on the other hand, looked as if rejuvenated a couple of years. The excitement emanating from his sword was palpable. I had to respond to that excitement. I gathered mana on my left palm and pushed it towards the wand. I felt power surging and images of spells began filling my mind as usual. The familiar feeling of being able to change nature on a whim that came together with the usage of mana began rising from the depths of my consciousness, then I shouted.

“Pillars of pure light!”

Five cylindrical pillars as high as the ceiling and with a circumference of about half a meter rose like blossoming flowers in five different corners of the tunnel. With me as the focal center, the five pillars took their place around a circle two meters away from me. The light they emitted was soft and warm yet as white as snow. The tunnels, previously filled with shadows cast by our torches, were suddenly swallowed in a lake of pure white light, without a single hint of shadows.

The sudden lack of darkness caused chaos in the midst of our insect-like enemies. Screeches heavy with pain filled the tunnel and almost deafened me. My head was spinning and my ears were ringing but my eyes worked just fine, fine enough to see the back of my brother launching towards the enemy lines. He had thrown the torch towards the closest monster and was now grabbing the sword with both hands. It only took a moment for him to close the distance between him and one of the monsters.

The monster screeched as he barely saw the silhouette of someone not from his species approaching him, too late to react. He raised all four of his scythe-arms in an attempt to parry the diagonal slash of Lucas’ sword. A futile attempt. Lucas’ sword was not simply a weapon anymore, not after breaking through that tier. It was an extension of his own body. A detached organ. Shifting the weight of his body and moving his arms accordingly, Lucas changed the trajectory of the sword mid-swing, making it look more like a whip rather than a solid sword. The upper body was cut in half. Cleanly. A fountain of light-blue liquid erupted from the severed lower body as the other monsters screeched at the loss of their companion. There was no hesitation in Lucas’ sword, even after hearing those screams full of pain and anger, as he dashed towards a menacingly approaching monster and shouted:

“THEY CAN BE CUT!”

That was the signal. He needed to judge whether those things could be cut by us too and I already knew, by looking at how he swung his sword. It had speed and control suitable for his tier but the strength backing it up was nowhere near the strength Lucas was able to showcase.

Namisatto watched in awe, powerless, as Lucas jumped onto another enemy only to finish him with a single swing of his sword. Ros and Lauter didn’t wait either. Once they received the signal from Lucas, they both jumped into the incoming wave of monsters now rushing toward us, their enemy. To make up for their lack of ability, the two men opted for rage. A rage fueled by the loss of two companions, the hunger and the lack of sleep. They severed arms and legs like a woodcutter does so with a tree. In my eyes, their way of fighting looked more like torture to me than swordsmanship. While Lucas’ sword created clean cuts and instant death, their swords delivered pain and suffering together with a slow death due to bleeding and immense screeches of pain. It unsettled me. Probably because I was used to looking at my brother's sword since in the two last years of academy, we were the only two students frequenting the dojo.

Physically joining the fight would've been a nice stress relief for me, but my duty to protect Namisatto, who could not fight, came before my needs. Yet, no monsters seemed to want to attack me. Those who stood in front of me remained still as if just to fill in to create the circle. The ones behind them all rushed towards Lucas’ position, for the vast majority, and to Lauter and Ros’ positions. I couldn’t permit either side's fights to become any more draining. Once again I gathered mana in my palm and threw it into my wand.

“Windstorm’s assault!” I shouted as I pointed my wand towards a group of moving monsters.

A tiny blade trembled in front of my wand for less than half a second before sprinting at incredible speed towards my target. In it’s sprint, the tiny blade, grew enormously in size, now taking a length of more than four meters. Or at least that’s what was shown to the naked eyes. In actuality, the blade didn’t grow but instead twisted the air around it to create other tiny blades beside it. A double-edged sword of a spell. The further the target was the bigger the destructive power would become but so did the lack of accuracy of the spell and the possibility of it missing or getting countered.

More than ten monsters fell in a single moment in a pool of blue blood. Some heads were cut off cleanly, some had their torso torn apart, some their lower body and so on. The result was a puddle of blood and bodily remains. The image of the wolves being dismembered in my memory resurfaced.

The battle continued for ten more minutes. The monsters weren’t strong but their numbers covered that lack. Once the fight ended, piles of bodies and rivers of light-blue liquid littered the tunnel still shining in white light. We took a moment to rest, away from the corpses because of the smell and in fear of being attacked again. During this break, I checked everyone’s condition and found some wounds on my companions’ bodies. Lucas had just a couple of bruises where he fell due to the slipperiness of the blood under his boots while the other two had a much vaster number of cuts all scattered around their bodies. Legs, torso, arms and even face. They were covered in them. The difference in ability was obviously the reason. I spent much of my mana to cure the more dangerous wounds while letting the smaller ones heal by themselves. I wasn’t able to heal using natural mana. Rather, healing was not my forte. I was even able to reach the advanced tier in it.

