Chapter 4: Cavern

"It was a shock to her, to say the least, but I really wanted to go down there. I couldn't help how curious I was about it all, and as Astrid had said before, I would never truly understand what it was like unless I went there myself. My mother was reluctant at-"

There was a knock at my door, and I could see the shadows of feet in the space beneath it. "Are you in there?" A voice called from the other side. It was my father, he sounded tired. His last day of classes was likely full of long-drawn-out goodbyes, he was always popular amongst the other professors as well as all of his students.

"Yeah."

"Your mother's going to be late for dinner, something last minute at work."

"I heard," I said. "Are we going to miss our flight?"

"No, no, you don't have to worry about that." I could hear him shift and the wall creak as he leaned against it. "Are you going to open the door?"

"Probably not."

I heard him sigh. "You've started packing at least? Gobber said you had."

"Yeah, I started."

"Good, good," he mumbled.

"Mr. Jorgenson came to see you, but nobody was here, only me," I told him, carefully watching the shadows of his feet beneath my door.

He moved away from the wall. "Did he? I should've mentioned I would be out all day...what did he say?"

I shrugged. "Something about wanting to catch up before all the guests arrived, then something about coming up with his wife and kid, you know, the one who graduated in the same year as me? That kid."

He chuckled. "Well, he's only got the one. I didn't know you two knew each other, though."

"Barely."

"You're friends at school?"

I scoffed. "He's an arrogant idiot."

My dad laughed at that. "Well, they're coming all the way here to say goodbye to you, so try to be nice to them okay?"

"I'll try."

"And don't stay in your room for too long, the guests will start arriving in an hour or so. This will be your last chance to see everyone before you leave."

"I won't."

There was a brief awkward silence, where neither of us said a word. "I'll see you downstairs then," he said. Then I listened to his footsteps as he made his way back down the hall and then down the stairs. I was once again greeted by the quiet of solitude, the house was large, and on days like this, I really appreciated that. Gobber and my father liked to talk, joke and trade insults, and I preferred to read in peace. I licked the pad of my thumb and flipped to the next page.

"My mother was reluctant at first to let me go with them, and I understood why. Unlike Fishlegs and maybe even the twins, I didn't exactly have a clear purpose to go down there. I could also tell that she was worried for me, I couldn't blame her for that, I was her only son, but sometimes I wished she would treat me my age. It took some prodding, but eventually I convinced her that my research might benefit from looking at the behaviours of various cave-dwelling species and how they may have adapted from living above ground. When it was announced that I would be going along, everyone seemed quite surprised, especially Fishlegs. Though they accepted the idea much faster than my mother had.

After the plane had air-dropped our second week's supplies, we got to work packing up for the next four days in the cave. Astrid oversaw all of it, making sure we had everything we needed but nothing we didn't need. When the day finally arrived, I was so excited my knees knobbed furiously during the short walk to the entrance...

"You've checked that you have all your food?"

"Yes."

"And your headlamp? With extra batteries?"

"Yes and yes."

"How about your-"

"Mom," I stopped her, "I'm going to be fine, you don't have to worry so much. Everyone is going to be with me, Astrid knows what she's doing, we'll be fine, everything's fine."

She sighed. "I just wasn't expecting you to go off spelunking for multiple days like this. Usually in a situation like this we'd plan to return with an entire team of experts to come with us, not just go spontaneously."

"Astrid was a rock climber, and besides, who knows when we'll get another chance to come out here. Getting permission to enter the park wasn't exactly easy." She bit her lip nervously. "Mom, we'll be fine, it's only for a few days, the rest of the expedition I'll stay in the sinkhole."

She nodded reluctantly. "Alright, alright, you're not a little boy anymore. Just take care of yourself."

I smiled. "I will." I turned to look towards the others, they were all standing around the small cavern entrance, chatting amongst each other as they waited for me to arrive. "I should get going," I told my mom, she gave me a quick hug and I made my way over to the entrance. "Okay, I'm ready."

Ruffnut scoffed at me. "About time, you sure you don't need your mommy to come with you?" Tuffnut snickered and Astrid glowered at her.

