Over the Sunken Realm – Part 3
Thanks to Andhal, you have found a temporary refuge in a secret underwater cave. But a large creature slithers out of another tunnel, and seems to be hungry...
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You flee into the tunnel.
The gleaming yellow jewels hanging from the walls of the tunnel cast dancing shadows all around you as you rush by them. The ground is on a small incline downwards, but is clean and smooth enough to run on. The air is moist and stuffy; beads of sweat soon crown your temples and roll off your body as you scramble your way further and further into the earth.
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Your breath is short, and a burning sensation flares up across your body. You never had to exert your muscles Down Below; with an icy sense of dread, you realize your flabby legs will never carry you to safety.
Then you hear it – a hundred of spindly insect legs tapping against the rocks, and the unnatural clicking of the creature’s gaping maws. Soon – in a minute, or a few seconds – they will sink into your flesh and gnaw their way through your belly…
The grisly thought gives you a surge of energy you never knew you had: your lungs are burning, your legs tremble with every step, but your head is clear. You clench your teeth as you throw yourself into a mad, final sprint. Your heartbeats send your chest quivering, blood pounds into your ears, but you hardly notice them. Nothing matters beyond running, putting one foot before another, living a few more minutes, a few more seconds –
Suddenly, your foot misses the ground below, and you fall legs first into the void.
Before you can scream, instinct stretches your arms wide, and you catch the rims of the hole you just set foot into. Thankfully, it is just tight enough: the shock reverberates through your shoulders right up to your fingers. Something light and rugged is stuck right between your chest and the border of the hole. You grab it, and realize it’s a rope coming down from the ceiling of the tunnel.
The clicking and tapping gets louder behind you. The Creature is closer than ever! Though fear grasps at your throat, you throw your arms up, grabbing the rope as tightly as you can, and let your body slide deeper into the void below.
The descent is much kinder than you expected: you just go down at a steady pace, instead of hurling down. Thankfully, your hands do not slip across the rope as you go: this could have heavily damaged your hands. The squeak of a pulley rings out from above. This gives you enough explanation: this rope is meant to be used to get people or materials down into wherever it is you are now bound to.
For a few seconds, you start to think that things could go well… until you hear the clicking and tapping above you.
You let out a gurgled scream of terror: the Creature has heaved the top half of its sinuous body down into the hole, and is lowering itself down after you. Your hands tremble so hard you almost let go of the rope: it’s getting down quicker than you are!
Blasted pulley! Would it that it broke now: better to die in freefall than to be devoured alive! Of course you could let go of the rope: but your instinct of survival will not let you.
A wave of nausea overtakes your senses. The Creature was already horrifying enough to see, but its smell is even worse. Pain shoots through your left shoulder. It feels like a pin of boiling metal just went through your arm. Taking a look, you find a blackened spot on your flesh.
Drops of liquid zoom past your face, and you do your best to avoid them. The Creature is about four feet away from you now, its mouth dangling above you overflows with bubbling, sizzling drool. Another set of drops fall: you twist your body to avoid most of them, but your back starts burning: a few drops have found their mark.
You pull helplessly on the rope, desperate to go quicker. At least, if you can get a few feet lower, maybe you would be out of the Creature’s reach – or of its jaws, at least. It can’t get its entire body through that hole… can it?
The darkness around you has deepened as you moved deeper underground, but you can still make out its silhouette wriggling its way further and further down, foot after foot, its hideous insect face getting closer and closer to your head. Only a few more seconds, and it will be over.
“Eï! Acuèn-tú!“
What was that voice? It came from below, but you can still see nothing but utter darkness below your feet…
“Acuèn-tú! Drrop yourself, now!“
It is closer than you would have thought – and you don’t have that many options. Right as the clicking jaws snap a foot above the top of your head, you let go of the rope, and hurl down to the ground.
Then it all happens in a flash: your body hits the smooth, cold rock a mere second after you let go; another drop of acid lands right on top of your head, and pain surges across your entire body. Then a blue light flares up right next to you, briefly illuminating the entire cave.
For a fraction of an instant, you see the Creature dangling from the ceiling, its legs twisting and turning in every direction, trying to find some hold on the rocky walls of the cave. Its dark eyes shimmer as the light hits them directly. An ear-piercing shriek of bestial fury and pain resonates all around you; but a second bolt of blue light surges right next to you and hits the creature again.
The Creature’s massive coils twist and jitter in its death throes. For a solid minute, it screams, and its body writhes and convulses, sending its head knocking against the cave walls. The spectacle is atrocious, and you cover your face as it lets out one final, maddened shriek. After a few seconds, it dies out, and its echo travel along unseen passages to die out in the unfathomed darkness below. The burning stench fills the air around you.
“You are good, yes?”
You recognize the gruffy voice of the person who saved you – but as you open your eyes and kneel up to them, you are stunned by surprise:
Before you, illumined by the warm glimmer of a yellow crystal, stands a deformed humanoid the likes of which you have never seen before – safe perhaps in some long-forgotten dream from Down Below. It is (or rather he is¸ for it looks very much like a human male, at least as far as the face, voice and beard go) a generally human silhouette, but shortened to an almost comical degree: his head is as big as yours, but his body looks like it has been compressed from above, making his legs short and stout, his chest deep but small in stature, and his arms disproportionately elongated.
