Mibbet swam as fast as she could (not particularly fast, what use is a body without built-in flippers? But she was doing her best, despite the physiological limitations.) She twisted and turned through the dizzying array of tunnels, not even wanting to think too hard about why the water still had a current. Still, there were more pressing concerns, for now, that could be summed up in a handy checklist.

1. Don’t get caught,

2. Don’t get caught,

3. definitely DO NOT GET CAUGHT.

4. Ignore the silly voice in your head telling you, it’s just an eldritch being, you can take it, remember, IT IS AN ELDRITCH BEING YOU CAN NOT TAKE IT.

5. In case you forgot DON’T GET CAUGHT.

Behind her the creature searched, kicking up splashes of water, gradually drawing closer, and closer, and closer with every passing second. Then at last Mibbet spotted it, a ladder heading upwards, in the rough vicinity of her destination. She quickly pressed herself down in the water and did the best she could in a human body to leap clear and land grabbing the rail, in order to climb up.

“You’re bloody lucky” Rosalind snapped, in her best bossy tone. “If you’d mistimed that jump you’d have walloped your chin, pratt-falled, and given your location away all in one go, now get climbing. I have no desire to end up eaten by a horror of the void thank you very much.”

Mibbet knew already, but for now, her top priority was on getting the hell out of here as fast as possible, Before some kind of tentacle dragged her back down or something. Her unfortunate encounter with Rosalind’s dubious tastes in literature had provided her with all the information she needed to reach the fairly firm conclusion that princess plus tentacle did not end well, and she had no desire to be given A tickle, let alone ten.

She didn’t know where those books had come from, and truthfully she didn’t want to, well except maybe to visit the writer one day and smack them one, and really, who would blame her?

So she scrambled up that ladder at a speed that would make a royal guardsman feel insecure about their performance, as behind her a long tendril snapped out, narrowly missing her.

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Se-h’m Pye of course knew exactly where they were, and was making at least a half-hearted effort to capture her, but so far she was making so much effort it was almost cute, besides they had a date with FlarGtaghn later (and she had such beautiful Flaracaps he really didn’t want to miss that, even if it meant having one of the elders for a brother in law. Could be worse, at least it wasn’t Cthulu, that guy drove him, and everybody else for that matter, nuts.)

So he did what he had to, and put in the token effort to hunt her down, making a huge show of the angry searching, muttering, and growling dramatically the entire time. (Always a crowd-pleaser, really helped drain the ol’ SAN gauge,) even snatching at her on occasion with a tendril or talon. OH looks like they were making a break for the surface, time was almost up.

But he did have a responsibility to watch over the young races, (it was always amusing to him that their little gods thought that they were responsible for the elder's creation, rather than slapping physical forms on things too ancient for them to ever comprehend, it was adorable.) in this case that meant babysitting and assessing how their race was doing. They clearly weren’t ready yet to understand, so now he had to make sure the beacon got lit. Failure was not an option for these creatures, (OK, OK it was, but he had a date later, and ruining his appetite like that wasn’t an option. Besides, he kinda had a feeling he’d feel sucky if he nommed the emerging race. He knew he shouldn’t have named that one, even if GeORGe was a really cute name for them. Everybody knows that naming them means you’ve already lost.)

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

So he slowly hauled himself up through the impossibly small manhole, almost getting through before, did they just slam the lid on him? Clever girl GeORGe, clever girl.

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Mibbet slammed the lid shut, and locked it in place, not that she expected that to hold for long, this thing treated the laws of physics as vaguely worded suggestions and seemed to have at best a tenuous connection to mortality. So as soon as the lid slammed shut, and sealed, she took off at a sprint.

Behind her, there was an ear rending, horrifying imitation of a chuckle, and the creature gradually started to pour itself through the vent holes in the lid, like some kind of horrendous, nightmarish version of a child’s modeling clay toy, (with less chance of getting stuck in the carpet of course. Even superglue isn’t as good at clagging to a carpet as that crud, and we all know it.)

Mibbet glanced behind her once more, seeing the oozy tendrils pulling clear, and decided that the speed of nope was no longer sufficient, pouring on a few more nopes per second, to break the hellnaw barrier.

The tower was now right in front, just up the stairs, and that was a lot of stairs. Apparently, the architect, no longer content to settle for a straightforward up and down configuration for their architecture, had invaded Escher, and Dali’s dreamscapes slapped them together into a monstrous amalgam, then fed it to Bosch. Then they had decided that the resultant bowel movement would be a perfect architectural style to go for in this particular structure. Mibbet was willing to swear, that at multiple locations staircases literally ran through other staircases, that a second earlier had appeared to be below them.

In other places, passages ran through statues, which were just about transparent enough to leave her guessing whether it was blocked off with glass, or somehow only existing in a vague sense. Normally it would be enough to make anybody stop and stair, but Mibbet right now couldn’t even afford to stop FOR stairs. She hit the staircase at a dead sprint and just kept on running. Her legs felt like they were going to drop off any moment, but after a conference with survival instincts, imagination (which had some very disturbing suggestions for things that would happen if they stopped, including rather more detail from Rosalind’s literature,) common sense (which was with imagination on this one, even if the fates it suggested were less disturbing,) and an executive vote from adrenaline, had decided, that despite the protests the muscles were putting up, overtime was definitely in their best interests.

So Mibbet piled on the speed, with legs like putty, and when that wasn’t enough got her arms to lend her a hand, as far below, the creature burst through the door to the tower behind her.

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Se-h’m Pye always hated this bit, and was willing to swear the creators had put this place in just to spite them. Because they could easily ignore most of physics, but there were still rules, they had to follow the trail of the mortal. Meaning no turning into a slug thing and climbing the walls, no hovering, no suddenly sprouting extra legs to speed the process, that would be cheating. they had to climb the stairs, ALL the stairs, of course, if there was an obstacle placed in the path they were allowed to ooze through, or around it. But they couldn’t bypass the stairs, they had to climb up these things every few million damn years, and they absolutely hated it. At least this time's trial opponent was a little fun to watch. He still remembered the time the trial had involved a glacier beast, rules then had matched him to his prey’s speed (they always did,) which when the speed is measured in meters per century, had not exactly made for a thrilling chase.

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Mibbet stepped onto another floor, and wished she hadn’t, it was an entire corridor of doors, and Mibbet was fairly willing to be they were all linked at random. Given that the passage seemed to go on forever if you walked in a straight line Mibbet sighed. She had no choice but to verify her theory. Sure enough, it spat her out of a random door, oh well, it was time to get this over with. Behind her, the creature reached for a door too, and she took off through another at a dead sprint.

After a few near misses when she opened a door to find herself almost face to face with the creature, she finally reached the end of the passage and saw the beacon up ahead. But the monster was catching up, Mibbet did the only thing she could, turning to the beacon up ahead, she summoned her magic and cast a teeny tiny little FIRE.