"Let's just get going okay?" Astrid said, turning towards the cavern. "We've only got four days to gather as much data as we can." She clicked her headlamp on and easily slipped through the narrow gap into the darkness, I could hear the soft echoing steps she made from inside.

I didn't need anything else, and before any of the others could make a move, I squeezed in after her. It was incredibly dark inside, I could see the beam from Astrid's headlamp illuminating one of the narrow passages. "Which way?" I asked, as Ruffnut followed after me.

"Turn your light on," she told me. I obliged her, clicking the light on and looking around the inside of the cavern. It was small, maybe the size of my first-floor bathroom. By the time Tuffnut had followed us inside it had gotten a little tight.

"We're going this way right?" Tuffnut asked, nodding his head towards one of the passages.

Astrid shuffled towards the cavern entrance. "Hold on, Fishlegs still hasn't gotten in." Fishlegs grunted and groaned as he struggled to squeeze through the tight jagged crevice. I scowled at the sound of the twins snickering amongst each other. Astrid reached out to grab his arm, helping to tug him through.

"You good?" I asked him.

Fishlegs nodded. "Yeah."

Astrid pulled a roll of fluorescent tape from one of the pouches attached it to her harness. Then she went around to all the crevices but two and marked them off each with a small X made of tape. "These are the ones we've already fully explored during our last search, these two go quite a bit deeper, so we should pick one to look through first."

"What did you find in each of these before you had to turn back?" I asked.

Tuffnut pointed towards the one on the right. "That one had significantly more insects and other lifeforms, I say we start that way."

Ruffnut nodded. "It was also much easier to navigate, the gaps were bigger, and there were fewer inclines and declines."

"But this one goes downward," Fishlegs said, pointing towards the left cavern. "If I'm going to find that underground river, we have to go towards the lower parts of the plateau, that's where we'll learn more."

"When we went down that one, the holes we had to climb through only got smaller and smaller, do you think you'd even fit if we kept going?" Ruffnut asked, crossing her arms with a smug look on her face.

Tuffnut sniggered. "Yeah, besides, we don't even know if this supposed river even exists. We know there are animals and all sorts of things in that direction, shouldn't we be going towards the route we know will give us data to collect?"

I frowned at the surly mocking tone in their voices as they spoke to Fishlegs. "There's no reason to speak to him that way, we can spend time searching through them both."

"What if we go down that way and we can't find the end?" Tuffnut asked. "There were so many insects I wanted to collect last time but didn't have the space for, that's the whole reason I wanted to come back, not so fishy over here could spend the whole time chasing a river that might not exist."

"Who's to say there won't be insects or amphibians in this part of the cave? We spent most of the time last trip looking in the part you wanted, you can't always pick the direction we go in, this is a group effort," Fishlegs retorted.

"Okay, okay, stop!" Astrid exclaimed. "We're going to be here for up to four days, knowing that there are animals who need to be collected not too deep in that direction, I say we start in the lower parts where Fishlegs wants to go."

The twins both turned to glower at her. "Why are you taking his side?" Ruffnut asked, sounding a little annoyed.

She sighed and crossed her arms. "I'm not taking sides, the less we have to carry early on, the better. Since you know you have a bunch of insects and reptiles and such you want to capture, we should do that as close to the end of the trip as possible, climbing with a bunch of filled samples boxes isn't going to be easy."

"We have four whole days," I pointed out. "If we can't find the end by the second day we can head back to where you want to go, there'll be plenty of time."

Ruffnut grumbled. "Fine, as long as we get back to find my specimens."

We began to head down further into the cavern, since they had already searched a little of this part of the cave, there were small tape marking made by Astrid all along the narrow crevices. It was dark and damp, and only got darker and damper the further we traveled down. The ground was steep and slippery, I gripped to the lines that Astrid had nailed into the sides of the cave for support, though soon we had entered unexplored territory where there was nothing to hold onto besides the cold walls of the cavern. Every once in awhile we'd find a diverging path, only to search and find it to be a dead end. The twins seemed to get more and more aggravated, as we only kept going deeper with no signs of life or anything besides rocks and darkness. Time seemed to pass excruciatingly slowly, I couldn't tell how long it had been since we entered, but I swore we had to have been walking for almost the entire day.

