Allegory of the Knave

[Relt PeltFelter]

(see recruitment thread here (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?22570-The-Re-Beginning-Again))

There is nothing quite like the sensation of a pounding hangover during a violent thunderstorm. Every raindrop splashing against the windshield, every flash of lightning and crash of thunder, every unearthly howl of the wind abusing the trees is like having a dodo egg jammed into each ear by a particularly indelicate college fullback. There are, perhaps, worse scenarios to have a hangover during; labor riots, operas, possibly boating accidents. And while Relt PeltFelter had endured hangovers during all three of these events over her past five years of illicit indulgence, she would be hard-pressed to describe any of them as worse than her current scenario.

Whatever she had taken to produce a hangover so profound was probably potent enough to melt the skin off a rhinoceros. She remembered some kind of dream, about a late-night delivery and an invisible monster, but couldn’t recall how it ended. Probably ended when I crashed into this tree, she thought, looking out the spider-web shattering of the passenger window and seeing only damp bark.

Though every movement caused her joints to send alarmingly eloquent death threats to the brain that commanded them, Relt managed to extricate herself from her shredded seatbelt. It was miserably cold, but at least the interior of the car was dry. The exterior, it must be said, was emphatically not so. Rain splattered against every surface like the poorly-aimed urination of a particularly cavalier god. Occasionally the tree which the car was currently wrapped boomerang-style around would sway in the breeze, shaking the stricken vehicle like a plastic bag stuck in a grocery cart.

It took a moment for the sluggish thoughts in Relt’s addled head to communicate the idea that she should probably call a tow truck, or at least a cab. Hopefully she’d be able to get work to pay for it. She pulled her phone from her jean pocket, relieved to see the thing still worked. This relief was lessened, somewhat, by the clear message the phone sent her:


OUT OF SERVICE AREA

Disheartened, Relt curled up in her sparse clothing and wondered how long she would have to put up with this shit.


- - -

It was twelve hours later, and Relt was no less irate than before. She had found a strange little olde-timey village, apparently called Underwood. Near as she could tell from the period costumes and the money-grubbing mercantile areas, it was some kind of Renaissance festival. There were leather mugs, hay bales, jugglers…all that was missing was a schedule for the jousting show and a row of port-a-potties. The absence of snide teenage boys and fussy middle-aged soccer moms gawking awkwardly at every sight was confusing though; perhaps this was the kind of RenFest where costumes were mandatory?

Everyone Relt had accosted to ask where the pay phones were had responded with befuddlement and rudeness, and the girl was beginning to feel slightly manic at the stubborn insistence the recreationists showed about maintaining the illusion. Unwilling to drop character even to make a sale? “What the fuck is this,” Relt asked the world at large, “Oregon? Did I drive all the way out of California?”

At this juncture it is important to understand the dramatic irony of this question. Currently, it is unknown to Relt that she has been transported (by the quantum unfurling of an aggressive transdimensional non-linear entity) across space and time to another world. In this situation, one is inclined to make use of phrases like “a great distance through time and space”, “vast eons of space and time”, etc., to express such a journey, but these phrases fail in every meaningful way.

This is because the English language does not currently possess units adequate to describe the sort of travel which occurs through higher dimensions; the linguistic footwork simply hasn’t been done yet, as quantum physics is still in the very shallowest end of the overcrowded public pool of discovery. Relt in particular would be hard-pressed to describe such travails, as she regards “Planck length” as having something to do with building a porch. Eventually, Relt will learn the truth of the situation. She will have difficulty processing it, and will proceed through several stages of misapprehension and indeed self-delusion before accepting the scenario as presented. But this has not happened yet.

What has happened yet is that Relt has taken a seat at a neglected table outside of a pub and taken a bong hit to calm her nerves. Eventually, the girl reasoned, the RenFesters would be hurried out by the, uh, park rangers or, you know, whoever it was whose job it was to frighten off drama nerds. Until then she could get baked as fuck and people-watch.

[Paragon]

Clear skies, he thought. No chance of rain, he thought. It took merely an hour for the clouds to come, giving Dorian a sense of foreboding as he traveled along the forest path with his little invisible dragonling companion, Fallow. The next hour, a crack of thunder. After the next one it started pouring harder than a drunk's bottle into a mug.

Meteorology is not an easy feat on Althanas. Either you go by experience or consult the local fortune teller, but the former was free and Dorian was running out of disposable income. It wasn't like this back in Salvar: The people back there are kindly and welcome any stranger to make use of their bed and food in return for a story or two. Although, all of Dorian's stories sounded like fiction when they were in fact, non-fiction. Either way, Concordia was a different matter. At times it seemed so quiet you could hear your own thoughts. Other times, bandits and other assorted hooligans made their nests in the endless forests around the towns. Most people took the long way across sanctioned roads, but if you were brave (or stupid) enough then the forest paths were available.

Although Dorian had his purple cloak, the cold had taken root in his body. By the time he reached the town, he had the sniffles and the occasional sneeze. He wasn't sure whether or not this would develop, but if it did then he would have to spend a couple nights. It was hard to keep him in one place for too long, since he had a serious case of wanderlust. He wanted to see something new, and the world was not quick to run out of oddities. Fallow, however, was not phased by the weather.

"What's the matter with you, Dorian? Is this what they call a 'cold'?"

Dorian was about to respond but something was caught in his throat and he swallowed it, maybe he was developing some bronchitis as well, "...That's right, little buddy. I, uh, it's not a big deal. Just need some rest is all."

"Aren't you used to the cold from Salvar? You lived up in the mountains, right?"

"Our bodies work funny like that. I can spend years in the cold and not get sick, but get used to some warm weather down here and there you go. Although, the tear in the cloak that got me all wet didn't help..."

This particular town was bustling today. With houses strewn about and something resembling a cobblestone road in the marketplace, it was a bit more than your typical sleepy Concordian village. Had he reached the beginnings of Underwood? He took off his cloak and packed it into his bag. His tired eyes wandered and spotted a girl wearing some strange clothing sitting outside the closest pub. She didn't look like she was from around here, so maybe she could help a fellow traveler out. He walked up to her table.

"E-excuse me," he said between sniffles. "If it isn't too much trouble, could you direct me to the nearest inn?"

[Relt PeltFelter]

In an ideal universe, Relt would have greeted the first man to approach her on a new world with utter poise and calm. Perhaps she could have exhaled a delicate stream of smoke into the air, or blown a series of smoke rings into his face, like the smoldering temptresses in old black-and-white detective movies. What would not happen in an ideal universe, and also what did in fact happen in this universe, was that Relt choked on a bong hit and began coughing, which metamorphosed into the notorious “bong burp”. So much, it would seem, for first impressions.

She gaped at him through bloodshot eyes. Clearly, this shit was far stronger than Hervé had led her to believe when she bought it, because this guy looked like he had a fucking dragon sitting on his shoulder, all hazy and see-through. “Look, bro,” she managed eventually, “I’m not even sure what state I’m in right now, and nobody around here wants to stop playing pretend long enough to tell me. There’s probably a Best Western or something nearby, if you're into roaches and shame.”

Relt got to her feet and drank in the debatable beauty of the grey new day. “Now I, for one, am going to find the cart that sells those giant roast turkey legs, because I am munching out hard right now. You can come with; maybe the dude can sell you a towel, too, because, I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I bet dragon crap just stains clothes like a motherfucker.” Relt stretched her shoulders until she heard them pop, jammed her intoxicating oddments back into her rucksack, and wandered off in search of food.

[Paragon]

Dorian was left standing in place, watching the girl walk off with his mouth slightly agape.

"Either I'm sicker than I thought or that didn't make any sense. Did she call me brother?"

"...Best Western? Did she mean the best inn is the western one?"

"Wait," Dorian looked over to his shoulder. "You're not visible right now, right?"

Fallow blinked, "I shouldn't be, no... oh!" The dragonling flew up into the air and hovered with his little wings flapping, unnerved. The 'dragon crap' comment couldn't have been a coincidence.

"I can't tell myself, you've always been visible to me. Nobody else seems to be giving us any odd stares..."

Dorian looked back to the forest path. Underwood was a huge town that spanned many acres, and it was the kind of place where you would think you were out of its perimeter when you saw another inn or pub. People didn't take kindly to trouble here, but it was hard to pay attention to every nook and cranny. Every corner had a specialty food cart, and many people differentiated which part of town they were in by the aroma of one of the many steaming beasts. People who live around here wake up to a cadre of ill-dressed travelers complaining about prices, to the point where some folks can't get to sleep without a good bar fight in the background. A child wormed through the heavy cart traffic, and his mother shouted at him. Both participants performed these actions with such weariness that it was immediately clear that the repetition of them was nearing a culmination due not to conflict, but boredom.

"S-she can see me, then?! She seemed so nonchalant about it!"

"Take it easy, little buddy." The smell of the bong smoke was still in the air. Dorian considered going into the pub to rest, but he was concerned about the girl. She admitted to being disturbed, and invited him to tag along. "Why not keep an eye on her? I can't help feeling that she's in trouble. The clothes, her odd... speech... I imagine she's a traveler like us, but from where?"

"Oh, alright. Make sure to ask her how she can see me!"

The smoking pipe on her was strange, as well. It didn't resemble any hookah he'd seen before, and people usually didn't smoke it outside a pub. He caught up to her, noticing that she was looking for something. Roast turkey legs, was it?

Either way, he introduced himself, "My name is Dorian. Sorry for not realizing you were a traveler as I am, and if you're feeling unwell I can help you look for the nearest inn."

[Relt PeltFelter]

While the town was a mélange of multifarious odors, Relt’s keen sniffer had yet to encounter the peculiar aroma of fire-roasted turkey drumstick. This struck her as strange, as these sorts of Renaissance festivals always had a turkey drumstick guy. It would be like going to a gallery opening and finding no complementary wine, or a strip mall and finding no gawky kid failing at skateboard tricks around the side.

Relt realized, through the sticky haze of her own personal heaven, that the older dude who had approached her was still following her, and had asked about her well-being. “Nah, bro,” she said, “I am feeling fucking awesome. High as fuck, but feeling alright. I do wish you’d drop the whole Shakespeare bit, though, and talk normal. I have had it up to here with ye Olde Englishe. Oh, wait…oh god yes,”

The crowd had parted to reveal, illuminated by a shaft of golden light from on high, a man leaning against a rickety wooden stand. The distinct sight of crispy-skinned, overdone turkey legs hanging over a smoking fire filled Relt’s heart with joy. She dashed towards the merchant, pulling her cell phone from her pocket.

“Dude,” she began, “I am so hungry right now, how much is one of those things?”

The turkey-leg-salesman peered at Relt over his bushy handlebar moustache. He had a very practiced peer. When you sort of turned away from the crowd to pick your nose, then realized that someone was watching, this was the peer you felt like hot wax on the back of your neck and the inside of your nose. But it was not a peer that was used to seeing a young woman dressed this way, nor was he a man used to being addressed as whatever a “dude” was. He was, however, here to move a product, and so he responded “One gold piece, miss,” as he carefully inserted his pinky finger into his left ear and swiveled it.

“Okay,” Relt rolled her eyes, “But what is that in, you know, real world money? Dollars? Euros, even?”

“Wot?”

“Look, whatever, just let me swipe my debit with my phone and give me one of those turkey legs,” Relt waved her cell phone like a maraca.

“Listen, missy,” the man intoned without emotion, “I ain’t gonna give you nuffin’ if you ain’t got any gold,”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I am a fucking customer here and I want to buy a damn turkey leg and you are turning me down so you can stay in character? This is such bullshit! Augh!” Relt spun away dramatically. This basic transaction, or lack thereof, had that day repeated itself five times as Relt approached a merchant, attempted commerce with her extremely foreign currency, and was rebuffed. It had taken five times for Relt’s chemically enhanced patience to finally run out completely.

“Listen, dude. Dorian,” she said, returning to the dragon-keeper, “The name’s Relt. You seem pretty chill. Do you mind dropping the act and helping me find a pay phone or a pub-term or something? I crashed my car out in the woods there and I need to get a tow and get in touch with my job. Maybe get some cash so I can BUY SOME FOOD,” this last Relt shouted spitefully, looking back towards the turkey salesman, who was busy peering at her with marginal disinterest.

[Paragon]

The exchange between the food peddler and the girl did not alleviate Dorian's slider of confusion. She waved around some shiny gemstone-looking object but it was rejected.

Fallow's voice beamed into his head, "Oh, I know! I heard that in Fallien the princesses there barely wear any clothing at all. Maybe that explains why she's so out-of-touch and trying to buy things with gemstones?"

There was only so much jargon a mind can process before the rest of the sentences turned to incomprehensible gibberish. Her insistence that everything was an act was disturbing, but supported Fallow's theory if people acted differently around a princess in Fallien.

She returned to him and said more things that served only to make his head spin. Although, that may have been from a mounting fever. He rubbed his itchy eyes and tried to make it look like he understood what she was talking about.

"I think she said she crashed something in the woods. A c-car? Maybe she meant chariot? I get it! The princess was riding her chariot and it crashed, and she's wandering around in a daze from the accident!"

Fallow's imagination had this undeniably convincing notion to it. It did not explain where her escort had gone... maybe she was the only survivor?! Dorian was unashamedly hooked to this fantasy. Either way, she was lucky to have come across him before anyone else.

"It's a pleasure to meet your acquaintance, Ms. Relt. I don't know if I can help you with those things you said, but if you crashed your chariot then maybe I can assist. I'm a blacksmith, and something with spokes and wheels shouldn't be too hard to fix up." He looked back at the now-irate food cart owner. He had to admit, he was hungry as well. "Excuse me one moment."

He walked back to the delicious-smelling cooked turkey and dropped two crowns in his hand, returning to the lady to hand her a turkey leg. Fallow protested a bit due to their increasingly-empty sack of coins, but Dorian assured him that they were still good for the next few days, even though that didn't make the dragonling feel any better. The dragonling was floating high above the town, still unnerved that Relt could see him. After all, he was extremely shy. He floated in front of some other people earlier and they didn't notice him, so it wasn't that he was suddenly visible. It was her.

The words slipped out of his mouth, "You wouldn't happen to be a Fallien princess, would you?"

[Relt PeltFelter]

(it shall be noted that all intra-post interaction in this thread is vetted and approved by all parties involved)

The raptorial skill with which Relt seized upon the proffered poultry would have stunned all but the most implacable of mantids. She managed to express a muffled “Fanksh,” through a mouthful of flesh, wiping the runaway juices from her chin with the back of her hand. She was only half-listening to the man’s jabbering as she ate, still somewhat confused by the persistent, not-exactly visual hallucination of a little dragon-shape following the man around.

It took her only a few moments to strip the meat from the bone. Looking around for a compost bin brought her no rewards, so she merely tossed it into the bordering bracken. “You, sir,” she belched, “Are a fucking king of kings. I’ll even put up with your whole Portland-style method acting. It’s nice of you to offer to help with the car, but seriously, I must have been completely shit-faced because it is wrapped around some tree like a banana,”

"Portland what?" the man replied, slightly agog. Clearly the great capacity Relt had for high-speed conversation had left him in something of a daze.

