In the darkness Will was forced to rely on sound more than sight.
“And who might that be?” Will asked, listening for where the sounds of reply would come from.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Skullcrusher said. The gnoll’s voice reverberated from every direction, but the sounds of his movement didn’t echo in the same way.
“I would,” said Will dryly. “That’s why I asked.”
Skullcrusher cackled, the sound coming from every direction. “You're not in a position to be asking questions.”
Will attempted to magically illuminate the whole area, but only managed a few feet of light. In the darkness beyond his range of vision, he relied on his ears to guide him.
The metal floor of whatever this room was, Will guessed it was a lab of some kind, clanked faintly with each step Skullcrusher took. He was circling the room, probably waiting for Will to make a move.
A vine slithered around Will’s ankle, holding him fast. He didn’t attempt to break free of its grasp just yet.
“What are you getting out of this deal?” Will asked.
“That's none of your concern,” Skullcrusher said.
“If you answer my questions, I won't resist,” Will said. “You're scared I will, and that I'll put up more of a fight than you can handle.”
“You can't threaten me,” said Skullcrusher, but his confidence audibly wavered. “Not alone, at least.”
Will laughed. “I'm not alone,” he said. “Glorious Purpose has been waiting for my signal just outside the room.”
“I don't believe you,” Skullcrusher said. “The walls of my lab are lined with lead.”
Of course, Will thought bitterly. Of course that was a thing. Unless it wasn't, and Skullcrusher was also bluffing.
“You're not resisting,” Skullcrusher observed. “even though I'm not divulging anything.”
Will crushed the vine that was holding him with his other foot and leapt from the lily pad to the metal floor. He felt the vibrations spread out from the force of his landing, attempting to piece together a mental map of the area.
He moved forward, hand outstretched, looking for a wall. He suspected the lab was a circle or other regular shape, and he found a flat, leaf-covered wall to orient himself on.
Skullcrusher began running after him, running on all fours like some kind of predatory animal. Will ran the other way, keeping one hand gliding against the wall. From the angle of where walls met, he guessed that the room was either a hexagon or an octagon.
Tables and shelves appeared out of the darkness as Will ran, dodging around every obstruction more on instinct than conscious reaction. Some housed plants, some carried piles of books and stacks of notes, and one looked like a pile of unfolded laundry on an ironing board.
Skullcrusher wasn’t as maneuverable as Will, but he knew the space better. This did appear to be where he both lived and worked, which meant…
“You won’t find a way out like that,” said Skullcrusher. His voice buzzed from the walls, and Will found a flower like the screen orchids the botanist was so fond of. As he had thought, it was broadcasting his voice.
“I don’t need a way out,” Will said, yanking hard on the speaker-flower. He pulled it free and crushed it underhoof as he searched out another.
Instead, he bumped into something that looked like an empty mobile planter box, which he grabbed and slid in a random direction, where it slammed into something unseen. There was the sound of glass breaking against the floor, and the sound of something small skittering and squeaking.
“Don’t touch those, they’re very delicate!” Skullcrusher shouted.
“That’s why I’m touching them!” Will said excitedly, grabbing a coffee mug from a table covered in moss and throwing it to the ground, where it broke apart very satisfyingly.
“Aaaarooooogh!” Skullcrusher screamed, leaping directly at Will and slamming into him with an audible thud.
The gnoll’s huge hand clamped around Will’s neck, pinning him to the floor with just enough slack that Will could breathe. “STOP!” Skullcrusher shouted, which was doubly unnecessary given that Will couldn’t move and was close enough to smell his peanut-buttery breath.
“I’m not letting you ruin this for me,” Skullcrusher shouted. “I’m NOT!”
“Ruin what?” Will managed to ask. “What are you planning?”
“I’m not telling you,” Skullcrusher said, but Will noticed that he loosened his grip so that Will could talk freely. “You wouldn’t get it.”
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“I study freshwater invertebrates for a living,” Will said. This wasn’t technically true, but it was something he was planning to do, assuming he did in fact save the world and get to go home.
“There are mussels that purify water as well as the best machines,” Will continued. “And a kind of insect that swims around on its back, using surface tension to skate under the surface of water. There’s a spider that lives its entire life in an air-filled web underwater.”
“And nobody cares! I get it, okay? It feels like nobody cares.” Will paused to breathe. “But I care. I think your research is amazing. I think it can help people.”
“You’re lying,” Skullcrusher said softly. “How would such a creature keep an air bubble breathable?”
