Not So Sweet Candyland

LXXXVIII: Cotton Candy Cave III

Chase and Berry nearly drowned in the stickiness of the caramel water that their clothes were sticking to their skin. Berry was awfully squeamish about this. 

"Ewwwwwwwwww, I feel gross." She tried to shake the caramel off but suddenly she had an idea.

With a little bit of magic, she formed a ball of bubbles and threw them on herself and Chase, clearing off all of the caramel that was stuck to them.

"Woah, how did you do that?" Chase asked in amazement.

"Some spells are where no words are needed, you just focus your energy on what's bothering you, and boom! BUBBLES!"

Chase laughed, when Berry was happy, she really was cute, however the times when he sees her smile are rare, but they are worth it.

But that almost never happened and Chase knew that Berry believed that showing happiness was a sign of weakness, which is the real reason why she puts up a front in front of others.

"Oh, I better not get too sidetracked, we still have two more sections to go, the next section might not seem risky, so you batter watch your step, but don't look at the ground the whole time. Because one would know what is happening in front of you as well. For example...."

Berry stepped a few feet away from Chase and tapped on a panel, but it was a fake platform that crumbled under Berry's feet, but she pushed herself away, the panel fell apart into what looked like a lighter version of lava.

"You have to keep your guard up, this is what I mean by fast reflexes. A platform can crumble and it barely makes a sound, if you look ahead of you, there are choices of panels that you can choose from, of course, only one is real."

"How do you that for sure?"

"If you took notice, there is a slight color difference compared to the tiles. Or to say, two completely different shades of brown, if you want specific shades for me to tell you, the real platforms are gingerbread brown while the ones that are not real are caramel brown. The texture is also different too, although both of them are not very good platforms, that they crumble once too much weight is applied to them. However, gingerbread is a little bit more stable."

"Damn, how do you know this?"

"My mother and I did science experiments and studied the density of candy and how much weight they could handle. A lot of surfaces were either super strong or puny level weak. Yet again, we can't just take parts of the earth without people being suspicious."

Berry started to jump on the platforms and Chase followed. He was always one platform behind her, making sure that he at least knew what to do and where to go.

One of the platforms broke beneath Berry's feet and Chase managed to catch her before she fell in the lava.

"I swear that that was a real platform. I swear that was. My head hurts, fuck, this pain is unbearable."

"When was the last time that you drank water?"

"Not for 12 hours."

"That might be causing you to get delusions."

"I don't need it, besides I've survived a whole day without water, believe me, I'm fine."

"You're only going to get worse if you don't hydrate yourself. Then you would start getting even worse, maybe even seeing platforms that don't exist."

"I'm fine, I'm serious."

That's when Chase grabbed Berry's flask from her belt and opened it, he forced the flask to her lips.

"Drink."

Berry shook her head.

" If you aren't going to drink, then I'll make you."

He took the flask away and gave her a kiss on the lips before he put the flask to her lips and she slowly but surely started to drink the water.

Suddenly, Berry started to feel more energized and she started to jump platforms at an insane speed.

"Wait up for me!"

Chase was still holding her flask, but realized that it still had a lot of water left in it, but yet she was feeling energized. He wondered why.

Meanwhile, Berry was so thrilled and happy that she went over every platform with ease.  She suddenly knew which platform was each and she waited for Chase, who was clumsily trying to follow her footsteps.

At the end, Berry just laughed, but a desire started to awake in her. She found Chase's clumsy footsteps cute as he was trying to mimic her and how swift his moves were. When his balance was slightly off and he nearly fell off of a few platforms but managed his composure. Berry liked that he would not give up even when he did not have the right skills or was the same as him.

He finally reached Berry but tripped at her feet, he was panting like crazy and sweat was dripping off of his forehead.

"Never again."

Berry picked up Chase and the two of them got close befire they pushed away, the feelings that they felt for each other were appearent and there, but in a dangerous situation like this, love is not the main goal, the main goal is getting out of the hellhole called Candylandf and making it to the real world.

"Was that it? Was that really all?" Chase asked.

"For this section, yes, but the final section is far more risky and the most dangerous, we went through the cave of darkness, battled monsters, and jumped over the platforms of fake of true, but there is one more challenge, and the place is supposed to disguise itself as a illusion. Beleive it or not, this cave used to be an underground castle. That's why it has such a weird dimension to it. The last area will make you realize how castle like this place is, for example, the only thing here not made of rock are these dark reddish brown curtains." Berry pointed to the curtains.

"What even happened?"

"All of the sages magic was in here, when my father killed all of them, then the last of their magic faded to rocks and stone and thus, this castle was born, the castle cave. What was once a ballroom for dancing turned into the final destination, between this world and your world."