Meeraz's Maze
Year 568, era of the Movement
"You two have been great little helpers around, but I know you came here for an adventure, so I pulled some strings" Azura's voice distracted me from cleaning the glass and I almost dropped it, thankfully my sister was faster and grabbed it before it reached the floor. We both turned around and looked at Azura's warm smile and the scroll she was holding, closed with the seal of the Pillar of Work. "I almost put it on the board, but I'm sure you two can manage this." she gave me the scroll but Naela took it off Azura's hand and ripped it open. Azura left with a nervous smile to attend her inn.
Time seemed to stop as I waited for her to finish reading the scroll, but she looked at me with shining eyes and a giant smile once she finished. "We have a fetching job! We must go to the Nika district, go to an abandoned cave to see if the previous owner left anything important, and then report back at whatever Nika entrance we use! This is exciting! Our first job!" she started trying to drag me outside the inn, towards the job. "What makes this job so hard that normal Nika workers cannot do? Is there no more information about it? It's a bit worrying." I stop still in the middle of the inn, to my sister's dismay. "There's no difficulty, but the Nika workers are overworked because of a collapse in a cave and thus are recruiting help from others." mentioned Azura while walking past us.
I sigh as I watch Azure passing by, going to her job, and letting my sister drag me outside. It's rainy today, and most of the Creator's clouds are green, that's a sign of luck at our home. Once out of the inn, Naela looked around, with confusion in her face. "What?" I ask, making her look at me and nervously smile, "Well, we first have to get to a Nika entrance, and, em... I don't know where they are. Maybe I should go back and ask Azura...", she turns around toward the inn, but I grab her arm and stop her, "Don't worry, I have a map that shows the public entrances to Nika, we can just follow there. I don't have a map for Nika though, so I'm not sure how we'll orient ourselves in there.".
We started walking towards the closest entrance that my map showed us. A guard was on the entrance, but quickly left us in when Naela showed him the scroll with the job and even gave us a map of the area. He mentioned that we couldn't use a couple of the tunnels because they were closed off after a cave-in on one of the caves inside them, but that we were free to go wherever we needed to if we followed the signs with indications that were on all crossroads.
As we walked towards the cave we had to go to, we encountered that our route was closed with signs of warning and claiming danger, but it wasn't one of the tunnels the guard marked for us. "We should find another way in, I think if we go through this other tunnel and then take this turn on the next crossroad, we should be fine." I mention as I looked at the map. "We should just go through here, if the guard didn't point it out, surely it can't be that bad, and we are strong! Don't forget that." answered Naela, shrugging and walking towards the closed-off tunnel.
Before I was even able to reply or stop her, she had disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. It seems that closed-off tunnels have their torches snuffed out, thankfully we have a couple of torches and as I run behind her, I catch her up as she's opening a torch. She smiled at me as she used her torch to open a second one for me.
Walking around this tunnel felt so much different from the previous tunnels we took up until here. Creepy sounds kept following us: water drops, skittering of small critters, small rocks falling. Yet, my sister was smiling as a child and jumping around happily. I know working as an adventurer has always been her dream, but I don't like that it's turning her into a daredevil. One time, a couple of shining eyes stared at me from the darkness and it scared me, making me scream. Naela jumped in front of me, sword in hand, and keeping me behind with her torch.
"What was it?" she whispered. "I think there's someone in the darkness, following us." I answer with a shaky voice. We stood still for a moment, looking around us and pointing the torches towards the walls, but there was nothing to be seen. She dismissed the situation, claiming I was just nervous because we were taking a "dangerous" closed-off route, and kept walking.
I rubbed my hands together, holding my torch under my arm, and then blew some air into the hole between them. A deep breath with closed eyes, and once I opened my hands, a small orb of green mist appeared floating in the air. It doesn't let go much more light than a torch, but it can float either in front or behind us, I hope it will either help us see better or scare away whatever might be following us.
"Don't do that!" she tried to scream while keeping her voice down, "You know people don't like magic, haven't you been punished enough at home because of it?" she scorns me, trying to dissipate the orb of mist with her hand but failing as I raised it higher than what she can reach. "I thought you think no one is here with us, and a bit extra light won't hurt anyone! And... it calms me. Let me have this until we reach the cave." I ask, doing the puppy eyes that she can't ever resist.
