Nothing to See

Darkness.

'Am I dead?' Mairwen blinked a few times, but only darkness remained. 'Does one blink when they are dead?' 

In her muddled state, the princess tried to think of what she knew on the matter. Alaron had immediately appeared before the Maker when he died, but maybe that was a special case.

Does everyone get that kind of treatment? Mairwen didn't know anyone else she could consult on the matter. 

The princess flinched. She could still feel her body, so surely she was still among the living. Sort of. It was still very dark. 

"I've been buried!" Her muffled words still brought up a panic in her spirit. "Help!" 

"Sh!" a voice reprimanded her through the void. 

Mairwen turned her head toward the sound, but of course, she could not see the owner of it. 'Renat!' she decided. He had been next to her when the world came crashing down. 

A moment later, his hand wandered through the darkness and found her face. He touched her lips and lightly pinched them shut. 

'Don't talk,' he silently told her. He stroked her cheek. 'Stay calm.'

Although her legs and back felt the immense pressure of the earth, there was a small cavity around her torso and head. Renat's trick of placing the cape protectively over their heads had worked well. 

Perhaps a little too well?

Mairwen sat up slightly and bumped her head on the cloak. It was hard as a rock. No, it was like it was made of rock!

Renat had once made a mixture that hardened in such a way. The princess didn't know how, but it seemed her husband had soaked his cloak in something similar and had tossed it over their heads before it hardened. 

The result was a cave made for two. Mairwen only hoped the others had been so lucky. 

The others! Mairwen couldn't think about them just now. She needed to focus on getting out of the ground first before she could help anyone else. 

The princess opened her mouth to ask her husband a question when she remembered that he had told her to be silent. Air was precious and words were costly. She better save them unless it would move things along.

Her husband was smart enough to know action needed to be taken. Even now, she could hear his rustling. Renat was working on something. 

Something cracked and the princess saw a momentary spark. The brief light showed Renat's tongue sticking slightly out of his mouth while he worked. He quickly shoved the spark under the cloak and into the dirt. 

The world went dark again. Renat's arm wrapped around his wife as he pulled her close. Suddenly the rock-hard cloak pressed against their backs and pushed them forward. 

All around them, things became very warm as the earth burgeoned and churned. The shifting caused Mairwen's stomach to flop. The world spun until she wasn't sure which way was up. 

But then.

Light! 

Somehow, in all the shifting, the couple along with their protective dome were spat out on the surface. beams of light poured in as they landed on their backs inside their makeshift turtle shell. 

Both Renat and Mairwen gasped for air. 

"I didn't think that would work," the scientist coughed. 

"What?" Alaron, who had come up beside them, screamed. "You just shot me like an arrow through the ground on a hunch?!" 

"It worked; that's what matters," the scientist responded with another cough. 

"Are you alright?" Eira, accompanied by Lilith and Nath hurried to the others' sides. They were scraped up but seemed otherwise unharmed. 

"I think I am fine," Mairwen managed. She climbed out of her dome-turned-earth-bowl and stood to look behind her.

Where the crevice had been, now the ground was disturbed into haphazard heaps. The remaining snow was completely obliterated. and in between the clods of dirt, yellow-orange blobs were slowly shrinking. 

"What is that stuff?" The princess wondered aloud. 

"I am not completely sure. It is similar to a few other things I have tried, though this combination was a new concoction. I had to work with what I had. I knew it would expand quickly, and I hoped it would be enough to give us a path to the surface. It pushed us to the surface instead. But I cannot ignore a positive result!" Renat searched around to retrieve his satchel and pulled out a parchement to write down his notes.

Avoiding the strange warm goo, the others also dug around to find their belongings. They watched for the griffins' return, but the pair seemed to have left the area after digging the graves of those who had wronged them. 

"Here is your sword!" Alaron uncovered Eira's blade and handed it to her. "I don't know if we will find mine." 

"My bow!" Mairwen lamented. She had been preparing to shoot when Lilith told them to run. The wood had not been able to withstand all the abuse. Mairwen pulled up a shard of the magnificent weapon and clutched it to her chest. 

"You can borrow mine when we find the horses. Or we have others with the soldiers," Renat tried to comfort his wife. "I know it's not the same." 

"Better the weapon than one of you," the princess responded, casting the remnant aside. 

After locating the most urgent items, they dug around for a long time looking for Alaron's blade. It had even more sentimental value than the bow. 

"It is supposed to belong to the first king of Valiant, but even more than that... the Empress got it for me when I least deserved it. It is a reminder of who I am and who I want to be." The Guardian explained to the elves. 

He felt close to tears. If his cloak were working, the sword would never have gotten lost. He would have stored it as soon as they got in the hole and pulled it as needed. Now it seemed lost beneath the debris. 

"Here!" Eira yelled from behind a tree. The soldier realized that she probably should have been more discrete with so much potential danger around, but the woman had been excited. 

Alaron practically flew to her side to view the object in her arms. 

"Hello beautiful!" the Guardian took the blade and stroked it gently. "Thank you, Eira. I am so thankful I could kiss you!" 

"Please don't," the woman responded, taking a step back. She knocked something with her foot, which she used as a distraction from the conversation. 

Thankfully Mairwen and Renat arrived a moment later.

"How in the world did it get back here?" the princess marveled at the distance. 

Shaking his head, the Guardian sighed. "I guess my last strike actually hit home. I tried to stop them from digging but lost my sword in the process and then got buried. I guess maybe it landed in one of the griffins before being flung aside." 

Alaron pointed to the fresh blood on the end of the blade before wiping it clean. 

"Which one of you elves threw your compass at the griffin?" Eira asked idly. 

Nath and Lilith, who had come right after the other two, looked at each other with confused expressions. 

"Not me!" both responded in turn. 

"Why do you ask?" Lilith cocked her head to one side. 

Opening her palm, Eira revealed the object she had kicked a moment before. "It was next to the sword." 

"An elven compass!" Nath was stunned. He looked at the intricate runes on the face of the trinket. "How did it get here?" 

"It isn't rusted, so it was left here recently. I can think of only one elf who would have brought a compass this way. Uri." Lilith's heart leapt and then sank.

If Uri was without his compass, what had made him leave it behind?

"There's blood on it," Nath noted with a frown.

"Could that be from the griffins?" Alaron leaned forward to examine the fleck. 

Eria shook her head. "No, it is dried. It is from some other incident."

Did Uri stumble on the griffin's nest as well? If so, it was doubtful he fared as well as they had. But it would explain the elf's disappearance. 

Alaron wondered if he should speak his thoughts when Renat came running towards them. 

His face was pale. "I think you should see this."