The passage was narrow and grimy, and stank like the greatest sedersi in the world mixed together. Still, Gudras felt at ease climbing through its filth-encrusted depths.
His large feet stomped through the grime, seemingly finding easy lodging for every step. It was almost like wading into a swamp, but it felt like strolling into summer field. A very stinking, summer field.
Gudras alternated his attention between peering into the darkness that laid before him, and the frog into his arms. Slimy croaked weakly under his scratches, trying to wriggle out both from them and from his hold, but his efforts were for naught.
They proceded into this instable tranquillity for a bit.
Eventually, the tunnel ended, and Gudras stepped into a open space.
Waterfalls of black, viscuous liquid made-up the walls of the ample room. The ceiling seemed to reach into infinity, barely visible through a gloomy haze.
Before him, the room seemed to go forward and forward, no visible end in sight.
Curious, Gudras advanced. His naked, pudgy feet made a dry sound upon the tiled floor.
He blinked.
There, in the bottom. There was something. He could swear that there wasn't anything a moment before.
Even more curious, he kept on advancing.
As he did, the object's features cleared.
It was a big table, darkened by damp and eroded by time. A fat humanoid the colour of bile seated at it, its only eye fixed on the mass of parchement laid before him.
He was scribbling on it with a long quill, and, as he got closer, Gudras caught snippets of his grumbling.
"Acne, Laryngitis, Retinoblastoma, Pleurisy, Tinnitus, Pur-char-char, Black Fever, White Fever." He mumbled, the quiver never stopping on scribbling.
Gudras stopped before the table. It was so tall that he managed to peek over its surface only by getting on his tiptoes.
He stood there, unsure of what to do. Sure, the writing guy seemed nice, but he seemed even very busy with very important stuff. He wasn't sure if it was proper to disturb him.
Slimy resolved the matter for him.
Getting impatient, the frog opened his mouth and lashed out with his tongue. The wet appendage stroke the cyclops scribe right at the top of his head, where a large horn jutted out. It remained attached for a moment, before returning down with a smacking sound.
The cyclops, barely wincing, snapped to look at Gudras.
Gudras jolted, very afraid.
"I am so sorry, sir." He said hurriedly. "That was Slimy. Stupid, stupid Slimy!"
To prove his point, he raised the frog over his head, showing him off. Slimy, far from feeling guilt, croaked in defiance.
The cyclops watched at the frog for a moment, face unreadable, before setting down the quiver and straightening himself.
"Well, i am appalled." He said, with a deep, cavernous voice. He sounded mightily outraged. "Youth shouldn't disturb the elderly, isn't, now?"
Gudras clutched Slimy in contrite embarassment. Of course he was right. What a terrible situation.
"I am so sorry, sir." He said. "He escaped from my grasp."
"Well, clumsiness is no excuse, as carelessness is not."
Gudras trembled as the big eye of the cyclops fixed on him.
"Have you something else to add on your defence?"
Gudras thought hard about it. He really hadn't nothing.
"I will make up to you, sir." He said. "I promise. Just ask away what is the payment for your forgiveness."
The table rumbled slightly when the cyclops smacked it with one of his large hands.
"Well, now this is talking like a respectful child." The hardness in his eye seemed to alleviate slightly. "Dear me, i was thanking of you like some disrespectful brat, but your words belies that credence."
Gudras clutched Slimy tighter, ignoring the gros's corak of protest. He felt embarassed by those praises.
"Well, now i have nothing to ask of you, but the promise i will remember and for now that's good enough." The cyclops' eye blinked. "But do tell now, little one. Why do you walk this hall? Don't you know that here is forbidden place?"
"Again, my greatest apologies, sir, but i am new here and i was searching for the fount of the green life."
"The fount? Ah, that's how it is, then."
The cyclops shook his big head.
"You cannot pass, little one. Not now."
He raised a hand to stop Gudras' protest.
"You have to earn your spurs first, you see? None bar knights can see the fount." The eye of the cyclops fixed on Gudras. There was a soft glow in it. "Are you a knight?"
"No… i am not…"
"Then, that's what your due is."
The cyclops waved once and beside the table two doors appeared.
