A faint glow drifted down the narrow passageway. Well, it was not actually just a glow, but wouldn't that be something? A sentient little ball of light, floating through the darkness, in search of others of its kind, getting into wacky adventures? Unfortunately, in this case, the little ball of light was not a plucky young adventurer trying to find its way home. It was simply held at the end of a crude torch, held by another creature, still quite small by most standards, but downright huge compared to the wisp of flame. She stepped carefully, the terrain uneven, the shamefully non-heroic light-source barely illuminating the space in front of her. The crude road regularly raised and dipped without warning, the rough earthen walls curling up around her, constantly dripping, putting her in knee deep in wet mud at best, waist deep in filthy water at worst.
The tunnels seemed to go on forever, branching paths few and far between. In spite of this fact, they were still frightfully easy to get lost in. Even from an entrance to sunlight, it was said that on a bad day, one could walk three paces, turn around and find only pitch darkness behind, with no hope of ever again reaching the surface. Everyone knew this was silly of course, and would simply make such statements as jokes. The sort of jokes which everyone would awkwardly laugh at, so as to not embarrass themselves, but secretly take very, very seriously. One could say that it was incredibly fortunate that the young mouse had a map, but on the other hand, it wasn't doing her much good. She narrowed her eyes, drawing the green plastic hood over her face to shield it from the falling soil and drippings overhead. The mouse stared at the tattered page intently, as though through sheer force of will she could have made the turn that was supposed to be right in front of her appear, or better yet, reveal the prank that the map had been pulling all along, and have it show that there was never meant to be a turn here at all. Surprisingly, neither of these perfectly reasonable options ended up happening. She crumbled it up in her paws and tossed it into a nearby puddle. An easy task, seeing as how virtually everything around her was a nearby puddle.
Back over her shoulder was darkness. Sure, she knew that it didn't go on forever, eventually were she to retrace her steps, she would find sunlight, fresh air and civilization. Except, of course, she didn't 'know' that at all. It would have been much easier if the passage were pure black, but she knew full well that there was nothing 'pure' about it. It would have been more comforting (well, marginally so), were the emptiness entirely silent, but it wasn't. Looking into the shadows, she saw shapes which would vanish or drift away the moment she tried to focus upon them. Listening closely she heard voices, not the happy chattering of friends and family, but the sort of voices which didn't speak in true words, yet beckoned to her, nonetheless. She continued forward, clutching a small plastic dagger on her hand, drawn up to her chest, her last torch flickering to let her know that the journey of this little glow of light was finally nearing its end.
Jerin the mouse quickened her pace downwards into the tunnel. This was a bit of a problem. It felt as though she should be going upwards, that her goal was towards the sky, rather than down towards, well, towards who knows what, but whatever lie in the deepest of depths, surely it couldn't be pleasant. Clearly, the tunnel had other ideas in mind. She let out a surprised squeak as the ground slid out from beneath her feet despite her best efforts to grip it with her toes, similarly trying to grab onto the wall which crumbled away from her furless fingers. She was sent sliding down into a pool of grime, struggling to keep her head above the water, and especially struggling to keep the torch above water. In a place like this, she'd sooner go without her head than a light. The torch brushed up against the ceiling, with small dead roots poking down through it, the flame flickering and blinking out of existence. Just for a moment, though. It quickly flashed back to life, as though warning her not to dare try that again. What's worse was that the water kept getting deeper the further she went, and right now moving forward was her only option. There wasn't another sudden drop off, which was fortunate, but the ceiling just kept getting lower and lower, the water rising from her stomach to chest at a rate where from one step to the next, she felt no real sense of depth, just the ratio of her submerged to merely soaked fur steadily tilting in favor of the first. It was proving harder and harder to fit the flame between that ever shrinking space between earth and water. It wasn't another drop-off which caught her, quite the opposite, a small stone (at least she had hoped that it was a stone, the sort without teeth or eye-holes, unlike so many she'd passed by on her trek) tripped her, completely invisible in the murky pool, and sent her tumbling face first into the water. The small wisp of flame joined her for a tragically brief swim.
