Kitsune in the Shadows
Chapter 119 – It Shouldn’t Have Moved

[Ava POV]

What am I supposed to do with this girl?

“Cattleya!” I shouted as I grabbed onto her arm, pulling her back before she could get anything further than five steps into the cave, “What are you doing?!”

Despite my complaints, she continued trying to wriggle her way out of my grip, pulling me further into the cave with just her strength; the light from the entrance slowly growing fainter.

“Cattleya Astrantia!” I shouted in a desperate attempt to get her attention.

She finally stopped.

“But we need to hurry, the Spirit King is already far ahead of us,” She said, a little downtrodden.

“No, we don’t,” I replied, “She knows what she’s doing. If she really needed us to be with her, she would have waited.”

“B-but…”

“No buts. In what world does it make sense to go running off into a cave that might have a dragon, or even something worse, in it? Because I’m pretty sure that it isn’t the one we’re in now.”

There was a moment of silence between the two of us as Cattleya slowly seemed to take on board what I was saying.

“Now, let’s get back to the entrance so we can discuss what we’re going to do… properly this time.”

“…” Cattleya didn’t respond.

There’s only so much I can deal with by myself.

There wasn’t any reason for me to wait for her to say anything, so I just started walking back, dragging her along with me while holding my other hand out in front of me to make sure I didn’t bump into any walls. But after moving only a few steps, she stopped again.

“But what if this really is the right place? What if this is where all of the stolen items are being stored?” Cattleya asked.

“So what?!” I asked in response, “That doesn’t change the fact that I’d rather not be in here right now.”

“It means that I might be able to find what they stole from me. It should be here with everything else… somewhere…”

“I thought you were still waiting for it to come in on a ship?” I just couldn’t understand why she was being so difficult about this all of a sudden, “Isn’t that the whole reason you approached us in the first place? To investigate whatever was happening to them?”

“No, that was for the replacement. The original one I bought that was stolen might still be here,” She said, looking around on the floor, “It should be in a thick glass bottle with a red cork in it.”

A bottle? Red cork?

I don’t have time for any of this. I can hardly see anything down here.

“Cattleya, we’re leaving. That’s the last I should have to say on it.”

“… Fine,” She eventually gave in.

Thankfully, this time, I didn’t need to drag her by the arm in order to get her to follow along. Although thinking back on it, I wasn’t even sure why she let me drag her around in the first place. I already knew if she really wanted to, it wouldn’t be too much of an ask to slip away, but that didn’t really matter.

I hadn’t paid too much attention to how far she dragged me in initially, but it couldn’t have been that far. Probably only a few extra paces as most.

Yet, as we kept on walking, there was no sign of the light that should have been coming from the entrance, not a weak breeze, nor even the sound of the others.

“Did I go the wrong way?” I asked, getting frustrated with the whole thing, “Why am I even in the front? You should be leading the way.”

“What do you mean, the wrong way?” Cattleya asked back, “There is only one way.”

Just how far did we end up going?

Has it not been as long as I thought?

“The dark must be messing with me,” I said as I pushed Cattleya in front of me, placing a hand on her back so I could keep track of where she was.

I shouldn’t have agreed to any of this.

Who knows what’s going through Kierra’s head right now? What if she gets herself into trouble?

“Oh, please wait a moment,” I felt Cattleya stop and start rummaging through her coat, “I saw this at the entrance and picked it up in case it was useful.”

A few seconds later, there was a very faint light in the tunnel, coming from something in the palm of Cattleya’s hand.

“It will more than likely not last for very long, but hopefully it is a little better for you,” She said as she placed whatever she had picked up in my hand.

Looking down, it was a small glass sphere with delicate silver bands running around it, looking not all that different to the big artefact that was at the lighthouse, just a lot smaller.

“You’re still leading the way,” I said as I nudged her forward a bit, using the little light just to make sure I wasn’t about to trip over anything.

Cattleya didn’t try to speak back that time, now just walking through the tunnel, if a little slowly… If I had to guess, she was still trying to find whatever she was after… even if she had already come through this tunnel in order to get here in the first place… although the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that this was in fact the same tunnel.

That, unfortunately, was confirmed to me when Cattleya suddenly stopped walking again.

