Chapter 21: Under the Surface
Selmas doesn’t think he falls very far, but he’s not entirely sure, because the impact knocks the wind out of him, and he’s left lying dazed on cool, hard dirt. When he gets his breath and wits back, he blinks his eyes into focus and examines what he’s fallen into.
It looks like a cave system, given that the darkness stretches off before him. If he tilts his head upward, he can see the sunlight above, poking through the hole that he made in the ground. Little showers of dirt crumble down occasionally, leaving the air filled with dust.
Selmas flaps a hand in front of his face, waving away the particles, and coughs.
“Byrin?” he calls. “Gwynfor?”
There’s no answer, so Selmas struggles back to his feet. His pocket of rock isn’t very big, just a little hollow cavern, the start of a tunnel, so there must be others. Gwynfor and Byrin have to be okay; they’re Warriors. They’ve just fallen somewhere different.