Quest For Harmony

by destinedjagold

Chapter 62 - Dark Cave

If my estimation is correct, I'd say that we've been traveling through this forest for almost two days now. That is, if my estimation is correct. We were able to get a glimpse of the Smokey Mountains through the little gaps of the leaves that covered our view to see the sky—er, clouds. Those little gaps were enough for us to see if we were getting closer to the mountains.

Now though, the trees in the forest were getting spacious. The gaps from tree to tree were getting wider, and we could almost see the edge of the forest up ahead.

The forest is still cold. The rain hadn't stopped at all. At least it's not a storm though. The mists were long gone now, and soon, we have exited the forest, and I stopped as I tilted my head up slowly, observing the tallness of the mountains that we're going to climb as soon as we're going to reach the base.

The edge of the forest was probably ten meters away from the base of the nearest mountain. I gulped. This is going to be a pretty darn difficult climb. The pale brown surface of the mountain looked really slippery, so one small miscalculated footing would end in disaster. I gulped again. I started observing the lower parts of the mountain as I started a slow walk towards it. I tried to see if I can see a few small rocks poking out or a few dents that I could use to climb on. From the looks of it, there are plenty, so at least it won't be that difficult. Though I wonder if there are still a lot of footing the mountain could cover when Spike and I are higher an—

"Hey look," Spike immediately stood on my back, rested a claw on my head and pointed with the other. "There's a cave!"

I blinked as I lifted my pupils up to see his pointing claw, and followed the direction, which was a bit left from the base of the mountain where I was focused on... Okay, I have no idea why I missed that huge cave there. "Eheheh..." I chuckled as I changed my route towards it. "Good call, Spike."

He slipped back into a sitting position as he puffed his chest. "Oh, it's nothing really." I rolled my eyes.

We reached the mouth of the cave, and inside, it was pretty dark. Too dark for comfort. Spike stood on my back, planted both claws on my head, leaned forward, and blew a huge green flame, providing enough light for the both of us to see how huge the cave is. The flame's light failed to reach the ceiling, nor any walls of the cave.

The green flame faded, and left us there simply staring at the darkness. The raindrops were the only noises that danced to our ears before I shook my head and asked Spike to hop off of me. I began looking around.

"Hm," I wondered as I kept on staring around and at the forest. "There must be something we could use as a torch though..."

Hearing me thinking out loud, Spike started looking around as well. "Well, how about this?" I turned to see him picking up a rather long and thick tree branch behind a rather large rock near the cave's mouth.

I nodded my approval. "That could work."

Smiling, he held the tip of the branch close to his face and breathed out a small green fire, and presto, we have a torch. He immediately ran towards me and hopped on my back, to my great annoyance. I sighed for I planned of making him lead the way this time, but oh well.

As I began walking inside the cave, the rain from outside was slightly echoing around the cave. There was nothing much to see from all this darkness with our little radius of light from our yellow flame...

I stopped and blinked, and turned my head to see our torch. "Why is the fire yellow?" I'm pretty sure it was green when he breathed it out.

Spike shook his head. "Dunno, and do we really have to wonder about that now?"

I glared at him, but he has a point. Aw well...

I continued walking onward. Spike was occasionally turning the torch left, right, and ahead, as he tried to see if there were things that could get our attention. It was probably five or seven minutes when we saw an inclined earth from the ground tilted towards a—hopefully—higher portion of the mountain.

I turned to Spike, and he nodded. I started walking on it as a thought came to my mind. "Hey Spike," I spoke too loudly, 'cause my voice echoed all around. I decided to lower my volume. "I have a weird idea, but can you send Twilight a rock over her head?" I chuckled slightly. "That might actually help to stop the war."

"Hey, that's a great idea," he exclaimed, his voice echoing around. "But, I can't..."

"Why not?" I asked, fighting the urge of turning my head to look at him. There were rocks lying around, and I don't want to trip and slide all the way back down.

"Well, during that rescue in the library, Twilight fired a beam at me. I think that made you go into a rage or something. Anyway, that beam was powerful, and it even exploded. My guess is that it may also be the reason why I couldn't sense her through my dragon mail-thing..."

"Oh," I don't think I get it, since I'm no expert in magic anyway... "That sucks..."

"Yeah," Spike agreed as he nodded. "Why didn't you thought of that sooner though?"

I rolled my eyes. "I have no idea."

We suddenly found the ground ahead of us turned flat. I guess we must be on a new floor of the cave, or mountain. After taking a few steps on the flat ground, we found ourselves in front of a huge wall, so I had to turn to see what path we should take next. Spike waved the torched for us to get a better view, but I guess this is another spacious area.

No choice, I had to walk and see if we can find another inclined earth-thing to walk on to reach a new floor. I chuckled lightly, earning myself a confused dragon. It kinda feels a bit weird. It's like one of those mystery dungeons from the Pokémon games, where I need to search for the staircase to reach a new floor. Here though, there aren't any staircase. Aw well.

I started hearing faint flapping noises. Spike and I turned our heads up, and saw faint images of flying bats. Well, they're just bats. Nothing to worry about.

Comments

[Tangle280]

Mystery dungeon reference I approve