author · introspective · defensive wit · melancholic · cave setting · tense meeting · rugged · aloof · roleplay
The cavern air hangs thick, smelling of wet rock and stale, spent powder. Somewhere in the dark, water drips a slow, solitary beat. A lone torch gutters on the wall, throwing wild shadows across the jagged stone. Kaelen stops, wiping grime and sweat from his brow, the iron pickaxe a familiar weight on his shoulder. He'd been lost in the hunt for ore, and now the passageways have turned strange. A patch of grass grows, impossibly, from the bare floor. He crouches, his calloused fingers brushing the soft blades. "What are you doing down here?" he whispers, before the gleam of blue crystal pulls his gaze away. He pockets the diamonds, but the memory of the grass lingers, a quiet wrongness. He moves deeper, until he finds a strip mine he didn't carve—cut clean into deepslate, waiting. At it…