~ 2.24 - Light In The Darkness ~
Dustgrove
4th Lifeday of the Full Moon
Flea and Bob left the Lorien and headed for the inn via the underground tunnel. Exiting the inn, they began to travel towards the southern gate. The duo arrived at the prison camp a little while after the day’s end bells to find Uglar arguing with Warden Or’loc. Uglar stopped arguing when he caught a glimpse of the Gnome and cat.
“Flea! Bob! Please tell me you’re here to finish that quest,” yelled Uglar.
“We thought we would check it out. What’s going on?”
“A cave-in happened today in tunnels five and six. The Desmox are now spreading to the other tunnels. Lost seven people today. And the warden here is still hesitant to spend the gold to put a quest up at the Adventurer’s Guild.”
“Which tunnels are five and six? I didn’t know they were numbered. If it’s bad, I think we need to talk about the reward for clearing it out,” said Flea.
“They are numbered one through thirteen, from right to left,” said Uglar.
The warden had finally made his way over to the trio and joined in on the discussion.
“I will give you your 50 gold back, as well as the runed steel pickaxe as agreed. If the Desmox infest the whole mountain or I bring in more outside adventurers into the territory, then I’ll be out of this cushy job. The baron has ordered people’s rebirths for less. I’m quite fond of remaining near my mate and our clan.”
“Alright, I think that would be a fantastic arrangement.”
“Then it’s settled. Please take care of the Desmox’s nest as quick as you can, Flea,” said Uglar.
Flea heard his quest journal update with a ‘ting.’
Quest Journal
* Uglar is requesting you to remove the Desmox Nest within the mines.
* Reward: Runed Steel Pickaxe (2x random enchantment)
* Reward: 50 gold
“Before we go, how do we use the carts to get down into the mine? Then how do we bring it back up?”
The Orc and Beastkin gave the Gnome a look.
“Have you been walking the shafts the entire time you were here?” asked Uglar.
“Yea…”
“You should ask more questions as ‘New Players’,” said Or’loc.
“Jump inside. There is a lever that controls the runes on the wheels. Forward, to go into the mine, back to come to the surface. Let the lever go to stop,” explained Uglar.
“Got it, ask more questions. Thanks. We’ll head down now.”
Flea and Bob entered the mine, taking fifteen minutes to walk down to the large cavern. The carts for shafts five and six were missing. After a brief chat, they decided to head down the first shaft they had been mining. Bob helped Flea get in the cart and then jumped up to the edge, pulling himself in.
Inside, they found a crate that one could stand on, while the other used the lever to move the minecart. Flea decided to be the lookout, while Bob controlled their descent. Working the lever turned out to be surprisingly easy. Bob pushed it all the way, causing the cart to lurch forward quickly. Flea, who was not holding on to anything, was flung back, smashing into the cart’s rear wall. The Gnome rubbed his head as he reclaimed his spot on top of the crate. With a couple of spots still dancing in front of his eyes, Flea looked over the front edge of the cart and into the darkness.
“How do they see what’s in front of the cart?” yelled Flea.
“I have no idea. I believe there is a far better question you should have asked Uglar.”
Flea looked down at Bob.
“What?”
“How do we know when to stop?”
Flea went wide-eyed and looked back over the cart’s edge. They were now moving at a breakneck pace through the mountain’s depths. Grabbing the lantern from his belt, he held it in front of him at the edge of the cart, illuminating the shaft. Flea could see clearly for about thirty feet before the light quickly dimmed again. The trip took a little under five minutes to travel the distance down to their usual mining spot. Flea called the spot out to Bob as they passed.
What a waste of so many hours. I should have known better and asked about the carts sooner.
Not far after their mining spot, Flea caught movement in the tunnel ahead. The cart barreled through two smaller Desmox, leaving nothing but paste behind them.
“What was that?!” said the startled Bob.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“Just ran over two Desmox. We should stop now before we get ourselves surrounded.”
