They both were quiet for a moment, reflecting on Boyce's idea, until Lloyd resumed. "I'd wager that both places were made by the same people!" The silence that came next lasted until morning when Boyce and Lloyd were snatched from their dream states by the shrill cawing of some crow on a boulder outside the mouth of the cave. Bleary-eyed, the men got to their feet and stretched until they were fully awake, but still relaxed. "What a noise to wake up to!" Lloyd complained. "Oh, leave it be. It's not hurting anything!" Boyce gurgled. "Besides, at least we can get an early start today." They left the cave and sat on the big rock that the crow had vacated. They took some food out of their packs and filled their bowels with the fuel for a rest. Their curiosity and sense of awe had made them go back into the mine. They were in there only briefly while they took some notes and made some calculations approximating the overall dimensions of the mine. They marked the location of this sight on their maps and then proceeded on their journey back to Pomperaque. Not very far from the mine there was a wide, rapid-moving river that they had to cross before they continued their trek overland to the Dark Forest which spanned most of the northern part of the Virgin Mountains. It was a part of the land where no one lived since it was too hostile for any groups of people to settle. Only hunters and criminals roamed those desolate areas. Lloyd and Boyce tried not to think of what lay ahead. They were given the choice of what routes to take and they chose the shortest and most perilous way. They were beginning to see more wild life now, some larger than they had ever seen before. They knew that they were nearing the Dark Forest because of these signs. The forest was home of every kind of titan-like animal, many of which were devilishly ferocious. They came over a rise and there they rested because, across the small aspen rose an escarpment a few hundred meters in height. To keep on schedule, they had to scale the escarpment walls by evening. Overhead, a black bird was circling, quickly nearing the ground with each successive round, until it finally came to rest in the top of a tree between them and the cliffs of the escarpment. It cried out in dry sounding quavers and flapped its wings in a silly-looking manner before it dropped itself off the tree and flew over to the cliffs. "Funny!" voiced Boyce. "What?!" Lloyd asked him, thinking that maybe he did something worthy of being made fun. "That's the second raven they we've seen today, and I wasn't aware that they were indigenous to this area." Lloyd didn't even notice the bird until Boyce pointed-out its presence to him. "Maybe it's lost?" Boyce shrugged at Lloyd's suggestion. He watched the bird fly over the scarp ahead and he sighed with envy. "Too bad we don't have wings to fly over that thing!" Boyce said about the escarpment. "I don't feel up to the climb."