Bartholomew, on the other hand, was perched on a mossy stone, looking infuriatingly pristine. Not a single gray hair was out of place. He was grooming a paw with the detached air of a king surveying his domain, which, I suppose, he was.
“Rise and shine, my dear wilted lettuce,” he chirped, without looking at me. “The sun does not dally for the domestically challenged, and neither shall we. We have miles to traverse before the next gloaming.”
“Gloaming?” I groaned, rolling onto my back and staring up at the canopy of interlocking branches. The light filtering through was a hazy, pale green. “Is that fantasy-speak for ‘happy hour’? Because I could really use a mimosa.”He sighed, a long, drawn-out sound of pure, unadulterated disappointment.
“It refers to twilight, you philistine. Now, on your feet. We are burning daylight.”
He wasn’t wrong. We walked. And walked. And walked. The Whispering Wood lived up to its name. The air was thick with sound, yet utterly silent. It was the rustle of a million leaves speaking a language I didn’t understand, the creak of ancient branches groaning under their own weight, the scuttling of unseen creatures in the undergrowth. It was the kind of place that made the hairs on your arms stand up, a constant, low-grade hum of paranoia that vibrated right in your bones. A few times, I swore I saw movement at the edge of my vision—a flicker of shadow that was too quick, too deliberate to be a trick of the light. Each time, Bartholomew’s ears would twitch, but he’d say nothing, just quicken his impossibly tiny pace.
My peasant-issue leather boots, which I’d initially thought were a cool fantasy cosplay accessory, were actually instruments of torture designed by a medieval sadist. With every step, I mentally drafted a scathing one-star review on Eldoria’s non-existent version of Yelp.
“So, what’s the final destination on this magical mystery tour?” I asked, hopping over a gnarled root that looked like a skeletal hand reaching from the earth. “Are we meeting a wizard? Seeking a lost artifact? Auditioning for a traveling circus? Give me something, cat. mind is rotting from disuse.”
“First, your wayward knight, since you seem to have forgotten. We level you up, then we seek the Sunken Library of Aeridor,” he stated, his voice a low rumble. “Within its walls lies the knowledge required to reforge the Ward of Kings, the only power that can repel the Shadow Lord’s encroaching darkness.”
“A sunken library. Of course. Because a regular, non-aquatic library would be far too convenient.” I kicked at a loose stone. “Let me guess, it’s guarded by a riddle-obsessed sphinx and the Dewey Decimal System is written in ancient, eldritch runes?”
“Do not be absurd,” he sniffed. “It is guarded by the Silent Monks of the Quenched Flame. And their cataloging system is far more arcane than arbitrarily punctuated numerical values.”
I was busy formulating a sarcastic retort about the monks needing a better branding agent when the ground beneath my right foot simply ceased to exist.
There was no warning. One moment, my boot was coming down on a carpet of damp leaves, the next it was plunging into nothingness. A sickening lurch in my stomach, the crack of rotted wood, a strangled gasp that was swallowed by the earth. My world became a blur of brown and black as I tumbled down a steep, slick chute. I landed with a bone-jarring thump at the bottom, my head smacking against something hard. Stars exploded behind my eyes, and the air rushed out of my lungs in a pained whoosh.
For a moment, I just lay there, a heap of bruised limbs and wounded pride in the oppressive dark. The smell was the first thing that registered—damp earth, mildew, and a coppery, metallic tang, like old blood.
“Paige! Are you operational?” Bartholomew’s voice echoed from far above, tinny and distant.I coughed, my throat full of dust.
“Define operational. If it means ‘breathing and in considerable pain,’ then yes. If it means ‘capable of climbing out of this hell-hole you led me into,’ then it’s a hard no.”
A small, furry head appeared in the perfect square of greenish light that was now my only connection to the outside world. He peered down at me, his green eyes glowing faintly.
“You did not fall into a ‘hell-hole I led you into.’ You blundered into a poorly concealed pit trap with the grace of a drunken moose. Observe your surroundings, for once.”
I pushed myself into a sitting position, my hip screaming in protest. The chute I’d fallen down was a smooth, earthen slide, impossibly steep and slick with moisture. The walls of the small chamber I was in were lined with rough-hewn stone. It was a tunnel. A man-made tunnel. Or at least made by something with an understanding of basic engineering.
“Great. So I can’t get out,” I stated flatly. “Do you have a rope?”
The silence that followed was heavy and judgmental. I could feel the disappointment radiating from him, even from twenty feet up.
