Chapter 14 – Followed

"You could have killed us!"

I prepare my bed for sleeping but Mila is relentless. She keeps following me, trying to grab my attention in any possible way. If I place my backpack down as a pillow, she grabs it and tosses it away. I look at her with exasperation.

"If you continue like this, I'll grab you and toss you out of this helicopter. Got it?"

My words manage to make her red in the face, but that's all they do.

"Have you perhaps thought that you were walking in a trap?"

Of course, it did cross my mind at some point. But I also don't believe she is seeking an answer from me so all I do is looking at her in the eyes and try to decipher her rage.

We are both exhausted, who knows for how long she has been trapped in the spider's lair. I feel compassion for her, that surely helps me feel less upset.

"We don't owe each other this type of deal," I say, maybe coming off too sour with my words than I intended to.

"Yes, we do! Whatever you do that could put me in danger is my business too," she stares at me with an intensity I didn't know she possessed. I am forced to look away, to steer away from her bright blue eyes. "We made a deal to travel together. If you are too reckless with your actions you will end up killing us both,"

I do get what she means. I nod, despite not entirely agreeing with her. This night is dragging on for too long anyway, it's better I talk about what I discovered tomorrow.

"We should go sleep," I say with a sigh. I don't have any intentions of getting a good rest in the helicopter, not after people were spying on us. But what other alternative do we have? Travelling in the middle of the night?

"There's no chance I sleep alone," she says without moving an inch. I gesture for her to join me in my bed and she does in a fraction of a second.

As I blink my eyes I see her already setting herself comfortable beside me. I need to push my back against the edge of the seat to make space for her, and lift my arm above her head so that she can rest it comfortably by my side.

"You sleep first, I will stay awake and look after us," I say and she nods.

"Wake me up when you get tired, so we can exchange!" she says.

I nod myself and I feel her drifting to sleep. My eyes are plastered where I saw the figure last.

The memory of the shadowy figure lingers in my mind, a puzzle with pieces that refuse to fit together.

The way it moved was beyond the capabilities of a human, a blur of unnatural speed and fluidity.

Yet, it lacked the arachnid features of the spider queen's minions, ruling out the possibility of one of her creations.

The figure seemed to possess an otherworldly quality, something human and something more. It moved with an insect-like agility, evoking images of wings that fluttered in the darkness.

The thought sends a shiver through me. Could it be a creature born of the magical essence that permeates this layer of the giant hole? A being with characteristics that defy the laws of nature as I understand them.

My mind grapples with the notion of a hybrid, something not quite human, nor entirely of the spider queen's domain.

As Mila's soft breathing signals her descent into sleep, I remain vigilant, my senses attuned to the subtlest disturbances in the forest. The shadows play tricks on my perception, dancing in the flickering light.

I swear softly at my lack of gun, the gun my father before me used to venture to the first layer. He had only reached the second and never spoke of the horrors he saw. I could have sold the gun and make a fortune for myself, instead I bought nine bullets.

One for each layer of this hell. Nine was also everything I could afford, not an attempt to look cool.

Without my gun I don't have a chance for survival. But going back to the queen only for the gun makes little sense.

I groan and I forget to wake Mila up, by the time I think about going to sleep I notice a light shining through the helicopter.

The first rays of sunshine pierce through the shattered window above our head, casting a warm glow on the bed. The enchanting dance of light and shadow begins to unfold as dawn heralds the arrival of a new day within the giant hole.

I shake Mila awake, she opens her eyes with a small cry and she is ready to fight. I place my hands up in surrender.

"Are you ok?" I ask.

She needs a few moments to feel alright, but she nods after a while. Sweat trickling down from her forehead.

"Yes… I had a nightmare."

And? I have spent the entire night awake. Instead of piling up my problems on her, I nod and don't ask anything of her nightmare.

"Thank you," she whispers, red in her cheeks.

I frown, and nod again. Nodding seems to get me away from troubles. She also seems to be thankful of my not prying, interpreting it as me being mindful of her feelings…?

"We need to get going though, so let's start walking," she says as if she wasn't blushing a second before, and walks ahead with a newfound confidence.

I look at her in shock. How can this woman change her mood on a whim? I scratch my head before packing my stuff and walk out of the helicopter.

 "Wait, before we continue I need to show you something."

She looks at me with suspicion.

"I swear if it is the person you saw yesterday…"

"No, it's where this figure left. There were some markings on the ground, ancient runes-"

"Ancient runes?! Why didn't you say so before?" Mila shouts and walks ahead of me, "This way, correct?"

I frown and nod, she doesn't even give me time to elaborate on what I saw that she walk ahead. I swear if she continues like this I will leave her behind and go my merry way.

As if summoned, she turns her head towards me and regards me with suspicion. "What are you waiting for? Show me where it went!"

"I though you didn't believe me at first."

"Well… at first but I remembered something that might be of use! Those runes could have been a way of communicating with you!"

I frown, "What do you mean?"

As we walk in the forest, towards the mysterious runes, Mila grabs the book she is carrying in her backpack – similar to mine, except hers is a much newer version of my dusty old one.

And according to her, more updated.

She skims the pages, and I peek at what looks like rapresentations of the different races living withing this hell of a hole. I see the spider figures depicted in the book, much more similar to the spider queen than my book showed them to be. Then I see, among the different fox girls and strange snakes, an alphabet.

"What if this is the language you looked at? This person might have left you a message in old runes! A variation of this language has been identified for different layers, one of these ones is this exact layer."

"You seem to know a lot… were your parents explorers somehow?"

She winces at the mention. "Yeah, you could say so…"

"I am not judging you or them," I say before she thinks otherwise.

Explorers are considered madman, her parents must have faced a lot of repercussions in society for wanting to wander down in these depths. "My father managed to reach the second layer and then had to come back up… he never explained what he saw and needless to say he didn't want his eldest son to follow in his steps either."

"And yet here you are," she smiles at me.

We share something, a piece of our past that if told to others they wouldn't understand. How do you explain that your parents left you behind to chase a fever dream in what is a suicide mission?

"Over there," I say, and I feel relieved that the runes didn't disappear overnight. I would never hear the end of it if they did. Mila approaches them with her book open. She strokes each rune, her eyes darting back and forth from the letters to the book in her hands. "Yes! This is the first layer's dialect. The book is correct."

Not going to lie, she seems very surprised that her book is right.

"Where did you get your book?" I ask.

She avoids answering me and goes straight to decipher the language. I hear her blabbing for what feels like forever.

"The end of … no, this is wrong. The beginning of… maybe it doesn't even start with The,"

I try to approach her, but she moves away with the book in hand. "I will need some time to decipher this! How about you go hunting for food?"

I groan, is not like I am looking forward to translate some arcane language for hours. Maybe I can keep looking for gears or the mysterious figure.

I accept and leave her to her translation, while I venture deeper in the forest. My sense of direction is horrible, so I have to make sure to mark each tree I see with a pointy rock. Not even doing that will promise me to find Mila again.