Chapter 5

Chapter Five

The answer, it turned out, was that he wouldn't.

The next morning, Sazahk found himself in the same position as the morning before: arm slung over Garin's waist, leg slipped in between Garin's thighs, and his nose nuzzling the nape of Garin's neck. At least this time, Garin's clothes kept Sazahk's fingers from tracing the musculature of his abdominals.

Again, Sazahk scrambled back with too much shock and clumsiness and again Garin woke with a start.

Twenty-three more nights they would squeeze into that sleeping bag together. Sazahk was either going to have to figure out how to keep his limbs to himself, or he was going to have to come clean to Garin about how badly he craved his warmth. Because that's all it was. A warm-blooded animal's instinctual heat-seeking.

"Everything alright?"

Sazahk stopped fiddling with his microscope and stuffed it in his bag. "With me? Yes. I'm pleased with the samples I've collected, though preliminary tests indicate that the cyanobacteria here and the viruses in some of the pools are unlikely to be helpful in our tasks of rendering the Dead Zone hospitable for carbon-based multicellular organisms which I believe includes the uncatalogued sentient species."

"And by uncatalogued sentient species, you mean the Insects." Garin seemed to accept that Sazahk's preoccupation had been with his disappointing test results instead of his concern with their sleeping arrangements, and Sazahk didn't correct him.

He sighed. "Yes, the Insects." The more Sazahk learned about the alien species from the far reaches of the galaxy that had shown up on the sector's doorstep heavily armed and in search of a new home, the more he had to concede that insects were an apt comparison.

There was still much he didn't know: their reproductive mechanisms and their communication technology, to name his most pressing concerns. But they had a caste-like social structure, winged alates in positions of royalty, and antennae. Insect was rather too generic a label. They had more in common, specifically, with the ants or termites of Earth.

But both those species were considered destructive pests, so Sazahk wasn't about to bring that up with anyone who might be in favor of shooting down the Insect Colony Ship floating along the sector's border.

"Well, maybe your caves will hold something more promising." Garin lead the way west, farther into the Dead Zone, leaving the remains of their little camp behind and charting a course through the hot springs and geysers.

They made good time that day. They kept a hard, steady pace, and Sazahk stopped only once an hour or so to take samples or measurements. He'd had a full day to study hot springs and while there were always going to be interesting variations, he was eager to arrive at his subterranean destination.

By evening, they were both too exhausted for small talk or arguments, though they hadn't argued since Sazahk had ordered Garin to share his sleeping bag. Part of Sazahk regretted that decision when his anxiety kicked up a notch as they huddled together to sleep, already anticipating waking up with the man in his arms, but most of him knew the discomfort was a trivial price to pay to save Garin from freezing nights.

He hoped Garin would see it that way too when he eventually woke up before Sazahk and found Sazahk clinging to him like a barnacle.

Midway through the next day, with the blistering sun high in the sky, they came to a hilly area and Garin stopped them.

"We're here." He pulled out his tablet and rotated slowly. "There should be an entrance to the cave system somewhere nearby."

"Natural or constructed?" Sazahk looked around, noting the ridges, valleys, and ravines.

"Natural, I think. The maps don't show any signs of tunnels."

Sazahk turned away from studying the lip of a particularly precipitous gully to study Garin's face instead. "Have you identified tunnels from aerial maps before?"

"I have," Garin nodded without looking at him, his brow furrowing as he stopped his rotation and held up his tablet.

"To bomb them?"

"To infiltrate them." Garin lowered his tablet. "This way."

Sazahk watched Garin pick his way through the rocky terrain toward the edge of a gorge and imagined him in a dark access tunnel, clad in black body armor, and locked in vicious close-quarters combat. He didn't doubt Garin had the ability. His record proved he did and the scars Sazahk had begun cataloging across his body added weight to the evidence. But the image still didn't sit right. A man who pestered others to eat and reminded them not to get too close to hot water shouldn't also stab knives into people's jugulars.

"Did you like it?"

"Did I like what?" Garin dropped from the edge of a boulder and offered his hand to help Sazahk down after him.

"Infiltrating the tunnels." Sazahk ignored the hand and landed on his feet with a hard thud.

