It was impossible to detach ourselves from the sight before us: a fern- and grassland, deep underground, below even the primordial fire. And it was nourished by some sort of luminous mist that ran along the floor.

A few steps of disbelief led us further into the chamber, just to make sure it was no mirage like they were said to appear in deserts. But it was real, I could see, hear, feel the nature around us, I even felt my mind and body suffused with an energy I had never felt before. What had begun as a creeping suspicion had turned into a monumental realization: life below the fire.

We finally started to look at all the different plants and animals we could find in detail. Both Brad and Anne, versed in the recognition of plants for professional reasons, quickly commented on the familiarity of many of them, yet also their inability to recognize them precisely. Some others however were entirely alien to them yet; a sort of creeper clung to the walls and hung down vines from above, a few of which connected ceiling and ground, whereupon they seemed to turn more tree-like, becoming stiff and gaining solid wood and bark. The bugs we found were beetles of various kinds in many brilliant colours, some sorts of spiders and butterfly-like creatures.

Anne was testing every single leaf for smell, hoping to find something that could have medicinal value or be edible.

Professor Scutolith was eagerly observing the bird-like creatures that would leap, climb and glide, yet rarely properly fly. They seemed very much like birds from afar on account of their plumage, but upon closer inspection, one would see they had claws on their wings, used for climbing, as well as a tail much longer than the short nub of ordinary birds. They often dashed along the ground on two feet, too, leaping and gliding to catch insects. The largest of them was about the size of a pigeon and had plumage the colour of turquoise.

Occasionally, the Professor would imitate bird calls, hoping to get a response, but without any success.

I, meanwhile, was doing my best to not become ecstatic at the abundance of new impressions upon me. For the longest time, I observed the thin bright swath of mist run along the lowest point of the cave. Beneath the ferns and tufts of grass, its light was obscured but even this little was a miracle. I held my hand into the mist and to my astonishment felt not damp freshness but a dry warmth, almost like the sun felt on a warm summer day, when lazing on the large campus green. Along its direction through the cave seemed also to come a steady stream of fresh air. At first I thought this draft to carry the mist with it, but as I tried to disperse the mist by blowing on it, it continued on like a trickle of water, unhindered in its direction and speed, rather than being dispersed like mist or smoke would be. It was being pulled by a force and refused to change its course for anyone or anything, slipping even through between my fingers pressed together tightly. It instead seemed to bring the draft with it, rather than being brought by it.

We found each other by the bottom of the chamber, where the tunnel went from left to right and had a discussion about our next steps. We might be able to catch some of the birds and eat them, our dwindling rations to be kept for later. Brad declared that it would be of little difficulty for him to catch small game, but he also warned us that such wild birds were rarely more than a bite or two. Still, we all agreed that it was more than what we had left of our rations.

As to our path, we were offered the right-hand side, leading up and upstream of the mysterious glowing mist, or left-hand side, following the mist downhill. We were in much disagreement and eventually settled on making camp in this chamber. We helped Brad with magic to catch the few bird-like creatures and roasted them above Anne's oil stove.

It was when I wanted to help Anne ignite the oil by snapping a flame into existence, that I noticed something odd. As I took a single grain of flux powder between the tips of my fingers on my left hand, and concentrated on my veins to channel the energy through them, I did not feel that power just running from my left hand, I felt it running from everywhere around me to my heart. Through the air I breathed, from my lungs, my skin, my feet. It was as if a light was shining through my entire body, revealing every detail of it to my own mind. I let the grain of flux fall and concentrated my mind instead on the energy around me, then I snapped my fingers.

A flame sprung into existence right before me. I was stunned by this feat of mine. Simply by feeding my spell from the air around me, I had worked magic. I was exhilarated and when I told the Professor, he too confirmed that it was indeed possible to cast magic without flux here.

Both of us experimented with excitement what we could do and although we were able to fulfil almost any daily tasks of magic without flux, we were unable to make intensive changes, like quickly reshaping stone or shattering it into tiny pieces. It seemed the nature around us supplied us only with a small portion of its power at a time. The great tasks the Professor and I had fulfilled when descending the chute, creating cool air or stopping magma were still out of reach to us, at least without using the dwindling supplies of flux we still had.

Anne and Brad interrupted our magic experiments when the caught birds had finally been plucked, prepared and cooked. The edible parts of these wild birds had were truly very little, but just barely enough to leave our rations untouched for one day. While we hunted, roasted and ate, we noticed that the stream of glowing fog diminished significantly. Was it a one-time occurrence or would it return like the sun? We hoped the latter and kept talking about the momentous discovery all around us before laying down for bed in the waning light.

I had a dream of imprisonment again. I was not a prisoner this time, I was a warden and a gardener. I ordered the briars and the crows in my garden to guard the prisoners well, to make sure that every crack in their cells would be noticed and that my children frolicking in my garden, were safe from the horrid prisoners within.

