The wind swished wildly from a natural vent on Wünder’s left. It gushed forth in waves, and blurred all sounds, bringing a chill to Wünder’s body. As he observed, Reynolds mouthed. “I’ll show you to him. Follow me.”

Had Reynolds been a victim of aspersions? Wünder could only guess as much. Or perhaps hunting down Elysia and Wünder after getting rid of Brown might have been too much risky - Wünder had such doubts after understanding his brother’s plan. “Lead me on,” Brown conferred, his face yellowish under the glow of the torch.

Wünder looked apprehensively at his brother, but the latter merely nodded his head, his jaw firmly set. Elysia gripped the hem of her dress, following Reynolds, and Wünder stepped in behind them, walking slowly, looking down. The cave brightened as they crossed through another room. “We are now in the working area for silver ore extraction, Wünder,” Brown said, turning to his right.

He came face to face with a monster with a reptilian head.

Brown ducked, as the monster lunged above him, and crashed upon Reynolds. The latter separated himself from the creature with a tremendous shove.

“Curses of hell! Where did that come from?!” Brown panted. Elysia and Wünder hurried along to get behind Brown. Brown lifted the torch, and swung it around to prevent the fire from extinguishing itself.

The monster, which looked like it had the head of a lizard, and limbs covered with scales harried at Reynolds, tracing arcs in the air with its claws. These looked extremely sharp and shimmered dully in the flickering glow of the torch. The creature’s eyes were a bright red, and long fangs protruded from its jaws. It had a reddish-brown skin, and stood upright on its hind legs as it swiped its arms at Reynolds.

The man charged at the lizard-like creature with his shoulder, and placated it against the cave’s wall. A sharp sound was heard, as if a bony junction had been cracked. Reynolds pressed the monster forcefully to the wall, before turning his body like a spring, and reverting it back upon the lizard-headed humanoid to give a final charge.

"..."

Another crack was heard, as the monster groaned in pain.

Reynolds stepped back, jumping away without any delay. Elysia looked at the scene, her face aghast. The air was suddenly heavy, with deep breaths and choking sounds heard, as the monster clawed at its face, which seemed dislodged, and shrieked stridently, before spitting a glob of what looked like blood.

It finally turned its body over, trying to lift itself back up. For an instant, Wünder thought that the creature looked pitiful. He felt like he could empathize with it, and the fact that he felt that made him scared. Elysia whimpered inchoately, caught by the shock of the turn of events, and trembled as she held Wünder’s hand.

Wünder himself was no exception to the fear. The thing in front of him certainly was a monster which could incite blood-curdling screams. “Thanks, Reynolds,” Brown murmured, admiration and hesitation in his voice.

“You are welcome.” Reynolds looked at them, seeming to inquire about their safety, but his eyes was dead-set on Elysia and only Elysia. Wünder thought that queer, but what was more queer was when Brown pointed out to him that he was crying.

Brown hugged him, whispering in his ear. “I’m sure you haven’t soiled yourself, so I won’t ask. Put up a brave face now, or it’ll be worse remembering things later on.” He then went on to hug Elysia, and said something in Elysia’s ear as well. This calmed her visibly. And lastly, he addressed Reynolds. “Young man, what age are you?”

“I’m… Please wait a moment.” Reynolds held his head, as if it were aching, and hissed, his eyes held acutely open, before he finally, as if surpassing something immense, said. “I’m eighteen years old. I come from-” He growled, and groaned, before looking at Brown with empty eyes. “What was I saying?”

“You were telling me about where you come from…” Brown shielded the two adolescents with both hands.

“Oh! That’s right, where I come from… Sorry, I forgot about its name. I’ve travelled a lot, you see?”

“I see, that’s alright,” Brown assured him, as the man beheld him with bloodshot eyes. “Thank you for subjugating the creature. He was a frightful one.” The monster lay there without being able to get up, and at length, stopped its struggles, death dawning upon it.

“Yeah, you bet he was. I’ve seen the likes of him a dozen times.”

“You mean you know where it came from?”

Reynolds stared at Brown for a moment, before the light in his eyes appeared to grow duller. “No, I haven’t the faintest idea where it comes from.” He coughed. “Besides that, let’s keep going. We’ll be in trouble if more of these monsters appear.”

“You intrigue me,” Brown said aloud. Reynolds looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but Brown only waved his right hand at him, saying not to mind his words. “Seeing such a creature here in the caves is a first for me. I wonder if it came from the unexplored territory we had discovered yesterday. It just opened up right after a wall of the cave crumbled to dust. Not even bits or lumps remain of the wall. It’s quite mysterious.”

“Sounds interesting,” Reynolds said mindlessly, as if his former spirit of interaction had gone.

Brown walked on silently, pausing before each bend, as if expecting a monster to pop up at the end of each one. “Such a killjoy,” he mused after the third bend.

Wünder looked at him reproachfully. “You want to get us killed, brother?”

Brown did not appear to hear him. He instead seemed to focus his attention on Reynolds. “You think these creatures can talk, Wünder?”

“I would not think so, brother.”

“Yeah, right. That’s right, huh?”

“You are rambling about anything at all, aren’t you?” Reynolds mused darkly. “Why don’t you hurry so that we can reach Router much more quickly? I’ll take care of the monsters for you. More like, let me take the lead. It’s much more practical this way.”

Brown shrugged but did not concede his place. “I would be troubled if you got injured first, and we couldn’t take care of the creatures which might show up.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I can evade the creatures as easily as you.”

