Beau jumped when the screeching noise emanated through the tunnel, the three of them being closer to the mouth when it closed than the other group. Ban pulled out a dagger, then was temporarily disoriented when he discovered his night vision was worthless (as there was no small speck of light even). Huai smiled, though of course, the two young men couldn’t tell.
“We’re all going to die!” Beau exclaimed, “We’re all going to die… And I haven’t even told Al-”
“Stop talking,” Ban commanded. “You’re wasting our potentially limited air supply.” Beau whimpered instead, which arguably wastes just as much air.
Huai laughed pleasantly. “Now, don’t panic boys. I can deal with this easily.”
“We don’t need your help!” Ban exclaimed, baring his teeth slightly in a grimace that was completely wasted in the dark.
“Yes we do!” Beau protested, realizing that not only would he die in the dark, but also with the two of them.
Huai’s voice grew sad (and they couldn’t see his smile) as he replied, “Well, I’m sorry Beau, but I can’t help you if you both don’t want it. Sayonara, boys.” Footsteps echoed in the silent tunnel.
Beau dropped to the floor. “Now look what you’ve done. We’ll both slowly suffocate here, and… and…” He said with a sniffle.
“We aren’t going to die,” Ban asserted. “Most catacombs have a way out, it’s just a matter of finding it.”
Blinking, Beau smiled. He then sat up in surprise as he felt a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Ban?” He voice quietly.
The response came, “What? We will get out, I already said.”
Huai burst into laughter from his position behind Beau. “Sorry, sorry, I just wanted to see what you would do! I know I said I’d be a chaperone, but don’t worry,” he said with a pause and a wink (that went unnoticed) “I won’t bother you if you guys want to…”
Beau jumped up quickly, shoving Huai’s hand off his shoulder. “We don’t!” Ban and Beau said together as Huai laughed. He then snapped and in a moment, a flame appeared, floating in the air over his hand.
Glaring at Huai, Ban waved through the flame with his hand, quenching it. “Flames will use our air. It’s inadvisable.”
The fire appeared again. “Don’t worry, kitty. This flame doesn’t consume air, and in any case, there’s a way out, so don’t worry about air.”
Beau glanced at Huai with a monkey like expression of curiosity. “How’d you make the fire appear? Sam has to say something…”
Huai grinned, an expression that seemed rather maniacal due to the lighting. “Well, I’m a more experience magic user than her, I would think. I can just snap and think the word, but she has to say…”
“Eykavua tepineite!” Sam exclaimed, holding her book in front of her. A flame floated above it. The tunnel seemed very dark and creepy with the fire casting shadows into crevices, making it far worse than it should have been.
A loud noise made her whirl around as she scanned the shadows for an enemy. Suddenly, there was movement at all corners of her vision as the flames danced, causing her to back up against a wall in panic.
“There’s no one else here,” she told herself, her voice echoing in the dark. “And I’d hear them because it’s so echoey. So it’s fine.” She forced herself to start walking.
She paused as she heard footsteps. “It’s… probably just my own footsteps. The chances someone else would be here…” She kept walking, thinking ‘But that one time I thought it was, someone came up from behind me and touched my shoulder, really startling me.’ She stopped and turned around. In the scope of her flame there was no one there.
“Okay, I’m just imagining things, I’m just imagining things, I just have to breathe, breathe in, breathe out, breathe- SPIDER!” Sam jumped back. A shadow changed to turn from a spider to an inkblot. She sighed. “Okay so, there’s no one there. They… the shadows are not out to get me. The shadows are not out to get me. I’ll sing! That’s it! ‘In sleep he sang to me, in dreams…’” she trailed off, eyes flicking to the walls nervously. “Maybe minor keys aren’t the best for me……. Let’s try…. ‘I’ve got a lov-e-ly bunch of…’ WHAT WAS THAT?!” She jumped around.
There was nothing there except shadows and rock. She muttered to herself. “I can’t… this isn’t working. Eykavua etekao!” The flame expanded to race down the walls, leaving scorch marks. Sam stood in the dark.
“Ok, breathe,” she told herself. “Just have to think this through.” She sat down to make herself a smaller target. “Ok, fire is not a good option. It will only give me some visibility but will let others see me well. However, if I could just see in the dark…” She grinned. “Yes!” Her words echoed on the walls.
Grabbing her book, Sam stood up. However, she couldn’t see the pages and was therefore forced to rely on her nonexistent knowledge of the language the spells were in. She turned to her French knowledge instead. “Voir du soir!” She exclaimed, fearing having to resort to the flame spell to read the book. The book glowed as it tried to carry out the spell, which was sufficient (even if the spell didn’t work.) Sam amended a few seconds later, “Vuxte opaon!” This did work.
