Shaking like a leaf Dawn climbed out of the water. Desperately, she pulled the two cocoons out after her. She really hoped she hadn’t unwittingly drowned two of Kharma’s friends. It had taken all her strength and willpower to tow them behind her through the icy water. She hadn’t had much strength left, to make sure their heads always stayed above the surface.

The cavern before her reeked of burned flesh and chitin. Charred carcasses of huge spiders lay around. She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, what a stench. There’s a decided drawback to burning demons.” She muttered as she checked her surroundings. At least no living specimens of the breed seemed to be around. The general mayhem had died down now, the caves were almost quiet again. There was movement a bit farther down the cave, but it seemed the living spiders were still occupied with licking their wounds. Or maybe they were preparing a grand assault on her and her friends. She wouldn’t put it past them.

Trying not to inhale too deeply she turned and cast Nurture once again on each of the villagers in the cocoon. She tried to loosen the knot which held the rope and the cocoons together but it had tightened in the water and she couldn’t open it. Resigned, she grabbed both cocoons and dragged them over to the entrance of the small cave. “Kharma, can you give me a hand here?” she called out, hindered by the rubble in the entrance. A minute later the bronze furry face of Kharma appeared. He mustered her for a moment, nose twitching, and brightened when he saw the cocoons she had dragged with her. “Help me carry them inside.” Dawn said. And he hurried to take up one side of the lashed together cocoons. They scrambled over the rubble with their burden in tow.

Lutha was still in the process of freeing the two others from the residue of the cocoons. “Are they even alive?” Dawn whispered. Both Kharlins lay motionless and looked more dead than alive. “Yes, they live.” Lutha replied. Dawn was relieved. At least their suicidal venture hadn’t been entirely in vain. “We got another two of your villagers out.” She said. “But there are still a lot of them left in the den. And quite a lot of live demons, too. I must admit I am a bit suspicious that it is so quiet right now.” Kharma nodded. “Demons tricky, too quiet means trouble.”

“Trouble or not, I need a break. I am freezing, starving and exhausted. At the moment, I’m not able to even try to think of a way to get another few dozen villagers out.” Dawn lowered herself down to the ground with a grunt. She took a bag of jerky and some bread out of her storage and passed it around to Kharma and Lutha who had started to get the new arrivals out of their cocoons. “Where is Ankou?” Dawn asked apprehensively, noticing only now that the lynx wasn’t present. “He went down cave. Bored I think” Kharma replied. “I’ll go and look for him. He must be starving too,” Dawn decided and stood up again with a huff.

She followed the passage down to the old lab and saw the cat was lying on the floor in a sodden heap. “Poor Ankou,” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry you had to get into the water again.” The cat blinked at her but made no attempt to get up. She laid a good portion of jerky on the ground next to him and started to wander around the lab while chewing on her own. “Strange that someone had a single lab down here, when all the other workshops were on the second level of the city? Does that mean he was someone important? Or the opposite?” she wondered. She investigated the things that were lying on the work benches. Doubtfully she took up a translucent milky white stone. She had never seen the like before.

Suddenly a man stood before her. He had wildly curly brown hair and brown eyes, a very prominent nose and was talking rapidly. “4th of Wahim in the eighth year of the reign of King Rakna the seventh. I’ve decided to use an Echo Stone instead of a normal journal or diary. It will speed up the documentation of my work. Time is working against me, now that Saida is so sick. She has contracted blackburn disease and the healers say it has been discovered to late. They can’t help her anymore. They said she is going to die in a few short months. I won’t let that happen. We have only been married for a few weeks. This can’t be the end for us.” A summary of alchemical experiments and the procedures to test the effectiveness of the resulting medicines followed. Dawn could only understand a fraction of what the narrator was describing.

Then came the next diary entry:

“29th of Wahim in the eighth year of the reign of King Rakna the seventh. I’ve tried to create a cure, but Alchemy seems to fall short. Others have tried before me and failed. I can’t afford to research the disease properly. That would take more time than Saida has left. Already my beautiful wife is only a of shadow herself. I’ll have to find another way to cure her. I have installed my laboratory apart from the others in one of the storage caves under Raknavor. I can’t afford any distractions right now.”