“And come on, what about me is princess…ish. Princessy? Princessoid. Whatever,” Relt picked insistently at a molar in order to dislodge an errant piece of turkey, “I work at a Chinese food joint. If you’re going to impose a whole adventurer class thing on me, at least give me the credit of being, like, I dunno, a druid? Maybe one of those dudes, you know, like, who can summon the skeletons and whatever? That’d be pretty boss,”

"Raise skeletons?" Dorian smiled sheepishly, "T-try not to say that to anyone else please..."

"Wouldn't want to upset your LARP partners," Relt snorted, her eyes and attention both elsewhere. There was a rustling in the bracken where Relt had tossed the bone. Initially, she dismissed it as a squirrel or something. This dismissal became difficult when the source of the sound emerged, dragging the turkey bone behind it.

It was only about six inches long, but this in no way diminished it’s unnerving aspect. The thing was shaped like a detached goose barnacle; a bleached-white shell from which several feathery crustacean legs emerged behind it. The flat surface of the ‘neck’, where normally such a thing would be attached to a whale or a rock, was home instead to a sucker-like mouth ringed with tiny sharp teeth, and a pair of tiny pincers. It maneuvered this mouth sightlessly over the turkey bone, hoovering up any remaining particles of meat.

After a moment it seemed to realize, despite its obvious eyeless-ness, that it was being watched. It emitted a quiet, worried hiss, and absconded back into the brush.

“What the fuuuuuuuuck,” Relt whispered hoarsely, “Did you see that too? What the shit was that?”

"I..." Dorian began, taking a few tentative steps towards the undergrowth, "I don't know,"

But Relt wasn't really listening. She looked back and forth from the still wavering bracken to the impression of dragon-ness hovering around her gustatory benefactor. She turned and briefly took in the panorama of the village, spying not one cell phone, or baggy t-shirt, or snarky teenager heckling a juggler. Further details became obvious under this shaken lens; some individuals with pointed ears far too authentic for a historical recreationist to have manufactured, legitimate examples of diseases with names like "dropsy" and "the scrabes" which normal people just didn't get, and worst of all, utter unblinking sincerity. She spun back around to see Dorian standing by the margin of the greenery. In a smooth motion, he kicked aside the shrubbery, revealing...nothing. The wretched creature had vanished.

"Shit-fuck. This is...I'm still in the car, right? In a coma?" Relt seemed to mull over this idea for a bit, "Yeah, that makes sense. Coma fantasy. That explains why the turkey tastes so good, and why you're somewhat passably attractive for a Ren-Fest nerd. I bet that dragon's real. Well, coma-real, anyway. Whatever,"

[Paragon]

Every now and then Fallow would fly down and hover behind Dorian, barely out of Relt's sight, but she caught a glimpse of him every time, sending him flapping back up into the sky. The young man coughed as he returned to Relt, looking over his shoulder to see if the creature was still gone. He stared at the girl, her eyes were darting to and fro, her movement erratic as she cupped her head in her hands. Delusional people saw things that weren't there, but she saw Fallow.

"You're not sleeping, the dragon is real, and only you and I can see him," Dorian announced. He tossed aside his own half-eaten turkey leg, feeling a bit more anxious than his usual calm self. "Fallow! I need your help here, little buddy."

"B, but Dorian! She can see me!"

He didn't know why, but he felt like he could suddenly relate to her. Everything around them seemed like a facade, an act all perpetrated to confuse and mislead. They were the only two sane ones among this gaggle of weirdos. Fallow floated downwards reluctantly, allowing her to get a good look at him. He made himself visible to her of his own free will, which allowed her the full spectrum of his appearance rather than the hazy partial view she apparently had.

"Look, bro, that shit I was knocking back was primo, but it wasn't that strong. Clearly this is all, like, a construct of my injured brain or whatever. You probably represent, like, my fear of butterflies or something-"

"Hey, uh, let's take a trip to the clinic and get you looked at, just in case?" He turned to the miniature black dragon. "Could you look after her while I go find a doctor?"

This time to both of their minds, Fallow said, "I understand. I'll keep an eye on her."

"Wait, what? No, hold on, I bet a doctor represents giving in to the brain trauma or whatever. I should have fun with this biz, maybe like, look for clues and solve riddles and get keys, all that junk."

One of Dorian's eyebrows had a nervous twitch. As his mouth hung open he tried to form some words, but produced only silence and a few coughs.

Fallow decided to boldly step in, "Well... the... the pub is where the fun starts around here! Let's go get a drink or two to start things off!"

"Yes, the little dragon dude is right! You always get your quest in the pub, that's like adventure game 101. Monkey Island up in this piece," After all, at this point, why not? She might as well have been talking to a pink elephant.

After receiving some coins from Dorian, they both wandered into the pub and left him with an odd sense of displacement. Suddenly, he had no idea what was up with her, even though he had a vague idea a moment ago. He took a deep breath, cleared his sinuses, and started asking around for the nearest clinic.

Meanwhile, the pub was populated by several patrons. The whole place had a grain wood feel to it with a splatter of round tables for guests. At the front was the bar itself. Relt had sat down at a stool and ordered the "pint of something that would make a seal barf" with glee.

Nearby, two men sat down and solemnly drunk ale from a mug. They were both dressed in aprons over their normal clothes, slightly portly, and balding.

One of them continued from a previous point in a conversation, "... And like I said, I don't know what to do! My stock is running low, and the caravan still isn't here! They were supposed to be here days ago!"

"I can't imagine what happened," said the other one. "I hear that they left the last town safely enough, do you reckon something happened along the road? I sure hope not, they usually take the safe road and I've never heard of a problem before."

"We got no word comin' in, and all I can do is sit here and hope! The damn city guard says it has no time for some no-name merchant to go inspect the Lazartian Pass, even though it's our livelihood at stake!"

"I'm sure there's a good reason for this. Let's just be patient."

[Relt PeltFelter]

The pub, to Relt, definitely seemed to be the sort of atmosphere she needed to get out of this coma. It felt like exactly the sort of place her injured brain might conjure as a way of pointing her in the right direction. The overheard conversation of the two workman-like patrons was merely the icing on the cake. She had been tempted to actually talk to them about the situation, but decided that since this was all just a simulation for her conscious mind’s benefit, it would be kind of a waste of energy. Especially considering that she was probably slowly freezing to death in a crashed car right now, in the real world. However, despite this newfound temporal economy, the past twenty minutes or so had found Relt scribbling speculatively in one of her class notebooks.

“Okay, little dragon bro, I think I have this figured out,” she said, tapping the crude bubble diagram with the end of her pencil, “The caravan those dudes were yammering about represents my consciousness. If we find it, I wake up and can start solving real man’s problems. You probably represent my, uh, I guess super-ego? The cool one, whichever it is, that has wisdom and hints that move me in the right direction. Whereas that dude you hang out with is the regular ego, and is all like ‘do dumb boring stuff that’s probably a bad idea also here is some turkey’. That sounds pretty Freudian to me,”

“Um…yes, okay!” the little dragon responded, trying to seem helpful in the face of Relt’s stream-of-consciousness psychobabble.

“But either way, this is probably some kind of mettle-testing scenario. So I'm gonna go find that caravan, okay, and you just keep buzzing the fuck around in my head and, like, keep the neurons firing or whatever it is you do. It’s all puzzles, man, brain puzzles. So let’s go find that dude, ‘cause frankly this drink is awful. It’s like that powdered coyote piss you buy to keep deer off your lawn. You’d think my imagination could at least manage, like, some Jäger. Pabst, even,”

“I don’t know what you’re saying!” the little dragon exclaimed, “But I think you should wait for Dorian to get back.”

“Hm. Yes, that is an entirely...reasonable thing. For me. To do."

[Paragon]

Most of this post was written by my partner here, but you can just assume that there's some general collaboration going on throughout the thread.

Dorian was lucky; there was a clinic at the edge of town (mostly for treating the accidental amputees generated as a by-product of the lumber industry) and when the doctor heard the story of a heavily concussed princess of Fallien wandering the streets of Underwood, her heart opened (but not before her wallet did the same). Now Dorian just needed to concoct a cover story to get the poor girl into the hospice without her objecting too strongly. At length. Everything the girl said was at length, for that matter. His hand rested only a moment on the door of the pub before it swung open and knocked him to one side.

Fallow's face nearly crashed into Dorian's as he said, "Dorian! She's gone!" The young man couldn't tell whether or not to be impressed by the dragonling's strength or concerned that Relt had run off somewhere. "She overheard some story about a missing caravan! I tried to warn her, but she wouldn't listen!"

"Which way did she go?"

They both made their way out of town and down the road that Fallow said she took. She was walking along at a brisk pace, peering up and down the hills adjacent to the flat road for any clues. When Dorian caught up, she turned around and smiled.

“You still here? Fine, no bigs, I guess you can come with. We need to go find some lost caravan at Laserbeam Pass.”

“Lazartian Pass, she means!” Fallow chimed in, by way of being helpful.

“Hey, this is my symbolic anti-coma journey, and if I say it’s Laserbeam Pass, then it’s definitely Laserbeam Pass, okay?”

Approximately six or seven things were playing hopskotch on the tip of Dorian’s tongue, not least of which was Fallow’s apparent uselessness in keeping Relt’s impulses from sending her spiraling out of control. He boggled in vain for a moment more, then followed the fading sounds of his own dragon-pal and what seemed to be a very unwell stranger, suddenly becoming acutely aware that perhaps he should have mentioned to the doctor about his own apparent illness before rushing off again. Fallow was a little concerned that Dorian was out of breath so soon for such a fit individual.

“So here we are,” he muttered as a stream of mucus made a daring escape attempt from his nose. "That's not a bad idea, I confess. Looking for a lost caravan."

"But Dorian!" Fallow protested. "You're not in any condition to go out again!"

"I'm fine," he grinned. He had already rented a room at the inn on the way back and deposited most of his things, which made him feel a lot lighter. Or light-headed from the cold. One of those two. "I'll take this over lying sick in some bed any day of the week." He had a feeling that Relt felt the same way.

[Relt PeltFelter]

The thick ceiling of rumbling grey post-storm clouds showed absolutely no signs of clearing. They were like a squadron of surly construction workers sitting in a nice little bistro, squatting in a sullen silence following an argument and making everyone nervous. Fortunately, just as burly men could be persuaded to stop tossing crockery about, the clouds had seemingly agreed to stop drizzling passive-aggressively on the world beneath them. The drenched forest was lent something of an early-morning glisten by what little grubby, second-hand light managed to leak through.

Not to belabor the point, but in the interests of the reader’s elucidation and general psychological well-being, it must be pointed out that the world of Althanas is not an elaborate construct built by Relt PeltFelter’s mind. It is an actual location in time and space, to which she has found herself transported by means normally unavailable to her and those like her. It is also important that the reader understand that this is not something the girl herself is currently aware of; at the moment, she is attributing the lessening of the weather to her own lightening of mood.

Her stroll through the forest was an interesting experience; Relt had spent almost all of her youth in the concrete tangle of early twenty-first century San Francisco; it was relatively late in life that the concept of the wilderness was laid out for her in terms of trees and earth, as opposed to homeless men and gang violence. This revelation occurred over the course of several days during a disastrous camping excursion, the results of which are never mentioned in polite company or if there is a chance that a law enforcement official might hear it.

As a result, any landscape where you cannot find a pay phone or a coffee shop with only a couple minutes walk is not something Relt is generally used to. Even now as she walked, flip-flops flapping on the muddy, cart-rutted road, she wondered why her abused subconscious would create a world to which she was so unsuited. Almost as if it wasn’t a coma fantasy at all…

Her revelation was interrupted (and therefore immediately forgotten) when Fallow bobbed up in front of her. “No, wait!” the dragon encouraged, “You’re going the wrong way!”

“Dude, you know,” Relt began, stopping abruptly, “That is the fifth fucking time you’ve said that. How do you know, do you have GPS? Like, little dragon GPS built into your tiny little dragon belly?”

“What does that mean?

Dorian took this opportunity to catch up. “Um, there is a sign right there.” And indeed, there was a sign. It read: LAZARTIAN PASS ->, and the pointing end had even been decoratively carved into a white-gloved hand with an outstretched finger. There were several other signs of similar design, all pointing different directions and with different (and to Relt at least, irrelevant) labels. One of the signs was even carved to include a little loop before becoming a hand.

“Pfff. Dr. Seuss up in this piece,” Relt sniffed,

“I thought you didn’t want to see the doctor,” Dorian accused, “Wait, how did you know her name?”

“What, you mean there’s an actual Doctor Seuss here? Haha, what? That’s awesome. We should go see Dr. Seuss. Do you think he’s got, like, an actual Lorax? Like a real one?”

“Wha-…well then what about the caravan?”

“The what? Oh, yeah that. Sorry, dawg, still a little high,” Relt turned back towards the sign and studied it for a bit, mumbling words as she tried to make sense of it. She reached into her bag and withdrew a large, black marker. It squeaked as she dragged it across the damp wood, but finally she seemed satisfied and headed in the direction it indicated.

The sign now read “LASERBEAM PASS ->”.

[Paragon]

The road ahead was slightly submerged and flat, likely the result of caravans plowing it as they passed. It was the shortest route to one of Underwood's neighboring towns, and as such it was sanctioned by the local bandit group. The concept of organized thievery always struck Dorian as a tad whimsical. It was indeed a strange alliance between the locals and the hoodlums. At either side of the pass was a hilly landscape populated by dense forestry. There was no easy way to get off course, as the trees would cut any mishaps short fairly quickly. He didn't think too hard about it, either there was something along this path or it was clear.

Despite the relative lack of sunlight, the rain-drenched leaves glistened as Dorian passed them by. He enjoyed the excursion, since the afterglow of rain revealed much about the land. All manner of creatures would appear during this time, foraging for food or rebuilding their burrows. The Triungle, a popular Coronian brown mushroom that would spawn in groups of three, camouflaged itself normally, but could not stop glowing after a rainstorm. He doubted that he could convince Relt to go mushroom hunting, but it was an idea for later. He felt something tingle in his nose and sneezed, wiping his noise with a handkerchief.

"Dorian, this is a waste of time! How would a caravan even get lost around here? How would nobody know?"

"Come now, Fallow. When is a stroll through the woods ever a waste of time? We might even find a caravan or two."

"Fine. If we don't find anything, take me to the fair?"

"It's a deal."

"Fucking jackpot!" Relt snapped her fingers, "Dude, come see this shit, it is crazy. It is a Straight Up Clue. I mean like I know this whole situation is crazy but well whatev-"

"What did you find?" Dorian asked as he caught up.

"Uh, whoa, hold on, you just totally snapped my caboose right there, uh...right! Yeah, the road is all fucked up. Looks like somebody didn't take off their snow tires, which is just fucking rude."

Dorian looked at the crack in the road, and noticed that the ground before it was slightly elevated. His eyes followed the fissure into a patch of bent trees and a small clearing.

