Danadrian never had dreams.

But he did have nightmares.

Darkness. A deluge without end. He saw but a brief spark of Light before it was subsumed, and he fell deeper into the onslaught of a power that was so… wrong, tainted and uncontrollable. It was to reality what a pack of wild beasts was to a hunter. That which should never have been. And it threatened to break him.

He was falling again, falling deeper than even the earth itself. Beyond the centre of Andwelm, to places only Creation itself understood. All the while, the Darkness buffeted him. All the while, the Abyss loomed ever present.

Then it released him. The invisible hand of the Light's foremost adversary vanished, and he breathed. He breathed, and he waited for the blessed hand of Mayare to take its place. For that brightness, that shining beacon, to bring his mind peace and warmth.

He grew worried when it didn't. There was no Darkness here, but likewise no Light. He hovered in a space between. He stood in a realm beyond. And then, he felt it. Or rather, it would be better to say, he didn't. He felt nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Absolute Nothing.

The Void.

If the Abyss was crushing, this was something else entirely. It pulled at him, gripped his sanity like a puppet and toyed with it. All the while, he stared at nothing, no light or darkness of substance. There was simply… nothing. He stared into infinity.

And when he woke, he knew there was something terribly wrong with this place.

. . .

Alleria didn't think she'd ever miss a Carathiliarian inn, but when she opened her eyes, that was exactly where she wished she was. A prison cell might have been more comfortable, in all honesty.

Instead, she opened her eyes and had to adjust to the fact that, yes, they were open, and that black cloud that appeared less than a metre away from her was simply the reality of their situation. She rubbed her eyes, pushed Danadrian's cloak off of her, and tried to ignore that hole in her stomach. She was unsuccessful, but it was better than the unbearable itch she could feel in her legs as they slowly fixed themselves. At a pace slower than a snail.

To hopefully fix both of those problems, she reached across and stuck her hand into Danadrian's backpack, retrieving sustenance, deliciousness given to them by the gods themselves.

Some roots and leaves.

They were hard, crunchy, and thoroughly tasteless. The same could be said for the chopped-up vines. To add to it, eating them was like scooping a cup out of the ocean, with the goal of emptying it. They left her throat and mouth dry, which could only be remedied by sipping from a waterskin they had, the only one, which held a limited supply.

After barely stating her thirst and hunger, she caught herself automatically trying to pull herself to her feet but only making it halfway before collapsing again.

She sighed. "Danadrian? You awake?"

She could make out his form facing away from her. He turned his head slightly.

"I- Yes, I'm awake. Are you ready to get moving?"

She nodded, and he shifted close enough that she could grab hold of his shoulders and pull herself onto him. If they weren't the only living, sentient humanoids for gods only knew how far, she might have found it embarrassing.

He was walking faster today, though she noted he was stopping longer to try and make sure they didn't walk into any traps. Which she was starting to think wouldn't do much.

What is he even hoping he'll see anyway?

And with the slime on the walls largely gone, only appearing in small patches they came across occasionally, she thought the danger of any Light Magic thrown their way was largely mitigated.

She found her opinions vindicated when they turned a corner and, in a shape that looked to be some sort of large spear, Light burst out and tried to impale them both.

Danadrian held his sword out, and they exploded into a thousand shards several steps ahead of them. Which she knew would happen, of course. But that didn't mean that an advancing spear of Light coming straight for them didn't make her flinch a little. He didn't even seem to bother giving it a second look. In fact, he didn't say anything at all, which struck her as a bit strange.

He just kept walking, striding across the stone floor a little faster when there weren't any immediate attempts to shred or impale them into pieces. He didn't even pause to examine any of the murals that were still somewhat decipherable. His advance was relentless.

She leaned forward over his shoulder. "That's quite the pace you're setting there. Any reason why?"

He stumbled for a second and turned to her. Their eyes met, and yet she didn't feel like he was really seeing her at all. There was something there that struck her as familiar.

