Chapter Twelve

  Miranda followed the path back to the temple’s entrance, the click of her hooves loudly echoing up and down the narrow corridor.

  As she went, she noted apathetically that all the snake carvings she had seen on the way in were gone, leaving only the smooth stone walls of a naturally formed cave. The torches were gone too, leaving her with only the Brighteyes spell to see by.

  Reaching the entrance, she paused when the sound of the waterfall reached her ears. On the other side of the curtain of water, she could faintly see Aaron and Derrick as they waded into the stream and began the arduous task of crawling back out of the cave.

  Aaron glanced over his shoulder, but given that he didn’t have a torch lit, she doubted that he was able to see her. Even so, she slunk backwards into the shadows, shame wrapping itself around her heart like a cold, dead hand.

  Derrick disappeared down the watery passageway, and Aaron followed close behind. Miranda waited another minute before stepping out, passing through the waterfall to—

  As soon as the water hit him, Jeremy spasmed and sat up in her arms with a cry.

  “Wh- What? Where am I?” he demanded. Miranda tried to keep hold of him, but his panicked thrashing sent him rolling out of her arms, and he landed with a splash in the pool beneath them.

  “Ashes!” Miranda hissed, ducking beneath the water to grab his shoulders and haul him to his feet, spluttering and coughing. “Jeremy, listen to me! You need to calm down!”

  “Miranda?” he gasped.

  “Yes, I’m right here, and I need you to be calm!”

  To her surprise, he actually obeyed. It took him a few seconds to find his balance on the slippery, moss covered stones beneath him, but once he was able to stand on his own feet again, he took a deep breath and didn’t struggle when Miranda let him go.

  “Where am I?” he asked again, still breathing heavily. “Why is it so dark? A- And why am I all wet?”

  “It’s dark because we’re in a cave,” Miranda answered. She had almost forgotten that he couldn’t cast Brighteyes, meaning that for him, their surroundings would be pitch black. “And we’re standing in an underground stream.”

  “A cave?” he echoed. “Why are we in a…where are we?”

  “Jeremy, listen to me,” Miranda said, reaching out and putting a hand on his cheek. He jumped a little at the sudden contact, but he didn’t shrink away. “I promise that I will answer all of your questions, but for right now we need to get out of this cave, and the only way to do that is for us to crawl. It’s going to be tight, and it’s going to be wet, but it’s our only way out of here. Can you do that?”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on!”

  This is the worst possible place for him to have woken up, she thought, grinding her teeth in frustration. Jeremy was always a little timid, and even I would be terrified if I were in his shoes. I can’t crawl through the cave with him on my back, though. Somehow, I need to get him to do what I say!

  “I know you don’t,” she said as gently as she could. “You’re scared, you’re confused, and I completely understand why. But right now there’s nothing I can do to help you understand except to say that I’m here with you, I need you to trust me, and…”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “And?” Jeremy asked, his voice weak.

  “And I…still love you,” she whispered.

  He went still, and Miranda was suddenly glad it was so dark because it meant he couldn’t see how red her face was becoming.

  She had said those words countless times to him since she’d found him living as an NPC in Sequestrinous nine years ago, but this was the first time she’d said them while he was…here…both physically and mentally. It felt like she was baring a part of her soul that she had been keeping locked deep inside of her for over a decade.

  A very vulnerable part.

  “All right,” he finally answered.

  She sighed with relief. It had always been easy to convince him to go along with her harebrained schemes when they were little, but what she had initially taken for an adventurous spirit hidden beneath an anxious exterior, she’d eventually come to realize was a crippling fear of disappointing others—something his parents had gleefully taken advantage of.

  But even he’d had his limits, and following someone he couldn’t even see into a tiny, pitch black, mostly-underwater cave would have been a bridge too far even for someone like her. Maybe he actually trusted her. Maybe he was just that desperate to get out of this place. Either way, she decided, now wasn’t the time to go looking gift horses in their mouths. Taking Jeremy by his hand, she led him over to the cramped, watery passage.

  “It’s going to be tight,” she warned him, “and you’ll have to tilt your head back to breathe. But I’ll be right in front of you the whole time, so just stay behind me and we’ll be on the other side before you know it. Okay?”

  Jeremy drew in a shuddery breath, and nodded. “O- Okay.”

  She gave his hand one last reassuring squeeze, and then began the claustrophobic journey back to the world of light and blue skies. Jeremy stayed right behind her the entire time, as if he were afraid she would vanish if his head wasn’t practically pressed against her backside for even a second.

  For every inch of ground they covered, she could hear him whimpering softly, even when his mouth was underwater. The poor guy had been woken up from thirteen years of dreamless sleep in an underground monster’s lair. The fact that he wasn’t curled up in a corner somewhere, crying, was enough to convince her that he was braver than his nervous, timid demeanor would lead someone to believe.

  The tunnel stretched on and on, farther than even Miranda’s magically enhanced eyes could see, and for the longest time there was nothing to hear except the splashing of their slow, methodical process, and Jeremy’s shallow, frightened breathing. Though she did her best to ignore it, Miranda’s stomach did a somersault inside her. This was the way out, right?