[Relt PeltFelter]

To the inattentive observer, the scene at this little ox-bow in the road was rather peaceful. The scattering of wooden debris was not a surprise, following such an intense storm, but careful examination showed a distinct directional component. And that was when the two spotted it.

Just through an unpleasantly lush growth of thorny blackberries, and half-sunk into the cloying mud, there sat the wreckage of a wagon. Wreckage was the only appropriate word; the thing looked as though an elephant had taken a nap on it. Unpleasantly suggestive reddish-brown stains splattered over much of the splintering wood, though any trace of them on the ground had long been washed away.

A peculiar whistling sound had filled Dorian’s ears as he drew near. It was uncannily familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on the source. It seemed to be coming from somewhere below. Relt had been hopping around excitedly, her unconventional sandals making a distinctive and distracting “sfffflaaap” sound in the mud. As the strange girl moved to take her next step, Dorian quickly grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back as she yelled, "Hey, watch it with the hands, Snatchmo!"

"Look down," Dorian said, letting go of her and pointing at the space where her foot had been only seconds away from landing. Or rather, failing to land. It was hard to see with all the greenery, but there was a definite chasm, maybe only a couple meters wide, right in front of her. There was an unnerving timbre to the whistling of air which suggested extreme depth. "The rest of the missing caravan must have fallen down there,"

“Butt-fuuuuuck…” Relt whispered. She leaned awkwardly out over the abyss. There was a distressing throat sound, and a ‘ptoo’ as Relt sent a dollop of saliva tumbling into the void. It was several minutes before a faint splash carried back up.

“Are you okay? That sounded like you hacked up a lung,” Dorian said.

“Oh, look who’s talking, mister dripping like my damn showerhead. Seriously, do you need some Day-Quil or something? I think I have some in my bag,” Relt pulled her backpack around to the front and rummaged around momentarily. “Yes!” she exulted, pulling a half-spent tab of little orange gel-caps free from the overstuffed sack. “Here,” she said as she popped a couple of pills free, “Put these in your mouth and swallow them,”

There was a significant pause as Dorian examined the peculiar little lozenges. “What are these?” he asked, finally, trepidation quavering in his voice even as mucus sealed his sinuses.

“They’re fucking meds, brah. I mean they might get you a little fucked up, I’ll admit, but they’ll make you feel less sick,”

Dorian’s eyes widened. He was feeling so far under the weather that it was possible a tornado had dug him a grave and buried him.

“I think you should eat them!” Fallow added, hovering around the pills, “They look like tiny orange raindrops which is, uh, pretty fucking cool!”

“Fallow???” Dorian exclaimed.

“What? She says it!”

Dorian was having trouble focusing. He opened his mouth to object to at least one of the many things assaulting his senses, but found this difficult as Relt shoved the medicine in. She clamped his jaw shut with her peculiarly strong yet absurdly small hands, and the man swallowed reflexively. Relt watched his face for a moment, then grinned and stepped back.

“There, now quit being a bitch and come on,” the girl chastised, “I bet there’s probably some survivors or something down in that wet hole,”

[Paragon]

While Dorian held his throat with an expression that suggested he just swallowed poison, Fallow asked them both, "Are you suggesting we climb down and look? That's... that's not a good idea."

Feeling no immediate negative affects, Dorian slowly let go of his neck and returned to normal, albeit a little stirred, "We'd be hard pressed to convince anyone else to do it, that's for sure. We don't know the situation down there; people might need help."

"I'll go check it out. I can see in the dark, after all."

"Oh? And here I thought you were scared."

Fallow blew some smoke out of his nostrils and puffed out his chest, "Me? A mighty dark dragon of Malanthar's Brood? I'll show you how it's done, so don't forget to ask her how she can see me!"

"All the same, be careful down there."

As Fallow flew down into the dark chasm, Dorian was a little impressed by the dragonling's initiative. After peeking into the darkness below, the young man looked at the caravan's wreckage with some interest. There were some tools and materials lying around- things like wooden boards, nails, screws, and the like. They were fortunate that this wasn't a grocer's delivery. A bunch of rotten fruit wasn't going to do them any good.

"Maybe there's a torch somewhere around here," Dorian suggested as he started rummaging through the debris. "By the way, how is it that you can see Fallow? He's supposed to be invisible to everyone but me and the ones he chooses to reveal himself to, you know."

Relt replied, "Well, duh, this is my allegorical coma fantasy." The delusion still concerned Dorian a bit, but it didn't seem that she was lying. Of course, that response didn't answer his question in any way, shape, or form.

At about this time, Fallow floated back up and announced, "It's deeper than I thought. There's actually a walkway jutting out from the walls not too far down, and it seems to descend quite a bit. I couldn't find anybody, though..."

Dorian threw a coil of rope out of the wagon's remains and onto the ground, "I guess we have no choice but to go down. Luckily, the right kind of wagon crashed in here." He pulled out a torch as well: A basic wooden rod with a rag affixed to it that was soaked in some flammable liquid. There was a faint scent of sulfur to it. Dorian figured there was some lime mixed in as well, which would preserve the fire even after being momentarily plunged in water. "Now, to light this... anyone got a match?"

"Let me handle it." After taking a deep breath, the dragonling blew a thin plume of fire onto the torch, lighting it up.

"Fallow!" Dorian's eyes shot up. "I didn't know you could breathe fire!"

"Did you forget that I was a dragon? Honestly, Dorian!"

"Well how about that!" Dorian said with a chuckle. "Right, then." He unfurled the rope and wrapped it around a tree, using one of his strongest knots to hold it in place. He pulled on it a few times to test both the rope's and the tree's strength, and after being properly satisfied he threw the length of it down into the chasm. "That should get us down to that walkway, at least." He walked over and peered one more time into the darkness. "Are you sure you're coming, Ms. Relt? It's not an easy drop."

[Relt PeltFelter]

An annoyed expression flitted across Relt’s face, but she tried to keep it from showing too profoundly. “Of course I’m fucking going down there, are you kidding?” she said, looking around at the cart wreckage, “Just don’t call me ‘miss’ again or I’ll fill your mouth full of spiders. Hey, I wonder if…hmmm…”

Relt rooted around in what had apparently once been the traces of the wagon’s horses. Most of the wooden components had been smashed, but there were some peculiar leather straps and buckles in among the debris. Relt grinned and hoisted a couple of oddments from the ground. They were leather, and sort of hammock-shaped, with a metal ring in either point. Relt tossed one to Dorian (nearly knocking both the torch from his hands, and his feet from the ledge), and started hauling the rope back up. “What are these for?” Dorian asked, when he had regained his purchase.

“Trust me, broseph, this is going to make it a hundred times easier. Probably should have stopped you from tossing the damn rope down there, but whatever,” Finally Relt could see the end of the line dangling around in the darkness. She pulled the last few yards over the lip of the chasm, and looped it carefully through the metal loops of her leather object. She snatched Dorian’s and did the same before pulling the rope all the way through and tossing it down.

“There, see? Check this out,” Relt stepped into the makeshift harness and grasped the rope with both hands, pulling the muddy leather up to her waist. She leaned against it and began rappelling down a couple of feet. “Make sure you wait a second before you come down, okay? But not too long, this flare isn’t gonna last forever,”

Relt pulled one of the salvaged road flares from her bag and struck it roughly against the stone of the cavern wall. It hissed and spat as it came to life, flaring at both ends and belching smoke. Relt let go and consigned the flare to the dark below. It tumbled end over end, red light flashing against the cavern’s damp walls, and finally bounced to a stop on the sheared ledge which formed the sort of walkway below. It rolled to a precarious stop at the edge.

For a moment, just a moment, Relt thought the crimson glare illuminated an unfamiliarly shaped something. There was just a suggestion of movement, but it was gone in an instant, and did not appear anxious to present itself again. Relt looked back up to Dorian and Fallow at the edge. “Hey, either of you guys ever see that movie The Descent? No, I guess you wouldn’t have, huh…well, let’s try to be careful, okay? Caves are crazy-shit dangerous,” Relt said as she began to lower herself into the abyss.

The walls were crumbling and muddy for the first few dozen meters; clearly they had been separated from one another only very recently. Further down, as the sunlight through the crevasse became a distant winking eye, the walls were more what one expected of a cave. Where they sloped downwards, small stalactites had even managed to form, and the subtle susurration of a hundred distant drips signaled the proximity of their larger cousins. Relt’s flip-flops were hardly suited to this kind of descent, and with a sigh she stuffed them into her backpack and pressed her callused feet against the moist, depth-chilled walls.

After what seemed like hours, Relt’s bare toes touched bottom by the hissing flare. The walkway was quite narrow, and the girl rested her back against the wall to avoid finding out, rather viscerally, how steeply it continued over the edge.

“Hey Dorian!” she called upwards, the hollow repition of her words echoing ‘orian orian orian’ off the unseen cavern walls. “Made it down okay, dawg!” ‘awg awg awg’.

[Paragon]

After Relt dropped down, Dorian looked over the harness with curiosity. He never considered using a safety precaution like this before. The flare was also something he had never seen before. The way it rained sparks in close proximity while still producing a sizable amount of light was amazing.

Fallow floated up to his face with big puppy dog eyes, "What did she say about seeing me?"

As he put the harness on, he raised a brow and smiled, "She says she can because she's sleeping."

"Sleeping?"

"We're both travelers in her world of dreams, here to guide her through the mystical landscape of her mind."

"No way! I'm preeetty sure that I'm real!"

"As am I. But I wouldn't mind being a resident of the dream. Living in fantasy, making up our own stories as we went along." It was then that he noticed that his sinuses were clear. He took a deep breath, "Huh..." He felt light as a feather, his headache was gone, and his eyes were not itchy. "That medicine really worked!"

Was she some sort of alchemist? Maybe her condition was due to an experiment gone wrong. Either way, she was very resourceful. He walked over to the edge and turned around. He strapped the torch to his back so that the flame would not touch him. Grabbing onto the rope with both hands, he started coasting down the muddy rock wall. After landing on the walkway beside Relt, he removed the harness and left it leaning against the wall near the rope. Dorian felt much better now, and felt no risk from standing on this narrow plateau of wet stone. He looked back up at the chasm's opening while unstrapping the torch and holding it in front of him. It didn't look like the kind of thing that would close up again, but the risk of cave-in was still there.

"I'll lead the way." Fallow announced to both of them.

[Relt PeltFelter]

The cave, to put it bluntly, was enormous. The flickering light of Dorian’s torch failed to reach the side opposite their convenient downward-sloping ledge, and it cast unpleasantly deformed shadows against any surface it did touch. The only sound besides the torch’s crackle was the constant dripping of unseen stalactites as water seeped slowly yet inexorably down through the thick limestone strata. The cave had evidently not been open long enough for larger animals like birds or bats to take nest here, but the floor was regularly dotted with white, whiskery creatures which scuttled into the void almost as soon as the unfamiliar light caressed them.

Fallow bobbed ahead, even less visible than usual in the gloom, and Relt endeavored to keep stride with Dorian. She felt that maybe they should have tethered themselves together or something, like in all the movies she’d seen involving caves. Of course, she also remembered that every movie she saw involving caves also involved monsters in caves eating people. This association did not sit well with her, and a sense of disquiet descended on her soul. She needed something familiar here, a mile below the surface of a fantasy world she didn’t recognize, some element of home to cling to.

“Man, all this natural solitude is giving me a god damn migraine,” Relt said finally, in a tone just south of convincing, “How about some tunes? I mean the speakers on this thing-” Relt held up her cell phone, “-aren’t that great, but I mean it’s better than nothing,”

The girl scanned through her playlists, and finally seemed to find some kind of pounding drum and bass madness which would help lift her spirits. In the inky stillness of the cave, which seemed to reach to the very bowels of the earth, the volume of the music was devastating. Relt found it impossible not to rock out as she walked on. “Fuck yeah,” she said, barely audible over the music, “This is my fucking jam,”

After a moment, she realized that she had walked a bit farther than the torchlight reached. Dorian had stopped a moment ago. She turned back around, asking “What’s the matter, bro?”

“What is that thing?” Dorian asked, gesturing weakly with the torch.

“It’s just music, dude, chill out. I figured-”

“No, I don’t mean your magic gemstone,” Dorian gestured for her to come back, and pointed at the wall. There was something stuck to it, vibrating softly.

“It looks like a…barnacle?” Relt said, cranking the volume of her music down slightly, “I’ve seen some at the aquarium, stuck to rocks like this, but mostly they were in the water…and, like, waaay smaller than this,”

Relt rifled through her backpack for a moment and pulled out the hammer she’d found in the glove compartment of her ruined car. She reached it, claw-end first, towards the anomalous growth on the wall. “Wait, don’t do that,” Dorian said. Relt either didn’t hear him, or far more likely, didn’t regard his injunction as meritorious. She prodded the nasty-looking barnacle.

Both Dorian and Relt jumped back in surprise when the pulsating thing seemed to let go of the wall. It skittered loathsomely into the blackness on little cirriped legs and disappeared. “Holy shit,” Relt whispered, “That looked just like the thing we saw at the Ren Faire, only, y’know, bigger,”

“That…was upsetting,” Dorian said. His hand had instinctively gone to his spear, and Fallow had hidden behind him in surprise. He relaxed a bit as the clicking of the creature’s legs on the stone faded.

There was a loud, drawn-out hiss, not unlike a tea kettle in slow motion, but much drier; it rasped and spat hideously before finally petering out. It originated, quite clearly, from just a few meters further down the natural ramp. Relt flipped her phone open and pointed the light of the small screen in the direction of the offending sibilation.

What this showed, it showed for only a moment. The creature (for again, what other word could suffice?) retreated from the electric-white glare, but the moment that it provided gave an impression of something quite similar to the escaping barnacle beast, but both roughly man-sized and man-shaped, and with a stump of neck open to a lamprey-mouthed aperture in place of a throat. The thing had shielded its translucent, paper-white skin with a quartet of robustly multi-jointed arthropod limbs and darted silently into the darkness like a fading shadow.

Relt stared at the spot where it had been, as her phone’s screen dimmed to save power. She turned stiffly back towards Dorian and inched as close as possible to the guttering torchlight. When she spoke, it was very rapid and very quiet, with a kind of terrified urgency. “we should leave now right the fuck now that was a real god damn monster and i do not want to be fucking eaten we should leave now please i dont care if this is a dream i am not doing this”

[Paragon]

"Your gemstone!" Dorian whispered with some urgency. "Make it stop!"

Relt blinked, "What? Oh, OOH, yes, of course." She fumbled the phone in her hands and turned off the music.

"Fallow, are you all right?"

The dragonling landed on Dorian's shoulder, "That... that was the weirdest human I've ever seen..."

Dorian realized that Fallow had probably got a better look at it than them due to his night vision, "It looked human to you?"

"It was like... missing some pieces... and in other places there were extra pieces... I don't understand, Dorian! Let's get out of here!"

"Yeah, that's what I just said," seconded Relt.

