Wrong turn, part III - the tunnels

_{Wrong turn, part I - the Autumn Forest
Wrong turn, part II - the abandoned military area}

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As the shadows grew taller, we made our way down the cliff. At first we thought this was an impossible task, but luckily we found a narrow trail between a crevice in the rocks.

As we made our way down, everything around us changed. The trees, the bushes, all the nature around us turned green and lush, as to lure us deeper into this weird place. Despite the creeps this was giving us, the curiosity was too big to turn back now. Speaking of curiosity, there's a guy named Cat in our party... weird, huh...

Reaching the bottom of the cliff, we suddenly found ourselves at a suspicious lake. Following the lake and pushing on through the thicket, we suddenly are surrounded with a swamp on every side except where we came from. Huh, the sense of direction must really be off after all that climbing. Yes, that must be it, nothing else to it. Right?

_Surrounded

So how come we didn't notice this opening in the cliff when we were coming down? We must have trodded right past it. But that's what we came here for... to look in those tunnels. Doesn't look so inviting now... especially as the sun is about to set.

In we go... the darkness is overwhelming. You cannot see anything down there. Our flashlights barely make a dent in the darkness.

You can barely see anything down here. After clumsily making our way to a bigger area underground, graffiti on the wall warns us of the presence of someone else. Who is this? Is it a drawing made by someone who got lost in these tunnels or does it mark the home of the creature displayed?

By now, we have completely lost our way in the tunnels. How long have been down here? Hours, days? No use in looking at watches or cellphones as these all stopped working as soon as daylight vanished. We have no other way than to push on. Some of our party members move too fast. The last few can barely catch up with them. A little more and they will turn around a corner or climb into another opening... should the flashlight or batteries now fail, we would be doomed.

And suddenly...

Panic ensues and our party scatters in multiple directions. Me and some others members run down a tunnel on the left, while the others take a tunnel that possibly takes them deeper underground.

As we stop running after a while, we take a look and for our great relief find that no-one, that we can see, is following us. As we have already long ago lost our sense of direction, it doesn't matter which tunnel to take. We take the one that smells the least foul. If in doubt, always follow your nose.*

Could it be? After blindly walking around in the dark tunnels, someone finally notices some light ahead.

It appears we have found the other half of our party, who have also been following their nose. How they got ahead of us, will remain a mystery. No daylight can be seen and sense of direction is lost, we push on towards cleaner air.

We find a vampire-bat sleeping on the cave ceiling. Carefully, silently, we sneak by.

As we push forward through the caves, light slowly starts returning to the caves through cracks in the walls and cave-ins. Someone or something must be guiding us through the right tunnels.

Finally we have found the other end of the tunnel. It's morning already.

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_{Disclaimer: Most events described in this short story are fictional. We have actually explored these tunnels and caves, there are altogether 6 of them. Hopefully there are no monsters in them, but definitely bring flashlights and backup batteries and be careful, as you actually have to climb through holes and cave-ins in complete darkness. While we were exploring these tunnels, someone actually decided to scare us - they were waiting ahead in the darkness and jumped out screaming, followed by an escape into the darkness, giving the heebie-jeebies to some of the party members. We never found out who it was.}

_{All 3 parts of the story can be read separately and don't have to be connected at all.}

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*Find the reference ;)

** If you are interested to see better photos of these tunnel and caves, please check out the photos taken by another team of travellers, here ademox on nagi.ee

***The tunnels and caves are U-shaped, you can find the maps with cave-ins on battal.ee

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