Garin recoiled, his face twisting. "Of course not. It was bloody, violent, chaotic, and awful."

"Why did you do it?" Sazahk followed Garin down the steep slope to the edge of an old riverbed.

"Because it was my job." Garin eyed a whistling fumarole belching steam into the air and gave it a wide berth as they descended. They'd left most of the hot springs behind, but this area still had numerous geothermal features.

"But why that job?"

Garin sighed and glanced back at him. "I'm not really sure you could understand, Sazahk. You grew up with money. It's different for you."

Sazahk fell silent, pressing his lips together as Garin reached the bottom of the dry riverbed and looked around, rubbing at the stubble along his jaw. Sazahk hated not understanding. There was very little he didn't understand. People thought he didn't understand social cues or dynamics or other people in general, but they were wrong. He understood them. He just didn't relate well to them. And understanding the mechanics of something was quite different from being able to effectively execute something. He understood the science of how guns worked better than most, but as Bar'in could attest, that didn't mean he had any ability to shoot them.

So he wasn't convinced he couldn't understand why Garin had chosen a job he seemed so poorly suited for, but he was convinced he didn't possess all the necessary information for understanding. There was a lot about the man currently crouched in the dirt, tugging at a dead shrub, that remained a mystery.

"What are you doing?" Sazahk cocked his head as Garin tossed the uprooted shrub away and lifted a heavy rock.

"Looking for a hole." Garin dug through loose gravel and brushed away some dirt. "It should be—aha!"

A large rock gave way in a shower of dust, and once the air cleared, revealed a small entrance into blackness.

Garin brushed the dirt off his hands and peered in. "You're sure there's nothing alive out here, right?"

"No, I'm not sure. That's the whole reason for this excursion." Sazahk lowered his pack and dug through it for the lantern he'd used the night before. "And I, in fact, saw some sort of medium-sized fauna roaming under a ledge on my last mission with Bar'in."

"Sure, but we're reasonably certain there are no creepy-crawlies waiting to bite or sting me and no wolverines ready to rip my face off?" Garin pulled his flashlight from his impeccably organized bag and flicked it on before Sazahk fished his out.

"The last animal on Qesha comparable to the wolverine was driven to extinction back when this was still a jungle." Sazahk finally yanked his lantern free from the bottom of his bag. "And if by creepy-crawlies you mean insects or arachnids or their closet indigenous equivalent, they are the form of life I most expect to see here, but as of yet, I haven't found a single specimen."

"Good enough for me." Garin shined the light into the darkness and poked the tip of his tongue out from between his lips as he thought. "Alright, I'll go in first and see if this leads anywhere."

He set his pack down out of the way and retrieved a length of rope, looping it around his waist.

"Is there a drop?" Sazahk's heart stabbed into his throat when Garin tied the other end of his rope around a boulder.

"Not that I saw, but better safe than sorry."

"Is there likely to be a drop?" Sazahk's voice shook more than he meant it to and when Garin looked at him, he moved his hands behind his back to hide the red spreading across his palms.

"Yeah, there is likely to be some sort of drop or climb." Garin frowned and flicked his green eyes up and down Sazahk's body as he clipped another small flashlight to his belt. "In my experience, at least."

"You have a lot of experience with spelunking?" Sazahk dropped to his knees to look through his pack for nothing in particular.

"A fair amount, yeah." Garin's boots took a step closer. "Is there something you want to tell me, Sazahk?"

"No." Sazahk looked back up at Garin and forced the red on his cheeks to turn green. He rarely manipulated his colors—he didn't often see the appeal of deception—but it was simple enough to do. He didn't know why the infallible Serihk had never gotten the hang of it. "No, not at all. I'm eager to see what we'll find. If anything's been able to thrive in this area, it'll be down there."

"Alright then." If Garin recognized his lie, he didn't call Sazahk out on it. "I'll go for as long as the rope lets me or until the caves force me to turn back. Keep an eye on your surroundings while I'm gone."

Sazahk glanced around at the nothingness in every direction: the dead shrubs, the cloudless sky, the yellow dirt and rocks. "I'm not sure that'll be the most effective use of my time."

