Day 56

Wooh! I was running through the forest, Lupe following behind, nearly empty satchels flapping in the wind. I had got up early and quickly ate, and immediately set out. I was dodging around trees, the familiar path whizzing past me as I went. Every now and then I would still drag my hand across trees, leaving marks and scrapes. I eventually ended up at the massive hole left in the ground by the giant worm and came to a stop, already halfway around it. I took a second to catch my breath in the chill winter air, my shadow cast long behind me. Lupe caught up behind me after a second, panting and lay on the ground, clearly exhausted already.

I decided to lay down and relax with him, taking a breather and a bite out of the little dried dragon jerky I had brought. I enjoyed the beer taste and chowed down eating a bunch. I pet Lupe's glowing stripe, as he rested and ate a little bit of jerky. We waited for about an hour but eventually, we got back up and examined the hole. It was still as bad as ever, a deep trench cutting through a couple of levels of the caves.

I aimed my hand in and tried willing it to concentrate deeper in, but to no avail. I shrugged and grabbed a large rock, and superheated it to a glowing red, and whipped it into the hole, spiking it deep into the hole, making an audible explosion. It lit the surroundings up for a couple of seconds, the glowing chunks highlighting the surrounding areas at the visible bottom. It looked like the upper layers, except there seemed to be vegetation, I could barely make out greenery with my right eye, as my left eye was still blurry as all hell. It looked like it was a layer or two deeper than the one I explored.

I looked at Lupe, and grabbed a leather rope I had made earlier, testing the knots I had made, finding them tight and strong, and tied it around the base of a nearby tree, throwing it down to the bottom, it hung a couple of feet off the ground, but not enough to worry. I grabbed Lupe and gently placed him in my empty satchel that was carrying the rope and started to rappel down. It was easy at first, all I had to do was kick off the sides of the wall to reduce my speed, but soon enough I got to the open-air portion, and having to slide down it without losing my grip was harrowing. Sure I had a strong left hand and arm, but that didn't matter when I had to loosen it to slide down. I haven't mentioned it a lot but I could feel with the Manaphage portions of my body, but a lot less, so I couldn't tell when the grip was just loose enough or not at all.

Eventually, I made it down in one piece, and set Lupe on the ground next to me, looking around I found myself in an unfamiliar part of the underground, probably because I hadn't explored it much. I held my hand up lighting up more of the area. The shadows of destruction still apparent, I didn't see any signs of animals or vegetables and peered into the next hole down. It was an even thicker layer of dirt, and what looked to be some sort of greenery. I swear, my left eye lit up with real light I was so happy. I couldn't see well with it but still. I was ecstatic, there were plants down there! Grass, root vegetables, moss, I don't care, I planned on eating it, after testing it, ya know.

I looked around for a way down to the next level, I only had the rope for the first level down, but I wanted to get down to those greens! I looked at the rubble around me and developed an absolutely terrible idea. I walked over to the largest chunk of the rubble and infused it with an inappropriate amount of magic, willing it to be as light as a feather, and shoved it into the hole, and it worked, also sapping me of all kinds of energy and I collapsed to the ground and promptly passed out.