You

Aparun fell on my skin as I ran together with Mel towards the exit of the unexplored chamber. Just like the book described it, the fine dust felt like watery mist surrounding us and cooling us down as we gave it our all to escape.

Though he kept asking me why we were in such a rush to get out, Mel made sure that he ran in front so that whatever danger might be trying to catch up to us would have to get through me first before reaching him.

"Coln, I think I'm starting to get what the issue is…"

"Oh? Have your feet finally gotten drenched too?" I asked, looking down at my shoes that were already filled with the fine, aparun dust that kept rising like water poured out of a faucet. For some reason, my first thought was that the stone looked beautiful the way it shined, but that thought perished soon after my survival instincts kicked in.

My feet felt not only wet, but they felt like they were freezing, like the aparun was sucking the heat out of my body, and while that felt refreshing for the first couple of steps, the fact that I couldn't take the dust out of my shoes told me how dangerous it was to linger around.

"Not only that, but look at the ceiling!"

"Of all the problems we're having, don't tell me you plan to throw your pickaxe up there again!" I scolded the dumbass, but the second I look at where he is pointing, my voice fades.

The way I panicked and started running, I forgot to assess the gravity of the damage dealt to the ceiling. But now it mattered little, for, as if to take revenge on us for hurting it, the tips of crystals popped off above our heads wherever we were, pouring more aparun on us.

"There's obviously something wrong with this chamber!" Mel shouted.

"The chamber? I say there's something wrong with The Warren altogether! It's trying to bury us here!"

"No way, dumbass! Did it really take you that long to figure out the obvious?"

The way Mel answered me, I couldn't help myself, and I kicked the leg he was flinging back while running. Soon enough, he collapsed before me into the aparun. Partly regretting the fact that I might have hurt him, yet plenty aware that he deserved it for the way he was talking back, I picked up the ignorant fool who was flinging his arms and legs instead of getting up.

When he pulled his face out of the laying aparun, the first thing he did was desperately wipe off the remaining fine shards that stuck to his face. He was so agitated while doing it that he left his face full of scratches, unbecoming of one with skin as soft as his.

I took a good look at his face, and I saw an expression I was unaware was something Mel could pull off. In his eyes I could read pure terror as he pushed into his arms to get up, and for the first time ever, he spoke to me in a whispered voice that he couldn't keep from trembling.

"Coln, we're in danger," he said. "I couldn't breathe down there."

Surprisingly, I didn't react to his words the way I thought I would, for a part of me already thought of this as being the true danger we were facing. Although Mel's face was completely dry now, it was obvious that he was struggling while he was down there, and although I had poured out the aparun out of my shoes too and noticed that my socks were completely dry, the small shards still stuck in there kept my feet feeling like they were soaking wet.

Fortunately, the exit should have been close enough. While I couldn't see it clearly from all of the shining rock around, both of us were used by now to calculating distances by how many steps we had taken. Judging by how fast we had been running, in a couple of minutes we should have reached the exit.

Yet even after we ran these two or so minutes and reached the stone I had marked. A stone which wasn't part of a wall anymore and instead was the only thing floating on aparun dust towards us. Before us there was nothing but a blue wall.

The fine shards were already up to our knees, and with this stone floating towards us from a wall that should have clearly been where we had entered from, it felt like the very chamber was playing a prank on us. No, it would have been fine for this to be just a prank, but as the amount of dropping cold vapour increased by the second, turning the fine mist into what the book described as "rain", it felt more and more like this chamber was going to become our grave.

"Up there!"

Still, while my mind drifted off to how my final moments would look, Mel, in uncharacteristic fashion, seemed to be fully aware of the danger and was actively seeking out an exit, pointing at an opening in the ceiling into which light was pouring out.

"We've got no choice but to climb," I said. "But we didn't bring any climbing gear. This was supposed to be nothing more than a reconnaissance—"

Before I could finish my sentence, I heard a loud shattering noise, and I felt one side of my face getting sprayed with cold ore. Moving out of the way and looking at the source, I saw Mel's pickaxe stuck into the aparun once again.

I was ready to shout at him, but when I turned towards the boy, I saw him waiting for me with his outstretched hand.

