[crow]

He hadn't said it though, so what Melanie said instead was, "Well? What is it?"

"I'm getting there," Fabio shot back. As he said that, the ground evened out again, and he saw it: a... big stretch of what looked like water. It lapped against the sandy shore, as if he were on some sort of beach, except he was utterly alone and there was no sun in the sky. A night-time beach, maybe. It still wouldn't have explained why the air was so stagnant.

"I think it's a lake of some sort," he said, toeing the water with one of his booted feet. That wasn't really going to tell him whether it was water or not, but it felt satisfying all the same.

[crow]

"Oh wow, an underground lake. I've heard about those, but I've never actually seen one," she said. She sounded genuinely impressed. Fabio resisted the urge to say that she wasn't really seeing it now either; he'd made that kind of mistake back at the entrance, and wasn't in any hurry to stick his foot in his mouth again.

"We can stay here a bit if you want," he said.

She made a humming noise, as if she was considering it, but ultimately she said, "Nah. Let's keep going. You wanted to leave as soon as possible, right? And we don't know how big this system is going to be either."

"I don't think there's a way past here," he said, taking a cursory look. The water covered almost everything. "Time to backtrack, I guess."

[crow]

With that, he headed back up the tunnel he'd come from, which was frankly easier said than done. If he thought the sand was treacherous on his way down, struggling uphill with it was even worse. He was crawling on all fours in places just to make any progress, with his flashlight in his teeth. It didn't taste great. He had no idea what Melanie must be seeing right this minute, but he imagined it wasn't thrilling.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he made it back onto solid, flat ground.

"Need a minute?" said Melanie over the comm. He didn't even bother giving her a response, grimacing and trying to brush the sand off himself. "Boy, I sure miss having CCTVs right about now."

[crow]

Fabio snorted. "So you can watch me suffer?" He was pulling his boots off to empty them of sand too. It felt like he could make a mini desert of his own with all the sand that fell out.

"Ding ding ding! We have a winner!" Melanie said, her voice artificially showman-bright.

"Gee, thanks," said Fabio. He put his boots back on and got back to walking. Making it into the room full of growths, he made to head down the path he hadn't taken.

However, Melanie's voice stopped him. "Wait," she said. "Back up a bit." He obliged, though he was a bit confused as to why exactly she'd asked for that. Mostly it was habit. Bicker as they might, she was his handler, and he was used to doing as she said.

[crow]

It had saved his hide more times than he cared to admit, and anyway, it was the rule. She couldn't help him if he didn't listen. Xing had stressed that enough during Fabio's training that it was probably impossible to forget.

"What's up?" he said. He didn't know what she saw, but having two sets of eyes was still better than one, even if she wasn't his eye in the sky like she usually was.

"I think you missed a tunnel entrance. Hey, shine your flashlight a little to the left," she said. "A little more... There! See it?"

He directed his flashlight to the left. The beam of it slid along the wall, but then abruptly disappeared--- no, hit the floor, much further away.

[crow]

She was right. He had missed a path. "Huh," he said. "I guess I have to change that on the map... Ugh." He sighed, pulling out the map and scribbling a correction, and adding the lake he'd found for good measure. The map was shaping up to be... not all that impressive, and frankly incredibly messy, but the Skyllard's handwriting had been messy too. He had no right to complain.

... Or Fabio could just make a neater map when he got his hands on a pen that didn't reek. That was probably the more likely course of action.

He packed it away as soon as he'd gotten the relevant details down, then considered his options. "So. New path, or the other one we didn't go down before?"

[crow]

"It looks like this one goes on for a bit," said Melanie. Fabio was still shining his light down the newly-discovered tunnel, which had been hidden by its size and an outcropping of rock. "What about the other one?"

"That one too," said Fabio. "But you know what, let's just come back to this one later." He mostly just didn't fancy another squeeze, especially after his adventure crawling up the sandy slope. He pressed on almost straight, into the tunnel on the other side of the chamber. Well, if it could be called a tunnel, anyway. It felt more like a continuation of the big chamber, since this one was so wide.

