34 | Light in the Dark

Eli breathes in a deep breath, but it is not precisely the rush of fresh air he was hoping for. Such things cannot exist so far down. But the air is moving, and this must mean there are tunnels for it to circulate through. It would be nearly impossible otherwise. 

Elijah Jyce

the Reaper, the Unknown, the Elder

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25/97 Buds | 2/10 Roots | 2/5 Filaments

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Stems

Bladewielder (15), Minddreamer (2)

Eli starts. The magic so rarely volunteers any change in his numbers. Buds have gone up a little with his climb, at least. It was certainly strenuous enough.

“Klia?” he asks, glancing down at the girl poking impatiently at his leg to be let up out of the tree. “Do your numbers grow when you do things such as climb this tree?”

She nods and puts her fingers together as if to say a little. So, they are at least a little similar in nature. Perhaps hers went up as well with the danger of the floating monster, but Eli doubts she’ll tell him.

“Alright, he very careful,” he says, carefully setting the flicking torch in a crook of the wood where it won’t burn anything, boosting this way up and taking Klia by the wrist to help her out of the tree’s trunk.

It is a broad top to this tree, with a dozen paces worth of uneven surface where they can sit, dipped enough in the center Eli would be fully comfortable sleeping up here. Not that they have time for such things. Massive branches lead away and into the dark of the cavern top where he cannot discern. Eli does not even wish to think about the fall below them and doesn’t look over the edge yet, not wanting to lose his nerve. 

Still, the trunk is large and thick enough he is not nervous to have Klia sitting in the center of it.

“Stay right there,” he tells her. “And don’t crawl near the edge.”

She doesn’t quite listen, laying on her stomach so she can peek just off the nearest edge, slinking back a moment later with a vastly concerned expression. Eli would laugh if everything didn’t hurt.

Carefully, leaving his pack near Klia so it doesn’t hurt his balance, he gets to his feet and steps closer to the nearest thick branch. It is massive enough to be walked on easily, even with his old legs, so long as he doesn’t consider the fall too much. Mumbling to himself, he glances around at the tree, considering how the Order still has not given him any identifying information about it. He would think there would be something by now. Perhaps this monster of a tree avoided it all—all the strangeness and mutation, so far below the ground. But this does not quite add up either, for he cannot imagine something so large could exist down here without the help of magic.

“Where are you coming from?” he asks the breeze, then louder, says to Klia. “Do you see anything in the branches?”

Her face is turned toward the wide expanse of the cavern, where the massive underground body of water should be, barely visible to Eli’s eyes from this height. He wonders where the monster is, drowned in all the oppressive darkness, and puts the thought from his mind.

“Do you see anything?” he asks again, not even restricting this curiosity to this tree.

She shrugs and glances up. He wonders very much what goes on in her mind, but nearly doesn’t wish to know. There is enough weighing upon him already, and if she does wish to speak to him—or write to him, rather—these types of things can wait.

Even after a glance up into the branches, she only looks at him sadly.

“No Thistle?” he asks. He’s been holding onto hope that the higher they return to the tunnels from which they fell, perhaps she would pick back up on their shared bond. There’s nothing in her eyes that would suggest such. Her momentarily excitement is gone, replaced by tired misery Eli cannot blame her, not at all, but knows no way to help. He sits beside her a moment, taking a drink and attempting not to dwell on the ache within his arm.

When they find their way back into the tunnels, he is going to sleep. Judging by Klia’s slumped posture, she won’t be giving any arguments. Squinting up at the trees, Eli counts a few of the spare leaves that manage to grow along its branches. Perhaps he should try to use minddreamer, it could not make his thoughts less clear, but he is not discounting needing it in a fight. With a huff, he seals the water back up, twisting his sickle between his fingers. For the first time in a while, he uncovers the new marking on his hand. It is not much changed—if he stares long enough, he thinks that perhaps the petals look larger than he believed, and that the little leaves curling away from the heart of the flower are more spread out, but it must be a trick of his mind. He has not looked at it closely in a long while. Even if it has shifted, he wouldn’t know much use it would be to him.

Above, he watches the few leaves flicker. They are not all dragging in one direction by the strange breeze. Eli frowns at them. More than one tunnel? Rising carefully, he instructs Klia to stay and carefully steps up the nearest branch as wide as him and reaching up into the dark, the one with the most ruffling of its leaves far above. Using his sickle for extra balance when he needs it, he eases up onto the next branch, squinting into the dark. There is a possibility Klia does see something up here but isn’t recognizing it as a way out.

With his good arm, he holds his torch as high as it’ll go, telling himself the drop below his feet is nothing, that he has stood on mountain cliffs quite taller than this and not been too terribly dizzy, he does not need to feel panic. The scant light is worth very little. Carefully, he takes the strange little orb from his pocket, washed up in the soft lapping of the cold water. Holding it tight between his fingers lest it falls, he squints at its strange pale light, the markings on it like the tentacles which nearly dragged them to their deaths.

I wonder…

Thinking of the monster and the strange song he felt behind his chest bone, as if it would drag him apart, he puts the glassy substance close to his face, as if it can hear him, and hums. A shiver of light ripples across his fingers. Eli stares down at it, nearly amused in an exhausted way. What a strange creature, and a stranger little remnant it left. It has been so long since he heard songs sung by another person. So, so long. He grasps for any lullaby Lyra used to sing to Abner. Many of them were in her own language, not Eli’s native tongue, but he remembers them far better than those by any of his own people.

Feeling a little silly but unable to find anything in their new existence too strange, he raises his voice and holds the little light above his head. It shimmers pale blue between his fingertips, and sends weak beams higher than the warm flames of his torch. Eli nearly smiles at the path it lights.

Returning to the safety of the middle of the tree, he takes his pack and Klia’s hand. She holds onto him without question or excitement, her tired gaze on the path beneath her feet. Whatever she sees in the darkness, it is of little use to them now, as Eli steps over tree branches and knots of strange bark nearly turned to stone. If we are down here long enough, will we turn to stone as well? Eventually, he helps Klia into a broken section of the cavern, into a walkway carved with familiar runes faded by time and abandon.

For a few dozen steps, they follow the tunnel at its upward slant, before Eli makes a pillow out of his backpack, and lays out with Klia tucked up under his good arm once more.