She sputtered, looking around at the sea of not quite nothingness in all directions, from the path which stretched infinitely behind and ahead, to the ceiling less than a paws length away. It was all the same from her perspective, even with her keen eyes more than adapted to handle the deepest gloom. That same ceiling, so close to her, might have well been a world away, as it wasn't as though she could actually see it. All things considered, she should have just closed her eyes, as it wouldn't have affected her vision in the slightest, and she wouldn't have had to face the looming shapes in the black, but being unable to see the threats ahead, which she still couldn't see, was a terrifying prospect. All she could do was run. It wasn't long before she was out of the deep puddle, not that she had really noticed. The mouse was too focused on what was sure to be following behind her, with the idea that she might be rushing headlong into some sort of unnatural horror being of little concern. Monsters always struck from behind, after all. Everyone knows that.
She regularly bumped into the soil walls, tripping stumbling, twisting and turning whenever the tunnels decided that they were tired of going straight, which proved to be quite frequently. With no idea whether or not the mouse was drawing any closer to her goal she just followed the reasoning that wherever she is going, it has to be better than here. As it turned out, she wasn't wrong. It was a little while, feeling like a considerably longer while, before even the slightest hint of light could be detected. Instead came the smell. Not an entirely pleasant aroma, mind you, but these tunnels pretty much all smelled the same, even more the same the deeper you went into them, until you reached a point where they smelled more like earthen tunnel than any earthen tunnel had ever smelled before, and that's when you know that you were in serious trouble. Instead, the smell was dryer, dustier, somehow larger, a sense that the smell was tiny compared to all that which couldn't be smelled, yet it just had to be there, didn't it? As Jerin ran, the ground grew drier, no longer made up of lumps of mud which somehow remained solid enough to be effective stumbling blocks while simultaneously comprised almost entirely of liquid. Now packed down dirt, littered with carapaces of long dead insects had replaced the misshapen earth. Jerin hadn't even really noticed when she'd gotten her first hint of light, staring into the darkness for so long that the transition into walls and floor caught her off guard, as though it had happened within the blink of an eye. A little bit of light was all that she needed, as it wasn't long until more followed, light not being a solitary creature by its very nature. You never seem to only see one of it, after all. The cavern opened up wide about her, as she turned looking back into the darkness, the unnatural shapes and whispers falling back into the depths, immediately losing interest in her once she had finally stepped out into the light of day. They no longer saw her as one of their own, after all.
Sure, she was still in a tunnel, and who knows how far from home now, but something about this place felt different. This wasn't made by some burrowing creature, or the simple shiftings of the earth. This was distinctly unnatural, and not in a bad way, as far too many unnatural things tended to be. No longer did she feel dirt between her toes, rather rough wood instead. As she looked up and about, her eyes taking a few moments to remember how to actually process light and take in visual information. Above her head, pleasantly far above her head, higher than she could every hope to reach (which after spending so long in those claustrophobic tunnels was a relief in itself) were dense, pink clouds, clearly fluffy to the touch but no matter how soft and wispy they had appeared, she couldn't see through them at all. Beneath them, along the pleasantly distant walls were boards and nails, signs of the Maker's craftsmanship. She stopped in her tracks. The walls of the chamber closed in up ahead, narrowing down to a small gateway, through which radiant sunlight streamed forth. At the center of the pathway, however, hanged a large multi-legged guardian.