He looked away. "We're not getting anywhere walking slowly. Even if we were to accept the fate of eating roots and leaves for the next several days, our water situation doesn't have an easy solution. Our supplies dwindle every minute we dally."

That made sense, and it was the same conclusion she'd come to. But still…

She went silent, and he continued to push himself forward, turning left at the next fork they came across, then right.

This place is starting to look like a dungeon.

She'd learned the myths of these places when she was a child. The one her-

Her face scrunched up for a moment, and her thoughts stumbled.

-mother had often told had been the Great Labyrinth of Waltathkius. Supposedly forged by Slathir himself, it had been a challenge hundreds of years ago for the inhabitants of Demagain to prove their worth and seek great power within its depths. At least, that was what the stories said. They also claimed that Lord Prydin himself had led a sortie into its depths and had stalled in its deepest rooms, facing power and strength that rivalled his own.

She peered into the darkness, at the cracking stone, at luminescent slime dripping from the roof alongside roots big and small. This place was nothing like Waltathkius, even if its reputation had been exaggerated and inflated by time into legend. A labyrinth that could resist even a being closest to the gods themselves?

They'd have been dead the moment they fell here.

But there were other types of dungeons the stories had taught her. Labyrinths were but one, made to hide treasure or great artifacts, covered in booby traps and other nasty devices, but there were also mazes. Never-ending corners and corridors leading into corridors, made to confuddle and misdirect enemies and trial-goers alike. In those, you died to hunger and insanity first. Or your fellow competitors. A Human concept.

Those were the dungeons crafted by design, though, with the express purpose of guarding or challenging those who entered, made by architects the likes of which Andwelm and Demagain would never see again.

There are also those not made by design or for a purpose. There are those whom nature and time themselves craft into dangers for mortalkind.

She glanced at the shattered murals, which she'd theorised to be thousands of years old, at least. Though some corridors held traps, most lacked them, and in a way, you could see the traps the same way one might see a locked door. A security measure, of course, but not designed to kill any and all who entered. Danadrian's sword was evidence of that.

No, this place looked to her like the abandoned temples and strongholds that became dungeons. When their masters and inhabitants either died or fled and nature was allowed to run its course. When their old defences and contingencies became traps, claiming the lives and explorers and treasure seekers coming to explore their depths.

Yes, that was what this looked like. Like the City of Abarat far across the sea, or Ildoril's Castle. All Human tales.

The only thing that put a wrench in her otherwise forgone conclusion was when they came across yet another fork in the corridor they were following. Whoever had resided here previously or for whatever reason this place had been used, there must have been a very good reason to justify this many hallways leading into hallways leading into nothing. Because it was starting to get ridiculous.

Danadrian looked right, which was better lit by the slime than the left and led to a flight of stairs, which was the first change in elevation they'd come across.

He paused to mull it over, but something else grabbed her attention. It didn't catch her eye. Rather, it caught her ear. A faint noise that under any other circumstance she'd never have given a passing thought to, if not for perhaps the curling of her stomach or the general lack of any other sounds here besides their breathing.

The sound of trickling liquid.

"Left."

"What?" He turned in the direction she was pointing.

"I hear water, or some kind of liquid that way. Come on, let's go." She kicked his back to make her point clear.

He turned to look right again, rubbing a hand over his chin, before nodding and turning left.

"Fine. If there's nothing there, we can always go back."

They made their way down the left corridor, and if he had any misgivings by choosing the darker path, they vanished when he said, "I can hear it too," and turned his slow trot into a jog.

Eventually, the hallway opened up into a small, illuminated room, by far the smallest they'd come across so far. Two more corridors broke off in different directions on either side of them. The third wall, however, was dominated by a small basin. Protruding from it, a thin, curling statue that looked like a snake.

It took her a second to register either of those, though, because what her attention immediately locked onto was the water streaming down from the snake's mouth in a steady flow.

