Heyyall!
Boy it is good to be back.
I apologize if I perhaps miss you in this, but here we go, our obligatory shout out:
YellowDragoon: Hope you find a real nice sunny cave top to sun tan! Although I doubt you're cold blooded. :p
KorvaxScientist211: Thank you for the continued support! I hope you find a nice spaceship to explore the endless galaxy with. :3
DStarBoy: Hopefully you make it to Hollywood soon!
Review responses:
KorvaxScientist211: Heh... Sometime soon
Thank you all for the support you have shown! It really makes my day and motivates me to write.
Without further delay, let's jump into it!
We skulked down a dark stone hallway. I lifted a fist, signaling Erly to stop behind me. The sound of jangling metal could be heard up ahead. Lights past down a hallway, along with the sounds of a casual conversation.
"They should have the keys." I spoke. "You ready?"
She snorted. "48th time's a charm." She then clapped her hands quietly twice, and seemed to fall against the ceiling as though gravity had reversed.
I stood, breaking into a run towards the hall in which the lights had just come from. Pulling out a deck of cards, I flipped through them quickly. "No, no, no... Definitely not a heron... Maybe a barbari-ant?" I mumbled, before selecting one and flinging it down the hall behind me.
With a flash, I could see a giant alligator the size of an SUV chasing me down the corridor. It's hide shimmered menacingly in the Torchlight. Although it was just an illusion, I still felt strands of adrenaline coursing through me.
Two guards stepped in from the intersecting hall. They were tall Newts in golden leafed armor. High rank. One of them had a rusty pair of keys dangling from his belt.
"rUn FoR yOuR LiFe!!!" I screamed, running past.
The guards let out loud high-pitched screams before ducking back into the hallway they came from. It was astronomically difficult, yet I kept myself from laughing.
Erly clung to the stone roof, just out of Torchlight. She flipped around, and began running upside down. The 'gator' followed.
The old flash and grab technique.
I began jogging to the rendezvous. This was our 48th attempt busting one of Andreus' strongholds, and as far as I knew, the only one we hadn't checked. Although we had picked up a few trinkets and magic artifacts in doing so, we still hadn't found... Her.
I made my way to a large wooden door. It led to the jail cells below. Pulling out a centipede leather bag, I took a paint brush that was resting on my ear, and began pasting bright green queen ant-acid onto the door hinges. The door came off with a Pop, and fell to the ground. I knew I should have waited for Amberly, but if she was here... I needed to see her first.
A musk that reeked of sewage and mold hit me like a wave as I peered down the dark passageway. A faint bluish light illuminated the end point. The stairs were thin enough that only my heel could fit on them.
I carefully made my way down the stairs, and stepped into a large circular chamber. The walls were covered in slime, and the floors were covered in leathery shells. Surrounding the center of the room, large iron bar doors pressed against the walls. They led into separate cells. There were about six in total. Four of which were visibly empty, with mossy slime coating the interior. One contained a human skeleton; however, it looked rather old.
I stepped towards the middle cell, peering through the bars. A rope dangled from the cement roof. It looked like it had been wriggled out of. A large hole was in the center of the stone floor, and the shelves lined the walls of the cell. They were covered in slime and what looked like eggshells.
If Marcy was here, she wasn't now. I sighed, turning around. Standing there almost disappointed, was Amberly.
"Really? What, did you have some mushy gushy speech to recite that you don't want me hearing?" She smirked.
"No!! I told you it's not like that, dingus." I groaned. It was totally like that. I heard myself let out a long sigh of disappointment. Feeling a hand on my shoulder, I glanced in Erly's direction.
"Hey, we'll find her. Don't worry." She gave a reassuring smile.
I nodded, straightening. "Yeah, you're right."
She jingled a ring of keys. "Wanna check it out in there?"
I snatched the keys, turning and slipping them in the lock. It gave some resistance, but with a quick yank to the left, it unlocked and swung open with an eerie creak. I stepped into the cell; my footsteps accentuated with squishing noises.
