Eighteenth Entry

“You invaded my mind!!” Raph’æl’s voice cracked open like thunder—raw, shaking, a depth of anger I was sure to have never heard from him before. “Despite everything you’ve done to spite us, I still consider you a friend… but my private thoughts are MY business!”

His words landed hard. Too hard. I felt them strike the air like arrows, and I flinched as if one might hit me by mistake. His anger wasn’t misplaced, but…

“I—I was just testing something out,” Ragar stammered.

She sounded small. Smaller than I expected.

“Another excuse, is it?!” he roared. “You sell the staff, you put the map in danger, you jeopardize the dragon parts, you speak in some form of code with the Miner’s Exchange, and then you dare to touch our minds without permission! And after all that, you haven’t apologized. Not once. It’s like you think none of it was wrong!”

“The only time I ever apologized was at my sister’s funeral,” Ragar replied, doubling down. Retreating inward.

“I’m sorry your sister is dead,” Raph’æl growled with an alien vitriol, “but it doesn’t give you the right to treat the rest of us like nothing!”

Then, without another glance, he stormed back to the cart, boots crunching gravel like the silence afterward was too brittle to bear. I swallowed hard and followed, trying not to breathe too loud.

Ragar rode beside us after that, but she never looked any of us in the eye again.

Sildar didn’t speak. At first, I thought perhaps his mind had gone untouched. But no… he was simply too upset to speak.

I felt hollowed out. Fractured.

Still trying to understand her… yet despaired at nearly losing them all over her curiosity.

When Raph’æl’s breath finally slowed, he turned back to us, voice now quieter, frayed with worry. “What are we going to do about this?”

I could see it. He didn’t want to throw her away.

Even now… his heart never stopped trying.

From Jack’s corner came a low, electric crackle. His teeth were clenched so tight that sparks hissed between them.

“Time and time again, she’s shown us what matters to her. And it’s never us.” His voice was venom. “Her pride won’t let her care about anyone else.”

I flinched again—not from fear this time, but from sorrow.

Because I couldn’t disagree. Not… fully.

“I don’t think that’s… completely true,” Raph’æl murmured. He always tried to see the best in most people. Maybe that’s why I clung so tightly to his light. Even when I didn’t believe I deserved it. But… we reached some form of limit, I think.

Super muttered into his pickle barrel, his head half-floating in the brine like a drowned thought. I couldn’t tell what he was saying, but I knew he was upset too.

I felt my voice come from somewhere deeper than usual—tired, soft. “We don’t have to stay together after we recover the boss.”

The words hurt as I said them. I was airing out my biggest fear and insecurity as of late and pretending it was the most logical step to take. Maybe it was. I think… I just wanted to know what they thought. Without asking directly. Because I didn’t have the courage to ask directly. I never do.

“The length this has taken is partially her responsibility, too.”

The cart fell silent. Only Jack’s electricity broke the stillness.

I think… I had hurt them. I felt it immediately.

“Wh-what are you saying, Fanesca?” Raph’æl turned to me, pain glinting in his voice like flecks of ice. “After we get the boss, we kick her out? I don’t want to do that… aren’t we friends? Aren’t we stronger than this?”

“N-no, I’m not saying we aren’t friends,” I reached for him, hand clasping his knee instinctively. Anything to keep him from slipping away behind that look—the one he wore when he first joined us. The one of a man trying not to believe he’s already lost everything. “I just assumed we were all splitting up after this. Am I wrong?”

Please tell me I’m wrong.

Please don’t make me walk away from you. From any of you.

“I… I didn’t think we would,” he said, eyes dropping to his lap. “We’ve all become more than coworkers. I haven’t been assuming wrong… have I?”

And in that moment, I saw it.

Maybe it wasn’t for the same reason as I, but…

He wanted us together. He wanted it as badly as I did.

I looked around.

The silence pressed in like a vice.

We knew the answer to his question.

No.

He hadn’t assumed wrong.

Spoken aloud or not, we were bound—by fire, by laughter, by tears. Something real had taken root in our group. But the question at that very moment wasn’t whether we were real.