The moment Danadrian got close enough to it, she let go of him and hit the ground. Ignoring her legs crying out in pain, she pulled herself up to the edge of the basin and stuck one of her hands in.

The water was cold as ice, but since it beat the lukewarm water they currently had, she couldn't care less. She cupped her hands and brought her lips close to it-

Danadrian grabbed hold of her hands, inches away from her mouth, and forced them apart. The water spilt back into the basin. She felt a growl form in the back of her throat as she tried to pull her hands away, but failed. He had a firm grip.

"Slathir's Soul, Danadrian, I don't care if there's some Angelican ritual you need to perform before you get a drink of water, I'm parched, so just-"

"Wait." He let go of her hands. "Just wait, okay? I want to check something."

Without waiting for a response, he took his sword, his Anti-Mana sword, and stabbed the water with it.

In any other context, that in and of itself would have been absurd; however, what made both of them pause and stare was when the flowing water stopped immediately. She looked up at him.

"If you just ruined our only source of fresh water, I'll strangle you."

He pulled the sword out, but the snake's mouth remained empty. Then, after hesitating for a moment, he retreated several feet and left the sword on the ground.

The water resumed its flow, as if it had never stopped. Her mind worked as she stared at it, and Danadrian returned, leaving the sword behind. He stepped onto the edge of the basin, which somehow supported his weight despite its age, and looked into the eyes of the snake.

He nodded. "It looks like a mana crystal. I remember seeing one before. If I remember correctly…" He tapped his chin.

"It takes in the natural mana present in the world and stores it," she finished for him. "If the magic we've been coming across here is somehow remaining functional for this long, putting aside that it doesn't follow any magical techniques I've read of, it will need a source of mana."

"Which would explain the flowing water." He stepped down and knelt beside her to inspect it. "It probably comes from a source, and the spell being powered is some sort of Water Magic. Remarkable."

She smiled dryly. "Quite. Now, may we indulge ourselves in its labours? Or do you need to stab it again, just to be sure?"

"You can never be too careful, especially here," he replied. "It could have been poisoned, or-"

"Because your sword would do a whole lot against that," she muttered.

"-or trapped somehow," he finished, glaring at her. "If there's Water Magic being powered here, what is stopping it from being trapped with fouler spells. I'm just being cautious."

"Yeah, yeah, are you going to drink or keep grumbling?"

She was already cupping her hands into the basin and sipping on her fresh, cold, glorious find. He stooped down beside her and started filling their waterskin, then pulled out another flash that she hadn't even known they'd had and filled that as well. Only after he'd filled them both and she was already leaning her back against the basin, fully sated, did he lean down to drink his fill.

She turned away from him and took another look at the room. It was the most well-maintained room they'd come across, which really wasn't saying much at all, but the engravings above each corridor looked to be partially intact.

The worst was above the hallway they'd come from. Even when she squinted at it, there was barely anything she could make it, most of the wall there had eroded away, leaving only the barest reminder that there had even been something there in the first place. To the right, the engravings looked to be some sort of weapon, a sword maybe? It wasn't entirely obvious to her, and if it was one, then it was by far the strangest she'd ever seen. Simultaneously too straight and yet too curved, how much of that was by design and how much the result of deterioration was anyone's guess. And the last was the simplest. Two figures, matching the same half-snake, half-man appearances of many on the walls, bowed in reverence alongside one another.

"I picked left this time, what say you we let you have a chance?"

Danadrian looked up from the basin and began eyeing each hallway. "We could always go back the way we came and continue to those stairs I saw."

"We could, but as a man of faith, I thought that path may interest you more." She pointed at the left hallway. "Though they write in a script foreign to us, I believe that's a universal symbol whose meaning is far from lost on you."

He stared at the engravings for a while. "An apt observation. If you wouldn't mind?"

