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“Speaking of unsettling pitch black,” Hester says, glancing uncomfortably out of their small haven of light. “Does anyone else get a bad feeling from the darkness here? It’s completely blocking light from spreading. I couldn’t even see Emily approaching.”

“It’s even worse than it was above at night,” Tom adds. “And the numbness was horrible.”

“Wait, numbness?” Emily questions, everyone turning to him with questioning gazes.

“Yeah.” Tom nods. “When I got down here, I lost all feeling: it was just like when I stuck my arm in that hole in the bottom of the lake. If I hadn’t practically landed on Hester, I think I may have drowned. I regained feeling once I was in her light though.”

Emily glances around, contemplating his observation.

“I see. There’s definitely something off about this darkness. I think it’s alive,” she says, pointing at the small tendrils of blackness trying to force their way into the light before dissipating. “I don’t feel any malice though.”

Her friends start inspecting the edge of the light as Juliana’s shaking finally subsides and she pulls away from Emily, tapping her shoulder to ask to be put down. She flashes Emily a tired, grateful smile as she steps away, which Ivor notices.

“You okay?” he signs with concern.

“Yeah, I just don’t like water,” Juliana signs back.

With Juliana out of her arms, Emily pulls out the Diver’s tablet.

“It worked! We’re on the same level as the Diver now,” she says, drawing her friends' attention away from the darkness and igniting a spark of excitement.

“Really? Are we getting close to the end?” Tom asks hopefully.

“I’m not certain, but I think so,” Emily answers, stepping out ahead of the group and pouring more mana into her light spell to grow the illuminated area, taking advantage of her increasing passive mana regeneration in the mana-dense darkness. “It’s still moving. We should get going. We’ll only know how close we are when we cover some more ground and, hopefully, we can finally close the distance between us.”

Nobody voices any complaints as they set off into the unknown. They march on, a quiet buzz of conversation accompanying their travel as Emily once again sets up her scouts to watch for enemies. She places her boat in the water, and sends a spider out ahead of them, not trusting a bird’s sight to penetrate the darkness.

An hour later, as their excitement has started to die down, Emily calls for the group to halt as she spots the first mantolyc ahead.

“There’s an enemy ahead,” she says with a vicious grin, holding out her hand. “One moment.”

The sleek black form of the Whisper appears in her hand from a light mist of spatial mana. Her friends fall silent as they watch her raise the rifle to her shoulder and line up a shot. The spider ahead approaches the mantolyc, tapping its feet periodically to send back a clear image of the unmoving creature.

Try to bait me now.

Emily flicks the gun into silent and pulls the trigger. She racks the bolt the moment the bullet leaves the barrel, adjusts her aim, and fires again, before repeating a third time. All three bullets vanish into the ether as they hit the blanket of darkness surrounding them, but Emily watches through her spider’s strange vision as three chunks are blown from the mantolyc’s shell, scattering chitin and flesh as its legs go limp.

Emily sends her gun away with a triumphant grin and gestures for her friends to follow her. They proceed forward until they reach the still-twitching body of the grotesque creature.

“What is that?” Tom asks, stepping past Emily towards the body.

Emily reaches out, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and yanking him backwards before he can get too close.

“Not a good idea,” Emily says before he can object, stepping forward in his place.

A few steps later, the monster’s arm suddenly lashes out, aiming for Emily’s chest. She easily deflects it with one Claw before slicing the limb in half with the other, pressing forward and doing the same to the other arm before it can attack. She glances over its body, quickly locating the still-surviving brain in its torso, only half destroyed by the bullet still buried inside it, and fires a Claw at it. The creature goes completely still as Emily turns back to Tom, whose complexion has turned sickly white as her stares at the deadly scythes lying on the floor in front of him.

“It’s a mantolyc, and they’re persistent bastards. They’re a third circle beast that’s been encountered deep in The Glade, and in the south of the Lerus Isles. They have three brains, and the fact that it was still twitching was a sign I hadn’t destroyed all of them with my first three shots,” Emily explains, turning back to the corpse to begin stripping it for materials. “Never approach a living mantolyc. It will not end well for you.”

“Yeah,” Tom says with a nervous gulp. “I got the idea when I didn’t see it move till you cut its arm off.”

Her friends gather around as Emily peels plates of armour off the beast. Tom offers to help, but she brushes him off, knowing he won’t have the strength to separate the chitin and flesh without several incisions. Emily gathers the armour, scythes, and undamaged heart of the beast before leading her friends onwards.

