Chapter 36: The Dark Cavern
When Aster opened his eyes, he couldn’t make out anything around himself in the pitch black, but he certainly was aware of the extreme heat that already had him sweating profusely. As the human sat up with an achy groan, he began looking around, trying to find something he could discern to better orient himself on his surroundings.
After finding nothing visible a moment later, the boy had an idea, and raised his left arm. The golden light of his shield shortly illuminated the rust colored walls of the cavern, allowing the human to finally get a look around. He was inside of a large, spacious cave. The ground had odd indents, and was smoothed over, implying something large had been nesting in the sweltering hot cavern.
He found his staff laying near where he had landed, and went to retrieve it immediately, thankful it hadn’t been lost. Just as he was standing back up, the human heard a strained voice speak to him from nearby.
"Good, you are still alive then." Aster turned towards the source, and found none other than Prince Tyfin himself sitting with his back against the wall, panting heavily.
"Sorry, I gave you everything I had back there, so I can’t really move much right now," the lion continued in a not so steady voice. As the human recalled the events that had led them to wherever exactly they were, his face took on a gloomy expression.
"Are they always that strong? The demons? We couldn’t do anything to stop it..."
The prince let out a small chuckle, despite the dire circumstances. "If they were all like that, I don’t think there would be an Alora left. I’ve never seen or heard of anything that... Unstoppable before. Not in this age anyways. Whatever kind of demon it was, it’s certainly on a level we’ve never faced before. The way it overcame Brutus like that... Alice..." He paused, his expression growing darker. "I don’t know that we can beat it, but I think we have more pressing worries before us for the time being. I don’t know what has been living in a den this size, but I don’t want to be here when it comes back."
Aster couldn’t agree more, so with a bit of effort, the prince was soon upright, leaning heavily against the smaller human’s shoulder as the pair began to walk towards the only exit in sight. They weren’t making fast progress, and the arid climate made breathing difficult enough on its own, but soon they had managed to leave the initial heart of the cavern behind as they made their advancement into the other parts of the tunnel.
Every so often, the pair had to stop to let Aster and the prince rest for a moment. Finally, the duo came to a split in their path. Aster let the prince decide on the left one, and obeyed. It wasn’t like he had any more idea than the cat had as to which path led to where, after all.
A short ways ahead, a loud scream carried through the cave ahead of them. Prince Tyfin gave the human a nod and some direction, and braced his weight against the stony wall as the human hurried ahead to investigate.
He was lucky he’d arrived when he did to cast a light on the situation, as the source of the scream was already surrounded by six, two feet long scorpion-like creatures. They had two sets of claws on either side that constantly made a clacking sound as they were endlessly opened and closed, with a terribly deadly looking tail that whipped around limberly in the air. As the cornered beast threw a rock in a feeble attempt at scaring his attackers away, the creature snapped a claw forward, catching and shattering the stone as easily as glass.
The same scorpion raised its deadly tail, and struck forward. Aster threw his shield just in time to stop the attack, and illuminate the cornered prey enough to discern. The boy felt his heart sink into despair when he realized it was none other than Rust Aschefell, the small timid fox, that was cornered. The cub turned his terrified face to the human now, his eyes filled with tears of relief as he called out to his sudden beacon of light.