"This is pointless, we're not going to find anything," Tuffnut grumbled.

Fishlegs shook his head indignantly. "There's got to be some sort of water source, I'm sure if we keep going we'll find the river eventually."

"Your stupid river doesn't exist," Ruffnut retorted.

"The deeper we go, the wetter it gets," Fishlegs pointed out.

Tuffnut sniggered. "Heh, that's what she said."

"Enough already," I groaned. "We're making a compromise here, we're searching this way first, if nothing comes up by tomorrow we'll go back to where you guys wanted."

"Whatever," Ruffnut grumbled.

Astrid sighed as she wiped the sweat from her brow. "It's almost six, I think now is as good a time as any to make camp," she said looking around, the space they were in was slightly larger than most of the narrow paths they had been climbing down. "We're all tried I'm sure, and we can get an early start tomorrow, five am, no later. If we don't find anything by noon, we'll head back. Sound fair?"

"I guess," Tuffnut said reluctantly.

Fishlegs and I both nodded. Astrid nodded back. "Aright, let's get unpacked for the night, you should all have your food in your own bags."

Everyone began pulling out their bedrolls and pre-packaged meals. I wasn't looking forward to the food, but I was hungry, and my body was about to collapse from exhaustion. I would sleep anywhere, even the cold, damp floor of the cavern. Astrid crept over as I spread my bedroll out on the ground. "Thanks by the way," she said to me.

"For what?" I asked.

"Backing me up, just now, and also this morning. Sometimes I feel like I'm traveling with a bunch of children. It's nice to have at least one reasonable person around."

I smiled. "No problem, I know they can be a handful sometimes."

"No kidding, I just hope we find something tomorrow or we won't be hearing the end of it."

I laughed. "Yeah, you're probably right about that."

"Anyway, that's all I wanted to say, we should both get some rest. See you in the morning."

"Dark and early," I joked as she began shuffling away.

"Pardon?"

I awkwardly wagged a hand at her. "Nevermind, it was stupid." She just nodded and shuffled off to where her things were.

The night was as dreary and uncomfortable as you'd imagine it would be. Though I was so tired I still managed to fall asleep pretty quickly. When Fishlegs came over to jostle me awake, I almost thought it was night in the fog of my sleep, forgetting where we were. Day and night were impossible to tell apart, and my internal clock was completely messed up by morning.

"What a beautiful morning," I groaned as I climbed out of my bedroll with slow, agonizing movements.

Fishlegs chuckled. "I'll say, c'mon let's get going, we need to find that river as fast as possible. I'll show the twins it exists."

I only nodded in response, gathering my things up and shuffling them back into my back. We continued downwards through narrower and narrower paths that started to look eerily familiar, like every crevice was the same one over and over. My eyes weren't adjusting well to the artificial light from the headlamps, and it was getting harder and harder for me to see properly.

"Looks like we'll have to go back, bummer," I heard Ruffnut say in a flat, unsympathetic tone.

I looked around to see what the problem was, but I couldn't. Then I realized, that was the problem. We had reached a dead end, a larger part of the cavern, tall, almost two stories tall, but nothing but rock walls surrounding us.

"No...there must be another spot somewhere that we missed."

"Fishlegs...we checked every opening, every crack, this was the last one. There's nowhere else to go back back," Astrid said. I could tell she didn't want to have to say this, but it was the truth.

He shook his head defiantly. "No, this is impossible, the water had to drain out somewhere, this is the only way that makes sense."

"Just admit that your stupid river doesn't exist," Tuffnt groaned, throwing his head back.

Ruffnut nodded in agreement. "Yes, and besides, there's only an hour and a half until noon, give it up, we should go back where we know something useful is."

"This...this can't be…" Fishlegs murmured to himself in complete shock and disbelief.

I looked upwards to the ceiling of the cave we were in, and noticed something on the upper right wall, several feet over our heads. "Uh...what's that?" I asked, pointing towards it. In the dim light, I couldn't quite tell.

Astrid looked, her light flashing up to where mine was set. "Oh my gods...there's...there's an opening up there."

