Lestra arched her back up and started panting. “N-no… No.”

George put a hand on her shoulder, which helped ease the trembling. “You’re safe,” he said. He wasn’t sure how true that would be. On either side, the tunnels still led long into unknown depths. But for the moment she was alive, unharmed. He said it in part for himself, to relish both of their safeties while he still could, not knowing how long it would last.

His voice helped to steady her breath. As her brows settled in place, she looked to the body of the scavenger. “Did you…?”

George nodded. The imprint of its neck still haunted his hands. He had killed it.

Lestra walked over to the body and bent over it. Frozen from its last attempt to grasp air, its mouth was latched open as were its eyes. A pale, ghostly film encrusted those golden eyes. With half a seethe, she scowled at it. Her face loosened as she slowly exhaled, savoring the soft release- something the scavenger could never do again. She looked back to George, who remained crouched in the now faint regions of the glow from her pendant. “A-are you able to move alright?” she asked.

“I think so,” George said as he stood up. His thighs ached with pain, but they were still mobile. And they had to be. He couldn’t burden her for however long it would be back to Meriford- if that was even where they were going. “What is this tunnel? It didn’t look like anything that was used often.”

“It isn’t on any maps,” Lestra said. “Few people knew it even existed, but… my mother used it a long time ago, when she ran away from Alfreya to elope with my father. She took me through it when I was a child. It’s long, and there are many passages, but she kept me safe. No more than six years old, you can imagine how hopelessly tired I was by the end of it when we got to Alfreya.” She gave a hoarse snicker. “I hated it. We were both stuck in the stuffiest cloaks imaginable to hide our appearances, and there was this unnatural heat to the place. Marble and cement as far as you could see- one giant building of bright, bright stone. And they so love their gold and yellows. For a long time, I thought that she took me there to show how awful it was, why she left. But now that I think back on it, she never said anything. She kept quiet. Just let me see it for myself. Alfreya, city of the sky.”

“So, is that where we’re going?” George asked. “Alfreya?”

Her eyes crept to the side as if some horrible gremlin was crawling out of her quiver. “No.” She shook her head. “It’s still a long way there. And as I said, there are many passages. I’m sure if we try them, we can get somewhere faster. One of them has to lead to the supertunnel, or to the main tunnel between Meriford and-” She stopped herself before she said it.

The main tunnel between Meriford and Vaaliya. George nodded. He knew what she meant- as far as what tunnel she referred to at least. The rest of what she said left him with a bit more uncertainty. “A-are you sure?” The idea of wandering around half-aimlessly through the tunnels was disconcerting.

“I’ve trained in tunnels like this. You don’t think I was born knowing how to use a bow, do you? It wasn’t just that there are a lot of targets down here, my mother wanted me to learn how to fend for myself in the tunnels. That was one of the reasons I took up the bow in the first place. I know a lot about what’s down here. We can- we can make it, George.” She smiled. The smile was fragile, so much so that he had no choice but to go with it, lest it break.

“Ok. You can lead the way when you’re ready.”

“Alright,” she said, then proceeded deeper into the tunnels.

George followed, trying to keep as close behind as he could. She tried to slow herself to accommodate his pace, but often ran ahead, nonetheless. Something kept driving her forward. George knew what it was. He wanted to get away from it too. He wanted her to get away from it too. But his legs, his stomach, his head, none of them were up to the task of running. So, he continued to shamble forward at the edges of the kine stone’s light.

Further in, a kind of vine strung over the walls. Its brown stem was bristled with hair-like thorns and crawling with ants. On its spiny body, there were clumps of soft nodules, which popped out with a brighter tinge. Lestra carefully plucked some of them, avoiding stinging herself with the bristles. “Here.” She handed George a few of the berries and gulped down the rest herself. She grimaced as she swallowed, a foreboding sign for George. “They’ll help with the wounds and prevent infections.”

George took them, figuring however bad they were, they couldn’t be any worse than dying from a scratch. They tasted awful, like rotten grapes. Maybe this was the elven cuisine Donald warned about way back when preparing for the first mission. Despite the awful taste, George smiled. It had been a while since he thought about the short mage. He wondered what Donald and the others had done after he and Lestra ran out on them. Donald probably wouldn’t have the patience to make it all the way through the graldor tunnels, and if he did, Andrew seemed too responsible for them to get sidetracked. That left two options for the Donald and the others they had left behind: cut their losses, and head back to Meriford, or continue to wait at Ardel. It would be funny if when he and Lestra finally made it to Meriford they had to trek all the way back to Ardel to meet back up with Donald.