As we kept moving, I tried to let her know that I thought the sound of water felt stronger while the skittering was stopping, but she ignored me and kept moving forwards. I don't like this, why are sounds so loud? I feel like I can even hear her heart under the strong beating of mine. "That's... that's a lot of running water..." she whispered before turning around in a rush, letting her torch fall to the floor and screaming to run with a panicked face.
As I try to process the information, I see a wave of water rushing towards us from the curve of the tunnel, towering higher than us. I turn around to start running, seeing my sister already far away. I run, faster than ever, I run for my life as my brain gets flooded with thoughts, panicked, bad, thoughts. We don't know how to swim! We've never seen a larger body of water than the wells in our village. We are going to die! Because of the recklessness of her and my inability to stop her! Adrenaline and fear fill my body, my brain gets clouded with thoughts and I'm just running without thinking or looking.
The next thing I know is that I'm gasping for air, moving my arms around, trying to stay afloat in the strong currents and hoping to find something to grab and hold onto. I must have tripped, or maybe I wasn't fast enough. I let go a panicked laugh as I remember the last time I almost died. I was hunting with Dad, and we were ambushed by... Something grabbed one of my arms, distracting me from my thoughts, and I looked up at it. I can barely see anything, water keeps getting into my face, but I saw those shining eyes from before.
Somehow, knowing I had always been in the right comforted me as the individual started pulling me out of the water into a small cavity on the tunnel's wall. There was no light around us, my green mist must have either stayed where I started running or got dissipated by the running water. I couldn't see the stranger, but as I coughed the water from my lungs, I heard a weak voice calling my name.
I turn around in a rush. That's my sister's voice. A bit deeper into the cavity, I see a body trying to stand up, coughing as badly as I do, and from her ear, my sister's shining earring, the only thing letting go some light and allowing me to recognize her. I drag myself towards her and fall on her with a hug, which she strongly returns as we both break into a laugh. "Lesson learnt, no more taking dangerous tunnels." I hear her weakly whisper to me between coughing and laughing.
I turn around to the mysterious person but find no trail about them. We both stayed until the water cleared and then some more. We had lost our torches and our new map, and half our equipment needed to be properly cleaned and dried after this or straight up destroyed. We only stayed until we had recovered our breath and our heart didn't threaten us to stop working out of fear.
We had barely any more problems afterwards, although we were on constant attention for any more sounds of water. A couple of misty orbs where the only thing keeping us from tripping or hitting walls on accident. There was a moment when Naela stepped on a puddle that was deeper than it seemed and I had to help her stand up, but that was the worst problem we had since the water.
It didn't take us much longer to reach the cave we had to go to. We weren't too sure what was considered important, but we took a couple of things and made a list of other things we found in an empty notebook we found in the cave. I still think it's weird that people in Meeraz keep their stuff in caves, but whatever. We stood outside the cave for a bit in silence. Thankfully there was light around us, and we had left the dangerous tunnel a bit before reaching the cave, but we had no map. "You wouldn't happen to remember how to go back to the entrance, wouldn't you?" asked Naela.
I looked at her and shook my head, but started walking towards what I thought might be a way out. The guard of the entrance told us that at the crossroads we could find codes that indicate important information, but we didn't know this code, hell, we only knew the tunnel we took was dangerous because we compared the writings with other closed-off tunnels that the guard had pointed to.
We... got lost. Probably multiple times without us realizing it. It took us so much time to find anyone in these tunnels that could point us towards an exit that, whenever we finally got out there was no more rain and the Creator was asleep, bringing night. The entrance we left Nika district through wasn't the one we had entered through, so we had to ask the guard for directions and he gladly pointed out where our inn was. When we got to the inn, Azura was extra worried. "Where were you guys?! I was so worried! Why... why are you two soaked?" she asked as she hugged us.
We looked at each other and started explaining what happened. Azura's face, in a moment, went through anger, panic, worry, and surprise. A couple of times she tried to say something but kept her mouth shut before saying any sound, especially when we mentioned the person who dragged us both out of the water. When we finished our tale, the first thing she said was that we were supposed to have left the items to whatever guard we had found in the entrance, but not to worry, that she'd take it to the guards, and pushed us towards our room and demanded that we took a hot bath and to make sure to dry well our stuff.
Sit down, my friend, and let me tell you of Aran'sha . A world where the sands shift and the stars sing, where the wind carries secrets and the twin moons keep silent vigil over it all.