Fracture, Chapter 3
The Sunken Kingdom
Long awaited on both my front and yours~ Please enjoy.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/13147872/chapters/66694057
It was four progressively more well-lit caverns, three tripped over rocks, two run into walls, and a cracked knoll covered in dead grass stumbled up in her panic before Aliza calmed enough to realize she wasn’t being followed. With this blessed realization, she stumbled to a halt in her frenzied escape to gasp for air and attempt to settle the rolling unease in her belly, blind to the room she had come to a stop in.
She bent to settle the little red butterfly in her sweaty hand on the ground for a moment (Ruby glowed weakly, her bent wing flapping uselessly as she attempted to stand), the flashlight tucked under her arm right beside her, and thereafter propped her good palm on her knee, wheezing and hacking against the insistent burning of her throat, torn apart by her exertion and her own stomach acids.
She hadn’t ever vomited that much, certain she had been close to heaving up her own internal organs in her illness… yet even now, thinking back on the creature she had just fled made her completely empty, growling stomach nearly turn itself inside out in disgust and fear, the bile gathering again on the back of her tongue, thick and vile.
Her watering, panic hazed eyes turned back to the path she had just charged down as she attempted to restore her fled breath. The ivy and grass strewn caverns grew darker and darker as they twisted and turned away from her (there was a curious amount of vegetation here, including but not limited to the glowing lavender mosses growing on the high, craggy ceiling above… though, she supposed, there did seem to be enough moisture here to support it), until they disappeared behind a thick rock wall, blocking her view of the tunnel that led to the room full of dried flowers, garbage, and, apparently, dead people.