Shadow and Memory

Part 2

"Wulfric." Carol said, sitting up on his back, no longer clinging to him for dear life. Her voice was calm now, a little tired. "Wulfric, please stop, talk to me."

Wulfric's pace had slowed down, from the sprint that had taken them from the mercenary camp down into the depths, to a steady trot. They had long since left the sunken ruin beneath the camp behind, rushing down the first side tunnel he had seen, an uneven rift in the rock wall that went deeper down into the earth. While he had been concerned about the darkness, he soon found their way illuminated unexpectedly by various kinds of dimly glowing fungus which lit the path with uneven green and blue light.

"Wulfric... please..." Carol asked again, a note of pleading entering into her voice.

Finally, Wulfric let himself slow to a stop, letting out a huff of breath. He lowered himself to the ground, letting Carol slide off his back before he transformed back into his human form, standing up beside her and stowing his axe at his belt. "I'm sorry." He began. "I just wanted to put as much distance between us and those mercenaries as possible before we stopped."

Carol nodded, pursing her lips and looking around the little cavern they had wandered into. "They won't follow us." She said, voice small. "They're afraid, they'd never be able to come down here. Most people won't even enter the uppermost area where they were camped, let alone down here." She looked around a little fearfully, as if expecting some nameless horror to rise up from the shadows and strike at them.

"All the better then, shouldn't have much trouble from this point on then." Wulfric said with a nod.

"Better?" Carol asked, half letting out a panicked laugh. "Better? Wulfric, people who come down into these tunnels don't come back! Why did you bring us down here, it would have been better for you to have escaped and left me with them! They'd have held me hostage for a while and gotten some concession from my family and then it would all be over. Now I'm never going to see them again." She trailed off.

"You will see them again." Wulfric said bracingly. "I've been down here a time or two and I'm still alive, aren't I? People who vanish down here probably just get lost and can't find their way out again. They can't smell their way along like I can, or run nearly as fast as I can, or go as long without eating." He grinned encouragingly. "These warrens never just dead end, we just have to keep going far enough, follow my nose and let that lead us to the next place it pops up onto the surface. I can sniff out food and water along the way. We'll be alright! This isn't any more difficult a trek than when we were going cross country before."

"If... you say so." Carol said, not entirely convinced. In truth, Wulfric wasn't nearly as confident as his bravado seemed to indicate. He wasn't that familiar with these tunnels and had certainly never been this deep. He wasn't entirely sure if they could find another way out, or if anything they found to eat down here would be edible, at least to Carol's less rugged system. Wulfric could live off carrion if he had to, but he'd found long ago that civilized folk couldn't live off what a starving wolf found palatable. Mostly he just wanted to keep her spirits up, this would be a lot worse if she started to panic.

"We should keep moving. No use sitting here. Are you good to walk or would you prefer to ride again?" Wulfric asked, gesturing down the tunnel. "Though if I become the wolf again, I won't be able to speak. At least not any language you understand."

"I can walk." Carol said, straightening up and nodding. Getting a move on turned out to be good for her, maybe it was just giving her the impression they were moving closer to their escape, but she seemed to calm down a little more once they were in motion. "What did you mean, when you said you couldn't talk in that form? You could talk when you were the..." She gestured to indicate something large, meaning the bipedal beast form.