It was whether Ragar belonged among us. And if she even wanted to belong.

I think… if we truly wanted to retain unity, then someone had to make the first move. Someone had to offer the hand first.

My heart thundered. I could barely breathe.

But no one else was stepping forward.

So…

“Ragar,” I called. My voice shook slightly, but I kept it steady.

She looked over her shoulder, startled. Wary.

“Come,” I said. “We need to talk.”

We fastened the horse to the cart, its reins slack as it trudged beside us in rhythm with the wheels. Ragar climbed inside. The cart felt smaller now. Denser. The kind of quiet that wasn’t truly quiet—Sildar muttering something sharp under his breath, Smeak steering in heavy silence, disappointment practically dripping from him like morning dew. Jack was a suppressed fire, teeth clenched, eyes flickering with sparks of fury.

I opened my mouth. Closed it again.

I didn’t know how to start.

So Ragar did instead.

“Look, I… I didn’t think—”

“Of course you didn’t think,” Jack snapped, and there was no humor in his voice now. “You never do. You’re the kind of person who stabs a man, says sorry because you ‘didn’t know’ it would hurt… and then stabs him again.”

His voice kept rising, and no one stopped him. Not yet.

“Welcome to the real world, sweetheart! Your actions have consequences! You can’t just treat everyone like garbage and expect warm welcomes and shared fires. Honestly, where do you get off acting like such a colossal bi—”

“Easy there, Syldithas,” Raph’æl said, voice strained. Still pleading, still holding on. “I don’t want to be angry with you, Ragar. I just need to understand. Why do you keep doing this?”

Ragar’s brow pinched. I’d seen that look on her before—somewhere between insulted and an incoming outburst. The next words out of her mouth would be layered in defensiveness, and I couldn’t bear another spiral.

I had to speak. I had to try.

“Ragar,” I said, keeping my voice steady, or at least trying to. “I need you to understand something.”

Her eyes flicked toward me. I kept going.

“You had a sister, right? Someone you loved. Someone you wanted to protect.”

A single nod. Tense.

“Would you have read her private journal—?”

“Yes.”

The speed of her answer hit me like a slap. No hesitation. Not even a pause to pretend it was complicated.

“Wh-why?”

“Because if I don’t know what’s happening to her, how can I protect her?”

That cut deeper than I expected. It wasn’t logic. It was fear dressed up as duty.

“Why would you assume you have to protect her from her own thoughts? They’re hers. They’re sacred.”

“Not always,” she said, like that should be obvious.

“Ragar—!” Her name came out louder than I meant. Sharper. I hated that I was letting her get to me. But I couldn’t stop now.

She shifted in her seat, her voice rushing out in jerks and fragments. “I get what you’re saying. I do. But… where I’m from, we don’t talk. We don’t sit in circles and spill secrets. We do—this.” She gestured wildly from her temple to ours. “It’s how we learn each other. Know what’s real. And like the journal—you can stop someone from hurting. You can act before it’s too late.”

There was a kind of desperation in her tone. As if we were the ones speaking nonsense, and not her.

“You finally worry for us, but you end up choosing to do something so invasive. Why not just ask?” My voice cracked slightly. “Why not speak?”

Hypocrite, my mind hissed.

You of all people. Telling someone else to speak?

I folded my hands in my lap, curling in on myself. My words kept tumbling out like loose coins I couldn’t hold. “I’m just… I’m worried. About you. About all of you. I’m truly starting to think I shouldn’t be with you all anymore.”

I didn’t mean to say that last part out loud. Not like that.

Even if it means keeping you safe, I’d leave. Even if it means I shatter.

From behind me, I heard Raph’æl’s soft voice, but it struck like thunder.

“Well, don’t worry. After Wave Echo Cave… that might just be the case.”

I turned sharply to him. He wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was lost in his lap, and his face was a knot of quiet heartbreak.

My stomach dropped. Shame hit fast and full.

No. I didn’t mean…

This is why I don’t speak.

Because there’s always someone who says it better.

Because when I do, I hurt the people I care about the most.

So I stayed quiet.

There was a long pause. We sat inside the hush.

