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Urcea guessed that she'd been lost for most of a day by then. The softly luminous lichens saved her gloves from most of the jaggedness of the rough walls, but occasionally she would give out a little cry that echoed far before and behind her where she went stooped at the press or scrape of an almost knifelike protrusion. The darkness was relieved occasionally by shafts of light entering the rough tunnels irregularly. They seemed to mirror or mimic the daylight, but at crazy angles, so that Urcea knew the light came by means of some craft or artifice which she knew not, and not in any way that might serve her in finding the surface.
Urcea made her way wearily on, growing more and more certain that she did not know the moss eaten stones she stumbled along. Where she had feared she went in circles for many hours, the roughwork of the excavation gave way to better finishes, till the floor grew level and the walls straight. The shafts of light grew fewer, but the glowing lichens had been cultivated to grow within the spaces between the worked stones of the walls, especially at her feet, so that, though dimly, her way was better marked than it had been many hours.
Now as she went a gossamer fog grew about the floor in wisps and tendrils, which swirled and trailed her as she walked, as if it was not moisture, but the finest spider webbing which hung there, catching the color of the lichens as they pulsed in time with some unseen rythmn of the earth.
Finally her wanderings lead her into an open space. Still the stonework and lichens guided her feet, so that it was several minutes before she woke enough from her stupor to raise her chin and truly see the room in which she now found herself.

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