Natalie woke with a start, wincing when her head tilted just a little out of the nook it had rested in through the night to jab into a sharper edge of the wall she still rested against. Her heart was pounding, and she had no idea why. Glancing up and down the corridor they slept in, she could see nothing in the soft glow of the fungus. Still, the sick feeling of raw panic only sharpened when she glanced again in the direction they’d come from and without another thought, Natalie started to shake Dominic, urging softly, “Wake up, we have to go. Get up!” before stepping over him to do the same to Corey, “Corey, come on. We’ve slept long enough, let’s go!”

Her voice raised in pitch, though she was careful to continue speaking quietly. Corey sat up, immediately alert to the growing awareness that Natalie was absolutely terrified. Dominic, however, rolled onto his side to bring his pocket watch up to the soft light. Squinting at it, he groaned, mumbling, “Nat, it’s 6 AM. Go back to sleep.”

This earned him a firm kick to the feet, which got him sitting up with an angry shout, “Hey, come on!”

Natalie froze. Reacting to her, Corey hissed, “Shut up!” to Dominic, staring in the direction they came from, trying, as Natalie was, to discern in the darkness what was causing her so much panic.

Finally coming to the realization that something wasn’t quite right, Dominic sat up, twisting to stare behind him, squinting behind his glasses and asking, quietly now, “What is it, what are you looking at?”

Neither answered him as finally, something stirred in the darkness. An oval shape, perfectly fitted to fit in the narrow passageway, it didn’t walk on legs, or even make contact with the ground. Multiple appendages allowed it to brace on the walls, moving easily towards the trio. While too dark to see the thing in detail, the sheer inhumanity of the form was enough to send terror spiking down their spines. “Get up,” Natalie whispered to Dominic, who rose unsteadily to his feet in front of her, still staring at the thing, “Run.” she whispered.

Adrenaline suddenly crackled through her veins as the thing, having been moving towards them at a steady pace suddenly started to surge forward, “Run!” she shrieked, turning and shoving Corey to stumble forward while grabbing for Dominics shirt to yank him in front of her as she started moving, putting herself between the figure and her friends.

Natalie and Dominic dashed after Corey, blind to all else in their panic, they focused on him as the corridor stretched on and on, horribly straight with no turns to escape through. Worse, Natalie could hear it as it closed the distance between them, the soft hissing of its appendages on the rock walls with each movement and the excited hum she could only assume was coming from its mouth, though she dared not turn back and look to determine the truth of her assumption. She didn’t need to turn back to know that she was rapidly losing ground.

His vision tunneling forward, Corey had no panic to spare when he saw that ahead, darkness took over, as the glowing fungus seemed to suddenly end. But with no alternatives, between the unknown ahead and the likely death behind, he couldn’t stop, couldn’t ask his friends for their opinions on what to do about the looming black.

Faster. Faster, faster, fasterfasterfaster! Natalie’s mind was focused on the one word, not even registering the change in atmosphere ahead when she felt something brush her hair as it flew behind her. Then sudden, absolute disorientation when the walls opened and all three of them found themselves not confined in the tunnels they’d come to expect in their short time Below, but in a cavern, stretching beyond their ability to see.

More immediately important, though, was the shriek that echoed through the cavern after Natalie blew past the opening. Horribly inhuman, it was a sound of pure frustration, somewhere between a tiger’s roar and a turkey’s warble. Shocked, Natalie twisted around while still running to see that the creature had halted at the edge of the tunnel, four appendages holding it in place while the rest… six more, Natalie counted, stretched forward, reaching for her.

