Backyard Dungeon Chapter 2

The tunnel went on another hundred yards, with other openings leading off it, and now I could hear the sound of trickling water, but the echoes made it hard to tell where it was coming from. The endless tunnels started to feel more and more claustrophobic, and I wondered how much further they would go, or if I should try one of the side passages.

Whatever was down here, I knew it had nothing to do with rum runners or coal mines. This was something else, something far stranger, and I needed to be prepared for anything.

But what I found was beyond my wildest imagination.

A dim, blue light appeared further down the tunnel, and as I got closer, the air began to smell of rich, damp earth. As I reached the opening at the end of the tunnel, I began to see small, phosphorescent blue mushrooms growing in little patches, and they offered a weak light into the darkness.

The mushrooms grew larger as I continued on, and when I came to the mouth of a massive cavern, the sound of running water sounded closer than ever.

Then I took a step farther, and my mouth fell open.

“Holy shit,” I muttered.

The cavern held a subterranean forest, with grass, underbrush, large twisting trees with foliage in shades of deep purple and green, and more of the glowing mushroom.

The mushrooms here grew between a foot to three feet high in clusters, and the light, while still dim, was enough that I didn’t need my flashlight anymore, so I clicked it off and put the heavy cylinder back in my backpack. Then I took a moment to eat some chips and take a drink of water as I looked at the impossible wonder before me.

I wish I had brought my sketchbook.

A few minutes later, I put the chips and water back in my backpack and made some notes on my phone, and then I walked toward the forest. I took a moment to look up and saw the ceiling of the cavern was hundreds of feet up, high enough that there was a filmy mist up there, almost like wispy clouds. I wondered if it rained down here and what held this odd ecosystem together.

How could there be plants without sunlight?

The trees averaged in height at about fifteen feet, but some were taller, maxing out around twenty. There were strange flowers and shrubby bushes everywhere, and here there were signs of animal life. I pulled up a compass app on my phone, which seemed to work, though I couldn’t be sure without the sun to check against it. But the readings were consistent, and it looked like the tunnel I’d entered through was to the west, so I made another note on my phone and continued on.

I continued on for about fifteen minutes through the impossible forest, but I stopped and quietly crouched down when I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. My years of hunting experience had taught me how to be quiet and observe wildlife, but what I saw wasn’t exactly an animal.

Up ahead, about three yards, there was a group of tiny, rat-like creatures gathered around a clump of mushrooms. They wore primitive clothes made from scraps of leather and cloth, and they wielded miniscule tools that they used to cut chunks from the mushrooms, which they then put into small bags slung over their shoulders. While some of the rat creatures worked, others watched a perimeter with small bows and needle-like arrows.

What the actual fuck? Was I hallucinating? Maybe I walked into a patch of natural gas? Weird skeletons and trees were one thing, but these creatures were alive and seemingly intelligent enough for tools.

I shifted slightly, and then I saw as one of the little guards’ heads snapped in my direction. There was a flurry of squeaking, and the group fled before I could react. They disappeared into the undergrowth in lines, and their squeaks faded within moments. I thought about following them, but they seemed terrified of me, and I thought it was best to leave them alone.

But the rat people’s presence in the underground woods showed that there was intelligent life down here, and I wondered if they were the only ones. As I stood to keep exploring, I loosened my katana in its scabbard and hoped I didn’t meet a living version of the skeleton in the cave above.

I eventually found a sort of path, maybe a game trial, and I made a note of the direction I was heading on my phone. I needed to have a rough idea of where the entrance was when I decided to head back, but then a new sound hit my ears, and I froze.

It was the scream of a woman.

Had someone else gotten lost down here? Maybe there were more entrances than the one in my backyard.

The sheer size of the cavern and trees made the echoes less of a problem, but it was still difficult to get an idea of direction and distance down here. I took my best guess at where it was coming from and ran in that direction, through the twisting tree to the east. Before long, I knew I was going in the right direction, because I started to hear the calls of some kind of animal that went from high pitched keens and whistles, to guttural grunts.

Then the trees opened into a clearing filled with flowers and a small spring, and I stopped as a woman burst through the underbrush on the other side of the clearing, dressed only in a thin, gauzy white dress.

She was beautiful but alien to me. Her skin had a bluish hue, and her long white hair, touched with streaks of grey and lavender, flowed behind her like a sheet of silk. The woman’s incredibly lush figure bounced and jiggled as she ran, and for a moment, I was captivated by the sight of her.