Dorian had a bad feeling about all this. That thing was walking up the same path they were going down. Was it heading to the surface? One of those things had already reached the town, and there was still no sign of the people from the missing caravan. While he left most off his things at the local town's lodging, he still had his coin pouch on him. If he could catch one of those smaller things, he would have some evidence to spur a more thorough investigation by the town.

"Fallow," he said, taking a step forward so that Relt was behind him. "Escort our guest back up to the surface."

"What about you?"

"I want to figure out what's going on."

"D-Dorian?! Y-"

"-ou're out of your fucking mind!" continued Relt. "I've seen this movie a thousand times, bro, it DOESN'T END WELL."

Dorian turned around and smiled. He was here already. He didn't have to be, but here he was.

Relt tried to rationalize all this, but couldn't. In the end, she calmed down a bit and, after all, this was all a dream. Wait. What kind of dream? "Shit, I'm not leaving on my own. The black guy always dies first in these movies, and I'm at least like a third black somewhere back there. And right after he dies, the dude who wanders off on his own to get away dies, so I am staying right the fuck with you and the tiny flying flamethrower."

"I won't tell you to go back, but be careful. You too Fallow."

"... I will."

They continued on the walkway, a bit more tense than before, and they could clearly hear the sound of running water. Eventually the walkway ended as it merged with a solid, rocky ground. They still couldn't see very far in any direction, but they had a lot more room to walk around. Even Fallow couldn't see the other wall clearly. The walls were much farther apart and more smoothed. It looked like they were in a cavernous tunnel. The path they came in on was attached to only a tiny crack in the tunnel's massive ceiling. Fallow could see the countless stalactites pointing down at them, which made him a little more than uneasy. He investigated the sound of running water that seemed like it was coming from the opposite wall, but there were was no entry through the thick stone.

"I think there's a river on the other side of this wall and under us."

They chose to go in the direction of the water. Since they had heard it faintly earlier, it would likely take them to the bottom of the original drop. As they walked, none of the strange creatures they saw earlier made their appearance. It's possible that they were attracted to the vibrations from Relt's music. The floor was more jagged now, which prompted her to get out her flip-flips again. Fortunately, Fallow couldn't see any broken remnants of stalactites on the ground, so he was assured that they would not be impaled from above due to another mudslide.

[Relt PeltFelter]

It had taken a few minutes longer than she would have liked, but Relt had managed to shed the peculiar trepidation that had clutched her from the moment she spotted what was, indisputably, a monster. She had been frightened before; when she was seven a man had tried to mug her family, and her father had broken the ne’er-do-well’s mandible with a cinderblock in a moment of adrenalin-fueled rage, and then (astonishingly) escorted the mugger to his hospital and treated the man himself. She’d had nightmares about the mugger, and his gun, for weeks after that, and every time her dad would come in, sit down with her, and talk with her until she felt comfortable going to sleep again.

It occurred to her that the fear of that nameless white abomination was no different than the fear she had felt in those long-forgotten dreams. This was a challenge her brain had put forth, in the shape of a horror movie, to see if she truly had what it would take to awaken from this coma.

“Hey, Dorian, bro,” she said as they inched around thick limestone columns, each looking like an enormous melted candle as the torchlight inched over their pearlescent stone skin, “I wanted to apologize for freaking the fuck out back there. Just never seen a monster before, I guess? Anyway, thanks for keeping your cool and keeping this thing on track,”

“Um, no problem,” Dorian replied noncommittally. He was rather more concerned with not slipping off of his stalagmite perch and into the watery chasm which had made itself evident.

The general tend of the cave chambers had been downwards, and it gave Relt a shiver of excitement to realize how deeply they had sojourned. The sound of rushing, roaring water was everywhere now, and when she had properly braced herself against the wall she looked down into the tumbling white cataract which the torch only just illuminated.

“I have to say, though,” Dorian remarked, inching towards the relatively flat area Relt had found herself in, “Those little orange things you gave me have really made me feel better. Without them, well, I bet my sneezes would draw more of those creatures than your music did!”

“Haha, I bet, dawg, that would be-” Relt’s expression froze, “Wait, orange?”

“Er, yes,” Dorian replied, “Sort of egg-shaped, bright orange?”

“Fuck!” Relt shouted, “I am so stupid when I’m high. Shit,”

“What is it?”

“Oh my god, you are just going to kill me,” Relt sighed heavily, “Green is for day-time, orange is for night-time. They switched it around a couple years ago for some dumbass reason, to discourage meth-heads maybe, I don't fucking know. Point is, the shit I gave you is going to make you totally trip balls,”

Dorian tried to sort out what the meant. He didn’t feel like he was going to trip, and his balls felt fine, so that phrase was probably more allegorical than literal. Relt’s patois was rather difficult to figure out. Where was she from, anyway? She had denied the Fallien origin, but perhaps she merely wanted to maintain a low profile.

Relt could see that the light of understanding had yet to dawn in her compatriot’s eyes, but was saved from repeating her explanation by the tiny dragon’s more advanced understanding of her jargon.

“I think she means they’re going to make you act funny, Dorian,” Fallow remarked, “Like those big mushrooms the dwarves sell in Salvar!”

"What?" Dorian replied, putting emphasis on the last consonant. "Well, I don't feel any different so far." His eyes rapidly moved back and forth while looking at the ground, trying to tell if something was off with him. "If you're sure about this, we don't have much time."

“Fuck, I know!” Relt added, inching her way down towards the river. It had carved just enough of a ledge to one side that they could pass further into the cavern alongside it. “Just, come on, let’s try to hurry the fuck up. Maybe we can get this shit done and get out of here before it kicks in too much. Honestly, I’m surprised I can fuck shit up so bad in my own damn dreams, and it actually matters. My subconscious is thorough as fuck,”

"Let's keep moving," Dorian murmured, following her down. The torch hissed as droplets of errant water struck it. The river seemed to be flowing towards a waterfall some way further down, where the tunnel opened up into a wider chamber; the sound of it had changed from pervasive to deafening as the trio approached the outlet. Dorian found his careful inching forward impeded; Relt had stopped dead at the mouth of the tunnel. “What is it?” Dorian hissed, the he too grew quiet as his eyes managed to communicate to his brain exactly what he was seeing.

It was a cavern, half-flooded to form an underground lake. The torch’s light faded far before it reached the opposite side, but it must have been a very long way away, judging by the distant and miles-long ceiling. It was punctuated by points of pale blue light which, if this chamber were not so far underground, could have been stars. The river which had begun behind them now crashed as foaming, spraying waterfall which poured at least twenty feet down; it was evidently the source which had filled this lake over the centuries. The lake itself was as clear as a child’s laughter. Sickly-pale fish darted through it like arrows, waiting for one of the similarly white crickets which haunted the margins of this ghostly subterranean beach to fall in. Relt and Dorian stood at the lip of a narrow cliff, gazing into the abyss which they had discovered. Just to their right lay what appeared to be a fallen stalactite; it had landed and stuck against the wall in such a way as to form a rather serviceable ramp from the little cliff down to the edge of the water.

“This is fucking amazing,” Relt whispered. She climbed carefully down the stalactite ramp, cell phone held out as a flashlight in the stygian blackness which, perhaps, no other human being had ever laid eyes on.

[Paragon]

They stood on the shore to this great lake of darkness, waiting for Fallow to return with the scouting report. Up until the revelation that he was drugged, Dorian wasn't particularly concerned with the oddities of how he felt. It was better than when he was sick, and that was good enough. Now, he didn't know. He heard stories about those Dwarven mushrooms, but never actually tried one out. Back in his sleepy mountain home, the closest thing to a drug would be the common pipe, but since his father never used them, he never felt the desire either. His father was a strange man; In his idle time he would just go out for a walk and become part of the scenery. Dorian inherited this relaxing habit, and his eyelids now were drooping down a little in sleepiness.

Fallow's voice beamed into their heads, "It goes way too far, but the shore wrapped around it as far as I could see," The dragonling could only go so far away from Dorian, and really, he didn't want to.

These kinds of places in Concordia were not altogether uncommon. The region was known for its cavernous underground. Many bandit organizations even made their homes in some of them. The idea of a completely undiscovered one would intrigue Dorian more were it not for him almost dozing off by the time his little friend returned.

As they started walking on the rocky beach that bordered the lake, avoiding the curved walls with stalactites growing out of them, Dorian noticed how remarkably warm it was down here. Normally deep, dark, and wet caves were chilly. Perhaps the river was flowing from a distant volcanic mountain and was still warm by the time it got all the way out here, or maybe it was some other reason. The thought was amusing to him for reasons he could not describe. The edges of his lips twitched, and he would intermittently smile without actively willing it. The ground was very uneven, with tall rounded pillars sticking up everywhere, and jagged stones pressing against each other. Dorian was more used to this kind of terrain, but Relt was clearly being slowed down, so he let her lead with the torch. The sound of the waterfall was quieting to a point where their own movements traversing the harsh shoreline was louder.

The lake was still a sight to behold. If the water was really boiled before it got here, it was a great potential source for fresh water. He stopped and looked down into the water. As the light from the torch passed over it, the bottom of the lake seemed to... move. The bottom of the lake was getting deeper and deeper, so by this point he was looking a couple meters down into the water from his perch on the shore. He got closer to the water and bent down, he could swear that there was something down there. The thought of a living lake amused him, and he let out a few inaudible chuckles.

That's when he spotted something in his peripheral vision. In front of him, floating gently in the lake, was what looked like a piece of cloth. He couldn't make out the details, but it was out of reach. Pulling out his spear, he extended it to its full form and leaned over the edge of the shore, trying to hook the piece of clothing. He had just almost reached it when he noticed that the ground was shaking under the point where the tip of his spear was making few ripples. Whether it was from his tiredness due to the medicine, the slippery ground, or some sort of nervous twitch from seeing what was below him...

He slipped.

[Relt PeltFelter]

“Holy shit!”

Relt’s exclamation rang throughout the cavern, a hundred ghostly hers repeating it back to her from the boundless darkness. She dropped both bag and torch, diving heedless into the dark water. The sinking form of Dorian was illuminated by her (mercifully waterproof) cell phone, and she swam towards him with the practiced stroke of anyone who grew up within walking distance of a beautiful Pacific beach. The lake was deep, and sloped downwards into an inky abyss; Relt was lucky to grab hold of Dorian’s clothes before he sank too much further into the blackness.

He was surrounded with fist-sized, whiskery creatures trying vainly to burrow into him, and Relt had to brush a few away from her own body as she hauled her companion back towards the limestone outcropping that passed for land this far beneath the sunlit world. Dorian was much harder to carry on land, but Relt managed to drag him up the beach, then collapsed gasping to the ground. Her lungs felt like she had just smoked a jalapeño.

“Is he going to be okay?” Fallow bustled around frantically; he was holding the torch Relt had discarded.

“Well,” Relt waited a moment, hearing Dorian wheeze and cough, “He’s breathing, which is always a good sign. But damn, those freaky whiskery dudes are like fucking aqua-mosquitoes,”

“Is that what that was?” Dorian said, dazed, “I thought I fell into the lake,”

“You did fall in!” Fallow chastised, “Relt saved you,”

“I saw clothes in the water and I thought that that was a bad place to leave clothes. Don’t leave the clothes in there,”

“What?”

“He’s just loopy from the pills, dawg,” Relt assured Fallow as she wrung out her own clothes, “Probably why his dumb ass fell in in the first place. I mean, why would there be clothes in there, nobody else has been down here before, like, ever? God damn, man, these little bites hurt like…a…bitch…”

It had dawned on Relt that, as often cited by nocturnal sojourners the world over, nothing that happened in your dreams could hurt you. After all, wasn’t the traditional method of checking one’s state of wakefulness a solid pinch on the arm? Relt wondered if perhaps such a maneuver might not be advisable at this juncture. She pinched her arm.

“Motherfuck! That hurt like a bitch too! Oooohhhh shit. Oh shit, this isn’t a dream is it?”

“Feels like a dream to me,” Dorian murmured.

“Uh, no, it isn’t a dream, at least, I think I’m real!” Fallow had found a crevasse in which to shove the torch which supported it adequately. He hovered awkwardly between his host and the strange woman, a lost and confused trio huddling in the only light present in the unfinished basement of the world.

“So this is all real? Shit, of course it was all real, there were like signs everywhere up to this point. Why would I dream up that crappy little village, why did the pills work on this dude, why were there things in here which I’ve never seen before…fuck, I totally bought into that whole dream thing, but god damn this is all real. The forest, the village, this cave, these monsters…that…the thing that happened before…in the lab…”

“Hey, calm down, it’s okay!” Fallow insisted, “But I really think-”

“Dude, I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, but I think I need a minute to get my head together. A minute not spent talking to a fucking invisible dragon, okay, because you totally shouldn’t even be physically possible but I’ll deal with that when I stop freaking out, okay?”

“Um. Okay? But I think maybe you should wait because, uh-”

There was a hiss in the lurking shadows, one far too close for comfort. It was answered from the opposite side, as though the owner of the second hiss had been following the impromptu adventuring party for some hours. These hisses were joined by a chorus of similar sounds, some of slightly different pitch. Relt carefully got to her feet and picked up her bag. Something skittered away in the darkness, like a dog-sized cockroach in a soup kitchen at two a.m. She pulled the official truncheon of her Chinese restaurant delivery driver position from the rucksack. Its weight was reassuring; she may be in some strange fantasy world, far away from pork fried rice and General Tso’s Chicken and surrounded by abominations, but this 24 inches of Kevlar was solid and familiar.

The torch hissed in the moist air, and as the radius of orange light shifted, pale shapes scrambled to avoid coming too near it. She caught only impressions of white, calcareous armor and distressingly rugose, pulsating limbs; only about five or six large creatures, but at least a dozen smaller ones, like the thing that had dropped off the wall earlier in their trek.

“D-Ran, buddy,” Relt whispered, the hissing rising and falling in time with her words, “I need you to get up and be ready to use that spear thing, okay? Because shit has just gotten real, in at least two senses of that phrase. And I am deadly serious about this, please get up and be ready to fight monsters, which it turns out are real, which I guess makes you real too, so good news for you, but right now I need you to be real ready to fight or we are all going to die,”

[Paragon]

Soaking wet, Dorian pulled himself to his feet, spear in hand. He didn't lose his grip on it the entire time, which was probably more of a subconscious action than anything. He wasn't feeling any better after almost drowning, although he was significantly more awake, despite the dark rings under his eyes and the red veins growing across his eyes.

Only catching the last part of Relt's auspicious warning, Dorian replied, "We don't have to fight. I mean, I'm sorry I got your clothes all wet, but they will dry off in time." Just then, one of the little barnacle critters jumped at him from behind. He turned around quickly and batted the thing into the lake with the shaft of his spear. Facing Relt again, he said, "Nobody can even see that your clothes are wet in this darkness anyway. I don't see what the big deal is, personally."

