Chương 63: Deep

Miriam had never wished for a Wind Nature more than when she was plummeting through the white clouds of Domhain, a snarling Third Ring tentacle-cat locked to her arm. If she could fly this wouldn't be any kind of issue. Priorities. The fall was more pressing than the cat, no matter the intense pain that was shooting through her entire left arm and in the dozen places it had stung her.. If only she could see!

The clouds soon faded, but she couldn't tell if she had truly passed them, or if she was just too deep in for the light to reach her. Frantically, she searched for some way to know when she was close to the ground, but found none. She had no sensory techniques that would tell her when she was nearing impact. Well, as with so many things since arriving in the Tír, she decided to just brute-force it. She activated Waterfall, another River Adept technique.

She wasn't as good at controlling this one as she was Raging Current. It was incredibly inefficient and would drain her fórsa terribly, but then again, so would a lethal impact. As she thought this, another two stingers tagged her in the back. The tentacle cat seemed to have no self-preservation; it was fixated on doing as much harm to Miriam as possible. She chose not to think about how mangled her arm was and decided to kill two birds with one stone.

Miriam manifested the Waterfall fórsa from the place in her arm that was directly between the cat's jaws. A torrent of Water fórsa blasted into the creature's mouth with the force of a hundred-foot-tall waterfall. Not real water - it would have taken even more fórsa to do that - but like Raging Current, still a focused stream of power. The cat was blasted backward, but Miriam almost lost the technique as the fangs ripped furrows in her flesh, the creature refusing to give up its bite.

She poured even more fórsa into it and the cat shot downwards as she directed her fórsa into the ground. Miriam had no way to know if the bottom was near or not, but it couldn't go on forever. There had to be a limit as to how deep Domhain actually was. Only seconds later she found it. Her body jostled roughly back as her fórsa stream found something to push against and for a moment she just hung in the air, suspended by a waterfall she was creating.

Then, with more control than she thought she had, began to lower herself down. Her technique sputtered and died five feet off of the ground and she landed with a rough thud, something in her leg crunching badly. Rough landing or not, she was alive. Though it felt like even her fórsa reserves were low after all that, she wanted to save the material fórsa Sol had given her. She had a feeling she might need it more later. Everything was darkness.

Miriam could tell she was lying on smooth stone, but she could see nothing. She cursed the fact that she hadn't thought to bring torches or a lantern. Night in the Tír was usually not that dark with two moons to light your way, so no one thought they'd need them. Cian hadn't gotten around to teaching her any way to generate light like she had seen Eoin do with his projections - but perhaps that was a technique granted him by his Mist Adept class.

As far as she knew, there was no property of the River concept that could generate light. Behind her she heard a pained whine and a low growl. Miriam froze. The cat had also survived the fall. The Third Ring creature must be incredibly tough if being propelled by her Waterfall technique from that height didn't kill it. For all she knew it could be back on its feet already, stalking her by scent while she lay there blind and helpless.

She was also losing feeling everywhere the cat's stingers had pierced - Róise had mentioned these things were venomous. Miriam didn't have any healing techniques. She thought the rapid healing of which her body was capable would let her make a relatively swift recovery, but not that swift. Clawing weakly at the stone, she began to create a shelter of vines that might give her some scant protection against the cat, but her fórsa stream kept falling apart as the venom disrupted her body's natural functions.

All she could do was hope the cat didn't find her. She heard a soft scraping against the stone nearby and the cat hissed loudly. Then a loud explosion, followed by the shriek of a dying animal.

"Miriam?" a soft voice called out. Miriam gasped in relief.

"Sol? How are you here?" She heard footsteps approaching her.

"After you all faded out, I absorbed some of the material fórsa I had made from you. You faded back in just as you were falling into the hole. I thought you might need help and, well… I was the only one that could give it." Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"Thank you, Sol!" Miriam had never been so happy to hear anther person's voice. It seemed unimaginable now that she could have ever thought this sweet man could be anything like Solas!

"Do you have anything we can make light from? I can't see a thing."

"Uh… Miriam, it's not dark here. Let me look… oh. Looks like that creature stung you in the eye. Eww. That's probably why you can't see." She could hear Sol rummaging around in his pouches.

"This doesn't work nearly as well as when Róise does it - it only captures a few seconds of her technique - but I have a little bit of Róisín Dubh." If rustic beauty was a sensation, that's what Miriam felt pass over her eyes as Sol pressed the sphere against her temple. Light began to blur in as her eyes started working again. After a few seconds the feeling faded, but her left eye was back to normal, while the right was still a little blurry.

"Ok," she said.

