A Call to Fate

Chapter 5 - The First Room

They were underground, which divided opinions immediately. They had known that they were going to be below the earth, entering a place like this, but some found it more pleasant than others. Though Alf and Gialli's home city of Hæd was above ground, they were nonetheless dwarves. Alf was frequently below ground in the temple crypts, and Gialli, who would spend days on end in cramped workshops was also no stranger to tight spaces. Reg and Teclis had both lived blameless surface level lives themselves. Talani had spent his entire life until now up in the mountains, and had nothing but distaste for this cramped, dark, and musty environment. This was only compounded by the fact that most places were too small for him anyway, so he was practically hunched over in here.

For Tove, describing it as a "mixture of feelings" would be truthful, but not accurate. The first feeling was familiarity, but the second was a deep, abiding hatred. She had lived most of her life underground. Her society leveraged the physical limitations of living under a mountain into social limitations. From birth, her path in life had been planned out. Expectations were placed on her by family and clan elders, and there would be no room for deviation. The fact that she had spent the last few years living on top of a mountain instead of underneath one spoke to what she had thought of that. Even though they were on the far side of the continent from her old home of Dwarden, and on a mission that couldn't be more different from her old life, it still brought memories back. And those memories, such as her slowly re-emerging claustrophobia, sucked.

"It's a bit cramped in here" spoke the muffled voice of Alf. "Can we please get moving?"
"I still can't see where I'm going" replied Talani. He was still at the front, there being no room to move around his massive form. "Reg," said Tove "can you try the light again please?"

There was a sudden bright flare, and they all had to shield their eyes as the light, as bright as ever now, ricocheted off the walls and dispelled the darkness. The air in the tunnel was dry, stale, and tasting of dust. They all tried to look around, but none of them could really see past Talani. He was not forthcoming on the details, but even if he had been, then all he would have described was the stone corridor that stretched out in front of them as far as the light reached. "I'm not a bloody lamp you know" moaned Reg.
"And yet, here you are with the light" said Teclis.
"Here, Talani, pass me your axe" said Reg. Teclis flinched reflexively.

Talani obliged, unslinging the large axe and manoeuvring it over to Reg. Reg placed his glowing hand against the flat of the blade, transferring the light onto the axe. "There," he said "now I don't have to keep holding my arm up."
"Getting tired already?" sniped Alf.
"At least I don't need a cane old man."
"Alright" interrupted Tove. "Talani, shall we get moving?"

The hulking form of Talani obliged, and began to set off down the tunnel. There was some jostling behind him as everyone cramped together tried to figure out the order in which they would move down the tunnel. Eventually they ended up with Tove following directly behind Talani, and then Reg, Alf, Teclis, Gialli, and Mersingmergr.

Even though they had limited vision forwards, they were all fairly glad to have Talani at the front. It was reassuring to have a large wall of muscle with a large axe leading you, mostly since it made it difficult for anything coming from the front to hit them.

They walked on down the corridor-tunnel in silence. After days of the mist deadening all their noises, it sounded uncannily loud in here. There was no wind in the tunnel, no sounds of the outdoors. Instead there was only each footfall, each creak of straps, each cough in the dusty air, all of which echoed off the walls. Each sound they made seemed amplified, and yet they could each still hear their own heart beating. They were all too tense to break the tension. All of them had heard stories of what kinds of things inhabited places like this, and if half of them were true, they didn't want to wake them up.