Several hours later, after a few encounters in the dark with some groups of second circle beasts, they pause to harvest a small patch of vothral weed they find growing along the riverbank.

“You know,” Hester says, dropping a stalk into Tom’s bag and glancing out into the darkness. “As unsettling as this darkness is, it’s quite nice to be able to see my footing again.”

“Agreed,” Tom chuckles, pulling a stalk free as Ivor softens the ground around it. “I’ve actually managed to go a few hours without tripping on something.”

“It was inconvenient,” Juliana adds. “But I quite liked it. It made some interesting patterns while we were walking.”

“Fair point,” Hester concedes. “There isn’t exactly much to look at down here. I think I’d go insane if I was stuck in this darkness alone.”

“Insane enough to eat someone?” Emily asks with a sly grin, standing at the edge of their small zone of light staring into the darkness towards an approaching group of moles.

“Hmmm,” Hester hums as if in deep thought, before glancing towards her brother. “Depends on how annoying the person is. I’m sure I could make some great food from Tom.”

“Hey! I’m sure you’d taste better. There’s more m-“ Tom cuts off as he receives a swift boot to the shin, making everyone laugh at his misfortune.

“Thinking about it though, mages probably taste alright,” Dante says as the laughter dies down. “All other mana-infused flesh we’ve eaten has been nice, so I can’t see why humans would be any different.”

As a debate on the health benefits of eating other mages starts, only Ivor and Juliana notice when Emily slips out into the darkness. She shuts her eyes, walking ahead while completely relying on her spatial awareness and the vision of her spider to track the moles she detected ahead as they rush towards her, diving into the ground to close the rest of the distance between them.

Emily takes a deep breath, rooting her feet in place and holding both arms out at her sides, releasing the Claws’ blades and letting out their reels till their tips lightly caress the ground. The left blade’s tip vibrates, and the dark tunnel bursts into motion.

Emily takes half a step to the side as a mole bursts from the ground below her, its claws pressed together to form a sharp point. A flick of her wrist slashes her blade through the beast’s soft flesh, bisecting it as a dozen other moles rise from the ground around Emily.

She twists as a mole lunges at her, wrapping a wire around its throat and slashing two beasts behind it in one movement. Her blades weave between the moles, avoiding their claws and rending their flesh with ease, taking apart their offensive and leaving the beasts crumpled in a pile of blood and guts within seconds.

Emily lets out the breath she was holding as she draws her weapons back in before moving between the corpses, cutting out their claws to save the valuable black iron. She returns to her friends soon after, stepping into the light to find them waiting with no weeds left in the ground.

“Are you okay?” Juliana asks with concern, confusing Emily for a moment before she glances down and sees the blood coating her robes.

“Oh, this isn’t mine,” Emily says, casting cleanse and removing the red splatters in an instant. “I just dealt with some moles. If you guys are done here, let’s get going.”

They continue their trek through the dark, the shrinking distance with the Diver and the tick of Emily’s pocket watch the only signs of time passing in the void. Emily deals with most of the fights, her friends struggling to target enemies in the pitch black. The evening arrives with no visible changes to the tunnel around them, but Emily watches the time on The Clock and calls to set up camp at the usual time.

They keep their sleeping bags close together, as the light from the barrier disc doesn’t spread very far, and set up a campfire in the centre of them.

“How long till we catch up to the Diver?” Enzo asks as he takes a bite from a skewer of bug meat.

“I’d say about a week to its current position with the pace we’ve been going, but it still appears to be moving so I can’t be sure,” Emily says, knowing it will vanish the following morning, hoping that signals it’s reached its destination.

“Are you hoping to find something at the end?” Juliana asks, drawing out similarly curious gazes from their friends.

“Not really.” Emily shrugs, unwilling to tell them about her quests. “I just wanted to sate my own curiosity.”

Her friends' shoulders slump slightly, but no one seems too disappointed.

“Haha,” Juliana giggles, leaning into Emily’s side. “I wouldn’t expect anything else from you.”

“Leading the most successful expedition into The Glade ever just to satisfy your curiosity. You really do never cease to amaze,” Enzo says in a tired tone, making Emily chuckle and roll her eyes.

“I try my best,” she responds, tossing her finished skewer on the fire.

After the meal, everyone slips into their sleeping bags, leaving Emily and Juliana together by the fire, using its warmth to fend off the chill spreading through the tunnels.

