The Three of Us

Chapter 9: A Guilty Heart

They all woke up at around the same time. They got to moving again real fast and started their journey to the surface up again.

On the surface Marla had woken up from her mini rest to the bright morning sun. She had slept through the rest of the day and it was already the next morning. She took her bag and limped over to the entrance to the hole. But when she looked down all she could see was the pitch black gaping hole that the three travelers had disappeared into. Marla limped back to town stopping by the town's medic to fix up her leg. She had already previously uploaded her new supplies into her shoes back room and headed down to the bar to drink her sorrows away.

She could feel the guilt of leaving her new found friends to die in a mineshaft uncertain whether they were alive or not. She drank away her money until she could barely stand. The hours she spent in the bar filled with bottles on bottles and her sobs. Multiple hours had already passed but she managed to stumble back to her shop and fumbled up the stairs to her bedroom which was situated on the second floor of the shop. SHe flopped into her bed and immediately passed out yet again as her mind emptied of the guilt of abandoning her friends and filled with the nightmares of what may have happened to them.

Their broken bodies forever cursed to wander the caves endlessly for all eternity, damned to this fate to save one person... her. The price of three for one, a cheat of a deal. She still had one faint spark of hope that they had somehow survived the fall and were safe and sound making their way back out of the caverns to reunite with whoever they knew on the surface again. She hoped they didn't have any family if they had died because if they did she would have to tell them their Sons, Dads, or Husbands were not coming home and that she didn't actually know what had happened to them.

Meanwhile down in the caves Sir Wilfred and the trio were nearly at the lift. They made it to the lift at last after many many hours of walking and climbing through seemingly endless caves and tunnels.

"There we are, lift K-7"

"Thank you for showing us the way out, we appreciate it very much"

"Don't worry about it, just do me a favor never... never let anyone near this cave again. Lock it up nicely, seal all the entrances. I'll be fine down here, with no people to feed on the monster will eventually die of hunger and I will along with it"

"Good luck down here Sir Wilfred" The three bowed. Sir Wilfred bowed in return. They started the lift and were pulled upward to the surface. Sir wilfred had told them what lifts to use since the lifts only went up so far so they had to switch between 3 nearby lifts and scale the last shaft upward to the surface

"We made it, we can add "falling down a few hundred feet" to our list of feats while here" Ferdell chuckled

"Well first things first, let's fulfill our dear friends wishes"

They spent the next half hour chopping up wood and making planks. Kengo's sword helped a lot since In a few swings he could slice boards to size to be able to use them as material. They boarded up every entrance to the cave in an hour leaving them some daylight to get back to town. They finished up the job by breaking trees down and throwing them in front of the boarded up entrances so that they couldn't be seen immediately and the cave could be forgotten, fading into history as a tale that wouldn't be remembered. No one would remember about the cave in a few years, except for Marla and them.

They made it back to the town by nightfall and when they got back to the pub they saw Marla in the corner of their eye. Marla had rested at her house awhile and then came back to the bar to drink and cry yet again. At this point she had accepted that the three would not come back. She sat in her own tears as they were still pouring out.