The rain had stopped again by the time Gar woke, in its place it had left a thick fog obscuring everything and for once his dark vision was useless for seeing through the obscuration. He could feel it in the air it felt heavy around him. Despite that he saw no reason to change his routine he started to climb moving across from his platform onto new rock he hadn’t climbed before. The fog made for an interesting session it limited his ability to plan out his route but in doing so helped him to narrow his focus onto each move and motion only able to see the rock just in front of him.
With his morning climb done he got himself ready and set off to explore the tunnels again only this time he was much more prepared. He had his spear as before along with his backpack he had his knife in its new sheaf hanging from a section of rope round his waist he was using as a belt, there was a full water bottle in his bag along with some nuts to snack on, as well as his writing sticks and the prepared badger skin along with a couple of larger coals. With better equipment and the badgers at his side Gar was ready to explore.
He had to squeeze past his stored wood just past the tunnel entrance then he was off. He kept his pace slow he was in no rush he would take his time on exploring right. Once in the cave snail cavern as Gar had come to think of it he took out the skin and a writing stick he marked on the entrance, the short tunnel and the cavern he was in along with the entrance to each of the tunnels leading off from it. It was much easier to make things properly and to scale with them right in front of him instead of trying to do it from memory. He marked the tunnel that sloped up with a small square to indicate it was fully explored, he resolved if he stayed there long enough he would travel down it again so he could mark it accurately in his map, it wasn’t a priority though so it would simply remain marked only as far as he could see of it from the entrance.
Gar was focused on the maze of tunnels he had explored the other day. He took it slow completely ignoring the fact he had been there before the network was too complex it would have only added to the confusion so he was starting again. Gar made his way down the tunnels marking every junction and side tunnel onto his map as well as using the chunks of coal to draw arrows on the floor and walls to indicate which tunnels he went into and came out of. This was immensely helpful in identifying if he had been to a place before when he came to it from a different angle or he got all turned around. With the map and his markings meaning he wasn’t stuck trying to memorise his route for when he wanted to get out again Gar found he was able to start looking at his surroundings more. He noticed he was moving through several different kinds of rock as he travelled. He even stopped a number of times when he saw an almost sparkling in the walls on closer inspection Gar guessed it was some kind of metal ore, he made sure to mark those locations on his map. It was also this extra time to pay attention that let him notice something he had missed previously. He was not staying on one flat horizontal level, in fact he was going both up and down a lot. He wasn’t certain of it at first until he had travelled through a tunnel that according to his map should have intersected with a small cavern yet it never did.
“Cartography levelled up cartography level 5”
It took a couple of hours of going back over where he had been all while consulting his map and editing it before he was happy he had been able to map out the full extent of the elevation changes and he was starting to pick out signs he could use to indicate if a tunnel would go up or down even if he couldn’t tell from a basic look at it. He even started having observe active all the time to help him spot the tell-tale signs.
With this information he stopped just picking the left most tunnels or whichever would fill in sections of his map, instead he actively worked towards going up. It wasn’t easy he wasn’t always up as some tunnels that started going up went down further than they went up resulting in a net loss before he got a chance to turn off it but overall he was slowly getting higher. Gar had been wandering for hours his map was massively filled in, he only had a couple of writing sticks left. He had finished his water and had stopped eating the nuts as they were just making him thirsty, Gar should have turned back he still had a long way back to base. Except he felt he hadn’t achieved anything yet, which wasn’t true he had filled in a large and complex area of his map, he had found several ore deposits and a few small mammal dens, yet none of it was what he was looking for he wanted the awe inspiring site or the curious thing that seemed impossible anything to make it an adventure.
