Dawn came to in the darkness, her head hurting something fierce. At first she didn’t know where she was and what had happened to her. The pounding in her head made it difficult to think. Once she tried to move she cried out, her leg blazing up in agony. It had been captured by something. Her headache intensified through the movement and the noise and she had to lie still until the pain receded to a more manageable level.

As the minutes ticked by she remembered that she had fallen as she had touched the runic circle. Had she found the secret passage by accident or had the queen simply set a trap?

Dazed, she tried to activate Nurture. At first the spell wouldn’t form, her concentration hindered by her pounding head, the agony in her leg and the nausea rising in her.

She swallowed hard. What would she do if she was unable to heal herself? She felt more of her strength ebbing away with every second that passed.

Pulling herself together with an herculean effort she concentrated intensely, which cause her headache to flare up once again. Slowly, ever so slowly, she felt the spell starting to form, felt her mana draining into it.

At last, it activated and she felt a wave of blessed relief pouring over her. She was able to feel her wounds, see her brain inundated with blood with her inner sight. As she followed her healing with her control, she saw the blood starting to dry up and crumble away into nothing. Immediately after, the pounding in her head was gone.

As she checked her status reflexively, she saw that she had only 42 HP left. Even now her hit points scarcely rose, her regeneration barely keeping up with the rest of her injuries.

Frowning, Dawn remembered she had activated her cocoon of shadows before she fell down here. And she had already healed herself once. That meant her fall had broken her cocoon and left her with only a few HP. Nearly 200 damage was nothing to sneeze at. Without her new skill she would have been very dead and at the end of her journey now. It had saved her life.

One by one, she healed the rest of her injuries, though she was stumped the moment she came to her leg. It was still trapped on a sharp rusty metal spike that had pierced it and she saw no easy way to get her leg off the damnable thing. On the ground around her more of the deadly spikes rose up.

Apparently she had hit several of them on her way down, and she had been blessed in that she had only pierced her calf and not her heart or her neck.

She pondered for a while how to get her leg away from that spike. She couldn’t stand up and was unable to lift the leg high enough to slide it off.

Tentatively, she took up her sword. Maybe she could cut the spike off with it? Not an optimal tool but what could she do? She clanged the sword against the spike, hindered by the awkward angle and the impossibility of moving freely. The spike didn’t seem very impressed by her weak hit. The only effect it had was that her leg screamed in pain as she moved. Sweating and exhausted she sank back. She tried to call out to Ankou with her mind, but couldn’t find the connection to him she was used to, its absence a glaring void in her mind.

Weakly she called out to him with her voice, the sound echoing in her surroundings. She called out some more, but stopped after a minute, realizing it was a useless endeavour.

She hadn’t brought any tools that could aid her in her ring. Maybe breath of winter would have an effect and make the metal brittle enough that her sword would have an impact? Something she could try, though she dreaded the effect her freezing spell would have on her poor leg.

Just as she prepared herself to activate the spell, another idea made her stop in her tracks, silently berating herself.

She was an idiot! She had completely forgotten about her gift from the lady. Of course, one with the shadows was the perfect answer to her current dilemma!

Mentally feeling around, she activated the spell consciously for the first time, trying to target the room above her. She wanted to return there. But the spell didn’t activate and she felt that the ceiling and the floor of the room above were too far away. She would have to choose a target in her more immediate vicinity. And so she selected an area of the floor on the edge of the room that was bare of any dastardly metal spikes.

To her great relief, this time the spell worked as intended and she found herself on the floor, bleeding like a stuck pig and minus a metal spike in her leg.

Exhaling in relief she immediately healed her leg. It took several applications of her spell to close the huge hole that the spike had left in her, but at last she was whole once more.

She rested for a few minutes to restore her mana, then activated her cocoon once again, rested some more and took stock of herself and her surroundings.

She found herself in a very dark room dotted with the sharp metal spikes on the floor. The darkness here was so absolute that even with her dark sight spell she had difficulties making out the farther areas. The ceiling was high above her, far higher than she had any chance to reach by jumping and she had already tried to get out this way through one with the shadows and failed.

She decided to walk around the room along the walls and search for an opening there. Surely there had to be another way out of here?

It took her some time to get around the room, but finally she found a niche in the wall, and inside of it a hole that just allowed her to crawl through, although in the wrong direction. It led downwards.

At first she had thought she had landed in the secret passage the queen had used, but now she doubted it. The queen was much too huge to fit into that hole. Apparently, she had set up a trap connected to the runic circle. And Dawn had been the moron who blithely walked into it.

But all lamenting was useless now that it had already happened. She hadn’t found any other exits from the room, so her only options were to stay here and wait for her friends to find her. Which might take them a very long time if they did manage it at all. Dawn didn’t know if the trap was still active or not. And if her friends activated the trap they might die in it instead of rescuing her.

No, she had to find a way out by herself. To be very sure that she hadn't overlooked another exit, she went round the room once more, keeping to the wall. Once she arrived back at the nichte, it was plain that no other exit existed. Dawn took up her courage and crawled through the hole into further darkness to find herself in a passage. She had no way to orient herself here in the gloom so she chose to folow the way upwards as the logical direction to get out of here. Unfortunately, the passage ended in a dead end after she had followed it for a few minutes. She felt around the bare wall, desperate to find any exit or a method to open it, but found nothing. Discouraged she sat down for a moment, then took out her waterskin and drank deeply.

Water would be a problem if she didn’t find a way out soon. She had her waterskin, but in the normal course of things that would be only enough for a day. If she rationed it she might get it to stretch out to two or three days, but after that she would be in trouble.