Again a shaking tore me from the prison. I saw Anne's face above me, a hint of light touching it and revealing to me muddied cheeks, dry lips and greasy hair. She was beautiful. I did not know whether the lack of privacy and intimacy were making my head turn primal, or whether her recent opening up had endeared her to me. Either way, she bore an expression of reassurance that was in such a stark contrast to our moods in the past few days.

After a ration for breakfast, it was time to hold council.

“We will have to hunt as we go.” Was Brad’s declaration, but where we should go was not yet decided. Brad weighed our options. “If we follow the fog we might find more food. If we go against it, we might find a way out.”

Professor Scutolith first nodded, then shook his head to himself. “We have descended for so long, I am afraid we would not make it back to an exit without substantial supplies. And even if, how will we ascend this heptagonal tunnel again without rations? Merely falling down took a good part of a day, crawling up might just be outside of our reach.”

He had a point an we nodded silently. Brad was vivified by the urge to continue our trek. “It is decided then, we will head down further, find out what this place is and restock our supplies. Then we can plan our escape. Seems like we shall not perish just yet.”

We each had a large swig of water and went down the tunnel crossing our path. We seemed to disturb many an animal with our shining vials and stomping feet, all of which Brad took note of. He tried to gauge how well they were to catch and eat. There were lizards in colours from blue to yellow, small squirrel-like critters that escaped up the vines and many different of those clawed birds, some as large as crows or chicken. Brad put those on the menu with a mental note so explicit that I could see it on his face. I looked forward to weird roasted birds with more than a few nibbles of flesh on their bones.

The tunnel itself at certain points narrowed to as little as four feet and was often grown completely closed by the tree-like vines. Brad used his knife with the broad and heavy blade to forge a path through, refusing to ask any of us mages for help. The Professor seemed to be of good spirits nonetheless. He hummed a happy chaotic tune that even Anne seemed to not mind and I myself found enchanted by. He once mentioned that the songs in the air were happy and uplifting. I wondered whether we happened upon another powerful ley-line that fed the life down here and brought the matter up to the Professor, who replied that it would be, if any way, the other way around, that the life fed the ley-line.

We did not go into further discussions and instead kept our eyes open to the new things around us. I decided that I would write down the many things I saw in my notebook this evening.

We entered another large cavern, the walls of this one far beyond our light’s reach. Its ceiling was at least sixty feet high and several vines as thick as tree trunks ran all the way to the top, clinging to the rock on both ends with numerous roots.

We found many new things in this chamber; moths flew through the air, hunted by different birds, some even as we knew the from the surface, without a long tail or claws on their wings, capable of flying by their own strength. Still, these birds’ plumage and songs were unfamiliar to even the far-travelled Brad. He also came upon some plants that intrigued us.

They were the size of a cabbage head or a melon and resembled a five-lobed bud with thick petals that remained tightly shut. From this bright green shell, thin red spikes grew outwards, stiff and sharp, six to eight inches in length. Brad told us that “If it’s prickly on the outside, it’s usually tasty on the inside, like chestnuts, blackberries or porcupines.” With a few swift flicks of his knife, he removed the thorns and cut the plant loose from the ground. It weighed heavy, promising indeed much to be found on the inside. His blade sank through the outer shell with a gushing sound and splashes of juice trickling from the cuts. The innards were a yellowish-white and exuded an odour not dissimilar to chestnuts indeed. Brad cut a small piece out for each of us, warning us to not “chew or swallow, just suck on the juices first.”

They tasted starchy at first, almost sweet, prompting me to squish the fibrous flesh in my mouth, which quickly released a flood of bitterness. All four of us with mouths and tongues recoiled in disgust. We spat out the repulsive bites, but it was too late, the bitterness had already spread throughout the mouth stuck to tongue and gums like thick oil. We drank plenty of water to get rid of the taste, but to no avail.

“I think we should stick to birds.” Everyone agreed with Brad on that sentiment.

Our trek continued, further down the slope through the vast hall, which seemed to continue for over a mile.

The Professor, who had been just sucking up every impression around him, opened another one of his lectures, talking of what caves usually were like in length and size and that no cavity like would have been considered possible in the upside world. As if on cue for a demonstration of all these subterranean oddities, the mist returned.

This time, it flowed upwards along the ceiling rather than downwards along the ground. It possessed still the same properties as before, not obeying to any wind or flow of air, as if it was flowing not through air, but another medium. Possibly the mysterious aether some scholars had proposed? Was it phenomena from beyond our world, merely seen but not impacted by our world? Both the Professor and I discussed these ideas, while Anne attempted to catch the mysterious substance in a bottle, with no success, it simply flowed around the dead end that was the bottle's neck. It was obvious this mist had places to be and none of those were glass bottles.

We continued on just a little more before again hunting for a tasteless but at least fresh meal. This time, we had the luck of catching one of the larger bird-like animals. With a filled belly, I fell asleep without tea and my dreams were free of the horrors of being imprisoned.