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“Fuckin’ A, this is so fuckin’ far down!” Tora stated as they entered what she estimated was the fifteenth or so minute of walking down into the mine.

“We’re only a little ways away,” Durin told her, looking at and holding a strange, rectangular device in his hands.

“...Not even gonna ask what th’ weird doohickey in yer hands is,” Tora shook her head with a frown and a sigh. “Does th’ damn thing have any practical use down here? Izzat how y’know where we are?”

He nodded. “Among other things, like the time of day and shit.”

“...Yeah, that’s bloody corker,” Tora nodded understandingly.

“I’d show you more of what it can do if sound didn’t attract the monsters,” He replied.

“Yeah, that’d be right,” Tora’s head drooped a little as they progressed further and further into the depths of the planet.

As they did, Durin looked to a seemingly normal wall and stopped short, holding a hand out and looking back to her with a small smile. “Why don’t I show you something before the biome?”

“Sure, mate. Shoot,” Tora said as she focused all her attention on him.

His smile grew, and a pickaxe appeared in his hand. With that, he started to dig into the wall he was looking at, sparks flying from the rock and pick as he did.

“Uh, that looks bloody tiresome, Durin,” Tora remarked as she moved out of the area of ‘sparks and high-velocity rock chips flying everywhere.’

He chuckled, and to her surprise, the wall didn’t crack or break, it simply...disappeared, block by block.

“...Y’ didn’t lace th’ meat with hallucinogens, right?” Tora asked, blinking slowly as she struggled to process what she was seeing.

He shook his head, and when the final block disappeared, he walked into a yawning cavern, motioning for her to follow.

Against her better judgement, Tora obeyed and followed behind him nervously. Then, her eyes widened as she beheld the great yawning cavern filled with glittering gemstones as far as the eye could see.

Durin swept a hand out. “Welcome to the Crystal Cavern biome,” he said with a grin.

“...I...it’s...it’s fuckin’ beautiful,” Tora breathed out, eyes and voice overwhelmed by awe and wonder.

“It’s not a biome that I’ve encountered before, to be honest, but,” He swung his pick into a seemingly ordinary clump of rock, revealing the plain rock was actually a geode with various brightly colored stones inside. He then lifted one and offered it to her. It was a geode with agates, rubies, sapphires, and a fair bit of quartz. “You’re welcome to any of the stuff in here. Monsters don’t come here often, either, so it’s pretty free roam.”

Tora looked at him with a blank expression for a few moments...then took the geode and gave him a quick - a very quick - hug before bounding off to explore like a kid in a candy store.

He chuckled and called out, “You forgot to grab a pick! Get back here so I can give you one, dork!”

Tora came running back, feeling quite miffed if her expression was anything to go by, and socked him in the arm, “Give it here, ya dag.”

Chuckling, he summoned a second tungsten pickaxe and handed it to her. “Go nuts.”

Snatching it from his hands, she immediately sprinted over to a particular light bluish-white cluster of geodes and started carefully picking away at the rock surrounding the first geode within reach, and within a few minutes, she’d chipped away enough rock to reach down and use a bit of torque to rip the geode away, “...Diamonds...46-carat by th’ looks...wait, is that one red?”

Durin walked over, juggling a couple of aquamarines. “Find something good?”

Tora looked at Durin and held it out to him, “It’s a naturally-colored diamond - bit o’ iron seeped in durin’ the formation, methinks - but...it’s...it’s way too red. Like...blood, almost.”

Durin stopped juggling the aquamarines, his eyes seeming to, oddly enough, contract for a moment, before he grunted and took it, looking it over as he squinted his eyes instead.

The red diamond was, as she stated, deep red - a bloody crimson in fact, and had jagged edges that seemed liable to slice open flesh like a scalpel…

Then it beat.

Thump.

Durin’s eyes widened. “...” He looked to her slowly. “...I’d recommend never selling this.”

“...Y’know what it is,” Tora stated more than asked, eyes slowly drifting to the beating diamond, each pulse giving off a bloody glow.

He frowned, looking back to it. “Only because my Terrarian blood lets me get names when I pick stuff up.” He hefted it. “This is tainted by the Crimson. My...senses, let’s call ‘em, label it as a Crimson Heartstone.”

“...Wait, izzat...actually a bloody heart?” her eyes widened as she stepped back from the beating gem, holding her hands up as if expecting to see them covered in blood.

He nodded. “Think of the Crimson as like necromancy/blood magic infecting the world itself.”

“...Could...Grogar have caused this li’l thing…?” Tora wondered aloud.

Durin shrugged. “Dunno. Never heard of him.”

“He’s a necromancer, ancient from wot I’ve heard, and...still alive an’ active, if the legends and rumors are deadset,” Tora explained with a nervous shuffling of her feet. “Some...some o’ the people I met on th’ way t’ Vinyl said that they think Grogar is th’ reason fer all the monsters risin’ up so fast.”

Durin frowned, looking to the Heartstone. Then he grunted. “I’ll kill him later, then. For now…” He offered it to her. “Keep it handy. I can make some runes out of it for Gabe, or your armor.”

“...I...don’t think that I...want th’ bloody thing anywhere near me at th’ mo,” Tora declined with a nervous little chuckle, holding her hands up in front of her.

Durin grunted. “Alright. I’ll just keep it then.” With that, it disappeared in his hand, and he gestured around them again. “Go ahead and keep looking for stuff. Who knows, you might find something better than Crimson tainted shit.”

