7

 

She saw nothing as she fell. Everything was a total darkness she had never felt before. The only comfort she had was the burning sensation in her pocket and Henry's firm grasp in her hand. She didn't know how long they were falling. It was as if gravity had stopped working all together, and after an eternity, they landed in something oddly goopy and gritty. "Mud?" she asked, feeling around in their surroundings.

 

"Ugh. Smells more like dung though," Henry whined, fumbling around and trying to find his own bearings. "No walls... I don't hear any more falling stones, do you?" he asked. "Oh. Nope, there they are again."

 

Their voices seemed to echo a bit, wherever they were. Cynthia pulled Luce out from her pocket and used the light he created to at least find where Henry was. "You alright?" she called out to him.

 

"Well, surprisingly enough, we didn't fall too hard at all," he admitted, "Now, let's take a good look around at what we've got here."

 

The light coming from Luce was relatively weak; however, it was enough for them to at least see if there were any walls directly in front of them. Looking up was useless. It was so dark, there didn't seem to be a ceiling to wherever they were at all. The least they could do was follow the sound of falling pebbles in the distance. The ground below them squished and gave way. The grittiness told her that it was some sort of mud; however, there didn't seem be any trace of running water around to create such a texture. The scent of mildew and rotting wood told them that there was at least some source of moisture coming from somewhere.

 

"I wonder where we are now... if we're actually below Happy's or something," she mused.

 

"Who knows, the other side treats directions strangely," Henry said with a shrug. "Sometimes you have to retrace your steps. Other times, it's just literally as simple as skipping over a pond and reciting a rhyme that'll get you back to where you belong. I guess it depends on what territory you've fallen into."

 

"Territory?"

 

"Mmhmm. The other side is split into different territories. There's the Enchanted Forest inhabited by the Dryads, the Star Trail where all the pyre spirits live with their Lord... hmm, well you know about the spiders and their Queen, though we don't know where they live, actually most of the darker sprites usually change the land they live on so it's always a gamble getting to the other side if you don't know exactly where you're going," he mused.

 

"It seems like you've been to the other side multiple times before," she commented.

 

"Well, yeah, I have," he admitted bluntly. "I already told you, the Lady of the birds had taken a fancy to me. Of course I had to visit her often to make sure she was at least entertained. And anyways, I was a teenager at the time, what else was I supposed to do? Pass my classes and do my homework?" He let out a light laugh.

 

"Well, that's what I did when I was a teenager. I didn't think there was anything better to do," Cynthia confessed.

 

"Tehee, I'm sure at that time, you had told yourself that everything that happened to you on the other side was a lie, huh?" he asked.

 

"I... Yeah. I kept on telling myself that I was only eight when it all happened. For all I know, it could have been my imagination at that time. Everyone made fun of me when I went back to school after being lost for half the day. I didn't think anyone would believe me if I had found an enchanted forest with a forest prince and a giant mother spider, so I told everyone that I had gotten lost finding shelter in the rain. I did some research on my own afterward and just found more and more reasons to believe that it had all been a strange dream of some sort. Even Luce had lost what mystical properties he had when a classmate of mine had told me that stones like this could be found nearby."

 

"Makes sense," Henry murmured, "Though, if I were your classmate, I think I would have believed you."

 

"Well, you weren't, but at least you're here now, right?"

 

"Right," he said, squeezing her hand tightly for a brief moment. "Hey, no chance you can make your little friend there do that thing he was doing earlier, huh? No way he's gonna go and show us the way around or anything?" he asked.

 

"I already told you that that was the first time Luce has done anything like that before. I don't know how to make him do that again, even if I wanted him to," she grumbled, though she did notice that the light from within had gotten a tad bit brighter and their vision increased just by a bit.

 

"Well, I guess the least we can do is follow the sound," Henry said with a sigh.

 

"Yup, that's pretty much all we can do," she said, straining her ears to find the source of the noise. They were getting closer, that was for sure. Unlike some of the sounds on the other side that would fade and come back, the sounds were constant where they were. The acoustic noise of pebbles falling, one at a time was slowly, constantly growing louder and louder as they continued to blindly travel. Every now and then there was a stray stalagmite which stood before them, and they would sidestep it before continuing.

 

Eventually, the echoing noise was the only thing they could hear. Everything else was drowned out by the rhythmic falling sounds. In the very distance, if she squinted past Luce's light, she could make out a silvery blue light in the distance. "I think we found the end," she breathed, relieved that their trip down the strange, dark rabbit hole wasn't in total vain.

