Winston squeezed and squirmed his way through the narrow tunnel, his fur brushing against the damp, curved walls of the pipe. The map's riddling verses danced in his mind as he inched forward,
pack
leading the way. This was precisely the sort of delightful predicament the ferret lived for. An unknown place, with a mystery tresure, behind a locked gate no less. Were it not for the, quite frankly, pretty unpleasant confines of the pipe, he might have indulged in a giggle.The tunnel curved this way and that in sometimes shallow, sometimes sharp turns. The dim light fading behind him as he went, he had to stop regularly to breath and unhook himself from some snagging hook or crag in the surface of the damp tunnel. Winston's whiskers twitched, detecting the occasional gust of air passing through as pressures changed somewhere far off in the distance. He hoped it was merely a swelling of some distant pool and not something more troubling.
"How you doing up there?"
"Gud chief. Jost takin' a shart rest. Smells great en 'ere don't et."
After what seemed like an age of subterranean crawling, he spotted a soft green glow ahead. As he rounded the next bend, the tunnel opened into a small grotto. Phosphorescent mushrooms lined the earthen walls, their soft green light bathing the area in an enchanting aura.
"Shallifa! Well now, ain't dis a pretty sight?"
"Bickering toadstools shining yuh recan?"
Joe
bobbed alongside, his ethereal form floating through the confined space of the tunnel and into the relatively spacious catacomb with ease. "Let's not linger here too long. The 'unlucky man' part doesn't fill me with confidence."
Winston chuckled.
"Have a little whimsy, my friend! Where's your sense of adventure?"
Joe smirked, replying with a casual tone as he floated around the space they now had.
"Back in the forge, with Chest, Angela and a nice spirit-cake or two."
"We cun stay lang enough far a snack an' per'aps callect some samples."
As he collected ample samples of the fungus into his pack, a narrow crevice in the far wall caught his eye, vines and tendrils spilling forth. He scurried over, Joe trailing behind with the resigned air of a longstanding companion to an incurable mishap waiting to happen. Peering through the gap, Winston's face split into a joyous grin.
Beyond lay a lush, subterranean glade of mushrooms and mosses thriving under the gentle radiance of more phosphorescent fungi. A babbling brook meandered through the center, its waters glinting with an almost mischievous quality.
The gentle falling waters echoed around them, traveling forth and returning from pipes and alcoves all around the larger open space like a cacophony of gentle words spoken in some tumbling foreign language.
"The whispers to guide us with their song!"
It was no surprise to find something that flourished around portals and teleportation inside the house of the Lady of Portals herself. The area fellt spaciouse to the ferret after his previous confinement, though in truth it was little more than a few feet tall and wide and a yard or two long as it descended in an uneven and broken fashion, the space clearly having been formed from the decay of some past structure deep under the complex of Saiore's Dream.
At the source of the stream, where the water entered the 'room', there appeared to be some kind of collapse. It was not the only entrance and certainly not the simplest to explore, but with a little closer inspection, he made a rather gruesome discovery. Lodged in the rubble opening was a skeletal finger, reaching out into the water. Upon the finger was a betrothal ring, typically that of a husband to be if Winston was assessing it right... It looks ancient and the bone had been stripped completely of its flesh. As for the rest of the finger-owner, there was no sign.
"Mun... Well det es certainly nat 'lucky'."
With that and a short prayer for the stranger's lost finger, he decided to take the ring and placed it into his pack. There would not have been many people that lost a finger and a betrothal ring around, though perhaps it would be a story so old no one would remember. Either way, he would hand it to someone up in Sairoe's Dream and then perhaps a relative might have a story to claim the ring by.
"Is it wise to be disturbing that kind of thing?"
Grasping at the ring and gradually turning it to slide it off the finger, his companion replied with a grunt.
"Et's a gud deed, nat theft. We es gonna try tuh return et tuh where et belangs..."
"Batha... Et's... Stuck..."
"I'm just saying, like these things tend to be, you know, haunted and stuff..."
"Well, me can't SEE ghosts, so dat's nat really a prab..."
The tunnel and grotto sped past him as Winston was flushed down the winding stream deeper into the hidden grotto. The slippery walls, glimmering with bioluminescent life, flashed past as his path through the open area, now filled with water, was cut against his will. As he attempted to fight the flow, his claws dug ineffectively into the soft slimy walls and he found himself crashing and bashing his way down into the pipe at the far end of the crag. It was all he could do to try and avoid smashing he head on the stones and walls as they passed him by.
Gasping for air at every opportunity, he found himself taking larger gasps of water then air and cursing the complete lack of salt in the water. Whether it was rain water or waste of some kind, it was not seawater and his gauntlets did nothing to help him breath.
Deciding it was better to go with the flow as best he could until he was flushed into somewhere he could recover from, he tried to go with it as he was dragged through what felt like an unending torrent of twists and turns. The tunnels split and turned and he had little to no control over where he was going.
A few moments later, he came to a sudden and sharp halt as he hit something hard and barred. It was another grate. Worse yet, another LOCKED grate. As the water rushed passed him still, he pushed himself up to where there was a small gap, a gap big enough to breath. His lungs bursting and coughing furiously, he managed to get his snout above the passign water jsut far enough to get sweet air.
"Winston! WINSTON! Are you OK? Can you get out? Teleport! Grab something from your pack!"
As Winston's racing mind fought panic, he attempted to focus on the grill he'd struck. It was the same as the last and locked to boot. HIS PICK! He furiously patted his side, grasping at his tools. Taking it out, fighting the numb sensation in his arms and legs, he turned, pushing against the force of the water as it rushed passed. Unable to hold himself securely aloft from the grate for long, he placed the tools into the latch to prise it open. As he attempted to turn it and what little air-filled space continued to flood, his hand slipped on his tools and it spang out and was flushed away by the gushing currents. His skills were no match for these kind of conditions...
Foolishly, he let out a cry of frustration, before immediately realising his mistake and rising again to try and gain access to some life-sustaining oxygen. There was little to no room left and as what there was ran short, he focused on Joe.
"Me cannat summon a partal widdout a dar, old friend."
"Get the gate open? Opebn the lock. COME ON!"
"Me nat stang enough an' me nat gat any tools..."
"TOOLS? TOOLS! I CAN DO TOOLS!"
The diri became a large crowbar that found its way inexorably towards the drowning ferrets hand. As tools went, it was better than he himself could even have made and as he turned and rammed it into the workings of the latch, he clenched his eyes, focused his mind, braced his knees against the bars and lifted with all his might. His mind was far from clear, but it allowed him to ignore his burning lungs and aching muscles logn enough to press against the bar...
What happened next as the ground gave out beneath him and the world fell into darkness wa a story know only to the wardens of the unconscious as the limp ferret was flushed down and out into the unknown.
Continued here >>
