"We don't have time for this. We need to keep moving. Who knows what that foul creature is doing to my Rynn!" Drelk wiped the moisture from his eyes as he pressured the companions to hurry.
"How are we supposed to do that? We can't bring all these people with us, Drelk." Leor gestured toward the group of dark elves as he spoke.
"Leave it to me," Thrale said with a stern expression as he stepped forward, "I will protect them and lead them back to the mountain fortress."
Leor nodded at the suggestion and walked up beside the injured older elf, who was still sitting with his back against the cave wall.
"Drelk… I think you should accompany Thrale and the others back to the fortress. You've been a great help, but you're too injured for this sort of thing. Who knows what we will encounter as we delve further into these abyssal caves. You'll only slow us down."
The old elf looked up at Leor with a deep frown across his wrinkled face, like he wanted to refuse, but even the slight movement of lifting his head to stare at Leor sent a wave of stabbing pain through his body.
Drelk tightly grit his teeth as he reluctantly accepted that the young human was right. He stared off into the dark cave passageway for a few seconds before reaching into his robe and pulling out a strange maroon herb tightly sealed in a glass container. The herb looked like nothing more than a puffy ball of cotton, but Leor felt a strange weariness as he watched Drelk push the item toward him.
"Here, take it. If you run into something that's too much for you four to handle, inject as much Willpower as you can into the herb through the glass, then throw it hard enough that the glass breaks." As Leor cautiously reached down to accept the strange glass box, Drelk grabbed his hand and stared him in the eye sternly. "Do not allow the glass to break while it's anywhere near you, if you don't want to die."
Leor took a moment to let the instruction sink in as he swallowed deeply, then gingerly accepted the glass box and held it up to get a better look.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It would take a long time to explain it properly. Just be satisfied with knowing that it's one of Viridrak's experiments. You don't want to be close by when the glass breaks, I promise you that," Drelk explained somberly.
"I understand, I'll be careful," Leor promised as he tucked the item away in his pack, wrapping it with spare linens to ensure its safety.
"We'd better go now. It's still the early hours of the night, but we don't know how long it will take to find Rynn, and we cannot afford to be here when the sun rises. I expect that the thousands of mutant defiled out on the plains will flood back into these caves to hide from the sun," Alina said with a hint of fear in her eyes.
With those words, the now much larger group set off, heading back down the long tunnel in the direction they had come. They traveled swiftly through the gloomy rock, only the two Willpower torches of the young humans lighting the way.
The group reached the fork in the cave where they had taken the wrong path earlier in the night. The path to their left was the way back to the cave's entrance, and the one to their right led deeper into the strange cave system.
"This is where we part ways. I hope you make it back safely," Leor said as he stood before the young dark elf Thale.
"How will they find their way in the dark? They have no fire." The rumbling voice of Bone sounded from behind Leor's head.
It was a good question. He hadn't considered it until now that they were about to separate, but he and Alina had the only torches, and they would need both of them to further explore the caves.
Thale waved his hand dismissively as he saw the concern on Leor's face, casually pointing toward his glowing red eyes. "These mutations aren't entirely useless. I'm able to see through the darkness of this cave almost like a well-lit summer day. So you don't need to worry about us. We will make it back safely."
"I see!" Leor spoke the words with earnest surprise as he stared into the glowing red eyes of the mutated young elf in front of him. In hindsight it seemed rather obvious now that he thought about it. The defiled mutants were creatures of the darkness, afterall, so it would only make sense for their mutations to make it easier for them to exist in that environment. The fact that the dark elves still retained the benefit of night vision after being cleansed of their defilement was a lucky thing indeed.
Leor glanced behind him to take one last look at the retreating group of dark elves as they headed toward the exit. As he did, he saw Drelk's misery-laden face staring back at him.
"You have to find her! Please, Leor! She's just a child!" The old elf shouted those final parting words from Thale's back as he was swiftly carried away, his voice cracking with desperation.
Leor, Alina, Bone, and the old grey wolf were the last remaining members of the rescue party now. The Beasts returned to their human forms as the group of four pulled their hunter's cloaks tightly across their bodies, moving through the dark cave system with all the stealth they could muster.
They kept their torches as dimly lit as they could, though it wouldn't make much difference. Now that they know the mutants had nightvision, they knew they would be spotted as clear as day with or without the torches lit. So they didn't bother to try to fully conceal the light, they just hoped for the best as they slowly travelled deeper and deeper into the eerie caves below the mountain.
"What do you think could cause an entire cave system to be dyed jet black?" Leor whispered the question to Alina so softly that it could hardly be heard by anyone without Beastly ears like her.
A shiver crept up Leor's spine as he listened to her telepathic response. His eyes couldn't help drifting toward the dark walls around him with newfound wariness. It was already bad enough that they were forced down into the depths of the monster-infested caves in the dead of the night, but it was just completely unreasonable to have to worry that the caves themselves might pose an additional danger.
Thankfully they had not run into any further defiled ever since they made their stand in the dead end passage, and defeated the nearly one hundred mutants who had cornered them there.
Perhaps Alina was right, and most of the defiled who would normally be in these caves were out stalking the plains during the night. That would truly be a lucky turn of events.
The four companions continued to follow the crystal compass deeper into the underground, passing through miles of the same jet black rock, seemingly without end. Leor was beginning to grow weary of how deep into the underground they were traveling. If something went wrong, it would be almost impossible to make it back out swiftly.
But with no real choice in the matter, all they could do was continue forward into the darkness.
And so they continued, hiking down another long stretch of cave ever deeper into the mountain, the solid black rock continuously passing them by from all sides as they moved, like the endless throat of a giant Beast swallowing them up.
Then, a change began to occur. Bone seemed to be the first to sense it, but the solemn Beast merely grunted at the strange sensation and continued to move.
Next it was the old grey wolf, who tilted his powerful nose up in the air and breathed deep from all directions, clearly picking up the scent of something strange.
Finally, Leor and Alina caught wind of it at the same moment. Her because of her Beastly body, and him because of his newly heightened senses. The two glanced up at each other in startled confusion as the wave of spiritual power washed over their senses.
It was unmistakably the spiritual power of a Beast, but stronger than anything Leor had ever felt before. If the power he felt from Bone was like a small pool, this sensation was surely the ocean.
But there was something off about it. It wasn't the lively and flowing spiritual power he felt from the living Beasts beside him. Instead, it felt more like the spiritual power he had once sensed from the corpses laying on the tables in Drelk's workshop—stale, lifeless, and decaying.
It was no wonder the strong sensation didn't really bother Bone or old grey. Whatever powerful creature was giving off such an overwhelming spiritual presence, it appeared to already be dead.