 

The closer they got to the silvery light, the more afraid she became. She held onto Henry's hand tightly. Part of her knew that what was coming up before her was going to be something she wouldn't be enjoying at the very least. Both trips to the other side had been filled with color. For this trip to be so dark, there had to be something horribly wrong with what she was about to witness. The light acted as it did when she was in the tunnel. It would sometimes grow larger and then shrink and then slowly grow larger until finally it led to an open area lit by the light of thousands of tiny orbs embedded into the stone walls of the cavern. In the center of the cavern ceiling was a large hole. To where it led, she didn't know; and quite frankly, she didn't really want to know.

 

The two of them looked around. Thin columns from where stalactites and stalagmites met littered the cavern creating an eerie forest of sorts. There were multiple entrances to the cavern as well, though they were scattered throughout the walls, some almost right next to the large hole in the ceiling.

 

"Whoa... Where are we?" Cynthia breathed, daring to speak first and hearing her voice echo several times even though she thought she had spoken rather softly.

 

"No idea, I've never seen anything like this," Henry admitted.

 

The glittering lights seemed to flicker violently when they spoke, and Cynthia slowly walked closer to one of them. She gasped when she peered through the translucent shell of one of them. There was clearly something inside of it, and it was not happy at all. The more she stared at it the more clear the figure became. It looked oddly similar to what she remembered Luce looking like before he was commanded to sleep.

 

"Take a look at this," she breathed, pointing at the light. "It's like they're... caught in here," she whispered, dragging Henry towards the light she was looking at.

 

He gently prodded the light, surprised when it gave way a bit. "Hmm," he mused, "Wonder if we can break it free." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his car keys which had a small knife attached to it. "Hang in there, lil guy, we're gonna get you outta there," he murmured before going to work at the edge of the casing. The knife easily went through a gelatinous layer. Henry quickly peeled that layer off with his knife, and wiped off the sticky goo on his pants before tackling what was left of the shell casing.

 

Without the gelatin layer, the light from within shone much brighter; and the figure could clearly be seen. Indeed, it was a figure that was very similar to what Luce once looked like. Through the crystal clear layer that was left, it could be seen that the glowing creature wasn't made of the same material as Luce. Instead of the thin crystals that he was made of, it was of a much stockier build. Broad, strong angles decorated this glowing figure. Its wings were still transparent and see through though there was a thick black outline to it. It was almost as if this one was made of stained glass in a way.

 

With a few grunts and the sound of glass shattering, Henry was able to pry off the last layer which clattered on the ground. The sprite zipped out from its confines to pause in front of the two, babble something in its gibberish tongue and plant a kiss on Henry's forehead before zig zagging through the forest of stone and flying straight up through the hole in the ceiling.

 

From that action, all the other lights started to flicker violently and brighten considerably. They all started to show colors – fluorescent green, pearlescent blue and every other color imaginable – coming from the little cells of gelatin and glass.

 

"There must be hundreds of them," Henry breathed, moving to the next closest prison and working on getting through to them to free as many of them as he could. The second one he was able free did the same thing as the first. It flew straight out of its last home and stared at the two of them before planting a small kiss on Henry's forehead and flying straight through the hole in the ceiling. Cynthia looked around for something sharp and found nothing of the sort. She placed Luce back in her pocket and started to tear at the gelatin layer with her bare hands. To her surprise, it came off easily, almost without any resistance.

 

"You work on the second layer," she commanded, "I'll get through to the gooey stuff."

 

"Gotcha, partner," Henry grinned, popping the lid off a third prison and watching as a quartz colored sprite fluttered out following the actions of the previous two. However, instead of flying through the ceiling as the others had, it stayed around and started to help in the process of plucking off layers from the prisons its friends were held in. It lifted the gooey gelatin layer much faster than Cynthia could ever hope to do, and the soft 'plop' from the lights losing their first layer soon echoed the room as more and more sprites joined their cause.

 

Eventually, the light in the cavern had become so bright, it was as if it was daylight in there. Cynthia took a moment to take a breather and sighed in relief when she felt something that wasn't a layer of gelatin fall onto her shoulder.

 

It was what she had originally assumed was the source of the dropping pebble sounds. However, on closer inspection, she noticed it was much too light to be any sort of rock she knew of. It certainly wasn't porous enough to be pumice either. She turned it around in her hand and looked upwards to see where it could have dropped from. When she did, she did her best not to scream. Instead, she tugged on Henry's shirt and motioned for him to stop a moment.

