As I descended into the first chamber the darkness swallowed me whole. I raised my hand over my head and intoned "Inlustris."
A bright while light flared in my hand before bursting apart and spreading out through the chamber like a swarm of fireflies, each emitting as much light as your average LED diode, which lit up the large chamber around me with a soft bluish light. I smiled to myself proudly. The spell was one of my own, created just for this sort of situation when you needed to light a large area with little effort. I'd hadn't thought about its utility when spelunking, never having had much interest in going cave diving before. It had always seemed unsafe and claustrophobic to me. And I found it a bit boring honestly.
My first impression of the cave didn't dissuade me from that last notion. It wasn't much to look at, in my opinion. It was big, oval and had a huge pile of rocks in the center of it. It was likely the remnants of the roof collapsing and exposing the cave entrance. I stooped and picked up a stone from the floor and transfigured it into a disk before placing a portkey charm in it that would take the user back to the entry cave. It was always good to have an exit strategy.
Once we were inside Takoda retook his wolven form and headed off towards the western part of the room and into a narrow passageway. The wolf had no problem crawling into the tight opening but I had to shrink myself down to half my normal size to be able to fit through it comfortably. It was rather interesting to see all the little lights flow in after me, compressing due to the cave walls, oddly enough, despite the increase in brightness I felt even more enclosed despite that. How did anyone ever look at something like that and say to themselves "Yeah, I'm totally gonna squeeze through that." It boggles the mind. The passage beyond was thankfully wider but I decided to remain in my smaller form for the time being.
"How the hell did that big fucker get in trough here anyway?" I muttered to myself as I floated along.
Takoda retook his human form for a moment and struck a "thoughtful" pose, with his left arm across his chest and right resting on it with his hand under his chin, this of course made the musculature in his arms to look huge, which was likely why he did it. "That is an excellent question! The Beast must have had abilities beyond what we saw during our battle!"
"No shit Sherlock, I'd never have figured that out without you - what's that noise?"
It was a kind of chittering squeaking sound.
Then we were swarmed by bats!
I immediately canceled my size spell because HOLY FUCK that looked big when you are the size of a six-year-old. I ducked down and cast a shield to keep the flying rodents off me until they had passed. I then dispelled the charm and talked over to where Takoda was kneeling on the floor and grabbed the back of his head and forced him to look at me.
"Volume control, motherfucker!" I hissed quietly. "Learn it!"
"Sorry..." Takoda responded apologetically. It was the first time I'd ever heard him talk in a normal voice. This was how he sounded when he whispered?! God help me.
My loud Indian companion retook his wolf form and took off down the passage again. I sighed and re-shrunk myself before flying after him. Fortunately, we didn't see any more bats after that and spent the next few minutes in blessed silence until Takoda stopped by a small hole going down. Its circumference wasn't much larger than your average dinner plate, much too small for any human to pass through, let alone an eleven feet tall monster.
"The scent goes down there?" I asked incredulously.
Takoda-Wolf nodded once before transforming into Takoda-Falcon and diving fearlessly into the hole. I rolled my eyes before shrinking down further and dropping down as well, even then it was narrow. Did the Beast have some sort of shrinking ability, or maybe it could transform into other forms like Takoda? Maybe that where he got his ability from?
The narrow chute was quite long, I was dropping down for a good minute before it started to widen and finally ended in a big chamber that in turn was connected to a gallery that sloped gently downwards. Takoda regained his human form and turned to me.
"I can hear the sound of water up ahead." He stated.
I nodded. Water meant that there might be something around. "Let's go."
The gallery went on for a good hundred meters before it narrowed again into a narrow tube. I became aware of a familiar smell; I sniffed the air curiously before wrinkling my nose in disgust. Tobacco, the place stank of it. Takoda moves forward cautiously and ran a finger over the side of the tube before sticking it into his mouth and frowned before shrugging his shoulders.
"It appears to be some form of oily substance. It's covering the walls." he rumbled quietly, for him anyway.
I grunted, not really caring. The smell was strong, but both my parents smoked when I was small so I was used to the smell. "Alright, it's weird, but hardly important, let's move on."
The tube was fairly long and by the end of it, my eyes were watering from the intense smell. The tube led into another gallery that itself led to a small my sharp drop. I noticed a faint blue glow streaming out from a crack in the wall below. Curious the both of us dropped down, Takoda by once again assuming the shape of a falcon, and stuck our head trough the crack. Beyond was a low and wide passage that had a shallow stream flowing through it, and all of it was bathed in a soft blue glow emanating from tens of thousands of little points of lights all over the ceiling.
"Glowworms?" I muttered. That wasn't right. I remember reading about these critters back home. They were native to New Zeeland, at least that particular strain. I took a closer look and noted that the worms that moved about on the ceiling, while superficially similar to the glowworms weren't actually worms; they looked more like some sort of centipede, one that apparently spun glowing silk.
I'd never seen anything like it.
This bore investigating. I acquired some rocks from the ground and transfigured them into a container and then cast a quick and dirty expansion charm on it before I started to transfer centipedes, along with some of the silk into the box and adding some water to it before I closed it up.
"What are you doing?" Takoda wondered.
"Gathering some specimens, I want to see what these things are and if there is some use for them," I answered before I shrunk my new possession down and tucked it away for later.
"Ah."
I chuckled at his befuddled expression. "You still got the scent?"
"Yes, we go to the left," he told me and pointed in the direction the stream was flowing.
"Alrighty."