She snorted as he leaned to let her climb on his back. "Hardly. We all have our quirks. Just remember that I'm pulling rank if we come across a library."

They made their way down the left hallway, which, unlike many of the others, had little in the way of deviation. There weren't any major crossroads or intervening rooms, and only small passages that were, even by the standards of a Demon accustomed to alleyways, quite thin intersected with their path. They were all empty.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

For that matter, she was beginning to consider how… bizarrely sterile this place was. No two dungeons were the same, naturally, but each one that she'd read up on, even the oldest and most ancient according to the historians documenting them, was inhabited by some sort of antagonist force. Be it a single monster or dozens to hundreds of them, be they large or small, dungeons were filled with two things: Traps and monsters.

And yet here they saw nothing. The only life present was the roots and vines crawling down from the ceiling, and what she assumed to be ants and other bugs crawling about unseen. The slime probably didn't count.

Some would find this comforting, only having to consider danger from one front.

Instead, she found it all the more worrying and kept twisting around to watch their backs every minute or so, even after Danadrian told her he was keeping track of their path, for when they inevitably needed to backtrack to the basin for water. This place was either entirely uninhabited, as it appeared so, or whatever was down here didn't want to be seen.

She was banking on the latter.

Progress was slow, either due to Danadrian's slow and meticulous pace or because what energy he had left was beginning to seep away. It was likely both, so it was no surprise when he requested a rest and breather after what must have been close to an hour of walking. The moment she fell down onto the ground, he stumbled back and rested his body against the wall. He rubbed his shoulders and muttered complaints about his back under his breath, which she respectfully decided not to make a comment on.

Rather not bite the hand that feeds us.

"If carrying me becomes too much… maybe you should eat more of the food." She was loath to call what they were eating food at all. "You're doing a lot more than I am-"

He raised a hand to cut her off. "As tempting as that offer is," he wiped his forehead and grimaced, "and it is tempting, mind you, the sooner you're walking on your own two legs, the sooner I'm not carrying you on mine." He flexed his back. "Now, if you will excuse me, I need to partake in the natural passage of the mortal body."

She frowned. "What?"

He met her eyes and turned away, "I need to relieve my body of some of its excess."

He grunted and wiped at his face, but in the dim light, she could see his face and almost burst into a fit of laughter then and there. There was a faint blush on his cheeks.

This? Out of everything, this embarrasses him?

She snorted as he began to walk away, "What is it with the highborn talk? If you want to take a leak, why don't you just say so?"

"I may be a Fallen Angelica, but I hold myself to some standards. And you are a woman."

She spat out a laugh, "What, are you only noticing now? Just don't expect me to be as courteous when I tell you I need to take a-"

He disappeared. One moment there, the next, nothing.

As a single second of time passed, she registered how strange that was.

As the next second passed, she realised that the hallway itself, dim glow and all, had likewise gone entirely dark.

On the third, she noticed the change in the texture of the floor. Dustier. Crunchy? What was it that her hands were touching?

And finally, on the fourth second, her stomach lurched, the same feeling she got when abruptly thrown around by Wind Magic, or anything similar.

"Danadrian?"

She blinked, looked down at her hand and pulled something up to her face.

A bone.

It clattered to the ground as she threw herself away, but then the crunching grew louder, and she looked around. Illuminated by the light of her horns, she saw bones. Dozens upon dozens, perhaps hundreds. Skulls, femurs, ribcages, cracked hips. Everywhere her eyes looked, they were there, staring back up at her.

And then the smell hit. A foul aroma mixed with dust and a definite lack of airflow. The moment she breathed it in, she wanted to stop, didn't want to breathe at all. Wherever she was reeked of death and age.

"And where am I indeed?" Her mind was already racing to find an answer. "Magic, for sure. Some sort of fast or instant movement, agh…" She snapped her fingers again and again. "Teleportation. Void Magic. I must've activated some sort of trap and now I'm…" She looked around the room again, compact and barely a few meters in length and width. Then she looked back down at the bones surrounding her.