“...Wot...wot happens if enough of that shite is gathered in one place?” Tora asked, staring back at the place she mined the Crimson-tainted gem from.

Durin hummed. “If I recall correctly, it just spreads like a disease. Doesn’t do that with gear or items from the stuff, oddly, but rocks, trees, plants? Yeah, it’ll spread through those.”

“...Then...if just one o’ these things was found here...couldn’t there be more? A source?” Tora inquired again, looking more and more nervous as she spoke.

Durin placed a hand on her shoulder. “Relax, Tora. While that may be true, I’ll deal with it if it gets worse. You’ll be fine, okay? I promise.”

“...A’ight, y’ bastard. I’ll hold y’ to that promise,” Tora sighed, gently brushing his hand off of her shoulder as she went to a different part of the same ‘patch’ of geodes she got the Heartstone from and resumed her mining.

After several minutes of mining gem-filled geodes and the sounds of two picks cracking stone, Tora stopped and cocked her head when she uncovered an odd rock with streaks and patches of a color that looked at first glance to be platinum, but clearly had silver and gold mixed in. When she leaned down to pick it up, the Abyssinian was quite surprised at how light it was. A gentle upward toss sent it a good foot or so in the air, and she had to reposition herself to catch it before it struck the ground and shattered or something.

Tucking it away in one of her pouches after catching it, she took one of her knives and gently stuck it in a gap near the feather-light ore deposit for later collection before moving on to another section of geodes and rocks to mine away for anything useful.

And something she definitely found, her pickaxe striking a particularly hard geode one last time before it split open to reveal a mass of what seemed to be black opals - inside of which, based on several of them that had been split open, was a golden center.

It looked rather pretty, and when she bent down to pick up one of the more intact gems, she flinched back when it suddenly glowed upon her hand coming within close proximity of the gem...and the rest of them, too, when her flinch brought her hand sweeping over the main mass of them.

Just like with the nigh-weightless ore, the tigress pocketed several of the black opals and left a knife nearby so that she could come back and mine more at a later date.

Soon enough, she grabbed her fill, and Durin walked over to her. “Got what you wanted?”

“Yeah, got some stuff I wanna take a look at when we get back to th’ surface, and I marked th’ spots I found th’ stuff at,” Tora replied with a nod as she adjusted the pouches containing the ore and black opals. “Y’ ready t’ go?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

With that, they left the cave, Durin closing the entrance up - somehow - with the same stone he’d gotten from it the first time, making it look as natural as it had.

“...Don’t bloody think I’ll ever get used t’ that,” Tora muttered as she set the pickaxe down next to the ‘entrance’ spot. “Y’ mind if I leave this thing here?”

He shrugged. “Prefer you keep it, since it’s the only other tungsten pick I have, but up to you. I’ll be the one mining from here on out after all.”

“Why’d ya even close th’ damn thing up if you’re minin’ from it, mate? Seems a bit...inefficient, y’know wot I mean?” Tora asked as she picked the pickaxe up again and secured it to her left hip.

“Keeps any wandering monsters from it, and, if someone finds this mine, it’ll hide it,” He replied, starting to walk down the shaft again. “Have plans for that cavern, too. Wanna keep them hidden for now.”

“Eh...that’s pretty smart, I reckon,” Tora replied with a shrug as she once more followed the Terrarrian down into the depths. ‘He sounded sincere ‘bout ‘is “Terrarian blood” an’ shit, but...somethin’ just seems off ‘bout that explanation.’ Her thoughts continued as they walked. ‘Doesn’t explain how th’ hell he knew that th’ cavern was behind that specific part of th’ wall, an’ thus knew t’ dig there t’ get to th’ Crystal Cavern…an’ how long’s he been here t’ memorize th’ location o’ that cavern?’

Durin’s voice broke her out of her thoughts. “Problem? You’ve been real quiet.”

“Nah, jus’ wonderin’ wot th’ ‘shroom place is gonna be like,” Tora said with an idle inspection of her paw.

He hummed, looking back at her critically.

‘Tch, it’d be right if he can also read me like a fuckin’ open book or somethin’ like that,’ Tora internally scoffed as she kept her face in her usual ‘indifferent/meh’ expression.

Eventually, he shrugged. “Alright,” he said, turning his view back to the path ahead.

“Wot, didja think that there was some kinda hidden meaning’ behind m’ words?” Tora asked sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

Durin chuckled. “You and I both know how much meaning can be behind a single word.” Tora’s tail bristled slightly, but aside from that, she showed no other outward reaction. He continued, seemingly oblivious of what reaction she showed. “Anyway, I think you’ll like the biome...at least until it’s inhabitants come about, but eh.”

“Unless th‘ damn place is full of the ‘get high an’ see weird shite’ kind o’ fungus, I bloody well doubt that I’m gonna like it,” Tora dryly meowed, making sure to keep pace with him - for such a bulky guy, he was pretty damn quick.

Durin only chuckled, and they continued.

“Wot, y’know somethin’ that I don’t, mate?” Tora asked challengingly, picking up the pace of her walking until she was almost walking beside him.

“Maybe,” he replied with a smile. He pointed ahead. “We’re about there.” He picked up the pace, gesturing for her to do so as well. “Come on.”

Letting out a mild huff, she nonetheless quickened her pace and made sure to stick close to him.

Then, her eyes widened at the sight before her.

“Welcome,” Durin began, sweeping an arm out. “To the Mushroom Biome.”

Next Chapter: 11 - Into The Gloom: Among The Shroom Estimated time remaining: 3 Hours, 43 Minutes