Honestly, sliding down the slick tunnel at high speeds reminded my of being on a water slide. That might be why I wasn’t panicking. Or I was just in shock. The feeling I had when I entered the cave, definitely felt like I was being pulled in by some force, but that wasn’t as scary as the time that has passed since I started sliding.Enough time to stop flailing around, and start comparing the tunnel with a water slide at least. At least the walls and floor were smooth. Even if it meant I couldn’t stop myself or climb back up this way later, at least I wasn’t going to be shredded to bits by sharp rocks.
Feeling a sudden dip in my stomach, I find myself plunged into a free fall. For a short moment it looks like I’m floating in space, stars glittering all around me, twinkling in the darkness. Then I find myself piercing deep into water and the stars that were below me disappear the instant my head goes under. Ah.. It was a reflection. Pushing that thought aside, I immediately and frantically swim towards the now blurry dots of light above me, desperately reaching upwards for air.
A few moments pass, as my lungs start to convulse in their need for air, before I practically burst through the surface of the water. Gasping for breath, I look around at the spots of light glinting in the distance. I notice a dense cluster of the lights out in the distance to my right at just above water level. I don’t hesitate to start swimming in that direction. I know I’m underground and that those lights aren’t stars, so I’m hoping whatever they are, that they are attached to the walls of the cavern. Hopefully that cluster of lights indicate land to walk on or possibly even a passage out of here.
After a few moments of swimming, a feeling of terror starts to slowly rise within me. The water is pitch black and it must be incredibly deep, considering that I didn’t even touch the bottom of it when I fell into the lake. And everything in the lake was perfectly calm, the entire cavern was absolutely quite. Not being able to see into the dark depths of the water, and the fact that I couldn’t hear or see the water coming out of the hole I fell through…
The implications along with my natural instincts were giving me tunnel vision as I swam with increasing urgency to my destination. After what seemed like hours, but in reality was just a few minutes, I reached the shore of the laked, scrambling out of it as fast as I could before collapsing on a very rocky ground.
Not wanting to even look at the terrifying but apparently harmless water, I stare blankly at the glowing cavern entrance a few feet away from me. Embedded in the walls were many golf ball sized, glowing crystals. It was those that were giving the illusion of stars in the distance. But oddly enough, despite how bright they seemed to be, they only illuminated a few feet around each of them. I take some time to calm down and catch my breath, hoping I wasn’t already hyperventilating, before I force my weary body back up and stumble toward the light.
I go to the wall and gingerly touch one of the light stones. It was cool to the touch and didn’t hurt me as I touched it, which was a plus, so I don’t hesitate to grip at its uneven surface and start tugging at it. I struggle for a moment, noticing that the crystal did shift a little as I clawed at it. But with an idea, I pause to bend over and grab a fist sized rock with a pointed end on one side, and use the pointed end to ‘gently’ bang at the wall around the crystal. With an imaginary ‘pop!’ the crystal tumbled out of the wall and into my eager hand as I fumble to catch it. Now I don’t really want to get close to the water in part due to my hyper active imagination, but this might be the solution to at least one of my problems. So after I gather another couple of the gem, I hold one out in front of me and make my way back to the waters edge. Kneeling down I drop one stone into the water, and to my relief, I see that the water is actually crystal clear. So I cup my hands together, and lift some water up to drink.
My God! This was the best tasting water I’ve ever had. I know I must have swallowed some after I fell, but I was a little too busy to notice how good it tastes. Now a part of me was still afraid of the water being contaminated in some way, but honestly, I couldn’t afford to be picky right now. Maybe in the future I’ll have the tools to cook it or something, but right now, I’ll have to just cross my fingers and hope it doesn’t kill me.
Oddly enough, accomplishing one of my objectives made me feel slightly happy. So with a slight spring in my step, I make my way into the tunnel, shoving most of the crystals into my pocket but keeping one out in case I find myself somewhere dark again. Of course I push away rather forcefully the thoughts of how impractical it’ll be to get back down here to get water, or even if there is a way back up at all.
