With Miaren's torch so far behind, it is hard for Draque and Fern to tell how large the chamber they are moving through is.  It may well be a cramped and narrow tunnel - certainly the sound does not echo, and the air seems thick, congested.  It may be a widening of the chamber - sometimes wind moves through it on great strides from unseen quarters, and the darkness seems void of shape and distance.<br/><br/>For Fern, her experience is just the burn of the great Thing's paw about her body, and the speed of it as it bolts through the dark.  With both hands free, it can rip and grind at her as it may.  Under its horrid strength, Fern feels things come apart:  The straps of her armor pop their brass fittings; her clothes rip; her flesh tosses with bruises.  But her flurry of stabbing keeps that panting mouth away.  She endures, for now.<br/><br/>For Draque, there is just urgency.  No sense of distance, no balance or notion of progress - just urgency.  Just rushing toward Fern's cry, as it grows more and more distant.<br/><br/>And when Miaren plunges into the darkness, she finds the torch casts only far enough ahead for her to see Draque and the floor he races over.  As she runs down it, she sees two sets of three symbols each repeated, over and over again.  Two sets; three symbols, both smooth and regular.  She has no time to investigate.<br/><br/>There is no sense of time.  Only haste.  Haste, darkness, and Fern's screams.<br/><br/>Suddenly, Fern plunges into a space of light:  Sunlight, projecting into the mouth of a cave.  Its cerulean shine renders an end to the darkness only forty feet ahead.  She glimpses a river pouring from deeper aquifers cutting across her path, then plunging out of the cave mouth.  The Thing is bolting for that rim.  The sound of water soaring down from the cave and thundering into a pool far below seem to only speed the beast.<br/><br/>Draque emerges into the cave just time to see the Thing leap from the rim of the cave, over its waterfall, bearing Fern.  For moment, the fat shape of the Thing and Fern's flashing dagger fill the empty space up to the ragged rim of dark stone.<br/><br/>The next instant, there is only the image of the cave river rushing into a sky as pure and glinting blue as an electrum coin.