"Just do it for me, would you, Sazahk?" Garin lowered to his belly and shimmied his head and shoulders through the narrow gap between rock and ground. "I won't be able to concentrate if I'm worried about you being jumped while you have your nose in your tablet, and I'm stuck down a hole."

"Alright, alright, I'll keep an eye on my surroundings," Sazahk called past the disappearing soles of Garin's boots.

"Good!" Garin's voice came back muffled and in moments even his boots had vanished. Only the rope sliding through the dirt after him proved he still existed.

Sazahk suddenly felt surprisingly alone. He tangled his fingers together as he circled the boulder Garin had anchored himself to. He didn't dare touch the knots, but a visual inspection indicated they'd hold. What they might have to hold against, Sazahk didn't want to think about. His stomach clenched at the unbidden image of Garin slipping over a ledge and plunging into darkness.

Even if he did, he'd be fine. Sazahk returned to the cave entrance and sat beside it. That was what the rope was for. The slack would run out and the rope would snap taut, but it would hold. Then Sazahk would haul Garin to safety. Or, at least, he would try. The qeshian equivalent of adrenaline had nothing on the human version. The feats a single human could accomplish in a moment of crisis were astounding. It was exactly that sort of nonsense—and a propensity for procreating—that had allowed the Humans to rise to a level of power similar to the Qesh and the Klah'Eel in such a short time, relatively speaking.

Sazahk watched the rope slide past him. So maybe he wouldn't be able to haul Garin to safety, but he'd certainly try. If he had to. Which he wouldn't. Probably.

After interminable minutes, the rope stopped. Sazahk stared at it. The minutes stretched on. Had Garin gotten stuck? Had he run into a hostile life form after all? He hadn't screamed. Surely Sazahk would have heard him?—

The rope started moving again, and Sazahk breathed a sigh of relief.

More minutes passed.

The rope stopped again. It still had several feet of slack left. Garin didn't need to turn around yet.

It didn't resume.

Time passed that could have been nothing or could have been ages. Sazahk couldn't tell, and he hadn't bothered to start a timer.

Just when he was considering yelling into the hole and demanding to know why the rope wasn't moving, he heard grunts and scuffling.

In moments, Garin belly-crawled back out into the sun, his face smeared with dirt but his green eyes alert and calm. "Good news, bad news."

"I have no preference on the order of your disclosure." Sazahk backed up to give Garin room to climb to his feet and stretch his arms up to the sky.

"I figured as much." Garin cracked his neck. "Good news is, I think we're on the right track. This passage opens up a good eighty yards in. I'm pretty sure it's part of the main cave system."

"And did you see anything?" Sazahk's excitement surged. "Moss? Fungi? Fauna, even?"

"No." Garin shook his head and untied his rope from around the boulder. "Just a lot of rocks. That's not the bad news, though."

Sazahk had a feeling he knew what the bad news was. He braced himself.

"Bad news is that to get any farther than I went, we have to drop down a pretty narrow shaft."

Sazahk's fingertips went cold. "You said it opened up at the end. Not narrowed."

"I'm pretty sure it opens up at the bottom." Garin paused his preparations, rested his elbows on his thighs, and looked up at Sazahk. "I dropped a rock down it and judging by how long it took to fall and the sound it made when it hit the ground, we're looking at a drop of about thirty feet and a pretty large cavern there, possibly with something other than rock in it."

Sazahk perked up at that, even as his belly churned. "Something other than rock?"

Garin nodded. "The sound was sort of muffled, not as echo-y as I would have expected."

Finding out what that something was motivated Sazahk far more than the threat of falling to his death deterred him. "Let's not waste any time then."

"Fair enough." Garin clapped his hands on his knees. "We're wasting daylight."

"There won't be any daylight down there, so that hardly matters." Sazahk walked to the opening in the ground and peered in. Definitely no daylight. Luckily, Sazahk had never minded the dark. It was the drop he was worried about.

Garin chuckled and nudged Sazahk out of his way. "Let me go first. I'm the one that knows the way. We're gonna have to push our packs out in front of us. Can you handle that?"

