Mitchell had been walking for nearly an hour, the slowly rising corridor had switched back on itself a half dozen times.

She was pretty sure she hadn’t fallen that far… but who knows!

Just like the beginning of the corridor, the one currently surrounding Mitchell was wide, made of marble and perfectly set, flat and smooth. Just at the end of her sight she could see a bit of change but it was most likely just another turn.

Having walked for what was most likely miles she was thinking of turning back… she should have checked the distance before she went off…

A few more minutes and she would… once she confirmed it was another turn…

Trudging her way closer to the turn while looking at the floor, she noticed a change in the floor… it was no longer white…looking up from the floor at the walls she noticed they also had turned gray.

Looking towards the turn she could finally see, it wasn’t a turn at all! It was the end! Her energy having returned to her on the realization that she was nearly at her destination, Mitchell picks up her pace and quickly arrives at a turn leading into a cave.

Smiling and laughing out loud, Mitchell runs up to the turn and sticks her head around the corner, she couldn’t see anything until she turned on a flashlight she had in her bag.

On the other side of it the walls swiftly turn rough and only a truck sized strip in the middle of the path is still smooth. Around the path stalagmites rise up from the ground to meet up with their cousins the stalactites, just like any other cave.

Walking into the cave but sticking to the path, Mitchell pulls out a whip she bought in a certain store… while the sound of drips and her footsteps echo around.

Along with her own footsteps she can also hear growls and someone else’s footsteps from somewhere… the echoes made it impossible to tell. Waking along the path, Mitchell slowly gets nearer to the source and stops around the corner from the area she was sure they were coming from. Peering around the corner she sees exactly what she expected to see, a group of goblins sitting around a fire. They were roasting what appeared to be… a woman… over it and some of them were drooling.

Since there was only about five of them, Mitchell rushes out and brandishes her whip in their direction. The whip catches one of them across the face and it shouts in pain while rolling over to its side. The rest of the goblin see the whip hit it and follow it back to Mitchell with their eyes, jumping to their feet they take out their weapons and run in her direction.

Lifting the handle of the whip, Mitchell smiles and whips the second and then the third goblin, they drop their weapons and grab their leg and arm respectfully.

Smiling at the scene, she whips the last two who also react in distress to the pain… “Wow this is so easy!” Mitchell says in a loud voice as she proceeds to abuse the goblins to death “Why don’t more people use whips?”

After a good ten minutes of whipping the goblins she knew why… it was taking forever to kill them! Getting sick of it after another five, she pulls out the short sword she had picked up and stab one of the goblins while keeping the others occupied.

Stabbing the rest she heads through the cave doing pretty much the same thing to the rest of the goblin group that had made the cave their home.

After another hour of searching she figured she had killed them all, there had been just over a hundred in total in the extensive cave system and now what she needed was to see some sun light…

Heading back to the flattened path, Mitchell follows it to its end and sees a dim light glowing around a bend. Signing Mitchell walks through an extremely large cavernous area with a completely flat ground, out of the closer of the two opposing cave’s exits and into the moon light… her sense of time was seriously bad…

Stretching out beneath her she could see the forest, the plains and beyond them the city… “I knew it!” she says pointing with a wide open mouth at the forest. “There was no way I fell that far!”

Looking around the caves entrance she found a small path leading down a cliff, which disappeared and reappeared several times in the area she could see. The path looked treacherous and the fall was well over a hundred feet until a rock plateau and another cliff…

Looking down at it all, Mitchell backs up towards the cave. “Umm, I think I’ll take the indoor path…”

Walking back into the cave she takes a better look at the cavernous chamber she had just passed through… at one spot along the way there was a work area and the cave exits actually had a door each. Pulling a lever beside the closer one, Mitchell watches as the door, which had a rock wall design on the external side, slid into place nearly seamlessly.

“I wonder what this place is for…” she thinks to herself as she closes the other door too, before turning on a breaker for lights she found near the middle of the long room.

A row of powerful lights that run the length of the room turn on and reveal lines running the length of the floor and a set of cables sticking out of the floor close to Mitchell…

“Oh I guess I’ll just have to bring Nebel along next time…” she says her index finger laid on her chin while she squints at the light with her tilted head.

Leaving the doors closed and the lights on, Mitchell heads back into the cave to start the long walk back down to the intersection.

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Reaching the top of the mountain at long last, Synthia drops her cooler near the edge of the craters and stands on top of it to get a better look at the crater of the volcano.

