ALL NOVEL 14 - Yo ho my lads
Claire sniffed suspiciously at the cave entrance atop the ridge, crouching down into the scrub that grew around the base of the Landmark. The rocky terrain was exposed to the elements, and worse than that, Claire’s relatively Large form was extremely visible without a forest to hide in. David thought that she looked a bit like his old neighbor's enormous tawny cat trying to hide in a potted plant, but it was better than nothing, and her grey-green coloration at least blended into the mossy rocks quite well. He’d spent the entire trip over-explaining his plan in complex detail only to be stumped by a simple inversion of a problem he’d already grown accustomed to adjusting for. Usually, he underestimated the size of things from the sky, assuming that they were a lot larger than they were if he could see them well from a distance. This time, however…
“David, I’m not trying to rain on your parade here, especially since you even did the sound effects for the plan but…”, Claire trailed off after another long snuffle at the entrance to the cave, “You know there’s absolutely no fucking way I can fit in there right?”
David fumed silently and almost snarled at the rocks while trying desperately to devise another plan as fast as he could. The cavern entrance had seemed large enough last night, though he hadn’t gotten very close or inspected it after getting the Quest notification. When they had finally arrived he’d been more than a little embarrassed when Claire could barely fit her head and shoulders into the thin crevasse despite its immense height. She simply wasn’t going to fit, at all. Despite how nimble she was, she was still Large, even if it was the lowest Grade of the Trait. What made it so frustrating was that she’d received the quest the moment she’d set foot onto the ridge below the cavern, with both of them joking and snickering the whole way up.
“I…I do see that yes. I’m sorry okay! When you’re the size of a labrador everything looks bigger to you! I thought you could fit?” He squeaked grumpily and hopped to the entrance himself, feeling a draft of air from deep within ruffle the fur on his face and tug at his ears.
“Are you calling me fat?”
Claire rumbled quietly in amusement when David kicked a small amount of dirt at her with his hind claws before continuing, “Okay my turn for a plan. We have the quest, and we can both smell ‘em in there for sure. I’m gonna wait right here, off to the side. You sneak in a little bit and do that screamy thing at them. Then you run back out here and I’ll let them run out after you then get ‘em from behind. Sound like a plan?”
David tried not to look impressed at how quickly Claire had come up with a lot better plan than he had as he turned to face her where she had sidled up to the rocks beside the entrance while she spoke. She shot him a placid look from a bed of thorny-looking, prickly bushes that she sat upon comfortably, thick scaly hide unbothered by the angry vegetation. He noted that she was far enough away that her faint scent was blown away by the draft coming out of the cave itself, but was close enough that her explosive speed could put her at the door in a heartbeat. All in all, it was masterfully done, and David resolved then and there to stop trying to come up with plans by himself.
“That’s…I mean yeah that’s pretty solid. Damn, Claire, you have a minor in ambushes to go with your mathematics degree?”
She let her huge jaws open with amusement, visibly suppressing her desire to let out a huge barking laugh as she shot back, “No, but my dad was a giant nerd and I grew up playing tabletop games with him and his old nerd friends. This is just like Bumblefuq the Mushroom-Farmer’s third module when you can’t fit the trebuchet into the gazebo.”
David maintained eye contact with her for a long time as he tried to decide if she was fucking with him before eventually just nodding and turning back to face the crevasse. He shook himself like a dog, a faint silver puff filling the air around him before being swept away down the ridge. Claire nodded encouragingly at him as she hunched forward in the bushes and set her feet predatorily under her with anticipation. Something in the far back of David’s mind hit an alarm switch that nobody had needed in about 65 million years at the sight, and the fur all along his back instantly stood at attention and bristled ferociously. She seemed to attribute this to him hyping himself up and nodded even harder, attempting to shoot him a thumbs up from a tiny clawed arm with no thumb.
He slunk into the narrow crevasse in front of him, ears set to maximum as he chittered out a few bursts of Echolocation while he entered. It was narrow, and the walls were slick with moisture and the smell of water and earth, the ground under his feet a mixture of clay and gravel that crunched with his movements no matter what he seemed to do. The Echolocation came back after a disturbingly long wait, revealing that the crack in the earth went much farther back into the mountain than he hoped it would. It curved slightly every so often, probably following some ancient faultline or imperfection in the stone of the ridge but he wasn’t too worried for the moment. Echolocation took a lot of the guesswork out of what was coming up ahead as the soundwaves flowed around the gentle curves of the cave as he continued to creep forward.
It wasn’t until the ceiling finally fell low to the floor and the walls closed in that the tunnel took a sharp turn downwards and David paused for a moment to consider.
Just when I was getting to like how dark it is in here. I know I’m not that big, but I will admit it made the entrance seem super huge when I was coming in. I’m surprised those dog things even fit in here…Okay quit stalling and make up your mind. Either you keep going and risk getting eaten in a hole in the ground, or we pop off a sturdy Screech right at the top of this then book it.
David lurked slowly through the darkness until he drew even with the sharp decline in the tunnel and chittered off a few more Echolocations, waiting patiently until the repeating pulses of sound had traveled back to him. He froze, even holding his breath as he realized exactly how lucky he’d been that he hadn’t decided to try the Screech and Run idea, further cementing that he really shouldn’t be trying to make snap decisions with his life. The decline was steep, looking almost slide-like in its angle if it hadn’t been for the rough stone of the cavern floor being more suited to grating cheese than amusing children. It continued down for maybe thirty feet before opening up in a large den-like cavern…
Which contained far more than 3 of the slithery dog-things he’d seen before.
David snarled silently in the darkness, partially in anger at being wrong for the millionth time in a row, and partially in fear as some of them were moving about, wakeful and alert. He began to shuffle backward away from the natural ramp downwards, unwilling to turn his back on the creatures but not physically designed to walk backward with ease. As he shimmied backward, he saw the fine silver mist puff out from his wings while the cloud they produced swirled curiously. He paused for a moment, watching with interest as some of the haze was blown back the way he’d come and some of it seemed to be sucked down the shaft in front of him, towards the creatures.
David smiled hugely in the dark.