Sazahk scowled. "Emotionally, mentally, or physically?"

Garin raised his hands in surrender. "I meant physically, but I'll take that as yes. You got a headlamp?"

Sazahk hadn't even considered packing a headlamp. He didn't think he even had one, though he assumed Patrick could have lent him one. "No."

"I have an extra." Garin pulled one from his bag's outside pocket and reached for Sazahk. Sazahk recoiled, and it was Garin's turn to scowl. "It's got a finicky strap. Can I help you, please?"

Sazahk pressed his lips together and held himself still.

"Thank you." Garin lowered the strap around the crown of Sazahk's head and brushed a few loose hairs from his forehead before tightening the band. Sensation skittered across Sazahk's skin where Garin's gentle fingers touched, and he quickly locked down his colors before they embarrassed him. "There you go."

Sazahk stepped back as soon as Garin dropped his hand. "Are we ready now?"

"We're ready." Garin shoved his pack through the cave mouth. "You should be okay. It's not too narrow, but if you have any problems, anything at all, say something and I'll help you, alright?"

Sazahk looked into Garin's green eyes and shifted his weight at the uncomfortable earnestness in them. "Alright."

Garin held his gaze for a moment, then nodded firmly and crawled into the darkness.

Sazahk followed before Garin's booted feet disappeared. Neither darkness nor small spaces made Sazahk nervous. Even if the walls had closed in around them and squeezed him between the stone, he would have kept his head. Immobility at the hands of nature wasn't so concerning. His problem was immobility at the hands of people who didn't care that he screamed.

And the walls didn't close in on him, anyway. This was a solution cave, carved out over millions of years through the passage of water long since dried up. That water had fed a jungle once, before Sazahk's ancestors had put an end to it. They hadn't ended the cave, though, and it was still smooth and stable from its slow formation.

But even if the psychological effort of the crawl was minimal, the physical effort was gargantuan. Sazahk couldn't imagine how he'd have kept up if he'd tried this before his time with Squad M. Months embedded in a Klah'Eel army unit had firmed his muscles and improved his cardio, but still his arms burned as he shoved his pack ahead of him, inch by painstaking inch.

"How you doing back there, Sazahk?"

Sazahk bit back his gasping exhale. "Fine." Mostly. He was still alive, and he wasn't about to ask for a break, so he was fine.

Garin's chuckle bounced off the rock and back to Sazahk's ears. "Not much more of this. We're almost to the chute where I turned around."

Sazahk ground his teeth and tried to slow his racing heart. He'd rather crawl another five miles than get to that chute.

Too soon, the low ceiling above them lifted and the walls on either side peeled away, and Sazahk joined Garin in a small room large enough for Sazahk to sit up on his knees in.

"You alright?" Garin swept his bright light up and down Sazahk's body and Sazahk shielded his eyes.

"Yes, of course I'm alright. I'd have told you if I wasn't alright."

"I'm just checking. You cut yourself at all?"

"No," Sazahk answered without thinking, then considered the question, did a mental scan of his body, and still shook his head. "No."

"Good." Garin turned his beam of light onto the other side of the room. "That's where we're headed."

Garin's flashlight illuminated a great pit that sucked every photon in the room into a black abyss. Cold sweat broke out along the back of Sazahk's neck, and he forced himself to approach.

He remembered the Yelt trees in the jungle on Klah. He'd hated climbing those. The world had spun around him and every instinct in his body had screamed.

He'd always abhorred heights. He couldn't blame that one on trauma. Even as a child, he'd refused to look out the window of a ship as it took off.

But this was worse than the windows or the Yelt trees. This hadn't been constructed to be climbed. This?—

"Easy, hey, shh, easy." Garin caught Sazahk's shoulders as he scrambled back from the ledge. Instead of pulling away from his grip, Sazahk leaned into the firmness of it. It anchored his world and halted the spinning. "You're okay."

"I won't be," Sazahk stuttered out, pressing his back into Garin's chest.

"You will." Garin massaged his thumbs into Sazahk's deltoids, and his now familiar scent saturated Sazahk's senses. "You don't have to climb. I'm gonna lower you down and I'm not gonna drop you."

