Heroes of Dreamland Rewritten, Book 1: Stars Amidst Lightning

Chapter 24

Meta Knight | メタナイト

Keeping my cape held tightly around myself, I cautiously make my way through the tunnel I entered back in the entrance room of the cave, keeping my eyes and ears open for anything that might manifest itself as a threat. Now that my three noisy companions are entirely separated from me, I have been unable to hear anything other than the echoing dripping of calcified water from stalactites for quite some time now. While I know, logically, that I have not been heading down this tunnel for very long, the fact that the light at the other end refuses to ever get any closer and that there is nothing else in the rocky, plain environment to cue me in to progress, makes it feel like hours are slowly passing by. In reality, it can't have possibly been more than fifteen minutes or so by now, but it feels like so much longer.

A quiet worry deep within my heart gives another unwelcome wriggle, making me scowl to myself. There is nothing cursed about this tunnel or this cave. It is just a regular monster that caused the earthquakes; once one of us kills it there will be nothing else to worry about. For all we know, we may be able to all just find our ways out without even encountering it again. The light keeps getting closer; it's just so far away that it doesn't seem to be drawing nearer at all.

While I am certainly not claustrophobic, by any means, I still find that like most people, I am not overly fond of tight spaces. On my back, I can feel a phantom sensation of my wings longing to be stretched and allowed to take to the air, even if only in the hopes of reaching the light, and presumably an exit, sooner. If there were any room, I would humor them, but as it is, things are far too tight in here to even take off, much less fly.

Grimacing, I hold my cape even tighter and lean forward slightly as I plow along, as if that will get me out of this place any quicker. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I notice a stalagmite jutting up just on my left side that looks awfully familiar. Shaking it off, I turn my eyes back ahead of me and keep walking, only to pass it again somewhere around a minute later. Again, I force myself to ignore it, but when it happens again almost exactly the same amount of time later, that buried worry's wriggling starts to become a genuine tremble.

Stopping by the stalagmite, I eye it warily for a long moment, and then yank my sword out and lop the top of the stalagmite off in one fluid motion. After looking at it for a long moment, I sheathe my sword again and turn around and walk back the way I came.

About a minute later, I find myself approaching not the stalagmite I passed minutes ago, but now one that has had its top sliced off. As a final test, still refusing to let the worry fully take hold, even now that it's frantically shaking around, I pick up the chopped-off piece and turn around again, heading back toward light once more, at a much quicker pace this time. Hardly any time later, I reach the stalagmite I originally attacked, and can see that the removed piece is no longer beside it.

All right. Like it or not, Meta Knight, you're going in proverbial circles, and this tunnel is as hexed as anything you've ever seen.

With an angry hiss of "Shotzo bless it," I throw the stalagmite top onto the ground, shattering it into several chunks. My hubris commands me to keep plowing furiously toward the light, and so I do for about thirty seconds, until I reach 'another' broken stalagmite with an identical pile of smashed rock just in front of it. It is then that I realize the true futility of my situation, and with a furious growl, cross my gloves and lean backwards against the stalagmite before glaring up at the ceiling sourly.

"Well. Now what?" I sigh to nobody in particular, before pulling my cape around myself again (it's rather chilly in here) and staring longingly down the tunnel again at the light. "There's got to be a way out. Even the most perfect hex has a loophole; that's common knowledge. Or, at least," I add, swallowing nervously despite myself, "that's the common statement; whether it's actually true or not is another matter entirely..."