"Come in star keeper…" Raziri said as she opened the door. I followed her into the small house and Dakarai and Astrid followed me. Raziri and her father's home. It was small and barren. There were next to none of the basic necessities that you would find in any other home in the village save a small stove and what I could only assume was a couch.
Raziri lead the way through her home to a small room in the back of the house. Tarrika's room was spacious in relation to the rest of the house, there was enough room for a bed; tattered and beaten down as it was; a dresser, a chair and various trash all over the room. It was barely a bedroom and didn't look good enough to house a dog let alone a full grow adult.
I walked over to the foot of the bed and lifted it up, part of the floor rose with it reveling a small hole in the floor. Dakarai looked at Astrid who shrugged softly.
"His evo told him." She said dismissively. Dakarai eyed me and nodded slowly.
I grabbed a piece of trash and threw it down the hole. It didn't take more than a second for it to hit the ground. I smiled and looked back at Astrid and Dakarai.
"I'll be right back." I said then moved to jump in the hole. Astrid grabbed my shirt to stop me.
"What do you mean you'll be right back?!" She shouted. "You are not jumping down a dark dingy hole into what could be a sonic viper nest!"
'Bone?' I asked.
I felt a sense of boredom come over me as another wave of shot put of my body and mapped out the hole for up to two miles away. That however didn't map out the entire tunnel. I looked back to Astrid and Dakarai.
"Bone-lasher says the tunnels clear for a while." I relayed to them. Astrid looked around and frowned.
"Is Bone-lasher a Hivdrix or something else tiny?" She asked.
"No he's the Liger shark I stole from Damon." I replied. Astrid frowned and crossed her arms.
"There is no way a liger shark can fit anywhere in this room. How is he telling you anything?" Astrid asked.
"He's borrowing my senses from inside my farm crystal to use his electromagnetic fields and relaying the information to my brain." I replied. Astrid blinked several times.
"It's doing what now?" She gaped.
"I've heard of this…" Dakarai interjected. "Sharing senses and emotions with evos. We call it Synsopilia with a person is able to even share and see the memories of evos. A evo doesn't have it be out of your farm crystal in order for this to happen. It's a defining ability that all of our villages previous star keepers had."
"Of course…" Astrid said with a sigh. She looked down the hole then groaned. "…let's go."
She pushed me into the hole and I hit the ground before I had a chance to scream. I groaned and rolled onto my back to look up at both Astrid and Dakarai staring down at me.
"Ow!" I growled.
"Is it safe?" Astrid asked.
"No its flooding with sonic vipers and I'm being screeched to death!" I yelled back sarcastically.
"Don't be a ass!" Astrid screamed back. I rolled onto my belly and pushed myself up.
It was pitch-black black and the only light was coming from the hole above me. I took a fee steps into the darkness and cycled some mana throughout my body making sure it was close to my skin. I turned it into shine attribute mana and kept cycling it. A second later my skin started glowing bright enough to illuminate the darkness around me for several feet. I heard two thuds behind me, which I guessed were Astrid and Dakarai jumping into the hole.
"Oh gods!" Astrid groaned when she saw me. "Why are you glowing?"
"How else am I going to see? I can't keep asking Bone-lasher to lend me his vision. Plus this doesn't cost me any mana to do." I replied. Dakarai sighed and stepped around me then started casting a utility spell sigil.
"It's moments like this that makes me wish I learned that spell when I was younger." Dakarai said. His spell sigil was cast and a small ball of light formed in his hand and hovered over hos shoulder illuminating the tunnel in front of us several feet further down the tunnel than the light from my body did.
"I'd rather have learned that spell or any spell really before I learned this one." I said as I stopped channeling mana. Dakarai walked in front of Astrid and I then started walking down the tunnel.
"Given what I've seen you do so far you have a great understanding of mana." He said with a look over his shoulder.
"He didn't even know what mana was a month ago." Astrid muttered, her voice slightly bitter. She walked past me and kept in pace behind Dakarai. I rolled my eyes and followed after the both of them.
We kept walking for almost fifteen minutes with no silence, Bone-lasher didn't note anything nearby either other than two more miles of tunnels that were sloping slightly in a incline. After another fifteen minutes of walking and no end in sight Astrid started to get visibly agitated.
"I don't like this!" Astrid griped. "This is a long tunnel? How does someone dig something like this without anyone knowing?"
"Pretty easy with a few million sonic vipers." I said. Astrid glowered at me.
"He's right, our village uses sonic vipers rarely for hunting in the desert. However those are much weaker than the ones that have attacked us." Dakarai said then glanced over his shoulder at Astrid and I. "Because of that they're creation is not closely monitored, that will change."
"Evo creation isn't that well regulated in England unless it's a hivdrix or a evo over five feet tall." Astrid said.
I felt a wave of nausea flood over me as my vision blurred and a wave shot out of my body highlighting the cave ahead of us. About a mile and a half ahead if us the tunnel expanded into a large cave filled with a mass along the cave floor. It took me a moment to realize that the mass was a giant heap of bodies. Thankfully Bone-lasher cut the connection before the smell was shared between the two of us.
"There is a cave coming up." I said softly to the others. Astrid and Dakarai turned to look at me. "About a mile and a half ahead, it's filled with corpses."
"Corpses?" Astrid asked.
"Bone-lasher can't tell how many but I saw it with our shared connection." I said. Dakarai scowled and started casting a axiom spell sigil. A sword made out of fire formed in his hands and he pointed toward the tunnel ahead of us. I popped my claws and kept moving close behind Dakarai and Astrid.
We soon came to the mouth of the cave and our noses were assaulted to the stench of death and decay. I covered my nose and groaned.
"Fuck that smells like shit!" I exclaimed.
"Nesting pod." Dakarai said with a snort.
"When sonic vipers mate the females eat the males genitals which kills the males."
"Ouch…." I groaned instinctively covering my own genitals in sympathy for the dead sonic vipers.
There were at least a few thousand sonic viper corpses covering the floor of the spacious cave near the mouth. Deeper inside the cave there was large nests made of various materials, namely straw, bone, and stone pieces. The nests were semi open ovals with somewhere between a hundred soft eggs inside.
I walked over to the closest nest and looked around. Bone-lasher didn't notice anything in the cavern when my group walked inside but I figured better to be safe than sorry. I didn't see anything but something about the cavern seemed off.
Dakarai walked over to the nest and poked one lf the eggs with his fire sword. It cracked open and fried from the heat of the flame. He curled his lip then swung at the nest, chopping most of the remaining eggs in one swing. I thought about walking over to break a couple eggs myself when it suddenly hit me what felt off.
"Where are the females?" I asked. Dakarai froze mid-swing and looked at me then turned to look at Astrid.
"Where is your Classmate?" He asked. I froze and looked around not seeing her anywhere.
"She was right behind you!" I exclaimed.
'BONE-LASHER!' I boomed through our connection.
I felt another pulse wave emanate from my body and highlight the entire cave there was only two entrances to the cave and no way for anything to sneak up in us and grab her. It took me a few seconds to calm down enough to notice that there was a hole not too far from where I last saw Astrid.
I rushed over to the hole; which had been partially concealed by a combination of the sonic viper corpses and a nearby nest; thanks to Bone-lasher I could see inside the hole. It was a short tunnel deeper into the ground that lead to what looked to be a underground lake. I could make out what looked like a lot of splashing just under the surface of the water.
"FUCK! ASTRID!" I screamed as I jumped down the hole.