Karen's POV

"So Karen you'll put the sword in the slot, and twist it at the crack of dawn. Right?" asks Darius.

I nod.

"Right, go ahead. Put the sword in the slot," says Caspian. I slide the long, silver sword inside the deep slot in the rocks and the blade smoothly slips in, just like it does inside the scabbard.

"So now, we wait for sunrise." declares Kevin.

And so we wait. Around ten minutes later, we see the sky's color, changing into reddish-orange, signaling that Mr. Sun is arriving.

"When the first ray of light hits the sword, you twist it, okay? We may not be able to see the precise hitting of light beams into the sword, but you can, Katarina." Caspian tells. "And you should be prompt."

"I will, Caspian," I assure, placing a hand on his upper arm. 

There, I see a flicker of the Caspian that I first met. The sweet Caspian who told me the story of him meeting me as a baby. As much as I hate to admit this, I miss him. I miss being with him like I did before I was with Darius. I miss him calling me amare.

As said, I see the first ray of sunlight hit the rocks. I position my hand on the sword's handle, ready to twist it.

The light travels from below the sword and agonizingly slowly, up toward the sword. And then, I see the first rays of sunlight hitting the blade. I twist my hand, along with the sword and it easily rotates in the hole. The giant rock door creaks beneath me, and a pocket of dust releases into the air when it slowly slides open.

All of us sneeze simultaneously as the dust disturbs our systems. The rock door slides open and stops moving when the sword hits the stone wall.

Swords drawn and arrows positioned on bows, we enter the dark cave. I and Kevin pull out our torches to illuminate the pitch-black pathway. Our footsteps and the sound of our breathing echo through the walls.

"Where do we start?" I whisper to Caspian.

"The point where the Borat was first found," he replies.

"Since this was a mine, shouldn't we look out for deep holes?" asks Iris.

"Good point. Direct one torch to the ground while another forward." Caspian instructs and we do as said.

"Do you guys know where the Borat was first found?" asks Kevin.

"It's on the map...but before looking, we just have to make sure that nothing is living other than us in here," Iris says.

We walk forward and I find the silence strangely disturbing. Both Darius and Kevin are in front of me, with Iris in the middle while I and Caspian are at the end.

"You okay?" he whispers.

I nod. "Why is it so quiet?" 

"Well, you can't expect a cavern that has been shut for the past hundred years or so, to be noisy right?" Darius scoffs.

I bite my lip. 

"What's with you, Darius? Why are you being rude to her?" asks Caspian.

Iris rolls her eyes. "Guys can we just shut up and move on?!"

It's better if I don't open my mouth after that. I don't know what's up with Darius, but he's been a little rude to me ever since we left Almine. So far I've kept quiet, but one more time and then he'll get it from me. I am taking no one's bullshit.

We keep walking and after around thirty minutes of searching around for any potential dangers, and finding none, we settle down at a corner. Caspian fixes the torch on a large rock as Iris spreads down the map on the ground.

"Okay, so we're here," she informs, pointing to a spot on the map. "And the Borat was first found in here along with various other minerals."

"Legend says that, once the Borat was found, mining was stopped forever in these caves. And so it is very likely that we may find some ... valuable stuff there," says Caspian.

"Will you guys allow me to collect them? To keep as a memorial?" asks Kevin and Iris giggles. "I mean, it's not every day that we get to see uncut minerals, yeah?"

Caspian laughs at Kevin's curiosity. "Of course, Kevin!"

"Okay, so we reach there, and then what?" Darius asks, a brow raised. I feel like it's just me, but he sounds....irritated.

"We look for any clues left by Etine." Caspian answers. "Why are you behaving like that?"

"Like what?" he asks.

"Like you're not interested. You were rude to Katarina just a while ago and now you sound irritated. What's wrong?" Caspian asks.

Thank god!

"Is it me?" I ask.

"Nothing is wrong with me, Caspian. Carry on, with the work." he brushes us off. "So far, we've only looked for clues everywhere. What if we don't find anything here?"

"We did get useful information, Darius. At Interlacus, Rosanto told us that Etine did find me. And that he knew, I would rule the kingdom someday. So he must have hidden the Borat somewhere I would find it, right?" I explain and he nods. "And be optimistic love."

Only after it slips out of my mouth, do I realize what I just said. 