Bob let go of the handle and hopped up on the crate next to Flea. The two companions looked over the cart’s edge. The old iron carriage slowed down almost immediately, coming to a complete stop thirty feet after Bob released the lever. Looking around the tunnel and seeing nothing, both climbed out of the cart. Flea removed his talon daggers, Bob his bow, his arrows auto-filling the quiver on his back.
Walking a few feet down the shaft, they heard the first group of Desmox coming up towards them rather quickly. Bob dispatched the creatures as soon as they entered the light of Flea’s lantern.
“Heat vision is useless, but I can hear them before we see them. There are more behind this group,” Bob said.
Waiting for the next batch to come up the tunnel, they were surprised to see the new arrivals stumble upon their dead brethren and start eating them. Flea watched as one Desmox tore off the head of a carcass, found the core, and ate it with a ‘crunch.’ The pink bastard then snapped at the others and ate the core of the second corpse as well. The pink Desmox then began to grow larger visibly. As Flea continued to watch on, Bob drilled arrows into all three new arrivals, killing them quickly enough. However, the larger one needed two arrows to kill it.
“So, creatures can grow by eating and absorbing the cores as well. Almost all of the ones we have seen so far are the smaller ones. Maybe there isn’t a big enough food or core source down here, causing them to spread out their search.” said Flea.
“It’s a valid hypothesis.”
Going up to the three dead Desmox, Flea started to butcher them the best he could without getting the blood on himself. During their numerous mining sessions, the Gnome figured out that as soon as the blood was exposed to air, it would evaporate not long after. Carefully cutting around the edges, Flea was able to remove the large plate on their backs. They then waited for the exposed blood to evaporate before moving onto the next segment. Removing the pinchers, Flea found the intact venom sacks embedded in each side of their face. Each centipede took them twenty or so minutes to harvest, including the time moving between them to avoid the blood.
The bounty of the three Desmox was thirty-six chitin segments, six pinchers, and venom sacs. Flea was going to try and harvest organs, but they still had plenty of blood in them, causing burns to his hands as they leaked.
“Need to talk with the alchemist some more about harvesting techniques. They probably have tools to gather things like this safely,” said Flea.
Finished with the three Desmox corpses, they began to walk down the tunnel again. Bob would stop them every time he heard the creatures ahead. Flea noticed Bob was now extremely proficient with his bow. Almost every arrow used, Bob could retrieve from their corpses intact. It seemed to Flea the only arrows which did shatter were those overexposed to the acidic blood.
Hours passed as the duo continued making their way down the shaft until finally, they came to the end of the tunnel. The Gnome and cat stared at the end of the rails, a foot or so short of what looked to be a very solid wall of stone.
“Where the hell are they coming from?”
“I have no idea. Did we miss a side tunnel or something?” Bob responded.
“What’s all this?”
Flea shined his lantern over what looked to be a large pile of iron ore, pickaxes, pieces of clothing, and other random items. Everything seemed to have been placed into a large neat heap at the edge of the cave. Moving his lantern slowly to get a better look at the stack, the Gnome caught a gleam of color from one side of the pile. Removing some tattered clothing aside, Flea picked the item up. A large grin broke out across the Gnome’s face as he looked down at an uncut red gem in his hand.
“Jackpot!”
“Sweet mother of Babbage! You scared the shit out of me, Kyle. I mean, Flea. What did you find?”
“A large red gem. Khorwin said gems are worth a fortune.”
“Good find. Now, get as much of that stuff into your bag as you can. I can hear them coming from back up the tunnel.”
Flea spent a moment looking back into the darkness from which they came, then began grabbing the ore and throwing it into his bag as fast as he could. Almost done with the pile of ores, Flea heard the familiar ‘twang’ of Bob’s bow and bodies hitting the floor. With all the ore collected, he looked back to Bob, who nodded to him. Flea then began looking through the random stuff left in the pile. Just as it seemed nothing would catch his eye, he spied upon a beat-up dark green book. Flea threw the book into his bag with the intention of checking it out later. Satisfied with his scrounging efforts, he moved up to Bob’s side.
