I stopped a few steps behind Jude who turned his back on me. He was standing a few centimetres from the corpse, his gaze still riveted on it.

- 'You're not going to achieve much from where you are, that's for sure!' he snapped at me as he turned around with a sneer, which vanished as he glanced at my face.

Given the sudden pity or rather dismay I saw in his eyes, I had to look really pathetic. However, instead of the nasty comment I expected, he caught me off guard and approached me and gently put one hand on my shoulder.

- 'First corpse?'

A stupid question in my opinion, since the small smile he wore meant that he already knew the answer. I didn't even bother to give him one and gathered all my faltering courage to take one more step forward.

- 'If you really want to try, you're going to have to get closer. Close your eyes, it can help,' he told me before moving away towards the entrance, where he stopped and began to scan the surroundings, as if he were standing guard.

If I hadn't been so distressed and nervous, I probably would have told him to keep his advice to himself and in less polite terms, but I held back. After all, in his own way, he had still tried to comfort me; and besides, I didn't have a choice. I had already decided to do it, so all I had to do was get started. I knelt carefully beside the body and took great care not to look at it or touch it before lowering my eyelids.

I waited a few seconds until I found a sense of calm, then took a deep breath, except that I couldn't detect any smell. However, after a few minutes, the cold and viscous sensation, which I began to associate with snakes, returned. It seemed to come from the right, the part of the cave hidden in darkness. So dark that it was impossible to determine the exact size.

I opened my eyes again, lifted myself up and began to move in that direction, Jude on my heels. When I stopped after a few steps, due to lack of light, he almost bumped into me and shouted a few very creative swear words. He could call me all the names if it suited him, there was no way I was going to take one more step when I couldn't see beyond the tip of my nose. I was going to break my neck!

He passed me by growling between his teeth incomprehensible words, even if it seemed to me to discern the word "bat", before he sank into darkness. I chose not to comment and wait for His Lordship to come back. He did so relatively quickly, stopping in front of me with a deep sigh.

He looked for something in one of his pockets and finally handed me a small silver cylinder, which turned out to be a flashlight, to finally step back and wait for me to resume where I had left off. I lit the light while glaring at him, to which he replied with a mocking sneer. Aware that we were at a dead end in terms of communication, I tried to refocus and carefully resume my work while following the small beam of light. After a few meters, the sand and earth gave way to uncut rock and we arrived at the bottom of the cave, in front of an impenetrable stone wall.

I might have the obvious in front of my eyes, but my senses told me that Martha had arrived through there. I directed the luminous pen towards the ground and began to look around when I remembered her animal form. Scanning the floor, I finally found a kind of tunnel hidden in the shadow of a wall cavity. Almost impossible to see if you didn't know it was there and barely big enough to crawl in. I didn't know why, but there was something terrifying about this narrow opening and I couldn't help but shiver.

- 'Did she come through there?'

Frankly, did he have any other stupid questions like that? I asked myself as I watched him kneeled down in front of the opening.

- 'What do you think, Sherlock,' I said ironically before I could stop myself.

- 'Let's go,' he said, beginning to engage in the narrow opening.

Wait what?

- 'No, but wait a minute! We're not going to enter this like that?' I panicked. 'What if we get stuck? In case you haven't noticed, we're a little bigger than a snake!'

My voice was dangerously high-pitched, which proved without a doubt that I was close to panic, but I didn't care. What I wanted above all was to talk some sense into this bonehead.

- 'Ha, ha, ha!' he laughed. 'Your nickname suits you all the better... Scooby-Doo! So, claustrophobic or just scared?'

- 'Just think about it,' I replied, sharply. 'You'll look smart, "Einstein", if you get stuck! Moreover, we won't see anything, it's not your little gadget that will be enough to light us both,' I concluded, wiggling the little lamp that, to prove me right, chose this particular moment to give signs of weakness.

- 'I have very good night vision and if I get stuck... all you have to do is pull me by my feet!'

He then gave me his most sarcastic smile and without further ado, entered the tunnel for real. I remained undecided for a moment, divided between fear and guilt for letting him go alone. If anything happened to him, I would be angry with myself all my life, however unbearable he may be. So I, as well, entered into this narrow gap.

The journey was slow and difficult. I scraped my hands on the stones that were on the ground and regularly hit my head against the top of the tunnel. I felt like Alice looking for the white rabbit. But the most scary thing was the almost total darkness around me, despite the glow of the flashlight.