Jerin was, of course, not unfamiliar with spiders, they being among the few monsters that her kind could regularly and safely fight, but they were not without their dangers. This one was clearly large and old, it's many splayed legs pointed at their tips like knives, a pale pattern dyed in the hair of it's abdomen of no design in particular but to the mouse it resembled a twisted, smiling face. She crept forward, knowing that the creature had a non-trivial reach advantage, and studied it. It was completely still. A little too still. The mouse stepped to one side and then to the other, but the eight empty eyes refused to follow her movements. Looking close, every faint wisp of air sent particles falling from it, and the web which should have normally been practically invisible was coated grey with dust. She approached, still hesitant, knife drawn, and gave it the lightest poke to the torso with her blade. The creature cracked like an egg, split down the middle, each half left dangling at either side of the gateway within its own tattered web, hanging by it's many legs. There was nothing inside but dust, to the point it could hardly even be considered a corpse, instead simply a lifeless husk which still took the shape of a spider purely out of habit. Still, the mouse counted that as a victorious battle, and was eager to tell her family about it once she had returned home. For now, however, while she had technically reached her goal, she knew that her real journey was just beginning.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
She was standing within the shrine. A lair of the Makers. She'd never seen one before, only having heard vague and ominous stories about them from her brethren, but there was absolutely no mistaking it. The floor in the cavern had been flat, but it was nothing compared to this, which was hard, shimmering and would be quite slippery if not for the completely uniform indentations set within it. The whole area was huge. She suspected that the entire kingdom would easily fit within it, the walls distant sheer cliffs, mounted with elaborate carvings and ornamentation. Although there was clearly a ceiling, the place still had a distinct sense of atmosphere and openness, with said ceiling not looking any closer to her than the clouds of the sky. The space couldn't be considered a simple room, it was closer to a world in itself, and she didn't need to look far to see another massive gateway leading to a whole other world entirely, a world of unique coloring, texture and its own variety of unique and incomprehensible objects. Who knew how many other worlds there were linked directly to that one, but such things hardly mattered. Her goal was right here. At the center of the enormous chamber were four colossal wooden pillars, holding up a massive pedestal, where she somehow knew that the objective of her quest lie.
Darting across the seemingly endless glass desert, she found even more evidence that this was a domain of higher beings: treasure. Treasure everywhere. The mouse crouched down to pick a piece up and take a bite. It was positively delicious. There were little balls of the food everywhere, almost impossibly fresh, nothing compared to the stale bits normally scavenged in the local stores, and there were so many of them! Completely filling her pouch hardly put a dent in the supply. That was when had she noticed something else: the other mouse, looking rather disheveled in her green cloak, dark wet tail dragging limply behind her, peering back up through the floor. She was a little nervous at first, but smiled down to it nonetheless. The other mouse smiled back. The pair giggled at one another, making funny faces, each trying to catch the other off guard, coming close, but never quite succeeding in spite their best efforts. Jerin smiled once more, looking up at the sunlight streaming in through the distant window, bathing everything with a warm, golden hue. Fresh air blew in through the large opening, offering the faint sound of wind-chimes from the outside. There was such a serenity to this place, the mouse thought to herself, at least until she looked down at her feet and froze. The other mouse was gone, with the only hint of her presence being a set of faint scratches underneath the floor, as though she were dragged away by some unseen force. Jerin swallowed, looking away. This place may have been beautiful, but it was also unnatural. This was not the sort of place that one should linger.
She couldn't leave quite yet, however. Sure, she had managed to stumble upon treasure, really wealth beyond her wildest dreams were she capable of carrying it all. That wasn't enough, though. She knew that there was something else here. Something important. Climbing the wooden pillars looked to be impossible. Even if she could make it up the extremely smooth surface, at their peak sat a flat and impassible overhang, too far to reach from the pillars. Fortunately, there was another option. Upon first entering, with the shrine being so vast, she had naturally assumed that the pedestal was at the center, everything else framed evenly about it. As she grew nearer, however, it became clear that it was much closer to one of the walls than the others. While most of those walls were smooth, white surfaces, near the table they are elaborately carved, with set grooves, and large metal rungs set at regular intervals. It was as though they were meant to be climbed.
That said, the climb still wasn't an easy one. There were both groves and ledges which made for solid foot-holds, but contrary to her first impressions, they weren't really designed for a mouse, too far apart to comfortably step from one to the next. Sometimes it went easily, but others it took a leap to reach the next point. Still, she wasn't discouraged. The fear of falling was nothing compared to the dark of the tunnel, after all. It didn't take long for her to get into her groove, to the point where she could travel vertically nearly as quickly as she had along the glossy ground. That's when what she had thought was solid wall slid away beneath her feet, nearly sending her tumbling into the chasm that it had created. She looked down with wide eyes, stretched out, toes gripping the drawers top, arms reaching out to hold her against the remainder of the wall, into the dark space it left behind. While she couldn't make out much, the lethal glint of metal spikes was clearly visible. She was nearly at the top, but ended up taking as long to finish that final climb as she had to get all the way to this point.