“My inventory is almost full. Take my second stack of chitin. You’re going to have to grab most of everything from here on,” said Flea.
“Alright, I heard two more coming this way. We need to find out how they’re getting into the tunnel.”
As the two slowly walked back towards the cart, they killed and harvested eleven more Desmoxs before finding what they were looking for. In the shadow of one of the crevices on the tunnel’s side was a large, almost circular tunnel at ground level. Bob could walk into it upright, while Flea had to bend or hunch over to step in.
Bonus points for being short.
Bob led them through the small tunnel using Flea’s lamp to light the way. Tripping, Flea fell forward onto his hands and knees while Bob kept walking along. When Bob got about fifteen feet from Flea, the magic lamp seemed to run into an invisible wall. Looking down at the lamp, Bob tried to push it forward but found he couldn’t. The cat began pushing on the lamp with his weight behind it and soon fell forward face first, hitting the tunnel’s floor.
“What are you doing, Bob?”
Bob got up and looked at Flea with daggers.
“You’re damn lamp got stuck in the air. I have no idea what happened.”
“Got stuck?”
“Yea, I couldn’t move forward for a moment, then it suddenly moved again.”
It took Flea a moment, but he thought he figured it out. The Gnome started walking backward, and nothing happened.
“Walk forward a few steps.”
Bob took a step back, and the lamp stayed in the air where he had held it.
“I can walk away from it, but I’m betting the soulbind on it won’t allow it to be moved away from me by an external force. Prevents its theft.”
“That makes sense. I can use it; I just need to stay close.”
“Try and pull it towards you now.”
Bob pulled the lantern towards himself, then looked back up at Flea.
“I gave your permission to use it. I couldn’t find any kind of window for my soulbound items, but apparently, I can just mentally allow you to use the lamp. That could come in handy in the future.”
After figuring out a little more about soulbound items, the duo kept pushing forward into the tunnel. It didn’t take them much longer before they found themselves in a much larger tunnel. This one had no cart rails and didn’t look entirely circular like the small tunnel they had left.
“It looks to be a lava tube similar to what we’d find on Earth,” said Bob.
“Fascinating. I wonder if the developers made Mea a developing planet; Starting with volcanoes that generated the landmasses.”
Bob shrugged.
“What way should we explore first?” asked Flea.
“Right, I can hear faint sounds in that direction.”
They began walking in the direction Bob indicated. A few minutes into their walk, Bob’s ears perked up. The cat picked up his pace till he was several feet in front of Flea. The Gnome began to ask what was wrong, but Bob raised his paw in a stopping motion. A moment later, the cat’s eyes went wide, and he yelled to Flea over his shoulder.
“There are people ahead, and they’re fighting something!”
The cat and Gnome raced forward. It took several minutes at a full run before they came to the opening at the end of the lava tube, which turned out to be quite a few feet up from the cavern floor. Coming to a stop at the sight, the two forgot about the fighting happening below them on the cavern’s floor. Instead, they were looking up at a large glowing yellow crystal. Like a small sun, the gem illuminated the seemingly never-ending cavern. Pulling their eyes from the unusual crystal, they looked below towards the sounds of fighting.
After about one hundred yards, the clear cavern floor gave way to a forest of mushrooms, varying in size and color. At the edge of the mushroom forest, they could see a small group of Dwarfs fighting off several Desmox. Looking straight down, it finally occurred to the two of them that the tunnel had ended up the face of a massive sheer wall. The ground looked to be about seventy-five feet below them.
“Good thing we brought the rope to get into the baron’s place.” deadpanned Flea.
The Gnome removed one of the spools of rope and a grappling hook. Tying the two together with a bowline knot, he found a sturdy crevice on the rock floor and kicked the grapple into it. Throwing the rope over the ledge and getting ready to climb down, he found Bob suddenly backing away from him.