After an indefinite amount of time, the light seemed to gradually fade and finally died. The darkness immediately surrounded me and I began to suffocate. I felt like I was choking, I absolutely had to turn around. I stopped in panic and prepared to try to go backwards when Jude's voice reached me.

- 'Don't stop! Close your eyes and focus on me. As long as you hear me moving forward, everything is fine. The exit is not very far away,' he said as he resumed his progression.

I tried to reason myself and listen to his advice to keep moving forward. I quickly realized that he had lied to me about the proximity of the exit, because I had the impression that I crawled for hours in this tunnel. When at last, just as I was thinking that I couldn't take another step forward, I heard Jude shout with obvious relief that he had found a way out. I gathered my last strength and managed as best I could to get out of this horrible gutter.

I was nauseous and trembling, and leaned against the rough wall of our new cave to try to breathe normally again. Once able to do so, I gently opened my eyes to assess my condition. The stiffness, starting to run through my body, was not good.

My hands and lower forearms were bloody and covered with scratches, as well as my knees, where my jeans had torn on the uneven floor, and my jacket was ruined. It was trivial, but having never owned much, I cared about what little I had. When my checkup was over, I looked up and saw that "Mr. Irony" didn't look any better than I did, which cheered me up a little.

- 'Please tell me...' I said in a raspy voice, before being interrupted by a coughing fit that tore off my dry throat. 'Tell me you have some idea of where we are?' I whispered, just to spare what was left of my throat.

- 'No more than you do at the moment,' he replied in a slightly huskier voice than usual, but not as awful as mine. 'I think I can say, without being too mistaken, that we have landed... in another cave!' he said, with a sarcastic tone and a smile to match.

- 'How very helpful! Thank you for that very useful clarification.'

- 'Please, it's my pleasure,' he said with a little caricatural curtsy, and a mocking grin.

He may have played it cool, but his face was a little pale and his features were tired. As I couldn't have looked better, I didn't make any comments. He got up smoothly despite his obvious fatigue and waited for me to stand up again, without even trying to help me.

- 'Here! It will do your throat good,' he said as he threw a small bottle of water at me.

I took it, surprised, and wondered where he had got it from. But that didn't stop me from taking two long sips of it happily.

- 'Thank you,' I said with gratitude while giving it back to him so that he could quench his thirst as well.

Which he didn't do.

- 'We have to get out of there,' he said, looking around. 'Can you still follow the trail?'

I was so relieved to have gotten out of that infernal bowel, that I had almost forgotten the original purpose of this expedition, so his question caught me off guard. Nevertheless, all I have to do is think of Martha and I will find her trail almost immediately. I pulled myself together and took the time to really pay attention to where we had landed, before answering. It was a lengthy cavity which, despite its diffuse luminosity, remained so dark that it seemed to extend to infinity.

- 'Honestly, I think so. But even if I lose it, we only have to follow the light to find the exit.'

- 'If I were you, I wouldn't count on that. This light is due to luminescent fungi, it doesn't mean anything.'

- 'Are you always so optimistic or are you taking classes?' I complained, taking a determined step forward, before stopping abruptly when I realized I was going in the wrong direction.

- 'Are you sure it's this way?' he mocked me. 'So we lost our sense of smell, Sc...'

- 'Don't you dare finish your sentence!' I cut him off in a raspy voice. 'You would deserve that I leave you there and let you deal with your problems!' I shouted at him while I turned around so I could look him right in the eye. 'You'd look smart then, Mr. Know-it-all.'

He at least had the decency not to answer and simply turned away while waving at me to walk ahead. As I was in a greater hurry to get out of this mess than to exchange childish squabbles, I took a raging step and tried again to connect to Martha's trail.

It felt even faster than the previous time. The "essence" of the latter, for lack of a better word, seemed to literally pop up in my face. I almost jolted with surprise and had to take two deep breaths to calm myself, then following the track, I headed towards the bottom of the dark cave without any great surprise.

We progressed for about ten minutes, without seeing any significant change in the environment, which remained desperately dull and hopeless. I began to wonder seriously about my new track skills, when the atmosphere became cooler. In view of this encouraging sign, I accelerated my pace, looking straight ahead in the hope of seeing a characteristic glow that would signal the end of our underground calvary.

When all of a sudden, I felt a tiny resistance on the front of my ankle, followed by a small metallic sound. By the time I understood, a deafening explosion occurred at the front of the tunnel, followed by a muffled and threatening rumble. The incandescent blast that swept in a few seconds threw me back several meters with incredible violence. I landed on my back with such force that my lungs emptied out, before my head hit the ground suddenly and everything went dark.