You fall for a decent amount of time. After a short period of tumbling, you end up situated falling head first, deeper and deeper into the earth. While your fall time passes quickly compared to your earlier fall, you still realize that you’ve been sailing downwards for quite a long time. You are surprised when the light from above seems to glint on a wire as fall you pass, and your foot suddenly snags something strung between the cavernous walls. The line you catch seems to stretch with your weight like a bungee cord, but remains solidly attached to your shoes. Your fall is slowed considerably, and you wonder what material could possibly act this way. At long last, your head bumps into a solid cave floor, and your body follows, falling gracelessly but almost painlessly onto the earth. When you touch down, you manage to loose your foot from the mysterious wire, though it seems excessively sticky. Before you can examine it further, though, it snaps like a rubber band, back into the upper reaches of the trap you fell through.
You simply can’t believe you’ve fallen again. To be this deep in the earth is beyond reasonable. The cave is primarily lit by luminous moss and plants that bathe the whole cavern in an eerie cyan color. The room you’ve in is almost perfectly circular, and the only exit you see is straight ahead, through a long, pitch black tunnel. Around you, stalagmites meet stalactites and form strong cave columns that have been undisturbed for centuries. You wonder for only a moment what kind of creatures might dwell in a place so deep in the earth, and so undisturbed, and the thought elicits chills that run through your spine. You banish it though, and steel yourself for the journey ahead. If the only exit is the tunnel, you’ll just have to navigate the tunnel.
You groan at the memory of being so foolish and cocky, and admonish yourself as you dig through your gear for a small flashlight you packed. You finally come upon it, and when you turn it on, you’re delighted to find that the batteries are functional, and the light provides a strong, steady beam of light that ought to make this cavern an easy thing to escape.
The first steps into the tunnel are defined by caution. You keep a keen eye out for any creatures or traps, and vow not to be so easily affected again. Still, the tunnel goes on for ages, and the journey is monotonous. No sharp turns, no bumps in the darkness, and no traps waiting for dungeon explorers. There is just the seemingly endless path of the tunnel in the cave.
After perhaps and hour of just walking forward, though, a stifled moan bounces off the cave walls and reaches your ears. Still wary of traps and snares, you quick your pace until you come to a chamber of unbelievable size. The room is bigger than any arena or concert hall you’ve ever seen, and your flashlight can’t even find the wall opposite the door you entered through. You do, however, discover the source of the earlier moans. You see a sac of some kind, shuffling around on the floor of the cavern, some thirty yards away from you. You sprint to it and are horrified to find what appears to be a woman, fully cocooned in some kind of rope. The only body parts not completely wrapped in the threads are the nose, which flares in sharp, ragged breaths, the eyes, which dart back and forth at the presence of an girl with a flashlight, the large, shapely breasts, and the slightly hairy vaginal lips, which drip a thick, sperm-like fluid.
Desperate to help, you try to tear the strange covering off her face, but find it to be strongly attached, and just as sticky as the cord that caught you as you fell. After some effort, though, you manage to remove enough of the threads for free the girl’s mouth. Having accomplished this, you frantically ask what happened to the poor girl. At first, she makes no sense at all, just thrashing and screaming in hysterics, but you eventually help her regain her composure, and she takes her first calm breath that you’ve seen.
She explains that she is Linda, whom you recognize from the list Hannah told you as a member of Amy’s party. She surmises that you are Deirdra, and says that Amy was sure that you’d come to the rescue, if the rescue was needed. Then she loses herself again, saying that rescue is hopeless, now that you’re in the cavern with her. The last word she says seems to be “drider,” but the word means nothing to you. She begins to thrash again, though, and kicks the flashlight out of your hands through her tight cocoon, and when it hits the rock floor of the cave, it turns off and you are plunged into a deeper darkness than you've ever known. No moss lights your way here. There is only total, consuming darkness.
You scurry about, frantically trying to recover your source of light and hope. You feel along the ground, trying to find where it rolled off to. Finally, after minutes of total darkness and searching, you feel your hands brush against its cold metal exterior. You greedily grab it from the floor, and pray it’s still operational. You stand up, will the light to work, and give it a try. The click of the button sounds like a bomb detonating in the otherwise quiet cave, and the rewarding light both blinds and overjoys you. As your vision returns, however, your excitement is replaced by a trembling, cold terror. |