"Ah."

This… might be bad.

She struggled to pull herself away from the bones, but it was about as easy as escaping a riptide. They were everywhere, to the point where she wasn't sure anymore where they ended and the floor began.

"Not good, not good," she muttered. "I need to find a way out, unless I plan on joining them."

She looked around, squinting through the darkness to try and make out something, anything. Any cracks in the floor or roof, places where roots created holes, or even just a door.

And why would they leave a door for us to escape through? It was clearly a trap, genius. And look at them-

She grimaced at a nearby skull, watching her flounder about.

-they clearly couldn't find an easy way out.

"Alright, okay, let's just think this through slowly. I was sent here by some sort of Void Magic trap, which went off…" She ran through everything that had happened barely two minutes before. "Danadrian walked away… he walked away, and when his sword left the area, it stopped nullifying the trap, that must be it." She began pulling herself through the bones. "And I'm going to hazard a guess that it was a one-way spell, damn."

The room was dark, lacking any of the luminescent slime, and though she could vaguely make out a root-like shape in one corner, it wasn't that large and wouldn't have been of any help up there when she wasn't even able to sit herself upright. There was only a single source of light that their eyes immediately latched onto. A pinprick within the darkness about halfway up one of the walls.

She squinted at the pale blue light and tried to pull herself further forward, with middling success.

That's the mana crystal powering the spell.

Her mind flashed back to the basin and its continuously flowing water. She frowned. "Can't be for that spell though. Unless I'm right beneath the corridor we were in, the mana source for that spell had to have been close enough to be affected by his sword. Ergo, that can't be the source for the spell that teleported me, ergo, it has to be for some other spell." So that was what she looked for next.

Thankfully, it didn't take long. After pushing herself against one of the walls, she quickly noticed that the otherwise perfectly square room had a bit of a bulge, where part of the wall just didn't quite line up with the rest. She expended precious energy then pulling herself across the bone piles again, gagging all the while and shuddering each time she heard something snap, before running her hands over the 'wall'.

Definitely not brick, and she made a calculated guess that it wasn't natural. Earth Magic?

"Think, think." Speaking out loud made her cough and gag, but it was getting harder to keep her thoughts straight. She looked around. "It's only practical to have a door; this room would fill up with bodies otherwise. It might not even have been-" she coughed "-intended to be lethal. But how do I activate it on this side?"

She stared up at the glowing crystal. Was it always moving? She put her hands to her head.

Nope. Not enough oxygen, the dust, maybe even aftereffects from the spell. We're not going to be able to… thinking straight is getting harder and harder.

She tried without success to ignore her head spinning. "Have to disable the spell. If Danadrian were here, gods help me, I wouldn't even be in this mess. He just had to take a leak, didn't he?"

Her hand, which had been running through her hair, dropped and brushed against her scabbard.

And the sword.

She closed her eyes, every curse and foul-mouthed phrase she knew going through her head at once.

We need this.

She unsheathed it with a shaking hand, its glow illuminating almost as much as the slime could. The flat side of the silvery blade was as clean and clear as glass, and she imagined that if there was glass here, it would reflect whatever mix of a grimace, snarl, and voiceless cry she had on her face.

"Gods damn them, whoever you are. I hope you're all suffering in Galumtir for this."

Struggling, she pushed herself up against the bulge in the wall as far as she could. Then, steeling whatever strength and stability she had in her legs, she reached the blade out towards the blue mana crystal.

The tip of the blade just barely tapped it.

In an instant, the light went out and the wall she was leaning against crumbled into dust. She fell hard on her side and gasped. She hadn't even realised how long she'd been holding her breath for. In between breaths of fresh, fresher air, and coughing and waving away the dust around her, she managed to shout.

"Danadrian!"

