Cleo's Game

12. Undergrowth

"I can't see shit," Cleo complained. "And you think I can? Let's just keep going forward and hope we find somewhere important enough to be lit up," Mince responded, leading the two of them forward. They didn't get very far at all before bumping into a wall for the first time. They instinctively blamed each other, despite how little it made sense. "Alright, fine, let's just feel along the walls. You're not afraid to get your hands dirty, are you, Mince?" Cleo announced confidently. She leads the way, feeling across the wall, only for her hand to brush against what felt like a tangled-up bunch of house centipedes on the wall.

"I'm afraid to get my hands dirty," Cleo backtracked. "I fucking hate this cave," she continued. "Stop embarrassing yourself," Mince laughed. "Let me try something." Mince aimed a gust of wind towards the wall, moving it around and listening for where the wind escaped. Eventually, they were able to find the crevice in the wall—the right way to go. This new avenue got more narrow, and the smell got sharper as they climbed deeper inside. Eventually, they were faced with a huge dip in the earth beneath them, filled up with ripe-smelling brown water.

"Please, just fucking kill me," complained Mince, seeing no way over the gap. "It's fine," responded Cleo, nonchalantly. "Just watch this," she told Mince, before stepping up to the rancid pool. Cleo reached down towards the barely visible, calm water and touched it with the tip of her finger, causing it to crystallise as the water froze all over. It turned to dirty ice, albeit ice that could be walked over. "Since when have you been able to do that?" Mince asked, completely in disbelief.

"For like, a week maybe," nonchalantly answers Cleo, hiding how pleased with herself she is for not messing that one up. She put a trusting footstep on top of the ice path, only for Mince to follow. "We actually make a good team, you know," mentioned Mince, while they tiptoed towards the end of the ice. "Yeah, when you're not at my throat, that is," Cleo responded, not forgetting how things have been before. They had never been friends—quite the opposite, in fact, but that was started by only one of them.

"Yeah," conceded Mince, meekly. "I really don't know what's wrong with me a lot of the time," he continued, looking towards the ground. "You're always the one starting something, I just-" "Alright, I get it. Can we just focus on getting the fuck out of this disgusting dark tunnel?" Mince interrupted, cutting the conversation short as they stepped off of the thin ice.

The new room they stepped into was different from the rest. The floor was volatile and bumpy, and it was hard to avoid tripping over the mounds that sought to knock the two over. These mounds were shaped into lines, as if they were tracks of some sort. Cleo walked alongside one to see where it would go. It led towards a wide corridor with even more twists and turns. "Come on, Mince," said Cleo, not wanting to wait around. The delay of a response was enough to creep Cleo out, as she turned back and could just barely see the outline of Mince... being dragged down into a hole!

She rushed over to him without delay, but once she was faced with the situation, she didn't have a clue where to start. Only Mince's arm stayed above surface as it clung onto the rocky floor. Her first instinct was to grab onto his arm, but whatever was drawing him under wasn't weak, meaning it didn't help. "Mince, talk to me! What's going on?" Cleo yelled out. Mince tried to reply, but his words were muffled by mud. The space around Mince was tight, too tight to be able to freeze the assailant without freezing Mince too.

Cleo got lower down and tried to look down into the hole while holding Mince's arm, but all she could see was squirming. From whom the squirming came from was unclear in the darkness. The situation grew tense as adrenaline rushed through Cleo, and she considered what could happen if she didn't act fast. There wasn't even time to consider everything, as there was no telling how much of the cave needed to be navigated, or how instrumental Mince would be in finding the way out.

"Just- let me die..." Cleo heard his request from down the hole, but she didn't even consider it. "I'm not leaving without you! Tell me what's down there!" Cleo responded. "Claws... in my legs," ominously responded Mince. Cleo had to find a way to disrupt whatever creature was down there. Sharp ice projectiles weren't the way to go, as they could hit anything after they'd been thrown. As she was desperately searching for ways to avoid giving up, she reconsidered her ice projectile idea.

"I'm able to create lots of little shards of ice on command," she thought. "So why not..." Cleo started to condense the cold air in her hands using her usual projectile-creating method, but continued to add to it. This one spike of ice was thin, and she allowed it to grow until it was around half her length. She formed a sharp edge before cutting off the cold supply, holding her finished product. She gripped the handle, unable to feel the cold, and looked at the hole as if it were a wound. With surgical precision, she must feed this spike through the area in the hole around Mince and get at whatever is beneath him.

"Stay very still!" Cleo ordered, doing very little to calm Mince's fear. He could feel the cold aura emanating, shivering to his core even without coming into contact with the ice. She slowly but surely lowered the spiked rod beneath even his feet, and with a very sure jab downwards, she made contact with something. She heard a disturbing, alien-like shriek, before Mince became much, much lighter and able to be lifted out. He was covered from the waist up in mud, and a sickening mixture of dirt and blood from the waist down. "Thanks," said Mince, face down on the floor in exhaustion.