Violet got the wind knocked out of him as something large and heavy came rushing around a corner and crashed into him. The dungeon fairy was the smaller party in the collision, so he was thrown back several paces. He tried to roll over and get his hands under himself, but the shifting colors prolonged his disorientation from the crash. He groaned as a large hand roughly grabbed the front of his shirt and lifted him into the air. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the bandit or troll or whatever before it killed him.
Violet opened his eyes when he heard a familiar grunt. Yrryth glared at him with her glowing red eyes. “Yrryth!” He shouted. Yrryth growled and tossed him onto her shoulder. She jogged down the tunnel, carrying the fairy back the way he had come. “Yrryth, we have to get to the snake!” Violet tried to explain the situation to the gargoyle’s back, but he was getting jostled too much to keep his thoughts straight. Yrryth eventually slowed and put the dungeon fairy on his feet.
“Snake is doing real bad, Yrryth.” Violet managed to say. “The bandits were torturing it and I think it’s gone insane. I had to paralyze it so it would stop crushing other creatures on their way to attack the bandits.” Violet had to jog to keep up with gargoyle, and his breathing interrupted his words. “You’ve got to help snake! You’re the only one who can…” He said.
Yrryth held out an arm to stop the fairy at a “T” in the tunnel. Violet got the wind knocked out of him for a second time when he ran into the stone arm. Yrryth growled and pulled her arm it tight. Only then did Violet see that her arm had a large crack from shoulder to elbow. “You’re arm!” He shouted. Yrryth growled again and covered his mouth with stone hand. She stood still for a few moments, then pulled the fairy into another jog.
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Shtorrr heard shouting down one of the tunnels. Punch said it didn’t matter where they went, so Shtorrr decided to go towards the shouting. The troll liked the glowing tunnels, but Punch had told it to keep moving, so it would keep moving. As Shtorrr came around a curve in the tunnel, he heard the shouting again and thought it sounded closer. Shtorrr ran a little faster, trying to catch up to the shouting.
Punch shouted at the other bandits, telling them they were going too slow and needed to stop looking at the walls. Shtorrr kept his eyes on the ground as he ran. He could run with his eyes closed, but running into walls would slow him down, and Shtorrr didn’t think punch would like that. Shtorrr thought he could hear sandy footsteps ahead, but it was hard to tell because of all the sandy footsteps from behind.
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Yrryth tossed the useless fairy over her shoulder again. She heard yelling from the tunnel behind them and a lot of sand grinding under feet as people ran. She tried to run faster, but she was already going as fast as her heavy body could run in the sand. Violet tried to say something again, so she bounced him roughly on her shoulder to shut him up.
The gargoyle chose turns at random, trying to throw off their pursuers, but the noise from behind never lessened. When she had to jump to avoid stepping on a peacock, she figured she must be close to the central cavern for these tunnels. She ran past a few dozen dungeon creatures before bursting out into a glowing cavern covered with dungeon vine roots. Without stopping, Yrryth shoved sandy stone steps out of the ground and raced up them. Small piles of dazed dungeon creatures were shoved aside by the rising steps. Yrryth reached the top and leapt up into the ceiling near the center of the roots. Right before her foot left the last step, she used her magic to break the stone back into sand. As she pulled herself through the root portal, the sounds of pursuit finally stopped.
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Shtorrr crushed the little monsters under his huge feet. It thought it had followed the yelling and running to this room with the roots on the ceiling, but there was no one here now. With a mental shrug, the troll kept running and entered the tunnel that was directly ahead of it. Punch yelled something, but Shtorrr couldn’t quite make it out.
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Violet spat and coughed to get the oddly textured sand out of his mouth. Yrryth had dragged him along as she crawled up through the waterlogged sand, not even pausing to make a tunnel like the ones they normally used. The gargoyle stood with her head facing upwards, eyes closed. Violet struggled to his feet.
“Yrryth!” He croaked out. “We have to go!” He grabbed the wrist of her un-cracked arm and tugged towards the worldlet entrance. “Come on!” He said.
The gargoyle slowly opened her eyes and looked down at him. She looked confused at his actions.
“Please!” Violet said with more urgency. “Snake needs your help, I don’t think it even knows where it is right now or what’s going on.” He continued to pull and the gargoyle finally began to walk forward. Violet turned and jogged to the portal.
The dungeon fairy caught himself on hardened air before he fell too far into empty space in the dark worldlet. He immediately turned around and threw himself back through the portal to the new worldlet. “Wait!” He screamed. “There’s no floor! You can’t go this way.” He sighed in relief as Yrryth came to a stop. “We’ll have to go back down in the tunnels.” He said. Yrryth folded her arms and shook her head.
“What?” Violet asked. “Why?” Yrryth pointed at her cracked arm and grunted.
“Oh, your arm.” Violet said weakly. “How did it get cracked?” He asked. Yrryth just glared at him. Violet scratched his jaw and guessed. “You fell down?” Yrryth glared even harder. Violet guessed again “Something fell on you?” Yrryth shook her head, but glared less hard. The dungeon fairy took one more guess. “Someone hit you?” Yrryth nodded. “Who hit you?” Violet asked. After a moment he considered that there were only two things in the dungeon that could hit hard enough to damage the gargoyle, and it hadn’t been the giant snake. “Was it the troll?” He asked. Yrryth nodded and looked away, not meeting his eyes.