Ch.2 Mysterious Voices in a Deep Dark Cave

[Phantom’s POV]

It was the middle of the night when I woke up to Atom jerking awake as something alerted him from a distance. I didn’t register what had happened, however he seemed really uneasy about it all, and it wasn’t until he started snarling that he woke Spectre up. “Hey what’s wrong… it's not even morning yet…” Spectre asked in a sleepy tone. He was the first to fall asleep so how he didn’t feel as alert was astonishing to me. “Something moved and hit the ground…. I doubt we’re on our own in this place…” Atom responded through gritted teeth as he got up, his body still partially limping after our last visit when we found him. His broken ankle had since healed, however he had a permanent minor limp on his right hind leg now whenever he’d walk. This made him a bit vulnerable if he were to come into contact with someone from behind, and because of this I decided to follow behind him. “Hey! Wait for me, yeah?” Was all that we heard behind us as Spectre ran to catch up with us.

“Hurry up then!” I yelled at him before bumping into Atom as he came to a stop. He was standing perfectly still as he looked around the large underground cave that was in front of us. It was huge… but something caught my eyes. It was small……so small. Kinda cute, but not every cute thing is friendly though. But I saw a small creature scurry across the cave floor as if desperate to hide from something or if it was looking for something. But before I could even get closer to the edge of the current cave floor we were on, the ground had collapsed under us! After the earth beneath our feet had collapsed, we went tumbling onto the ground. This was immediately followed by a clinking sound on the ground.

Atom’s left horn had broken slightly during the fall, the look on his face was that of pure annoyance. I had taken the time to look him over briefly as he stood up to check if he was ok. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary aside from the broken horn. Spectre appeared to be fine as well aside from a minor cut near his mouth. As opposed to me and Atom who had some sort of weird healing properties when it came to minor injuries, Spectre didn’t have any of that due to him being a mere mortal in comparison. This wasn’t a bad thing, but it just meant that it took longer for him to heal from any major injuries as well as keeping any minor scarring to his name. As for myself… I had no idea…

[Spectre’s POV]

Getting up from the floor, my first instinct was to look around and see if the others were ok, especially after hearing the small sound of metal falling near Atom’s paws. His left horn had broken from the fall, and I can see that he’s not happy about this happening. However as long as he doesn’t suffer any major injuries here and now we will be fine. I looked down to notice that Phantom was still lying there on the ground. She looked so small… she didn’t appear to have any injuries from what I could see, but she was trembling… “are you okay?” I asked as I walked over to her. “I’m… I’m fine…” her response was quiet yet still audible for us to hear. She was properly spooked.

“W-what was that?!” She asked upon jumping up from the ground after spotting something. Atom turned around to look in the direction that she was looking at, only to remain completely still as if he’d seen a ghost. There were a couple of figures in the distance, one large silhouette and another, smaller one beside it. The storm on his body was growing a bit stronger without him realising it, a loud laughter could be heard in the distance, however the larger figure had then suddenly disappeared in what I could only assume was a body of water. “Atom… are you ok?” The storm remained the same even after he’d snapped out of his trance. “I’m fine… I thought I’d seen something eerily familiar.” Was all he could say before he walked towards Phantom, picking up her trembling body by the scruff and placing her on his back. “We’re going to investigate… I want to see if my speculation is true or not…”

And with that he started walking towards the body of water, and I followed him. When he reached the edge he began examining the ground, looking for a trail of some kind. Phantom had jumped off of his back by now and had started looking around herself. She appeared to be following something that she’d found. It wasn’t until she had come to a stop and suddenly yelped that our attention was drawn away from what we were doing.

There was a small fox-like creature standing in front of her, its upper body perched above the ground as it sniffed her paws. She seemed so terrified by it. Atom ran up to us to see what was wrong, only to freeze in place once again. “You.. I know you…” was all he could say. He seemed very lost for a moment, unsure of what to do now. He lowered his head, his hair making it impossible to see his face.

“Look at you, you’ve grown so much over the years” the small figure said as he lifted himself out from the ground, shaking off any excess dirt that was clinging to his fur. “I’m certain Tidus will be very happy to see you again after all these years, my wife will be overjoyed as well” he seemed to be quite cheerful as he spoke. “Who are you exactly?” I asked, tilting my head as I sat down. “This is Dr.Rutile, he is one of the few who cared for me for a little bit when I was a pup” Atom said, his tone was full of sorrow, as if he’d forgotten his past, only to regain fragments of his memory from our visit.

“This is indeed very true, really we weren’t supposed to do this, however my wife was insistent that we look after him, as she spends most of her time caring for the sick and injured creatures who could be passing by, even if they aren’t a Clayfox themselves” he explained, his tail swaying from side to side, his clawed fingers tapping into the ground gently. “That’s how they found me… it was after I gained the scar on my neck… and she took me in despite the differences in our species and histories”

Atom had never really told us much about what had happened before we found him, other than two people caring for him for a certain time period. Otherwise that’s all we really knew about him. We were all different in some way from each other. I still had no clue who I really was, we barely knew much about Phantom either, however only time will tell when we know more about each other. This also includes anything new that might be revealed to us about the Clayfoxes as a species. 

“I’d hate to interrupt but… shouldn’t we be moving to somewhere safer?” Phantom’s question broke my train of thought as she spoke up, growing weary of our surroundings. “She has a point there” Atom agreed with her that our current location wasn’t so safe as we were practically out in the open, and there’s no telling as to what else could be in this cave, let alone if it’s friendly or not. “I can take you back to our home if you’d like” Dr.Rutile spoke up, offering us the safety of his home for the time being so we could continue our discussion. 

“I do hope that the cave doesn’t crumble further though… seeing as you fell from the first cave floor due to the ground crumbling under your weight…” He muttered to himself as he began leading the way. “Dr I want to thank you for this, but really you don’t have to—” Atom began before he was cut off by Dr.Rutile “nonsense! My wife and son will be pleased to see you again, especially since Cass has been worried sick about you for all these years”

“Cass has been worried about me..?”

“She has, she didn’t want to leave you on your own but we had no choice but to, especially given that you are a Cirrocanius, you are bigger than a Clayfox aside from those who have a size altering mutation, in this instance both Cass and my son, Tidus”

“I see… so that’s what really happened… I thought I was abandoned again because I was seen as trouble for everyone… due to being different…”

The two were conversing with each other ahead of us as we were heading towards another tunnel that was just across from where we were in the cave, but the Dr had stopped to make sure we were still following while Atom went on ahead to make sure that the path up ahead was clear. As he turned around to tell us that it was all clear, the roof of the entrance began to crack and in turn it started collapsing into itself with Atom being pushed into the tunnel by a figure that moved too fast for any of us to register exactly what it could have been. And with that, the entrance to the tunnel had been blocked by rubble.

[Atom’s POV]

I was laying on the floor as dust started to settle on the ground, however something felt a bit… off. There was something on top of me, as if protecting me from the rubble as it was falling. I felt the weight lifting off of me as I opened my eyes. “So the prince finally awakens” was the first thing I heard as I looked up to see a tall figure that was a little taller than me. “Tidus…? Is that you?”

“It’s been a long while, hasn’t it Atom?”

“It has been…”