Deeper Inside.

 Venus knew her form would be silhouetted against the bright daylight sun and thus, she didn’t hesitate when she reached the cave mouth, swiftly darting inside and ducking to one side.  As she crouched there, hidden in a wide, shadow filled crack in the cavern wall, her dark brown eyes repeatedly scanned the area as they slowly adjusted to the dimness.     

   The young huntress waited patiently, her eyes and ears straining to detect any sign that she had been spotted or heard entering the cave but there was nothing; not loud shouts of alarm or the pounding of approaching footsteps, in fact the only thing Venus could hear was the faint sound of her own breathing and the even fainter dull thumping of her heart and she had not seen any trace of motion as she studied the cave around her.

Strange she thought, frowning a little I would have a guard or two here if this was my base

   The cave was nearly two dozen feet long and was quite narrow at barely a dozen paces across, the ceiling rose sharply the deeper into the cave it went, rising from nearly twice the huntress’s height at the entrance to well over three times at the far end.  There looked to be only one way to proceed; a single wide passageway breaking the rough surface of the cave’s far wall, Venus quickly made her way towards it, her booted feet nearly silent as she made her way across the cave and headed into the tunnel.

   The tunnel headed downwards at a steep angle and gradually turned to the left; Venus clung to the inner wall as she descended, she was trailing the fingers of her left along the rough stone as she moved through the tunnel and her lips were moving silently as she walked.  This wall touching and step counting was an old Shadow Hunter’s trick she had learned long ago, it was used to both to memorize the number of steps the hunter had taken and the doorways or tunnel mouths they had passed.

    The tunnel was of rough stone and though broken with the occasion small crack or niche it didn’t have any side branches or doorways coming off of it as Venus made her way deeper. After the huntress had taken exactly a hundred steps she stopped, there ahead of her was the warm, flickering red-yellow light of several torches and she could hear the rough, deep voices of Minotaur’s coming from ahead.  

   Venus froze in place, fingers tightening on her sword hilt as she peered down the tunnel; there was a soft clatter and rattle, as if of bone or pearls rattling together, then a sudden burst of groans and vile curses that were almost but not quite drowned out by a deep, guttural laugh and a moment later there was the clatter and clinking of metal on metal.  

Gambling Venus realized There is more than one Minotaur and they are gambling together

   Dropping first to her hands and knees, then to her belly, Venus slowly made her way closer to the torchlight and voices, holding her sword up in one hand so it would scrape against the stone.  It took a lot longer for her to proceed down the tunnel but there was a lower chance of her being spotted, especially by a creature as tall and bulky as a Minotaur.

    Now that she was closer Venus could see the source of the voices and laughter, there was a group of four of the massive bullmen in the cavern before her.  They were all well armed, each of them wore massive swords on their hips and a long, barbed spear on the ground beside them; the group was gathered around what looked like a crudely drawn circle on the ground, it’s borders were marked out in a pale blue substance that looked like some kind of chalk or powdered stone and there were tall stacks of silver coins stacked before each of the bullmen.

   Venus’s big brown eyes never left the four Minotaur’s as she slowly eased herself back up the slope, crawling with so little noise was difficult and rather time consuming but it paid off here as not a single one of the gamblers looked up from their game to notice the huntress half hidden in the shadows. 

   Biting her lip absently Venus rose into a crouch and stared down the sloping corridor *I could just charge in and attack* she reflected *I would probably get one or two of before they even notice I am there.* Her lips quirked in a thoughtful frown *But if one of them looks up or I miss the first kill I could be fighting three or maybe even four at the same time*

   *I could try to stay hidden, wait and hope that some of them leave or they separate* the thought had barely crossed her mind before she dismissed it; the odds of success were simply too low for her to consider it.  *Maybe there’s a way to lure one of them away from the others*