The cave was dark. The three comrades couldn’t see a thing. The elf walked barefooted in front of the others. She could sense movements around her. It didn’t bother Jade that her friends relied on her for direction. But she still felt blind, a handicap that proved its worth to her when she bumped her head into a stalactite. She stopped walking and appealed to her willpower to help her not to shout out in pain. She pressed her hand to her forehead and heard Acantha whisper in her ear.
“Is something there? Is it the daemon?”
Jade was forming curses inside her head and made a mental note to let them out as soon as the threat of the daemon was gone. Not risking speech, Jade used her elf ability to whisper directly into Morn and Acantha’s head.
“No daemon. Watch your heads.”
“You’re able to sense the ceiling too?” Acantha replied with a hint of surprise under her breath.
“I am, if it hits me in the face.” Jade replied, agitated.
Acantha kept quiet despite herself, she was pretty sure that bursting out in laughter was not going to help their situation.
They continued their walk through the tunnel. Before they’d gone in, Morn had summoned their shadow falcon to provide them with a cloak of shadows. It made no difference in the dark, but they had it on, just in case. They had no idea of the powers of the daemon and they gratefully clasped onto the bit of extra shelter. Jade stopped walking again. A whisper sounded inside Morn and Acantha’s head. It was a weird sensation to have someone talk inside your head. The sound didn’t come from anywhere, it was just there, in your head.
“I think it’s the daemon, I don’t know what it’s doing. It appears to be standing there, in the cave, maybe it’s the end of the tunnel.” Jade paused as she focused on the movements. The implications of the daemon simply standing there dawned on them. “There’s a smaller creature too, the kid, I hope. It’s sitting in a corner of the cave. We should be able to go in without getting the kid mixed up in the fight.”
Morn grunted softly in affirmation and Acantha nodded her head in the dark, realizing that no one could see. They had gone over the plan before. Their purpose was to learn who had sent the daemon to abduct the Lost. When Aoda had sent them on their mission, she had told them that if the daemon was hurt, it would possibly try to capture someone and run. If they would slay it, the daemons body would vanish and they had no means of gaining the information. It seemed crazy to go into a cave with a daemon. Before the three were part of the Truepath clan, they would have never dared to go near one. Even Morn, the strong and proud warrior who loved a good fight, preferred to walk the other way when a daemon was in sight. But things were different now that they had a purpose.
As quietly as they could, the three sneaked up on the daemon. It didn’t give them any indication that it had noticed them. Jade left the others to circle around the giant beast in an attempt to flank it. The fight started before they had a chance to develop second thoughts. Jade had attacked the creature by slashing her blade on to one of it’s giant spider-like legs. The creature screeched, an obvious sign that it was disturbed from whatever it had been doing. Jade readied herself for an incoming blow, but when she heard it, it sounded like Morns axe hitting a giant spider-leg. The creature screeched again.
The darkness faded. The sound of grinding stones sounded from where they had come. They could now see what was going on. In front of them, the large insect-like daemon stood in a circular room. Six giant legs, it’s skin a thick armor and next to its mouth were two large mandibles with which the three had seen it grab the little captured elfling when it had run away from Effy’s snake in the forest. However frightening the daemon looked, it paled by the sense of impending doom that the source of the light gave the three of them. A stone slab was sliding into place in front of the tunnel, cutting the adventurers off from the way they had come. The stone was engraved with a glowing text, providing a convenient light to shy away the darkness, both for them, as well as for the daemon.
The cloak of the shadow falcon had disappeared as soon as Morns axe had made contact with the daemons leg. They were now all in plain sight.