The crevice's shaky grip on the torch failed, and it fell to the ground, greatly darkening the immediate area they were all in. The creatures took this opportunity to attack, and the quad-limb headless abomination from earlier leapt at Dorian, trying to grab at him with its pulsating arms. Its milky white skin was cracked and hard, almost reflecting the small amount of light. The skin had hardened to form a light, scaly shell. It was more cracked around the joints, and many sections of its body had large wounds that were occupied by barnacles. The rest of it looked suspiciously human.

Dorian cut across the monster's mid-section with his spear, causing some blue goo to come out from its new chest wound but otherwise did not stop its assault. He jumped back and lifted his right leg, spinning around on his left and backwards kicking the creature in its gut, sending it flying back at the wall. Several of the smaller barnacle things were skittering across the limestone beach but Dorian swept them up and pushed them away.

Another humanoid-looking monster tried its hand at attacking the young man. It was just a torso with legs and arms sticking out of it, spinning counter-clockwise along the ground as it shifted toward him. He tried to stomp on it but it maneuvered around his kick and ran under his legs, nearly tripping him. He turned around and stabbed into it, but that turned out to be a bad move as it pulled both him and the spear forward and made him fall into the ground. He started getting up but it grabbed out at him and pulled at his clothes. Visibly stirred, he threw a right haymaker at it and knocked the spear out of its fleshy innards, as well as sending it sprawling on the ground. He got up and suddenly wished that he carried a more choppy weapon around. Nonetheless, he swung at its limbs and removed several errant legs from its form.

He couldn't have been prepared for the next attacker. Looking behind him, he saw a huge horse with half its skull missing staring at him with empty eye sockets. In the missing section of its head lived several of the smaller barnacle creatures, packed tightly together to create a spiky helmet. It had many wounds all over its body with bones sticking out, a broken hoof that just dragged along behind it (instead opting to stand on a protruding bone where the dislodged hoof once was), and an entire wooden board lodged in its back. It made a horrifying hissing that sounded like the horse was still alive and screaming.

It immediately tried to ram him with its body, instead slamming into the wall and causing more dormant barnacles to fall from the ceiling. As Dorian dodged, he noticed his original quad-armed attacker was dangerously close to Relt, so he ran up to it and roundhouse kicked it away from her.

"Don't touch that; you don't know where it's been."

Returning to the barnacalized horse, he jammed his spear into its hide as hard as he could, but it didn't affect it at all. These things reminded him of zombies. Were they zombies? No, they were alive somehow. Something was alive in them. Unfortunately, he had once again lost the only weapon he brought with him, and had to avoid the horse-barnacle's attempts to kiss him with the side of its head. Digging a foot into the ground, he lifted his left leg and slammed it into the barnacle portion of the horse's head on a hunch, just under the clump of barnacles. They were not only loosened, but fell out entirely and started skittering around in confused circles. The horse lost its balance and fell down, barely able to move.

Feeling a sudden extreme dizziness, Dorian stumbled to the wall and threw up. His breathing was very hoarse at this point, his deep breaths causing his entire body to expand and contract. However, he felt slightly better. In fact, he pulled the spear out of the shivering horse-monster and spun it around over his head, finally resting it in front of him held with both hands along the shaft. His focus had returned, and while he wasn't going loopy from the pills anymore, the exhaustion they caused remained. Three more barnacalized monsters too hideous to describe (but suffice to say expect body parts in the wrong places) jumped at Dorian, but he deftly dispatched them by hitting a couple of them with the shaft of his spear, and pushing the last one away with the bottom of it. What followed was a series of coordinated attacks that kept the creatures at bay, incorporating his athletics and martial arts ability. He jumped over them, knocked them around, landed kicks, and even threw punches with his free hand in-between spear attacks.

This wasn't getting any better, however. Dorian picked up the torch for a really bad discovery: It revealed that another half dozen of these things were along the edge of the light, getting ready to pounce into the fray. It seems that they slowly get used to the light, and then attack. Who knows how many more were waiting beyond the torch's radius.

[Relt PeltFelter]

It was not a good time to be Relt PeltFelter. Her entire conception of reality, something which was frankly rather frayed around the edges as things stood, had been torn asunder to reveal a nightmare riot of pale, skulking things in the dark places of a world she didn’t know she’d traveled to. Her paradigm had shattered like a porcelain urn struck by the errant baseball of revelation, and now the ashes of Grandma Ethel were being ground into the carpet. In time, a new urn, or, to abandon a metaphor, a new paradigm could be crafted to replace that which had shattered, but for the moment the shock of its loss had an icy grip on Relt’s brain.

The torch toppled. One of the abominations lurched towards Relt, and with an almost dreamy expression on her face, she drove the truncheon into the gaping lamprey mouth which served the creature as a face. She pushed as hard as she could down into the throat even as thrashing cirri tore at her midriff. The creature’s hissing turned to a gurgle as something ruptured, and Relt drew the night-stick back covered in oddly thick, blue ichor. The creature thrashed wildly, and the reflected light of the fallen torch cast its shadow miles high on the wall behind.

The overall shape of the monster, as well as that of it’s four or five human-sized cohorts, was of an enormous goose barnacle which had half-swallowed a man. A pair of oddly ridged human legs stuck out from the barnacle’s shell, and much like the other creatures Relt and Dorian had seen that day, what appeared to be the head was a flat, toothy maw on the attachment end of the scaly neck. A nest of flailing limbs, like the graspers of a mantis, sprouted from about where one would expect the feeding legs of a barnacle to emerge. The white shell of the torso, the forward-leaning posture, and the absence of human arms, gave the unpleasant impression of a man wearing a straitjacket.

Relt had little time to think as the stricken man-sized abomination grasped her with its basket of legs. It pinned her arms to her sides, but she kicked viciously at the kneecap of its borrowed leg. If the creature felt pain, it gave no indication of it, but something snapped inside and the monster sagged forward, tumbling to the ground with Relt under it. More of the thick blue blood poured from its injured throat, and Relt slammed its damaged neck with her forehead over and over until its legs released her.

The girl slid out from beneath in one motion, and stomped on the monster beneath her as hard as she could, flip-flop flying off into the darkness. Dorian said something to her, sweeping another attacker away from her, but she failed to process it. Sounds were dulled and muffled; the rhythmic thump of her heartbeat filled her ears. A barnacle-beast about the size of a raccoon launched itself at her out of the darkness, and struck her full in the chest, knocking her again to the ground.

Relt struggled to her feet as the smaller creature seemed to be trying to grasp her in the same way its larger compatriot did, but lacking the requisite arm-span. She scrabbled against its bucking shell until she found a seam. She pressed her hands into it and pulled, panting, as the monster continued its assault. There was a horrible cracking as the shell popped apart, spilling cobalt organs across the cavern floor. The clawing cirri stilled and fell limp. Relt cast the carcass aside, noting on some level that a ribcage, pelvis and skull tumbled from the shredded barnacle.

Her original attacker was trying to get to what could charitably be called its feet, but was only succeeding in driving the splintered tibia through its own mismatched and rugose flesh. It managed a few halting steps before Relt kicked it away from the wall, and it skidded backwards into the water with a splash.

Dorian picked up the torch. The light seemed to strike Relt like a physical blow, and she dropped to her knees as their attackers moved to evade the radius of the hated brightness. “I think I know where the caravan went,” Dorian said darkly.

“Huh? You say something?” Relt said, seemingly shaken from a trance. Her eyes scanned the perimeter, and there was the suggestion of cautious, crustaceous movement. “Oooohhh shit, monsters. This seems…eugh, what is this shizz all over me?”

“If you have any plan, now is the time to share it,”

Relt reached into her rucksack and pulled out what looked like a knife handle. “Sure," Relt said, "I plan on showing these things my stabs,” There was a click, and the blade sprung out; it glinted in the torchlight like the baleful eye of a perturbed rhinoceros. A particularly brave barnacle (possibly formerly a badger?) seemed to be testing the edges of the circle of light with it's legs.

It charged her. She stabbed.

[Paragon]

"You guys have got to get out of there!" came a booming dragonling voice into their minds.

The dragon's inconspicuous absence from the situation was due to him flying around, trying to find a way out of this mess. As he flew, he couldn't help but stare down into the lake. Now that he knew there was something there, he was acutely aware of the movement in the deeper waters. To that effect, he was horrified: There was no gap at the bottom of the lake that wasn't occupied by the whiskery larvae.

Meanwhile, after a failed stab Relt kicked the approaching barnacle-badger hybrid away and Dorian dealt with the never-ending wave of the smaller ones. There was a distinct difference between the little spidery barnacles and the more grotesque hives of them occupying the flesh of the dead. Although, he wasn't particularly interested in the biology of them.

The situation went from bad to worse as a flying barnacle scratched the young man's arm as it flew by, and another one scratched his leg. Relt was having problems as well: Her shock offered her safety due to her instincts of avoiding danger, but her situational awareness was low. In short, as the aforementioned quad-limb monster crawled one of the stalactites on the wall, Dorian was the only one who noticed it. It dropped down toward Relt, its pulsating arms reached out for a wide grab. Dropping the torch, Dorian jumped in and knocked her out of the way, turning his face to respond to the attacker but not in time. As he jabbed his spear into it to try to halt its fall, its flailing arms with long nails scratched at everything they could, and tore deep gashes into Dorian's face. It narrowly avoided scratching his left eye, but the skin around it was cut and bleeding into it, causing him to close it. He pushed his spear to his right, which carried the monster it was attached to to his side and allowed it to slip off the blade and fly into a few of the more skittery creatures. With the torch on the ground again, the creatures surrounded the two.

"Stop it... Dorian heard Fallow's voice, but it was low and trembling. It was likely that the dragonling was broadcasting to everything in his telepathic range. Dorian looked up and his little friend was above him, glowing with a constant emission of steam from his mouth. In what could only be described as a scream, the dragonling yelled, "Now!"

A plume of fire erupted from Fallow's mouth, expanding and spreading light and heat towards the entire width of the space between the wall and lake. Dorian and Relt, being under the dragonling, shielded their eyes from the display. The fires disappeared, leaving many burning creatures and others that escaped into the lake. The dragonling, completely wiped out from the attack, stopped flapping its wings and let gravity take him down.

Dorian carefully caught the little guy, but not before hearing a barely audible voice in his mind, "Don't let them get inside you!"

They had no time to be creeped out by the cryptic warning. This was their chance. Running through the opening carved by Fallow's flames, they continued along the shoreline in the same direction they were going in earlier. Holding the dragonling under his left arm, Dorian pressed his right hand against his damaged eye, letting the blood cover his hand. It also served the purpose of proving some relief to his incessant headache. Gritting his teeth and with lowered brows, he couldn't look more serious. Relt had picked up the torch again, but there was also a low ambient light coming from the direction they were running in. The lake, rather than alongside them, was soon behind them, as they entered a rocky coast. While the lake still ran under them, it was only evident by the cracks and openings between the rocks. Noticing that they weren't being followed, they stopped to catch a breath. A low light was coming from holes in the walls, just enough for them to see in their immediate vicinity but not enough to discern the gray matter in the distance.

Relt plopped down on the ground, pressing her hands against the sides of her feet in pain. Being forced to run along a hard, rocky ground with jagged edges in the darkness was hell on her feet. Dorian's problems were different: He felt like he hadn't slept in two weeks. His head spun in ways that made him want to throw up again. His cold symptoms were not returning, but he would gladly take them over what he was feeling now. Taking off his scarf and wrapping Fallow in it, he placed the dragonling on the ground and tried to make sure he was okay.

"D-Ran!" came a harsh whisper from Relt. "Check this shit out!"

She pointed at a tide pool that had barnacles around it, but they were smaller. Packed together in clumps, they had the goose barnacle neck but none of the little legs. Were these... normal?

"Sharp pain in head," said Dorian tersely, standing up and re-extending his spear. "When you say that." His eloquence and ability to form complete sentences went out the window with the onset of the migraine.

Relt, figuring out that Dorian was implying that her nickname was no good, had the distinct realization that the man she had spent her time with since coming to this hellhole was real. This was a bad time to let her shattered conception of reality doom her to a lonely death in the dripping bowels of…of… "Dorian... what is this place?"

"I don't know," he replied, feeling that there was something more to that question. He looked at her and saw something sincere in her eyes. He could feel it; She had woken up.

He was a bit short on words at the moment, so she continued, "I mean, pretty obvious I'm not from here. Maybe a different planet? I don't know how it works."

His eyes lowered for a moment, but he fought back the sleepy impulse and looked back up. A different world... it didn't seem like such a hard pill for him to swallow. The way she talked, her clothes, the way she thought everyone acted strange, and the odd things she had with her...

"What's this dump called?" She asked. "Not, like, this place in particular, but like-"

"Althanas."

[Relt PeltFelter]

As they walked along the lime-encrusted banks of the marvelously clear lake, Relt’s focus could not help but stray to the inhabitants therein. It helped distract her from the swirling maelstrom of horror which had swallowed her life.

They had relocated the lake shore. Where they had first encountered the water’s edge, there had been schools of those blind cave fish, milky-white salamanders, and all sorts of crickets and cockroaches teeming along the shores. Here, deeper into the nameless cavern, there were only barnacles; in the water, clinging to stalagmites above it, along the walls. Barnacles everywhere. She watched as one flexed its unpleasantly spider-like legs. Relt had seen barnacles at the aquarium, or the zoo, whichever, and generally their legs were kind of feathery, for snatching little bits of food. The legs on these things were like knives.

An unfortunate, and evidently directionally-challenged, cave fish had wandered into barnacle territory. One of them reached out, cleanly, and severed the fish’s head. It thrashed for a moment, then settled to the bottom. Instantly, a swarm of whiskery things encircled the corpse; one finally managed to wriggle inside, and the rest simply drifted away. There would, Relt assumed, be other fish carcasses for them. She couldn't help but mentally narrate these happening in the voice of David Attenborough; his soothing grandpaternal voice was exactly the sort of thing she needed at a time like this.

The torch Dorian had brought, which Relt now held, was beginning to dim; it had been rather badly abused in the previous tussle, and even without taking that into account, it had simply been burning for a long time. The circle of luminescence, so closely linked to safety in Relt’s mind, was both shrinking and dimming.

She heard a clatter in the darkness behind them. Dorian froze, and Relt flicked her switchblade open once again. “What was that?” she whispered.

“Don't move,” Dorian responded.

Relt held the torch out in the direction of the sound; the burning orange illuminated, just barely, the outline of a man-sized barnacle. It held, in its basket of twitching arms, the bloody carcass of a sheep. Heedless of the dimming light, it walked towards Relt and Dorian, eyeless maw bobbing limply as it went. Scraps of cloth dragged behind it, the remnants of a pair of canvas trousers. Relt’s muscles tensed as the creature…

…walked right past them.

It went a little ways further into the dark, and the sound of its stumping legs stopped. Relt and Dorian looked at one another, and both dripping wet, cut, and bruised, seemed to share a sentiment. They followed the barnacle, finding it standing on an outcrop by the shore. The sheep’s blood dripped into the water, which was thick with whiskery monstrosities. Finally, the barnacle-man stepped roughly into the water, releasing the carcass. The little biting creatures swarmed this, just as they did the fish.