Gasping for breath, Natalie slowed, turning around to look at the thing, which truly seemed incapable of moving from the narrow tunnel. Breathlessly, she called out, “Wait!” while taking cautious steps forward to get a better look at the creature. Stopping about five feet away, with some space still between her and its long, grasping appendages, she could see it in detail and stared, both horrified and fascinated by the thing, so unlike any animal in the surface world. Thinly oval in body, it would stand about three feet tall, with its ten spindly-looking arms protruding from its sides, each approximately three feet in length. The “hands” at the end of each arm were encircled with seven grasping digits, all tipped by dagger-like claws. Interestingly, Natalie noted that the hands gripping the walls weren’t clawed, perhaps indicating that they’re retractable.

The body was a void, smooth black flesh covering it for ideal camouflage in the dark tunnels and the reason that they couldn’t see it until it was so close. So close to it, Natalie could only just make out the eyes, glittering, black and lidless, resting close to the center of its body, looking much like spiders eyes. Most noteworthy, though, was the final appendage that Natalie could now see reaching out from the bottom of its body, half the length if the arms, it could only be the creature’s mouth. It looked almost like a separate creature as it flailed around hungrily, gaping open and closed like a fish’s mouth, flashing sharp, barbed teeth.

“What are you doing!?” Corey’s voice behind her made Natalie jump, especially as it echoed through the cavern. Turning, she found he and Dominic had stopped a good ten yards away from her, too far to take in all the detail she had which allowed her to come to a conclusion;

“It can’t leave the tunnels. Everything about it is designed to face forward, to move directly at its prey. Out here in the open, it’d be crawling either facing straight up or straight down, it’d be almost completely helpless!” The boys approached slowly, stopping just behind Natalie, and she pointed, careful to remain out of reach of the still grasping pincers, “See its face? Completely forward, and its body clearly isn’t made for balancing on the ground. I’d bet that it either rests upright in the corridors, something like a cow, or maybe it has a lair to go back to where it’ll be safe enough to lay down.”

They all flinched when the creature released another warbling roar of frustration that echoed clearly around them. “Fascinating,” Dominic’s voice trembled slightly and he grabbed her shirt, “You’ll have something new to add to your dad’s books. Now can we leave before that thing attracts something else, maybe?”

The pointed reminder of ever present and unknown danger broke through Natalie’s fascination, and she finally turned away from the creature and looked around at their new environment.

The cavern was so wide that she could only vaguely see the faintest blur of the fungus growing at the edges. She could see from the wall closest to them that the surface, unlike within the tunnels, was more smoothly textured, with natural rounded raises like the outside of a geode. Following the wall upwards, she found to her surprise that the ceiling was visible, appearing to be at least fifty feet up, but rather than being illuminated by the fluorescent green fungus that they’d become accustomed to, there were glowing clusters of gemstones dotting the ceiling, throwing a dim glow through the rest of the cavern. With her eyes adjusting to the constant darkness, Natalie found that she could see some distance ahead.

“We should stick to the wall,” Corey commented, while Natalie took all of this in, “That seems better than staying out in the open.”

“Or it’ll leave us vulnerable to more wall-crawlers like this one,” Natalie answered quietly, her voice carrying an edge of despair as the fascination from her inspection of the monster faded, “Let’s face it. Down here, we’re prey. Bottom of the food chain, completely unequipped to handle whatever wants to make a meal out of us.”

The boys exchanged looks, and with nothing else to add, Dominic settled for lightly complaining, “Stop talking about eating. I’m hungry enough as it is,” then he looked at Corey, “You’re up front, you decide if we’re out in the open or hugging the wall.”

Corey looked between his friends seriously, feeling the weight of that decision on his shoulders again, and in a moment of inspiration, he looked at Natalie. “You knew the thing was coming!” he gestured to the tunnel, disturbed to see that the creature in question had vanished while they talked, but trusted Natalie’s conclusion that it wouldn’t be coming out after them. “How’d you know?”

Natalie frowned slightly, not immediately understanding why he was asking as she answered slowly, remembering the feeling that woke her, “I don’t know. I just… I knew something was wrong. I knew that there was danger. There was a feeling in my stomach like when you go down a hill too quickly,” she looked between the boys, their blank expressions telling her that neither of them felt the same and her voice grew meek with disbelief, “You guys didn’t feel it?”

