“Kill the lights!” I hissed, dropping down to the others, trying to land as softly as possibly. I didn’t quite succeed, but given the distances involved, I was reasonably certain the rat-spider-things wouldn’t be able to hear us. The light though, they might have already noticed that. Luckily, Olivia didn’t ask questions, instead the golden flames on her staff instantly winked out of existence, leaving us in complete darkness once more.

“What did you see?” she asked, sounding concerned.

“Have you ever seen an ant-hill?” I asked in response, as I used my Darkness Magic to perceive my surroundings.

“Imagine that, just instead of tiny ants, you have weird, spider-like rats the size of a small wolf.” A shudder ran down my spine, as I wondered why such creatures would need tunnels the size of the one we had used. A spider-rat the size of a horse was not something I wanted to see, ever, but then, I would’ve preferred not seeing the smaller-sized spider-rats either. There was something about their skittering movement that creeped me out a lot worse than the arachnids had done, a primal and powerful revulsion that made me consider setting their nest on fire a valid option, despite my hate for fire.

“Do you want to continue? Or should we head back?” Sigmir asked, cautiously moving forward a little, one arm on the wall to guide herself.

“I think we should. We asked a deity for guidance, there should be a reason for her response, right?” I looked over to Olivia, forgetting for a moment that she wouldn’t be able to see my gaze. I had to suppress an inappropriate giggle when I saw the form that was her nod, despite the complete darkness.

“Lady Eleutheria should have her reasons, sending us down this path.” she replied verbally, though I wasn’t sure how truly confident she was in her statement. Maybe the darkness and monsters lurking within managed to shake even her faith.

“Well, let’s go, I’ll guide you to the underground river I found, I didn’t notice anything like these monsters there.” I told the others and realised that we had more than just my concealment-magic. “Adra, can you please cast that concealment-spell of yours? And Rai, do you think you can push the cloak of shadows I taught you out, to cover all of us?” I asked them, getting one affirmative, one negative answer in return.

“My magic works with the forest, the plants around us, to hide the tracks we make and confuse trackers. I’m afraid there is very little forest around us to help.” Adra stated, her voice nervous.

“I’ll try, Teacher.” Rai sounded a little more confident than Adra, but the fact that he addressed me as Teacher told me that he wasn’t too confident, either. He had been using my name more and more, as his confidence had grown. Not that I really minded, he had turned out to be a remarkably good student, quickly turning into a real asset.

I could feel the waves of Astral Power flowing out of him, wrapping around us in an almost smothering cloak. It wasn’t as subtle as I would have liked, a being sensitive to Darkness Magic might detect it, even at a distance, but it should conceal us quite well, while allowing me to carefully ward off the tendrils of Darkness the spider-rats used for detection and possibly other purposes.

Once concealed, I stretched out the vines of my Eisblumen, guiding the others into a row behind me, and continued on my merry way. Without light, I was limited to perceiving the Darkness around me, just as I had with my tendrils, making it almost easier to follow my earlier exploration as things looked the same again.

We got to the tunnel towards the underground river without incident, but just as we turned in, I heard Rai urgently whisper, “Teacher, I’m almost out of Power.”

His words brought a frown to my face, though I should have expected it. He wasn’t a pure spell-caster, not even close, so expecting him to conceal the entire group for an extended period of time had been unrealistic. His efforts were appreciated nonetheless, allowing me to add my own Astral Power into the concealment he had used, smoothing it out as I took over. It would be a bit of a distraction to keep up, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

The tunnel towards the underground river was, again, smoothly cut into the mountain, or however it had been created, by this point I was almost certain it was artificial, not something the spider-rats had moved into. Thanks to the smooth ground, we could make quick progress, even in the dark, and after what felt like a good hundred meters, I softly told Olivia that she could light up her staff again.

Her relieved sigh made me smile, just a little bit, even if I had an inkling just how disturbing it would be, to be completely cut off from your primary form of perception, while knowing that there are monsters nearby. As she chanted, I moved into the back of our group, ready to block off the light from spreading up the tunnel. I had no idea if the spider-rats would notice, if they even had eyes, though the luminescent lichen around their tunnels hinted at that.

“Ugh.” I let out an annoyed grunt, pushing the thoughts about the spider-rats and questions regarding their sensory organs from my mind. I might just have found the edge of my curiosity, something I really wasn’t curious about, that I didn’t want to know, not even as an academic question. I simply wanted those creepy, skittering things to be as far away from me as possible.

With light, we could move even faster and soon, we could hear the quiet noise of the underground river. At the same time, the smooth ground turned slippery with ambient moisture and intense scents started to flow into my nostrils.

On the magical side, it was still the all-encompassing Darkness of the underground tunnels, but now mixed with a crisp, eternally freezing cold carried by the water from the Glaciers somewhere far above us. In addition to that, there was something almost similar to the scent of Blood in the air, though it was less coppery and more primal, reminding me of the northern forests with their boundless, stubborn vitality. On the mundane side, I could smell the moisture in the air, mixed with the smell of plant-life and mold, not too unpleasant, compared to the dry, dusty smells of the tunnels.

Stepping into the cavern itself, I quickly realised that I hadn’t paid too much attention, the tunnel ending on a ledge almost two meters above the stream, something I hadn’t quite internalised due to the floating nature of my tendrils.

Climbing down was not a lot of fun, the slick, wet rock and the general horrid lighting combining to make our lives difficult. We somehow managed, mostly by working together and pushing our system-enhanced bodies, while still managing to slip and slide, getting a few bruises in the process, but we made it down.

There, we could finally relax a little and I was grateful that we had moved into the tunnels and past the spider-rats. While the earlier tunnels had been gorgeous, with small flecks of crystals in the rocks reflecting and refracting the light to create a magical scenery, the cavern with the underground river took that to a whole new level.

The gently flickering light from Olivia’s staff was reflected by the small brook in the middle of the cavern, the moving water causing it to dance and glitter, as it bounced off the shimmering, wet walls. It was breathtaking, the light and shadow woven together in a magical fashion and for once, I wasn’t sure if the cyclical view of the world didn’t have a point to it. Here, in the depth of the earth, I could truly see the beauty of the twilight, the time when light and darkness co-existed, mutually enhancing each other. An endless cycle, unbroken as the two sides of the coin spun through the void.

“We should continue moving.” Sigmir reminded me, pulling me from my reverie.

Shaking my head, I focused on the cave itself, instead of looking at the pretty lights. It was similar to the tunnels we had moved in earlier, before we had stumbled onto the strange, artificial tunnels, only that now, the deepest parts were still filled with running water, slowly making its way downwards. There was more than enough space to move, even for Sigmir, but keeping our footing would be challenging, due to the ambient moisture and a thin film of slimy fungus or lichen that covered the rock of the cavern.

Taking the formation we had used earlier, we continued on our path, hopefully on an unimpeded path towards the surface.