Page 71 of On Burning Paths

“You really see it going any other way?” I ask, glancing at him when we near the cave. He glances over at me, easily following the thread of conversation, then shrugs once more.

“Eh, maybe we get picked off by the warlocks.”

I knock into him with the sticks, and he rolls his eyes at me. “Okay, fine, yes, I want to do the whole marriage and family thing too, alright? But, in your words, I’m not going to be such a pussy about it.”

My cheeks flame. “I’m not a pussy, I’m just a man who knows what he wants. Women think that’s hot… I heard.”

Talon laughs. “How many women have you been with?”

Two. “Enough.”

“You’re a single digit man. I can tell.”

My cheeks burn. “I’ve had hundreds of lovers.”

“Hundreds,” he says, while choking on a laugh.

I could melt into the ground. “All well-pleased and begging for more.”

“Begging for more,” he repeats, tears stinging his eyes.

We reach the entrance to the cave and find Thorian and Nyx there. I’m glad for the break from the conversation. I was about to start making up names of moves I’m really good at in bed.

He’d see right through that.

Thorian glances up. “We’ve got the animal fat. Let’s start assembling these.”

We make quick work of the torches. When they're done, Thorian takes one and lights it, holding it out in front of him, while the rest get strapped to the outside of my pack, handles secured and angled outward so they won't be difficult to reach. I adjust the straps across my shoulders, settle the weight, and nod.

“The unknown is supposed to be exciting, not make you feel like you have to shit your pants,” Talon says.

Nyx laughs. “Need a few minutes behind the bush?”

Talon rolls his shoulders. “Nah, I made the deliberate decision to stay constipated during this competition.”

It makes me laugh, but my shoulders don’t relax. At least when crossing the bridge, I knew what I was in for. I’d come up with the plan to cut it when I saw Thorian wrap the chains around his arms on his way over. I’d thought it would be a good way to keep the other teams from following us, from using the lightning rod to their advantage. Then I talked myself out of it, only for it to become necessary when they started attacking me.

Going into the cave now feels worse than that. The lack of information is the worst part. Whatever is in there… we won’t know until it’s on us.

But, I suppose that’s why most people are afraid of the dark. The unknown.

"Come on," Thorian says, our fearless leader forcing us ahead. "Someone take the rear. We're going in before we get some sort of poisonous abomination sent after us."

The dark comes immediately after the first turn, absolute and total, pressing in from every direction except the small radius of orange light the torch throws around us. It's not like being outside at night, where there's always some ambient softness, some give to the darkness. This is a different thing entirely. Solid. Intentional. A darkness that makes you aware of your own breathing, that makes every sound feel too loud and too close. The drip of water somewhere ahead. The scrape of our boots on stone. The way the torch flickers when the air shifts, throwing shadows that move in ways that make the periphery of the cave feel populated.

The walls are close enough that I can reach out and touch them without fully extending my arm. The ceiling dips and rises unpredictably, and the floor is uneven beneath our feet, slick in places with moisture, rough and jagged in others. The air smells of cold stone and deep earth and something older than either. It sits heavy in the lungs, damp and mineral.

We walk for what feels like hours, though I know it isn't.

Then Talon lets out a low, amused sound.

"What?" Thorian asks from the front, his voice tight and barely above a whisper.

"Look up," Talon says.

We all do, in tandem, and the breath goes out of me.

The ceiling is alive with crystals. They catch the torchlight and fracture it into a thousand shifting points, seeming almost to drip from the rock above us, growing down from the stalactites in clusters and formations that have no business being this far underground. In the glow of the single torch they flicker and pulse, like something breathing.