“This cave is a lot longer than I would have thought it would be…” Beth groaned as she continued to trudge alongside Jess.

Jess just sighed and rolled their eyes. “You didn’t really think it would be a short walk, did you?”

“Well, I mean… no, but we’ve been walking for like fifteen minutes now… that’s so much of our time already being used up by this stupid walk…”

Jess looked around the empty tunnel and sighed. They didn’t want to admit it, but they were starting to get a little annoyed at this tunnel too. It had been quite a lot of time spent just walking through a tunnel and there hadn’t been any sight of an end yet. It didn’t help that they could barely see a few feet in front of them before their vision was engulfed in pure darkness.

“We’ll get there soon, I’m sure. I mean, it’s not like this is a tiring walk,” Jess offered.

Beth sighed. “It’s not about tired… it’s about anxious… This tunnel is really not doing good things for my anxiety about this whole thing.” Beth clenched her hand.

Jess looked over to her and nodded. Their eyes drew down to her hand and Jess was about to reach out and hold it, but they quickly shook their head, getting the thought out of their brain. Now was not the time to be thinking about this. Ever since they had started to train together, Jess had found themself becoming increasingly amorous towards Beth and they so often wanted to simply be close to her, but they knew that Beth wasn’t feeling the same way. Training had been so much fun, but it had also been torture.

Before they could continue to lament their current romantic predicament, a strange but unfortunately familiar sensation began to take over their senses. Their knees grew weak and they collapsed to the ground, barely bracing themself with their hands in time. They stared at the ground, vision blurry and shaking.

“Jessie! Jessie?!” Beth called, quickly dropping down and holding them carefully. “Is it…?”

Jess nodded slightly, unfortunately causing the wave of dizziness and disorientation to grow worse. Ever since that day when they had felt that dark presence underneath of the tree, it would crop up every now and then. It had started off much more subtle, but now, whenever the feelings did hit, it was like a airship crashing right in front of them. “Whatever that thing is… I have a feeling we might be getting to say hi to it today…” Jess managed to cough out.

After a few minutes, the feeling began to subside and Jess felt a new sensation beginning to fill them. It wasn’t one they were familiar with, but it almost seemed like it was fighting away the awful feeling of the dark presence below. Eventually, the dark presence was completely gone, replaced entirely by the new feeling. The feeling was that of something warm and powerful, almost as though that something was alive, but it didn’t feel like any creature or artifact Jess had ever encountered.

Beth helped Jess to their feet, overcome with a concerned look. “Are you alright…?”

Jess nodded weakly and motioned forward. “I think we’re really close to the first stage…”

Beth gave them a confused look, but didn’t argue and continued back down the tunnel, now supporting some of Jess’s weight to ensure that they didn’t collapse again. After a few more minutes of walking, the two finally arrived at something new. The tunnel, which had previously been about two feet taller than Beth, opened out in to a much wider alcove, now around two times Beth’s height and just as deep. On the far end of the alcove, there was an opening that seemed to expand outwards in to endless darkness. Along the side walls hung torches of soft green flame.

“You okay to stand on your own now?” Beth asked cautiously.

Jess nodded and Beth let them go, allowing them to regain their footing on their own before she walked over to the wall and attempted to take one of the torches, but they weren’t budging. Beth then walked over to the opening and reached a hand inwards, making contact with a strange plant. There seemed to be a curtain of them hanging down from the top of the opening which Beth brushed aside and peered in to the room beyond, finding that all that lay inside was pure darkness.

Confused, Beth peeked back out and examined the plants, finding they were a set of long, leafy, black vines with bright blue buds running all along the inside. It took a moment as she began to run through all of the plants that she had learned about until it finally clicked what it was.

“I think the entirety of this first room here is covered in Vantalorum. We’re not going to be able to see a damn thing in there. These torches don’t seem to budge, so I guess blind is the way to be for this stage…” Beth informed.

Jess nodded and walked up to her side, staring at the curtain before looking to Beth. “Clock’s ticking… We should probably get on our way.”

Beth took a deep breath and nodded, taking the lead and heading in to the room first. Jess quickly followed behind and like that, the two lost all sense of where they were. Even the curtain that they had just come through seemed to have essentially vanished the second they had entered. As Jess pulled forward some of their hair they found that even their hair didn’t provide an ounce of light.

“Jess, are you there?” Beth called, only a few inches from her companion.

Jess reached out a hand towards the direction of the sound and found it come in contact with something firm. Jess quickly identified this as their friend’s shoulder and they moved downwards, taking their hand. This time, taking it not out of affection, but practicality. “I’m right here, Beth.”

Beth squeezed their hand, holding tight to make sure that they wouldn’t get separated. She then closed her eyes, seemingly pointless, but it was a reflex at this point when trying to concentrate. She focused on the terrain under her and attempted to probe at it with her earth vision, but it didn’t return anything. Usually, she would be able to get some general topography and find life or lack there of, but this time, she received nothing beyond what the ground she was standing on looked like, hard, smooth stone.