“A rope,” he began, his voice dangerously calm. “You ask if I, a feline of discerning taste and minimal cargo capacity, possess a rope. Might I remind you that you are the bipedal pack animal in this partnership? The one with opposable thumbs and the theoretical capacity for forethought?”
“Okay, I get it, I should have packed a rope,” I grumbled, rubbing my head.
“‘Should have packed a rope’?” he echoed, his voice rising in an oratorical crescendo. “My dear girl, a rope is not merely an item to be ‘packed.’ It is an extension of the adventurer’s will! A simple coil of hemp fiber is the difference between success and ignominious failure! It is the key to conquering the vertical world! With a rope, one can ascend sheer precipices! One can descend into mysterious chasms! One can bind miscreants, secure provisions from scavenging beasts, fashion a rudimentary pulley system, create a tripwire for the unwary foe, or even, in a moment of dire desperation, serve as a rather unappetizing form of emergency kindling!”
He paused, taking a dramatic breath. “You have no food, no water, no real weapon, and now, I discover, no rope. Your preparedness for this endeavor is so catastrophically deficient it borders on performance art. What, precisely, did they teach you at that ‘college’ of yours? How to compose a strongly worded letter to a goblin?”
I stared up at his silhouette, utterly speechless. Then, I did the only thing I could. I started to clap, the sound echoing strangely in the confined space.
“Bravo,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “That was beautiful. A true tour de force. Ten out of ten. You should take that act on the road.”
“Your flippancy is noted and, as usual, entirely unhelpful,” he sniffed. “The only way out for you now is forward.”
He was right. Cursing myself, the world, and especially verbose feline mentors, I got to my feet. The tunnel stretched away from the small patch of light under the trapdoor into absolute, impenetrable blackness. The air grew colder just a few feet in. Taking a tentative step, my hand brushed against the wall. It was cold, damp, and slick with something I didn’t want to identify.
Great. Just great. Trapped in a spooky murder tunnel with no light and a cat giving me a lecture on rope etiquette from above. Then I remembered the night before. The tingling in my palm. The tiny flame in the vast darkness.
A spark of power.
“Okay,” I whispered to myself, flexing the fingers of my right hand. “Okay, Paige. You’re not completely useless. You’re magically useless. There’s a difference.”
I closed my eyes, trying to recall the feeling. Not the heat, but the intent. The pull from my gut. I focused on the desperate need for light, for a way to push back the cloying, breathing darkness of the tunnel. I reached for that flicker inside me, that tiny ember Bartholomew had ignited.
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“Fos parvus, serva me.”
For a second, nothing happened. I felt a familiar wave of frustration and failure wash over me. Useless.
“Cease your internal whining,” Bartholomew’s voice floated down, sharp and commanding. “It is not a demand, you witless child. It is a request. You ask the light to obey.”
Ask.
I took a deep breath, pushing the doubt away. I wasn’t demanding light. I was asking it to exist. I opened my palm and focused all my will, all my fear and frustration, and desperate hope into that single point. Light. Now. I rolled my eyes. Light now, please.
A warmth bloomed in my palm. It started as a pinprick, then swelled into a soft, gentle glow. I opened my eyes. Floating an inch above my hand was a small, pulsating sphere of silver-white light. It wasn’t much brighter than a cellphone screen, but in the absolute blackness of the tunnel, it was a supernova. It cast long, dancing shadows down the corridor, revealing damp stone walls marked with faint, spidery scratches, and a floor that sloped ever downward into the unknown.
I let out a shaky laugh, a sound of pure, giddy relief. I looked up at the square of sky, holding my personal star aloft.
“How’s this for preparedness, you pompous furball?”
Bartholomew was silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, the condescension in his voice was tempered with something that might have been grudging approval.
“Adequate. See that you do not drop it. And try not to fall into any more holes.”
The furry silhouette disappeared.
“Wait, aren’t you coming?” I shouted up the shaft, suddenly terrified of being alone, despite how many times the intrusive thoughts had suggested killing the damn cat.
“Why should I? I am not the one who fell in there.”
“I don’t know much, but I know splitting the party is a bad idea.”Barty hissed from ground level, somewhere out of sight.
“Your logic is not entirely wrong.” He spat, sounding supremely annoyed.
A moment later, a smattering of small pebbles and detritus skittered down the mud slide as Bartholomew hopped from rock to root to rock, working his way down.