[crow]

The growths, fortunately, got fewer and fewer in number as he progressed along the cavern. It was replaced by something... glittery. At first he thought he was just seeing things. How long had he been down here? Long enough to start hallucinating, probably.

But it persisted on the stone faces where his flashlight hit, and after a while he found himself moving toward a wall to get a closer look. Partly out of curiosity, and partly to confirm that he wasn't going insane.

Close up, it was actually way more mundane than he had thought. "Oh, so that was what it was," he said, as soon as he drew close enough to see the make-up of the rock.

[crow]

He'd seen this type of thing before, mostly when he was a kid on a playground, bored silly enough that he was entertaining himself by inspecting the rocks that they used to fill in the ground around the jungle gyms. Even back then, the practice had confounded him. Sand would have made sense, but how was a bunch of rough-hewn rocks supposed to break anyone's fall?

A lot of those rocks were shiny in the same way though, bits and facets of what he knew now was probably quartz, or mica.

"What are you looking at?" said Melanie.

"Oh, nothing... I was just wondering what was reflecting all this light," he said, running a hand along the wall.

[crow]

"Oh, did you see something? I guess the camera wasn't picking it up." Melanie sounded a bit put out. She must really have been feeling out of her comfort zone, not being able to see nearly as much as she was used to. At times like this, she seemed more like her real age. He didn't know how old she was down to a number yet, but they'd met in person a couple of times, and he always remembered her as looking young--- short and young, and strangely nervous compared to all her bravado over the comm.

"Hey, don't worry about it. You helped me find that other tunnel, remember?" he said, trying to cajole her as gently as he could.

[crow]

The response was immediate. "Yeah, I know. I don't need to hear that from you," she said. Any hint of disappointment in her voice was completely gone, replaced by her usual smugness. He grimaced again, but he supposed it was worth it. Annoying as it was, he still preferred smart-ass Melanie to bummed-out Melanie.

Now that he had figured out what he was looking at though, there was no reason to linger here any longer. He walked on at a faster pace than before, as fast as he could manage while still keeping a reasonable eye on his surroundings. Which still wasn't very fast. Even if the ground was thankfully even here, the dark put a damper on things, as it always did.

[crow]

He was still following one wall, but that wall turned a corner not long after he'd resumed walking. He might have been dismayed at the size of the chamber if not for the fact that he could see to the other end of it with his flashlight. It wasn't wide, just... long. Maybe this was another tunnel?

There wasn't anything immediately interesting about it though, so he gave a shrug and continued along the wall. He needed to map it, so he had to at least get a perimeter on the thing. He was beginning to wonder just how much walking it was going to take.

[crow]

Before he could devote too much thought to the matter though, Melanie said, "Hey, don't look now, but I think you should stop."

He did, but he couldn't help firing back, "What's with all the suspense? What, did you see a cave beast or something?" He was mostly joking; he hadn't found any sign of anything living down here so far, and he hadn't really heard anything either, excepting water, Melanie, and himself.

She didn't laugh, though, or fire back a smart retort. What she said was, "I don't know, but there's... something there. Doesn't that look like eyes to you?"

[crow]

"Ha ha, Mel, if you're trying to freak me out---"

"No, Fabio, I'm serious! Look!" Oh. Geez, she didn't sound like she was kidding. He was still half convinced it was a prank, in which case she was going a bit too far for it, but he was also starting to feel a prickling at the back of his neck. He looked, just to be safe. Always trust your handler, right?

At first he didn't see anything, but as soon as he opened his mouth to make a retort, he saw it. Flashing out at him from the dark, something that... yes, did look like eyes.

[crow]

Shit. This wasn't good. The prickling was transmuting into a chill that ran along his spine. Did he try to confront it? Did he just... turn around and leave, and hope it doesn't follow? It wasn't moving, which was probably a good thing. Maybe. Better than if it were immediately trying to jump on him and chew through his jugular, anyway.

Except that it was moving closer now. Shit. It wasn't springing, but that didn't rule it out. About the only good part about this was that it was moving into the light, so he could see it a bit more clearly. Big, gold eyes; a broad muzzle; some sort of mane...