“So okay,” Relt said after a few moments, “Why didn’t that one try to kill us?”

Dorian shook his head; or rather, what remained of it. There was a nasty congerie of wounds around his eye.

“Hm. Well the ones that did try to kill us…I mean I dunno about you, but they just kinda kept trying to grab me, I think. Maybe they need dead bodies for something? I mean, I think I saw one crawl inside it. I guess…maybe they’re baby barnacles? Hold on, I think I have a book about this kind of biz,”

Dorian waited by the waterline as Relt rifled through a dog-eared textbook. Fallow lay in his off-arm, still completely unconscious. The world seemed wavy before him, oscillating inside his head. His wet hair fell haphazardly over his face, and he felt around his injured eye with his free hand, twitching whenever his hand pressed into the cuts inflicted by one of the monsters. The pain kept him awake, but the effect was fading as his heavy eyelids threatened to close for good.

"Okay, here we go. So these barnacles are troglobites," Relt said. Dorian gave her a Look. It was a Look that said that he was not at all in the mood for words like that to be introduced into the conversation.

“That is, uh, they’re animals that live their whole lives in caves. They’re all pale and creepy, and they freak out in the light. What probably happened is that, like, a thousand years ago they got washed into this cave from the ocean. So they adapted, right? Instead of just eating, I dunno, fish farts or whatever, they have these nasty claws for catching big stuff. But they don't just eat them because, I guess, maybe the little babies need dead things to grow in? Instead of just attaching to a wall like regular barnacles, they attach to a dead body and, uh," Relt thought about the creature she'd fought earlier, and its uncharacteristic skeleton, "They use its bones and shit as leverage to walk around? Ergh, then that means the person-shaped ones were…”

“The caravan,” Dorian mumbled.

“Gross. But before they got down here the barnacles must have been just using, like, fish bones? How could they have killed a bunch of dudes?”

“I don't know," Dorian mumbled again, cracking a faint smile, "But it sounds like you have an idea,"

“I guess," Relt hardly heard him; she was ensconced in the throes of science, "That the storm or whatever bumped the cave open, and the wagon fell down here? And I mean, all those dead dudes and that horse, they’d just be more bodies for the little larvae dudes to grow on, they wouldn’t really see the difference. And then the barnacle-men go up top and find all these other caravan dudes, probably trying to get down here and help the ones who fell, and they just think of them the same way they do the fish or whatever and, you know, crunch. Which I guess…means they aren’t so much monsters as just animals. Weird animals, but still just animals doing what animals do,”

“I’d prefer they didn’t do it to us, though,” Dorian replied.

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Relt agreed, striking a flare on a shattered stalactite, “Fuck that shit,” The flash of red light scattered a couple of small barnacles which had been milling about, harmlessly, in the dark.

[Paragon]

"I've been wondering why they haven't targeted us again," Relt rubbed her chin. Her eyes were buried in that book. "They were pretty interested in us a minute ago."

Dorian put Fallow down and said, "Can't hear you very well. It's awfully loud in here." The pounding in his head almost had a beat, and the stinging sensation around his eye from the cuts was not helping. Wrapping up the dragonling in a soggy scarf did not seem like the best idea, but he didn't have much choice. He ripped the bottom of his shirt and wrapped it around his head, covering up his right eye.

He adjusted the makeshift bandage to hold his wet hair back as Relt said, "That's right! They were attracted to my phone. I think... I think they go after fast heartbeats. The beat from my phone was sort of like a heartbeat, and after getting you out of that lake we were freaking out from those little buggers. Now that we're all calm, they don't see us as targets. That explains the rest of the caravan- I can't imagine their heart rate not jumping after seeing those things crawl up out of the chasm at them."

Dorian's idleness was taking its toll on him. He dropped to both knees and his hands hit the ground. Water was dripping off his face, and he couldn't breathe through his nose.

She blinked, "Whoa, D-Ra, er, Dorian- Hold it together!"

"I just need... a, a little rest is all."

"You want to rest forever? You close those fucking peepers and you're not getting out of this cave! Here-" She reached into her bag and found a Red Bull; some taurine-happy co-worker had handed them out free, and this one had been slowly roasting in the hot San Francisco sun for months before now. "Now, I mean, after the bad trip last time I can understand if you-"

Dorian grabbed the bottle and downed it like it was his last act on Althanas. He straightened up and leaned back, planting his behind firmly on the ground while looking up and exhaling heavily.

"Make sure you stay calm bro, that thing can raise your heart rate. Last thing we need is more attention."

Between breaths, Dorian got out of his mouth, "Hope you're right about that heartbeat thing."

Relt realized what he was talking about as she looked around. Just out of the torch's dimming reach of light, the creatures from earlier were milling about. Despite their wounds, they still wandered around as if nothing happened. They were avoiding bumping into them due to the light, but they were all around them. The horse one, with fresh barnacles occupying its new wounds, the quad-limb one, the straight-jacket type, the torso with most of its extra arms chopped off, the occupied badger corpse, and about a dozen of the little spider-y barnacle things. One wrong move, and it would be over for both of them. Dorian could always stay relaxed when he needed to, but Relt was swallowing a lot.

She buried her worries and fear, and strived to push forward, "We need to find the baby factory here and shut it down."

"Baby factory?"

"Dude, there are waaay too many of these fuckers around to just be making babies the traditional way. This cave is a closed ecosystem, they'd run out of food in weeks if they had this many babies this quick. No, something weird is going on, something...I dunno, new? Maybe that's why they're so aggressive, the competition for, ugh, 'scaffolding' is so hard right now. Now these things are gonna shoot out of the ground like hungry ants when some asshole decides to have the world's most sugary picnic."

"Fallow knew something," Dorian mentioned. "Whatever is causing this must be nearby."

Relt got up, and helped Dorian up as well. She had an odd sense of responsibility for this situation. It was too much of a coincidence that she was transported here right as the world was doomed to an invasion by barnacle monsters. There was also Dorian himself. He had actually put up with her to this point without complaint. Getting him out of here and making sure his world didn't succumb to parasites was the least she could do.

[Relt PeltFelter]

As the two wandered through the caverns, footsteps echoing flat and absurd in the darkness, a sort of ambient glow had begun to suffuse the environs. It seemed to bleed out of the walls, which here had begun to take on a vaguely scarred and pitted look, not at all like the milky lustre of the preceding cavern. On the one hand, the dying torch and temperamental flare were no longer quite so necessary for the pair to navigate by. On the other, as it were, hand, the eerie blue-green glow was highlighting exactly how many straggling cirripeds were still tailing them hopefully.

Relt ran her hand along the surface of the scarred limestone; it was something to take her mind off of the relentless beating of her heart, and the fact that the unpleasantly insistent hissing of their crustaceous malefactors seemed to rising and falling in tune with her own cardiac palpitations. “Oh, for fff…gross!” Relt whispered, pulling her hand away. Her palm was coated in a sort of fleshy ooze, which appeared to be the origin of the pervasive glow.

“D-dawg,” Relt complained, increasing her speed to catch up with her concerned colleague, “Did you see this crap on the walls? I think it’s, like, fungus or bacteria or something. Glowing and-” She stopped. Dorian stood at the edge of a barnacle-coated outcropping; this batch didn’t seem terribly interested in moving around. He was staring down, into the crystalline waters which were illuminated, spookily, by the aquatic counterpart of the goo Relt had begun wiping absently on her pants. She followed his gaze, and for once, even Relt Peltfelter was speechless.

At first, it looked like a warty white whale-carcass; it was pale and flabby, and enormous. Unfortunately, further specificity regarding size is difficult at this juncture; there simply isn’t an established metric for this particular scale in the heritage of narrative convention. Football fields far overshoot the matter in comparative description, whereas public transit buses are simply not large or girthy enough. Suffice it to say that the thing was massive in a way that seemed wrong; for, once the eyes adjusted to seeing such a thing on such a scale, it became clear that the object was a gargantuan goose-neck barnacle.

Four vaguely reptilian limbs, and a half-skeletonized tail, hung from the enormous shell. They bobbed slightly in a gentle current, as though water was flowing from somewhere behind this unwholesomely large crustacean. A pair of spindly lattices may once have been bat-like wings. At regular intervals, a maul of spidery limbs the length of city buses (ah, we return to the traditional metrics) emerged from the ridged shell to sweep the water. Bits of detritus were caught in wrist-thick hairs and swept back into the main body.

“They…it came here to die, when it was very old…” Fallow was stirring in his impromptu swaddling-clothes, mumbling in his sleep, “The world was…I think…younger? And the cave was open then…its memories…echoing like screams…pain. So much pain. Can’t you hear them?”

“It’s a dragon…” Relt murmured, looking from the submerged colossus to the ailing creature in Dorian’s arms, “The barnacles infested a dragon. That’s where they’re coming from. It must have taken the parasite hundreds of fucking years to get this big, and it just recently became sexually mature…maybe they pick up some of the metabolism from the host, I dunno…”

“It came here to die but they didn’t let it…they dug inside of it while it screamed and screamed, too weak to fight it but too strong to die quickly…” Fallow was squirming in his sleep. Dorian had hoped that the dragon would be able to rest for a while, like this, but even in his sleep something was tormenting him.

“D…don’t let them get inside you…it hurts so much…” Fallow grew silent.

“Is he dead?” Relt asked indelicately. After a moment she seemed to realize that this may not have been the most appropriate of questions. "I mean he kind of freaked out back there, and then this, so I just thought that maybe he was de-"

“He’s fine,” Dorian said sharply, cradling the little dragon, “Dragons can talk with their minds, like how Fallow talks to us. The...thing down there, before it was a thing, it screamed so loudly that its thoughts are still echoing in this place. I suppose Fallow can hear it, but he's kind of young...I don't think he can process them right,”

“So should we, like, leave? Or...” Relt asked.

"No, I'm not done here, just yet. We need to stop these monsters from getting outside,"

"They're not monsters, man," Relt said impassively, eying the behemoth below, "They're just freaks of nature. Nothing they could control,"

Dorian was a man who noticed things. He hadn't spent much time with Relt, and the time he had spent with her had largely involved bewilderment and intoxication, but still he could tell that she had more layers than a Gisela pound cake. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"No, I'm good, I'm rocking it," Relt stepped away from the ledge, adjusting her bag on her shoulder; she was not actually good at all, as clever readers may have divined. Her day had begun with suspicions of a concussion, followed by confusion, horror, revelation, and additional horror. A big damned barnacle was nothing compared to realizing that you are farther from home than should be possible. Part of her still held out hope for the dream hypothesis, but the smarter part of her knew that would just be too...nice. "You know, I guess I shouldn't be surprised at these guys. Nature's kinda cruel. Did you know that there's a type of snail that-" She was interrupted as the weight of her bag banged into her back pocket (the outside of which was still coated with glowing fungi). There was a kind of odd click, and a moment of portentous silence.

Her cell phone went off; pounding drum and bass music swept through the caverns like the roar of the departed dragon.

[Paragon]

The momentary look of horror on both their faces turned to ones of panic as Relt dropped the torch and her arms turned into noodly appendages trying to shut off the phone in her bag. The ground rumbled beneath them, and Dorian slowly turned his gaze towards the bloating, shelled mass submerged before him. It was... rising out of the water.

"Got it!" Relt announced, clicking off her phone with a depraved grin that suggested lunacy. "No, uh, harm done, right?"

"Depends on your definition of 'harm'."

The thing kept rising out of the water, higher and higher until its shadow eclipsed the two. Its huge shell body loomed over them, but they were frozen in place. It wasn't until the howling all around them started that Dorian grabbed Relt's arm and made a run for it. The barnacle queen's massive body crashed down onto the shore, and its reptilian legs somehow managed to lift up the absurd body.

Letting go of Relt, Dorian pulled out his spear and somehow extended it one-handed, since Fallow was still wrapped in a scarf in his other arm. They both ran blindly into the darkness, now completely torch-less. They still had the illuminating fungi to make sure they didn't trip over anything or run into any pale blobs of 'want to feed you to our young'. He swatted away approaching barnacle critters, looking back to see something that could very well serve as nightmare fuel for arthropods. They were being chased by a giant barnacle with dragon legs. Its legs were small in comparison to its long body, but it crawled through the rocks with enough force to tear through their bodies like wet paper. They ran around the other side of the lake; the shore that lead back to the waterfall. If they could get to that, the sound of the falling water would hide their presence.

There were many obstructions on this beach, which forced them to twist and turn around the protrusions. The monster left a cloud of dust in its wake, kicking up dirt and bits of rock as it careened on its death path. It came dangerously close to them and whipped its skeletal tail at the two, nearly cleaving their heads off if they didn't duck in time. As they turned a corner, Dorian could see all of the barnacle monsters crawling along the walls and swimming in the lake, catching up to them. Behind them, the biggest barnacle of them all was still after them, plowing through the rocks like they were blades of grass. It turned the corner to follow them but could not maneuver itself fast enough for the new direction, slamming into the wall and causing another rumble. Several stalactites fell from the walls and ceiling and broke harmlessly on the giant monster's thick shell. That gave the two a small lead, but as it pulled its enormous body up, a stream of crushed rock flowing from its body, it wasted no time in continuing the chase.

Then, the it seemed like the duo's luck had run out. The beach abruptly ended into a solid wall. They were almost blind back here, now far from the dim light of the fungi and only going off the faint reflection from the water. The wall jutted out into the lake, and there was likely the continuation of the beach behind it, but going into the water was suicide. They had to take one of the small openings between the stalactite-covered enclosure that lined the beach. It was just large enough to fit their bodies, and it was pitch black inside. The little room only spanned a few meters; they had picked the wrong doorway. They were trapped.

Instructing Relt to back away into the corner while giving her Fallow, Dorian put both hands on his spear and faced the opening. He doubted that they would last long here, but he didn't give up.

"They hear our hearts, right? If we could just relax, maybe they will lose us."

"How do you expect me to just make my heart stop beating?!"

"Meditation?"

"Oh, yeah, like I can just sit and fucking-oh wait!" There was a rummaging sound. Dorian cast a sidelong glance in Relt's direction, which didn't help at all in the darkness. Relt muttered a little "Ah-ha!", and after a bit of miscellaneous fiddling, there was a click, a brief spark, and a gurgle. "Oh yeah, I'm totally ready to start relaxing."

Dorian, not knowing what to think, but having no time to do so, said, "Take a deep breath!"

From right outside the exit, the hissing grew louder. Dorian could do this, he could meditate and lower his heart rate, but Relt's chemical aid seemed less reliable. He firmly gripped his spear, pointed it forward and kept his eyes open, confident in his ability and ready to defend himself if need be. He could see the darkness shifting around him, and a faint clacking sound on the ground. The smaller spider-y barnacles had entered the room and were slowly making their way toward Relt. They were already ignoring Dorian, but could still feel something coming from the girl.