Sazahk opened his mouth, ready to deny Garin's confidence and call out the absurdity of such a promise. Except he didn't actually think it was absurd. He closed his mouth.

Garin wouldn't drop him. Garin might be an overbearing, smothering, dismissive, frustrating man who never trusted Sazahk to get anything right, but he'd keep Sazahk safe. Sazahk didn't doubt that. He doubted whether safety was worth the price, but he didn't doubt Garin's ability or commitment.

He nodded and Garin squeezed his shoulders.

"There you go, see? You're alright." Garin left Sazahk's back and Sazahk turned to watch Garin retrieve his long rope. Garin was shorter than Sazahk and lean, smaller than Patrick or Bar'in, and far smaller than Fal'ran or Tar. A sudden pang of longing for his team hit Sazahk in the heart. This was the longest he'd been apart from them since he'd joined. He wished Tar was anchoring the rope.

But maybe he wouldn't choose Tar over Garin for this. Despite his size, Sazahk knew Garin could hold his weight. And despite his protective fussing, Garin's confidence was undeniable and soothing. If Garin said he wouldn't drop Sazahk, then he wouldn't.

"I'm gonna tie this into a harness around you, okay?" Garin shuffled over on his knees and held up his rope.

Sazahk didn't know exactly what that entailed, but he nodded. "Okay."

Ohhhh, that's what that entailed. Sazahk flushed as Garin closed the distance between them and looped the rope around Sazahk's waist and thighs and between his legs. That general region of Sazahk's body hadn't gotten any attention in a long time and he bit his lip as a certain part of his anatomy responded.

Unwanted arousal—something that had barely reared its head in Sazahk's teenage years and never since—had been creeping around the edges of Sazahk's consciousness since the first night Garin shared his sleeping bag. It crept a little closer every time Sazahk cataloged a new scar on the man's body or learned some new tidbit about him or encountered some new question. And apparently, Garin's kindness and certainty in the face of Sazahk's bone-deep fear of falling and breaking his spine had coaxed the arousal out even farther.

"This is gonna hold you." Garin didn't react to the subtle tension in the front of Sazahk's pants and Sazahk prayed to the goddess he didn't believe in that Garin stayed focused on his rope work. "This rope is strong as hell and these knots have held bigger men than you. Once you're down there, tug on this, and it'll all unravel."

Sazahk jerked his fingers away from the loose rope Garin indicated, as though mere proximity would undo his whole harness. "What if the rope's not long enough?"

"It's long enough." Garin wrapped the slack around himself and hooked up some ratchets and other gear Sazahk didn't recognize. Then he leaned himself against the cave wall on the side opposite the crevasse and braced his feet against a broad stone step cleaved through the floor.

"What if you slip?" Sazahk's throat narrowed, and he drummed his fingers against his thigh.

"I won't." Garin smiled at Sazahk, affectionately, encouragingly, not mockingly.

"What about our bags?" Sazahk still didn't move himself from his position.

"I'll lower them down after you once you're safely to the bottom."

Sazahk closed his eyes and breathed. No more excuses. He called to mind that one beautiful patch of green moss shaded in the ruins of an ancient city that he'd found with Patrick, Fal'ran, Tar, and Bar'in. That one brilliant piece of life had convinced him that the Dead Zone wasn't dead. That despite his ancestor's incredible efforts, it could come back. That it might have already.

But he'd never find out, stuck up in a dry cave with his eyes closed.

He swallowed the lump in his throat, lifted his chin, and crawled to the ledge.

"That a way, Sazahk." Garin's voice rose, and Sazahk didn't make a snarky reply. Garin's encouragement was painfully necessary. "This is gonna be uncomfortable, but I want you to face me and go off backwards so that you can hold the rope and brace your feet on the side of the wall. Then you'll be able to walk down step by step as I give you more rope."

Sazahk nodded and shuffled around to face Garin. Dirt smudged the human's handsome face, and his stubble came in dark along his jaw, but his teeth flashed white as he smiled.

"I'm gonna need verbal confirmation from here on out. I won't be able to see you."

"Obviously." Sazahk licked his lips. "Yes, I got it. Backwards. Down. Step by step."