  The certainty that the cavern must have branched at some point without her noticing, and that she was leading Jeremy even deeper into a maze with no exit, began to creep inexorably into her mind. But just as she was beginning to seriously consider turning around and going back, she heard Jeremy grunt behind her.

  “I- I see light up ahead!” he exclaimed, tilting his head back.

  Miranda blinked in surprise, and then canceled her Brighteyes spell. Sure enough, there was a glimmer of sunlight in the near distance. Because of her spell, she hadn’t even noticed it. Relief washed over her, and she resumed her crawl, desperate to be free of this oppressive darkness.

  If Derrick ever tries to get me to do something like this again, I’ll…

  Oh. Right.

  She forced those thoughts to the back of her mind. There would be time to worry about things like that later. For now, she had to focus on safely getting Jeremy to Faen’s Hand.

  The light grew larger and brighter by the minute, and despite the circumstances, Miranda couldn’t help but feel her heart leap at the thought of being back in the wide open wilderness again. There may have been monsters and enemy guilds out there, but at least she’d be able to stand up straight and stretch her arms. She could almost smell that sweet, fresh…

  She emerged into the daylight and froze. The first thing she realized was that Aaron and Derrick were standing there in the knee deep water at the mouth of the cave.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The second thing she realized was that they had just walked into a trap.

  — —

  Still on his hands and knees, Jeremy followed Miranda out of the cave and into the light. After so much time spent underground, the sudden brightness felt like a pair of flaming nails being driven into his eyes, and he was forced to squeeze them closed before they were fried like a pair of eggs. Because of that, he didn’t realize Miranda had stopped until he ran into her from behind.

  “Huh,” a stranger’s voice greeted them. “I want to say I’m surprised, but this is just about the only thing that actually makes sense. How you doing, Miranda?”

  Jeremy raised one of his arms to shield his eyes, but the world was still nothing but a painful smear of colors. Only by squinting so hard that his eyelids ached was he able to get a general impression of their surroundings.

  The first thing he realized was that they were crouched at the base of a cliff. A natural crack in the stone produced the stream they had just crawled through, and in front of them stretched a rich, green forest. The sun was somewhere behind the cliff, blanketing the nearby woods in shadow, but even that faint amount of light was agony to his poor, sensitive eyes.

  And they weren’t alone.

  “Nice of you to lead us straight to the party,” the voice said again, “but I get the feeling that wasn’t your plan here.”

  Miranda was slowly and cautiously rising to her hooves in front of him. The tree man—Jeremy’s eye twitched a little—and the giant were standing in the water a few yards to their right. For a second, he thought it had been one of them who had spoken, but their eyes were fixed on the shore with an intensity that sent a chill down his spine.

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they were looking at—strike that, he absolutely did not want to know—but the tension in the air was so thick that he couldn’t stop himself.

  A little beach of white pebbles ran alongside the stream, and on it stood three blurry figures. Straining his eyes, Jeremy was able to make them come into view one by one. The one on the far left was an old woman.

  No, he realized with a jolt of surprise, a young woman.

  She crouched on her haunches, wearing a flexible looking set of brown leather armor. He had assumed that she was old because of the stark white color of her hair, but when he looked closer at her face he guessed that she must have been somewhere in her early twenties.

  A pair of long, pointed ears extended straight outwards on either side of her head. She glared icily at them, a short metal tomahawk clasped in one hand and a small buckler shield strapped to her other arm.

  As if it knew he was looking at her, a box popped up above her head.

  ZARA MASTERS

  LEVEL 17 RANGER

  (BOUNTY HUNTER)

  The man on the right was older than Zara by a handful of years, but although he was leaning heavily on a wooden walking stick, he wasn’t as old as he seemed at first.

  Calling him thin wouldn’t have been accurate—he was emaciated. Jeremy found himself wondering if the man was actually alive, or if he was just some kind of skeleton wearing a skin suit that was too small for it. The thought was absurd, but…well, there was a walking, talking tree standing just a few feet away. Whatever screwed up reality this turned out to be—dream, nightmare, or hellish afterlife—it obviously didn’t abide by the same rules that Jeremy was used to following.

  ISAAC CAIN

  LEVEL 21 BLACK MAGE

  (DEATHGATE SHAMAN)

  “What are you talking about?” the tree man demanded. Jeremy glanced at him, and the box above his head named him Derrick.

  The one in the middle shrugged. He was tall and broad shouldered, muscular without being bulky, and had a shaved head. The set of plate mail he was wearing was so polished that it made Jeremy’s still-adjusting eyes water. There was an image of a broken staff emblazoned on the breastplate in black, and he wasn’t wearing a helmet. What Jeremy had taken at first to be a mocking smirk was actually a scar that ran from the right corner of his mouth to the top of his cheekbone.