"I can see well enough. The rest of my body is still numb though." Sol made a face.

"That might be a good thing. Your leg is pretty messed up." Then he faded away again. Miriam sighed, looking around with her one good eye. Sol was right - soft light illuminated the cavern, but she couldn't tell where it came from. The cave itself was unnaturally smooth - no jagged rocks or stalactites or anything. It was as if the rock had been hollowed out. The tunnel seemed to continue on in two directions, but the way twisted such that she couldn't see far down them.

"Hey, I'm back. Sorry," Sol said, popping back into view.

"I think I have to basically be topped up with your fórsa for this to work. If it drains even a little I get shoved back into my own reality."

"We're lucky it works at all," Miriam said.

"Wait, how did you get down here anyway? Did someone have technique that we could use to get back up?

"Ah. No, on that last question. I got down here with one of Cormac's Luck techniques. So far the results of me using that material fórsa have been really inconsistent - it's very much controlled by his will, which I have no attachment to when I use it. I fell, but I managed to hit enough outcroppings on the way down that I wasn't falling that fast. Still hurt though!" Sol shrugged sheepishly.

"Ok. I'm going to have to wait until my body can repair this damage," Miriam said.

"I don't suppose you have any more Róisín Dubh in there do you?"

"I do, but only two. I should have stockpiled more, but Róise was always busy training. Honestly, I should have given them to you and Cormac. Stupid!" Sol hung his head.

"It's not like I was going to need it."

"Hey, it's fine!" Miriam said weakly.

"None of us were prepared for this. Tell you what. Use one of them on my leg. We need to be moving as fast as we can. I can heal the venom as we go. I think. We'll save the other." Her leg knitted back together - it was ghastly to even look at - but the healing wasn't complete. She thought she could walk on it, but it would hurt. Sol helped her to her feet, one arm draped over his shoulders. He was taller than she'd realized and she had to angle her arm awkwardly to rest any weight on him.

"Ready?" Sol asked. Miriam looked down at her body, limps floppy and weak, one leg bristling with pain. At least both her eyes had healed now.

"I'm ready." Sol promptly faded away, leading Miriam to flop headfirst onto the hard stone.

"Well shit," she said. ✧✧✧ Sol returned quickly with profuse apologies and they worked out a new system. As they walked, Sol would continually drain fórsa from her, which kept him in the same reality indefinitely. The downside was that Miriam seemed to be healing more slowly as a result, but it was a tradeoff she was more than willing to make.

"Do we go left or right?" Sol asked.

"I admit I lost my bearings during the fall. An inexcusable failing for a proud naval ship!" Miriam smiled. His sense of humor was coming along, but he still always looked shy when telling a joke.

"Well, the exit to Cianán's Walk is in the direction of the center of the Tír. And Scior is on the way, right?"

"Yes?"

"Then we go right. I always know where the center of the Tír is.." In fact Miriam was struggling a little to maintain focus even now. Her eyes kept drifting to a spot somewhere beyond the caves, where she could imagine the willow Sailleach calling to her. I'm waiting for you, Miriam. Watching always. Sol draining her fórsa seemed to make the haze a bit worse.

"Hopefully where there's a tunnel there's a way out." They hobbled together for another hour, at which point Miriam felt healed enough to walk herself. She wasn't in top form, but she was no longer both numb and in blinding pain. Meanwhile Sol was also stockpiling Miriam's material fórsa in case they got separated again. The caves were twisty, but extremely linear. There were not many branches, and those that were there seemed to end quickly on the rare occasion when Miriam led them down a wrong turn.

There was no life here that she could see. They were wondering if this would be a safe route to Scior that somehow Cian hadn't known about when they realized they weren't alone after all.

"Miriam," Sol said tightly.

"Have you noticed the light is following us?"

"Well, yes," she said, looking around at what seemed to be the exact same, nondescript cave they had been trudging through for an hour.

"I just thought it was something Cian must have built into the cave."

"I don't think it is," he answered.

"If you look as we walk, the light is shifting, moving with us - not in the manner of lanterns activating along a path, but actually following us. A moment ago, I thought I heard footsteps." Miriam glared at the walls, trying to make out anything unusual.

"I don't see anything. But…" She manifested a vine spear and began swinging wildly near where the light shone.

"Oye!" a voice rang out, reverberating through the cave.

"Watch where you're swingin' that thing." Shapes began to melt out of the light, each a squat creature with a bright lantern held aloft. Within moments, they were surrounded.

"What are they?" Sol asked, as the one who'd spoken first grinned, teeth wicked and sharp. Miriam bared her teeth.

"Wisps."