We didn’t get started exploring the cave as early as I would have liked. For one thing, we had to dismantle the barrier that these folks had spent quite a bit of time erecting to ensure their safety. Laboriously moving hundred of pounds of rock and timber isn’t that quick even in the best of times. I was certain that they would rebuild it once we were in the cave and we would have to wait at the entrance waiting for it to be dismantled again. Better safe than sorry, I guess.
The other issue we encountered was that Alfons was not, in fact, dead. Just before dawn, he dragged his weary and bedraggled ass back into the cave. Of course, before he made it to the cave he happened to wander by our camp. I thought he might attack us but I was able to talk him down by mentioning some of the other people’s names and assuring him that they were unharmed and resting comfortably. Of course, having someone he could actually converse with perked him right up. He had a lot of things he had to get off of his chest apparently. Yesterday, he had wandered too far down the mountain and had spent the day dodging a slaving party that had caught sight of him. Well, actually the day and part of the night. He finally got away when they encountered something that decided to hunt them. Of course, I had to repeat the entire dog and pony show for him and altogether my conversation with him took a little more than an hour. Alfons seemed like he was a little more competent than the run of the mill five-fingered fellow around these parts but I didn’t have time to get into the details of his background to find out why.
Finally, in the middle of the morning we were ready to set out. Included in our camping gear, we had a couple of nice oil lanterns. We weren’t carrying a ton of fuel for them but they did keep me from having to become James Smith the amazing magical flashlight right away. The entrance to the rest of the cave system was through a narrow crevice in the wall and we could only walk single file. I worried about encountering anything in this section because the walls were so narrow it would be quite difficult to swing a sword. Aleyda led the way, I walked in the middle carrying the lantern, and Bowen trailed behind me. I had warned Segerick that if the cave system was extensive we might be gone for several days. I hoped the caves were fairly large. If we just wandered down this narrow path for twenty minutes to find out that the way became impassible I would feel pretty damn foolish. Before we had made it thirty feet into the mountain I could hear materials being dragged across the floor behind us to erect the barrier again.
The tunnel narrowed until we were forced to turn sideways to make any progress but then it started widening again. I saw insects, some familiar and others grotesque, scurrying around in the pools of light cast by the lantern. Within half an hour of walking or so, we broke into another cavern. This one was even smaller and before we even reached it I started smelling a fetid stench. I panned my lantern around the room and realized it was covered with drifts of bat guano and the bats that had deposited said guano were roosting throughout the room. High on one wall was a narrow crack, far too small for a human to utilize, that must have given the bats ingress and egress from their lair. I wondered if rabies existed in this world because, at least on Earth, bats are a significant carrier of the virus. Bowen must have wondered the same thing because he pulled out one of our blankets and covered his exposed head with it. When they were struck by the light, some of the bats stirred, flitting around the room. Aleyda started swinging her sword around her and that claimed a couple of victims. On the other side of the chamber, a low tunnel lead deeper into the mountain.
Crossing the room was really unpleasant. The bat colony was obviously well-established and the floor was covered with crap almost up to our knees. When we reached the opposite side of the room, we realized we would have to crawl to make any more progress. Although we tried to muck out the entrance to the tunnel there was only so much we could accomplish. So, for the first ten yards or so, we ended up crawling through bat droppings. Feeling my arms sink down into the nastiness on the floor made me want to retch but I kept things together until we were clear of them. I hoped we would find a water source soon. We all really needed to wash up.
Thankfully, before long we were able to stand upright again. I had never spent any time in my old life exploring caves and my experience so far suggested that was a good decision.
Soon, we found our way into another cavern but we were not alone in it. This one was much larger and was inhabited by four translucent looking grubs, each about the size of large dogs. Their ringed, toothy maws, each surrounded by undulating tentacles were nightmare fuel. As soon as we made our way out of the passage, they spun to face us. I didn’t know how they detected us because they didn’t seem to have any eyes. They weren’t very welcoming. As soon as they detected us, they surged forward to attack.
“Fight with your back to a wall so you can’t be flanked,” Aleyda cried out reflexively in a language that Bowen clearly didn’t understand.
“What did she say?” he asked.
“Fight together with our back against the wall because we’re outnumbered,” I quickly told him, placing the lantern on the floor to clear my hands. “And don’t knock over the lantern or we are screwed.”
The good news was that the cavern was big enough that the grubs were spread out and couldn’t all reach us simultaneously. The bad news was that they undulated towards us quite quickly. The first one arrived and attacked Aleyda, lunging forward with a quick burst to try to grasp her with its waving tentacles and pull her towards its maw. Not content to be grasped, she met it with an overhand chop. Somehow, it detected her attack and aborted its own at the last minute trying to pull back. It was somewhat successful but several of its tentacles were struck and cut through, the severed ends continuing to write at our feet. I couldn’t pay and attention to the rest of her fight, though, because an opponent of my own was soon upon me.
So far, our expedition into the mountain had not met my expectations. Instead of finding valuables to support our cause, I had crawled through shit and had to fight these abominations. I dearly hoped this wasn’t the larval stage of some other creature because I was not looking forward to finding out what horrific thing these creatures turned into.
As my opponent entered the range of my sword, I swung sideways at its head. My sword impacted it with a solid thunk that I could feel up into my hands but what I hoped would be a devastating blow didn’t defeat the creature. One of its tentacles lashed out and wrapped around my lower right leg, trying to crush it and pull me off balance. For its size, these things were strong, and I could feel my foot sliding across the floor. Soon, one tentacle became several and others swept forward to secure its grip. My leg started getting numb where the gooey appendages contacted it.