The cell was a 15 by 15-foot cube. The aforementioned shelves dripped a goo that smelled like sewage. I examined the rope. It had once been tied in a mini double-noose, potentially around someone's wrists, yet one of the loops had been chewed away. Below, the mortar between the large stones had been scraped out. In the back left corner, a pile of stone bricks the size of my head sat. Grimacing, I peered down the hole. It seemed to lead into a small sewer. However...
Something glinting caught my eye.
A butterfly hairclip with a single plastic gem between the wings. She had been here. "Hey! Erly!" I called behind me. "Come look at this."
As she stepped over, I almost winced at the squishing noises her shoes made. "What the what is this stuff?"
"It looks like some form of embryonic fluid." I shrugged.
She shuddered. Peering over the hole, she squinted. "You sure that's hers?"
"Certain." I nodded.
She frowned. "Well, before we do anything we should-"
I jumped in. I realized as I fell it was a lot farther than I had originally thought. I hit the ground, and the impact shot up my legs. It didn't hurt as much as I had expected. It had been almost a 20-foot fall.
Either side stretched off farther than I could see.
I felt the urge to lose my lunch, but kept it down.
"You okay down there?" Erly called from above.
"Other than the fact it smells worse than moldy sushi? Yeah." I pinched my nose. Glancing back and forth, I began making my way down one side of the sewer. My eyes caught onto bits of caterpillar fur lining the ground. "Hey I think I-" I abruptly cut off, the gloom parting down the sewer.
"What was that?" Erly called back.
I didn't respond. A few features I could make out. Bright slitted eyes, long yellowed teeth, and leathery green skin. My face went pale, as the light from the hole above seemed to illuminate the ferocious beast.
"That's just your illusion, right Clark?" Erly called out.
I felt like a moron. The eggs! I was so focused on trying to find Marcy, I didn't even stop to think that just maybe, they actually hatched something. "NoPE!" I squeaked. "That's a froppin gator." Although, it was smaller than most of the songs said. Some said they were the slumbering mountains. Then again, it looked fairly young.
The giant mass of muscle and teeth froze, before opening its jaws wide as if to roar. I clamped my hands over my ears, but no sound came. A barely audible hiss came. The scutes on its back scraped the roof of the sewer passage, barely accommodating the massive creature.
I turned and began sprinting down the corridor. It gave chase, it's scutes tearing through the stone above it, sending debris flying as it wriggled its way through the sewer. I fumbled over the stone, hopping around and barely able to keep moving forwards. ' I have to wonder, if it doesn't fit in the passages well, where did it come from? I stumbled to a halt in front of a huge drop, where the water from the sewage canal to my left poured down into a broth of churning green water. I barely stopped in time, pebbles skittering down into the drop. It opened up into a large circular sewer deposit, sewer canals flowing in miniature waterfalls from all sides. Up where the roof would be, was a giant grate with chains and cages dangling from it.
'Geez. Andreus was cruel. Imagine an eternity trapped in a sewer.' I thought to myself, my face going a little green. I pulled out my deck of cards once more, flipping through the cards. I'd used fifteen cards so far, which meant I only had thirty-seven left. I pulled out a Joker, flinging it behind me. I visualized a large stone between me and the gator. With a flash, an almost seamless wall appeared between the gator and I. I bought some time, but not much. It would most likely discover its incorporeality soon enough. A chain dangled about ten feet in front of me, approximately seven feet up from where I was now. I suddenly got a very bad idea.
