There was a splash, somewhere something fell into the lake. Scarlet knew she wasn't mishearing, something was in the lake, something was too stupid to make so much noise down here. As she made her way to the lake she noticed some of the small spiders were also making their way there. She contemplated crushing them under her shoe but she knew better than to provoke them first, she made that mistake once before, she wouldn't make it again.

  Exiting from one of dozens of pathways she found herself in the lake room. Her eyes strained to see through the pitch black darkness. How she was able to see without any light still puzzled her after however long she'd been trapped down here. On the shore of the lake she spotted the source of the noise, a person, it turned out her mind had been playing tricks on her again. She'd lost count of how many times she'd seen or heard people in these desolate caverns. Strangely this time it felt different, more vivid. Scarlet wasn't sure if she should let her mind keep leading her astray but it was better entertainment than watching spiders crawl on the ceiling.

  The person, a little girl that was eleven or twelve, was struggling to get air into her lungs, it seemed that she had come from the lake, which should have been impossible. She was shivering through the coldness of the cave and with her being thoroughly dampened by the water. To Scarlet the cave was always mildly below room temperature, probably something to do with the red skin and horns she gained when she woke up. Every time she touched her skin she felt a strange warmth coming from it.

  Scarlet watched as the girl fumbled around in the darkness before she found something and held it tight, and then there was light. Even the dim glow of a single string illuminated the entire cave in Scarlet's eyes. Around her the spiders seemed to spitter away as if the red light from the strings was real, which it obviously couldn't be. She was hallucinating a person that could use magic like she could, that was a first.

  With better lighting Scarlet was able to see the girl in better detail. She was a strange girl, tan skin, green highlights, and were those scales on her body? Then she noticed the black spiked tail protruding from her, Scarlet's imagination really had gone into overdrive. The girl looked like she came straight out of one of her DnD characters back when she was younger and didn't know who she really was.

  Soon the girl began picking up her stuff, a bag, and whatever else had fallen out of it before exiting into one of the hallways. Soon the light faded away and the lake dimmed once again with the absence of her strings. Scarlet wasn't sure why but she felt compelled to go to the area that the phantom had just been, it wasn't as if she would find anything. But then as she scanned the area her shoe grazed something that didn't exactly feel like stone or a stray spider.

  Looking closer she found something made out of wood, ridiculous as it was she picked it up. It didn't feel like any rock she'd felt, or as furred as any of the creatures down here, instead it felt like it looked, wood. The illusion made by her mind wasn't something amazing, it was just a wooden wind up toy that the non-existent girl seemingly didn't find earlier. Scarlet didn't bother winding the toy, in reality it was probably just some rock or something like that.

  Stowing the toy away into one of her many pockets Scarlet entered the tunnel that the girl had and followed behind. She trailed the dim light making sure to make as little noise as possible; the creatures down here were sensitive to it, though the phantom didn't seem to get the memo. The girl passed through corridor after corridor, with each new room the cave system felt ever expanding. Even after how many weeks she'd been down here Scarlet didn't know the entire layout of the place she was trapped in.

  Eventually the girl wandered into a room covered in glowing blue gems. Scarlet recognized it as the gem room, and it was one that she typically avoided due to the fact that spiders tended to linger around the gems. There had to have been a few thousand small gems scattered through the room, some clinging to the roof, others in the walls. A few gems were even as big as the girl. Despite the mass of spiders it was a beautiful room that felt like watching a starry night to Scarlet. The girl didn't seem to care or notice the spiders and instead rushed to the gems and began to collect as many as she possibly could and stuffed them into her bag.

  Scarlet watched as the girl fruitlessly filled her pack, she knew that unless the girl had a way out of here they were nothing more than spider attractors. As the bag became fuller and fuller more spiders began to surround as if she was actually real. Soon Scarlet realized that some two of the larger spiders were approaching the girl, arachnids that went up to her hips. The ghost still obvious to her plight continued to harvest crystals.

  Scarlet wasn't sure why she did it, the girl wasn't even real, she couldn't be, but she pressed her hands together in a clap and formed a dozen red hot strings. From her hiding spot she jumped at the largest spider and began strangling it as the searing threads burned through the overgrown tarantula. In a few seconds the beast was dead.

  The girl finally realized the severity of the situation and fumbled for a gun Scarlet hadn't seen in the darkness and prepared to fire it at the remaining spiders, but it was too late. In a moment of panic Scarlet shoulder bashed the other spider before lacing it in burning wire, cutting the beast into pieces. However in the end the spider got the last laugh, with its dying movement it slashed at her left arm. Blood gushed around her as she fell to the ground; smaller spiders scattered, not all of them escaped the falling woman.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  After a few seconds the adrenaline rush faded and the girl was panicking over the soon to be dead lady. And then she touched her arm, the girl touched her, she wasn't a figment of her imagination after all, if only she wasn't trapped down here with murderous spiders. Soon a warm sensation came over her as the blue light brightened. Scarlet thought that death would've been less soothing; at least she saved the child.