"Come on! Hand me yours and grab on!"

Of course he had no reservation in asking for my pickaxe so that he could save himself, but at the very least he didn't forget to tell me to grab onto him and hope for the best.

*****

"You know, it would be much easier if you just grabbed on to me instead of the pickaxe!" said Mel, complaining that I refused to hold onto his waist and instead decided that we would both grab on to the tools as we climbed.

"Yeah? And then the holes left behind could all fill my mouth with aparun while you look for the next spot to shove the pick into?"

"It's not like it isn't filling my mouth too! If anything, now you're just hiding behind me! How is that even fair?"

Hearing him spout nonsense again, I nudged Mel with my inner elbow over the head. It was just a light tap to get him to stop complaining.

"By what damn logic should one suffer just as much as the other for the sake of 'fairness'? You're the one who took my peak; I at least get to stay behind you. Why should we both be sprayed with cold aparun?"

Of course, no matter how many times I would have explained it to him, Mel still couldn't wrap his head around completely rational questions, so I didn't bother insisting on it. We were slowly reaching the ceiling of the chamber, and by now our backs were almost completely facing the rising shard powder.

The first one to start struggling was, as expected, Mel. With a mouthful of aparun after climbing past a hole he had poked with his pickaxe, he had trouble seeing where he should place his foot, and it slipped, his shoe falling off and getting completely swallowed by the sandy ocean that started rising quicker from all of the damage we had dealt to the ore.

"Coln, can you reach it? My shoe fell and I can't push with my leg now!"

Mel waited for an answer from me, but I only recompensed him with silence for his stupid question. Just like him, I was also having trouble with my footing, and the fact that I was basically holding the man above me was making matters even more difficult to handle.

Instead, I pushed with one of my feet on the boot I had the other in, and after a couple of kicks, my left boot followed his into the aparun.

"What the hell are you doing!?" he shouted at me the second my shoe sank.

"Didn't you say you liked fairness?"

"Not when we'll both die because of it!"

Finally, he made some sense, and he chose his timing right as I was busy taking off my other shoe. Then, I proceeded to kick at Mel's foot, trying to kick off his remaining boot.

"Stop that! What are you doing? Do you want me to fall off together with you? Why are you doing this?"

"The aparun only feels wet. Otherwise the crystal is just like a really cold piece of glass! You can try grabbing on to it with both of your feet!'

That being said, while the cold helped keep our feet there, it wasn't long before the pain would set in. The plan I bet everything on had high chances of leaving us both lacking a couple toes, but that was still better than drowning in that freezing dust.

In the end, Mel nodded and accepted my plan, and we continued our climb on the ceiling of the chamber with our pickaxes and feet pushing through the pain and the cuts left behind on our bare skin. Surprisingly, it was Mel who seemed to struggle more with the cuts and the cold.

"Guess I'm lucky that you'll catch me if I let go," he said.

"Don't even think about it. I'm turning to the side the second I feel like you're starting to lose grip—woah!"

As I spoke, Mel feigned that he would let go of one of the pickaxes, and I couldn't help but stiffen my body beneath him.

"See? You'd catch me regardless."

I clicked my tongue and didn't speak another word until we reached the exit in the ceiling. By then aparun had entered our nostrils in such large quantities that we could barely breathe, feeling like we were drowning on dry land. The cold shards cut us from the inside, and blood dripped from our noses.

My body was in a state of constant stress, though it wasn't sure if it should be acting like I was underwater or in a cold northern chamber.

"Done! We're saved!"

But none of that mattered, for when I heard Mel's voice as he shoved his pick into the wall of the exit, I suddenly envisioned myself in my warm, dimly lit room in the main chamber, reading the book just like every other evening as I tried to unravel more of its secrets.

Just then, the walls started to tremble, and a sound akin to the one I was hearing before we reached the aparun chamber rang into my ears.

"Mel! No! Don't climb any further?'

"What the hell are you talking about again? We really need to get you checked—"

That's when his pickaxe popped out of the rock, and a giant, long body came out with it, blocking our exit all the while it made its way through the stone above.

"—out!"

That was the last thing I heard Mel say, just before he'd grabbed me and pulled me down with him into the aparun sea.