"In there?!" Kai shouted, stumbling back as if the hole in the ground had physically attacked him. "Kipo HAS to be kidding! We can't go in there, we'll obviously die!"

"It'll probably be fine!" Mira told him. She seemed used to this; already ready with encouragement to try and get Kai through whatever was going on. She knelt by her friends, with a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Come on, Kai, we have to do this."

"ABSOLutely not!" Kai shouted, shaking his head. Mira's face changed, and while she still was nice and happy, there was a bit of annoyance in her face now, as well.

"Kai, we need to do this, to collect the flowers," Mira explained, firmly, and when Kai opened his mouth to protest again, Mira turned to Tulip. "Right, Tulip?"

Tulip frowned, feeling kind of awkward, like she was interrupting something she shouldn't be a part of. Like when someone else's parents were arguing right in front of you, or when your friend was clearly and obviously laying out their bond with their much closer friend right in front of you.

"Um... yeah, we do need to go down there..." Tulip eventually said, and Mira looked triumphant. Tulip only saw it out of the corner of her eye, because she was determinedly keeping her eyes on the hole in ther ground. Despite it being the middle of the day, the hole was shrouded in darkness, and Tulip could only see a glimpse of stairs that led into it. "But we shouldn't head down without some sort of supplies, I think. Like... a light."

Kai breathed a visible sigh of relief, and Mira glared at him.

"You know a flashlight only makes it more horror game-esque, right?" Mira asked him.

"It's... also practical," Tulip pointed out.

"Let's go look for a flashlight," Kai said, sounding relieved, like he had been saved from death somehow.

Mira frowned. "Where would we-?"

"I saw a town on the way in," Tulip told them. "We could probably ask around there."

"A town...?" Mira trialed off, sounding confused. "Where did you... oh, right. You mean the couple of buildings."

"Yeah, let's go, let's go!" Kai cheered, scrambling up from the ground. But he stopped suddenly, looking around. "Where is it again?"

Tulip and Mira exchanged a look.

"It was off in the distance, over there," Mira told him, pointing to the place that was almost too small to see, on the horizon of the desert that surrounded them. Not because it was so far away, but rather because it was so small. Kai had to squint to be able to see it, and Mira laughed.

"You'll see it better when we get up there," she told him, starting back down the road they had just spent so much time walking on to even get here. "Come on!"

Kai followed straight away, but Tulip hesitated for a second, looking back down at the hole. Other that the intense shadow, there was just something... off about it, something rather unsettling that made her stomach curl just looking at it. Even standing near it made Tulip feel that the air around her was off, and that there was something in the space around her, something she couldn't imagine. It was strange. Unnerving. Tulip and Mira had hid it for Kai, but Tulip was certain that neither wanted to take a trip down that hole.

Didn't really matter though. They had to go in there, after all.

Tulip followed Kai and Mira, eager to get away.

To Kai's visible disappointment, their shopping trip was short shopping trip was straightforward and short. They went to the town, and found a shop out of like, five buildings. In the shop though, they couldn't find any flashlights (they weren't really expecting any electricity anyway), but they also couldn't find any lanterns either, or any light sources. So they went to ask the person working the counter, wiping it down with a rag. She hadn't said anything as they came in, and she didn't look up from her desk, but Tulip could feel her eyes on them as they perused. But Tulip only saw her eyes when the three of them approached her. She gazed at them with an unimpressed look as they explained to her what they needed.

"A light, huh?" she asked gruffly, rubbing at the back of her neck with a hand. Tulip saw what she thought were tattoos running up and down the woman's arms, but upon closer inspection turned out to be scars, depicting fish leaping in and out of the water. Why wouldn't she just use ink?

"Hm..." the woman grabbed their attention again, staring down at the three of them. "You three wouldn't happen to get planning to go into that hole over there, are you?"

She sounded like she already knew the answer, but Mira gulped, trying to deny it with a shake of her head. However, her sheepish look had already given everything away, and the woman sighed.

"The idiots just keep getting younger..." The woman glared down at them. "You probably already heard this, but that's a big mistake."

"B-Because n-no one comes back?" Kai asked. The woman snorted.

"Oh, they come back alright," she told them. "But they don't come back... 'all right'. We've all seen it before. A moron comes through, asks for a light and then wanders into the hole. A few days later, they wander back out, muttering about God knows what and running through the desert to... nowhere. They always run the same way, like they're possessed by the same demon who leaves them out to die in a pile. I don't know. We don't see them again."

At this point, Kai's face was downright horrified, and even Mira was glancing at Tulip nervously. But Tulip's eyes were on the woman in fascination as she continued.

"Once I made the mistake of approaching one of 'em, because I'm a nice person and I wanted to see if he was alright," she explained. "However, when I saw his face, well... it wasn't the same guy I saw just a little bit ago. His eye sockets were stretched out too wide for his eyes, and when he moved, they nearly dangled out of his skull. And the skin around his mouth had been... well, I don't know, but it hung pretty loose around his mouth. And I don't think he had most of his teeth anymore either, because when I asked him what was wrong, he started screaming gibberish at me. Rather rude. Anyway, when I looked into his eyes sockets and his mouth, they had the same darkness in them as that hole."

The woman stared the three down with a resoluteness. "It's too dangerous down there, that's why I don't put the lanterns up for display anymore. Don't want anyone getting a bad idea. So if you all want one, you better give me a damn good reason you need to go down there, as well as how you'll survive. If you can't well, there's no way I'm sending you off to your deaths. You understand, right?"

Mira, Tulip and Kai gave each other looks, and Tulip could see her own dread matched on their faces.

"Yeah... I guess we understand..." Tulip eventually mumbled. "But we HAVE to go down there. We have to get something from there, and it's really important."

