FRESH AIR! FREEDOM!

     AMPHIS has since woken up, despite orders from COLUS to remain in bed resting. He really needs to keep himself together, especially if the information he translates could be useful to us. Any mistake he makes could cost us... dearly... He assures us he's fine, and no-one would know better I suppose than himself, but I still have my doubts about his performance levels. Well, at least he had something to eat, a step I expected him to skip, and he's now elbow deep once more in papers and books. Me, THEXIS, UOPETA and THEROS are back in the tunnel though; having made the start of the final stage an hour or so ago, we're hoping to break through by the end of the day. I must admit, after seeing the position THEROS had pointed us at in terms of tunnel progress, I was surprised it wasn't taking longer! There was a massive distance between the base and the tower, and we hadn't exactly taken the most direct route...

"Well judging from what COLUS and OROTHO have said, this tunnel should make it faster to go to the tower from the base. Looking at your map, I can't see how that works."

"Well think about how much time we have to wait while I'm ensuring the coast ahead is clear...? There won't be any more of that. And we have a direct route to where we need to get to."

"Yeah, but have you taken the time to actually take in how long the tunnel is...?"

"Well we'll have to find some way of amusing ourselves on the journeys back and forth then... We don't need to worry about being quiet or cautious, so... I don't know, we could have a sing song..."

"I do hope you're joking. I've heard your singing..."

"I spy then...?"

"Okay then... I spy with my little eye, something beginning with... S..."

"...Stone...?"

"And that's every game of I spy done with..."

"Touché UOPETA... Touché..."

We continued laughing and joking as we continued digging, and the time seemed to fly by. The whole idea of "time flies when you're having fun" must really be true... We made quite a large amount of progress and I can't really remember doing any of it at all... Not necessarily a bad thing considering how tedious the job was...

----

     We've made it! We've actually got to the end! THEROS has judged from the length of the Eastern tunnel that we're as close as we can get to the tower without actually coming out in the sand! We're now going to begin mining out the shaft that will head towards the surface, and we have to hope that we don't come out too close to the tower. Now because of OROTHO's grand security door design, we have to reduce the width of the tunnel by a metre or so, which isn't a major issue, but it does slow down the progress we had been making. I've been put with THEXIS on material removal, whilst UOPETA and THEROS mine out the stairs. I hadn't actually realised it, but all of the stone, dirt and gravel that we had excavated had been thrown into the lava channel near the entrance. That was a lot of waste material, all being destroyed, but we had no use for it, and there was nowhere else to put it. However, the upside to the narrowing of the tunnel was less material to dispose of.

"Are any of us aware what time it is...?"

"Erm... late afternoon... Why...?"

"Well if it's too dark out there and they break through the surface, the lights close to the entrance might be visible from the tower... Depending on how close we are to it that is..."

"We should be fine. OROTHO reckons we should come out a decent distance away from the tower, but just in case, we aren't putting any torches up near the entrance until we know for sure."

"Fair enough, but also if it's late afternoon, there won't be enough time for OROTHO and Joe to install the door until tomorrow, which means there's a gaping hold leading directly our base..."

"Well we'll just have to keep some material aside and block the entrance up before we leave."

THEROS and UOPETA stopped mining, and they looked down at us.

"I think we're through..."

UOPETA continued a little further digging out more of the dirt, until a small amount of light began to shine through. We had done it! We were there! UOPETA pushed the last of the dirt through and came back down a few steps in case there was anyone on the surface.

Waiting a few moments to see if we had drawn the attention of someone on the surface, I then began to ascend the steps to see where we were. With each step, my heart began to beat a little faster. Eventually, I reached the top, and hesitantly poked out my head; there was no-one around that I could see of. Then again, we had somehow managed to surface almost directly beneath a tree! Moving off to the right to assess where we were, it didn't take long to determine that the last week or so had not been in vane at all.

There was going to be celebration tonight!

Syeonyx signing off