Halfling (editing in process)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"Aria... Are you ill again?" Javen questioned quietly, hearing retching from the darkness.

It had been over a month since they had fallen into the labyrinth, perhaps longer. They had been wandering around, hopelessly lost and unable to tell if they were making progress or not. They had survived thanks to Javen. Even though one of his arms were broken he was far from useless. He had grown them food, berries and different plants. They had been eating rats, and whatever other unfortunate creature fell into their path. There had been things Aria had never seen before, winged creatures, insects, it was hard to believe what one would eat when they were starving. They found water often, a small gift from the hell they were trapped in. It was hard to stay optimistic, hard to say that they were going to get out when so much time had passed. Aria would have had trouble distinguishing between the night and day if Javen hadn't been so connected to nature. He told her the cycle of day and night.

Aria visited Payne once or twice in her dreams, and Payne's condition worsened every time. Aria didn't know what Lucien was doing to her, and Payne would never tell her. The demoness would simply instruct her to leave, that it wasn't safe for her to be inside her mind. Aria had begged her to let her stay, but she was kicked out of the demoness' mind every time.

The sickness had begun around two weeks into their confinement, and she had been sick nearly every day since. She would wake up feeling nauseous, go to sleep feeling ill. She had blamed it first on some kind of strange fuzzy thing they had eaten the night before, but it happened again and again, no matter what she ate. She felt miserable, and it was all Javen could do to keep her eating, insisting she drink nearly continuously through the day.

"I-I'm fine." Aria gasped, groaning softly as bile rose in her throat again, another session of vomiting following the first until her stomach was empty of the remnants of the previous night's dinner of berries. "I think I'm allergic to those damn berries you keep growing." She looked down at Marcus when he whimpered, sighing as the nausea slowly faded away.

She made her way over to where Javen was sitting and plopped down beside him, leaning her head on his good arm. She was so sick of the darkness, so sick of wandering around seemingly endlessly. She looked down one of the hallways that were softly illuminated by Javen's vines, another one dark close by. They would have to get moving soon, they had learned long ago it wasn't wise to stay in one place for a long period of time. The last they had stayed for more than a few hours of sleep they had woken up and nearly been ambushed by a group of goblins. If it hadn't been for Marcus they would have probably been eaten. They had encountered many strange creatures throughout their journey, goblins, skeletons, gigantic bats, random undead and, her favorite, the giant spiders. Then again, at least they weren't trying to mate with Javen and make plans to have her babies eat them. So, there was that little ray of sunshine, no drider.

"Are you sure you are alright Aria?" Javen questioned. "You have been sick for nearly two weeks now, and I really don't think it's the berries. I fear you are getting ill, something might have given you a disease. I can try and grow something that would be lighter on your stomach, but if you fall terribly ill down here I don't know how to treat you."

"I'll be fine Javen... We need to go before the goblins find us again, you know they got pissed off after we tried to kill their shaman. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't have a scout watching us right now."

She rose to her feet and offered her hand to Javen, pulling him up and looking around. They weren't in a big room, they had learned that big rooms were filled with traps or other nasties. They were in a little room, not much bigger than a simple bedroom, which housed a small trickle of water and had been home to a family of rats until Marcus had gotten hold of them.