TBATE - Fated To Rule Together

Chapter 25 - Motives IV

(Jasmine Flamesworth POV)

I have failed!

Looking at the hole Arthur and Amber fell into; I subconsciously clenched my fists; hard enough that I drew my own blood. I was supposed to protect them! I had sworn to both Alice and Tabitha that I would protect them! Yet here I am, standing here twiddling my thumbs while some other person, who we had barely even known for a day, went down to go after them. Amber had jumped in after Arthur when he fell. Of course she would! After all, they were both together and from what I had observed, she cared immensely for him and seemed to know almost everything about him. It's like they were together in some past life!

While she was down there, looking for him, I was up here, uselessly standing there doing nothing. I had tried to jump in after them, but was swiftly pulled back by our party leader, Alea. She stated that she would go after them as it was her duty to make sure everyone in her party got out of there alive. I wanted to dive in anyway. I wanted to do something, anything to help, but was stopped once again by my teammates, saying that we should have trust in Alea to handle herself and the other two.

Whilst the others got ready to move forward, I stood there, fear suffocating my heart. I had been adventuring with them for almost two years and had spent most of our time in each other's company. And even if I didn't show it on my face, I really enjoyed my time with them! It was with them that I felt for the first time, I was understood. Sure, the Twin Horns had treated me well, but they had never truly understood me like the way both Amber and Arthur did. Then I told them about my relationship with my family, they had only showered me with sympathy, and even though I was grateful, sympathy was the last thing I wanted. Yet those two, they had never shown me sympathy or pity, they just listened to me without judging me. They gave me advice I would expect to get from experts, saying that only I was allowed to assess my own self-worth. It was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and it allowed me to breathe freely; something I hadn't done in a long time.

(A/N: Had to look up the other party members names because I forgot their names😅)

(E/N: and we danced, and cried, and we laughed, and had a really-really good time)

(E/N 2.0: And We Danced is a BOP!)

A hand grabbed my shoulder and I looked over to see Nasir, signalling me to get going. I paused for a second and gave him a reluctant nod before setting out to catch up with them. We walked for a little over four hours, fighting beasts and taking breaks along the way. In one instance, there was a whole cavern that looked like it had collapsed on itself. Within the debris, there were sparkles and glimmers that looked like they might have belonged to precious gems, but we all deemed it too dangerous to go down there and look. Strangely enough, after passing that collapsed cavern, we hadn't run into any other beasts, and the ones we did run into were by themselves or easy to deal with.

"This is suspicious! We barely had to do anything after passing that collapsed cave, and this is in the depths of beast glades. Surely there has to be stronger beasts than the ones we've been fighting," Vammeth voiced out his thoughts. Everyone nodded in agreement, unable to land on a definitive conclusion on why this was the case.

"Maybe Alea, Twilight and Note have come through here and cleared them before us. That's why it's been easy so far," Amraelyn added with a hopeful expression. Hope started to erase the anxiety that was floating in my mind! If what she said is true then that means that they had safely located Arthur and were ahead of us. Picking up my pace, I quickly made my way down the path in front of us. The other saw me and silently quickened their pace to meet mine as we moved forward.

After a few minutes of walking, the temperature suddenly dropped; causing us to augment ourselves in mana to accommodate. Soon I could see my own breath in front of me as we got deeper into the dungeon.