  —

  I weaved ten simultaneous threads across the red woman's body, one for each of my fingers. There were more than enough gems for me to wrap the entirety of her arm in blue light, though I couldn’t see if it was even doing anything because I couldn’t see past the strings. Every other moment I would look to the entrances to the cave looking for any more of those gigantic spiders, but I hadn’t seen any in the past fifteen minutes, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. Slowly but surely I began to drag the lady by holding her under her arms and into the cave system I entered through. If I could possibly drag her far enough maybe none of those spiders would show up again.

  Room after room my body began to exhaust as I pulled the woman through the corridors. By the time I finally made it back to the lake room I was ready to fall asleep but I knew that if I did that the woman might never wake up, I compromised by sitting down instead. As I concentrated on the gems I realized that some of them had dimmed greatly since I began healing her and eventually stopped glowing entirely. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there as I rotated through gem after gem until my pack finally emptied, if I went back to the cave I wasn’t sure I would be able to make it back in time to keep her alive.

  Instead of doing anything I just sat there with only the light from my gun's red string as I watched the woman's chest rise up and down with every breath she took, at least something to tell me my savior wasn’t dead yet. Taking a closer look at the woman I realized she looked nothing like anyone I’d met before, bar those devil looking people back at the inn. She wore a black and red letterman jacket, though it had no letters on it, beneath that was a plain black shirt and even more plain black pants. Her skin was a bright red and she even had two black horns coming out of her forehead. She even had a tail!

  Whoever she was it was obvious she was a wayfarer like me, except instead of waking up in Rosurnan she had probably woken up in the middle of a cave. That meant she’d have to have been here for at least a month. I couldn’t even imagine living down here, were there even anything other than spiders down here? Oh God that probably meant there wasn’t an exit. In my contemplation of the horrific situation that I was now stuck in, the woman began to stir.

  “Hey! Hey, wake up!” I grabbed the lady by the shoulders and lightly shook her, but in my condition that felt like a monumental task. Slowly the woman rose up and leaned on her good arm.

  “I'm alive?” The woman gave out a voice of disbelief at the fact that she wasn't a corpse.

  “I'm alive!” She sprang up and pulled me into a crushing hug. Immediately I tried to push back against her but my feeble body couldn't stop her. Eventually though she was warm I couldn't resist the urge to break free.

  “And you're real! You're real.” All of a sudden her tone turned into something expectant, like she wanted something from me. “How- how did you get down here?”

  I was finally able to get out of her grip as I pulled away from the woman. The smile on her face faltered a tiny bit but still stayed strong.

  “I um… I fell down here. There was this underground river I fell into that pulled me into that lake.” I was hesitant to tell her of my blunder but what else was I going to tell her.

  At that moment all her enthusiasm disappeared. Her face turned angry and I instinctively flinched as if she was going to hit me, but instead all she did was scream her heart out into the void. She seemingly thought that since I fell down here there wasn't an actual entrance.

  “God damnit! I'm never getting out of here am I?” She yelled into the caverns venting her frustration.

  “We actually- we came here to find this cave. My friends needed to explore this cave for money.” I did my best to calm down the woman hoping she wouldn't take her frustration out on me.

  “You came here for this cave? Then there's an exit! All we have to do is wait for your friends!” She was about to give me another hug before I quickly backed away and dodged her hug.

  “Well anyways since you're real I guess I'll tell you my name! I'm Scarlet.” Her enthusiasm returned in full force as she loudly proclaimed her name. “And I believe this is yours.” From one of her jacket pockets she pulled out my robot!

  I quickly grabbed the robot back from Scarlet and inspected it. Despite the fall the wooden figurine was only slightly bruised and dented. I shoved it into my bag to make sure it didn't get further damaged.

  “I'm Michael.” I wasn't exactly sure what to say to the woman besides my name.

  “Soo, what's this world like? Oh wait I'm not from this world I'm from Earth, and you're in those medieval clothes and you've got dragon parts. Are there other dragon people? How do you live? Do you buy clothes with tail holes? Also, is Michael a girl's name in this world?” Scarlet bombarded me with question after question about my life in Rosurnan and about me being a Steilae, I quickly got tired of her rambling.

  “Stop, just stop. I'm also from another world too, there are dozens of us in an inn. Just stop rambling, you're gonna give me a headache.” Scarlet quieted down but I could feel her need to ask questions wasn't fully contained.

  Even though I stopped Scarlet's rambling I could feel a headache forming in my head, and that wasn't helped by the cold either. God it was getting so cold, I was still damp from the lake. To make matters worse I could feel my body beginning to fall asleep from the lack of sleep from last night. Drowsiness began to take hold as the cold spread throughout me. Whatever force kept me moving through the cave was quickly fading away.

  “Hey it's gonna be alright. You can go to sleep, I'll make sure nothing bad happens to you.” Her tone shifted to something strange, it was soothing, nobody had ever spoken to me like that before.

  “Why’re you talking like that?” My head nodded as I began leaning on my arms onto the even colder stone floor.

  “Because in my experience it makes kids feel better in stressful environments.” My body had tricked yet another person into believing I was a child.

  “I'm not a kid.” My words were beginning to slur together as sleep began to take over.

  “They all say that, now just rest until you wake up, hopefully by then your friends will have arrived.” She gently took my head and pulled it into her lap. It was warm, just like the red gem my gun had inside it.

  I couldn't resist the allure of warmth and faded away into slumber.