Then Ragar spoke again. Her words were clipped, scattered… but not angry. Not anymore. And beneath it, I could finally hear it.

Not malice.

Control.

She wanted to control what she couldn’t predict.

Because predictability meant safety. And safety… safety had always been out of her reach.

And then, like a small miracle stumbling into the middle of a war, Smeak ran to her and hugged her. Arms thrown around her without caution, without question. Like nothing had changed. Not unusual for the little goblin. He didn’t need proof of trust. Just food, warmth, and the person who brought him home. She hugged him back—awkwardly, stiffly—but I saw something in her face soften. Just for a moment.

And just like that, it was over. Not resolved. Not repaired. But paused.

Because we had arrived.

Wave Echo Cave.

Sildar cleared his throat, breaking the silence with a tone that struck somewhere between command and encouragement.

“Well. Y’all have kept each other alive this long… that means something. However!” He looked around, face unreadable. “If we all intend to go inside that place, ya gotta keep it together. Right?”

Our eyes passed over each other like unfinished sentences.

Jack was clearly still fuming.

Ragar masked her discomfort in silence.

Raph’æl’s jaw was set, unreadable now.

Super oozed from the pickle barrel like some sad sea creature.

We were whole, technically. But not unbroken.

Ragar thought she was testing her own merit.

But what she tested was us.

The glue that held us together had gone translucent.

Stretched. Strained. Something was going to snap eventually.

But not yet.

For now… it was time to work.

So we stepped down and forth. And there it was on the mountainside.

For a place wrapped in legend and secrecy, Wave Echo Cave appeared rather plain. The entrance was little more than a slit against the hill—unadorned, uninviting, and somehow still perfectly suited to its reputation. Narrow and dark, the kind of dark that felt like it had been waiting.

Was this really it? This unremarkable break in the rock, yawning open like any other cave we’d passed along the Sword Mountains?

Then it answered me.

A deafening thunderclap echoed out from within—sudden, bone-shaking. It lashed across the stone walls, reverberating out into the clearing where we stood and escaping through the opening like a warning hiss. Wave Echo. I suppose it was aptly named. But the name didn’t make it feel any less like a mouth ready to bite.

I heard Sildar mutter something behind me—anxious about how close I was to the mouth of the cave. As though I had appointed myself our vanguard. I nearly turned to reassure him that I could see just fine in the dark, better than most, but Raph’æl spoke before I could.

“Fanesca is likely better suited to lead us inside,” he said, low and certain. “She probably knows more about the drow than the rest of us.”

It made me nauseous. He had no right to assume that and yet… he could be right. I tried to cope through it. Maybe it was more than just where I came from. Maybe he saw something in me—knowledge or strength or experience—I wished I didn’t have. That I wished I had never earned. That had been etched into me unwillingly like the raised symbols in my arms.

No, no. He’s just being a fool.

Still, his “faith” in me lit a stubborn ember. I would follow it.

After all, it was one step closer to the truth.

We entered in single file. Jack lit a torch and moved ahead, but I slipped past him—careful not to crowd, but needing to see for myself. I expected the tunnel to remain narrow, but it opened quickly into a larger cavern, its walls rough and uneven, crowned with a natural rock pillar that divided the space like a spine. To the west, beyond the pillar, I spotted a scattering of bedrolls. Supplies. A campsite. And in one of the bedrolls… a body.

It wasn’t moving.

I moved toward it instinctively, but Raph’æl was already there, kneeling, his fingers brushing the dwarf’s skin with that same detached care he likely uses when diagnosing rot or fever. “Serrated puncture wounds,” he said quietly. “Killed in his sleep.”

But I wasn’t focused on how. I was focused on who.

This was… a dwarf.

Please, no.

Sildar arrived behind me, and when he removed his helmet and said the name Tharden Rockseeker, I felt its significance strike like a stone in water. No one said anything for a moment. We just stood in silence as Jack looked away and Ragar crossed her arms. I watched Sildar drape Tharden’s hat over his face, I somberly followed suit with one of the empty bedrolls. We said we’d return for a burial. I made a silent promise that I would.

