The Forgotten Faithful: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 2) by Cajiao, Jez (little red riding hood ebook TXT) 📕

Bane moved off quickly as agreed, while the others waited with me, staring into the darkness and listening carefully, hoping against hope we’d not landed near anything too dangerous.

Twenty minutes passed before Bane returned, leading us to the east quickly and as silently as he could. The group strung out into a line, occasionally tripping over branches, and staggering when the ground dipped unexpectedly.

Eventually, we reached the cave that his sonar sense had picked up, our little band clambering awkwardly up a steep incline until we carefully walked inside. I held a Firebolt in my hand to guide the others that couldn’t see as clearly as Bane and me.

“Is anyone home?” I asked Bane, and he shook his head.

“Not now, but there’s signs of it being occupied recently. We should be safe enough here, for a while.”

I dismissed the Firebolt, letting Arrin take over light duty, and I sat at the entrance to the cave, looking out at the forest before us.

The steep slope led down from the cave’s mouth to a shallow stream. Trees surrounded us, the cave itself being little more than a dozen meters deep, with a sharp kink to the right a handful of meters in. I considered what could have formed such a strange cave, then shrugged, realizing I really didn’t care.

Bane appeared at my side and nodded to me, Barrett taking a seat close by and drawing his sword, ready for whatever might come.

“I’ll get started, unless there’s a reason to delay?” Bane asked, and I shook my head.

“No, better you go now; see if you can find any of the landmarks that Barrett remembers. I’ll keep watch here, and Oracle will go in the opposite direction, see if she can find anything.” We’d discussed it at length as we traveled, concluding that Bane’s Worldsense, as the Mer called it, would be a huge advantage when it came to finding the entrance to the smuggler’s tunnels.

He should be able to sense any hidden entrances, even if they’d managed to hide the tracks of the carts and caravans they’d used.

Oracle, on the other hand, used magical senses anyway, and could always find her way back to me, so the darkness was no issue; neither was getting lost.

I nodded to them both and watched them disappear into the darkness. Oracle had taken the time to change into her ‘work clothes’, namely black yoga pants and a strappy top today, and two lines of camouflage paint on her cheeks. I snorted as I watched her vanish into the darkness, feeling the amusement and excitement filling her.

As usual, she’d torn the images from some deep recess of my mind, leaving me to wonder where I’d seen that particular combination. I lived in a state of constant dread of her deciding to wear a particular outfit from a movie around other people, leaving me to explain it to them. The dread wasn’t so much from the thought of the explanation, as it was from the worry over the film she’d choose. All the movies I’d ever watched were hidden away somewhere in my mind, and as my wisdom score increased, my memory had started to grow far more easily accessible. This morning at one point she’d been a tiny Freman from Arrakis. I know it was only a matter of time before she changed into the outfit that Kelly le Brock wore in Weird Science at the end, and then I was screwed. Or she would be, anyway…

I shook my head as Barrett coughed lightly nearby, suddenly aware I’d been staring into the forest aimlessly while that mental image circulated over and over…

“So…” I said quietly, “You’ve a sister and a nephew back in the city?” I asked Barrett, and he smiled into the darkness.

“Aye, Senna and Darin, a good pair. Their lad died a few years back; mine collapse. Darin would have been joinin’ me on the Airship in another year or two. He’s six now. Senna works as a seamstress; she’s crap at it, but it was all she could find, so, you know how it is.”

“Didn’t she want to join you on the ship?” I asked, and he snorted.

“No chance. She’s terrified of heights. Strange how it gets her, and not me or Darin, but still.”

“I had a friend like that, scared of heights…” I said, and we chatted quietly, watching the forest as we waited. Lydia made the others rest inside, in preparation for the next day.

When the dawn finally began to stain the sky, I stretched and reached out with my senses to Oracle, knowing that she and Bane would take the rising sun as the sign to return, as we’d agreed.

She was some distance to the south, a good few miles at least, but the sense of disappointment was easy to feel. She’d found nothing. We’d all finished a cold breakfast by the time Bane arrived back, tired and dirty.

He waved to me, then dunked himself into the stream at the bottom of the bank, staying submerged for a long time as he recovered from his exertions.

By the time he returned to the cave proper, the first two groups had gotten ready, and they passed him as he came back to rest.

Lydia led Miren and Arrin, and Barrett took Stephanos and Cam, while Jian watched over Bane and I as we slept until lunchtime.

At lunchtime, the others returned, tired and hungry, and we all ate together, before we mixed the teams up, going back out and searching again.

When the teams returned at dusk, I set up by the cave entrance again, and Bane and Oracle went out, to search again. It took two days before we’d cleared all the area to the point that we were sure there wasn’t anything here, and we moved five miles further south, finding a new cave and starting the search again.

It was boring work, mostly because Bane had the best chance of actually finding anything, and we needed a guard