She was in one of the thin corridors they'd passed, though she had no idea which of them. And after a few minutes of silence, whilst she slowly began crawling to the hallway, fear began to seep in. That Void Magic spell could have sent her anywhere; there was nothing to say she'd be anywhere near Danadrian, much less within earshot.

…

..

.

"Alleria!"

And then he was there, leaning down beside her and helping to pull her face off the ground.

"Void Magic," she coughed, letting him pull her up by her arms into the hallway. "The spell activated as soon as you left its radius. Damn sword."

At the mention of the Void, his face went slack. Then, for the first time that she could remember, a snarl formed on his face. "Light take them, meddling with that is a step too far. I was just about to start bloody running down the corridor, traps or not, to try and find you."

It was hard to keep her eyes open, but she muttered, "How long was I gone for?"

"Maybe three or four minutes?"

The sword slipped from her grip and clattered on the ground.

"Huh, it felt like longer."

. . .

She slipped in and out of consciousness after that. Occasionally, she'd open her eyes to see passing walls that all looked the same, and one of her hands would try in vain to feel at her scabbard. Was it still there? Slathir's Soul, part of her hoped it wasn't.

"I should have let Velandus keep it. It was better… without…" And then she slept again.

When she woke again, they were back in the room with the basin, and Danadrian was trying to feed her roots. Surprisingly, they didn't taste all that bad anymore. But maybe she was just that out of it.

The next time she opened her eyes, she was fully conscious, though she couldn't remember ever feeling as tired before. She'd slept less after falling through Andwelm itself and breaking countless bones, though that could be chalked up to some form of adrenaline.

It must've been a build-up, first the fall, then the healing, and finally nearly asphyxiating.

She sniffed. Bereft of the foul smells of dust and death, she smelled a familiar aroma, but one that she hadn't smelled in what felt like an Age. Smoke.

She leaned up against the basin, still trickling water, and rubbed her eyes. A few steps away, Danadrian was stooped over a small fire contained within a stone circle. He had a pot, closer to a bowl really, carefully placed on top of it, which he was watching with such intent that it was only when she moved that he noticed that she'd woken.

"How are you feeling?"

She rubbed her head. "Yeah, yeah, I think I'm okay, I just… you started a fire?"

He looked down at it, as if he'd somehow forgotten. "Oh, right. Yes, I managed to- if I could just…"

He stared at his open hand, face twisting with concentration, before eventually a tiny flame appeared, dancing across his palm. It was only then that she noted his sword, placed several meters away from them both, leaning against the wall. He glanced back at her as the flames vanished, looking quite proud of himself.

"I understood part of the process, I'd just… never actually tried to use any other magic. It didn't come as naturally to me, and I could sustain a fire indefinitely with it," he shrugged, "but it gave me the spark I needed, and there's plenty of dry foliage and roots to act as a substitute for firewood. Speaking of which."

He picked the bowl up, his hands wrapped with some thick cloth and placed it beside her. She looked down incredulously at what was definitely not just water and roots.

"How on Andwelm… what is it?"

He coughed into his fist. "Hot water, roots, some vines and flowers I came across. And, um…"

She stuck a finger in and stared at the sludgy texture. "No."

"Yes, well, I tried it myself first and-"

"Slime? You're actually planning to feed me slime?"

He coughed again. "Well, actually, you already have been." Her head snapped around to look at him. "You were probably too tired to remember, but I've fed this to you at least three times. I hadn't managed to perfect the recipe until the second."

"When did you learn how to cook? And with roots and slime no less?"

He frowned. "I had never tried, to be honest. Velandus always had it covered, or I was eating at an establishment. I… just sort of let my hands do the work, and it started coming to me-"

"-naturally," she finished for him. "Just what sort of Angelica were you, Danadrian? I hardly remember any stories describing your kind as chefs, and you've got more than a basic understanding of the wild."