The view from the counter top was a truly majestic one. Below, the floor glitters like an ocean of diamonds, around her, strange and elaborate devices of metal, wood and plastic lined, every space along the wall, countertops and any other flat surfaces with enough room, as though there were a conscious effort to clutter up every possible bit of empty space. It had reminded the young mouse of the general store, one of her favorite places to spend both her time and money. She couldn't even begin to comprehend the purposes of most of these items, of course. She felt as though she could spend an entire lifetime here, studying each one and still make little sense of them. This was probably an accurate assessment for multiple reasons, not the least of which being the fact that her studying skills were less than remarkable. At the top of this peak was another floor, darker, not nearly as shimmery as that below and similarly lacking in the wide array of foodstuffs (there was still a bit if one looked closely enough), but no less unnaturally smooth. While there were undoubtedly plenty of valuables to find right here on the countertop, she was certain that the real treasure lay on the nearby table, the centerpiece of the shine. Well, not quite the center, really, but close enough to count in her view.
Nearby might have been a bit of a stretch, though. It was nearby compared to the length of the tunnel, or even the scale of the glass-like desert below, but it wasn't a simple hop over. This was the point where she would have expected some sort of rickety rope bridge, a great stone stairwell leading to her goal, perhaps even a shimmering magical portal. There was nothing of the sort, however. It was simply an island in the sky, supported by the four great columns. The only option was to jump. Well, the wiser option might have been to just go home, or simply find something more accessible, but she took a running start and leapt anyways. It should go without saying that Jerin was not an expert in physics or geometry. She didn't know exactly how far that she could jump, or how far that she would need to in order to reach the pedestal. The crude mathematics in her head calculated that she could jump pretty far with a running start, and that the table was similarly pretty far away and that, therefore, both values were equal and should cancel one another out. It almost didn't work, which may not have resulted in a fatal drop, but still one best avoided. Fortunately, there's often very little difference between succeeding by the narrowest of margins and a plan working perfectly. Sure, she didn't land right on top of it, barely catching the rim with her fingers, but as the famous saying goes, whatever doesn't kill you was clearly a great idea.
Jerin was not disappointed. As she scrambled up onto the tables surface, the fabric draped overtop it helping greatly with that task, she took in the spectacular sight. Okay, technically she could see all of this from the counter top, as it wasn't all that far away, but still, the closer look certainly did nothing to diminish the experience. The surface was covered in a frilly red cloth, or once was, fading into a deeper pink as it had aged, upon which she left dusty mouse footprints on as she stepped. Her feet were already dried, but the dirt of the tunnel made a point to only let go a little bit at a time. She was far too dazzled by the spectacle to care that she was leaving evidence of her crimes, however. She has seen artwork of the humans, mostly in the form of the drawings within the holy scripture, but it was a different matter entirely to have huge sculpted three dimensional objects looming over her head. Four great statues of translucent glass stood before her, three in the form of sitting feline shapes, one clear, one muddy grey, and in the middle a deep, shining black, with a great bird of spread wings behind them carved of shimmering dark red stone. At the center of the three statues was a large cushion of bright red fabric, full of just what she had been searching for: dozens of blades embedded into the surface. Even at a glance, they were all clearly of incredible quality, especially compared to the jagged red shard of plastic which she currently used as a dagger. A part of her told her to snatch up all of them, with another warning that, no, she shouldn't defile this place. All she needed was one, and she had found it.
She pulled it from the pillow, the longest of the weapons. It seemed to glow in the sun, warm to the touch and considerably longer than her arm. Impossibly smooth, and unusually light, with a lethal edge at its tip. Far more important, was the hole at the base. She slipped her fingers through it, closing them around the metal ring. It had a handle, not for a human, but for a mouse, and she knew that it was not just for any mouse, but specifically for her. A weapon of the Makers, a holy blade designed to destroy evil, and waiting for who knows how long for her come and claim it. She slid the sewing needle into her belt and smiled, the blade so long that it scraped against the floor as she walked away.
Jerin the mouse was finally ready to complete her mission. Even without a map or a torch, the tunnels leading back held no fear for her anymore. As far as she was concerned, now that she had her holy sword at her side, there was nothing in this world that could hope to stop her. Clearly the unknown monstrosities in the dark had felt the same way, as none of them had even tried to hinder her progress.