Again a litany of experimentation and results followed, this time concerning the topics of runes and magic. Dawn was totally out of her depth here.

“3rd of Bassera in the eighth year of the reign of King Rakna the seventh. I may have found a solution. In my last experiments I tried to combine blood magic with animation runes. The first results show promise, but I will have to refine my experiments further. I must keep them secret from everyone. Blood magic has been forbidden to the stoneblood folk since the earliest days of Raknavor. And of course, the price for it is always death. But Saida will die, blood magic or no, so I don’t see any harm in it. And if it works as I expect, it could save her.”

“Dawn are you coming?” Lutha was calling for her from the passage. Startled, Dawn let go of the white stone and the apparition vanished. “One minute,” she called back. Fascinated she stared at the Echo Stone. She would have liked to continue listening to the narrator. She stuck the stone in her storage and reluctantly turned to go back to the others.

As she got back to them she was greeted by smiling faces. Lutha told her: “They woke up.” “Wonderful,” Dawn replied. “How are they? Do I need to heal them once more? I should have regenerated enough mana for a spell or two now.” Lutha smiled: “For now they should be good. They are still pretty dizzy right now. This here is Yima, that guy with the black fur over there is Grodim, one of our hunters, and these two are Laik and Reina. Dawn smiled shyly at the villagers, somewhat overwhelmed by so many new faces at once. “I hope you are feeling better now,” she said. The cave was starting to feel crowded now.

Kharma was already on his feet and pacing. “Need to go back. Many villagers still with demons.” Dawn raised her hands helplessly: “It’s getting more and more difficult now. The demons know we are here. We can’t use fire in their lair without killing your friends too. There are still so many we need to get out. I’m fresh out of ideas.”

Kharma growled, his ears flattening: “You promised help us.” Struck, Dawn retorted: “ And I did help. I will aid you still, but I don’t want us to be killed in a senseless suicidal mission. Your friends here just got out of the demon’s clutches. Can they help us to fight them off while we try to get the others out? Or is it better for them to get out of these caves completely, so at least some of us have a chance of survival?”

Yima and Reina stiffened. “No, I will not go back and fight these monsters, I cannot! “ Exclaimed Yima. “I want to get out of here! “ Reina nodded, lowering her head and whispering: “When they took the children I tried to stab them with my knife, but it was no use. They took the children and me too. What use would I be now?” Laik stayed silent, his expression uncertain. Only Grodim said with calm certainty: “I will help to free the others. I can fight and shoot. My wife is still there. I will not leave without her.”

Dawn rubbed her nose: “I have got a crazy idea. The spiders can’t swim. We know that now. But we can’t stay in the water for long, it’s just too cold. Could we build some kind of raft? So we can stay on the water, and try to get the others out from there? Stealthy, it is not, and it would take some time to build it. But the demons couldn’t reach us. Get a few villagers out on the raft, heal them and wake them up and maybe get them out via the underground waterway. It is very hard and uncomfortable to get into, but the spiders couldn’t follow them on that way.”

Kharma froze: “Can build, yes. But have no wood here. And need rope and nails too.”

“The old lab down there contains a lot of shelves. We could use these, just take them as they are and lash them together. Maybe put some boards on the top crosswise. The raft doesn’t have to look pretty. I have some rope and we might tear some clothes to strips and use those.” They looked at the shelving in the old lab and decided to try to build the raft. But they would have to do it outside of the cave, finished it would be too big for the entrance.

“Grodim and Ankou, keep an eye on the surroundings. The demons might try to get at us again. And don’t forget to look at the ceiling.” Dawn said as they prepared to leave the cave. Kharma snorted: “If come, more burned demon.”

“It doesn’t do to underestimate them. They learn.” Dawn wasn’t convinced it would be so easy to fight the spiders off a second time.

Their efforts in raft-building during the next hours were not exactly glorious. Laik, at least, had a little experience in woodworking, but the resulting raft was ramshackle at best. They could have used a lot more rope to lash the shelves together, but they simply did not have enough. “I hope it will hold up for a few hours,” Dawn sighed. The demons had not been seen in their part of the caves during the whole time they built the raft. It made Dawn deeply uneasy. According to her prior experience, something was bound to go wrong.