Corey shook his head while Dominic answered, “Nope! I guess neither of us has a freaky monster-detecting sixth-sense,” he frowned, “I always wanted a superpower, though. No fair.”

Natalie met Corey’s eyes and he smiled with a small shrug, suggesting “Maybe you and your superpower should take the lead so I don’t take us down another trap tunnel?”

She started to protest, wanting to deny the ridiculous notion, before realizing that even if it was a fluke, if some survival instinct had just randomly kicked in while they were sleeping and would never show itself again, it was no different than Corey taking the lead - they’d still be walking blind. With a soft sigh, Natalie nodded assent and looked deeper into the shadowy depths of the cave. Just as through the tunnels, it was nearly impossible to see too far in and from what she could see, there were no other exits.

After a moment of contemplation, Natalie declared, trying to sound sure of herself, “We’ll stick to the wall. It’s a good idea.” she smiled at Corey. “Yep,” Dominic chirped, “We’ve got a regular genius on our hands. After you, Supergirl!”

Shaking her head at her friend’s attitude, Natalie started off at a slightly swifter pace than Corey had been going through the tunnels, following along the subtle curve of the cave wall. They walked in silence for hours, each of them straining their ears to catch even the slightest hint of anything coming their way again. Dominic, now striding behind his two friends and keeping a wary eye over his shoulder almost didn’t notice and skid slightly on the cavern floor when the other two slowed abruptly. Turning his attention forward, his jaw dropped. Ahead, starting with a gradual low growth that increased dramatically every few yards was a dimly lit, but clearly visible mushroom forest.

Unlike the lichen-like growth that lit the edges of the rock walls, these mushrooms shed no luminescence, but the glowing growth grew thicker ahead, dispersing from the walls and spreading on the ground between the patches of small inch-high mushrooms and the stalks of some that came up to Dominic’s waist, with everything in between scattered through the space ahead.

Dominic’s stomach suddenly clenched. Mushrooms! “Do you think any of them are edible?” he asked, his voice full of hope and hunger. Natalie swallowed hard as her mouth suddenly filled with saliva at the thought of food, their twenty-four hour fast taking its toll on all of them.

“Do you guys remember how to tell poisonous mushrooms from the okay ones?” Corey asked, venturing forward, past Natalie and into the fungal forest, stooping to look at some of the smaller patches. Dominic and Natalie looked at each other, but neither seemed sure. Not answering Corey, they followed him into the growth, branching out to search through their own sections. After a few minutes of desperate, silent searching, all of them desperately struggling to remember rules taught in passing during a singular biology class, Dominic plucked a singular mushroom. “This looks a little like what the kitchens use, doesn’t it?”

Closest to him, Natalie came to look at the sprout, taking a moment to inspect it. After a moment, she shook her head, hating to see the disappointed slouch in Dominic’s shoulders, explaining, “The stalk is different. See?” she ran a finger up the white stalk where small frills formed a skirt around the middle, then shook her head at her friend, “We can’t chance it. Mushrooms can kill you if they’re the wrong kind.”

Dominic’s face fell, and Natalie turned to return to her position in their line, unable to look at the starving devastation on his face - the same devastation she felt herself. To be surrounded by food, but not knowing what could kill you… she could compare it only to the stories of raft-bound survivors of a shipwreck, surrounded by water, but unable to drink.

It felt to Dominic that his heart hit the ground as surely as the mushroom as he tipped his hand to drop the mushroom, and he shuffled after Natalie, not bothering to look at the mushrooms anymore, not seeing a point if the risk was so high. Instead, he pulled out his pocket watch. Twelve forty-seven. It felt like so much longer since their flight from the monster, but it was barely past noon.

