The monster was smart. It knew that the narrow passageway was probably important in terms of the cave’s stability, so it didn’t plow through it, but instead chose to dig down, under the floor, to reach his prey.

But it had still been thwarted. The two male humans had gone into the very crevice he had avoided, and the girl human was still alive. His rage grew with that knowledge, and he growled harshly, more determined than ever to kill them and to KILL THEM NOW.

But how? He didn’t want to destroy the wall and possibly the cave. The cave sheltered him from the painful light of the outside world, he didn’t want to destroy it…

In any case, they would have to come out soon enough. If they wanted to save the girl, then they would need to get her out of the cave. And even if they decided to leave her to die, they would run out of food soon enough.

And so he decided to settle into a waiting game with his prey once again.

~~~~~~~

For his part, Farn was desperately moving around, trying to find a position in which he and Aurelie weren’t getting their life squeezed out, and Farn could still attempt to tinker with Aurelie’s phone in the hope of somehow getting the damn thing to open. He knew that Spirit Energy wasn’t the solution. Aurelie had had the phone with her when they had first met, long before she became a practitioner.

And then there was that message. ‘Try Again’. He hadn’t done anything, not that he’d noticed. But obviously the device had thought he had. He quickly went through what he had done. He pressed the button to make the device light up, pressed it again to summon the circles… and then left it there.

His mind quickly provided him with a reel of Aurelie with the phone. She always let her finger linger on the button, and he realized that sometimes she didn’t even summon the circles. She didn’t push the button a second time, she just let it linger there. Then he remembered that, once, she had put her finger there, frowned, adjusted the finger, and it was only then that the phone had opened. And, when she’d frowned, the phone had vibrated.

‘It has to do with fingers. If I can get Aurelie’s thumb in the same position it usually is in when holding this thing, it will open.’ Farn realized. It sounded like some sort of magic, too ridiculous to even bear thinking about, but this was Aurelie. Everything about her was completely insane. It would make sense if that included her belongings too.

“Gallo, give me Aurelie’s hand.” He barked.

Gallo balked. “Wha- what? No! I am not cutting off Aurelie’s arm!” He cried.

Farn gaped. “How is that the first thing that comes to your mind when I ask for her arm, idiot?!?”

“Well, you looked really panicked, and I thought you were thinking about cutting off her arm and throwing it to distract the monster, or to give us some more room in here! I don’t know!” Gallo cried, and Farn realized that the other conscious person with him was panicking and well on his way to hysterics. And, apparently, Gallo turned very morbid when spooked.

“Gallo.” Farn said calmly, trying to force his faked tranquility into him. “No one is going to be cutting off their limbs, or the limbs of others, to create a distraction”- though that was actually a pretty good idea, and Farn resolved to use it on himself in an emergency- “ and I found out how to open this thing, but I need Aurelie’s hand for that. Could you, I don’t know, pass it to me or something? Preferably without maiming it?”

“Oh. Yeah. Of course. Wait, lemme…” Gallo busied himself in trying to find Aurelie’s hand in the near darkness, desperately hoping that he wasn’t touching her anywhere inappropriate, and trying to stop the flush of mortification that rose up his neck and into his cheeks at the memory of his rather stupid misunderstanding.

‘Of course that’s what Farn meant, you stupid oaf. What’s wrong with you?’ He berated himself mentally, finally finding Aurelie’s hand and passing it over Farn’s shoulder.

It took some maneuvering, a lot of cursing, more discomfort and pain, and they were all covered in multiple new scrapes (including the unconscious Aurelie, which prompted Gallo to mutter that she was going to bleed to death before they ever got out of the cave) but Farn managed to get Aurelie’s thumb onto the phone’s button and position her finger correctly.

The phone clicked open, multiple boxes zooming onto the screen. Farn stared at them quizzically for a moment before swiping up from the bottom of the screen using Aurelie’s limp fingers. He didn’t want to risk the phone exploding or something if someone other than Aurelie touched it now that it was open.

A menu of sorts slid up, and Farn guided Aurelie’s finger to press the glass of the same icon that she had pressed at the beginning of the cave. A high powered beam of light sliced through the darkness, making Farn and Gallo let out a joyful cheer. They then immediately began to wiggle out of the crack in which they were wedged.

Farn handed the phone to Gallo, and the two of them were off. Farn gripped Aurelie tightly to ensure she didn’t fall off his back, and Gallo ran behind him, waving the phone around like a madman as he stuck as close to Farn’s heels. The light warded off the monster, and Farn was more thankful than ever for his now flawless memory. It had helped him figure out how to get the phone open and was now providing a perfect account of all the turns they’d made on the way in, all the places they’d gone.

As a result, they made it out of the cave without any more encounters with the monster, collapsing onto the grass outside and letting the sun warm them with its gentle rays, gasping for air and sweating and smiling and laughing in relief in between breaths.