  MILES STREINHAUS

  LEVEL 19 CRUSADER

  (MAGEBREAKER)

  “I’m talking about him,” Miles said, and a sickening lurch shot through Jeremy’s entire body when the Magebreaker’s finger rose to point at him. “We’d just gotten back from a patrol when an NPC ran right past us through the city gates. I vaguely recognized him as the owner of a nearby shop.”

  “Ashes and flame,” Miranda whispered, her shoulders slumping a little.

  “Someone had hired him, but I couldn’t see who. That didn’t sit well with me, so my team and I decided to follow him and see what we found.” Miles folded his arms. “Looks like I made the right call.”

  Everyone was looking at Jeremy now, and he had to fight the urge to shrink back into the cave, where the walls and the darkness would hide him.

  These were dangerous people, and it wasn’t just the weapons in their hands that told him that. They gave off a sort of aura that told Jeremy they had killed before—and that they were going to kill again, very soon.

  It was an aura they shared with the giant and tree man…and with Miranda.

  Jeremy tore his gaze from the scarred man to look at her, and felt his spirits sink a little deeper into despair when he saw the look in her eyes. Scared. Ashamed. But there was also a hardness that told him that she wouldn’t hesitate to slit the throats of all three of these strangers if they forced her hand.

  Whatever that all-consuming light had done, he was clearly the only one here who hadn’t been affected by it. He was a little spring lamb who had found itself in the middle of a dispute between two wolf packs.

  Miles studied Jeremy for a few seconds, and a real smirk rose to his lips, further emphasizing his disfigurement. “Looks like they went and charged you up while you were down there. Welcome to hell, my friend.”

  “How do you know Miranda?” Aaron asked, his voice so deep it made the water around him ripple.

  “We play cards whenever she’s in town. Sometimes we’ll hire her if we’ve got a dirty job we don’t feel like doing ourselves.”

  “You’ve been working for the other guilds?” Derrick exclaimed, spinning around to glare at Miranda in outrage.

  “When she’s not busy robbing us!” Zara snapped.

  “Only for gold!” Miranda protested, her face going pale. “Never for XP, I swear!”

  Jeremy stared at them all, wide eyed. XP? As in, the stuff you levelled up with in roleplaying games? Were these people insane?

  Then again, he thought, his stomach turning over inside him, that would explain a lot…

  “Speaking of XP,” Isaac spoke up for the first time, his voice as thin as the rest of his body.

  “Right,” Miles agreed, nodding. “Care to explain what you were all doing down there?”

  “Don’t play games with us,” Derrick shot back. “We aren’t in the mood.”

  Miles raised an eyebrow. “Is that a demand? I knew you Underwing slurs were full of yourselves, but giving commands to the people who just caught you poaching on their territory?”

  “We just lost somebody down there, Miles,” Miranda said. “More fighting is the last thing we want right now. Please, can we just—”

  “Pretend this never happened?” Miles cut her off. “Sure. Just hand over all the XP you stole.”

  She hesitated. “We already traded it.”

  “And the dungeon?”

  She closed her eyes, and Jeremy swore he could hear her cursing herself inside her head. “We destroyed the core.”

  “Then it would appear we have a problem.”

  Jeremy looked at Miranda, then Derrick, then back at Miles. Nobody said anything, and for a long, tense minute the only sound was the water lapping against his arms and legs. Even the birds seemed to know that something was about to happen, and had gone silent.

  “Jeremy!” Miranda suddenly whispered. He looked at her, and she discreetly extended a hand behind her back toward him. “Take my hand! Do it now!”

  Jeremy began to stand up, reaching out for—

  Zara’s head swiveled toward him, and her ice-cold glare froze him in place.

  “There must be some way we can work this out,” Derrick pleaded, sounding exhausted.

  “That’ll be up to Captain McLane,” Miles said. “If you come with us willingly, I’ll make sure you get a chance to talk to him.”

  “Hurry!” Miranda hissed. Jeremy tried to take her hand, but Zara’s gaze had him petrified.

  “Has McLane ever let a poacher go?” Derrick asked.

  Miles hesitated, then shook his head. “Not as far as I know. Gotta be firm, or else people will walk all over you.”

  Derrick sighed. “Then you know we can’t do that.”

  Silence fell over the scene again. The tension was so strong that it felt like there was an electric current running through the air. Jeremy had never been in a fight, but even he could tell that one was going to break out here at any second—and it wasn’t going to be some playground brawl. If something didn’t stop them, people were going to die.

  As if waiting for their cue, more words appear in the air in front of Jeremy, nearly making him jump out of his skin.

  PRIMARY QUEST:

  REACH FAEN’S HAND SAFELY WITH MIRANDA JACKDAW.

  OBJECTIVE UPDATED:

  DEFEAT OR ESCAPE FROM THE SHIELD WARDEN GUILD.

  Miles grunted in disappointment. “Can’t say I expected any different. Hey, new guy?”

  Jeremy tore his eyes off the inexplicable message, and sucked down a panicked breath when he realized Miles was looking at him again.

  “Sorry about this. Especially since you just woke up.”