 

"Please tell me I'm not going crazy here," she breathed and pointed upwards towards the ceiling.

 

His eyes widened and he let out a gasp. "Wow... That's... Definitely a new development," he said, swallowing. "Unexpected, to say the least."

 

"I'll say," she murmured.

 

Above them hung at least twelve young girls, their blank, dead eyes staring down at the two of them. Their hair done up in pigtails and in various stages of rot. Their bodies were wrapped in layers upon layers of silvery spider silk while they hung by their feet from the ceiling. Cynthia had to fight the urge to vomit everything she had in her stomach at the sight. Some of the girls had fingers missing from being eaten alive by the spiders that probably lived here. Others had clumps of hair missing and various appendages in different stages of being eaten. On the other side of the room, she could see a couple of shoes and more bones that littered the ground.

 

"Spider... nest," she whispered.

 

"No, it's more like they're storing them for something," Henry replied, his voice tense.

 

"So it's like... a feeding ground for their babies who can't hunt yet."

 

"That's definitely a thought. All these girls do look awfully similar to each other, though, don't you think?"

 

Cynthia paused for a moment to compare all of them and noticed how right Henry was. They were dressed simply in shorts and a t-shirt, their hair done up in pigtails and on their feet were a pair of hiking sandals. She gasped when she realized that they were the victims of the spider queen's anger.

 

"Gods... they took all of these girls?" she whispered, "All because of what I did?"

 

"It seems-- Wait, do you hear that?"

 

"Hear what?" she asked, though with a slight moment of silence she heard it as well. There was the sound of something coming this way and coming fast. The sound of skittering echoed throughout the room and the creatures which they had freed all dashed out of the hole in the ceiling. There were still enough of them left trapped for them to clearly see what was pouring out from the various entrances to the cavern.

 

Spiders. Arachnids of all shapes, sizes and colors came crawling in from those entrances. From the entrance in which Cynthia and Henry came from, they could hear something much larger make its way through; and, quite frankly, Cynthia was not interested in finding out what it was going to be. In a hurried rush, she stared her greatest fear in the eye and ran straight towards one of the entrances situated at the ground, grabbing Henry and dragging him along as well. She wasn't that interested in him dying on her, either.

 

"Aww come on! I was just getting started on counting how many of them there might be!" he whined as they ran.

 

"I'm sorry, but there's something big coming and I sure as hell am not going to stick around and find out what it is," Cynthia said, pushing through the feeling of spiders covering her body. Her heart was beating faster than she had ever thought it could. For a moment, she was sure that it was going to just beat itself out of her chest as some of the sprites had done to their cells inside the cavern. Blindly she ran, in the dark, not bothering to take Luce out from her pocket. Her mind was too panicked to think straight at that moment. All that mattered was both her and Henry were going to get out of that place safely.

 

She must have run into several walls in her frantic escape. There was no doubt in her mind that the two of them had been bitten at least three or four times from startled spiders but she ignored the pain as she continued to race out of the dark labyrinth of spiders, mud, captured sprites and kidnapped children.

 

Her lungs had started to feel as though they were burning after running in the dark for so long. Her anxiety wasn't helping her case at all. It felt as though her chest was on fire as she searched for her dear life for something that would seem like an exit. She was on the brink of despair when she kept on running into wall after wall. There seemed to be endless turns and dead ends.

 

"Is this the end?" she asked after hitting what seemed to be another spider infested wall. The crunch of arachnids beneath their feet and their heavy breathing was the only thing that reminded her that she was alive and that she had at least had Henry who believed in her.

 

"Come on now, this is no time to be all negative," Henry chided. "You were chosen by the forest prince for a reason. I'm sure we'll find a way out. There has to be, how else would they be coming in?" he reasoned.

 

"Right," Cynthia said, though part of her still wondered if there really was an exit somewhere in this endless maze.

 

She felt a slight breeze then, and instantly she knew it had to be a sign from her world. There was a hope, and though there was no light to guide them, she could at least follow her other senses out towards where they could be in some semblance of safety. It wasn't far. It couldn't be that far. How else would they be able to feel that breeze? She followed it to best of her ability until her footing slipped, and she fell down another abyss to an unknown end. The last thing she remembered in the darkness was squeezing Henry's hand as tightly as she could, determined to make sure they wouldn't be separated. It was the least she could do.