They exchanged a surprised look at the undeniable excitement in their friend’s voice, and started to trot towards his voice. Corey came into view from behind a small bend and waved eagerly at them. As they approached, the pair could see a brighter blue glow than the one they’d become accustomed to, and Natalie asked, somewhat breathlessly as they came up to his side, “What is it?”

Corey was grinning from ear to ear, as he just said, “Come on, I’ll show you!”

Confused and mildly concerned by the brightness of his attitude, Natalie reluctantly followed after him when Corey turned and walked briskly down the narrow and curving tunnel ahead. Dominic was merely confused, and followed closely behind his friend, so when Corey turned an abrupt corner, he nearly skid on the smooth passage floor at the change in direction to follow.

Turning the corner, Dominic froze and his jaw dropped. When Natalie came up behind the both of them, demanding in borderline fear at the stiffness in Dominic’s shoulders, “What? What is it-?” before abruptly cutting off at the sight that captured Dominic’s attention. Corey turned from where he stood a couple yards ahead of them and grinned at his friend’s dumbstruck expressions, gleeful in the discovery that caused such a reaction.

The chamber was lit, luminescent moss coating the walls all around them, the source of such an abundance reflecting and magnifying the light. A broad, black pebbled beach stretched out before them, leading to a lake and circling it. Easily as large as the one that the island and church had sat on, perhaps even larger, with water clear enough that they could see bright flashes as fish darted around within it. And at the water’s edge - what could only be called a campsite. A tent, a chair, a fire circle with a kettle hanging over it.

“Do you… think someone’s there?” Dominic asked, taking a step forward. Corey shook his head, “I checked, before I came looking for you guys,” Natalie shot him a sharp, disapproving look at this, shaking from her shock, “It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a long time. There aren’t any footprints on the beach or anything. But everything was left here. For people like us, who need it. Come on.”

Corey still grinned as he beckoned them to follow him to the campsite, “There’s a fishing pole - an OLD fishing pole, but I think it’ll still work,” their shoes crunched in the pebbles of the beach as the trio walked for the lake, “As far as I can tell, whoever set up the camp used the big mushrooms from the field for the fire, or at least the stalks. A couple of us should go back for some so we can try to get a fire going.”

“With what?” Natalie asked, a sarcastic edge in her voice.

Corey glanced back at her in surprise and Dominic quickly interjected, “I think what she’s asking is did the person who made the camp leave… matches? A lighter?”

Corey walked backwards a few paces, his grin fading into a small frown as he took in Natalie’s disapproving scowl before he answered, “I didn’t really look for one. I just checked if there was a person, looked at the fire circle and ran to find you guys.”

“You shouldn’t have checked it out on your own.” Natalie told him flatly as she came to a stop, letting him know under no uncertain terms why she glared at him now. Corey’s cheeks flushed in response to the tone, and he halted in his backwalking, immediately growing defensive and his voice raised a couple octaves with his response, “You two were a mess when I left you, why would I go back to bring you into a potentially dangerous situation?”

Natalie’s voice raised to match his, and the hair on Dominic’s arms raised as the sound didn’t echo as one would expect in such a cavern, the moss absorbing the sound eerily, “You shouldn’t have left in the first place! It’s too dangerous, what if you had run into something? You could have vanished, and we would have had no idea what happened!”

Panic at the idea was starting to make Natalie’s eyes water again, and she angrily blinked the tears back, swiping a hand over them, and she lowered her voice with her next words, “We need to stay together. No matter what. If we get separated… we might never find eachother again.”

Corey started to deflate, the idea no more pleasant to him than to her, and his eyes went to Dominic as he chimed in quietly, not wanting to take sides in the unpleasant argument, but… “She’s right. We can’t get separated.”

Corey looked down, breathing a sigh and nodding, muttering, “Yeah, I know,” before turning to walk to the camp again, with a subdued, “C’mon.”

The camp looked pristine, like it had been used only yesterday, with only the primitive nature of the tools giving away their age. A fire pit was dug into the rocky ground and it did, indeed, appear to already have been filled by dried stalks from the mushrooms in the fungal passage. An empty iron kettle was nestled in the middle of the nest of stalks, old and sturdy cast-iron that somehow picked up no rust in the wet air of the chamber. An old fishing rod and tackle box sat beside a chair facing the lake, and Dominic went over to it first, picking up the rod and starting to fiddle with it, checking the hook, and investigating the inside of the tackle box.

