Reynolds’s grasp on Elysia’s arm was hard while he dragged her away from the hole where they had left Brown and Wünder. Elysia gripped her free hand, gritting her teeth. She thought hard about it, and thought even harder, but couldn’t accept it.

“Say, Mr. Reynolds. Is my father dead like Brown said?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Why did you abandon him in there? What was in that place? Why-”

“I!” Reynolds said aloud, silencing her, “…I didn’t do anything of the sort. Your father had something to tell you in private. It won’t matter even if Brown and his little sibling come later.”

“Is it true?”

“Yeah, it is,” Reynolds looked her in the eyes. “It definitely is.”

Elysia felt like she couldn’t believe him. “And what was in there? What was-”

“I think it was another lizardman.”

Elysia gasped at the answer. “I…” she couldn’t shake off the feeling that going along with Reynolds was wrong, but her father needed her - that’s what she kept telling her. ‘Why am I so docile?’ she asked herself.

Reynolds continued walking silently, without taking further note of her. He looked about their surroundings with caution clear in his eyes, as they glazed before the fire of the torch, which swayed lambently, to the whims of the cave as air moved in and out of it.

“You should be more daring than that for a girl this age,” Reynolds said after a while. Elysia felt even worse than she had been before just with these words. She hoped that Brown was safe. ‘He is safe,’ she thought willfully, and this bolstered her to ask.

“What’s going to happen to Brown and Wünder?”

“Well, they’ll most likely kill the lizardman and head back our way.”

Elysia could hardly believe him, and yet, she found herself agreeing. “I see.”

Her mind filled up with turmoil, and confusion. She thought herself fearful - fearful of every shadow, fearful of seeing her father’s corpse in front of her, at the next step she would make, and even dreaded the return of Wünder and his brother.

The path ahead of her looked bleak.

***

Brown held on tight to his brother’s hand as he raced across the cave’s floor. The sound of their footsteps resonated with the thundering ones behind them. Brown ran through the cave; he ran like a runner running his lap, taking long strides, and feeling the wind against his shivering body, and the torch flickered and flickered, almost like it was about to extinguish itself, but held on each time it came close to its demise.

“Wünder, Pan’s little story was true! We’ve got those yellow bastards chasing us like no tomorrow!”

Wünder took a deep breath. “Yeah!” The somber path of the cave haunted his eyes, and the torch kept beaconing forward like a will-o’-wisp. The darkness felt cold, the torch’s warmth felt like a flume blasting against his body.

Behind them, the creatures approached, making weird screeches. Wünder kept running, following solely his brother’s urgency, and trying not to be distracted by the sounds which almost shadowed them.

The path was unusually long. Wünder wondered if they would reach a dead end. His brother seemed calm, and Wünder felt like he could leave worrying to him. Only, his brother was far from being in his element.

The path grew rougher, the air grew thinner, and Brown remarked, with a bit of sarcasm. “You reckon these creatures will find us too bony and leave us alone?!”

“I would rather not find out, brother!”

“Precisely, right?! I wonder when they will stop chasing us!” Brown gripped Wünder’s hand harder. “Brace yourself Wünder, and don’t panic!” So saying, Brown increase the pace of their running, and after a few seconds, slammed his body against the cave’s wall.

Nothing happened. The creatures grew closer, and Brown spat. “This bloody hurts!” Wünder looked at his brother with worry, as they kept on running, and his brother kept on hissing “curses!” under his breath.

The path forward narrowed. They eventually felt constrained and had to release hands. The monsters thrashed about the narrow aperture, and stopped in their tracks. As Brown and Wünder advanced through it, they came out in the open again. Coming out of the narrow space, Brown dragged Wünder out, and pointed his torch to inspect the monsters.

They were effectively trapped at the other side of the path. Their features were rocky, and yet, Brown thought he could hear something flapping while he observed them. They had heads, and after some time of trying to get in the space between the two walls to reach Brown together, a single one of the creature thrust itself partway through.