Fishlegs' head snapped up to see what we were looking at, and a huge smile beamed across his face. "I knew it! I knew it couldn't have ended here, it has to have a water source, I'm telling you!"

Ruffntut began shaking her head. No. There's no way we're wasting any time climbing all the way up there, we only have an hour and a half before you said we would start heading back!"

"It'll only take twenty, thirty minutes tops for us to get up there," Astrid said, "and I haven't forgotten our deal, if there's nothing up there we'll head back, I promise."

Ruffnut and Tuffnut both groaned in unison.

I nudged Ruffnut. "Come on, you're not even the slightest bit curious what's all the way up there?"

Ruffnut frowned. "Rocks?"

"Maybe, we'll never know if we don't at least take a look."

Tuffnut began bobbing his head side-to-side. "It's worth a peek, she said it'll only take twenty minutes, we still have plenty of time."

"Fine," Ruffnut said, crossing her arms. "But if there's nothing we go back."

"Deal!" Fishlegs cried out, rushing over to the spot in the cave directly beneath the opening.

Astrid walked over next to him. "Alright, everybody just stand back for a bit while I get the cables set up." She began working to put the rock climbing cord up so we could safely make it to the top. She climbed to the top free-hand and attached the cables to the top, calling down for us when she had finished. Fishlegs went first, both surprisingly and unsurprisingly. Afterward, the twins went, Tuffnut followed by Ruffnut. Finally it was my turn, and I slowly scaled the wall, stumbling over the edge.

"Is there anything?" I asked as Astrid took my arm and pulled me up. "A few paths...much larger paths, but nothing we haven't really seen before. Fishlegs is still looking around."

I nodded. Astrid began packing up a few things, making sure they weren't a tripping hazard. "What's that?" I asked, pointing to one of the strange metal tools she had in her rock climbing kit.

She smiled and picked it up to show me. "It's a few things...but mostly it's a climbing pick. I don't use it much when I'm not climbing on ice, but it has a few different functions and tools inside...do you want to hold it"

I couldn't help but smile back, she seemed so excited that I had asked. "Sure," I said reaching out to take the pick. It was lighter than I had imagined, but I supposed it was built to be as light as possible to make it easy to carry around. "So where are th-"

A scream cut me off and both Astrid and I jumped to our feet. Neither Fishlegs nor the twins could be seen from where we stood and we both went running towards the sound of the yell. I could tell as I got closer that the person screaming was Fishlegs, I turned to tell Astrid but she was nowhere to be found and only darkness surrounded me. "Astrid!" I called out. "Fishlegs!" Nothing. It was suddenly very, very silent, all I could hear was my own heavy breathing. I started to slowly scan around myself when I caught a glimmer of something from the corner of my eye. My head whipped around frantically, and I could see enormous glowing yellow-green eyes, terror rushed through my entire body, and before I knew it, I had frantically flung Astrid's climbing pick towards the eyes and stumbled backward. I heard a clang and a yelp, then nothing as my headlamp flickered from the impact of hitting the ground.

I sucked in sharp breaths of air as I simultaneously crawled backward and smacked at my headlamp to turn back on. Finally it flickered back to life, and I quickly looked back to where the eyes had been. Whatever it was, it was now slumped on the ground, a scarlet trickle of blood came from its torso. I could see it better now, it was jet back, huge with large bat-like wings and four short legs. My breath hitched in my throat as it shifted ever so slightly. It was still alive. I shuffled my backpack off in a panic, nervous hands digging through it for my utility knife, never moving my eyes from the creature in front of me.

When I finally retrieved my knife, I shakily lifted myself up, approaching it ever so slowly. I knew I had to kill it, kill it before it regained its strength and killed me. With its sheer size, I knew I would never win in a fair fight. I stopped as its head came into my view, it's huge yellow-green eyes were still open, they glowed so brightly in the darkness, staring back at me with a look of utter defeat. I lifted the knife up above my head. I had to kill it.

Then I lowered my knife, my eyes drifting to the wound I inflicted on its side. I had my first aid kit, I could help it. I knew I had to kill it, but I could help it.