He had long since almost completely abandoned any caution. Having decided the next time he reached a dead end or come to an area where his only choice was to go down he would turn back he was moving with purpose. As he travelled through a tunnel where he could easily reach out and touch both sides he realised that it was time to go back it was foolish to just keep going for who knew how long, so he turned back the way he had come he looked around once more still reluctant to leave. As he did he happened to glance up, he immediately had to look again something had caught his attention he just wasn’t sure what it was. The same grey rock was up there as surrounded him nothing stood out. Then Gar realised what it was, he could see the rock up there it was fifty or sixty meters way outside the range of his dark vision.
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He could only think of one reason why, there was light up there. Not much just enough to allow him to see with his dark vision. All thoughts of returning back to base where forgotten he needed to get up there and find out what it was. He started trying to find hand holds in the rock, it was far to smooth there was nowhere to get a grip. Gar took a step back to get a better look, only to bump into the wall on the other side. A quick look then a check of the distance and he had a plan. He put down his bag making sure his map was safely inside then turned and lent his back up against the wall. Slowly he raised one leg and placed it against the opposite wall, pushing to hold him in place he raised the second leg to join the first.
Wedged between the two walls he could slide his back up and walk up the wall, he was a uncomfortable about going alone and while he couldn’t take all the badgers he could take one. Bodger jumped up on his lap, fortunately the skeletal badger didn’t weigh much being just bones. So Gar worked his way up his badger companion balancing itself in his lap. Gar was glad he had decent strength and endurance scores as even with that he had been walking all day and his legs were tired and starting to ache before he reached the top and his back was sore from having scrapped along the rock. When he got high enough he found he was off the mark there was a cave leading off but it was a couple of meters too his left, he had to do an awkward shuffle to the side to get over there.
Once they were right next to it he had Bodger jump off onto the edge while he had to take a moment to psych himself up for the next part, there was no easy way from his position into the cave. In the end it involved sliding as close as he could then throwing his whole body forwards into the cave, he rolled a couple times to get away from the edge but he had done it. It was defiantly lighter up there and Gar could see why, further down the tunnel there was a spot of light. With only one badger with him and only his knife as a weapon Gar was back to full caution he slowly crept towards the light. It was so bright in the darkness that at his distance Gar couldn’t tell what it was. It was only as he got closer that he heard the noise and realised what it was, he could hear rain. The tunnel curved sharply to the right, however Gar didn’t care because right there in front of him was a hole to the outside. The hole wasn’t large slightly smaller than his head, he peaked through and could see out over the cenote he had been trapped in. It was grey and at some point it had started raining. Despite all that for the first time he was high enough up he could see right across the hole to the cliffs on the far side an imposing wall trapping him.
From what he could tell he was about half way up the wall. Gar was happy enough to dance, he picked Bodger up and swung him around in joy. He had been worried about how far he had to climb if he could start at that point he would have already cut the distance in half. Gar stopped celebrating and calmed himself there was still lots to do. He would need to widen the hole so he could climb out and he should check the tunnel out and see where it led it may even end up taking him higher. All that would have to wait as it was late in the day Gar was tired and he still had to make his way back. It was an awkward climb down, pushing up was a lot less frightening than letting himself slip down. At the bottom he quickly had out his map marking on the tunnel and the hole ready to find it again.
Picking up all his stuff he set out for base. It still took hours to get back but with the help of his map he was able to take the shortest route possible and cut down the time it could have been a fair amount. Once he got outside Gar made a dash through the rain and into his shelter trying to keep as dry as possible. He grabbed the full water bottle he had left in there and almost downed the whole thing, he had learnt his lesson he had made multiple water bottles so use them don’t just take one. With some water inside him he started eating some pods and nuts as he turned to the map on his wall. He compared it to the map he had with him and it was mostly wrong some of the larger tunnels where mostly correct and that was about it. Rather than trying to correct it Gar rubbed off the entire section of the map about the caves then started redoing it copying from his new map
“Cartography levelled up cartography level 6”
He didn’t really need it as he had the portable one but it raised his cartography level and he liked having it, so Gar figured he would keep it up to date at least until he left. Once it was done and Gar had eaten he no longer had a reason or the energy to fight sleep.