It had scales of a golden color, a snout of a golden color, and even the eyes which looked at Brown were all golden without the trace of any iris. Its head was small though. “Well, alright let’s keep going.” Wünder walked on after Brown had taken the lead. They took a few steps forward, springing forth as if ready to break into a sprint anew.

Brown couldn’t see any wall; the area about them was largely unconstrained, making Brown comment. “It wouldn’t do good for these golden creatures break out through here. I can’t even make out any leading path right now. Would suck if we got at a dead end,” he kicked a stone. “Wünder, get to the left. I’ll get to the right. We’ll stay close to each wall, and find any leading path. First one who finds it gives out a shout, okay?”

“Alright!”

Brown grabbed Wünder’s shoulder, “I’ll give you this,” he gave him the torch, “now, get going.”

They got to exploring and contouring the walls of the cavern they had found themselves in. The monsters groaned and screeched just meters from them, and the latter’s cries grew dimmer after a dozen meters spent exploring the walls. Wünder held his torch at eye level, taking bold steps forward to make up for time in case the golden creatures got through to them.

He walked on, feeling himself going down a slope, and hurried along. It was another fifteen minutes before he saw some light at the bottom of the slope. Some dozens of meters from him, he could hear quick shuffling steps, heading downwards, like him.

Wünder felt renewed vigour, and walked swiftly, before stumbling, and having to come a stop. The ground returned to being even. He did not slip again, and walked hastily. Soon, he would reach that growing expanse of light. He couldn’t wait to shout out to his brother.

He slowed down, for the ground was becoming steep again. Soon, he found the sky gaping from within the amorphous light which enticed him. Wünder trekked carefully along the slope, and was one step from the light when his brother yelled. “Wünder, stop right now!”

Wünder came to a halt, puzzling over his brother’s command. In fact, he couldn’t see him anywhere near the light as he looked to the right. He pointed his torch behind him, and then looked under his feet to get the footing to get back up. What he saw, only a few feet from him, was a sudden drop, and some traces of trees at the end of it.

“Alright, brother! I’m getting back!”

“Got you!”

Wünder climbed back up to the crevice, and was soon met by his brother, returning in turn. Brown took the torch from Wünder, and illuminated the narrow path. “May the cat eat you, and may the devil eat the cat! Bloody monsters.”

Wünder stayed quiet at this sudden outburst, and Brown handed him back the torch. He then took Wünder’s hand and led him along the right wall. They emerged in a place filled with light, and there, Wünder saw that the ground disappeared from under them to reflect upon a lush view of a forest. The answer to this was simple; they were standing on the edge of a cliff. A crag in a cave.

And as Wünder looked to the left, he saw the ground sloping in a descent, to protrude forth, acutely curbing down, and finally give onto the forest. If he had continued downwards, he would probably have slid down, and ended up in a free dive on empty air.

“I was almost a goner…” Wünder stated.

“We still are,” corrected Brown. “We’ve hit our dead end.”

***

Elysia thought the men who were working all around her to be feverish. Their faces looked worn out, and they seemed to spend a great deal of ardor in mining for the precious ores of gold and silver which the mountain of Taitanus was known for.

When she tried to give out a call, not one of them responded to her. After a few more hesitant call-outs to them, she stopped trying altogether. The cave was lit with torches on both sides, just like it had been when they met the lizardman. The fact that she knew the men who were working served to console her, but at one time, she found a person gaping at her, and then proceeding to tell her. “Your father’s dead. Why don’t you run away?”

“He is not!” she retorted. And the man, after getting bashed by his companion, retracted his words, and acted differently from the way he had upon her first time seeing him there. Elysia found this to be queer. “Don’t be so harsh on him,” she said, despite herself. She did not know where she was heading anymore, and her only companion being Reynolds, she found herself breaking into tears.

“I see that girl is a crybaby. Should I silence her? Master Oregon is hungry.”

“Shut up, wooden doll. This girl is in my company.”

The person in question laughed, and said. “It makes no difference to me whether she’s in your company or not. Master Oregon will still have his meal as he pleases.”