"That's right."

Samples. Fresh samples. Microbes swimming around on his microscope slide. DNA unraveling before his eyes and zipping back up in the way he instructed. Sazahk thought of his favorite things as he lowered his feet down over the open air.

For a moment, he was sure he'd drop. His arms would give out, his legs would flail, the harness would disappear, and the rest of his life would be the rush of cold cave air and screaming.

But before he knew it, his boots found purchase on the cave wall, and he sat back into the snug harness Garin had wrapped around him.

"Oh." With his feet on the stone, the rope hugging him tight, and the dark obscuring the true magnitude of the drop below him, Sazahk's heart rate normalized.

"Not so bad, right?" Garin grinned at Sazahk from over the lip of the ledge.

"I wouldn't say that." Sazahk gripped the rope holding him up tight enough to whiten his knuckles against the swirling red and orange of his skin.

"I'm gonna start lowering you, alright?"

Sazahk nodded, then caught himself. "Alright."

"You let me know if I'm going too fast."

"Right now, you're going too slow."

Garin chuckled, then slowly released a length of rope through his ratchet. Sazahk's stomach fell out as he lurched downwards, but he moved his feet and it reinserted itself. He was walking. He was just walking.

"Good?" Garin's voice echoed down to him.

One foot down, the other foot down, one foot down, the other foot down. "Good."

This was fine. Sazahk could do this. His back bumped against the cave wall. "Wait!"

The hiss of the rope through the ratchet ceased. "What's wrong?"

"The passage is narrowing." Sazahk craned his neck around to look down. "I can't walk down that. I won't fit."

"Will you fit feet first?"

Sazahk snapped his head up, even though Garin was far out of sight now. "You mean if I hang?"

"That's right."

"I—" Sazahk didn't want to even consider the possibility. But he did. He analyzed the gap below him, zipping his gaze across its width and length. "I think so."

"You got this, Sazahk," Garin called down the chute to him. "And I got you. You know I won't let you fall."

Sazahk did know that. He did.

"Drop your feet down. Let me take your weight."

Sazahk closed his eyes, pressed his forehead into the rope gripped tightly in both his hands, and dropped his feet from the wall. He didn't move. He'd half expected the rope to give or snap or for Garin to disappear and send him plummeting to the cave floor. But when his feet lost purchase against the stone, he only swayed back a little. He didn't drop even an inch.

"Here we go. You ready?" Garin's voice had an edge of strain to it. Maybe. Or maybe Sazahk's fear-addled mind imagined that.

Sazahk unclenched his jaw. "Ready."

Sazahk sank with a tiny lurch, and he gasped. But then he lowered evenly, down into the narrow pinch point. The smooth sides of the ancient cave wall brushed his shoulders as he slipped through. Cold air eddied around him as he entered a massive cavern so large his headlamp illuminated nothing but vague shapes in the distance.

A new scent hit Sazahk's nostrils. The sweet damp of decay and something tangy. Sazahk inhaled deeply. Familiar but not.

Curiosity dragged Sazahk away from his terror and his fear of falling became an impatience to hit the floor. "I'm alright, Garin! You can go faster."

Garin barked a laugh. "I can't, actually. I don't want to lose my grip."

That thought tempered Sazahk's enthusiasm considerably, and he shut his mouth as he lowered. The floor would wait.

After several minutes, it came into view and in moments, Sazahk's feet hit solid ground. "I'm down!"

"You've reached the bottom?" Garin's voice came from so high up, vertigo hit Sazahk in the gut when he looked up through the shaft to the pinprick of light above.

"I have." Sazahk tugged the rope Garin had told him to and his harness slithered off. "This room is immense. I'm skeptical that it formed naturally, but the floor is clearly unpaved. It's rather gravely, but by the smell, I assume I'll find detritus nearby."

"Don't wander off!"

Sazahk halted his straying feet. "I'm not!"

"I'll lower you our packs." The rope lifted back up into the darkness.

Sazahk spun around at a sound.

But his headlamp didn't pierce the gloom, and he saw only hazy, stationary forms beyond the beam of light. A small rock knocked loose by the vibrations of their passage?