To her surprise, there were holes on the sides of the tunnel wall. Running up to them, she discovered that on the left side, below, a fire illuminated the figures of Ban, Beau and Huai walking in a state of brooding (or in the case of the middle person, nervous) silence. To the right side, she could see Al, Dlak, and Vi stumbling around in the dark.
A pile formed as Vi shoved Al forward, knocking Dlak over, but then tripping, herself, causing them all to wind up on the ground. In dark as they were, this was a bad situation, as when the two girls’ glasses fell to the ground, they were as good as lost. Scrambling around like rodents in the water, they found their sense of touch was not all that keen.
Al stood up with a sudden idea. “Hey, these stones glow when they turn into weapons, right?! Vi, make your quarterstaff come!” She commanded. The other girl stood up with her rock in her hand, and in a instant, it expanded into a quarterstaff. Dlak yelled in pain as it extended to hit him, but there wasn’t any flash. Al sighed. “Maybe I should try it myself,” she mused, reaching into her bag.
Having heard from his brother that Al’s weapon was a sword, and remembering the pain from the blunt staff, Dlak shouted, “No!” Al, lazy without encouragement, sat down to take a nap while they searched, but didn’t have time. As the search resumed, Dlak flicked his lighter, illuminating the cave for a moment. “Hey, I found your glasses over here,” he called, gesturing from a kneeling position with his free hand.
The illumination from the flame revealed two glaring faces, shadows making them look positively diabolical. A grin burst from one of them, reminding Dlak of a jack-o-lantern. “Where was this lighter when we were emptying our pockets earlier?!” Vi exclaimed, throwing a rock at him.
The stone Al had taken from her bag flashed and turned into a sword. Dlak took a step back as it shown in the fire light, dropping his lighter. Everything went dark again. “Attack!” Al commanded, a la Napoleon. Kald laughed from inside Dlak’s head.
Vi scrambled on the floor to steal the lighter and hide it while it was still dark. She missed the logic that said that if she stole the lighter, it wouldn’t be able to be light, the flash from Al’s sword now gone and her quarterstaff apparently defective. As her hand grabbed something, she exclaimed, “Victory!”
She dropped it again as she accidentally flicked it on. Dlak caught it from the air and held on to it protectively. Al blinked, something having occurred to her. “Why do you have a lighter anyway?” She asked him.
He sniffed, happy to be starting again on one of his brother obsessed sob stories. “It’s a memento of my brother,” Dlak commenced, a familiar intro to his tirades. “He used to carry it with him everywhere, just like the rest of them. But his was special. Because he kept it in his pocket.” There was silence until Vi started snickering uncontrollably.
“Why’d your brother have a lighter anyway?” She asked teasingly. Dlak considered for a few minutes.
“I think,” he answered seriously, “He used it to ward off creatures of darkness.” They heard laughter. Kald echoed it. You seriously think that. I almost pity you, he said in Dlak’s head. Al and Vi were too traumatized by this to even snicker. Dlak sighed. “If only he had his lighter with him that night, then he wouldn’t have had to draw the shades away from us by running away!”
Al spoke up. “Why haven’t you given the lighter back to Beau then?” She inquired, forgetting for a moment that Beau himself had no memory of having a brother.
“Because brother was always so mean to me!” Dlak exclaimed, the light flickering in the wind of his breath. “Especially when he and his friends had their lighters! I mean, they would always sneak off and blame me when they didn’t finish their homework, and then threaten to burn my hair! And they smelled bad! And now Beau tried to duct tape me in a closet! No lighter for him!”
In laughter, Al’s sword retracted. “That is an awesome story. Of course, not as awesome as me,” she concluded with a guffaw.
“I don’t get what’s so funny,” Dlak muttered. Kald shook his non existent head. And that is why it amuses us.
Vi hit him. “You’re funny,” she accused. “Just kidding, man.” With a pause she backtracked, “Actually, I’m not kidding. You stink yo.”
Al walked away from them, leaving them to their alone time for a few seconds before exclaiming, “Let’s go!”
Running up to her, Dlak remarked, “You’re not acting like yourself today. What’s wrong?”
Al shrugged. “Yeah I know, right? Who knows.” She continued walking, tripping forward as a step as Vi slapped a hand against her back.
“She’s depressed!” The older girl informed Dlak. “You should give her brownies!”
Downcast, Dlak replied, “But I don’t have any brownies…”
Kald watched from his objective position as the walked off, a circle of light illuminating them in the darkness. I give up, he said, even though he knew Dlak wasn’t listening. You’re walking in the wrong direction. As always, Kald’s common sense was ignored.
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