Together, Natalie and Corey cautiously approached the closed tent, secured only by a tie between the two flaps. They flanked the sides of the tent, and all but holding her breath, Natalie pulled the tie loose, and grabbed her side of the tent flap as Corey grabbed his, mouthing silently, “One. Two. Three.” They pulled the tent open and looked in together, and exhaled a simultaneous sigh of relief as they found it unoccupied. As Corey slipped into the tent to figure out what it contained, Natalie straightened up and took it upon herself to stand sentry, watching over the dark beach while musing to her companions, “I wonder who left all of this stuff here. And why. It all seems a little too valuable to just leave behind in a place like this.”

“Maybe they were chased off.” Dominic suggested from the fishing chair, bent over the fishing pole as he struggled to figure out how to put on new twine from the tackle box, having found the one that had been connected snapped with only light stress. “I mean think about it. This is the first source of water that we’ve found in…” he paused to check his pocket watch, reporting, “almost twenty-four hours since we started.”

They grew silent at this bit of information, even Corey could no longer be heard shuffling around within the tent as it struck them all that they’d not even been down there a full day, though it felt like so very much longer. Shaking himself out of it, and returning to the fishing pole, Dominic continued, his voice only slightly more strained than it had been, “If even a fraction of the creatures down here still require water to survive, this is no doubt the place to come.”

“So we probably shouldn’t stay for too long.” Natalie concluded quietly. “Maybe long enough to get something to eat and drink?”

Dominic shrugged, not knowing what would be best, suggesting, “Maybe we could get a little bit of rest. Your sixth sense should warn us if something’s coming, right?”

He smiled at Natalie’s scowl, and she scolded, “We shouldn’t depend on what could easily have been a fluke or coincidence.”

“We also need some rest,” Corey crawled out of the tent, holding matches and tinder in hand and tossing them to Natalie by the firepit, “I don’t know about you guys, but I barely slept at all last night, and the early wake-up call didn’t help with that. Sleep is every bit as important as food and water in a survival situation, and this tent has a good five layers of padding between it and the beach. And who knows if we’ll have an opportunity like this again.”

Natalie frowned, clearly still hesitant. She said nothing, sliding the matches open and looking to see that the box was still nearly full. Looking up, she caught sight of Dominic’s raised eyebrows, quietly reminded them, “We have six days to get out of here. No one’s been seen again who’s been here longer than a week. I feel like the longer it takes us, the less chance we have.”

Dominic and Corey both watched her in silence as Natalie stooped down and stuffed the tinder in the fire pit beneath the readied mushroom logs and struck a match. All three held their breath, waiting in silence in the moment it took for the tinder to catch. Then with a gasp, Natalie had to yank her hand back to avoid being scorched as the logs took the flame with ease.

Corey was beside her in a moment, pulling the kettle off its mount. He walked swiftly to the water and dunked it to fill it to the brim before returning it to the fire.

“We might only have a week,” Dominic said, turning to the water and casting out the baited and weighted fishing line, “but we won’t make it that long without food and water. And sleep. It’s just as bad to die from exhaustion as it is to die by monster… actually, the monster would probably be quicker.”

Natalie looked helplessly at Corey and only received a small shrug in return. “This might be the only safe place we find, Nat. I don’t think we can afford to pass it up. Not with how scarce food is, not if we can spend some time catching and cooking some fish to take with us.”

Outvoted, Natalie sighed softly, her shoulders slumping. “Then I’m going to go sleep. Dom, do you think you can keep an eye out well enough that Corey can sleep, too? It would be best if we have one of us awake at all times.” she looked at him with calm, trusting eyes, even as Dominic himself hesitated with uncertainty.

Corey sighed and threw a pebble at him, stating, “Of course he can. Wake us up after you’ve caught a few fish, got it? And don’t forget to keep an eye on the fire. Once the water has boiled for a few minutes, take it off and let it cool, then drink.”

With that, the bigger boy ducked into the tent, flopping down with a heavy sigh. Natalie looked at Dominic, who nodded, smiling at his friends unwavering faith. With a sigh of her own, Natalie stepped into the tent, finding the floor of it thickly layered with plush blankets, turned up in a few spots from where Corey had been searching around to find the matches. Sprawling out opposite of where Corey lay, Natalie closed her eyes and fell asleep after mere moments.

Outside, Dominic settled into his fishing, sitting down on the rocky beach, listening to the sound of the fire crackling behind him, the tension slowly leaving his body as it remained the only sound in the massive cavern.