Chapter 22 - Is It Safe

  Given that he’s been able to make good use of the Intent-movement to cross large areas, including through open air, Alex is puzzled why a descent would be any form of roadblock. But if it’s enough to worry Corvus and Shalmond, it’s something to take seriously. While considering the challenge, Alex kneels down next to the stream. He reaches down, letting his fingers dip into the flickering flow of black and silver.

  Alex had expected the water to feel ephemeral and insubstantial, given the way this territory makes everything look. But instead, his fingertips push into the surface, encountering the cool wetness just as normally as ever. And then it occurs to Alex, this is the first water he’s seen in Hell. If you don’t count what was served at his dinner with Mora, Collin and Galla. He glances back over the pond and the silhouetted mushroom forest reaching back up the slopes.

  “Where does the water come from?” He muses aloud, unable to see any sign of a feeder stream bringing water in. And there’s no disturbance of the pond’s surface except for directly around the out-flowing stream. The surface is so flat and placid that it almost seems like a complete void within the Abyssal Grotto.

  Alex feels a spark of attentiveness from Shalmond as ‘The Waiting Breath’ settles their awareness over him. In answer, Shalmond presses a sensation of sinking slowly, going deeper, deeper, gaining speed. Then a sense of flipping and beginning to rise, but still following the same direction. They press the sensation of breaching the surface with a relieved gasp. And finally, Shalmond impresses upon Alex a feeling of unimaginable vastness and being utterly lost.

  It takes Alex a little longer to parse the sensations into the meaning Shalmond is intending. “So, if I were to dive into here and go down, like way down, I’d eventually hit a point where the gravity shifts, and I’d be swimming up. Right?” He says and receives a sense of correctness from the entity. “Then at some point I would emerge… what, in some kind of giant cave?” This time Shalmond presses wrongness towards Alex. Alex reconsiders. “Vastness, and feeling lost.” He muses, trying to imagine it. “Wait, like an ocean?” And this time Shalmond presses agreement. “So the pond is the other side of an ocean?” Alex marvels, slack-jawed at the implications.

  “Is it safe to drink?” He asks and gets a hesitant affirmative. Shalmond takes a moment, then presses an idea towards Alex. Small, Little, Ok. Then they push again. Much, lot, bad. “Ah, so a little won’t hurt me, but more than a few mouthfuls will probably be bad. I understand.” Alex says and scoops just a bit of the water in his palms and lifts it to his mouth.

  But he spits it out immediately after tasting it, triggering the effect from the territory again. But understanding what it is, Alex doesn’t panic this time. “BLECH! Oh it’s horrible!” He nearly retches. “Tastes like someone’s been soaking pennies in old laundry water.” He complains while wishing he had something to wash his mouth out with.

  Corvus and Hara both watch with amusement, the crow chuckling softly while the hound openly giggles. “My dear boy, what did you expect? You just drank water from a pond located in the heart of a mycelial growth.” Corvus chides Alex while the unfortunate human tries to use his shirt to wipe the indies of his mouth.

  Shalmond feels amused as well, and presses another string of concepts towards Alex. But the sensations are far more alien. So much so that Alex can’t even find the right words to associate them. “Hey Corvus. I can’t quite figure out what Shalmond is saying this time. Can you try to translate?” He asks as Shalmond’s attention shifts to Corvus.

  After a few moments, Corvus hmmmms and tips his head. “This is difficult. They are trying to communicate a specific series of events. But tele-empathetic communication struggles to convey specific data.” He says, then kneels down and touches one of the mushrooms. A moment later, he moves to the water and touches it. “Ah, alright, I believe I understand now.”

  Corvus takes a moment to settle his thoughts before turning back to Alex. “They are attempting to convey that you are now going to be carrying the mushroom spore within you. It’s largely harmless, and you likely won’t even notice any effects. But you should not drink more of the water from here.”

  Alex stiffens, then shudders. “Ugh. Why did you let me do that?” He says, trying not to be sick.

  Corvus just chuckles. “Well, you asked if it was safe. They answered you. You never asked if the water was good to drink.” To which Alex’s only response is a one-fingered salute.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Once Alex had mostly recovered, Shalmond once more tries to impress upon them to be cautious. “Yeah, we’ll be careful. Thanks.” Alex says to the open air before stepping into the opening of the tunnel. Shalmond gives Alex one more parting ‘message’, longing and a desire to return, a gentle goodbye. Hara follows at Alex’s heels, unaware of the exchange and still giving periodic little giggles. Corvus, much more composed, takes up the rear.