There were still others left to find.

While Ragar began rifling through the abandoned gear and Jack and Sildar quietly discussed what to do with Tharden’s belongings, I drifted. My hand against the wall, gloved fingers skimming the sharp, damp edges of the stone. I moved southeast, letting my unease guide me like a string. It led me to a pit.

A second body waited below. But not a friendly one.

Its skin was a sickly shade of gray, streaked with flickering lines that looked like verdant fire frozen in place. Its skull was long, misshapen. Goblinoid… or a mockery of one, somehow. The kind I’d seen before at Tresendar. At Reidoth’s dissecting table. These things unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.

“If only we had Reidoth,” Raph’æl said quietly as he came up behind me. “These… recurring vermin.”

I nodded. She would’ve known what this was, maybe what it wanted, how to dispose of it properly. I didn’t, even if I had a hand in it once. I only knew I didn’t like looking at it.

A rope had been left behind, anchored securely. I grabbed it and began my descent down into the pit. Halfway down, I saw something blur past me—Super. Of course. He jumped. Didn’t even pause. Just a quick little blur of frog limbs and then he was marching deeper into the dark, fearless.

I scrambled down the last few feet, breath catching, and ran to catch up, half-remembering too late that I wasn’t even sure if grung could see in the dark. But Super didn’t seem bothered. He never did. Behind me, I could hear the rest of our group clambering and clinking down the rope one after the other, but I didn’t turn.

I didn’t want to look at the thing in the pit again.

It wasn’t just the corpse that rattled me. It was what it might mean. What lay ahead. And that I wasn’t sure if I was walking toward my fate, or returning to it. Either way, the air was getting colder. And I was no longer certain the dark could be outrun.

After a few more minutes, I started to clock the rhythm of the crashing waves: every 126 seconds, without fail. It was almost soothing—no, not soothing. Predictable. Which made it worse. Like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to any of us, loud enough to fill our chests with echoes that weren’t ours. The deeper we crept, the stronger it grew, until I felt it vibrating in my ribs.

We reached a fork. The crevice that had narrowed into a tunnel now began to twist and widen again. Super nudged me right with a confident hop, and Jack moved ahead with his torch raised high—part scout, part beacon. Even with my darkvision, the torchlight helped me see the others’ faces. The shadows in this cave did strange things to expressions.

Every step brought fresh unease. We could run into anyone—anything—from this so-called Spider Alliance. Some part of me feared seeing a familiar face. A much larger part feared that I might recognize one… or worse, recognize me.

We came upon a small, natural clearing to the left, and to the right, what looked like another stretch of dwarf-hewn passages—doors, corners, cover. Strategic. Sensible. Before we could weigh our options, Super veered off into the clearing like a child spotting candy. I followed his trajectory, and my stomach turned. A pile of bones. Humanoid.

He slurped gleefully.

I gawked.

I will never understand that frog.

I looked toward the tunnel instead, hoping someone else might share my discomfort. But even Ragar had started drifting toward the clearing, instincts like a bloodhound. I followed, reluctant, hugging the cave wall. There were empty sconces bolted against one of the walls—maybe I could direct Jack to light them. Anything to keep this area from feeling like the lion’s den that it was.

But before I could say a word, I heard it.

Scratching. Delicate, rhythmic—like a creature pacing the inside of a drum.

“Oh, hey there, buddy,” Super cooed, tilting his head upward.

I followed his gaze and saw it: a bat-winged abomination, bloated and wriggling. Veins along its flesh caught the torchlight like threads of oil. A stirge. Then another. Then more. Crawling over one another, clicking and flexing their spindly legs.

One of us let out a small gasp. Maybe me. Maybe not. Didn’t matter. It was enough.

They swarmed.

Super threw his tiny fists at them with unholy delight.

Raph’æl struck clean arcs with his blade—strained but merciless.

I reached for my sickle—too slow. One landed on my arm, clinging with the weight of hunger. Its mouth, or whatever counted as one, pierced my skin like a drawn-out insult. It drank. Not just blood—it drank heat, balance, control. I yelped and slammed it into the wall, where it skittered sideways, eager to return. A second one flanked it, hovering at my side like it was waiting its turn.