Why the hell did I just call him love?

Caspian resumes explaining.

"So the mining hole would be very deep and the Borat was found in one of the deepest spots. We'll have to get there via ropes," he says.

"Crawl into the deep hole with ropes?" Iris asks, her eyes wide with fear and so I take charge of the situation.

"She is super scared of heights, guys!" I inform.

Caspian looks at Iris and snorts.

"What!?" she asks, annoyed.

"Such a hybrid, killing people mercilessly with icicles is scared of heights!" Caspian snorts.

"I will kill you!" she threatens.

"As if!" he challenges.

"Guys!" Kevin shouts warningly and nods his eyes toward the map to bring the duo back.

"You say something like that again, I dare you!" she snarls at Caspian, who keeps giggling.

"Okay, so we climb down the hole and look for whatever we want to find. Yeah?" I ask and Caspian nods, confirming.

After filling in on some food and water, we pack everything up and start heading towards the mine hole. Caspian and Iris direct us and following the map, we reach there shortly. And as promised, it is one giant hole.

I direct my torch down the hole. The hole seems to be endless because the light beam disappears down to darkness.

"How we know how deep it is?" I ask.

Iris shrugs. "Simple physics" she answers. 

Right, so she remembers whatever they taught in physics class.

"Explain further, dear," Kevin says.

"You guys learned this too! In school, remember?" she asks.

"We don't exactly remember that shit after exams!" I answer.

"Okay, so technically, we have to find the depth right? If we drop an object down the hole, it will take a certain time to reach the end. Now, we have the time taken and we have the acceleration due to gravity as well. With these two, we can easily find the distance." She explains. The accurate way she explained, just like in those boring ass textbooks, makes me stare at her in disbelief. It was the best idea to bring her along in this quest.

"Brilliant!" Kevin exclaims. "You are such a genius!"

"Dang girl, so how are going to do this?" I ask.

"Grab something considerably heavy and I need a pen and paper to the calculation as well. I can't do it mentally, it's complicated," she says.

I quickly fish out a pencil and scrap paper from the deepest ends on my bag and hand it to her while she gets a stopwatch from hers.

"When the hell did you pack that?" Kevin asks.

"You know, just in case, I thought. Hey, it came handy, didn't it?" she argues.

"Okay, so what should we do?" Darius asks.

"You guys need to drop the object when I say and we get the time taken to hear the sound of it hitting the ground. Given that the walls of the hole are rock, the sound will echo, so we will definitely hear it," she explains. "And then we do the calculations."

"I really need to focus in physics class," comments Kevin.

Darius picks a medium-sized rock.

"Yeah, that should suffice. Now chamois, drop it down in 3....2...1!" she orders, simultaneously activating the stopwatch. We wait for the sound and Iris clicks the stopwatch once we hear the thud.

"15.8 seconds," she announces and jumps down to calculate. Caspian curiously looks down at whatever she is doing, her quick hands working swiftly at calculations.

"Does someone have a calculator?" she suddenly asks.

"Sorry, I didn't think we would need that on a goddamn adventure!" Darius jokes and Iris grunts. She carries on doing the calculations and seconds later, announces the answers.

"Guys, its roughly 1.2 kilo meters deep." she declares.

"We don't have a one-kilometer long rope!" says Kevin.

"The hole won't be, a fully straight hole. The walls will have stopping points. After all it was a mine." reminds Caspian.

"Good point," I remark.

We take out our long ropes and tie the ends around our waist. But then, my eyes catch something... unusual on the walls of the hole.

"Guys wait!" I shout, halting their movements. "Look at these, are they....stairs?" I ask directing the torch toward the walls of the hole. I see the grooved slopes descending in spirals down along the walls. 

They actually carved stairs in here. 

"No need for ropes?" Kevin asks but I ignore him, walking around the hole to find the starting point of the stairs, which spiral all the way down the deep hole. 

Found it!

"Guys, there is literally stairs down here.  There is no need of ropes and stuff!" I chime, giddily.

"We underestimated our miners, eh Darius?" Caspian nudges Darius, who grins.

"Let's get down guys!" Iris jumps and we begin our descent into the hole.

*************

A/N: I'm writing real shitty chapters these days. I will edit them all to being readable once the book is completed.