Elysia could not quite understand the kind of conversation these two people were having. The person speaking to Reynolds definitely looked human. She wondered if that person was called a doll only because of his bony appearance.

He certainly seemed to have a pair of ruddy cheeks, hollowed-out eyes, and his smile made her skin cringe. She observed him apprehensively while he passed by her side. The men all wore linen clothes, and the surroundings looked surreal. For her first time visiting a cave, Elysia was quite caught up in trying to come to grips with the fact that she was inside a mountain.

The men struck the ground hard with their pickaxes and grunted while mechanically repeating the action again and again. Elysia looked up the dark ceiling. ‘I wonder if it will all come down on us with all this digging’, she pondered, wiping the tears drying on her cheeks, and observed Reynolds’s rigid face. “You are not lying, are you?”

Reynolds paused in his steps. “Why would I lie to you?”

His answer got her confounded. “Th-That… Maybe you are lying to me because you want to take… take my hand!?”

“Maybe I should consider doing that. I quite fancy prim and proper ladies.”

“You… You are doing it right now?” She considered her words as she felt a lump growing in her throat. “You are doing it, right?!”

Reynolds started laughing darkly at her words. “You are really funny, girl!”

“Stop mocking me! I won’t come along with you anymore!”

“What? You don’t want to see your father?”

“...” Elysia gritted her teeth. She considered letting out a yell, but she doubted that it would help in her situation.

“Now, let’s get going. You were hurrying along just a few moments ago, weren’t you?”

“You dumb oaf!” Elysia hurled the most terrible insult she knew of to him. Some of the miners stopped working. Elysia thought they would grab her.

“You should discipline this girl you have here, Reynolds!” cried out a bald man.

“Yeah. She seems… choleric,” said the person working next to the bald man. And then, as if they had made a personal joke, the miners laughed. “That’s why you shouldn’t have daughters, Tom! Look at her! What is she doing here?”

“Well, Mike, do you remember why we are working here?”

“Oh, I don’t remember. I’ve been forgetting things lately.”

“Well, let’s head away from this choleric girl. She seems like she’s gonna be a bother.”

The miners trundled along leisurely, before their gait straightened, and they continued working seriously some dozens of yards from Elysia and Reynolds.

“What… What did he say, Reynolds? What does choleric mean?”

“He told you to watch your mouth. And you should. You are not gonna call me an oaf again,” Reynolds said, grabbing her shoulder and looking her in her eyes.

She stared at him. “But what about the word? What does it mean?”

Reynolds looked at her intently, and then frowned. “Ah, kids!” Elysia flinched. “You got angry. That’s all he said.”

Elysia looked beside Reynolds’s face, not daring to confront him. And Reynolds let go, before commanding her to keep up her march as she had before. Elysia obeyed him, looking down as she kept walking.

Carts filled with ores rolled past her, while the carriers laboriously made it move. They moved past her, and advanced in front of her, and they disappeared. She thought that they were heading outside. She felt reassured on realizing that.

However, as they kept walking for half an hour more, she started to doubt herself.

***

Brown glanced at the sky silently.

There was darkness behind him, and the only thing he was sure of was the ground under him. It had already been close to an hour since he had been wasting time sitting here, on the cusp of empty air, waiting for something to come up in his mind - an idea - so that he could escape from this godforsaken place.

Wünder looked at the vast panorama which extended in front of them - a purple-blue sky, as if waiting to be cast with clouds and rain down on them, and a forest beneath their feet, which continued forth before giving unto a river. Musing about how it would have been much better to have come here on a different occasion, Wünder thought he remembered something important.

“Brother, at that time, the monster had a different face, didn’t it?”

“At what time?” Brown yawned, rubbing his shoulders.

“Well, when you cursed at it - at that time.”

Brown adjusted himself against the wall of the cave. “Well, I didn’t notice anything, if you ask me.”

“Arrrree you… speaking abouttt… me?”

“Holy shit!” Brown startled, stumbling almost down the precipice outside the cave.