Dominic didn’t even have the energy to feel embarrassed as tears started to leak from his eyes, stress finally starting to weigh him down. Soft sniffles reached Natalie where she walked ahead, drawing her to turn around. Dominic sat on one of the taller mushrooms, the stalk barely bending under his weight, his pocket watch cupped in his hands, though he doesn’t look at it, staring down at the glowing ground. With his head hanging between drooping shoulders, the boy was the picture of despair and Natalie’s heart clenched.

Softly, she called, “Corey, wait.” going over to Dominic and sitting on a mushroom beside him to drape an arm over his shoulders.

Furthest ahead, Corey didn’t quite hear Natalie’s words, though he heard her call and turned to ask what she’d said, but the words caught in his throat when he saw them. Not knowing what happened, he rushed back and the moment he was in hearing distance, he asked, panic clear in his voice, “What’s wrong? Did something happen? Did you eat a bad mushroom?”

Dominic didn’t even glance up, still sniffling and now leaning into Natalie’s embrace. She looked at Corey and shook her head, with unshed tears in her own eyes as she understood her friend’s hopelessness and fought to stave it off herself. “No. We just need a break, I think.”

Looking closer at his friends, Corey was very suddenly hit by the realization that Dominic was crying. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the other boy cry, because of the bullies that continued to harass Dominic during the early years of their friendship, resulting in many visits to the school director after he’d gotten into retaliatory fights until the day Corey hit a growth spurt that put him at the front of the line for the school’s sports teams. Since that day, Corey had made it his job, his duty to see to it that Dominic would never be made to cry again and woe to anyone who was caught bullying another student.

But now there were no bullies to chase off. No ways to use his stature to chase away what caused his slight friend’s pain. Furious frustration filled him and, confident that Natalie would give Dominic more of what he needs in this moment, Corey muttered, “I’m going ahead to try to find a way out of these stupid mushrooms.” turning on his heel and stomping away before Natalie could say anything.

Still her voice followed him as she cautioned, “Be careful.” Corey was nearly beyond where Natalie could clearly see him when she finally released the hold she had on her own tears, letting them slip down her cheeks in silent streaks while gently rocking Dominic as he continued to sniffle. They sat in silence for long minutes before Dominic finally spoke, his voice thick and quivering from crying, “We’re not going to make it, are we?”

Natalie’s heart clenched at the vocalization of what had been her personal insidious mantra since the moment she’d woken in that alcove only yesterday. She had to swallow a hard lump that rose in her throat before she could answer her friend, somehow maintaining a steady voice as she gently scolded, “You can’t think like that, Dom. People have made it out before, we can too.”

“But you said yourself,” he mumbled, sniffling, “Thousands more were never seen or heard from again. We’re just kids. What kind of chance do we have that the grown-ups didn’t?”

Her arm tightened on his shoulders and she gave him a little shake, forcing levity into her voice as she demanded, “Are you kidding? The three of us are invincible together. Corey’s a giant, you’re the brains, and I have a superpower, remember?” Dominic glanced up finally, giving Natalie a grimace in return for her light words, and Natalie held his eyes, gently, but firmly reminding him, “Remember what you said before we came down here, Dominic? You said that I was assuming of those thousands, none found what they were looking for. Don’t give up. We need you.”

Dominic sniffled softly and looked back at the ground, before mumbling, “‘Kay…” then glanced up and around self-consciously, asking Natalie, “Should we go after Corey?”

Her lips turned down into a small, worried frown as she, too, glanced up and around to where she’d last seen him in the distance, and she answered slowly, “I don’t know… Would it be better to go after him or wait?”

“He said he was going to try to find a way out of the mushrooms,” Dominic stood, clearing his throat of the tears that still choked it, “I think it’s safe to assume that if we find another corridor, that could be where he went.”

He looked at Natalie, and she shrugged before nodding and starting to walk in the direction Corey had wandered. They didn’t have to walk for very long, before Corey’s voice reached them, calling from up ahead, “Hey! Hey, over here! I was just coming to get you, I found something!”