With the silence pressing in from every direction, Sazahk frowned, unsure he'd heard anything at all.

"Heads up!" Garin called as the two bags blotted out the light from the shaft. The zip of the rope filled the silence before the bags landed with a thud.

"Be careful!" Sazahk rushed to his bag. "My microscope is the most important tool we have."

"You have like four of them," Garin scoffed. "And our most important tool is this rope or our water generator."

"All the more reason not to throw our bags around." Sazahk unclipped the rope from the two bags. "Alright, you?—"

A clatter and two distinct, sharp footsteps echoed on Sazahk's left. His chest seized, and he whirled toward the sound, stumbling a few steps away from it. But again, his light landed on nothing.

Sazahk swallowed. "You should get down here now, Garin."

"Sazahk?" Garin's tone turned serious as he picked up on Sazahk's tension before Sazahk had even processed it. "Sazahk, what's wrong?"

"I think there's something down here." Sazahk unzipped his pack with shaking hands, looking for the combat knife Bar'in had snuck into it. He didn't really know how to use a combat knife and he didn't even really want to hurt or kill whatever precious living creature was down here, but he didn't want to die a horrible, bloody death by unknown assailant in the dark either.

"Shit." Garin's hissed expletive only made it to Sazahk's ears because the cavern had fallen deathly quiet again.

Sazahk strained his hearing as the rope lifted into the dark again, but all he heard were the thuds, clicks, and clips of Garin doing whatever it was he had to do up there to get himself down here.

"I'm on my way."

Clicking that sounded nothing like Garin's climbing gear sounded from above and a flash of movement skittered away from Sazahk's headlamp beam.

"Garin, it's coming to you!" Sazahk abandoned the search for his knife and jumped to his feet.

"What is it?" Garin demanded as he rappelled through the shaft and approached the pinch point.

"I don't know, but it clicks when it moves and it runs from my light and it's moving toward the chute," Sazahk rattled off every observation he'd made and wished he'd had more. "Maybe you shouldn't?—"

But Garin slipped through the pinch point without being mauled at the entrance.

"Thank the goddess. Never mind. I thought you'd—Garin!" Sazahk's relief burst into panic when Garin jerked right, then swung left, swinging like a pendulum.

"Fucking shit!" Garin swore as he veered through the darkness. "What the hell?"

Both their headlamps darted to the entrance of the chute, where a dark shape swallowed up the rope, shaking and jerking.

Sazahk gaped at the beast, one too far and shrouded in too much darkness to make out, and remembered the creature he'd seen from a distance with Bar'in. He wished with a stinging self-loathing that he'd insisted on following it before, so he'd know what it was, so he could help Garin now as he swung through the open air.

"Shit, shit, shit." Garin kept rappelling, dropping as the animal gave his rope another vicious yank, sending him careening to the side. "Shi?—"

Garin's scream reverberated through the cavern when the rope snapped.

Sazahk stood, frozen and horrified, as Garin sailed through the air, the beam of his headlamp spinning wildly as he tumbled into the darkness.

He landed in a burst of light.

Sazahk recoiled and shielded his eyes with both arms as a bright green blaze burned away his night vision.

"Garin?" Sazahk squeezed his eyes shut against the dazzling afterimages. He heard gasping and coughing and stumbled toward the sound. "Garin?"

"I—" Garin devolved into a coughing fit and Sazahk pushed forward.

"Garin, are you…" Sazahk forced his eyes open and stilled in awe.

Green threads and blooms of light lit the entire cavern. Garin lay in a small copse of what looked like huge, frilly mushrooms that gave off a vibrant emerald glow. Spilling out from the mass of fungus were ropes and veins of the same color, crawling along the floor and up the wall and arching along the ceiling overhead. They encased the room like a fine, glowing net.

Sazahk followed the tangled throngs of sinewy hyphae threading across the rock with an open-mouthed gaze. Emotion choked his throat at the shocking beauty of it.

But another cough tore Sazahk out of his reverie, and he sprang forward.

"Don't!" Garin raised a hand, still gasping and panting. "Don't come any closer. We don't—" he ducked his head as he hacked "—don't know what this is."