We followed the stream for maybe half a kilometer before we came to a new cave where the stream dropped down several steps into this new place. The whole place was filled with stalactites and stalagmites and whatever you call it when the two met and become one of those pillars. It was my first time seeing something like this in real life. I've always thought that there something strangely arcane about these lumpy pillar-like structures, something I doubted I was alone in. Maybe it was the age, one could almost feel it when you ran your hand over it.
Takoda suddenly growled and darted forward and I immediately landed and readied a shield. There were a few tense moments before the big Indian reappeared and retook his human form. He gave me a serious look.
"There is a new scent, and I saw something move. We are not alone." He growled.
"More Beasts?" I wondered.
Takoda shook his head. "No, it is different."
"Wonderful." I sighed. Something new then. It would probably be hungry and eat human faces.
"It smelled female." Takoda elaborated.
"A mate?"
"I'm not sure. It did not smell much like the Beast."
"Hrmm." I grunted irritably.
Not deterred we continued onwards, trough more tunnels, galleries, and caves as we followed the underground stream ever downwards into the depths of the earth. We didn't see anything else of interest, though I did note the presence of butterflies or moths; I didn't know how to tell the difference. I was betting on moths though. We found the source of them about ten minutes later when we started to see a new source of light in the distance; this one looked almost like sunlight. Being eager to get out of the murky half-light provided by the glowworms, we rushed forward into the light and stopped.
"Woah." I whistled, impressed.
"Magnificent..." Takoda agreed as the retook his human form for a moment.
And it truly was. The cave we had entered was brightly lit, but not by sunlight, but by bioluminescent plants that could have come straight out of Avatar. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration. Pandora looked like someone had swallowed glowing rainbow paint and then puked it up all over the place. The plants in this grotto glowed primarily with a bright yellow, almost like sunlight. The ground was dotted by these glowing bulb-like flowers while the ceiling instead held clumps of a brightly glowing moss of some kind. I would have to get some samples of these plants. it wasn't really my field, but I would have to make do. I noticed that there was another stream flowing in from an opening across from the one were me and Takoda was standing, both of them flowed into a small lake in the center of the cave.
It looked like a small piece of paradise. I mentally named it Elysium in my head; I'd have to get back here at some point. I dropped off the edge and floated down towards the lake in the center and looked around. Takoda flew down and settled on a rocky outcropping just by the lake and turned and pointed towards a brightly lit part of the cave.
"We go that way!" he called to me.
"Alright—ugh!"
Something suddenly impacted me in the back, sending me face-first into the lake. I felt something clamp down around my neck and squeeze. I panicked and struggled for a moment before I got my wits about me and just called on my magic and conducted a shock out through my neck, the grip tightened momentarily, but slackened after allowing me to tear myself free and orient myself enough to figure out what was up and down before I blasted out of the water.
Takoda was on the shore, in bear form, and was fighting half a dozen small quickly moving forms. I didn't have time to more than register that before I saw something moving in the corner of my eye and threw up a shield. Another of the white things bounced off it a split second later and dove into the water and disappeared. I saw several more moving along the shores towards me. I quickly spelled the water from my glasses so I could get a better look.
Takoda's roar diverted my attention and I dived in and assaulted his attackers with bolts of lightning, and was gratified to see that it was far more effective on these things then it had been on the Beast. They collapsed in twitching heaps as my lightning arced between them. I head a shrill cry behind me, which heralded the reinforcements. I turned and attacked them with blasts of wind, sending them flying into the lake. I yelled out in pain as a rock slammed into my chest and knocked me out of the sky momentarily. I was quickly on my feet again and zapped one of my attackers who came at me armed with what looked like a sharp rock.
Takoda charged passed me and tacked three of the creatures that had managed to get behind me. The three managed to get away mostly unscathed from the enraged shapeshifter and looked to be ready to attack again when there was an interruption.
"STILL!"
At the cry, our attacks froze before backing away to a safe distance. I looked around trying to see who of them had shouted. I eventually spotted one of them that had just gotten out of the drink and was now moving towards us. It was a rather alluring sight, I admit, she, and it was definitely a she, was entirely covered in light dense white fur that looked almost like skin when wet, that thickened and lengthened as it went, with her legs being rather fluffy looking. They were also inhuman, being shaped more akin to the hindquarters of a goat and ending in a split hoof. Her face was mostly human, but her nose was wider and flatter and her eyes larger and her pupils were split horizontally, much like that of a goat. She also had a pair of horns, but they looked like those found of female deer, short, furry and split at the end into tow cute little nubs. Her ears also looked more like those of a deer, not being quite as long and floppy as goat ears. All in all, they looked like female Satyrs, only white and with the wrong kind of horns. I noted that the rest of them looked much the same. I also noted that they were all female. Nice.
As she came close she sniffed the air and gave us a searching look. "There is blood on you, Its blood. You stink of it." She stated as she moved closer to Takoda and me and took another sniff. "Much blood. Is It yet alive?"
"If you mean the goat faced fucker, then no," I responded while fishing out my portkey and moving closer to Takoda. I didn't use it yet, because the female creature didn't look all that hostile at the moment. I wasn't entirely sure about it, it was hard to read her expression.
"You have proof?" She demanded.
Takoda and I exchanged a quick look and Takoda tilted his head inquiringly. I considered it before inclining my head. Takoda immediately opened one of the pouches on his belt and produced the head of the Beast and held it up by its one remaining horns. There was a chorus of gasps all around.
The apparent leader looked at the severed head for a long moment before refocusing on me and Takoda.
Here we go.