Disgruntled, she shook her head to get away from these dark thoughts. Surely she would have found the way out of here long before her water ran out.

With a grunt, she stood up again and started to retrace her steps. The sooner she began, the sooner she would be reunited with her friends. With a pang she envisioned how worried Ankou would be by now. But there was nothing she could do about it, her connection to him still missing. She had no way to contact him now. Maybe he would believe her dead?

Again she shook off the morbid thought. She had no time to feel sorry for herself or Ankou. She had to find a way out!

So downwards she went. The passage she followed was rough-hewn, wide enough for two persons to pass each other and just high enough to clear her head. Nathan wouldn’t have been able to walk upright in it. Luckily, she was small enough that it was not a concern for her.

She reached a crossroads where several other, similar passages met with hers. Now she had the choice of three directions to go on. She could easily get lost, down here in the darkness, she realized. Taking up her sword once again, and grimacing at the abuse she put her poor weapon through, she scratched a mark into the wall of the passage she decided to follow. If she repeated this in regular distances, she should at least be able to find her way back here. At the last moment, she marked the passage she had come out of with a cross, so she would be sure which one it was afterwards. It was all too easy to get confused down here after all.

Hours and several passages later, Dawn found herself sitting on the floor once more, deeply discouraged and close to tears. There was an entire web of passages down here. She had discovered several bigger open areas in between, but until now there had been no exit that led her upwards. Slowly, but surely her fear ate at her mind, telling her that she would be lost here in the darkness forever, that she would die down here, alone, without anyone ever knowing where she had disappeared or what had happened to her. It was a gruesome thought.

With an effort she managed to stand up again, despite the fears that threatened to paralyze her. She would persevere. She would find her friends again and return to her adopted mother. Giving up was simply not an option.

She trudged on doggedly. Finally, she found herself in a wide open area, the ceiling so high above her that she couldn’t make it out. Strange growths rose up from the earth and came down from above. They almost looked like pillars holding up the ceiling. Listening, she became aware of the slow drip of water. She had found water at least! She almost ran forwards but could not find any stream or body of water in the gigantic cavern. The source of the drip was not discernible to her. She stumbled over something on the ground as she walked on, keeping to the side in easy reach of the walls. Looking down, she saw that a mound of irregular rocks was strewn around her. She took up one of them and made out a dark piece of rock with glistening silver veins inside of it. Next to the mound she saw some kind of tool on the floor and picked it up. It was a pickaxe that had seen better days, probably discarded long ago. With that, Dawn knew she had stumbled upon some kind of mine. Maybe it had belonged to the stoneblood folk. She had no knowledge of metals and couldn’t guess what they had dug out here. Not that it did matter to her.

She gnawed on her lip uncertainly. Surely they had used some method to mark the passages down here. Else their miners would have become lost all the time.

As she stood there, wondering about the stoneblood folk and their way of orienting themselves in the passages here, something arrested her attention. It sounded like a whisper. Was she hallucinating or was it real? Surely it was too early for madness to set in?

She listened more closely. More whispers all around her now. And tendrils of darkness coming down from the ceiling, rising up from the floor all around her.

One of them touched her and hot pain erupted in her hand. She cried out, surprised, and saw that a long bloody tear had appeared on the back of her hand. Confused, she turned in a circle. Hadn’t she activated cocoon? A short check assured her that it was still running and showed no damage. Why had she been hurt then? Her cocoon should have protected her.

More tendrils reached her now, and she felt the hits on her calf, her shoulder and her face. With a cry she clapped a hand to her cheek, feeling blood beneath her palm.

She stumbled backwards and activated Shadow Play calling herself a fool for forgetting to keep her stealth up. She ran away from the walls, but her enemy, whatever it was, still found her, further pain blossoming up on her hip and the back of her legs

“Did you think you could fool us with your weak tries at deception, human?” The shadows whispered to her, laughing.

“We are the veins of darkness, your ridiculous skills are only a weak copy of our own. There’s no use in trying to escape us. We will find you wherever you go.”

Desperate, Dawn healed herself, feeling some of her wounds close. A moment later, more injuries appeared, the tendrils relentless in their attack. 'They are playing with me,' she thought bleakly, 'drawing it out intentionally.'

“Who are you? Why are you attacking me?” She called out hoarsely, stumbling forwards in a weak attempt to outrun her tormentors. “I’m not your enemy.”

“Are you not then?” the voices mocked her. “But we are yours.” The whispers becoming louder and clearer to her now.

“We will not be enslaved again, child of the blood. You are weak. You are alone. You cannot prevail against us.” The voices called out to her.

“But I don’t want to enslave you. I just want to find a way out of here.” She replied plaintively, trying to convince the shadows that she meant them no harm.

“We will grant you a way out. You will find death here with us. It is the final escape.” The shadows assured her.

“I don’t want to die! Let me go!” she protested, frantic now.

“That we cannot do.” Even more shadowy tendrils coalesced around her. “No one can know we are here. Only then are we safe.”

“I don’t threaten you.” She protested once again.

“You are one of them. Child of our former masters. You are not to be trusted. She told us they were all gone. She, too, lied.”

“Who is she? Do you mean the queen?” Dawn asked, trying to distract them, to keep them talking instead of attacking her.

“She was our ally once.” The voices replied. “She gave us the keys to our freedom.” A swelling whisper, full of joy. Then the joy changed to fury. “And we paid them back for keeping us chained. For forcing us to work for them. Mining their useless materials. Our masters. We spied on them, we ambushed them, we trapped them. Together with the queen, yes we did. They didn’t know we were free. Didn’t suspect their slaves, oh no. They too thought their shadows would save them. Useless thieves!”