“That’s some fine info from you. Why didn’t you become a squire rather than a miner?”

Reynolds paused in his steps. “The flow was just against me becoming that.”

Brown pondered over his words. “Flow?” He couldn’t say anything more than this, as he was parted aside, and Reynolds took the lead. “Reynolds, are you another one of those cursed people?”

“I’m not!” yelled Reynolds, his face transformed into a grimace.

Brown glanced at Reynolds with a placid, lukewarm look on his face. “Your eyes were not yellow when you were fighting, Reynolds. Do you think it’s yellow again now?”

“That’s none of your business.” Reynolds motioned for Elysia to come behind him, and Brown chose not to intervene. “You should protect your little companion, Brown. I haven’t been to this cave’s uncharted territory, but if that’s where that lizardman came from, I would think that the entire cave is endangered.”

“That’s very rational of you,” grumbled Brown while keeping a stoic face. He moved to the back of the group, to protect Wünder, like Reynolds had said, leaving the man himself perplexed. “Talking to you almost makes me feel like the dead body I saw was a lie, but Router is definitely dead. I don’t know what to make of you, Reynolds.”

Reynolds kept quiet for a while, before relenting. “That’s fine by me.”

Brown jumped on his reply. “You know, Elysia is quite an artless girl. Her only vanity is what her youth brings out in her.”

“I don’t understand why you are telling me this.”

“That aside, I feel like I really want to ask you what I’ve been thinking so far now,” Brown cleared his throat. “Tell me truthfully, will you?”

Reynolds halted his steps anew. “What do you want?”

“We’ve been making much leeway from the place where Router’s dead body was found. Where are you taking us? Are we heading to your lair? Are you part of a-”

“We are not heading to any lair, and I’m not what you mean to say I am.” Reynolds turned his head to his left. “Are you satisfied?”

“I’m not,” Brown pushed, before suddenly noticing something by the wall on the right. He stopped walking. “By the way, Reynolds, did you hear of any monsters which looked all golden roaming in the mines?”

“You are too talkative, Mr. Loxias.”

“I owe that to my surname,” said Brown, making a proud announcement of it. He bent and looked at a hole to his right. He put his hand into it, and felt a draft of air coming from the hole. He went for a torch hanging by the wall, and took it from its metal bracket. “Should I assume you didn’t hear of these monsters?” pondered Brown. He approached the hole. “Well, what have we got here?”

“What are you looking at, brother?” Wünder stopped in his track, as did the pair ahead of him.

“Wünder, could you help me for a bit?” Brown tapped above the hole. “I want you to get in there.”

“Okay!” Wünder acceded, walked over, and then got on his knees. Brown handed him the torch. Wünder took it, and then crept into the hole, his knees scraping against the rocky surface.

“You are making us lose precious time,” declared Reynolds, grabbing Elysia’s hand, and ensuing. “We’ll go on ahead if the boy doesn’t come back out in ten minutes.”

“Yeah, yeah, do whatever you want, but leave Elysia here. You’ve got the medicine you wanted, right? I’m not letting my friend’s daughter go through any more danger. God knows how stupid I am for only realizing this now.”

“Oh, but you are stupid indeed,” Reynolds said, in a strange voice. It was a cold, inhumane voice.

“What… did you say?!” Brown asked him loudly.

“Congratulations, your brother is gonna get killed.” The face glowering at him through the torch’s light looked imperious, scornful, before it returned to its grim, serious self. “…Huh? What? What just happened right now?” Elysia stared at him in terror, and tried to get free from his hold, but couldn’t do it. “I’m not holding you. I swear it isn’t me who is holding you!”

Brown looked at him with a threatening glare, before scrambling into the hole, and looked for the light coming from the torch held by his brother. He found him standing in front of what seemed to be a polka-dotted egg. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except that the egg was the height of his brother, and was as large as the oldest tree in Delossus, the village they lived in.

Under the light of the fire, Brown noticed another egg at the entrance they had come from. Brown assumed that these only looked like eggs, but for hearing a crack, which was then followed by another, and then another one. The eggs looked about ready to hatch. “Oh shit!” The cracks on the eggs grew wider, and Brown shouted to Wünder to get back through the hole, but the latter remained frozen, and Brown ran to him, taking his trembling hand, and charged back for the hole, but a monster of golden shades sprung out of the egg by the side of the hole. “Damn!”

“Let’s go, Elysia, it’s dangerous in there!”

“B-But! But Wünder! Wünder is in there!”

Brown could hear Elysia resisting Reynolds, but he couldn’t do a thing in his current situation. “I really should have considered tackling Reynolds again. Shouldn’t have mattered even if the man looked strong.”

Even as Wünder asked him questions, and looked at the monster in front of them with terrified eyes, Brown took the torch from Wünder’s hands, looked behind them, and noticed that the path continued on ahead, turning sharply to the right. “Got no choice.. Let’s run for it, Wünder!”

While the second monster was taking birth into this world, Brown sprinted along the path presented in front of him, holding on tightly to his brother’s hand, and looked no more behind him.

***

Duff had noticed a lot of men walking towards the mines with young girls. He wondered if something was going on there. He came across a person he knew, but when he tried to approach him, he got the cold treatment.

“I don’t know a brat like you! Get lost!”

Duff found it to be puzzling. There was Brenda, the raven-haired girl. And there, Blair, who would make scarecrows to place in her father’s wheat field. Their parents were all people he knew and was on familiar terms with.

“I wonder why they are all heading for the mines. Did something important happen there?” he brooded silently, while making his way alongside them.