"Are you hurt? Did you break anything? Can you breathe?" Sazahk forcibly glued his boots to the dirt floor, rapidly cataloging everything in his field of view.

"No, no, and yes. Mostly." Garin climbed to his feet in a cloud of glowing particles the same hue as the spongy fungus-looking structure that had cushioned his fall. The tiny particulates zipped up Garin's nose as he breathed.

"You shouldn't be breathing that." Sazahk watched the particles settle on Garin's hair and clothes, softening his outline with their glow. The frilly structure continued pulsing with light as Garin untangled himself from it, but already the light from the far side of the cavern faded.

"Too late." Garin stumbled out onto open ground, keeping his distance from Sazahk. He brushed at his clothes and everywhere he touched, the dust lit up again and fell off. "What the hell is this stuff?"

"Spores, I think." Sazahk lifted his shirt to cover his nose and mouth and approached for a closer look. "I believe you landed in the fruiting body of a mycelium-based fungus." Sazahk experimentally brushed Garin's chest, and the spores lit up again. "Their bioluminescence is triggered by external stimuli."

"And what the hell was that?" Garin looked up at the shaft and the frayed end of their rope, swaying far out of reach.

"An animal of some sort, but that's all I can say with any amount of certainty." Sazahk's cheerful fascination with the glowing spores took a hit at the reminder of his failure to observe anything of note on the only fauna he'd come across, but he shrugged it off. "Let me sample you."

For some reason, Garin blushed as Sazahk grabbed his wrist and dragged him to their bags.

"You said you can breathe?" Sazahk launched into questions as he pulled out his kit. "Normally? Deeply? Shallowly?"

"Um." Garin took a few experimental inhales. "All of the above."

"How's your vision?" Sazahk swabbed one of Garin's eyebrows and picked up the spores caught in the dark hairs. He gave up on covering his own nose and mouth, the vast majority of the particulates having settled out of the air.

"Fine. I can see normally."

"Sense of smell?"

"Intact."

"Taste?"

"Normal, I think. Hard to tell."

Sazahk circled Garin, prodding at his sides and tilting his head to get a look at the spores gathered under his collar. His skin was hot to the touch, but Sazahk wrote that off as typical human heat.

"You getting what you need?" Garin stayed obediently still as Sazahk swabbed different patches of skin.

"Almost. I just want your nose and mouth." Sazahk held up two more cotton tipped sticks and Garin grimaced but tilted his head back for Sazahk to swab his nostril and opened his mouth for Sazahk to get the inside of his cheek. "Wonderful. Truly fascinating. I couldn't have imagined a better introduction to this cave system."

"I could have," Garin muttered as he pulled his pack on.

Sazahk snapped his kit closed with a guilty gray coloring his fingers. "Right, of course. I didn't mean that I wanted you to be exposed to an unknown organic substance or to be attacked. You truly are feeling normal now, though, correct?"

Garin didn't meet his eyes as he adjusted the weight of his pack on his shoulders. "Normal enough."

Sazahk shouldered his own pack with a frown. "Garin, are you experiencing symptoms you haven't disclosed to me?"

"No." Garin deliberately made eye contact and shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

Sazahk gave the man a once over. He stood the same as he had before. He had no obvious limp and didn't favor any one side. He was dirty and sweaty, but that was to be expected. All the remaining spores on him had stopped glowing. He looked normal, but the tension around his eyes made Sazahk uneasy.

"If you don't want any samples of this room, we should get going." Garin jerked his head at a gap in the far wall, lit by faintly glowing tendrils. "That rope's done for, so we have to find another way out of these caves."

"I thought you already planned a route with an alternate exit." Sazahk lead the way toward the passage, stopping next to a small thread of glowing green to snip it off and stow it in a plastic tube.

"I did, but I was hoping to preserve a confirmed exit." Garin trailed after him. "I don't know how accurate these maps are."

Sazahk decided not to take on that particular concern. Garin was capable of being more than concerned enough for the both of them. Instead, he busied himself with snapping photographs with his tablet of the mycelium crawling across the cave floor and clipping samples from everything he could get his hands on.