Poisonous Fox

We were on our hands and knees, crawling through the cramped earthen tunnels. It seemed miraculous that the walls had yet to collapse, but as I felt the ‘dirt,’ I found it at the same consistency as the walls of our guest quarters. Firm enough to hold together, but not quite hard.

The scent of the mucary had grown stronger as we progressed into the tunnels. They were pitch black, without a light source, and I could only navigate by scent and touch. There was a slight air flow, but not enough to reveal anything but the fact that the tunnels had formed some manner of labyrinth. How far they stretched throughout the valley, I could only wonder.

“Dark down here,” Muleater said in a low voice.

I cringed at the noise, though it was soft enough to be absorbed by the walls. Idle chatter was not conducive to stealth. Not that I rebuked her. It would only make more sound.

I continued on our descent, feeling ahead, ears swiveling, nose twitching, and tail swishing. The tail swept past Muleater several times, whipping her in the face.

Once, while she was following too closely, my tail apparently struck her while her mouth was open. She must have been preparing to speak, to make even more noise.

“Blerghh,” She sputtered, getting the fur off her tongue. “You do that on purpose?” she accused.

I shushed her as quietly as I could. And while she grumbled, she stopped making unnecessary noise. Though she still was moving heavily, like the brute that she was.

Eventually, we came to a t-junction in the tunnel. I knew this, because I had almost rammed my head into the wall, which was the top of the ‘T’. Fortunately I felt the wall just before I would have face planted into it. Unfortunately, Muleater failed to realize that I had stopped, and she once again became far too personal with my tail, and her hand landed heavily on my ankles, bruising them, I was sure.

I could tell she wanted to ask why we had stopped. But she held her tongue, perhaps worried that I had detected enemies ahead.

But no, not enemies, at least not yet.

I just had to determine which direction to go.

To the right, the scent of the infestation was strong. That seemed the direction they most oft went. It also came with a slight breeze, just barely perceptible against the more sensitive hair follicles along my nose.

To the left was stale air.

I could no longer catch the scent of my satchel, and I worried that I had lost the trail somehow. But that would have been impossible, because there had been nowhere for the infested to turn off, and I knew that they had come down into the tunnel. I figured that the stench from the infested must have overpowered my satchel.

And in truth, my satchel had been in the custody of the mucary long enough that it mostly smelled of them, anyways.

Muleater could no longer resist, and she prompted, “Well?”

To the left, there was stale air. The infested had still used that route, but not as recently as the right.

I made the decision and headed left. Resuming the course, and shaking Muleater’s hand off my ankle.

“Why’d we stop?” Muleater asked.

“Junction,” I whispered. “Let’s keep moving.”

The tunnel stopped sloping. The walls widened. Perhaps ten yards from the junction, the floor dropped away. As I was patting the ground to feel the way through, I detected the drop before I fell.

I stopped.

Muleater bumped me from behind.

With only one arm supporting myself, my tripod of support failed, and I found myself falling forward and down. Were I less experienced, I would have yelped. Instead, I rolled in air, using the last of my traction to summersault, attempting to put my legs below me in a crouch.

The ground hit me before I finished the maneuver. Rather than landing in a crouch, I half landed on my back.

Air escaped my lungs.

“You alive down there?” Muleater asked from above. Thankfully, she had not shouted it.

I picked myself up. From her voice, from the length of the fall, I realized that the tunnel exited about three feet off the ground. A very short distance. I could stand and remain at a greater height than Muleater, who was still crouched within the tunnel.

Of course, the fall was terrifying in the pitch black.

“It’s a short drop,” I replied.

The juvenile thought of pranking her had crossed my mind. I could have pulled her out and down. Or tricked her into stepping out on nothing by using a tangible Illusion. However, doing so would only burn goodwill, and could result in even more noise than she was already generating.

Thus, I simply guided her down until she was standing on the floor, stretching out.

“Where are we?” she asked.

I had been in the process of figuring that out myself. Or trying to.

Feeling around, I found what might have been wood, and irregular shapes of softer material. I thought it might have been sacks. Which implied a storeroom, or pantry. Navigating the room by touch would take too long. We needed light. For that, I had an idea.

“Illusion.”

A [Flame] flickered to life, creating a healthy orange glow with which I illuminated the room.

Shelves had been carved into the walls, with planks in places to create subsections or cubbies. The planks of wood were not refined, and instead looked like pressed and dried vines. On the cubbies, were sacks and stacks and piles, from roots to artificed parts, and even a few knives and swords. Arrows were thrown into a pile on the ground nearby. Altogether, the room was approximately four hundred square feet, or about the size of a small apartment.

Which was large, for a storeroom. It almost qualified as a warehouse.

“About time,” Muleater said.

And then my Illusion expired, plunging us back into darkness.

“Gods,” Muleater swore.

“Sorry,” I whispered. We waited in silence until my Spirit restored, and we tried again. Fortunately, we found a glowstone among the supplies, which when activated, provided enough light to make my illusory flame superfluous.

We spent several minutes looting. We were limited by what we could carry, and how we could carry it. There were sacks, but no bags, including my own. There were swords and belts, which allowed Muleater to arm herself. I emptied a sack and began filling it with flagons and the most edible-looking roots, though all of it seemed a bit too slimy to be appetizing.

Soon, Muleater followed suit, and then we were once more crawling through the tunnels.

Fortunately, Muleater turned off her glowlight, navigating by touch. She grumbled something about only seeing the south end of a north-bound kunny. I was just glad I would not need to tell her to turn it off.

Because in the pitchblack tunnels, the light certainly stuck out.