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Walking down the tunnel, I notice a few holes higher up on the walls, and that the crystals do seem to be growing more sparse the deeper I go. I don’t think I can reach the holes, much less fit into them, so I discard the idea that one of them might lead out. Especially since the thought of being in such a cramped space crawling and climbing for god knows how long. So what feels like an hour, I notice that the cave has been ever so slightly curving to the right and slowly inclining upwards. So with a grin on my face, I start to jog a little hoping to get out of here even just a little faster. I don’t like the feeling of being trapped down here. Of course right after I start jogging, I run right into a fork on the path. One way seems to follow the same direction as the path I’ve been on, but the other turns sharply right and has a very steep incline.
So what now? I ask myself. After hesitating for a moment, I make my way to the right and nearly have to climb to walk up the incline. Five minutes or so in, the pathway abruptly evens out and opens up into a small cavern. I can’t really see how high or wide it is, but I do see a large glowing crystal protruding from the opposite wall about 15 feet or so away.
The crystals are huge, measuring at what I estimate at two to three feet in length and as thick as my arm, all protruding from a clustered base. They were also glowing a soft, shimmering purple, giving off an almost hypnotic effect. Now I know I should just turn around and leave, this wasn’t the exit and and something deep in my mind was literally screaming at me that this was a trap, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t tear my eyes off the crystal cluster. Oddly enough, my first reaction wasn’t fear, but a building irritation at this whole shit show that I’ve been through.
Do I really need to recount everything thats happened? Its just been one thing after another, no pause or break to catch my breath and really think about things and what seems like constant danger, but not really. I’ve been running around like a headless chicken, but I honestly haven’t seen anything to really be afraid of. Now I’ve seen a lot of weird shit, yes but nothing that really was a threat. Actually, I haven’t even seen anything alive except plants. I’ve heard birds and that roaring thing, but I haven’t seen anything yet. And now I’m standing here, completely cumpulsed to stare at a freaking glowing ROCK! So with my head pounding with growing and irrational anger, I stomped over to the damn thing that had me in its clutches, intent on venting myself on it until it let me be on my way.
I barely make it half way across the room, when I suddenly hear a soft scuttling sound from behind me. With a spike of adrenaline and a healthy dose of fear, I tear my eyes away from the crystal, practically imitating a high speed drill to turn around and look for the source of the noise. Not seeing anything in the darkness, freeze for a moment to listen. Silence. Then I hear it again, a soft scuttling noise from just beyond where I can see with my current light source. So I force my stiffened arm to move, reaching into my pocket and grabbing a few more glow stones. Pulling them out, I scatter them across the room towards where I came from, only to freeze up again before screaming like a little girl at what I saw.
In front of me stood two huge fucking spiders. I absolutely hate insects, but I’m not exaggerating when I say they were the size of a freaking dog!! I don’t fucking care that is was “only” the size of a medium sized dog, it was still absolutely horrifying. Did I mention that I hate bug? Especially spiders?
Of course, the moment I scream, those things start scuttling towards me. With a high pitch whimper, I backpedal as fast as I can before stumbling over my own feet and falling backward. I scramble backward as fast as I can reaching around me for a rock or at least something I could use to keep those things away from me. Skittering towards me and making very disturbing clicking sounds, they get within a few feet of me before one of them jumps right at my face. Again, screaming like a little girl, I reach behind me and grab something. Not having much time to look at what I had grabbed at, I pulled at it and with a crunch, it breaks free from wherever it was before. With incredible luck, I swing something purple across, right onto the head of the that had jumped on me. At this point though the second one had already jumped too and landed on my stomach.
After that everything was a blur of me freaking out with limbs flailing everywhere before my vision goes dark again. What seems like only a few moments, I come to my senses only to find myself in all kinds of pain. My whole body hurts and I can see what seems like blood all over me. Before I can even process what is going on, I suddenly have that feeling of ‘eureka!’ like when you figure something out that has kept your mind busy for a long time, or when you remember something you thought you had forgotten. Along with the feeling, a blue box appeared right in the middle of my vision.
Level Up!
I just stare at it for a moment, then pass out again.