I couldn’t find my weapon. Couldn’t look away from them.

Then—

“COVER YOUR EARS!”

Jack.

No time.

Click. Clack. BOOM.

My vision went white at the edges. The cavern screamed in chorus. The blast cracked through the stirges, shredding them right before me. My ears rang, my heart stalled. I almost screamed just from the shock—but I didn’t. I swallowed it. I had to.

The two creatures that had flanked me were gone, their torn bodies peppered across the stone floor.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Ragar’s voice was gravel and momentum. She reached out—Raph’æl in one hand, Super and me in the other—and tugged us back toward the tunnels.

Super, ever the wildcard, had let the last few stirges latch onto his shoulders like decorations. They gorged themselves with alarming joy—until they twitched, seized, and dropped dead, bellies bloated with his own toxic blood.

He grinned. I stared.

My mind was still spinning from that attack. My wrist throbbed, my stomach churned from watching Super deliberately poison them—gods, watching them drink from him—and yet he hopped along beside me as if he’d just earned a gold star.

Raph’æl was streaked with blood—hopefully not his, I’ll need to inspect him when we slow down—and Sildar clanked behind us like an overworked bell tower. Jack walked ahead, casually reloading that so-called rifle staff of his.

He slung it back over his shoulder just as we reached an old wooden door. No hesitation.

He kicked it open.

A shiver passed through me before I even registered the sound: bones rattling, groans rising like breath held too long. I didn’t see the undead. I didn’t need to. The smell alone was enough.

Jack quickly pulled the door back to shut it as they advanced.

“LOCK THE DOOR!” Ragar and Raph’æl shouted at once, barely audible over the crashing waves and the sudden chaos of snarls and clawed fingers shoving through the opening.

Jack threw his whole shoulder into the door just in time to stop them, and heavens bless Ragar—she dove in with her thieves’ tools, locking it shut with surgical precision.

Click. Latch. Safe.

One second of peace. I let myself breathe it in.

“Hah. Can’t wait to eventually find out that we need to go through that door,” Jack muttered, mostly to himself.

Raph’æl wiped the sweat from his brow, trying to stay hopeful. “If we do, at least we’ll have the element of surprise.”

Ragar crossed her arms. “We could, if someone were capable of opening doors quietly.”

Jack scoffed. “You’re in no position to give tactical orders, Ragar.”

“I think it’s common logic that if you open doors slowly, they won’t alert an entire horde.”

“And I think it’s common logic that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and yet—!”

“I like that you think I’m still dependent on all of you!”

“What are you here for, then?!”

“Jack and Ragar, sitting in a tree~”

“SHUT UP, SUPER!!” they yelled in unison at the ever-complacent grung, who just shrugged and rocked on his heels as he unholstered yet another pickle from gods-know-where.

“Guys. GUYS!” Raph’æl barked, not looking at any of us—just back at the door, where the snarling continued. Claws scratched against the wood. The door pulsed in time with the crashing waves and the groaning horde. We were feeding their anticipation.

“L-let’s keep going,” I offered, not loudly—just enough. I turned toward the next corridor. And slowly, one by one, they followed before Ragar briskly took her long-legged strides past me.

I’m sure they felt awful. The apprehension was palpable, likely for more than just myself. But even then, I could find relief in this ridiculous little moment. It’s so odd. This kind of camaraderie. Even mid-argument, it settles into us like muscle memory. When danger comes, we move—no questions, no hesitation. The mess shows itself in the silence, in the gaps between fights. Always has. Even in the first week.

Somewhere ahead, I knew the drow were waiting. Whispers of prophecy, destiny, they clawed over my troubled mind. The irony of voluntarily stepping into the domain of what was likely another cult hoping to devour me. More spiders. Memories of the past I was now shoving into every hidden drawer. I was not ready. I don’t think I would ever be ready.

But at the very least? I was not afraid. Not with them.

Fractured as our foundation was, they were a cornerstone. I would never willingly give them up. One day I might have to. My soul will kick and scream all the way. But that day won’t be today.