"I've… been grappling with the same question for a while." He stared at his hand. "After I first Fell, I was in the wild for more than a day, and I survived. And that was before the tuffhorn. And then there's my swordplay…" He shook his head. "Angelica, carry out the will of Mayare, in whatever form it comes in. I suspect I was an enactor of her justice, a warrior, swordsman even."

"Couldn't have fooled me." She stared down at… it couldn't be considered a soup, really. She shrugged. "Well, at least it smells alright."

She cringed after the first sip, mainly due to the texture; the slime did it no favour. But after the second, she realised that it really did help where the roots and other assortment of ingredients failed. It wasn't the best meal she'd ever had, far, far from it, but compared to what they'd been eating? It might as well be a feast.

"How long have I been out?"

He shrugged. "There's no real way to tell, but I took a sizable nap since so maybe… a day? I can't think it's been longer than that."

"A day. And with three decent meals…"

She looked down at her legs. She put the bowl down and gripped the edge of the basin. Then she began pulling herself to her feet.

"Hey, what are you-" Danadrian was immediately at her side, but she waved him away. Sweat was building on her forehead.

Almost, we can almost-

She achieved a few fleeting, blissful seconds standing unaided on her own two feet, before they buckled and she hit the ground on her backside again. The hard way.

"Are you alright?"

He leaned over to look at her, his brow furrowed with concern, but after wincing from the sudden pain, there was a smile on her face. "Almost. The bones have mended, by the muscles are still weak, and my body isn't used to having to hold its own weight anymore. But a few more days, maybe even just a day, and I'll be as good as new."

He smiled. "Brilliant. Not that I wanted to moan, but my back has been killing me recently."

"You can go one or two more days, I'm sure."

She stretched, feeling the kinks in her back after lying on stone for hours. Hardly the best, not even the worst, but she'd never recommend sleeping outside to anybody. Inns were cheap, and any bed was better than none. Readjusting herself, one hand unconsciously reached down to her waist.

It was bare. Her heart skipped a beat, and her eyes began darting around the room, eventually pausing on a thin shape beside the fire.

Danadrian followed her gaze with a frown, then nodded. "Right, you had that drawn when I found you. I had to put it back in its sheath before-"

She grabbed his arm. "You touched it?'

"Only for a moment-"

"Never touch it, Danadrian. Swear to me you won't even touch it barehanded again."

He looked startled. "I'm well aware of the dangers of handling a sharp blade, Alleria."

"Swear. It." He had to. That he'd seen it drawn was already too much, but if he risked touching its blade again. For his own good.

After only a second's hesitation, he nodded. "I swear it. In the name of the Light, and Mayare, and all that comes to pass under her gaze, I swear it."

"Good." She scrambled over to it. It was, as always, cold to the touch, and she immediately regretted taking it up again. She reattached it to the belt at her waist.

Twice now she'd been forced to draw it, both in self-defence, both in vastly different scenarios. And even then, when she'd fought that gods-damned Talradian, she'd resisted. Never to draw unless there was no other choice. Never to kill.

If only it didn't pull at her so.

Soon, we will be forced to draw it by our own hand, to defeat an enemy we cannot hope to best.

She shut those thoughts out of her mind and turned back to Danadrian. "Do you plan on moving out soon?"

He blinked, clearly still thinking of the oath she had forced him to swear. "I- yes, I suppose so. Once you are ready, that is."

She nodded and pulled herself up onto the side of the basin. "I should be in a few."

He quickly began packing away their 'camp', if you could even call it that. He put out the fire, cleaned their bowls, all two of them, and made sure anything else he'd taken out of their pack was put away. Which didn't seem that hard, with what little they had.

While he did, she cleaned her face and checked to see if she'd taken any more damage to her clothes or left any lingering dust. The dust she attempted to brush away, a fruitless endeavour, considering she'd likely pick it all back up within a few minutes, and when it came to her clothes, only one more hole had popped up near her shoulder. Brilliant.

