Chapter 29: What Waits Below

“I’m worried about Mireia…”

“Relax, Nerez. It was fertile land. In a couple of decades, you’ll have thousands of believers. Mireia will do a great job converting them all. I could see that devotion in her eyes.”

“…”

“What?”

“That’s exactly what worries me. I can see what she does through the skeletons. During those first few days, she devoted herself to building some sort of temple with them instead of her own house…”

“I still don’t see what the problem is…”

“Children should be playing and learning, not building temples. I tell her that every night when she… calls me…? contacts me…? but she never listens…”

“What are you talking about, Nerez? Children are supposed to absorb the lava’s energy and develop their own inner warmth.”

“I’m pretty sure those are just the fire spirits from your village…” Nerez let out another sigh. “Mmm… I’m worried… If we weren’t going to the underworld, maybe I would have brought her with me… Besides, the skeletons have the rest of the villagers terrified…”

“What good is an apostle who’s always with her god?”

“…”

“What is it now?”

“I’ll have to settle for watching over her through the skeletons. At worst, I’ll just take control away from her and make them take proper care of her.”

“For someone who doesn’t want trouble, you really are creating it for yourself… Mireia will be fine, I’m sure of it.” Cerys raised a finger. “She said it herself, didn’t she? She’s survived by running from monsters since she was little, and now she even has a company of skeletal soldiers around her. And yes, the rest of the villagers are terrified, but that’s exactly why they’re treating her like the leader of the village.”

“That’s true… I’d better focus on the matter at hand… But tonight I’ll try again to convince her to take things more slowly and try to make friends her own age. It’s not healthy for her to spend all day talking to skeletons.”

“…Has no one ever told you you’re a little overprotective?”

“No… but then again, I’ve never had a family of my own to be overprotective of. That’s how fate wanted it… literally.”

“True, you still haven’t told me about those thousands of lives.”

“And you still haven’t told me about your problems with your village and with the gods of fire.”

“That’s none of your concern…”

“Same goes for me, then.”

“Well, maybe someday.”

“Haha, all right. Someday we’ll talk about the past.”

Under the light cast by the fire in Cerys’s palm, the two of them made their way through a vast network of caverns.

They had already spent days descending into the depths of the earth, and at last Nerez felt the river of death was closer than far away.

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“To think it looked like an ordinary cave from the outside…”

“Up to a certain point, it was an ordinary cave,” Cerys replied. “The underworld began when the glowing moss appeared, along with the oddly shaped mushrooms and the creatures that hide the moment they hear us approaching.”

“You seem rather well informed about all this.”

“Of course I am! I didn’t get to be three hundred years old for nothing, so don’t look down on me!”

“O great expert, what else can we expect to find ahead?”

“Mm… The glowing crystals should start appearing soon, and then we won’t need the fire anymore.”

“And what are those glowing crystals called?”

“Uh… they’re called… uh… mm… Look it up in your own Godscript!”

“‘Look it up in your own Godscript’? That’s a rather strange name for some crystals.”

“Don’t mess with me!”

“Hahaha.”

“I’m going to bite you again!”

But the conversation was cut short when they rounded the rocky tunnel and found themselves facing a starry sky.

They were not real stars, but hundreds of small shining crystals illuminating the cavern with an emerald hue.