Gudras blinked. They seemed to shift and move like bubbling bile. As he watched, they stopped and defined themselves. One was a single iron slab, a single golden ring hanging from a notch carved in it. The second was polished wood, carved with delicate images of birds.
"These are the places, these are the times." The cyclops said. "Choose now, footman. Your spurs await for you."
Gudras watched him for a moment, before his gaze shifted to the door once again. Unease, fear and burning curiosity fought for dominance inside of him.
He moved before the doors, eyeing them both warily.
Whispers edged along his coscience. Snippets of discussion, far and away, slithered between his thoughts.
He raised a hand toward the iron door.
As he did so, the whispers seemed to raise in intensity while voices failed and fewer remained.
They talked of… stomping of iron-shod feet. Crackling of fire. Roars of monsters. Twisted boughs. Horns over horns.
He stepped back, and the vision retreated.
He was unsure.
He watched the second door. Pure, incorrupted, the carvings' eyes seemed to reflect his own gaze.
He stepped to it and put his hand over it. The voices raised and he understood… bones that grow. The glint of light over a sheated blade. A mask that break. Endless defiance. Despair.
He paused for a moment, before nodding.
"Good luck." The cyclops said, already returning to pick up the quill.
Gudras nodded to him, then to Slimy.
The frog croaked weakly.
"Don't be like that. We'll have fun."
Saying that, Gudras pushed the wooden door and stepped inside.
Darkness stood beyond the threshold and it engulfed him.
Gudras fled through it like a flying bird. Stars and planets passed by him. He saw fires engulf them, some raging strong, others about to gutter out. Colossal beasts seemed to linger just beyond the black shroud of space, enormous, darkened shapes that writhed and twisted like shadows on a great wall.
Gudras felt himself accelerate. The stars elongated in lines of light, the planets disappeared into a chaotic blur of colours.
Feeling Hoyful exhilaration, flowing through him, Gudras moved his gaze from them and forward.
There! Alone in the immense distance of space, a point of lithe light. That was his destination! He could feel it!
As the light grew closer and closer, he clutched Slimy harder. The frog croaked in protest.
The light became great as a building, then as a city, then as a planet.
Just a moment before impacting against it, Gudras had the image of an enormous ship voyaging through space. A crystalline, lithe structure of what seemed like bone made-up the frame of it. Fin-likes strutture and domes of glass dotted the titanic structure. And there, just in the canals of bones that kept everything together, Gudras could see shapes and forms, like fishes in the water, gliding through currents of built reality.
Then, he was against it.
Aquamarine light filled his vision. The speed that was carrying him seemed to wriggle around him like loose strings before compattino again.
Smooth, white walls appeared before his eyes. Scents of martial purity and cleaniness hit him, together with hot, stable air. The costrictions of the material realm fell upon him like a ton of chains, and for a momenth he just stood there, scrunching his nose in distaste, trying to get used to it.
He didn't. But there was little he could do about it.
Ill at ease, he looked around.
He was in what looked like a corridor. There was a closed door at the end, smooth white as everything else.
He walked towards it, but stopped right away.
Someone was coming.
Acting out of instict, he jumped into one of the grates that stood on the ceiling. The incredibly annoying laws of that plane of existence didn't stop him from taking a liquid form and slips between the bars.
There, he waited.
Only after a moment he remembered of putting a hand over Slimy's mouth.
As the frog emitted a muffled croak of protest, the door opened and Gudras heard steps coming close.
"It's here, Farseer?" A stern, male voice said.
As Gudras tried to lean to see better, two figures appeared in his vision.
The first was a warrior in lithe armor. An elongated helmet covered his head, and he was watching at his comrade. This one was a female, her armor a lot more ornated than that of the male. She wore no helmet, letting her long, golden hair flowing down her back.
She clutched a staff in her hand, and she wore a look of concentration.
Gudras didn't need to hear her reply, since he knew that she was a Farseer and she had felt his arrival over the Craftworld.
Clutching Slimy under his arm, he retrated deeper inside the system of the Craftworld, liquefying into a green puddle to pass through tubes and gaps.
He had to earn his spurs to being admitted at the fount's presence, but how was that supposed to happen? What was he supposed to do exactly? He would have to think long and hard about it.