True to her word Fable had made a point of taking care of Noor, who was still a shadow of her former self but could at least eat without gorging herself and being sick now. And all while they'd been traveling south. After the night under the shadow of the spires rumors had already started that something odd had started happening further south and with the mission to get more information in mind they moved. And though Noor was weak they'd made good time.

They'd hadn't even been able to see the shoreline when an earth deep rumbling could be heard and a few surprised shouts rose up from the beach. Whatever that was it hadn't been expected by the curious explorers. And it didn't take long to see what had happened, sand still cascaded down into the maws of some sort of chasm. How deep it was Noor couldn't tell. She wasn't about to get too close even as she stepped onto the beach proper. Noor tried to crane her neck to see into the fresh hole in the ground, but with the dim light of the seemingly perpetually red sky and the careful distance she was keeping it was impossible to see anything but the yawning mouth of the chasm and the darkness within.

"First things came up out of the earth and now it's collapsing in on itself?" It was more comment, a thin connection she was making but Noor turned her gaze on Fable all the same.

Or she did for all of a few seconds. One moment standing on solid ground and the next discovering how solid it really was. Maybe it was after shocks, maybe it was just that whatever had been below the sand had finally given up its structural integrity but Noor joined the ranks of wolves who found themselves plunging into the dark. The ground wasn't particularly forgiving, she'd landed on her side but at least it seemed the worst it would do right now was bruise her and wind her. Noor lay there for a moment, eyes closed. Unaware if Fable had also fallen or if she'd managed to get herself stuck in a second hole in front of her former lover in as many days.

"Speech"

Art by Hagon

Her assumption had been correct. Taking Noor on as a sort of ward had taken most of her mind off of the situation at hand. Regardless of the red sun or the quaking earth, Noor had to eat. She had to hunt for Noor, cook for Noor, ensure that she was warm and safe while she slept. As a chef, she was a natural caretaker. Not a healer in the obvious way, but a healer in the way a good, hearty meal made your body feel more hale once you were finished. Fable enjoyed watching Noor come back to her old self, even if it was a painful reminder of what they'd once had. It ached in heart like a splinter.

Their arrival in Auster was punctuated with distant shouts and more tremors in the ground, which didn't bode well. But what did, when the sun still glared down at them, angry and crimson? They followed the source of the noise only to come to the edge of another yawning pit off of Auster's shoreline. "Something is moving down there," she responded, only to have her words meet empty air as Noor slipped further into the tunnel before them.

Strangely, she didn't hesitate to jump in after her. Or perhaps it wasn't strange at all. No sooner had Noor tumbled in than Fable had scrambled in after her, jumping down off the wall with a scree of soil and loose stone in her wake. When she hit the ground, she had to squint to see in the dim red light that poured in from above. The tunnels were cavernous and seemed to stretch out in both directions. Fable blinked and got her bearings before hustling to Noor's side, bending down to check her limbs and pulse. "Are you hurt, can you move?" Throughout the tunnels she could hear the strange echo of others asking similar things. It rebounded: ... hurt ... move ... hello?

"Speech"

That something could be moving below their paws would have likely been a deeply unsettling thought for Noor. Luckily she didn't really have a chance to dwell on it. Because she had hit the tunnel floor before the words even fully registered. A few seconds later, or maybe it was a million years, she heard the skittering of more loose stone and sand and for all her bruised side and ego Noor wasn't keen to end up buried, her eyes snapped open but the roof wasn't collapsing down on her. It was the shadowy form of Fable coming to land close by, with the grace of someone who'd chosen to jump in... Show off!

"Yes and yes, but it's nothing I can't walk off." Noor dragged herself stiffly to her paws, grimacing slightly as she discovered a few more parts of her that would probably bruise. Still she managed it, even gave her shoulders a few cautious rolls. "I think what's left of my pride will never recover but I'll live." It was almost dismissive, not towards Fable but herself. Noor's gaze was already turning skyward, the dim red light hardly helping to penetrate the shadows. The hole she'd accidentally created wasn't particularly large and there wasn't an easy path up that she could see...

