[This would be a terrible place to be trapped as someone with a fear of bugs, the dark, or enclosed spaces. Though Liem is not that person, the dirt corridors swarming with an endless supply of voiceless killing machines are still a nightmare scenario, and he still manages to be a little jumpy about it when a person lunges for him from a side-corridor to drag him off the main tunnel. He ends up in the little cavern nonetheless, but wrenches himself out of the sudden grip to stare warily at the person who’d just pulled him in here.

Oh. It’s John.

John, who looks and smells a little worse for wear, thanks to the chunk missing from his other arm. Liem might not be able to see the wound in the full richness of colour vision right now, but the scent of fresh blood is distinctive.]

As soon as possible, yes.

[Liem does have the benefit of working eyes and some amount of magic to serve him down here, but what he doesn’t have is his crossbow. It’d be really hard to kill one of these monster ants with nothing but muscle and a puny, splinter-sized dagger, so he hasn’t been wasting his time on fighting. He wouldn’t mind a companion to take some of the heat off him when ants start swarming, but John is a Zenite, and unlike the last Zenite Liem ditched in these tunnels, he is notably not a gormless teenager.]

Though in life-or-death circumstances, I generally prefer the one watching my back to be… trustworthy.

[Full shade, but the last time Liem was alone with John in a tunnel, he got brainwashed.]