• Assuming Leadership

With the silence that came after, everyone waited for Linne to speak. She looked around in the darkness, feeling their waiting gazes blaring at her even though she could not see them.

Slowly licking her lips to ready herself, she began to recount the memories of her childhood, even the ones most recent. "We always gathered as much food as possible over the weeks once we suspected the Calamities were about to begin. In fact, it's what we were doing that morning when we found your cave."

The team collectively remembered: the brown bags each of the Abyssians had been carrying, the wooden caravel filled with other forages.

"Once the Calamities hit, we would already be safe inside our cave, protected by a giant stone door. Sometimes, I would watch through the holes in the mountain. The beasts, the drought, the tornados. They just kept coming and coming, and every time I would think they would never end. Which is perhaps telling of the name."