"Getting closer to being rags than proper attire. And while with company…" her eyes wandered over to her companion, "well, let's just hope I can stay decent."

"What was that?"

"Hm? Oh, nothing." Talking to herself, too, he might start to think she was losing the plot completely.

Once he'd finished cleaning up, so to speak, he came back to her and helped her climb onto his back, though she needed less of it this time. Then they set off again, this time with the assurance that neither of them was going to wander off to relieve themselves anytime soon, and certainly not without his sword present and any traps thoroughly scoped out.

Thankfully, due to the linear nature of the hallway they were following, it was an uneventful journey, if not a familiar one, and with Danadrian's energy renewed, he didn't lag as much nor need as many breaks.

She felt him tense up when they approached the location of the Void Spell, and when he lingered there, ostensibly to look around for the mana crystal, that too wasn't surprising. But what was, was the look on his face while they went about it, or the way his shoulders were tensed up and rigid the entire time, regardless of their safety.

His expression was a mix of emotions, somewhere between scared and rageful, neither of which she'd been prepared for.

You'd have thought he was the one who sprung it, not us.

After fifteen minutes of searching, his shoulders slouched again as she patted them. "We should get a move on, no point looking for it anyway."

He nodded, though she didn't miss the way his hands gripped the sword held in them. "You know, it's almost like I can… feel it, feel the wrongness with it. The empty space of Nothing."

"That's not possible, not within the Anti-Magic effect."

He nodded again. "I know that I just… I know that."

Eventually, he turned away, and they began walking again.

"Maybe this place is starting to get to me," he muttered.

"I'd be concerned if it wasn't, Danadrian. No man could traverse a dungeon and say otherwise."

"Dungeon? I know that term, if vaguely. It's the place in a castle where criminals are sent, no?"

She shook her head, though with him so close to her, there was really no need. "A misnomer, in this case. I refer to the lost dungeon, the ancient or otherwise decaying structure of labyrinthine proportion. I'm going to assume you've never heard any of the stories?"

"None that I can remember."

She began recounting those that she could remember to him, though with none of the flair bards could pull nor the detail her mother had given her when read before bedtime. Regardless, he was an attentive listener and seemed to be trying to absorb all the information he could. And while she found that flattering, it was only a bit concerning for her when he almost walked them into a wall as a result.

"So you believe this place was a palace? A temple, then?"

She looked around. "Maybe, but what always throws a wrench into that idea are these hallways. Tunnels, even. You said it yourself, All of this seems hardly practical for anyone, even snake-people."

"If that's what they are."

She eyed a surviving mural depicting a Human face mixing with that of a snake, seemingly gaining scales and fans in the process.

"I'm not a gambler, but I'd stake my gold on it at this point."

"Speaking of gold, I lost my pouch during the fall, or sometime before that." She pinched his neck. "Ow! It didn't seem like the most important thing to bring up."

"And I suppose you want to just live off my endless gold supply?"

"I am still a registered member of the Company. I'll take a job or two if we get out of here."

"When we get out of here." And it was still a 'when', at least to her. "Don't go throwing that 'if' around here, Lightbringer."

"Well, unless you plan to have us dig our way out once we get high enough…"

She shook her head. "We'll figure something out."

She's said it with confidence, but in the back of her head, it had been a gnawing thought that wouldn't budge, no matter what she did. How were they planning on getting out of here? Digging really wasn't an option, not unless they miraculously came across some shovels, or she subjected herself to immense pain digging by hand. Following the paths here and hoping they eventually ascended seemed to be Danadrian's current objective, but it was flimsy at best. It bet on the idea that there was an open entrance somewhere, and she thought that if a dungeon were lying beneath the Crynmon Forest, it would've been written down somewhere and scoured for everything of worth. This place hadn't been touched for Ages.

"We'll figure something out," she repeated.

Though this time it was more of a reassurance for herself than for him.

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