Which didn't bode well, Noor was not keen to have to go deeper into the dark. "Promise me the next time I get stuck in a hole you'll leave me behind. I think if there's a third time it probably means I'm destined for some pit based fate." It was a weak attempt at humor.

Stress, Noor could deal with. High pressure? Sure, no problem. But this? The creeping anxiety? The primal sort of fear that was slowly clawing it's way  into her? She didn't know how to handle it. So she covered it with jokes, with the mask of charisma her upbringing had so graciously outfitted her with. Probably wasn't helped by the fact she'd decided if her job was to distract Fable from her own clearly deep rooted anxiety that meant Noor had to push hers down, couldn't let it show lest it set off Fable. Was it maybe a bit patronizing? Yeah, Fable was a grown woman she didn't need Noor to babysit her emotions but Noor also knew she was largely still reliant on Fable and some part of her was desperate to be of some use to her. She owed Fable much more than that but it was a start.

"Speech"

Art by Hagon

As long as Noor stood up, Fable told herself everything would be okay. As she shakily got to her paws and rolled her shoulders, Fable let out a long breath she wasn't aware she'd been holding in. Noor had become something of a project to her now, treated with the same fervent intensity she had when she developed new recipes. Everything had to go correctly. Her perfectionism would be the death of her, and likely any real relationship. "Well, pride can be healed more easily than a broken hip," Fable said blithely.

It was a relief that Noor was okay, but now that they were down here in this tunnel, she wasn't quite sure what to make of it all. She hadn't really thought about what would happen after she jumped down here, only that she ought to be by Noor's side, no matter what. Fable shoved that thought to the side quickly and decided there were other things to concern herself with at present: like this massive, so dark it seemed impenetrable, tunnel. The soft echoes of other voices came from both sides - it was clear others had come here and found themselves succumbed to similar fates.

She snorted at Noor's joke and rolled her eyes. "If only it would be that easy to leave you," Fable admitted, her voice somewhat distant and rueful. "Until the sun rises true," she added quickly. "That's what I said - and I'm a woman of my word. We will remain together until things are..." Normal didn't seem like the right word. "Until the sun rises true," she simply said again, firmer this time. It sounded prescient and noble and gave her some small amount of comfort.

"Surprise pits and all, we're in this together." Fable stepped forward and nudged Noor's shoulder gently, checking for any tenderness, before stepping cautiously into the darkness that lay before them. Although the surface topsoil had given way, the tunnels here seemed relatively stable. "It doesn't seem like we're at any risk of falling further at this rate. How far do you think these stretch? Back to Boreas?" Fable mused, running a paw along the tunnel wall. It was firm to the touch, like it had been here for a long time beneath the ground above, just waiting to be discovered.

"Speech"

Noor knew Fable would rebuff her joke, even if some part of her hoped for that laugh she'd grown to adore, something she'd fished for more than she probably ought to. But it was all business... Of course it was. The sky was red, spires had sprouted from the earth on one continent and on the other tunnels had collapsed in on themselves. Their lives had been ruined, their relationship fractured and Noor had been the one to do it. She doubted she'd ever get even a sliver of it back.

Yeah okay not dwelling on that or she'd probably start crying again and she'd been doing such a good job of not doing that... Well not doing so directly in front of Fable at least. Besides Fable had slid in beside her and even the slight wince the contact caused as her sore flesh reacted couldn't stop the wild running of her mind. "Care-" And she caught herself, finding she'd been about to fall back into a joke she'd often teased Fable with. Careful, I might start to think you care. Because at the time she'd felt it was true... Noor had to turn her head away and take a deep breath. Recenter herself and when she turned back Fable had wandered slightly off into the dark. "Careful we don't actually know how stable these tunnels are." It wasn't a save, the pause between her words had been too long but it was an attempt to at least save face.