“Thanks, Barty,” I said as he sauntered into the tunnel ahead of me.
“Do not thank me yet. We still lack the knowledge of what made this tunnel, and what may still inhabit it.”
I took a deep breath, the magical light warm against my skin. He was right, and as usual, his rightness wasn’t of particular comfort. A cold knot formed in my stomach as I squared my shoulders and drew Rusty from my belt.
“Okay, murder tunnel,” I said, my voice echoing in the sudden silence. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Holding my light high, I took the first step forward, into the cold, waiting dark.
The light, a small, captured star in the palm of my hand, pushed back the oppressive blackness but couldn’t seem to warm it. The air was frigid and heavy, thick with the smell of damp earth and something metallic and ancient, like a forgotten tomb that had been chewing on old pennies for a century. Each step I took was a declaration, my leather-soled boots scuffing against the uneven stone floor, the sound swallowed by the immense, hungry silence.
“Must you tread with the subtlety of a drunken ox?” a voice, dry as dust and twice as condescending, emanated from my shoulder.
I glanced at Bartholomew, whose gray, fluffy form was a ridiculous contrast to the grim surroundings. He was perched on my pauldron, tail twitching with irritation, his flat Persian face a mask of profound disappointment.
“Sorry, Bart,” I muttered, not sorry at all. “Forgot I was supposed to be a ninja. My bad. It’s not like my education included ‘Stealthy Dungeon Crawling 101’.”
“A pity. It seems a far more applicable life skill than, say, ‘The Semiotics of Corporate Branding’,” he sniffed.
I chose to ignore him, focusing on the path ahead. The tunnel was a rough-hewn affair, the walls glistening with a slimy dampness that probably hosted twelve new kinds of plague. The beam from my magical light danced over the stone, revealing the occasional deep gouge in the rock, as if something very large and very angry had tried to claw its way out. Or in. I decided not to dwell on that particular distinction.
We walked for what felt like a lifetime crammed into twenty minutes. The only sounds were our own: my footsteps, my breathing, and the occasional, deeply put-upon sigh from Bartholomew. Then, the tunnel began to widen. The oppressive closeness receded, and the ceiling lifted into a yawning, black void beyond the reach of my light. We had arrived…somewhere.
The space was a cavern, vast and circular. And it was a boneyard.
Bones were everywhere, scattered like driftwood on a grim shore. Ribcages, bleached white and brittle, lay half-buried in the dirt. A human skull, jaw agape in a silent scream, stared up at the unseen ceiling from beside a pile of what looked like disintegrating wooden crates. The air was thick with the dust of ages and the faint, sweet smell of decay. Along the far walls, yawning like slack-jawed mouths, were the openings to at least five other tunnels.
“Well,” I said, my attempt at casualness falling flat in the cavernous space. “Someone didn’t tidy up before they left.”
“Regardless of competence or luck, I don’t believe they actually left.”
“No shit.” I nudged a splintered femur with the toe of my boot. It crumbled into a fine, white powder. Sightless, multi-legged insects, pale and translucent, skittered away from the disturbance, disappearing into the cracks in the floor. My stomach did a slow, nauseous roll. “So, which one of these lovely, uninviting death-holes are we taking?”
I gestured with Rusty at the array of tunnels. They all looked identical: dark, foreboding, and oozing with the promise of a deeply unpleasant experience.
“One must listen,” Bartholomew said, his ears swiveling. “Magic leaves a resonance, a whisper on the currents of the world. We seek the one that hums with the faintest echo of corruption.”I leaned in, pointing an ear at the closest tunnel entrance. All I heard was dripping water.
“Not with the ears, you foolish human, but with the soul.” Bartholomew smacked the side of my head with a paw.
“Ow! Okay.”
I closed my eyes and tried to listen with my soul. All I could hear was my own heart thumping a frantic drum solo against my ribs and the phantom crunch of bone under my feet.
“Yeah, my soul is currently screaming ‘Get the hell out of here’ in about twelve different languages. You got anything more specific?”He let out an exasperated puff of air.
“Find the resonance, like the stone last evening. It is a subtle art, one that requires years of—”
He was cut off by a sound that was anything but subtle.
It was a chittering, scraping noise, like a thousand knives being sharpened on stone. It came from the darkest corner of the cavern, a place my light hadn’t quite touched. I snapped my head around, raising the light high. Rusty felt suddenly very heavy and inadequate in my hand.
The beam of light landed on it, and my blood ran cold.
