NOTE: Edited 01/11/23 - significant changes to pacing, dialogue, and prose.
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We didn't need to light our sage lamps or holy torches. At least not yet. For every few feet, torch sconces hanging along the craggy walls would flare up at our approach, filling the tunnel with ghostly light enough for us to see by.
With Esmerelda in the lead—her tracking and trap skills were seriously useful here—we traversed a long, round-shaped tunnel with a low-hanging ceiling that sent us deeper and deeper into what was turning out to be a vast cave system.
"This is weird," Delphine whispered.
She walked behind Esmerelda as the raven-haired girl's backup because a hill dwarf's expertise in traversing an underground lair was second only to their cave dwarf cousins, and only because cave dwarves were known to swim in the earth the way everyone else could swim in the sea.
"What's weird?" I asked.