  The downward slope of the tunnel is much steeper than the bowl of the pond, and the tunnel itself narrows until Alex has to brace a hand on the roof of it to prevent his head from banging. And to make matters worse, the flowing water doesn’t neatly stay within a single path. With the monochrome environment, it’s impossible to tell safe footing from the treacherous.

  “Smell changing.” Hara says, having less trouble with the footing than Alex. “Smell like smoke.” She says, nose lifted and twitching in the air. Alex hadn’t noticed any smell, but the air had started getting drier, hotter.

  Alex turns his head to look back at Hara. “Smells like smoke? Well Cor-” Alex cuts off mid-word as his foot slips out from under him. The sudden motion of falling triggers the odd effect of the territory again, giving everyone present that sense of impending doom. Alex lands hard on his back, knocking the breath out of him. And he slides.

  Unlike every time before where that sensation was harmless, this time something is seriously wrong as Alex scrabbles to stop himself as he slides down the sloped tunnel. But instead of stopping, Alex just slides faster. The rock had been worn smooth by water long ago, and the surface is slick. With nothing to grab or stop himself on, Alex just keeps picking up speed.

  “Shiiiiiiit!” Alex screams as flashes of silver flicker past him, then with a sudden blinding clarity, all the color and light that had been missing from the world reasserts itself. Alex breaches the edge of the Abyssal Grotto without warning, and can finally see the sides of the tunnel rushing past. “Oh shitshitshitshit.” He nearly panics, recognizing just how fast he’s moving.

  “ALEX!” Corvus’s voice breaks into his mind and the crow is suddenly there behind him, swooping through the tunnel to keep pace in his bird guise again. “Alex, you must halt your descent however you are able. This passage terminates over an open chasm.” He warns.

  Alex’s blood runs cold. He spreads his arms and legs as best he can, trying in vain to get any purchase against the smooth rock. But it does slow him slightly. Not enough. Alex can see a faint orange glow coming from down the shaft, and now even his human nose can smell the smoke. An image of himself rocketing out into open air above a roaring blaze fills Alex’s imagination as the panic redoubles.

  Hara thunders down the shaft after Alex. She wasn’t able to do anything to stop him falling. She wasn't able to do anything when he started sliding away. Hara has to catch up and help! Her metallic claws dig into the stone, giving her much better footing than the others, allowing her to run full-tilt down the passage. She can hear him, just a little. And then she bursts through the border, color and light coming back in a flash. She can see Alex! She can also see the hole.

  Alex does everything he can, boots and nails scraping against the rock until his fingertips are bloody. And then he hears the howl. That piercing sonorous howl that chased him through the unclaimed territories. It seems to reverberate through the rock and stone like ripples over water. Then the opening Alex is rushing towards is obscured partly as a stone barrier rises to partly cover it. Alex barely has time to register the change before he smashes into it, crumpling into a heap. Corvus arrests his own motion much easier, flapping to land on top of the low wall that had grown from the floor of the tunnel.

  “Oooow…” Alex groans, shifting to get his limbs untangled and pushing off the barricade. He takes a few heavy breaths, trying to get his racing heart to settle down, his very soul quivering at how close that had been. Then Hara comes blitzing down, colliding with the wall too. But she just harmlessly bounces off of it, sending chunks of the thin wall clattering further down the passage, shattered off at her impact.

  “Alex! Alex ok? Alex not hurt?” The worried hound asks in a rush, sniffing and licking at everywhere she can reach.

  Alex winces, everything hurting. But nothing feels broken. “Yeah, yeah, I’m ok.” He pants out, groaning. “How did…” He trails off, seeing the ‘melt-stone’ appearance of the barrier that he crashed into, then looking at the hound. “Hara, did you do this?” He asks, rubbing Hara’s neck.

  The hound pulls back just a bit and looks at the barrier. “Hara not sure. Hara knew Hara need to get to Alex, Hara have to help. Hara knew Alex in trouble. Hara just think about stone catching Alex, and stone did.” She says, then frowns. “Hara felt fire inside go crazy when Hara howled.”

  Corvus had remained silent since the danger had passed, but now he speaks up. “Hara, that indeed was you. You used your Animus, your ‘fire inside’, to reach into the stone and make it do your will.” He says, a touch of amusement and pride in his voice. “You saved Alex’s life.”

  It was only then that Alex dared peek over the top of the barricade. What he sees causes his stomach to do flips in his gut. Not even 10 feet further down the passage, the tunnel ends on a small ledge, then the floor drops away. At the speed he was going, that would have been mere seconds. He sinks down with his back against the tunnel wall and pulls Hara in against him, hugging the big hound against his chest. “Oh good girl, Hara. Thank you. Good girl.” He mutters. Hara wags, her friend is safe, and that means Hara is happy.