It was one of the insects from the floor, but scaled up to the size of a prize-winning pig. Its body was a hulking carapace of translucent chitin, glistening wetly in the light. Dozens of spindly, jointed legs carried its bulk forward, scuttling with an unnatural speed. But the worst part was its head. It had no eyes, only a smooth, blank plate of shell. Below it, a set of wicked, intersecting mandibles clicked and gnashed, dripping a viscous, green fluid onto the stone floor. A tag appeared for a moment before settling above the creature’s head:
[Grave Scuttler] [Lvl 5]
Bartholomew had described them once as the dungeon’s janitors, blind scavengers that consumed anything dead or dying. This one, however, looked like it wasn’t willing to wait.
“Competence or luck, you said,” I hissed through my teeth. “I’m really hoping for luck right now.”
“I find that luck is often a byproduct of not standing still,” Bartholomew retorted, his claws digging into my leather armor for purchase.
He was right. The thing was charging.
There was no time for a plan, no time for witty banter. Just pure, adrenalized panic. I sidestepped, bringing Rusty around in a clumsy arc. The Scuttler, being blind, didn’t react to my movement, but to the sound. It swerved, following the scrape of my boots, and my sword connected with its side with a hideous, wet crunch.
It was like hitting a sack of gravel and rotten fruit. The impact jarred my arm to the shoulder, and Rusty bit into the chitin but didn’t cleave through. The creature shrieked, a high-pitched, grating sound that vibrated in my teeth, and lashed out with its forelegs. I stumbled back, tripping over an inconveniently placed ribcage and landing hard on my ass.
The world was a dizzying mess of scuttling legs and clicking mandibles. The Scuttler loomed over me, its eyeless face somehow conveying a terrifying sense of malice. My light had winked out when I lost concentration, and the monochrome hues of my Dark Seer trait only made the monster look even more grotesque.
“Paige! The light!” Bartholomew yowled from somewhere nearby.
My brain, which had temporarily been replaced by a static-filled television screen, finally rebooted. The light. It’s blind. It hunts by sound.
The Scuttler lunged, its jaws snapping inches from my face. I rolled desperately to the side, grabbing for a loose rock—the skull I’d seen earlier. Without thinking, I hurled it as hard as I could into the darkness on the other side of the cavern.
Clatter-clack-clack.
The Scuttler froze, its hideous head swiveling towards the noise. It was the opening I needed. I scrambled to my feet, scooped up my sword, and charged, not at its armored body, but at its legs. I poured every ounce of my fear and frustration into the swing. Rusty wasn’t elegant, but it was solid. The blade connected with two of the spindly legs on its left side, shearing through the joints with a sickening crack.
The creature shrieked again and collapsed on its side, flailing and churning the dirt. Greenish ichor sprayed from the stumps of its legs. It was wounded, disoriented, and thrashing wildly. I didn’t give it a chance to recover. Stepping in close, I raised Rusty high with both hands and plunged it downwards into the softer-looking chitin where its head met its body.
There was a final, convulsive shudder, and then it was still.
I stood there for a long moment, chest heaving, hands trembling. I was covered in dirt and splattered with thick, foul-smelling bug guts. Rusty was dripping green.
[You killed a Grave Scuttler] [Lvl 5][Rewards:]
[50XP]
[Grave Plate x2]
“Well,” Bartholomew said, his voice impeccably calm as he hopped down from my shoulder to delicately inspect the corpse. “That was vigorous.”
“Vigorous?” I gasped, leaning on my sword. “That thing almost turned my face into an abstract art piece.”
He ignored my complaint, tapping a claw against the dead creature’s carapace.
“It came from that tunnel.” He flicked his tail towards the second archway from the left. “The one with the faintest resonance. These creatures are drawn to magic like moths to a flame. Or, in this case, like giant, disgusting, eyeless cockroaches to a soul-destroying abyss.” He looked up at me, a glimmer of what might have been approval in his emerald eyes. “A competent deduction, wouldn’t you agree?”
I looked from the dead monster to the dark tunnel it had emerged from. A cold, weary resolve settled over the fading adrenaline. I killed it. It wasn’t glorious. It was gross, terrifying, and necessary.
I pulled Rusty free with a wet squelch and wiped it on the creature’s shell, leaving a long, clean streak in the grime. “Okay,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “One murder tunnel down.” I took a deep, shaky breath and started walking towards the indicated archway, the magical light held steady in my shaking hand. “Let’s see what else you’ve got.”