Trisha lay in a coma on life support, her parents crying near her hospital bed. Time was running out and the decision to discontinue the life support was being discussed. But unknown to her family and doctors she wasn't dead, but trapped inside, ins...
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Fluffy raced up the mountain in the dark, only the full moon lighting their way. He managed it with ease, even with the weight of the two girls on his back, as if they weren't even there. Whatever Nate had whispered to him had energized the brute, and it was as if he were showing off but very alert and protective of his passengers. Crystal looked ahead as they came over a rise and there before them in the shadowy moonlight was an enormous cave. It had taken Fluffy only two hours to cross the distance to the cave, and Crystal hoped it would take no longer than another two for the boys to reach them. She tried to get Fluffy to go back for the boys, but he would not leave them. Obviously, Nate had instructed him to stay and protect the girls.
The girls dismounted Fluffy's back, and they walked up to the cave entrance. They could see a few feet into the mouth before it became pitch black. It gently declined down into darkness, filled with large rocks and boulders that they would have to climb over to descend into its depths. There was no easy path to take and it would be slow going in, which they could use to their advantage as a defense from attack. Crystal looked around the entrance and withdrew her wand and the tip glowed white. There were several bushes and trees near the entrance. Pointing the wand, light shot from the tip setting them aglow. Then the ground trembled, cracked, and broke apart. Large roots pulled out of the dirt and snaked across the ground, pulling bushes and trees with them. Soon the entrance was blocked and covered in a thick entanglement of limbs, leaves, and vines. A solid wall of vegetation. Crystal pointed her wand at the wall and the wall moved all over and reshaped forming a tunnel through to the cave behind. The girls and the giant wolf walked through and the tunnel behind reshaped back into the solid wall it had been. The girls now stood in the mouth of a great cave. The sun wouldn't rise for several more hours, well after the expected arrival of the boys. With hopefully nobody else following.
"Well, we should explore a little ways in and make sure there isn't anything here that we need to worry about." Crystal said, climbing down into the cave with Trisha following.
"What are our chances its empty?" Trisha asked hopeful.
"With our luck?" Crystal half smiled back. "Probably full of butterflies and cute little tweety birds."
Trisha couldn't help but giggle as she climbed over the rocks following Crystal. Fluffy didn't seem to have much problem at all bounding down into the cave. "You didn't by chance bring a flashlight did you?"
Crystal pulled her wand out again, and the tip lit the cave in front of them ten times brighter than any flashlight could have. "That do?"
"That's great!" Trisha exclaimed. Then she looked around the cave. The cave was a lava tube, about a hundred feet wide and twenty to thirty feet high. Large stalagmites rose from the cave floor and equally large stalactites hung from the ceiling and dripped water down on their heads. Many of the stalactites were covered in a black layer that moved. Trisha glared at the movement and then realized it was a huge mass of black bats. Guano lay all over the cave floor.