Something else accompanied the vines. The faint red glow was no longer alone, and the deeper parts of the cavern no longer darkened to a pitch black as soon as they were out of the kine stone’s reach. Instead, the walls turned silvery. George knew better than to think it might be an opening to the surface. They had gone much deeper than they had risen.

It didn’t take long for them to find the source of the new glow. The vines sprouted near natural patches of light crystals. And with the light crystals came leaves. They didn’t have the vibrant green George had hoped for, but they were leaves, nonetheless. Pale pellet-sized leaves popped up from little weeds blanketed by the dark draping leaves of the vines which were isolated to their bases.

Most of the light crystals were blueish, but there were a few which had a pale yellow hue to them- those were smaller than the rest, but still larger than the one which hung from Lestra’s neck. Their red glow was reduced to a purple shadow around their feet.

George could see how the natural patches differed from the crystals in Meriford, and even the kine stone. Those refined gems had a solid, consistent color, while the raw light crystals were whiter, their colors only displayed near their edges and the edges of their glows. The red of the kine stone wasn’t infallible. Many things still showed their natural colors through it, like the yellow eyes of the scavenger. But there was always a hue, and that hue was always distinctly red. In contrast, the centers of the glows from the raw blue and yellow light crystals were indistinguishable from one another. Even the crystals in Meriford which were pale were just that- pale. Be it a pale blue, pale red, or pale white, their color was solid.

George remembered what Donald said about light crystals and how they were the source of magic. The basic essence of it was that the raw ones had more varied potential, but were harder to use. Something to do with their chaotic energies. Being around them wasn’t dangerous, right? Fantasy worlds don’t have radiation. George held his stomach to protect it from whatever harmful rays might be flowing at him. His stomach hurt. Not as bad as earlier that day, the berries seemed to be doing their jobs, but it still ached a little. The berries also gave it a new type of pain; they made it turn. He couldn’t shake the idea that his stomach pains might not just be from residual aches and a bad taste, until he saw that Lestra kept composed, unbothered by the presence of the crystals. He relaxed.

“Do you think we can use these crystals to get out of here?” He asked jokingly.

Lestra chuckled. “Doubt it.”

It was good to hear her chuckle like that after what she had been through. For a second, George strained his mind to try and use whatever energy existed to teleport them to Meriford. He quickly gave up, knowing the chances of him being some god of wizardry on his first attempt were slim to none, especially when he didn’t know how to go about spell use, or if teleportation was even a thing. It was just a light suggestion to keep their minds off of what happened in Vaaliya.

Lestra tugged at George to make sure he was paying attention before he walked unwittingly into the next chamber. A chittering sounded from it. Keeping their bodies to the sides of the entryway, the two of them peered into the chamber. The light crystals inside illuminated white, spindly legs.

Reapers. One of the more common dangers that could be encountered in the tunnels, and fortunately one of the easiest to deal with. He remembered them from his guide, and unlike the burrow worm, he actually paid attention to their page. Though even if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t take many guesses to figure out what they were called. They had a skeletal appearance. Like a walking rib cage.

He could imagine Lestra as a child training against such targets. Their bodies were thin, segmented rods- barely a spine. It would be difficult to hit with an arrow. The eyes however glowed red, like bullseyes. They would be perfect challenges for a young kid starting out with a bow if not for their pincers. Their pincers were more than large enough to injure.

If only her bow wasn’t broken. There were three of them. One on the ground, one on the right wall, and one on the ceiling. George knew he would have to take them all. He planned his approach in advance, to make up for his slower speed due to his lingering aches. Their biggest weakness was their predictability. With their only weapon being their pincers, they could only attack head on.

George took his sword out of its scabbard and stepped into the next chamber. At once they charged at him. He made sure his first strike was down and to the right, so that once it crushed through the neck of the reaper on the ground, it carried him through to the direction he wanted. And he lifted it, driving it through the head of the reaper which crawled on the right wall as the last one lunged off the ceiling onto the ground he had just stepped out of, missing him. George turned and let his blade fall on the last reaper.

As his seething stopped, the chamber fell quiet. Then, a new sound revealed itself. Without the chittering to mask it, they could hear a slow, light drip. Water.