One obstacle we did encounter, as we made our way back towards the junction, was that Muleater’s swords, as she had taken two, rubbed and scraped against the walls of the tunnel, particularly when we turned.

Every time I heard the scrape, every time I heard debris slough off the walls and hit the floor, I cringed, expecting the worst to happen.

Fortunately, none of the mucary heard. If we were doubly fortunate, we could make it back to the surface before we ran across any of them. I was unsure how we would even go about fighting, or fleeing, if we encountered hostile infested within the tunnels themselves.

When we reached the t-junction, I immediately noticed a problem.

The scent of the infested was even more recent than before, meaning they had come this way recently. I was unsure if they had been coming or going, but considering that there had been none on the surface at the last time we were up there, I thought there was a solid chance that the mucary could be in either direction.

One direction led upwards towards the surface, while the other direction headed off towards the unknown.

This time when we stopped, Muleater avoided running into me.

“What now?” she asked.

“Something came through here,” I said as softly as I could.

“All the more reason to make haste and get the godslovin’ outta here!” She maintained a whisper volume, though she still managed to express her sense of urgency.

“I would, but we might be walking into them!” I hissed back.

“This is no time to freeze up! Just keep moving.”

I wondered how long it would be until she began threatening me once more.

“If you don’t budge then I’ll be finding a new sheathe for my blade sooner than I thought,” she grumbled.

“Just give me a sec,” I hissed back.

I lowered my nose to the floor and swept back and forth, trying to judge which way was a miniscule fresher. It was not easy, in fact, it was impossible, and were it not for other indicators, I likely would not have caught it.

But with my heightened sense of hearing, I did catch it.

The sounds of high tension wires snapping over themselves. It was approaching. I could not tell from which direction, I wanted to say from the entrance of the tunnels. It was muted enough to seem omnidirectional. Or, a thought occurred to me, it was coming from both directions.

“Back,” I hissed, scrambling backwards until my rear was against Muleater’s face. “Get back!”

She spat fur onto the ground. “Wha–” she started.

“Just do it!” I insisted.

She obliged, crawling backwards.

The clicks were approaching. I finally determined that they were coming from the deeper end of the tunnel. They had yet to arrive at the junction, and my sole hope was that they would turn towards the surface.

I pushed further back.

The clicks, which in the complete darkness almost reminded me of insects chittering, were close enough that I froze, for fear of creating vibrations. My tail swept against Muleater’s head and held still.

She moved a bit further, not catching the hint.

But as she moved, and I remained stationary, she realized what the game was, and she finally stopped.

But was it too late? I hoped not. Motherswear the brute, but I hoped.

I felt the familiar burn on my right arm. Something had changed. A fire swept up through my veins. A new glyph burnt itself onto my flesh as the living mark updated.

Trackless Tracks (9/9) (+1) -> Trackless Tracks I (1/9)

Area Coverage (1/9)

I had no chance to see what changed, not without any light, and I would be a fool to create any additional indicators. So as the mark seared itself upon my arm, I remained still, hardly breathing, listening to the approaching infested, listening to Muleater’s heavier breaths, and hoping to avoid detection.

Seconds passed.

The infested approached the t-junction. And then they grew fainter and fainter. They were heading towards the surface.

I let a minute pass before I even considered moving from our spot. However, I still heard them. They were still in the tunnel heading up. They must have been moving, as I heard them. But they were not growing quieter nor louder. It was as though they were treading in place. Perhaps digging, fortifying, or otherwise performing maintenance on the tunnel. Or perhaps they were caving it in, blocking our path, trapping us. Or perhaps they were solely standing guard. Any number of possibilities ran through my head.

At the end of the moment though, it mattered not why they chose to linger. What mattered is that they did, and our means of escape was currently unavailable.

In the softest voice possible, I relayed my observations to Muleater.

“They gone?” she asked.

“They linger by the entrance,” I explained.

“Well, gods,” she swore. “The tunnel goes somewhere else, yeah? We know there are other entrances.”

“You want to go deeper?” I asked.

“Not like we’ve got much of a choice, unless you think you can take the wyrkwik in these quarters. I know I sure can’t.”

There was scarce enough room to draw a sword, let alone swing one.

She was proposing to head deeper into the tunnels, into the unknown. And while it seemed like our only recourse, we actually had other options.

“We could wait,” I offered instead.

“And give ‘em the initiative? No.”

“Or we could lure them into the storage chamber?”

“That only works if they follow suit, and if there aren’t reinforcements. For all we know, they could hold the tunnel and wait for more. Then we’d be trapped. It’s better to keep moving,” she explained.

If it were solely me, I would likely find an alcove to hide in. But that was the way I operated. I avoided fights, preferring trickery and stealth to violence. I could not imagine Muleater staying still for long, nor hiding when an enemy was near. So at the end, I had to hand it to her, that her plan was likely the best, at least for her.

For me, not so much.

However, I doubted I could sneak past her, or away from her. At least not in a way that profited me at the moment.

“Alright,” I agreed.

Despite my hesitation, despite my judgment, I progressed deeper into the tunnels.

Who knows, I thought. I might just find my satchel.

Blessings: Rank (1/9)

Body: 65

Mind: 75

Spirit: 49

Talents:

Athleticism (3/9):

Climbing I (1/9)

Featherlight (5/9)

Stealth I (4/9)

Trackless Tracks I (1/9)

Area Coverage (1/9)

Alchemical Immunity (ineligible for growth)

Eschiver (3/9)

Evasion (6/9)

Spells:

Illusion I (5/9)

Touch (6/9)

Closed

Closed

Gifts:

Obsession (3/9)

Closed (0/9)

Closed (0/9)