A Witch and a Wolf (Lumity Werewolf AU)

Booby Trap

~~~~Luz~~~~

The cave was musty.

That was the first thing Luz noticed about it.

The next was how dark it was, even for her exceptional vision. Normally, the dark was barely even an obstacle for her.

The final observation she made was the feeling of dread she gained the moment she crossed from dirt to stone. It was all encompassing, and almost seemed to radiate from the cracks in the walls and the small craters in the floor.

It was unsettling, and when she looked towards Hunter to gage his reaction, he seemed to be experiencing the same thing.

Even so, neither of them said anything about it. They just kept walking deeper into the darkness.

Eventually they made it to a fork in the cave, and Luz looked at Hunter for direction, given he has been in here before.

"This isn't right. When I was here before, this was a large cavern space," he said, throwing his arm in front of him. Luz made an indifferent sound before responding.

"Do you know of any magic that could change the rock?" she asked, furrowing her eyebrows as she inspected the walls with her eyes. It was strange, the rock was hard to focus on. Luz tried to convince herself it was the dark, but something still festered in the back of her mind.

"Not to this caliber. It should be impossible," Hunter said, moving towards the wall and trying to do the same thing Luz was, focus on the walls. It was remarkably hard to pinpoint his vision on one point in the rock. It almost blurred together.

Luz said nothing in response, not trusting herself not to say something backhanded. The cave was quiet, so quiet. Their feet barely made any noise on the ground, and there were none of the normal acoustics that resonated in a cave. Their voices were like thunder, even though they didn't even echo. The only sound that made any noise remotely close to it were their silver anklets, clanking like a baton on cell bars. A reminder of the prison that held them both.

Luz tried to listen to anything else. Anything. She tried to hear the surface noises that were assaulting her senses not even minutes before. The chirping birds, the crunching leaves under Hunter's boots, the wind roaring in her ears when she removed her beanie at the entrance of the cave.

Nothing. She could hear nothing.

It was disturbing, the way the senses she came to rely on so heavily seemed to be swept away from under her.

Hunter sighed, and the noise caused Luz to almost jump, because she was focusing on hearing anything that when she actually did, it shocked her back to her present location.

Luz gestured between the two tunnels, splitting off on the right and left. Hunter shrugged, so Luz chose the tunnel on the left and started walking. Hunter followed without saying anything.

~~~~

It was wrong, Hunter decided. That word seemed describe his current situation the best. He could barely see in this titan forsaken dark, even after Luz used a light spell. It just seemed to surround him, cover him in the dark even with the light between them illuminating their immediate surroundings.

There were none of the normal noises present that he came to associate with standard.

He couldn't hear his feet scarp against the floor like nails against his eardrums. He couldn't hear the small droplets of water hit the floor around him. He couldn't hear Luz's breathing like he always did, because anyone's breath always seemed to ring like an alarm in his head.

And so there he was, deprived of the senses he normally had and even though he felt so exposed and vulnerable, it was almost relieving in the way he didn't hear everything around him scratch his ears like nails on a chalkboard.