“It’s a lot colder down here,” Juliana says, pulling her robes tighter around herself as she presses closer to Emily to steal her warmth.

“It is.” Emily nods, poking the fire with her mana and guiding the rising smoke to form shapes.

They fall into a comfortable silence for a while, neither of them doing anything but enjoying each other’s company and watching the fire, until Emily finally breaks it.

“Hey, Jules... are you okay?” she asks carefully, her fingers tracing patterns along Juliana’s shoulder and feeling them tense as her question falls.

Juliana lets out a sigh, lifting her head from Emily’s shoulder. Emily’s heart rises into her throat at the separation, before relaxing as Juliana lowers herself down to lay her head in Emily’s lap. She remains silent for a few seconds, gathering her thoughts as Emily gently strokes her hair.

“Not really,” she finally says, freezing Emily’s hand in place. “I really didn’t want to go underwater, especially not being pulled around by a strong current like that.”

She starts shaking again, jolting Emily back into motion, her fingers weaving in a calming rhythm across Juliana’s scalp.

“I keep thinking that I’ll probably need to do something similar to get out again, and whenever I do it starts feeling hard to breathe,” Juliana whispers, her hand rising up from inside her robes to clasp onto Emily’s thigh for comfort. “But I hate feeling like a burden. I came on this expedition because I wanted to spend time with you. I wanted to see what it was about this place that had you so excited to come back. But ever since arriving here, I’ve just felt useless.”

Emily opens her mouth to try and comfort her, but pauses as Juliana continues, turning her head to gaze into Emily’s eyes.

“You slip away to deal with attacking beasts when you think no one’s watching. You went into a dungeon alone because you thought we may have to fight on our own. You have a machine or spell prepared for every situation we run into, and if you don’t you make one within hours. It’s not helpful for you to have us here. We aren’t providing anything you can’t do better alone. You don’t need us,” Juliana says, her voice getting weaker as tears form in her eyes, and her words getting faster as they slice away at Emily’s heart, the fresh seed of hope that she has only just began to nurture turning rotten and poisoning each word. “On our first night in The Glade, I thought I found something I could do. When we talked about you leaving, you looked so sad, and angry, and confused! It hurt to see you like that, but, as much as I hate myself for it, I also felt hopeful.”

Tears roll down Juliana’s cheeks as she turns her gaze away, shame bubbling up in her chest as her words continue to spill out. Emily bites her lip at mention of the all too familiar form of guilty self-loathing, sucking in the blood that flows out so it doesn’t fall on Juliana.

“As horrible as it is, I thought I’d finally found what you need. Found your one weakness that made you need someone else. Need me. But, even then, you didn’t. The next day you put your walls back up and kept going as normal, and now you’ve spent more time on this trip comforting me than I have you. I know you’re still hurting inside. I know you brought us all along because you feel lonely, even if you refuse to admit it. But, I just don’t know what to say. I don’t know when the right moment to talk to you is when you always look so brave and strong, and I just don’t want to be the one to ruin that.”

Juliana falls silent, her body still, without a single quiver, as she turns her tearful face back up to look at Emily. She breaks into a sad smile, a mix of acceptance and grief settled in her eyes.

“I’m not strong enough, Emi. Not just as a mage, but as a person.”

Juliana reaches up, brushing a tear from Emily’s cheek and wrapping her arms around her neck, pulling herself up to sit in Emily’s lap.

“I love you, Emi. And I do think you love me. But you don’t need me. You need an equal. A partner. Someone who’ll jump into the fires of hell with you when they catch your curiosity.”

Despite herself, Emily can’t help the chuckle that spills from her lips along with fresh tears. She opens her mouth to try and respond, to refute the words she knows to be true, but Juliana places a finger on her lips, noticing the torn edges and gently running her finger along them before pulling Emily into a hug.

“It’s okay. I don’t need you to comfort me, for once. I know you realised I couldn’t keep up with you ages ago, you’re far too smart not to have, but I guess it just took me a while.”

Emily silently cries into Juliana’s shoulder for a while, the confusing mixture of guilt, anger, sadness, and longing slowly blending into a muted sense of acceptance as she focuses on the tears soaking her own shoulder in turn. After a few minutes, the two pull apart, each running a hand over the other’s cheek, wiping away the tears.

“I love you, Jules.”

“I love you too, Emi.”