The woman raised an eyebrow. "You'll have to be a little more specific, girl."

Tulip sighed. "It's... a bit of a long story, but basically, our town is getting attacked, and someone else promised else that the thing we need to save it, a little flower, is underground in the south, so..."

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that person is probably lying to you," the woman told them.

Mira frowned. "How would you know? You haven't gone down there, have you?"

"I'm still alive, aren't I?" she snorted. "But anyway, so the only way to save your home is to get some flower, right? Here's my advice: find a different town. The home is in the heart, blah blah blah... that place isn't really worth dying for, is it?"

Tulip gulped. If she was honest, she had to agree. The empty group of buildings they all had found their home in, it didn't really matter, did it? They could go somewhere else. No one had that much attachment to it, right?

Tulip wondered if the others were having this much trouble.

"It's not that simple," Mira spoke up. "There are other people counting on us, and besides, the thing attacking our home isn't just going to stop there, it's going to come after us next."

The woman gave them a strange look. "What? Why? What did ya'll do to it?"

"Nothing!" Kai cried. "It just hates us, that's all!"

"It's mad at us for unfair reasons, let's keep it at that," Mira grumbled. Tulip smiled at them. Right... if everyone else was doing this, then they'd just have to, too.

"We'll be able to handle it," Tulip assured the woman. "We've already been through a lot before this, a lot of life-threatening situations, and we're still alive!"

The woman's eyes narrowed. "Life-threatening...?"

"I was set on fire once!" Kai offered.

"We also fought a dragon," Mira sighed.

"I was on a train that was trying to kill me," Tulip admitted. To no one's surprise, the woman didn't look like she believed them.

"Look," Tulip told her. "We're... tired. We've all been through a lot, and we just want to go home. And we really, really don't want to go in there, but we don't have a choice. If you don't give us a light, well, we don't have a choice. We'll have to go in there anyway."

"We will?" Kai's shrill voice asked. Mira quickly shushed him.

The woman stared at them for a long time, before finally shaking her head. "I admit, I don't fully understand, but I suppose it doesn't matter. I believe you, but you'd have to be crazy to think I'd send kids into a dangerous hole alone."

Kai, Mira and Tulip immediately brightened. "You'll help?"

"If you've got no choice then neither do I," the woman grunted, turning away from them both and opening a cabinet on the other side of the counter. "Besides, I'm getting sick of this stupid hole, maybe I can finally do something about it."

"Huh?" Kai asked. "Do something about it-oh."

The woman turned back to them with a rifle, putting it on the table before bending down beneath the counter and putting two big lanterns on the table. They were already lit with fires of an unnatural red. The never-ending fires, like the ones back in town, Tulip realized.

"I'm not giving you kids a gun," the woman told them, but I'm not letting you in there without a couple weapons. Take these."

To Tulip's surprise, the woman held out three wicked sharp knives to each of them. Mira took one easily, and Tulip and Kai followed her lead, albeit more hesitantly. After they took them, the woman shrugged on the backpack, and walked out from behind the counter, gun in one hand and a lantern in another. After some prompting, Mira took the other, and her arm bowed under its weight.

"Oh," she said, surprised.

"Are you ok?" Tulip asked her.

"Fine," Mira grunted. "It just surprised me, that's all."

"I can carry it for you," Kai offered, and Mira laughed breathlessly.

"We don't have all day," the woman called to them. She was already walking out the door. "Let's go!"

After a second of surprise, the three followed her quickly. Mira was able to keep up easily after getting used to the weight.

"Hey!" she called out to the woman. "Thanks for this. It, um, means a lot. Also, who are you?"

"Jolene," the woman answered gruffly.

"It's, uh, nice to meet you," Mira told her.

"You know, you're actually pretty normal for this world," Kai told her, and Jolene hummed.

"I suppose you could say that."

Jolene walked quickly, and the four arrived at the hole much faster than they had arrived at the shop. It looked pretty much the same , as their trip to the shop had probably taken a little less than an hour, and the trip back even less time.

Jolene peered into the hole and whistled. "Man... I've never been this close. It's like it's telling me to turn back."

Kai nodded quickly, looking like he was about to do just that. Tulip could even see his leg jumping up and down, like his body itself was about to ignore his better judgement and run away. To his credit, though, he stayed in one spot, no matter how much it looked like it was hurting him.

"Hm," Jolene said, and Tulip turned back to her. "Well, no time like the present. Shall we?"

Tulip nodded before she could think about it too much. She didn't really trust herself to speak, worried she might say something she didn't mean to. The longer she looked at the darkness in the hole, the less it looked like the absence of light and more so a real tangible thing set out to harm.

It wasn't exactly like if Tulip was looking for a monster hiding in a nothingness. It was as if the monster WAS that nothingness.

Either Jolene didn't notice it, or she ignored it, because she stepped down into the stairs, holding her lantern up. When she did, the darkness acted just as it should, disappearing as soon as it was touched by the light.

After a second, Tulip followed her. She cringed as she stepped onto the first stair, but it wasn't like she touched anything alive or real. It was exactly like walking in the light. Tulip kept that in mind as she followed Jolene quickly.

Kai was next, but not by choice. Mira forced him down screaming, startling Tulip while Jolene only rolled her eyes. Mira didn't seem to give any reaction to the darkness, but perhaps that was because she was focused on making Kai come with them.

With nothing to distract her, Tulip could feel the chance in the air as she stepped down. It was like there was a danger meter in her stomach, and every step made the arrow go higher and higher, where it started in the yellow, then went to the red, and then when her head was submerged in darkness, it was all the way off the charts, and Tulip almost found herself growing numb to her fear.

It was a different world down here. Like she had stepped underwater, the danger was all around, pressing in and holding the four of them in a vile grip.

They'd be able to get out... right?