“What’s it now?” I asked, trying to get a look over her shoulder.

“There is someone else in here.”

“Someone else?”

“Yes, they are sitting on the floor a little in front of us.”

The two of us approached the person cautiously, but that might not have been needed. Once we were close enough that I could use the little light we had to get a better look, things took a grim turn.

They were a fairly short rabbit beastkin, with scruffy black hair and dull blue eyes. His build was quite thin, to the extent that he looked starved… which he likely was, given the situation in which we found him. He was lazily slumped against a wall, his skin pale, his eyes lifeless.

“A corpse…” I muttered as I pieced everything together.

He had nothing overtly valuable on him, just his robes and a simple wooden stave, implying that he was some sort of mage, even if not a particularly valuable one, considering there were no rumours about their disappearance.

“Are you sure?” Cattleya asked as she crouched down next to the body.

“Don’t disturb them,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder, “It’s not our place to… Anyway, I think we went the wrong way somehow. Let’s go back and see if there was a side path we both somehow didn’t notice. I’d really rather not stay down here any longer than I have to.”

Instead of just listening to me, Cattleya gave the body a slight poke before standing up.

I swear…

“Come on now,” I said, trying to lead her in the right direction.

But as I did, an uncomfortable cracking sound filled the tunnels.

“A-Ava,” Cattleya ran into my back, almost sending me to the floor, “I-I think we need to go.”

“What-?”

As I looked over my shoulder to check on Cattleya, that’s when I saw it. That body was very much not a corpse… although it was also far from being a person. Its body contorted unnaturally, its legs extending as its mouth gaped wider and wider. The teeth now like rusted blades, becoming all the more numerous by the moment, lining its horrifically unhinged jaw.

It wasn’t long until the rabbit beastkin looked more like some grotesque bastardisation of a frog.

“Gods…” I grabbed onto Cattleya’s arm and tried to drag her through the tunnel as quickly as possible, holding the little glass ball in my teeth so that I had a free arm to keep myself steady. It also just gave me a bit of an extra push not to trip, at the risk of badly chipping a tooth.

The two of us did our best to move as quickly as possible, or at least I did. Cattleya kept trying to stop or slow down for whatever reason. It didn’t matter to me, though; the only thing that mattered was making sure we were safe.

Something that was on our side was the size of the tunnels; they were just small enough to make it difficult for whatever the thing behind us to keep up… although it was hard to call it anything more than a slight advantage, as unlike the creature, I somehow had to move through them at speed with a scared Cattleya latched onto my arm.

I really hope Kierra didn’t follow me in here.

I don’t know if she could handle something like this.

As we were running, I noticed a small side path up ahead, much smaller than the tunnel we were in, but given the situation, it was perfect. As soon as we were close enough, I dived in, pulling Cattleya along with me despite her protests. However, in the process, I accidentally opened my mouth, letting the light fall to the floor.

Cattleya tried to grab it, but I pulled her arm back in, holding her down so she couldn’t try anything else.

“Stop,” I whispered into her ear, making her tense up.

The two of us hugged the wall there, hoping that the creature wouldn’t notice us and just continue on its way through the tunnels.

I could hear it inching its way closer. The shifting of trinkets, the sound of its knees hitting the ceiling, yet all I could see was the small area illuminated by the glass ball on the floor.

It got closer and closer, picking up speed as it went, clearly getting more comfortable in its own body.

And then, it happened: a shadow was cast across the cave wall as the creature slowed to a halt just next to us, its eyes still completely unfocused. Cattleya jolted next to me, but I just put my hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.

The creature slowly approached the glass ball, looking it over before picking it up with its malformed forelimbs. It then just continued down the tunnel, completely ignoring us as if it had now gotten what it wanted.

The two of us sat there to catch our breath.

“We need to hurry up and find the way out of here,” I said as I hastily tried to get back to my feet.

Unfortunately, it seemed that wasn’t going to be the case, as Cattleya grabbed onto my waist and pulled me back down.

“What-?” As I grabbed onto her arm to try to remove her, all I could feel was trembling, “… Fine. We’ll wait a few minutes for that… thing to move on,” I said as I gently rubbed her back.