“The spider’s web keeps the bubble stable and is fine enough to allow gasses to diffuse into the water. Oxygen flows in and carbon dioxide flows out.”
“Incredible,” Skullcrusher said. He got to his feet and flicked the incandescent lights of the lab back on, dazzling both Will and himself.
The lab looked like a greenhouse, with plants growing from every wall. Tables and equipment were strewn haphazardly across the room, and it was a small miracle Will had only run into one. Ripped plants and piles of spilled fertilizer dotted the floor, and Will was pretty sure most of that wasn’t his fault.
Skullcrusher looked upset in a way Will hadn’t expected, like a dog anticipating a scolding. The gnoll hunched over a desk, face ashen.
“What are you really doing here?” Will asked again. “Who are you working for?”
“I truly don’t know,” said Skullcrusher plainly. “The master is very secretive. I design plants for him and he pays for my research. His ultimate goal, and what I’m really working on, is a cultivable warp flower.”
“Like the kind Daphnis grows?” Will asked.
“Sort of. The master wants something more reliable. He doesn’t trust the kind Daphnis grows, he wants something entirely unlike it. Something with deeper roots.”
“So, same goal, different start?” Will asked.
“If you like,” Skullcrusher said. From a compartment in his desk he extracted a bleached-white animal bone, which he began gnawing on between sentences. “I’m close to a breakthrough, I know it, but the master is starting to lose patience.”
“The master will be… disappointed with me when he finds out I’ve had so many setbacks,” Skullcrusher continued, suddenly cowering in fear from an invisible enemy. “...And then I’ll be out of a job and I’ll have to move back in with my brothers and I’ll spend the rest of my life gutting eels on a houseboat.”
“It sounds like you’re jumping to the worst-case scenario,” Will said calmly. “Several men had false memories that seemed to originate from here, do you know anything about that?”
“The last time I saw the master in person was a few months ago, where I gave another of his minions a weapon I had developed.”
“Was the weapon a nettle hydra in a jar?” Will asked.
“Yes!” Skullcrusher said, ears raised in surprise and curiosity. “Did you see it in action? Were you impressed?”
“It was great,” Will said encouragingly. “But it replaced a gift for Daphnis the scribe, and we were sent to apprehend whoever was responsible. Daphnis himself—“
“Wait,” Skullcrusher said, perking up. “I tricked a scribe? I unleashed a monster upon his feast?”
“I guess you could put it that way,” Will said. “It was certainly your hydra, at least.”
Skullcrusher giggled excitedly to himself. “It’s settled. You will take me to Daphnis and I will gloat before him. He will punish and scorn me, and I’ll be infamous. An iconoclast, a rebel, a bad boy. Everyone will want to see my creations. It’s flawless.”
“I’m not sure I’d call it—“
“Silence!” Skullcrusher shouted, standing up as tall as he could. “I must gather my things. If I am to be your prisoner, I can’t leave anything important behind.”
Skullcrusher began rummaging through the lab, tossing objects into discrete piles. If one was ‘keep’ and the other ‘leave,’ Will couldn’t tell the difference.
“You’re taking this remarkably well,” Will observed.
“When opportunity beckons, it’s best to lubricate quickly!”
“Right,” said Will. “Not how I would put it, but okay.”
Will sat down on a stone column that had been turned into a bench. He wondered where everyone was, and if Glory really couldn’t detect him at all.
“You said he was looking for people from earth,” Will prompted. “Do you know why?”
“No,” said Skullcrusher. “He stressed it, but never elaborated why. I suspect it’s connected to the warp flower research.”
“He wants to go to earth?” Will asked. He had a sudden, terrible, absurd vision of what an alien invasion from Planet XXXIV might look like.
“It’s just a hypothesis,” Skullcrusher said. “Truthfully, I only picked up where you were from because the master provided a list of words and phrases he suspected earthlings would use.”
“How would he know that?” Will asked. He suddenly felt as though he were being watched, or had been for a long time.
“Again, I don’t know. Historical records, maybe.”
“How many people from earth have come here?” Will asked. “And if you say you don’t know again I’ll scream.”
“I… uh,” Skullcrusher paused. “Somewhere between one and one thousand. Just a hypothesis.”
Will directed his existential angst away from Skullcrusher, who of course couldn’t be faulted for not knowing everything. He would have to have words with Glory, though.
As if on cue, Glory burst through the ceiling of the lab, followed immediately by a giant ice worm and half a ton of gravelly slush. This was, Will decided, absolutely fucking typical.