The rock walls scraped ever closer as Adran shuffled into the cave. Gritty sandstone rasped at his shoulder, pressing him sideways through the opening. The surrounding stone seemed to glimmer in the darkness, his eyes demanding details as the light dimmed ever further.

“Keep your hand on the right wall,” Torean’s voice echoed down the tunnel. Adran grit his teeth at the imposing darkness, focusing solely on his footsteps and the roughness of the stone passing under his fingers. After an endless pause, he took another step. Again, the light dimmed, the stone wall grated, and his fingers traced. Another moment of gathering willpower, another step. More glimmers in his vision, louder echoes of his own breathing, and unyielding stone.

Adran shook his head and stepped forward again. The grit dug deeper into his fingertips, and he felt warm blood being drawn into the walls. He felt his shoulder bones grinding, and heard their shards landing at his feet. He felt the ceiling pressing down onto him, and knew, deep within himself, that the mountain-crushed rock above simply couldn’t withstand the pressure any longer. He felt it pressing the very life out of him, felt the vibrations as the stone prepared to fill the overlooked passage, and trap him for an eternity in darkness.

Adran stepped forward once more, and felt a cold rivulet of water run over his trailing hand. He stared at the darkness, willing it to show his hand in front of him. He reached down at his feet, plunging his hands over the lip of rock and into a lake of miracles, unsounded and vast. He tried to speak, his voice emerging as an inhuman croaking, taunting him with echoes from the void.

“I’ve found it.” He called out, deafened by the reflections of his own voice. Shuddering at the chill permeating through his mind, his shaking hands dropped his pack and withdrew the company’s 6 waterskins. He filled them numbly, praying for the water to oblige quickly, and allow him departure from this realm of terror and seeping panic.

After minutes of nothing but darkness and his own stuttering heartbeat, he stowed the waterskins in the pack and began walking back, right hand tracing the wall. He stepped, felt his shoulder skid along, and paused to breathe. Step, skid, breathe. Step, skid-

His breath caught. Adran felt his heart stop. He reached out with his left arm, and found no wall to grasp. Time in the darkness was endless, and he couldn’t recall how many steps he’d taken in, nor how many he’d taken to get out. He knew that his left arm should be tracing the wall to exit, but as he flailed in the dark he felt nothing, only the faint current of near-stagnant air.

He sat, his right hand affixed to the wall in desperate fear of total loss. Staring into the void, the glimmers intensified, and he saw the wall, mere paces away. He closed his eyes, unable to stand the thought of it being a phantasm, a trick of his mind in a moment of panic.

Finally, he gathered his courage and stood. Stretching out from the wall, he held his left hand forward and stepped away, the crushing darkness giving no hints of where the end might be. He pushed off hard from the ground, beginning to run, hoping only to find the other side.

He ran directly into the wall, his vision flashing white with a piercing ache. Staggering, blind, and with a pain shooting from his chin to his forehead, he ran along the left wall until the light returned to guide him.

–

Adran stepped from the cave, the sun shooting daggers of betrayal into his eyes, and stopped in front of the water barrel. He emptied the skins into it, watching the water level inch upwards to the halfway point, his knees shaking with the adrenaline and relief of his hasty exit.

“What took so you long?” Torean asked, sitting against the other side of the barrel. At the lack of response he stood, seeing Adran for the first time. “What happened to your face?”

Adran closed his eyes, leaning heavily on the barrel. “I took the wrong wall back for a while, then realized and hopped over to the left wall. I may have run headfirst into the rock,” he admitted through clenched teeth.

A burst of laughter caught him off guard, and he looked over to the side, where Ynten and Qarnet sat tending a fire. “It’s not much fun, is it?” Ynten called out, grinning hugely. His eyes were large behind ugly, barely-functional glasses, pressing deep ridges into his nose and ears.

“At least I didn’t break our only compass,” Adran called back, smiling despite himself. “I don’t think I can do that again,” he sighed, dropping his pack beside the barrel. “It’s too cramped, I can barely keep my thoughts in my head.”

Torean slumped, downcast. “That’s all right, I can keep going. Qarnet, you’ll have to take some turns eventually.” He said over his shoulder, stepping through the slashing entrance.

Qarnet smiled widely. “Of course I will. And you’ll have to cook tonight, and suffer our criticism!” he shouted at the cave.

Adran cocked his head, ignoring the pain from his battered cheek. “Why would he have to do that?”

Qarnet looked back at the fire, his smile dimming. “He bet that you’d do at least five runs before you gave up, I said that you’d never manage more than two. Now he’s paying the stakes.” Qarnet shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry for betting against you, but Torean’s never made a reasonable statement in his life. I’d bet against him just on principle.”

Adran lay near the fire, looking over the edge to the cleared area below. A dozen trees had been felled already in a widening clearing. The beginnings of a log cabin were taking shape between the stumps. “I can’t believe he’s going to do this,” Adran said, staring at shadows lurking in the thick undergrowth. “Are you sure the food will last him?”

Qarnet grunted, throwing another lump of wood on the fire. It burst into flame immediately, yellow flames curling like a river around a stone. “Yes.”

Adran nodded, accepting the answer as he had each time he’d asked. Long minutes passed, the silence broken only by Torean’s return from the spring, and departure. “It only took us a couple weeks to get here, so three months should allow us to go out and return.” Adran looked at the clouds drifting by, dimming the sun moment by moment. “I’d feel better if we had a compass, to be sure of our navigation.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, actually.” Ynten sat up, his magnified eyes staring through the mountainside. “The glass refracts differently based on the heat applied right? But you mentioned that your glass glove was lighter than it should be, your imparted lightness wasn’t wearing off as it normally did?”

Adran nodded, the shape of the idea coming through. “Well,” Ynten continued, “I think it can interact with and channel magic as it does with light. Refract, bend, mirror, and store it, like no material I’ve ever worked with. So all we need is to bind both Apothet’s metal blessing and Porial’s directional blessings to it to magnetize it.”

Ynten reached into his bag, and brought out a device, a construct the size of a large man’s head. It was woven of ropes, strand over strand, each tied into intricate knots and threaded around slender poles to create a rough pyramid. The knots, once laid together, created a pair of interlocking sigil patterns; and the construct -ropes, poles, and all- was made of crystal glass, seemingly tied together when molten by red-hot hands.

Ynten looked up at the clouds, waiting. When the sun peeked through, he held it over a patch of bare stone, and the light shattered, casting a circle of dancing light shards on the ground. He lifted it further up, and the shards coalesced into a circle with a small break, pointing roughly north. He smiled and rotated the construct, and Adran realized the circle wasn’t following. The gap pointed north regardless of how it was held.

“And there you are,” Ynten said, placing the glasswork on the stone. “I couldn’t sleep last night with the pounding in my head, so I decided to give it a shot. I still can’t quite explain how, but it seems to work. Just don’t follow my lead and headbutt the compass.” Ynten gave a pained smile and closed his eyes again.

“Then I guess it’s decided,” Adran said, looking at the cave. “Torean will settle here, and the rest of us will take the easy road, trekking back to civilization to convince them of an unbelievable miracle, only to the hike all the way back.”

“No,” Ynten cut in. “I’m staying too. If these glass marvels are half as important as I think they’ll end up being, the world will change around me.” He tilted backwards to lie beside the fire. “If I’m right… I’m not sure I’ll ever leave.”