The larger creatures were poking their pulsating arms through the opening, feeling around right in front of Dorian's face. He held his ground, and was starting to feel pressure building up inside of him from lack of air. A low pounding could be heard inching closer and closer to them, a deep stomping from the barnacle queen. The infested dragon braced its oversized bulk against the stone wall just outside the natural cabinet; its second-hand claws resting just inches from the opening. It shifted itself ponderously, dragging the dragon-paw across the stone and leaving ragged grooves. Then, it...

Stopped.

Turning around, the little barnacle creatures walked back out through the opening. The many arms that reached and groped disappeared, and the pounding starting going away from them. Dorian and Relt exhaled, almost gasping for their next breath.

He smiled, "I had a feeling you could do it."

"Yeah thanks," Relt said distantly, "Hey do you have any snacks?"

[Relt PeltFelter]

After a long moment of waiting as the pattering of monstrous feet petered out into silence, Relt stumbled out of the hidey-hole and blinked in the darkness. Through the thin haze of marijuana smoke, she managed to focus on the issue at hand, and set the pressing concern of snacks, and their availability, aside. She waved her cell phone around with her free hand, the digital beacon illuminating only bare stone.

Occasionally the crumbling of a distant spire, or the splash of something sliding into the lake would disrupt the solitude. Relt considered these sounds for a long time before her intoxicated brain fired the appropriate neurons. “Hey,” she whispered huskily, “Looks like we’re free and clear, broseph,” Dorian emerged cautiously, spear at the ready in the event that barnacles turned out to be smart enough to set up an ambush.

“I suggest,” he whispered, taking Fallow back into his care from the dangerously stoned girl accompanying him, “That we make our way out of here with some speed. It's clear that we won't solve this problem without fire. Lots of fire. And alcohol,”

“Oh shit, dude,” Relt laughed haltingly, “Check this out, I’m totes bringing this one out with me,” She had found a barnacle, about the size of a rabbit, clinging innocently to the wall. Guided by whims and vagaries unknown even to herself, Relt began prying the creature off the wall.

“What are you...?” The barnacle popped free with a wet pop. It utterly failed to raise the alarm, or even protest noticeably.

“What, you think it was gonna, like, raise a ruckus?”

“You must admit, it’s not exactly an unfair assumption,”

"Nah, I bet that queen thing is just long gone. Check this also out: FUCK BARNACLES!" The ringing reply of "arnacles arnacles arnacles" filled the cave briefly.

"You didn't take the stuff you gave me, did you?" Dorian asked, coolly.

"To be fair, that seemed like a really good idea right up until I did it,"

There was a riot of torturous sounds as the infested hulk of the ancient dragon hauled itself once again out of the water directly behind Dorian. Wisely, he opted not to turn and stare at it in shock, but instead to bolt back into his successful hiding spot, one arm dragging an unresisting Relt along with him. Were life more like one of the hundreds of horror movies currently sitting on the hard drive of Relt's cellular phone, Dorian would be the one to survive until the end, as opposed to Relt, who would probably be axe-murdered quite early on.

The creaking legs of the draconic revenant were unused to controlling such a massive weight, and had been in slow atrophy in the water for hundreds of years. The invading barnacle itself was not skilled in their use; these factors added up to contribute to the fact that the creature slammed full-bore into the wall which had halted Relt and Dorian’s progress, smashing it to splinters. Fragments of limestone the size of an elderly St. Bernard tumbled from the ceiling, clanging against the impenetrably chitinous armor of the barnacles’ unintended queen.

Had this devastation been caused by a living dragon, perhaps it would have lain there a while, concussed and buried under the debris, long enough for a pair of crafty rogues to sneak past it to freedom. But the creature which had done this was a crustacean; what passed for thoughts in the limited scope of its mental world ran through a ventrally-based system of ganglia which, while ill-suited to consideration of philosophical principles, were well insulated against physical concussion. Even the shattering of one of its great femurs didn’t keep the creature down, and it scrabbled viciously to regain its footing.

Relt grabbed Dorian by the wrist and hauled him out into the cave again, sparing only a moment to gaze at the struggling bulk of the great dracocirriped. There was a distinct…ramp-like shape to the temporarily downed monstrosity.

It has been said that marijuana cannot give a person ideas, and this is quite true. It must also be said that, while under the influence, the most inane or dangerous concepts are considered as though they bear great merit. However, once in a great while, marijuana can turn a terrible idea into a work of genius. Fortuitously, for Relt Peltfelter, this was one of those times.

The girl released Dorian's arm as she ran towards the bucking, acre-wide shell. Her bare feet, flip-flops long since stowed away, made contact with the ridged, calcareous shell, and carried her up it surprisingly well. "Relt!" Dorian shouted, stunned at the kind of thing he was seeing. His face made rather an odd expression, and he hurried after her. The two ran up the viciously bucking corpus of the thrashing beast, coughing and spluttering as bits of ceiling rained around them, vision clouded by dust and darkness both. They reached the end and slid, absolutely without dignity, down the great slimy neck of the thing as though it were the universe’s worst-designed water slide, landing roughly on the opposite side. Relt laughed that special laugh reserved for those who have just tapdanced on the devil's scrotum. Dorian blinked, feeling strangely numb, and caught his breath.

Dorian took the lead, not waiting to see if their improvised staircase had taken umbrage at this violation. Relt followed, not caring as her heart punched her ribcage from the inside, simply hoping to outrun the now-upright titan which hissed wretchedly as it surged forward, as though the tattered threads of its reptilian host were still vibrated madly by the usurping parasite. One of its borrowed legs was totally useless, flopping behind as though it were the world’s least mirthful party streamer, but it made up for it with that nest of razor legs, looking for all the world like a combine harvester as they pulled the abomination forward.

The pair of panicked compatriots ran for a long ways, still pursued by both the enormous malefactor and its coterie of smaller supporters, attracted by the pounding heartbeats of two people running. Eventually the lakeside fell away; Relt and Dorian found themselves slipping through tunnels, only to have the semblance of safety shattered as their pursuer smashed them apart without even registering the impact. There was a distinct upward component to their journey, and though the frequent inclines and sheer surfaces slowed them down, each one conquered seemed to engender a seed of hope. At one point Dorian and Relt found themselves in an open cavern again, scrabbling over the shattered remains of a cart very much like the one they had encountered above. Relt tried not to think about the shredded clothes which littered the area around it.

The queen barnacle burst through the last enclosed space, rampaging and thrashing in blind, instinctual pursuit. It collided roughly with the wall, and bluish fluid was leaking from a number of abrasions on its distorted host body. There was a new rumbling, now, as though something else entirely was shaking the cave. There was a stony crack from far above, and a stalactite the size of a fishing boat crashed to the ground, just the left of the barnacle-dragon.

"Damn it!" Relt cried during a brief pause to catch her breath, "That should have totally stabbed the-"

The new rumbling intensified for a moment, and the fractures spreading from the stalactite's impact point grew. A whole sheaf of wall and debris tore free, grinding across the floor and pinning the queen barnacle to the wall. It struggled in vain, but the mounting pressure crushed the beast's shell inward, forcing the goopy inner body out like pistachio and vanilla through a hole in the bottom of a waffle cone. Relt stared, open-mouthed; on the one hand, this should help restabilize the barnacle's population down here (not to mention that it was a gloriously cool sight), but on the other hand...how many crazy barnacle-zombie dragons were there in the world? Three, maybe five, tops? Despite herself, Relt hugged her own liberated barnacle a little tighter. She almost didn't realize she was still carrying it; it however, did, and thrashed impotently.

"Come on," Dorian said, tugging gently at her arm, "Let's get out of here,"

"Yeah, yeah," Relt said. The smaller barnacles seemed utterly unfazed by the death of their largest member, and were continuing their frantic chase.

Something bounced away from Dorian’s foot as he crested a hill. He picked it up, feeling a sort of papery oblong. It was still hot at either end; the flare which Relt had dropped into the cavern! They must be just under the entrance that they had taken before. As he examined the debris-strewn floor more carefully, he saw that what had appeared to be fallen rock at first was actually bits of the wagon they had scrambled over just minutes before; a wheel here, a chunk of pulverized wood there, with a distinct sort of trail leading down the way they had just come.

"This...it's the opening," Dorian said, "We're at the bottom of the pit we were walking alongside when we first came down the rope,"

“Fuck yes!” she replied, eloquent as ever, "Then let's fuck the get out of here!"

[Paragon]

They were near the epicenter of the quake now. All of the barnacle monsters, from occupied corpse to critter, were in a frenzy. None of them could sense the duo's heartbeat. Everything around them trembled slightly, with bits of rock and dirt falling from above. Dorian looked up, unable to see much. It was night already, so there was no indication that their way out was up there. Relt's phone could not illuminate much beyond a few feet, and they remembered how far down the flare originally went when she threw it down. It disappeared into the darkness; by the time it hit the ground they were standing on it barely made a sound.

"We're too far down," Dorian looked at Relt. "The rope is not long enough to reach us."

They both looked at the way they came in. There was no way through that mass of rock and dead barnacle-dragon.

"So, fine," Relt said. "We'll keep goin' down this tunnel and find another way back up?"

"This feeling... the chasm opening is closing."

"What?!"

"You said this was a closed eco-sysomething? They never got out until that mud-slide. If we go in the tunnels, we may be stuck here for days, weeks..."

"Whoa whoa whoa, you're completely harshing my buzz here. You're saying that if up there go us doesn't, then we're totes d's for reals?"

"You're doing that thing again where I don't know what you're saying." Dorian ignored what she was saying for the moment, and just thought about the tone of her voice. "But yes, we will die."

"This suuuucks, man! We better think up a way to scale these walls like right now."

Relt's voice was drowned out by the sound of crumbling stone, which threatened to fall the wrong way and crush them both. Dorian stopped looking up, and instead looked down at his boots. Malanthar, the great dragon father of Fallow, once gave Dorian a gift. His footwear didn't look at all unusual, but they allowed him a superior jumping height. It was a very clumsy thing, and more often than not he was prone to accident using it. The problem was that even then it wasn't enough. He could get up to maybe seven, ten feet before gravity caught up with him?

Squinting.

Staring at his boots in the limited glow of the phone, his eyes narrowed and focused. There was something there. Sometimes people see things in the corner of their eyes that aren't really there, but Dorian was looking at his boots in the same way with the full spectrum of his vision. There was something there, but there was nothing visible. The way he was looking at it was... wrong? It was like he needed a different type of sight altogether.

Seeing.

The world went dark. A pure pitch blackness surrounded him, where even the sensation of things moving in the dark was gone. In the eerie stillness, thin arcs of light surrounded him. He could not tell their origins, or where they ended. They were all manner of colors; blue, green, yellow, red, every color he could imagine was there. The thread-like lights surrounded him, and waved back and forth in an imaginary breeze. He felt like he was inside a loom. In the thinness of the threads, he could almost make out tiny moving pictures inside. Despite hardly having any width, the threads contained a strange, limitless amount of information. Instinctively, he knew which thread he wanted.

Reaching.

His arm extended, his free hand slowly curling around a green thread, but not coming into contact yet. This light had what he wanted, what he needed. The ability to make it out of this situation alive; to avoid the destiny of a slow, agonizing end. He wanted to embody the change in his fate; to give it form.

Touching.

Upon closing his hand around the thread, it shined brighter than ever, engulfing all of the other lights until Dorian was drowning in a sea of green light. The next thing he knew, he was back in the soft glow of the phone. Only a moment had passed, as Relt was still mid-sentence with portents of doom.

"Get on my back," He said with confidence. "I'm jumping."

"Dude, did I hotbox that little room we were in bad enough that you think this is a real id-"

"We don't have time. Trust me."

He looked into Relt's eyes, showing her the passion in his own. He was deadly serious, and in this weird world with barnacle monsters, little telepathic dragons, and really good turkey legs, she was ready to believe. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she hopped on.

"Hold on tight," Dorian grinned.

"If we die, I am going to punch you so ...hard."

The ground cracked beneath them, but not from the earthquake. Dorian's boots dug into the ground and began glowing a deep green color. He still held onto the scarf with Fallow in it with both hands, keeping the dragonling close to his chest. He felt nausea wash over him, the feeling that his little fate-weaving experiment nearly robbed him of all the time he had left before his body shut down and knocked him unconscious. There was no explaining what he had done, so he didn't try. Right now, it was unimportant how he did that. He bit his lip, omnidirectional shock waves being emitted from his boots.

For Relt, she felt herself being pulled toward the ground. It was like gravity was taking its revenge. Then, she felt like she was on a roller coaster at the apex of its ascent, and in the flash of an instant, everything she knew about physics fell apart and both of them shot straight up into the air. Just barely avoiding the falling rocks, their ascent took them all the way up to the top of the chasm.

Well, almost. Just a meter under the top, their incline stopped and Relt felt like she was on a roller coaster for real this time. Thinking quickly, Dorian switched Fallow to his left hand and pulled out his spear again, somehow extending it one-handed and stabbing it downwards into the incline of mud as they dropped only a foot. If it was an ordinary spear, there was no way it would have embedded itself into the muddy wall as far as it did. However, Malanthar's other gift was one that gave the spear an added punch in any fall.

Dorian's body dropped, his hand gripping the shaft of the spear and letting out an audible "augh!" as the weight from all three of them nearly tore his arm out. He hung from the spear, and instructed Relt in a damaged, hurried voice, "Climb up!"

Relt, who up until this point had her eyes closed, opened them and blinked. She didn't waste any time in crawling up Dorian's back, then pulling herself up the shaft of the spear.

"Here!" Dorian let out with a gasp, his body nearing its physical limit.

Relt immediately knew that he was giving her Fallow, and she took the wrapped-up dragonling and put placed him on the ground outside the chasm, which she could barely reach. After that, she pulled herself up to the top and disappeared from his sight. He looked behind him and saw the converging wall, threatening to turn him into a sandwich. Putting his other hand on the shaft of the spear, he tried to pull himself up, but his arms were little more than noodly appendages at this point. He felt like he just did a hundred bench presses.

"Relt?" He yelled up, but there was no reply. He heard some strange muttering, and there were definitely some masculine voices in the mix. Maybe she was preoccupied?

He looked around, and that's when he spotted it. Roughly ten feet away on his right was the rope, still hanging along the muddy incline. Putting his feet on the wall, Dorian took a deep breath and jumped sideways. His enchanted boots took him as far as they could go, and he just barely grabbed onto the rope, swinging slightly to the right before the rope normalized back in the center. He held onto the rope, his hands shaking as his grip loosened. He had no time to rest. Climbing up the rope shot a sharp pain throughout his entire body with each inch, as he pulled his body up over the chasm, it just narrowly closed behind him and split the rope apart. He was lying on his back now, his breaths so hoarse that they were hurting his throat.

They were finally out of that hellhole.

[Relt PeltFelter]

Panting and grunting like a horse trying to climb a tree, Relt pulled herself onto the muddy edge of the chasm; Dorian’s spear popped up after her, splatting gently to a rest in the wet mud. What greeted her was not what she had expected. Sturdy, long-burning torches had been placed in a rough semicircle around the chasm, on the road-ward side. The blackberry bushes which had impeded their approach to the opening had been trimmed back considerably, and boards placed over them. Even the debris of the wrecked wagon had been cleared away. The ground still rumbled, however; a tidal wave of loose stone and mud was surging down the hill at the speed of ancient molasses dug out from the back of the fridge.

