The Heavenly Host

“What expenses does a Knight Rampant have?” Antefalken asked rather incredulously. “If you are in Eton or anywhere your pantheon is, you get free room and board.”

Talarius coughed. “Do you have any idea how many bales of hay it takes to feed a flying horse? They eat twice as much as a normal horse!”

“It’s such a long haul back and forth; it’s a shame to have to make multiple trips,” Rupert complained. He was fastening his one bag to his rope belt.

Before leaving, Antefalken had gone to his home and returned with rope and some sacks. Those without belts had created rope belts to fasten one or two sacks to. Antefalken had only four sacks that could hold about a gallon each, three smaller bags and a few small pouches of his own. Boggy, Reggie, Rupert and Tizzy had each taken a large sack. Estrebrius had taken two small sacks; the large sacks were simply too large and ungainly for his frame. Talarius had a few bags of his own somehow secreted in his armor, and also took the third smaller bag. Antefalken made do with his small bags, and both he and Tom had belt pouches.

“Hmm... you know, one hole in the ground is about as good as any other,” Tom mused. “I’ve got my only possessions from the cave in my belt pouches. I suppose we could set up shop here.”

“Interesting.” Antefalken frowned, thinking. “From the point of view of back and forth to Astlan, it doesn’t make any difference, but I have to imagine, given how far out we are, getting back and forth to the Courts could be a pain. Your current cave is only a single boom tunnel away from the Courts.”

“True. But if Lilith is looking for Tom, I’m thinking this might be a better location,” Boggy mused.

“I cannot disagree with that,” Antefalken admitted.

“Well, you haven’t even seen most of your planned new home yet,” Tizzy stated. “We really should move on and see more.”

“Hmm, well, we could just carry what’s easy and leave the other piles here for now,” Antefalken said.

“Yeah, I like that idea. It’s not going anywhere, and we know where this room is relative to the diamond room,” Estrebrius said.

“It was a straight path,” Boggy agreed.

“What’s down the other paths we didn’t take, Tizzy?” Rupert asked.

Tizzy scratched his chin. “Well, that depends on the path. Some will take you to the other rooms on alternate paths. Some are dead ends and some... are just cave rooms not that different from Tom’s cave.”

“So you’ve explored this entire cave system?” Antefalken asked.

“A lot of it. There are some deeper regions I haven’t ventured to. It’s a very big system,” Tizzy answered.

“So what’s next? You said there were gold and silver rooms?” Rupert asked.

“Yes... they are a ways away though; they are on another side of the mountains. So it will be a long trek,” Tizzy answered. “Back in the day, though, streams of silver and gold were quite a sight to behold.”

“Streams? You mean molten gold and silver?” Tom asked with a furrowed brow, trying to understand how that could be.

Tizzy shrugged. “Probably not flowing now. A long time ago, there was a very large and active volcano at the heart of the mountain range. It’s been cold for several thousand years now, so I suppose the molten metals will have stopped flowing and solidified.”

Antefalken shrugged. “Well we have nothing else to do, and if we are thinking about hanging out here anyway, we might as well go take a look.”

“Cool! Lead on, Tizzy!” Rupert shouted.

Tizzy made a gesture indicating where he was going. Everyone who had been seated stood and straightened their leftover piles of gems and then lined up behind Tizzy as he started off down a corridor.

Tizzy had not been lying. The journey was pretty long and meandered through a number of twisted tunnels with lots of branches. They were definitely relying on Tizzy to find their way out. It would have been quite easy to get lost in here. Finally they came to a cavern with six exits in addition to the one they had entered.

Tizzy stopped and rubbed his chin. “I think we want that one there.” He pointed to one of the tunnels.

“What do you mean you think?” Boggy asked rather shrilly.

“Well, it’s been several hundred years since I’ve been to the crystal caves, and probably almost four thousand since I regularly wandered these tunnels,” Tizzy replied.

“Nargh! We are relying on four-thousand-year-old memories of Tizzy’s?” Antefalken complained.

Tizzy twisted a bit to give Antefalken a grin. “Aaah, not that bad. I’ve been down most of them at some point.” Tizzy paused and closed one eye and tilted his head to the left. “I think.” He shook his head. “Let’s go this way.” He took off.

Tom quickly gouged a mark in the tunnel they had just exited, and another near the entrance of the one they were now going down. He should have been doing this all along. It really was pretty stupid to trust Tizzy on this. The demon had just been behaving so reasonably lately; he had forgotten exactly how unreliable he really was.