“Earth vision doesn’t seem to work much. You able to get anything?” Beth asked.

Jess shook their head, the strange feeling still all-encompassing at this point. “All I can feel is… something… I don’t know what it is and I can’t even tell where it is, but I get this feeling that it’s what we’re meant to find, so why don’t we just walk around and try to see if we can find anything, okay?” Jess offered, forming a seal and conjuring a long stick which they began to tap around. “Use a stick to make sure we know there’s ground wherever we’re walking.”

Beth followed suit and formed her own stick, tapping it around along with Jess. The two began to maneuver around the room, attempting to stick to the wall, figuring that it would have to turn at some point, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Thus far, the ground hadn’t been anything special. It had been mostly flat with the occasional rock or pebble, but, unknown to them, they were slowly descending as they ran along the wall.

After several minutes of following along the wall, Jess shook their head. “The feeling of that thing hasn’t changed at all… It’s almost like it’s literally everywhere… I have no idea what I’m feeling. It’s so weird… Can’t you feel it?” Jess asked.

Beth shook her head and sighed. “I guess I feel something faint, but until you mentioned it, I barely even noticed…” Beth admitted.

“I want to sit down for a moment… I have an idea…”

Beth followed them down to the ground, continuing to hold their hand as Jess sat down and got in to a meditative stance. A seal appeared underneath them as they began to concentrate on the room all around them, working to form a thin layer of dirt all around the two them.

“Destroy…” a voice came, startling Jess and causing their seal to disappear, dirt falling all around the two of them. They squeezed Beth’s hand tight and sighed. “Can you do it…?” they asked, shyly.

Beth squeezed their hand back and nodded. “Yeah. What were you trying to do?”

“I was thinking that if I shot out a sphere or dirt all around me… I would be able to get a read on whether or not there was something different in the room by the sound of it,” they explained.

“That’s a really good idea. Yeah, I can do that.” Beth formed a seal underneath of her and formed a large sphere, using tiny pebbles instead of dirt to make sure that the sounds would be loud enough. She fired off the stones at high speed and listened in to the sound. There didn’t seem to be anything too out of the ordinary, but from the sound of the pebbles falling and rolling downwards, Beth was able to identify that they were on a slope.

“I didn’t really hear anything out of the ordinary, but I do have something I want to test. Come with me,” Beth said, standing up. Jess followed and Beth begin to make her way away from the wall, tapping with her stick, searching until finally she found it, the edge. Feeling Jess about to walk off the edge, Beth put their hand in front of their chest. “There’s a drop here. I think that this whole place is like one giant spiral walkway. With that in mind though…” Beth picked up one of the rocks on the ground, holding it over the edge and allowing it to drop. After a few second, she finally heard it impact with the bottom of the spiral.

“Okay, so… that’s… a really far way down… It’s probably just as long of a way if you were to go upwards…” Beth remarked.

Jess sighed before shaking their head, their eyes lighting up with excitement. “Wait! I figured it out!” they exclaimed excitedly as they began dragging Beth back towards the outward wall. They pressed their hand to the outer wall and closed their eyes, taking in a deep breath and allowing the feelings to flood their brain. “I was right! The walls! Inside of them, there’s some kind of mineral or something that exudes life energy and it’s quite literally all around us. That’s why I felt like it was everywhere. However, this isn’t the only ones… I think…” Jess concentrated on the minute fragments of mineral within the wall, drawing out their life energy and sending a shock through the entire system with their own, causing all of the fragments to become dormant.

In a cascade, the noise that was overwhelming Jess began to fade until it became a much clearer sound that they were able to focus on. They quickly flopped down to the ground and once again began to meditate, allowing them to focus in more on the feeling they were getting, finally pinning it down to a similar but more intense feeling to what was in the wall that was in the floor. Placing a hand to the ground and doing the same thing they had done to the minerals in the walls, they were met with a brilliant sight.

Along the ground, glowing crystals began to emerge. Even through the cloak of pure darkness, their light was visible to the duo. The crystals continued to glow, leading along the path upwards. Beth and Jess took off, full sprint, no longer holding hands as they followed the path created for them by the crystals. When they reached the top of the path, they were met by a stone lion state with its mouth open. Inside, there was a carved out space in the shape of the badge they had been given. Jess retrieved theirs and placed it in the slot, causing the crystal eyes of the lion to begin glowing, followed by the crystals within the walls that had previously been dormant to come alive, shining light all throughout the tunnel.

Beth smiled brightly at Jess as they removed their badge from the mouth of the lion. Beth then did the same, causing a low rumbling to begin to emanate all throughout the room, before finally, a stone door to their right opened up. The two rushed forwards in to the new opening, heading off to the second stage as the lights behind them began to slowly fade until the room was once more engulfed in darkness.