Two men stood just inside the circle of torches; they were both tall, and dressed like clerks or merchants, in fine black tunics and hose. One their faces, they wore spectacles of smoked glass. The broader of the two had a prim moustache on his face, while his lanky associate was pointing a very small crossbow at Relt’s face. This concerned her deeply, but perhaps not as deeply as it may have. Crazy otherworld or no, this was a tune that Relt could play well. She put her left hand up, the other being busy cradling an unconscious juvenile dragon wrapped in a scarf.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?” Relt asked, level-toned. She was concerned that Dorian might have some trouble pulling himself out of the cave, but she wouldn’t be any help if some trigger-happy ye olde cop put an arrow in her.

“It would seem you’ve got the wrong end of the stick, young lady,” the moustachioed man said in a voice like treacle, “M’colleague and I do not represent the local authorities. Now, and I realize that this is bound to be a complicated question,” he continued, stepping forward, “But now we need you to tell us everything you’ve been through today, particularly that element of the day which you spent underground,”

“I am invoking my right to remain silent,” Relt replied, as if reading it off an internal prompt. Besides, this was way too embarrassing a story to tell anybody, much less to a couple of spooky guys.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to insist,” the lanky, crossbow-wielder said as the two men closed the distance between themselves and Relt.

“M’colleague,” Moustache said, “I wonder if I could perhaps entreat you to shut your bleedin’ neck?”

“Oh. Right-o,” Lanky said, grinning oddly as he kept his crossbow level.

“Also invoking my right to an attorney,” Relt continued. She scratched absently at her chest; something about these two men gave her a strange, localized itch just above her heart. “And my right to help my friend out of that hole, so just hold up a sec,”

“I would suggest you stay put and begin providing answers, young lady,” Moustache’s tone lost the dulcet marmalade quality it had maintained before; it was all business now. “We two, m’colleague and I, are not men renowned for our patience and good humor,”

“Wait, sounds like he got out on his own,” Relt said, looking over her shoulder. Dorian had managed to slither out just before the curtain of loose soil closed the gap. “Ooh, he does not look so good,”

A strong hand gripped Relt’s shoulder, and she turned back around. The moustachioed man glowered own at her through his smoked glass lenses. “I suspect,” he said, “I suspect that you do not realize the gravity of your situation. What were you doing down there?”

[Relt PeltFelter]

Relt stared at the aggressor for a good while. She wished that she had her own shades on; they had been stowed in her bag once the party had entered the cave, for while sunglasses at night represents the epitome of cool, sunglasses in the dank undercroft of the world just makes you look like a tool. But right now they would aid her in combating this sinister man’s gaze. There was something in those eyes, just visible through the smoked glass, that the man was trying to suppress. Was it…recognition?

She turned her head to look at Dorian again, as though the large and menacing man were of absolutely no importance. “Welp, I thought he was going to get up and do something for a second there, but he’s pretty much out cold. Took a lot of cough medicine, and he’s probably coming down from that stupid Red Bull about now. Stuff’ll kill you. So I guess…” Relt said slowly, “As far as this disagreement goes, it’s just going to be the three of us,”

“Indeed so,” the moustache man smirked darkly. “M’colleague,” he said at last, “I believe we still have several casks of Alerar black powder in the cart behind us?”

“Three, I think, since it only took one to set off the mudslide,” the lanky crossbowman said, “Although I think the actual unit of measure is hogshead, seeing as casks are used for-”

“Oh, do shut up,” Moustache sneered, before returning his full attention to Relt. “Now, my dear, I suggest you come with us. Elsewise, I shall have m’colleague Mr. Lorry here pour black powder into the gullet of your less-than-conscious associate until he is fit to burst, at which point I will happily, happily mind you, drop a match on him. Are we clear?”

“No!” The psychic shout rang throughout the area. Relt looked down at the little bundle in her arms, finding only an empty scarf. She dropped it to the muddy ground, feeling a bit stupid. The girl looked around, but in the waning torchlight, she was unable to pinpoint Fallow’s tiny black body.

“Dear me, miss, do you really think that this kind of cheap trickery is going to-”

“Ahm, Mr. Smallfish, m’colleague?” Mr. Lorry said, sounding mildly distressed.

“Oh, what is it, you excrementally unuseful person?”

“Well I hate to bother you mid-threat, of course, but I do appear to be on fire at the present moment,”

Both Relt and Mr. Smallfish turned to see; Mr. Lorry had not changed position in the slightest, still holding his pistol crossbow at the ready, though now the left arm of his suit was extremely on fire.

“Well how in blazes, if you’ll pardon the pun, did that happen?” Smallfish inquired.

“Haven’t the faintest,” Lorry said with manic cheerfulness, “Just sort of came out of nowhere, really. Would you object terribly if I dropped to the ground and had a bit of an old roll-about?”

“Oh, do whatever you like,” Smallfish rolled his eyes and, with his free hand, drew his own pistol crossbow. He frog-marched Relt towards their waiting cart, sitting dark with three huge barrels in the back. An ebony horse stared in the mad, brainless way of all horses, as they came nearer to it. “You have something to do with this, don’t you?” He pointed his crossbow accusingly in Relt’s face, “You have some kind of offworld trick that sets fires,”

“Me?” Relt said, an internal red flag rising at the word ‘offworld’, “Nah, dawg, I been standing here the whole time. Maybe Dorian and I have a, um, guardian angel?”

“Yeah!” Fallow shouted, “I’m, um, a guardian angel! Let them go or I’ll…spite you!”

“Smite, I should think,” Smallfish said dismissively, “And I somehow rather doubt that,”

A thin lance of fire shot towards the wagon, striking one of the barrels full on. The outside smoldered a moment. The wagon exploded.

It was, perhaps, not one of the great explosions. The detonation of a world-destroying space station fully outclassed it. The incineration of a national monument under the baleful beam of a giant extraterrestrial Frisbee made this little firecracker seem insignificant. However, at that moment, on that mud-soaked caravan road, three barrels of Alerar’s finest blasting powder succeeded, all at once, of achieving their primary goal in life. The world turned white, with a bit of orange at the edges. Smallfish released Relt to shield his eyes, and the girl (like the now screaming and on-fire horse) took the opportunity to bolt away.

She nearly tripped on Mr. Lorry, who had decided that a nice rest in cool mud was just the thing he needed, but kept moving. She snatched up Dorian’s collapsed spear, and more importantly, his collapsed body, and struggled away through the forest. She heard a flapping at her side, and turned to see Fallow.

“Really fucking nice job, little bro,” Relt puffed under Dorian’s weight.

“Yeah, well, I’m just very smart is all!” The little dragon replied.

“You seem to be feeling better. No more dead dragon memories bouncing around in your little peach-sized noggin?”

"I don't remember much. I think I was having a bad dream, but at the end I felt so peaceful for some reason. Was I talking in my sleep?"

“Yeah, a little, but nothin’ embarrassing like saying the name of the girl you think is cute while at a sleepover in the sixth grade at that very girl’s house. That was a rough weekend, let me tell you,”

“What?”

“Nothin’, just trying not to think about how heavy this guy is. What does he eat, bowling balls?”

“Just food, I think!”

The odd trio, who that morning had set out on a misguided and confusing quest and, instead, learned a great many distressing and unhappy truths, walked with meaningful silence through the forest. In Dorian’s case, he was silent due to being unconscious, but were he awake, he too would likely have walked with a purposeful and bedraggled dignity.

Eventually they found the road again, and following that, returned to Underwood. There was a time when the little town would have been tightly shuttered, this late at night, but its recent economic upturn had given birth to a small but insistent all-night industry. Relt, having toiled almost to the breaking point, had reached the end of her reserves of a adrenalin. She managed to get Dorian into a sparsely attended tavern, and sat his unresponsive body on a long bench.

“Hey, bar dude,” she panted, “How much for a room or whatever?”

“’Ere, you two look like you’ve been t’ Haidia and back,” the bartender said, “Tell y’what, just take yer friend there on upstairs, the two’ve yer can pay in the mornin’,”

“Sure, whatever. Uh, thanks,” Relt shouldered Dorian again, dragging him more than carrying him up the stairs. “Two beds, right?”

“Oh, erm, room three,” the bartender added. He scrubbed a dirty glass industriously to a nigh-empty room. The glass became dirtier.


- - -

“Well, that was a bloody shower,” Mr. Smallfish said to no-one in particular, but particularly not to his partner Mr. Lorry. “Fat lot of help you were, too,” he added with venom in his voice, “Tell me you at least got the samples of those horrible little barnacle things for analysis back at HQ?”

“Well, that’s sort of a good news, bad news situation,” Mr. Lorry said, half-slick with mud and with the whole right side of his fine black tunic burnt away, “You see I did collect several of the little blighters, and stuffed them in standard bio-containment crates, right? But-”

“Oh no no no, don’t tell me, I am keen to guess,” Mr. Smallfish responded, “The bad news is that you put the samples on. The. Wagon. Is that right?”

“Got it in one, yes,”

“You twerp,” Mr. Smallfish was in a particularly sour mood; not only because both his eyebrows and his prim little moustache had been scorched away by the explosion, not only because they had come away from this op empty-handed, and not only because it was three days’ walk to the nearest safehouse.

“You seem to be in a particularly sour mood, m’colleague,” Mr. Lorry said, “Dare I ask why?”

“Oh, it was just that girl,” Mr. Smallfish said, “I suppose the tip we got from our Underwood contact was somewhat helpful, she’s definitely offworld, but…”

“Yes?”

“She looked rather like someone I shot once,”

“Ah, yes,” Mr. Lorry, who had shot more people than he had family members (though there was some crossover betwixt the two groups, admittedly), nodded sagely. “That can be tricky,”

“Funny, isn’t it? You can shoot down dozens of people in cold blood, for the cause, but then something like that gives you a nasty turn, and you just want to…”

“Shoot them again?”

“Got it in one,”


- - -

Relt had left by the morning. She felt a bit bad about this, but after all, there was a whole new planet she had to mess around with, and Dorian (nice though he was) was kind of too nice for his own good. I mean, he'd helped a delusional girl climb down into a cave for basically no reason. So she left him a note and slipped out after a quick, and unfortunately cold, bath.

It took her about twenty minutes to convince a man in an ox cart to give her a hand with something, but eventually she was riding with him into the woods. It was a bit of a confusing trip, as the whole forest was transformed by daylight and the storm's aftermath. However, just as the ox-driver's patience was beginning to wear thin, they found the unmistakable hulk of Relt's ruined car. They hauled it back to town, though Relt hadn't the faintest idea what she was going to do with it.

There was one thing about it that surprised her, though. She hadn't noticed it the previous night, and indeed probably wouldn't have been able to. But directly under the car, nestled with care under the sheltering boughs of the sturdy oak, was a fresh grave. An olde-timey pistol on some kind of cord loop hung from the branch which served as a marker.

There was no name on the impromptu marker, which was just as well. The last thing Relt Peltfelter needed to see was the grave of Relt PeltFelter.

[Paragon]

Several days later, a rejuvenated Dorian started heading out with Fallow floating alongside him. Relt had decided to forge her own path in this new world, and Dorian understood the feeling. For him, something like that was like a dream come true, not that he was running out of new things to see.

He still had the note she left him, which Fallow noted was written in 'English' despite it looking like regular old Common. It read:

hey d-double-d-dawg,

so i left. sorry i didnt tell you first, but you know how it is, i got shit i got to deal with. you seem like a nice dude, so you should probably hang out with i dunno elfs i guess? i dunno how it works here, which is part of why i left. but it was fun hanging out with you, and thanks for all the help with you know the monsters and the scary shit and that.

anyway i'm pretty sure we'll run into each other again. i'll probly be wanderin but on the off chance that some asshole invents telephones soon, i wrote my cell number on the bottom here. call me, if hypothetically you are able to.

tell fallow i said bye, and that he is a cool little dude.

-relt

PS if any dudes dressed in black ask about me, tell them i died

PPS also you owe the guy downstairs like twenty doubloons or whatever for the room

Spoils:

I'm retconning so that Dorian's boots are the ones that grant him the ability to jump ten feet, not a natural ability. I want Dorian to be a regular guy, and for his equipment to boost him up. That said,

Dorian's Boots- Modified with the Fate of High Jump, which currently allows one insanely high jump per day, to the tune of a quarter of mile, into the air.

Expensive Material Token: A token that can be combined with another spoil for some sort of expensive/strong/rare material. I can't think of anything right now, plus there was nothing in the thread I could use really, so in another thread or The Bazaar I want to use this token as currency to get a better deal or a better spoil out of another thread. This falls in line with that thread I posted about cool stuff.

[Yari Rafanas]

Allegory of the Knave

33 posts? No problem! Oh wait, each one is a couple pages long... Damn. Into roaches and shame. Pink elephants. Pabts? Are there still hipsters in Neo San Fran? Should have been high when reading this thread.

Story: 6.5
Less points in this category because the middle part in the cave had really odd pacing. One moment you're fighting for your life, the next you're chill, then running for your life again, then chill, then once again a random run for your life. I think if you guys chose to condense it into a more even spread and less of a roller-coaster I would have enjoyed that portion more.

Continuity: 7

Setting: 7

Creativity: 10
Awesome monster concepts. Queen could have turned out to just be some boring mass of barnacle, but having the queen's host being a dying elder dragon was really, really cool. Reminded me of a particular video game I really enjoyed. Also, it served to give more to Fallow than just the witty translation role he had earlier in the thread. Great work.

Character: 8
A character who wants to go hunt for mushrooms is a refreshing concept. When that character also happens to be a noobie Dragoon I am all for it. I love Relt's second incarnation, and I want to see more heroic, honest characters like Fallow and Dorian.

Interaction: 6

Strategy: 6
I almost feel like Relt wrote too much of the beginning and didn't give Dorian a chance to bring his character into those parts. However, in the end, you guys balanced out which one had the heavy responsibility of moving the thread along.

Clarity: 6
You had plenty of paragraphs early on that explained Relt's odd placement on Althanas to the reader, directly calling them out so that somebody who was not in the know would have an idea of what was going on. What if a reader didn't know that there was a Relt PeltFelter before this Relt PeltFelter, though? The end ended up just a bit confusing.

Mechanics: 9

Wildcard: 8
High points for a long thread.

Total Score: 73.5

EXP
Relt PeltFelter gains 2,000 EXP!
Paragon gains 1,869 EXP!

Loot!

Paragon earns an Expensive Material Token: A token that can be combined with another spoil for some sort of expensive/strong/rare material, essentially upgrading a future spoil or purchase. In another thread or The Bazaar you can use this token as currency to get a better deal or a better spoil out of another thread.

I see no problem with the ability retcon, but please submit it for approval through the RoG for your level 1 Update.

Good thread, guys.

[Silence Sei]

GP-Exp added.