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“Watch out, they may have poison,” I called out. Then, I began whaling on its head for all that I was worth, raining blow after blow down on its brain box and upper body. I was close enough that I really couldn’t miss. Strike after strike impacted the thing’s head until nothing was left but a pulpy, misshapen mess. I wasn’t unscathed, however, because the thing managed to reach my leg and bit a chunk of flesh from it the size of a saucer. Even after the rest of the thing was down, the tentacles continued to wriggle and pull. I ended up having to sever them, thinking later I would pull them off individually. I turned to see how my companions were faring.
Aleyda had dispatched her opponent and didn’t appear to be injured. Bowen was having more trouble, though. He fought defensively, trying to keep the tentacles from finding purchase on his skin. I stepped forward and started chopping at his opponent but I had to move carefully because I couldn’t feel my right leg. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aleyda move away from the safety of the wall to engage the final creature. It was prowling around trying to find an appropriate avenue of attack.
After I whacked it a couple of times, Bowen’s opponent must have decided that I was the bigger threat because it turned to engage me. That was great for Bowen, though, because it allowed him to move forward and launch his own attacks. Finally, the thing showed some survival instincts and started to try to disengage but we wouldn’t let it. Keeping up the pressure from both sides, it absorbed continuous damage as it tried to flee. Soon it had taken too much injury and collapsed to the ground but the tentacles continued to lash out. And then, I saw one of the tentacles detach itself from the grub and start moving towards me.
Were we dealing with parasites and their hosts? Were those things independent creatures? Bowen and I started chopping and stomping until we could see no more movement from any of them. Well, he did most of the stomping because I still couldn’t feel my leg. Turning to Aleyda, I could see that she had quickly dispatched her final opponent and was likewise macerating its tentacles. Soon, there was no more movement on the ground and I felt like I could relax and take a deep breath.
“Uh, James,” Bowen said. “You realize you still have tentacles crawling up your leg?”
Crap, I had gotten lost in the fight and due to the numbing agent they introduced I couldn’t feel them continuing to move on my body. When I looked down, I realized that they were inching their way up my leg. This was not good. I pulled out my belt knife and cut them into smaller pieces and then levered those pieces off of me onto the ground. I was probably a little too exuberant with the cutting and slicing because I dealt myself some superficial wounds in the process but I didn’t care. I wanted the damn things off of me. Bowen and Aleyda pulped the remains when they hit the floor. I hoped that the parasites, if that’s what they were, weren’t compatible with human biology. I really didn’t want to become James Smith, the tentacle-faced man.
“Well, that was new,” I said.
Looking at my companions, I noticed that neither of them were injured. Of course they weren’t. Stupid injuries only happened to me, not other people. Honestly, the biggest injury was to my pride. If I had just followed Aleyda’s example, I probably wouldn’t have been injured at all.
“It’s not a fight for you unless you bleed, is it?” Aleyda asked.
“Give me a break,” I replied. “I’m a work in progress. I just haven’t gotten there yet, wherever there is.”
That caused Bowen to laugh at me. Yes, the biggest casualty was certainly my pride.
We stood there, sipping water, slowing our breathing and calming down. I bent down and picked the lantern back up. I was starting to get feeling back in my leg and that feeling wasn’t pleasant. It was a magnified version of the pins and needles sensation you get when you sleep on your arm wrong. It made me fidgety, stomping around on the leg to make the feeling go away. All my antics didn’t speed up the process any but soon both Bowen and Aleyda were laughing at me.
“I thought you guys were my friends,” I said. That just made them laugh harder, the sound echoing around the room.
When I examined my legs I noticed that my self-inflicted cuts were already healed. It was quite fascinating watching the hole on my leg fill in with granulated tissue and then slowly remodel itself until not even a scar remained. I quickly decided I was ready to continue.
“Do we want to camp here and rest up, or do you want to explore some more?” I asked.
“I do not want to stay here,” Aleyda said with a shudder. “What if more of those things show up.”
“Good point,” I replied. Then, we started exploring the room. We found two exits, both walkable tunnels. If my dead reckoning skills hadn’t completely deserted me, I thought one ran towards the southern slope of the mountain while the other continued penetrating its gloomy depths.
“Do we want to see if there are more exits to this cave system or do we want to head deeper in?” I asked.
“I could use some fresh air,” Bowen replied. We turned and headed down the southern passage.
It seemed like we walked down that passage for hours. It didn’t run in straight line, weaving back and forth. As we walked, the air seemed a bit fresher. Finally, we found ourselves in another smallish cavern. Due to the musky scent and the piles of old bones strewn around the floor, it had obviously served as a den for something at some point. Whatever that something was, though, it was not currently in residence. I was more than a little grateful for that. Some of the bones looked like they came from humans. There were odd scraps of cloth and other things interspersed among the bones. At some point, we would have to come back and poke through the mess to see whether anything was useful. That time, however, was not now. A diffuse light filtered across the floor from a small passage on the other side of the room.
We crossed the room to the sound of crunching and splintering bones and peered out of the passage. I was correct. We apparently had broken out on the southern side of the island. We moved a little distance from the entrance up into the trees and made camp for the night. It was late in the day already, far too late to retrace our steps and see where the other passage led.
“So, tomorrow we search the other passage?” I asked. Receiving nods of assent, we settled in for the night.