After catching our breaths and discussing what happened, we walked back to the site of the massacre and began searching the bodies. We took all the food we could gather from those slender bodies, mostly gathered from their lower half of their body, where it was plump. We were unsure whether it was edible or not but we all agreed that having a stomachache was far better than starving to death. With food gathered and the holes on the walls collapsed, we began our march towards the surface anew.

Part 3

Long, lengthy days passed since the first encounter with the insect-like monsters. The boringness I felt at the start of the journey was rapidly replaced by the frequent attacks of platoons composing twenty to thirty of those monsters. We decided to call them “Tunnel mantis” because of the similarity with the praying mantis of the animal world and the fact that they lived in tunnels.

The monsters attacked us frequently, at times even ten times a day. Night and day had no meaning for them so our hours and quality of sleep drastically reduced. Luckily for us, food was not a problem anymore since we fed on the corpses of the monsters we killed. Their meat was dry and tasteless, not only that but it was also extremely difficult to cook and chew yet none spoke a word of complaint about it. It could be easily spotted in everyone’s eyes: they were losing their will. Sleeping just a few hours every night, fending off constant attacks from vicious monsters, getting injured and eating tasteless meat. All those factors piled up to increase the weight everyone had to carry and the fear of being stuck in a mortal trap called dungeon. I too felt my sanity slipping by at times and only the thought of my family being trapped somewhere pushed me forward.

After three days from the first attack, we noticed the number of smaller tunnels increasing. We had entered the Tunnel mantis’ territory. Hence, none of us was able to sleep for two days straight as we pushed ourselves to the limit by running like madmen through the tunnels. We were being chased by hundreds of those monsters. Lucky for us, they were not suited for long runs and had very little stamina to back them up. Still, the ten fights a day felt like a joke, unlike the constant fighting that occurred for two days straight.

Then, like a miracle, all the monsters stopped following us altogether. It was as if they dared not to enter another monster’s territory. In fear of that, I kept scouting with mana nonstop yet never found the trace of a living being. Relieved by that news, we took a full day to eat and rest to our hearts' content, finally regaining a hint of hope and strength. Needless to say that a day passed by in a flash. And so we began walking again.

The next day we noticed something strange. The more we walked the larger the tunnel grew. Not only that but also it’s shape changed. From the randomness of a natural tunnel to a more man-made structure in the shape of an arch. All of us began hypothesizing on whether that tunnel was actually man-made or not. The answer to our doubts didn’t take much to come.

Soon, the floor of black stone became a paving of rectangular black stones tainted by the years. Dirty with the undeterred passing of time, the stones were cracked and turned to dust or ruined and painted in black without recognition of their original form. The walls became smooth and pleasant to the touch. On the walls, half-columns rose from their altars of nude black stone and reached the ceiling in an arch with the column in front of them. Created from the walls themselves, those columns only showed half of them, the other half still contained in the stone, waiting to be brought to light by their sculptor. The body of those columns was a spiral rising from the ground and thinning until it reached the top. The space between every column was of around four to five meters but the sheer quantity of those beauties was overwhelming. Between each of them, a little groove was dug onto the stone and smoothed out like the walls. In it, a pedestal made of a material similar to iron seemed to wait for something to be put on it. It was clear that those grooves were created to hold a torch of sorts. We couldn’t see an end to them but we all were certain. Living people had passed through here.

We walked for long until the light of the torches was not necessary anymore. With our hearts full of expectancy, fear and anxiety we followed the bluish light coming from further in front of us. The end of the tunnel was near. We all felt that.

Our steps fastened, fastened and fastened until it became a march. Then a sprint and finally a full-on run. Careless of the state of our bodies, we ran like our lives depended on it. We ran until we reached the edge of the tunnel where two columns several times bigger than the previous ones held in place a broken-down gate. Scarred and beaten by the ages the gate was pried open and bluish life was flowing like a waterfall from the other side.

The huge gate, several meters tall, was decorated with high reliefs. Just the thought of creating a gate made of thick stone was absurd, but also decorating it?

[Whoever lived there must’ve had absurdly capable artisans] I thought to myself upon brushing my palms against the now faded pictures describing a story over those enormous gates.

We slipped through the hole in the gate and filled our eyes with light after countless days in the absolute darkness.

None could speak.

None could move.

None could breathe.

Such was the scenery etched into our eyes. In front of us was something far beyond the imaginations of us five. Hidden from anyone’s knowledge. A thing too majestic to even be called the work of mortals.

“This is not a natural dungeon-” I said after bathing my eyes in the absurd majesty of what stood tall in front of me for what felt like hours “- this…this is a labyrinth!”