My mind spun, trying to put together some sort of plan, or calculate my chances, but I gave up. Maybe I had spent too much time around Erly. I stretched out my limbs, before tossing a medium sized chunk of rock through the illusion. I must have thrown it harder than I thought, because a sudden burst of wind nearly threw me off my feet as a deep-toned roar echoed through the tunnel. It sounded like a loud belch. The gator plowed through the illusion, and launched itself straight at me. I jumped onto it's back as it launched out of the sewer corridor. Fumbling, I leaped upwards towards the chain. A strange surge of strength shot through me, propelling me significantly further than my targeted trajectory. Foux-cursing and flailing mid-air, I managed to grasp the bottom of a cage about ten feet behind the chain I had been going for. I looked down, as the Alligator plummeted down into the massive churning of sewage. Hitherto hitting the water, massive jaws shot out, and an alligator big enough to swallow it whole snapped it out of the air before diving back in.
I had heard that some alligators ate their young, but I thought that was an old wives tale. Climbing up, I began climbing the chain towards the grate. I grasped my fingers through the rivets in the grate, pulling out a beetle steel dagger from my belt. It sliced through the metal with almost no resistance. I cut a large circle, big enough to hoist myself through. The freshly cut metal almost stung with heat. Odd.
I climbed above, standing now in a funnel shaped chamber the size of a large bedroom. It had a small hole in the top. "Probably for filtering out the smell." I mumbled to myself. Two large wooden doors stood on either side of the room. Their surfaces had been polished, and rags were stuffed under the doors.
One of the doors had been untucked, however. My eyes flicked towards a nearby trap door in the grate. "Really?" I groaned. Stepping cautiously forwards, I opened the door. It swung inwards in silence. It led down a damp corridor with stairs. "Does this place never end?!" I groaned. Behind me, something seemed to be slamming against the other door. The rags held it in place. After a minute, it finally burst open. Erly.
"Hoillee- You weren't kidding when you said it stank!" She gasped, pinching her nose. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she made her way to peer down the passage. "This place doesn't end!"
I chuckled. "Yeah." I sat against the doorframe, a wave of exhaustion rolling over me.
"You good?" She tilted her head.
My eyelids felt heavy. "Yeah… I just need to… maybe…." I fell to the ground. My skull smacked against the metal grate, yet I felt no pain. My vision went fuzzy, then black.
Wet. My calves were wet. Along with my entire backside. I gasped for air, sitting up. I had been laying in a pool of water. Everything was white. Even the water. I rubbed my eyes. It wasn't the weirdest I'd seen, but it was strange nonetheless. Ahead of me, a single speck of red seemed to glow faintly in the distance. I stood, and started making my way towards it. The water resisted my movements, and began growing into a thick sludge. Red energy seemed to stain the whiteness, stretching across it until everything glowed a blood red. I felt helpless.
Up above, where I felt the sky should be, a single giant eye opened. It glowed orange. A woman seemed to descend from it. She wore a circlet with a red gem on the center. It radiated with power. She had long blonde hair, the tips stained red. She wore a flowy white dress, that seemed to purify all the red it touched.
The sludge-like water began sucking me in, and it pulled me to my knees and slowly began to rise. I tried to resist, but I couldn't push through.
The woman seemed to walk on the surface of the now red sludge. Nearing me, she placed a single hand on my head. I strained my neck to look up at her. One of her eyes had a scar slicing vertically across her eyelid. In the other, swirled galaxies. A starry sky. "Young one. What is it you desire?"
I frowned, still fighting the suction of the sludge. I attempted to speak, to let sound out, yet nothing escaped.
"You feel… Weak. Helpless." She frowned.
Could she not see me struggling? Wasn't that obvious enough?
The gem on her circlet began glowing with an eerie strength. I had no choice but to avert my eyes. " He is much stronger than he was once." She said, almost distastefully. "Stronger than he should be. You are not supposed to be here either. But perhaps you are the key?"
I squinted, shaking. My body had begun going under.
"Do not trust the sky. Find me. Together, with you as my vessel, we can avoid the calamity to come." She said, removing her hand.
I sucked in one last breath, before I went under.
And then I woke up.
Sorry if it seemed like the writing got a tad bit sloppier near the end!
Hope you guys enjoyed!!
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See yell next week!
-Aj