“You are not hurt, no?” the creature asks, with all the concern one could as for in a friend’s voice.
You nod, and explain you will probably feel it tomorrow morning, but for the time being, it doesn’t hurt too bad.
“Oh, good then! I am Bazkior, the Druegan. How are you named?”
Your reply is as dry as your throat: “I don’t know.”
“You have forgotten your name? I have known that the Tall-ones are forgetful, but I never saw – wait, you are from Down Below! Of course, like the other ones, you do not know how you are named!”
Now that you listen to it, Bazkior’s voice is not as gruff as it appeared before: it rolls off his tongue like water off a waterfall, with rolling r’s and singing vowels. Since you are too busy listening to interrupt, your odd new friend continues:
“I have not met the others from Down Below – that is the job for Andhal: he is up there with the Basquionná, and we are down here, to dig ever more deeper. For it is true that they are better at dealing with other Tall-ones; while we are better at digging. It all comes to good, just as I –”
“Wait,” you interrupt before he starts another sentence, “who is the Basquionná? Is it Lin Dâo?”
Bazkior shivers, and mutters, almost for himself: “no, we can not say the Basquionná’s name. She is our Basquionná, who seals our lips and orders our limbs. It is the elder law from the days before the third fall. Yes, we can not.”
All these new terms and words make your aching head swim. “Can you help me heal? I got a few drops of the Creature’s poison here and –”
Without a moment’s thought, Bazkior rushes to your side; his fingers are surprisingly nimble, and he quickly finds the places where the poison fell – touching them even lightly sends flashes of pain through your body.
He then fumbles about in the satchel he wears on his belly, and produces an oddly-shaped iridous crystal, which seems to melt in his hand without drooping down to the ground.
“This will absorb the evil”, he assured.
And picking off a part of the crystal as easily as if it had been jelly, he places it right on the top of your head. The fresh sensation that invades you renders the pain entirely null. It feels so good not to feel anything that you quickly let your friend place other bits of crystal over your shoulder and back.
“Now stay still,” Bazkior says right as he finishes, “the ethralda will swallow the evil and spit it out.”
You obey the odd dwarf’s instructions, and as you wait for the effects to wear off, you decide to ask a question:
“Why do you work for Andhal?”
Bazkior almost shouts when he spits: “I? I, work for Andhal? I am not a slave to him, thank the All-High! What a fool you are to think this way! Did I not say my lips are sealed and my limbs commanded by my Basquionná?”
You sigh. “Bazkior, I don’t know what a Basquionná even is, how could I even…”
“All right, I will tell!”
And the odd little man, taking a pose like a professor giving out a lecture, begins his explanation:
“We Druegans are bound by the elder law, which, among many things, says: good for good, evil for evil. Thus when one does a great good to a Druegan, the Druegan must repay with a good just as great, yes?”
You nod, amused by the spectacle.
“Then, the Basquionná is the one who has done the greatest good: saving the life of a Druegan. Then the Druegan must repay: or his life belongs to the Basquionná, or he saves the Basquionná’s life in return! And me and my clan cannot save our Basquionná, because she is always guarded. So, we belong to her. We obey her entirely, because we cannot break the elder law.”
You ask yourself how anybody could take a contract or unspoken agreement so literally: what is the hold of this Basquionná over the Druegans? Is it mere superstition, or is there something more?
“So, you can never disobey her?”
“No,” replied Bazkior. “Not even if we want to, we cannot.”
“But does she come here to tell you her orders?”
“No, her servant Andhal comes, and he tells us where she wants to dig, or what crystals she wants to extract.”
The pangs of doubt sink into your heart. So perhaps Andhal was nothing more than a slave merchant, or a quartermaster forcing his prisoners to labour under Lin Dâo. After all, was he not looking for survivors of another ship when he met you? In the midst of resentment and shame for being so gullible, you ask:
“But how do you know that he speaks truth?”
“We can not know,” replies Bazkior, “only trust. No one knows where to find the Basquionná.”
An idea is burgeoning in your mind. Perhaps it is time you helped Bazkior, in exchange for his saving your life…
“Bazkior, I had asked Andhal to help me, and he wanted to present me before Lin Dâo…”
“I cannot say who is our Basquion-”
“I know, Bazkior, I know, but if I get close to Andhal, perhaps I can go to his mistress and ask her about her true will regarding you and your clans. Then I will be sure that Andhal truly speaks her words alone!”
Bazkior’s eyes glimmer: “if you did that, Elmorlèm, I and my clan would be grateful!”
When you ask about the name he just gave you, he shrugs: “it means Depth-Dweller in my tongue. If it fits you, you can keep it!”
Elmorlèm… It may have to do for the time being.
“You can reach the entrance of the first cave by following that trail to your right. It moves up, and there are crystals to light the way… But first, come, let us first go to my people, and we will feed you and heal you.”
You rise to your feet, about to argue, but the ethralda crystals fall off your body. They have gone from clear and shimmering to a dull opaque grayish colour. As if they had absorbed the poison right out of the wounds…
“Yes, many other wonders we have us Druegans!” Bazkior exclaims, “come with me!”
You start to wonder whether the Druegan’s intentions are as clear as they seem. After all, you trusted Andhal all too easily. What if this was a trap of some kind?
Do you follow Bazkior to his people, or do you go back to Andhal?
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