As me and mi Marra was gannin tea wark,

I met with the de’il. Twas in the dark.

I owp wi’ mi pick, it being in the neet,

I lopped off his hied,

and his hands,

and his feet.

The Collier’s Rant.

HehEhEhEHe.

The twisted laugh that couldn’t possibly have been emitted from a human throat echoed through the tunnels. Due to the collapsed workings and the water distorting it, Rowanne couldn’t even figure out what direction it was coming from. Regardless of the direction, she had no desire to meet it. The laugh sounded hollow and cruel. Like a bully who knew you had no help coming.

She groped around in the dark, her hands vanishing from sight before her. They hit solid stone to one side, but an unknowable void on the other three.

There was nowhere to hide and the noise was getting closer, and louder.

HehEHeHeHEEE,

Rowanne's blood ran cold. If Cutty found her, death would be preferable to her fate. But she didn’t have an escape route. She couldn’t hide in the tub, that would be the first place he would look. Just a minute. She couldn’t hide inside the tub… but…maybe…

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She quickly lay down in the swampy water beside the tub, sliding into her hiding place beneath the rotted wood, turning her head to the side to breathe in the scant space beneath and desperately making her breathing as shallow as she could.

HEhEHeEhEeEhEhEhhEHEEEEE

As she heard him approach, she could have sworn the hammering in her chest would be loud enough to give her away, like something out of a Poe novel. With a slosh of water, two ancient boots reached the tub. And stopped.

Stayquietdon’tbreathenotasound....not.....one....sound. Rowanne held still in the freezing brackish water. Above, that thing checked the tub, looking for her. Holding back a cough she lay there, then realised he wasn’t moving. Her heart sank, he was going to look underneath. She reached beneath herself where she floated, daring to catch a single breath before slipping her hands into the submerged rails and pulling herself back down. Submerging herself in the silt, muck, and water. The sensation of the sucking mud beneath her, slowly enveloping her, was indescribably unpleasant, but even that was marginally better than being captured by a Bogle.

It was getting harder and harder to hold her breath and that THING above seemed reluctant to leave. Poking around. Then, finally, a rat that had been hiding nearby decided the monster was too close for comfort. There was the sound of a scrambling run, a pounce, a terrified screech, then finally a sickening CRUNCH as the Bogle claimed his prey and scuttled off to feast.

She lay beneath the tub for a while longer until she was sure she was in the clear, before once more getting unsteadily to her feet. She slipped away from that place carefully. Rowe had no idea where to go next, but the way Cutty had headed was the way the water flowed; for now, she was content to travel whatever direction that thing was not.

She took her probe and prodded around where the area the wall had vanished on her. Sure enough there was no wall, and no rails, but to her surprise there was a floor.

Floor, no flesh-eating, monstrous, possessed scarecrow thing? Suddenly that direction was sounding better and better. Then, as if to sweeten the pot, she heard the one thing she hoped for above all else off ahead of her. Taptaptap. The more the Bwyca tapped, the more it sounded like salvation knocking, so she steeled herself and stepped forward, trusting once more to their guidance.