Broken Lands

“Thanks, I think.” Sophia winked at Dav. She wasn’t really certain how she felt about being something that didn’t add up, but at the same time she was pretty sure that Dav meant it as a complement, because it meant he saw her as a real person. As little as that sounded, it meant quite a bit given what he thought was going on. “I’d better get started. I’m not quite full, but it should be close enough if I’m careful.”

Practice made perfect, after all, and Sophia was getting a decent bit of practice. In this case, the melts were still both makeshift and ugly, but they cost a lot less mana than they had at the beginning. The three quarters or so of her normal mana that Sophia had available was enough to finish the second half of the sled fairly quickly.

Once they assembled everything, it turned out that the sledge slipped over the inch-deep water acceptably well … as long as Dav was the one who pulled it. Sophia tended to slip; she wasn’t certain if that was because of her lower upper body strength or her lower mass, but she was happy to blame her lower mass. It could also have been her shoes; they were fine for walking around, even in the water, but they weren’t really designed to pull a sled.

They searched the large cavern and found only one viable exit other than the one they’d entered through. There had clearly once been several others, but most of them had been blocked with stonework; the one that wasn’t deliberately blocked was the way the water exited and it was filled with rocks about fifteen feet into that branch of the cavern.

The way they picked was the stream’s entrance. It didn’t carry much water right now, though it could clearly carry more. More importantly, it was obvious that it was manmade, or at least improved. There were clear tool marks on each of the points where the walls narrowed and at each point where the ceiling rose high enough, there was more of the glowing bluish crystal that dominated the large cavern.

Even more importantly, it went uphill. The slope was pretty shallow, but it ought to be a good way out, especially since the walls had clearly been deliberately widened. The sledge was quite a bit narrower than the width of the widened sections, so they were almost guaranteed to be able to fit all the way through to the exit.

As long as nothing more had collapsed, at least. There was never a guarantee about that in an unexplored cave.

It was slow going. For all that Dav could pull the sledge, he could only manage it slowly. When he was too tired to keep pulling, Sophia tried again. This time, she was able to get it to move without falling, but she was even slower than Dav. After the first few minutes, neither of them wanted to talk; when Sophia was pulling the sled, she was working too hard to have the breath to spare while when Dav was pulling the sled she didn’t want to bother him. She wasn’t sure why he didn’t speak, but it really wasn’t like there was much to say, was there?

It was almost a relief when they reached a branch in the tunnel. Both of the incoming branches carried water and seemed to lead up; there wasn’t much to choose between them. The only real difference was that the one on the right seemed to have been covered in stonework at some point while the one on the left looked like it had had less work done.

Sophia stopped pulling and carefully set the rope on the sled before setting on it herself. “A short rest, then explore the tunnels and see which way to go?”

Dav found an open spot on the sled and sat down as well. It was obviously purely coincidental that the open spot was next to Sophia, close enough that she could almost feel him but somehow not so close that it was uncomfortable. “Sounds good. Do you want to sleep or just sit for a few minutes?”

A nap sounded good, but a few minutes’ rest followed by not dragging the sled would do almost as well. “Just a few minutes. I haven’t seen any sign of anything actually living down here and that makes me want to get out of here as fast as I can. There’s usually a reason when nothing lives somewhere and there is light; there should at least be moss, maybe some fungus too, plus insects and fish. Those might hide, but the plants can’t.”

Dav glanced around the tunnel, then frowned. “You’re right, I don’t see anything. Now you’re making me wish we hadn’t stayed to salvage everything. Do you think we should abandon it and hurry?”

Sophia shook her head. “Only for long enough to figure out which path we’re taking. There’s no sign of a danger we can’t see; I have enchantments to detect those. I’m more worried about a sudden storm that washes everything away than I am about anything else, and there’s no way to know when a storm will happen. I think we were safe back in the large cavern, so if the water level rises we may want to retreat.”

She still thought her mother was paranoid to pay an enchanter for a necklace that would detect everything from diseases to radiation, but that didn’t mean she didn’t wear it. She just usually wore it under her shirt where it couldn’t be seen; she didn’t have to see it to know if it found something. It was far, far too elaborate to wear out in the open under almost any circumstances.

Dav leaned back on the sled and stretched … or, at least, he tried to. His left arm almost immediately hit one of the metal bins. “Argh. Forgot that was there.” Rather than scoot a bit farther down the slab of metal, he set his left arm stiffly against his side. “Let me know when you’re ready to move on.”

