It wasn't a horror, to fall. It was weightlessness, it was an untethering, a severing of earthly bonds. With air all around me, in darkness, without the senses or experience to tell up from down, I could have been flying. And falling is only a hair's breadth from flying.

In those moments I spent falling, an eternity of moments, I pondered the alternate course my existence might have taken. I recalled that first choice, offered to me by my angel of evolution. Energy, motion, mystery. What was energy? What was mystery?

I couldn't bring myself to regret my choice. Why second guess my survival when I'd won it by such a slim margin? But still, a bun could wonder.

The space I was falling into was dark, but the dark didn't impede my vision much. The hole opened out into a wide chamber, a new tunnel, this one several feet in diameter, with a flat bottom.

The curved walls of the tunnel were made of moss-strewn bricks, and the floor was occupied by a channel filled with the glossy too-smooth darkness of water.

As I tumbled into the chamber, I felt a sensation I recognized as pressure from my bunrunning skill, urging me to shift my position, to prepare to meet the water. I twisted in the air, bringing my legs under me, and braced for impact.

I hit the water with a tiny splash as my circular body broke the surface. The water was deep, at least ten inches to the brick bottom of the channel. To my surprise it was also clean, clear enough that I could see through it easily, except for the distortion of the surface.

My momentum carried me down to the bottom of the channel, and then I started rising again, the air bubbles trapped in my fluffy flesh granting me some buoyancy.

I kicked my legs against the channel's bottom to aid my natural floatyness, and wound up rocketing out of the water, leaving a trail of droplets in the air as I flew towards the edge of the tunnel.

I landed on my feet on a narrow strip of flat paving stones just at the edge of the channel, where the water gave way to the curved walls.

I stood there for a moment, feeling my surface puff up as some restorative aspect of my body worked to shed the water I absorbed. Moisture beaded on my surface as it was expelled, before slicking away. I even saw powdered sugar reappearing on sections that had been washed clean, the tiny sweet motes springing up in patches as if by magic.

I only wished the same effect would heal my wound, or rid me of the pain in my back and my core. As it was, I felt tired, and moving was feeling increasingly painful.

I spent a minute deciding which direction to travel, during which I rested my weary dough. Both directions curved away for several yards, before the gentle bend of the tunnel blocked my sight.

One direction led into darkness, while I could see a faint light coming from the other. I decided to head in the direction of the light, and set off walking at a sedate pace, grateful for the smooth, sure footing of the tiled walkway.

It wasn't long before I found the source of the light. The ceiling of the tunnel opened up in a hole several feet in diameter, at the top of which I could see faint daylight filtering in.

A rope hung down through the hole, with a wooden bucket tied at the end. By the way the bucket bobbed and tugged on the rope, I could tell that that water had an invisible current running beneath the surface, and it took me a moment to realize where I was.

The well.

The tunnel must have been some kind of aqueduct, bringing water to the well in the grassy lot, and by the size of it, perhaps to other places as well.

I continued walking in the same direction, moving away from the light, but following the current.

I'd been walking for a couple of minutes when I saw the first sign of trouble.

On the wall to my right, a large irregular circle of the brickwork had been scorched brown, the moss that had been growing there dry and dead. At the center of the scorch mark was a patch of unburnt stone.

The shape of the unmarred section was indistinct, but I couldn't shake the impression that it was the silhouette of something that had been standing next to the wall whenever what caused the scorching had struck.

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I checked my surroundings. There was no sign of any trouble now. Just the airy passage, and the almost imperceptible flow of the water. It was peaceful, tranquil, a welcome respite from the chaos above.

I spent another minute walking down the tunnel before I found the next set of scorch marks. Three this time, all clustered close to the ground.

One of them again showed a blurry silhouette, but this one had more definition. I could distinctly make out a rounded bulbous shape, the edge of a blobby body.

Whatever had been between the heat and the wall must have been almost as big as Popo, but with a much different body plan.

I walked on. Soon I came to another feature of the waterway, a pipe descending from the ceiling, with its open end in the water. I could hear a rushing, chugging sound, and there was a slight distortion around where the pipe met the water, that suggested the fluid was being sucked up.

There was no obvious source of power for the upward flow in the tunnel, and I wondered what could be driving it. A hand pump? A windmill? Something stranger?

I found that place, with its gentle swirl of water, to be a fine place to rest my weary body. I walked over and sat down at the edge of the channel, the butt of my round body resting securely on the platform.

I dangled my skewer legs over the edge, feeling the cool water soaking into the battered wood, easing the stress and tension.

I thought about what had happened so far, and what might happen next. I had no clear plan, and now that I was out of immediate danger, I wasn't sure what my goal should be.

The tunnel I was in went in only two directions, and presumably if I followed the current I'd eventually reach a letting-out place that would let me back into the world above, but what then?

Ideally I'd be able to find one of the evolution tokens mentioned by my angel of evolution, but I had little to go on there. I didn't know what they looked like, or where they could be found. I didn't even have a voice that I could use to ask about them.

For now I was still vulnerable to many of the bunivorous creatures I'd meet on the surface, for all my skill with movement.

Perhaps I could find a giant to be my patron, someone without a penchant for living delicacies. Perhaps I could augment my wooden feet with materials better suited for battle. I would accomplish neither sitting there.

I climbed back to my feet, feeling them swollen and puffy from their soak. I left tiny wet dot-prints behind me as I continued my walk down the tunnel with fresh determination.

I passed more scorch marks, closer and closer together. On some of them the moss had started to grow back, speaking to the aqueduct being the theater of an extended and intense conflict.

And in every scorched circle was an image of the same beast, sketched out in too-close focus by the unscorched bricks. A bulbous body, a long tail, at least two fat legs.

I dreaded to meet the creature in person, and trying to imagine what kind of thing it could be had filled me with apprehension. I hadn't seen any sign of any other living thing in the aqueduct tunnels, just bare stone and tranquil water, but my anxiety was giving me the impression of being watched.

I was so focused on the tunnel behind me as I paced, that I almost missed the door.

It didn't look exactly like a door. It was a brass gear, a little taller than I was, set on the end of a copper pipe that opened at ground level next to the platform.

The gaps in the gear were all filled with a grainy substance, which stopped me seeing through it and into the pipe, but I could see from scratches on the ground a pattern of it being rolled to the side.

Whatever it had been originally used for, the pipe was obviously dry now, and the gear, so clearly out of place, had to have been put there by some kind of intelligence.

I was wary about investigating it, conscious that the tunnel was home to a force that could scorch bricks, as well as a large creature, but this was something new and interesting, and another way forward.

I leaned over against the gear and tried to roll it aside with my body, but while it had some give, I could feel it sticking against a latch or lock.

Perhaps I should simply knock?

I lifted my leg and rapped my foot sharply on the gear, three times.

Ting ting ting.

Nothing happened for half a minute, and I was preparing myself to swallow the disappointment and move on, when a voice rang out on the other side of the gear.

"Y'ello? Is someone there?"