camp nano 2018 drabbles 3

Bodus wandered through the darkened tomb with his crystal lantern held high, the light slipping across his glasses and making him squint into the blackness beyond the lamp's reach. His heart hammered in his chest at every tiny noise, every quiet skitter and falling pebble in the darkness.

More than that, though, it was the silence that filled his gut with ice. Stuffy, pitch-black silence. The walls absorbed every sound so easily. He could scream, he imagined, and someone around the next corner would barely hear him.

The thought gave him a nasty flutter. And then a nastier one, at the idea of someone waiting around the corner, and he picked up his pace as if to outrun the images of tall dark things with long arms that beat at his mind like panicked moth wings. His hooves didn't click on the floor, even at his pace, and the dulled shuffle-scrape of trotters across stone only added to the dreamlike atmosphere.

A bad dream, he thought, gut squeezing tighter. Not the kind of bad dream he had often, but bad nonetheless. The few of this kind that he'd had were plenty to last him a lifetime.

The hallway seemed to go on forever. He wondered, a little hysterically, if his lamp would go out. Nonsense, he reassured himself. It wasn't one of those flimsy human things, fire on a stick, or metal cylinders running on 'batteries' with such a pitiful charge that he could've dispelled them with a word and a touch of his finger. This was crystal, imbued crystal, faceted and carved to throw its light far in places as dark as it had come from. It wouldn't die.

But it might, whispered a part of him that skittered up his throat. It just might. Anything could happen in a dream.

He pressed on, fighting the squeeze of panic around his ribs.

---

"Hey! You in there?" Ellie cupped her hands around her mouth, sticking her snout into one of the eerie holes in the wall that disappeared into blackness. "Bodus?"

Her voice echoed.

Ellie drew back, frowning at the hole, and then up at the troll carved into the stone over the door her employer had disappeared into. Its mournful expression sent a shadow of unease through her this time. "Bodus!" she called again, stepping back to give the walls around the door a look-over. "I don't know if you can hear me, but stay where you are! I'll be there before you know it!"

She paused. "No, really, stay where you are, the place is full of death traps. Hello? Hello!"

Still no answer, save for the wind rustling the leaves. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting.

"I'm coming," she said, half-heartedly this time. What was she going to do about this? What was there to do, really?

She paced over to plop down ungracefully next to their packs, snagging a piece of cheese to pop into her mouth. As she did so, her eye caught on the edge of a book peeking out of his bag. /The/ book. The stupid book that had led them here.

She slipped it out by the corner after a moment's silence. The cover stared back up at her. She leafed slowly through the pages, feeling them whisper past thin and brittle under her fingertips as she started skipping sections until she closed the book entirely.

Your job, she thought. That's what there is to do.

Ellie looked up at the temple again, and sighed.

---

After an hour of poking and climbing around, her efforts were rewarded; she found an opening on a high ledge, not too far behind the gargoyle. Her satisfaction wavered as she passed it and its eerie expression of gloom. As she followed the ledge she had to squat lower and lower, which was thankfully not too hard on her troll form's lanky, leggy frame; by the time she reached the sharp corner that led into the entrance, though, the opening was so small and the ledge so narrow that she had trouble rounding it.

After a moment's bracing, she levered her hook claw against the edge of the stone and squirmed her long body at a diagonal angle around the corner. Just like moving a couch, she thought. Just like moving a--

She slipped. Her screech cut off when her claw caught itself on a chip in the stone; she could feel her heart in her throat and her breathing so harsh and fast that it reflected off the stone back into her face. Christ, christ, "Christ," she whispered at a frantic speed, not moving while she gathered herself. It was a long way down from here.

Pull it together. Do your job.

She swallowed and closed her eyes, and fought to control her breathing. No fast moves. No careless ones. But she /would/ have to move, or she'd cling here until her muscles seized up and refused to hold her weight anymore.

Okay. Okay okay okay. "Easy does it," she muttered. "Eaaasy. Easy peasy."

She felt around in the darkness in front of her nose, looking for another crack, a handhold, something.

After a minute she found it. When the very tips of her claws hooked on the shallow, shallow seam in the crawlspace, she almost wished she hadn't.

It was going to have to hold her weight. It was going to have to pull her to safety, with one long leg and haunch and her tail hanging out over nothing. She cursed the dampening field that kept her from shapeshifting, again and again and again; she could think of half a dozen troll species that could have instantly gotten her out of this mess, and not a one of them was available now that she needed it.

She squeezed her eyes shut again, tighter this time. Her claw started to scrape down the wall.

He won't get out of this if you don't.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Do your job.

She pulled in a breath so sharp it whistled, and dug her claws into the seam just as she pushed off with the other one, which gave her just enough leverage to push herself into the hole. Her claw scraped and scrabbled horribly against stone, and kicked out into space for the few seconds it took her to shimmy deep enough into the crawlspace to drag it in behind her.

Once safely inside, she buried her face in her arms and pressed her forehead to the floor. "Shit," she wheezed. "Holy shit. He's paying me extra for this one."

She lifted her head. "You hear that?" she barked down the tunnel. "I'm gonna want double from you!"

The darkness swallowed up the sound, just like it swallowed up her night-sight. And yet, even muffled and muted, her voice took a little too long to disappear. The quarters were cramped enough that she might not be able to turn around for awhile. Maybe not at all. She might have to crawl the whole way backward if she wanted out.

Behind her there were leaves rustling, jungle birds cooing. In front of her there was only stillness.

Ellie stared. She stared for a long time.

Bodus was counting on her.

With a long-suffering sigh, she propped herself up on hands and knees and began to make her awkward way in.

---