Sophia shook her head. All he had to do was scoot a bit farther down and there was plenty of room for one of them to lie down. There wasn’t really enough room for both of them without emptying the sled, but that was fine. She didn’t need to nap. Sophia closed her eyes and leaned back against the bin behind her; it wasn’t all that strong, but it would still act like a seat back for a few minutes.

The next thing she knew, she was curled up on her side and something was shaking her shoulder. It took her a moment to blink herself awake and realize that the “something” was Dav. She felt annoyed with herself; sure, dragging the metal sled was a workout, but it wasn’t that bad! “I fell asleep.”

“So did I,” Dav admitted. He didn’t sound nearly as bothered by it as Sophia was. “Seems like we both needed it, but you said you didn’t want to spend too much time here.”

“Right.” Sophia bounced to her feet and looked around. Nothing had changed, not even the light level from the stones set in the various openings’ ceilings.

No, there was one thing that had changed: her magelight had gone out. That made sense; she hadn’t put all that much mana into it to power the enchantment. She lit it again, then nodded. “Let’s get going. The right, since that seems to be built instead of dug?”

Dav nodded and turned to lead the way. “Good by me. How far do you want to go down the tunnel before we come back for the sled?”

“The exit or the next split,” Sophia said, then thought a little more. Those two options were easy, but she didn’t want to have to walk back miles to get the sled. “Or when we’re pretty confident there will be a big enough opening on the way out. I want to know what this place is before we head into it.”

The water seemed to be moving a little when they entered the branch, but as they got farther in Sophia started to think it was just a puddle. A huge puddle, yes, but the motion in it was so slight she wasn’t sure it was moving at all, sort of like a lake. She was arguing internally with herself about the fact that some lakes have notable currents because they are moving and it’s just not obvious because the top is smooth when Dav suddenly stopped in front of her.

Sophia stopped to not run into Dav and glanced ahead. The most obvious thing was that the rocks in the water were suddenly covered in green gunk, gunk that wasn’t there at all less than a foot away from where it coated the floor. There was green stuff on the walls, too. It looked sort of like moss and moss-covered roots, but there was something about it that just looked wrong. If she’d suddenly stepped from darkness into light, that would be one thing, but the area seemed even dimmer than the areas they’d just left and the only change was the green.

Sophia followed Dav’s gaze forward towards the water and saw that was probably the real reason he’d stopped: the water was bubbling. It was ugly and green, more like snot bubbles than boiling water. “You think that’s a monster?”

“No shit,” Dav immediately replied. “I’m trying to decide if we should leave or try to fight it. Makes me wish there was some way to tell how strong it is.”

There was a way, if the rules for auras worked the same here as back home. Unfortunately, Sophia’s aura control was only really good enough to sense a few feet around herself; she’d have to nearly step in the bubbles to get her aura close enough to have a real chance to guess how strong the monster was that way. She’d have to fall back on other methods. “Well, it can’t be all that large. The water just isn’t that deep; an inch, maybe? That means-”

Sophia stopped talking as something green seemed to solidify on top of the water, then rise. The water spilled to the sides as the green thing continued to rise. “Well. That’s not good. Either the water’s a lot deeper there than I think it is or that thing can shift forms.”

It had a face with entirely too many jagged teeth and bright red eyes. “Definitely a monster,” Sophia muttered. “I think we need to fight it; I think it’ll come after us if we try to run.”

Right now, the green thing didn’t look like a threat; it had a pair of arms but they were clearly insufficient to lift it out of the water. It also had a bunch of tentacles or maybe roots instead of legs. It didn’t look like the creature would be able to move very quickly; they could probably outrun it at a slow walk if they wanted to. Sophia wasn’t certain if they’d be able to outrun it while dragging the sled, though, so she really hoped they’d be able to kill it. She lifted her magelight to see a little better.

The good news was that the water wasn’t any deeper near the monster than elsewhere. The bad news was that the transformation wasn’t done. The critter had absorbed quite a bit of the green goo around where it started, so it was clearly a goo monster of some sort. That was bad news, again, but it looked solid now and that was good news. In this form, it would probably be able to move faster, even if she couldn’t make out its legs, but it would almost certainly have all the vulnerabilities of a flesh and blood monster. She’d rather fight one of those than a ball of acid any day.