They couldn't know how long these tunnels had been here... How many years of paws on the surface had passed before they'd finally collapsed in on themselves? How many infinitesimal cracks in the walls had it taken? How many more would it take for the rest to come crashing down? "Possibly..." Noor moved up beside Fable finally, doing her best to remember where they'd been facing when she'd fallen. "If I'm right though, I think this tunnel is currently running west to east." Had she twisted in the air? Had she stood up and gotten herself turned around? Impossible to know but she hoped at least she was close. Not that those directions were much better. Further inland or... Into the sea... One certainly felt worse than the other.

"Speech"

Art by Hagon

Fable hmmm'd quietly to herself at Noor's response. Yes, it was possible that it stretched all the way back to Boreas, but the idea of walking beneath the sea - no matter how far beneath it they might be - turned her a little queasy. Noor's reluctance to entertain her idea any further solidified solidified her desire to turn inland. "It's true that we don't know how stable they are, but truly... just look. To my eyes, it seems as if they've been beneath the surface all this time, waiting to be discovered. I see no cracks, and there haven't been any quakes since those ugly spires erupted from the ground. Perhaps I'm just saying aloud what I want to be true, but..." she sighed, pressing a paw more firmly to the wall. "I don't know. This isn't my area of expertise."

It frustrated her to not be an expert. "Alright, we may as well move further inland," she murmured, heading in the direction that took her deeper beneath Auster's lands above. Silence stretched between them, only the sound of their paw steps echoing, until Fable asked: "What do you remember about that night? After we plated, but before the food went out... I keep wracking my brain how it managed to slip by me. Honestly, Noor, some nights it keeps me awake." She took great pride in her work. Her reputation had been all she had, and it still rankled Fable to have it slip like water through her paws. At least if they kept talking, she wouldn't keep thinking about how this tunnel stretched on, and on, and on, with no end or path to the surface in sight.

"Speech"

((Content warning for descriptions of mass death via poisoning))

Noor was used to feeling out of her depth at this point, most of her adult life had been her jumping into the deep end and having to learn how to swim. Seeing the real world for the first time, learning how to bake, learning how the world really worked... Hell, she hadn't even been in a kitchen before the plan. She brushed a paw along the floor, feeling the loose silt that stuck to her paws. But was that from the cave in or was the ground beneath them also likely to fall out from under them? "And we haven't felt any aftershocks since the spires, so what triggered the cave in this time? It couldn't have been just the digging... Right?" It wasn't like she knew any more than Fable did...

Did it even really matter? They weren't getting out by climbing the walls so they had to find another way out, maybe one of the walls had collapsed in such a way it would make a slope back up somewhere further in... Noor swallowed down the lump forming in her throat as they started off into the dark, leaving the sunlight, even dim and red as it was, behind. The darkness felt heavy with the silence between them and Noor put more effort into making sure she didn't swerve into Fable than anything else. At least until Fable started to speak, then her attention was rapt on the other woman and she stumbled slightly towards her before quickly righting herself.

"Honestly, most of what I remember has been crowded out by... The aftermath..." It wasn't even a lie. She did remember what had happened, how she'd distracted Fable to ensure her plate made it to the other agent to be taken out... But she couldn't even seem to remember what she'd said, what anyone had said. She remembered the screams, the poor staff that had been tending the dinner and the terrible gurgling of her dying family when the kitchen rushed in... She remembered the glassy eyes. She remembered the shock of seeing the whole table, not just her father and brother, dead. Every part of her family, everyone she'd ever known or cared about in her early life...

And she remembered the sound of approaching paws, the royal guard. She remembered turning to look at Fable, wide eyed and terrified. She remembered the "run" she'd whispered to Fable, said in vain. "I know... I know I was distracted." Noor chuckled darkly. "I can't even remember by what exactly. I know I was preoccupied... By..." Noor sighed. By Fable. "I've spent a lot of time wishing I'd done things differently, that I'd been more... Focused. Been less... In your way." It was the most truth she could manage, not a word of lie and still... She didn't admit to her guilt. If she could have done it over she'd have seen the others working outside even her knowledge to massacre the whole table... If she could have done it over, she'd never have agreed to it. She'd never have darkened Fable's door. She'd choose not ruining Fable's life over the brief glimpses of happiness they'd shared. She'd choose Fable's life over her own love.

"Speech"

Art by Hagon