I found myself desperately clutching onto the back of a goblin who was desperately clutching onto the back of a giant badger corpse. All three of us blasting down the rapids of the wildly twisting subterranean aqueduct.
There was a lot of screaming and no small amount of swearing. Which just about summed up the entirety of my life in the Dungeon so far.
~~~~~
I was tense as a coiled spring. The Dungeon had just snitched on me about my [Deceased Adventurer] title. Gig was stricken stalk still in shock, staring at me like I’d spontaneously grown a second head. It was my own damn fault really, I should have gotten the full details on how the dungeon’s contracts worked before sticking my foot in it. I’d gotten ahead of myself, too damn eager to get back on track.
In that shared instant of frozen hesitation, before either of us could make whatever our next move would’ve been, was the exact moment the badger problem decided to solve itself. In spectacular fashion.
The trickles of water flowing around the body suddenly turned to jets, driven by a sudden wave of pressure slamming into the obstruction. I have no idea if the surge in the current was a regular occurrence or if we were just that lucky, but regardless in the moment Gig and I calmly put aside all our other concerns and came to an agreement on a prudent and well reasoned course of action.
“FUCKN’ RUN!” we shouted at each other, in near unison, as we turned to flee down the passage with all the haste impending disaster could lend our limbs.
We barely made it around the first bend when the badger dam gave way with the angry roar of an unleashed maelstrom.
Pushing [Rat Bastard] for every ounce of extra speed I could muster I pulled ahead of Gig and lepped for the alcove I’d been sheltering in earlier. I made it, rebounding off the back wall of the little space and catching myself at the lip of the ledge in a skidding halt.
Reaching out one paw, I called to the goblin that had been hot on my heels.
“Up here! Take my hand!”
She made her own jump for the ledge, falling just short of a hand hold, she found herself scrambling for purchase. Before she could fall away completely I snatched for her wrist and managed to get a paw full of sleeve.
Gig may have been an extra petite young goblin but that still meant she was easily double if not triple my weight. Nevertheless I dug in my claws and hauled with everything Vitality Burst could give me. With gritted teeth and my entire body straining I pulled her up just enough that she was able to find her own precarious grip on the ledge.
We were just in time to be clear of the water crashing into the wall below us like a hammer striking an anvil. Drenching us both in a, now near scolding, spray of the mineral water as it dashed itself against the twisting passage. Followed an instant later by the meteoric collision of the much abused armoured badger corpse. The impact knocked Gig free of her tenuous hold and took me along for the ride. The goblin smacked into the badger’s back and grabbed hold with reflexive desperation.
I hit the water.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
I’d nearly gone under, floundering in the roiling tumalt, when I felt a little hand wrap around my tail before being yanked free of the water.
That’s how we ended up as the captain and first mate of the good ship Big Fuckoff Badger.
~~~~~
It was dark. We Screamed. We swore. We crashed into walls. We hung on for dear life when the badger rolled and tumbled in the current. There were no less than three gods damned waterfalls. Even the relatively benign straightaways were barely breathers between being slammed down contorting rapids. In short it was absolute fucking maddness.
I couldn’t tell you how long we were swept along like that, other than it saying it felt like its own little eternity.
The nearest thing we had to communication along the way was repeatedly screaming “HOLD ON!” at each other. Not that ethire of us really needed the reminder or had any incarnation to do otherwise but not every situation lends itself to rationality. Sometimes you just have to get by on having someone around to be irrational with.
By the time we spotted a very real and literal light at the end of the tunnel we had both been laughing like lunatics as often as we were screaming in terror.
~~~~~
We were all but launched from the tunnel’s mouth and past a thankfully wide open flood gate. The water continued to propel us forward in a rushing torrent as the armoured badger impacted a wooden wall ahead of us with the force of a battering ram. Practically shattering the timber to splinters as we unleashed a deluge on to the chamber beyond.
We weren’t the only ones screaming any more, but we were still the only ones laughing. This time in astonished relief the swirling wurl pool we had just turned the chamber into had finally arrested our forward momentum. leaving us merely spinning and bobbing in the roiling waters of the flooded chamber.
Around us a host of goblin’s splashed, sputtered, and yelled while being tossed around in the tumalt.
One voice broke through the chaos and cacophony. “Close the gate, damn it! CLOSE THE GATE!”
A harried looking godlin in a workmans leathers burst out of a side passage and dashed along a catwalk around the top of the chamber I hadn’t noticed before then. He reached the open flood gate and began frantically cranking on a lever. The gate slowly inched closed cutting off the torrent spilling from the central basin we’d crashed through on our arrival.
The water claimed as it began to drain out of the room through a combination of grates in the floor and the various passages leading out of the chamber. Anywhere it could find a gap to pour out of really.
As the water receded and the room revealed itself I saw that the space was filled with a network of chunky brass pipes and a series of tairest pools and tubs connected by an array of platforms and ladders. Also a lot of bedraggled and bare ass naked goblins haphazardly strewn around the place.
It seems that godlins here had taken advantage of the ready hot spring to set up a rather extensive bath house for themselves. I was already impressed by the ingenuity of the place. From what I could make out past the mess we’d made of it anyway.
As the last of the water slipped away the good ship Big Fuckoff Bagder settled in the middle of the chamber above one of the larger floor grates. Though it was looking a lot less like a badger and more like a mangled heap at that point. It’s bone armour mostly cracked and broken after the repeated beating it had taken over the course of our river ride. Hey, better it than us. Thanks bud.
By the time Gig and I had unsteadily got into our feet there was already a goblin woman in drenched finery stalking towards us, her face a stormcloud of contained fury.
Before the woman could say anything, Gig cut her off with a huge bright, albeit clearly forced, smile. “Hi Jan-Jan! Cleared the block.” Then added in a rush. “Youcanpaymelatergottagobye!”
Gig scooped me up into her arms like I was a house cat and bolted for the exit.