Heading down into tunnel was much like how Matthew imaged it’d be if one was a dust mite traveling up someone’s nostril. The air was warm and damp. Viscous slime covered the walls and floor. Putrid green bile dripped from the ceiling, and the smell of the place was foul enough to make him thankful that he hadn’t eaten anything since morning. The pungent odor of rotting plant, old wet fur, damp earth, and putrid flesh decaying blended into a combination that felt caused the hairs in Matthew’s nose to curl up in abject terror, forcing him to breath heavily from his mouth.
The tunnel itself was narrow and claustrophobic, often requiring him to turn sideways and scrap against the corners of the slimy stone passage, or duck and squat as he wound his way through a compact bottleneck, leaving him drenched in the ever-present goo and slime the coated everything. Several times he had to fight back his body’s own desire to retch and gag, and his eyes burned and watered by the time he finally emerged into what was a huge underground cavern.
The cavern he’d came out into opened up into a chamber with the ceiling easily stretching several hundred feet above – perhaps even several thousand feet – and mushrooms the size of trees rocketed out of the ground. Vines as wide as a man’s leg covered the top of the mushrooms like a giant spider web, and loose rope-like tendrils crisscrossed and intertwined around each other making the path between the mushrooms and almost impossible maze to push through.
Waiting on Rebecca, Matthew tried to wipe some of the slime out of his hair and away from his face, but gave up in pure disgust as soon as he realized he was simply smearing it and making it worse with the crude already coating his hands as thickly as it had the rest of him.
Gagging, looking almost as if she was going to pass out from the stench, Rebecca slowly emerged from the tunnel. Slime and goo covered and trailed from her hair and body to such a point that Matthew couldn’t help but be reminded of a video he’d once seen on National Geographic about a foal being born. It’d looked wretched, pitiful, and half dead to him when it emerged from the womb and tried to stand on its feeble knock-kneed legs – and Rebecca reminded him of the exact same scene now.
She staggered. She wobbled. She fell, and then she feebly tried to stand again.
Straining his ears, Matthew struggled to listen for any sound of danger which might threaten them from the depths of the gibberling’s underground haven. When he was satisfied that he couldn’t hear nothing more than the sound of silence, he slowly rubbed his slime covered hand across his ring several times until he could open the black portal where he stored all the things he’d collected that could fit in it over the last year.
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Not really caring what he got, Matthew pulled out a cloth of some sort – a dark shirt with a logo of so band ironed onto the front of it – and tossed it over to Rebecca so she could use it to wipe as much gunk from herself as possible. Reaching back into the hole a second time, he pulled out a pair of white boxers and used them to wipe his hands, face, and hair free of as much goo as he could.
Feeling a little better, Matthew crumped up the fouled shorts and tossed them down on the ground in utter disgust. Reaching back into his portal, he pulled out a gallon of fresh water, popped the lid in one harsh yank, tilted his head back and then poured the gallon over his face and eyes until the last few drops splattered out pitifully across forehead. Once again just tossing the jug to the side without a care in the world, Matthew grabbed another gallon, walked over to Rebecca, and then repeated the process for her. Not happy with the outcome -- her long hair still stained and slimed – Matthew repeated the process with two more jugs pulled from the portal hovering over his left hand.
Finally finished, and seeing how Rebecca was now more in control of herself, Matthew wrinkled his nose and half coughed trying to laugh. “That was….”
“… something we’ll never talk about. Ever,” Rebecca finished, wheezing as firmly as she could manage.
“I understand completely.” Matthew nodded, in complete agreement with her for once.
“Either we’re going to find the damn heart and capture it,” Rebecca coughed, spitting phlegm from the back of her throat, “or we’re going to die down here. I’ll be damned if we’re going back out that way.”
Nodding his total agreement, Matthew pulled on the surrounding darkness and lashed out at the tunnel with the full might of Hel’s blade. With an echoing rumble, the ground shook and slimy stone exploded in all directions, leaving a thick putrid cloud hanging heavily in the air. As the cloud slowly settled, Matthew nodded in utter satisfaction. The entrance had completely collapsed, leaving a pile of various sized rubble and boulders blocking the way out.
“I’ll be damned if anything is going back out that way,” Matthew grinned, staring over at Rebecca. “Those bastards probably heard us, but they’re not getting out that way. At least,” he laughed, “not unless they kill us first and then spend a week digging their way back to the portal!”