The dying fire crackled nearby as the group sat in silence. They had been waiting for Avery to join them, and as he sat down, Aoife looked up, apprehensively.
"So. We've decided that today is the best day for us to escape this Hell. Everyone still agrees?"
Stiff nods came from each person in the room, as they all collectively steeled their resolve. Aoife exhaled slowly, before continuing.
"Good. Well then. The thing I noticed in the tunnels was something you had already noticed, Rowan. The rocks inside were fitting tighter and tighter, and they were growing increasingly difficult to dislodge. What I discovered was that the tunnels themselves were shrinking. If we had not found and stayed in this place, and instead continued moving through the tunnels, we would have likely ended up stranded in a room, with no way to escape in either direction."
'The tunnels are getting smaller? That doesn't seem particularly dangerous. We've been here the entire time, and this cavern doesn't seem much smaller. It'll likely be months before this cavern is small enough to pose any threats'
Rowan considered the new information, but didn't find it particularly dangerous.
"Now that that's out, let's try to figure out the core. The failed guesses are caves, darkness and wolves. Once we start getting close, Rowan and I will head out to fend off the wolves."
Avery and Nadia each took turns throwing out random guesses, while Rowan and Aoife took the time to consider what was to come.
"pressure?"
"Shifting tunnels?"
"suffocation?"
"compression?"
A slight tremor followed Nadia's second guess, and the group paused to think about it.
'Compression? It seemed like that caused a reaction. But then why didn't pressure? What's the difference between the two?'
"Maybe... the tunnels are eventually going to compress us? Maybe the core is crushing?"
No tremor followed Rowan's guess, revealing it as a failure.
"Jeez, we didn't even need to avoid thinking about this. This is a damn confusing Hell. Compression but not crushing? What, is it gonna stop moving once it reaches us?"
The entire cavern shook, and the sound of rocks shifting and grinding could be heard all around them.
"That's apparently close, but the system hasn't told us we're correct yet..."
Nadia was right, and Aoife added on to her guess with an observation.
"It could be immobility? Maybe it's trying to lock us in place?"
The tremors grew as more sounds could be heard, as well as the faint howling of wolves. Aoife stood up and motioned for Rowan to follow behind her.
"Shit, it's started. Rowan, let's go get ready. They'll be coming soon."
Rowan nodded as he got to his feet, still puzzled over what it could possibly be. Deciding he had better things to think about, he stepped outside, following Aoife's lead. He fidgeted with the straps in his armour, carefully adjusting each piece so it allowed him to move freely, whilst still protecting the important bits.
Finally standing outside, Rowan realised why the ceiling had felt so off to him. It was descending, not at a noticeable speed. The crystal lights were slowly but surely coming down, and it would just be a matter of time before they were crushed to his feet.
He was briefly reminded of the tight spaces he had endured in the complex, but brushed it out of his mind.
'I have to keep an eye out for wolves. Now that we've gotten close to the core, they'll be swarming out to kill us.'
Grimacing, he looked in the direction of the tunnel and noticed that more stalactites had fallen from the ceiling.
"Aoife! Some of the stalactites are falling, be careful!"
Aoife, who had begun moving away from the base, spared a quick glance upwards towards the ceiling before nodding in his direction and continuing on. She was going to fight them as they smashed out of the tunnels, and Rowan was positioned to defend Avery and Nadia, who were still focusing on what the core could possibly be.
A chorus of howls resounded once more, emanating from each of the tunnels adorning the cavern's walls. The howls echoed off the wolves, sounding as though there were an uncountable number of beasts arriving inside the cavern.
"There can't be too many; we cleared six tunnels out of eleven, and we haven't seen that many wolves in total. We'll survive."
He spoke the words to himself, knowing that the others were too far away to hear him. Truthfully, he was scared of the hybrids, whose tunnel he had still not discovered. Looking down at his sword of light, he was at least grateful that he had something to defend himself with. Growing sick of waiting, he was relieved when Aoife's voice called over the rumbling, despite her dire warning.
"They're coming in through the cracks! Get ready!"
'The cracks? What cracks? Are there cracks in the walls?'
Moving quickly down a street, he found a position where he could see the first tunnel he had come out of. Like liquid, wolves were squeezing through the gaps in the rocks, passing through the barricades as if they hadn't existed in the first place. And there were far too many at once. He had expected to deal with a few at a time, but swaths of beasts came through the tunnels, coming in waves of three and four.
A few white wolves were within their pack, with pained human features as their canine bodies continued to charge.
Rowan gritted his teeth as he returned to the front archway of the base, a grimace of fear on his face. He knew, before the battle had even begun, that this would be hard. As the ceiling continued to descend, and the wolves continued to approach, he cursed his earlier comments on the difficulty of the Hell.
A small group of three wolves entered the clearing the team had made around the base, and each snarled as they turned to Rowan, who stood holding his faintly glowing sword. Fighting back his fear, he yelled as loud as he could. The wolves returned growls of their own, and the two sides began moving towards each other in a rush.