Craning her neck she is just barely able to see the glow of the beautiful molten death all the way at the bottom…

“Unacceptable!” Synthia screams and jumps down into the crater itself “There’s no way I’m going to leave it like this!!!”

She had actually prepared for this! Out of her bag she pulls a small package… “LET’S SEE THE FIRE BLOOM!” she yells and lopes it into the lava when she gets close enough.

As the package slowly falls towards the lava, Synthia races its fall as she dashes back to the top of the crater. Manipulating stone into a ramp she just barely manages to reach the top when the package touches the lava and….

BOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!

Explodes with a roar, throwing bits of rock towards the sky and breaking the volcanoes cap into pieces. Released of its only impediment other than the small hole that was draining it, the lava swiftly bubbles its way all the way to the top of the crater where Synthia is manipulating it to become higher and higher while laughing her head off.

“HAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHA!!!!” her eyes stretched wide and her nostrals flaring she screams in delight “Rise! RISE!!”

Eventually the lava pressure drops enough for the lava to stop rising and Synthia manages to calm down enough to open a bottle of Champaign “I christen thee glorious!!!!” she downs the whole bottle and throws it into the lava…

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After running all the way back down to the intersection, Mitchell runs back to the control room to check the length of the other two passages before deciding what to do next.

Seeing that by the luck of the draw… she had actually chosen the longest one in the whole facitity… the other two were not nearly as long, in fact even among the ruined passages it was the longest one…

Before heading down to the next cave, Mitchell takes stock of the rest of her equipment and notices a lot of left over pieces of wood and nails… don’t ask what from… an image of the tree house she had tried to build the other day flashed into her mind… even birds didn’t want to stand on it… the thought brought tears to her eyes that she wiped away before taking out a hammer and setting to work on a make shift weapon.

She was never sure what she would get herself into… ever… so she thought it would be a good idea to try he had at crafting, just in case she ever needed something.

Placing the board on the chair of the command room, she sets to work hammering nails into a board.

“How many nails do you put through a board to make it into a weapon?” she thinks to herself as she works “One hundred should just about do it…”

After a little bit of time has passed, Mitchell finishes her weapon and heads off to her next destination to give it a try. Upon reaching the Second cave, Mitchell wanders around it until finding a lonely goblin.

Much like the other cave this one had a flat path through the middle of its largest tunnel, while the rest of the cave was pretty much natural. The only real difference between the two was an eerie glow that came… seemingly from the air itself.

Sneaking up behind the goblin she raises her make shift weapon up above her head and brings it down and around against its butt.

“AARRRGGGGGG!!!” The goblin yells, dropping its hands to hold its bottom with both hands while tiny droplets of blood well up from the spot on its bare bottom were she hit it… Mitchell had attacked it while it was going to the bathroom…

Looking at the goblin jump around in pain she hits it once more, this time on its back… this time there isn’t any blood at all but the goblin yells even louder.

Mitchell was sad that her weapon wasn’t very effect… “But maybe it’s just where I’m hitting it!” she says out loud and continues to hit the goblin…

After a few dozen minutes she manages to kill the goblin using only her home made weapon. “Yay, I did it!” she shouts and runs to find more goblins, she had the trick now, she just had to hit them really hard against the face… a dozen or so times…

After a few goblins she mostly gives up on only killing them with her nailed board, but just like the whip she found it useful for disarming and overwhelming her enemies. The short sword was getting quite a bit of use and she was actually getting good a stabbing with it.

Having managed to kill all of the goblins that wee in the cave, Mitchell heads to that caves exit to see how it is. The exit just like the other was at the far end of the flattened pathway but this time it stopped at a wall with a small crack leading out.

She thought it was weird for there to only be a crack when the path was big enough for a truck so Mitchell searches around the crack for a while and discovers a few things, one, the crack was actually just damage done to the real door but it did lead outside and right into the forest, two, the control panel for opening the door was mechanical and rusted to the point where it would budge, and three, that there was a cable leading away from the door along the path… there was most likely another way to open it…

Walking back along the flat path, Mitchell heads for the last of the three passages.

Chikongunya hit me again... aparently it does that.. so i took a little time off from writing... mostly since i couldn't...

But im back!

im getting close to finishing the time skip so thats something!

in a few chaps there will be another real life chap!

tell me what you think!

...and yes mitchell has no idea what she's really doing...