A second later, I saw the things chasing her, and the sight of them made my blood run cold.

Two snarling bat-like men emerged through the woods with their wings tucked behind them so they could run faster. They had long, cruel curved blades on their leather belts, and I guessed they would catch up to her in a few moments.

As I started to move to enter the clearing to help the poor woman, a third bat creature swooped into the clearing ahead of the woman and blocked her path. Unable to stop herself in time, the blue woman slammed into the creature, and they both fell to the ground. The two wrestled wildly for a moment, but she was no match for its strength. The thing got on top of her and reached back with a clawed hand to strike her.

Oh, hell no.

I burst from the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing and ran toward the thing.

“Get the fuck off her!” I growled as I drew my katana.

The head of the creature whipped around to look at me, and then it let out an ear splitting screech. My heart pounded in terror as I closed the gap between me and the living version of the skeleton I had found in the cave, but there was no way I was going to let these things hurt the white-haired woman.

With a prowess I didn’t know I possessed, I jump kicked out at the thing's chest, felt a slight crunch, and knocked it off the prone, blue-skinned woman. She quickly scrambled out of the way, as I landed. Then I swung my sword before the thing could recover and slashed it across its bare chest. The keen edge of my Cold Steel katana ripped into the monster, and it shreeked again, but this time in pain.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the other bat people take flight, and I knew he was going after the woman while the other ran straight at me. I reached back with the katana again and slashed the wounded creature in front of me across its throat, and a fountain of blood gusted from the clean strike.

Holy shit was the katana sharp, and I felt vindicated for blowing so much on the sword as a broke-ass college student.

I heard the blue-skinned woman scream again, followed by the sound of a struggle behind me, but the other bat creature was almost on top of me, and I couldn’t look around to see if the woman was alright. My opponent was the largest of the three bats, and it was decked out in gold and jewels. The thing had drawn its sword as it ran, and I had to doge out of the way of its heavy swing.

The big fucker’s sword was much heavier than mine, and I knew my katana wouldn’t be any good for blocking its blows. I would have to avoid the creature’s attacks and try to use speed to get it hits when the thing recovered from its swings.

The creature and I circled each other as we faced off, and I waited for my opportunity as my heart beat wildly in my chest from the adrenaline.

Big Fucker snarled, and I braced myself for its next move. Then it swung the heavy sword at me, but I was ready, so I jumped out of the way, brought my katana around, and slashed at its back as the thing’s heavy blow took it past me. One of its wings was served from the creature’s body as soon as my blade cut into it, and the appendage fell away with a Monty Python level fountain of blood.

Big Fucker’s high pitched screech echoed through the clearing and nearly caused me to drop my sword as my ears rang.

But I realized something important in that moment. The bat creatures flew, so they must have evolved with hollow bones to be light enough for their wings to carry them, and that gave me an advantage. When I kicked the other one off the woman, the crunch I’d felt must have been the thing’s ribs cracking. Their claws and teeth made them dangerous, but they were relatively fragile, despite their size and strength.

And I was a corn-fed Midwestern guy who probably outweighed them by a hundred pounds.

Big Fucker turned and wildly swung at me again, but I was calm despite the fire I felt in my blood, and I sidestepped the blow and brought the katana down on its arm. While I didn’t manage to sever the limb, the sharp sword cut through muscle, and the creature dropped its sword. Then I moved in to press my advantage and ran the thing through the ribs, where I guessed its heart would be.

The large beast stiffened, and foamy blood spurted from its mouth. Its huge, black eyes started at me for a moment, and then it fell to the ground as it slid from my sword.

“Fuck,” I panted as I looked at the creature’s lifeless body. I was shocked at what I’d done, and the strangeness of the whole situation, but then I turned to look behind me.

The last bat creature held the beautiful, blue-skinned woman in its powerful arms, and they both looked back at me like they were also shocked at what had just happened.

“Let her go.” I squared myself and shook the creature’s blood from my blade as I walked menacingly toward the last creature. I didn’t know if it understood English, but it could definitely hear the growl in my tone.

I took another threatening step forward, and the thing looked around in terror, released the woman, stumbled back, and then took to the air in its fright.

The blue-skinned woman stared at me, then up to where the fleeing creature flew, then back at me. Her wide, violet eyes were still frightened as she looked me up and down, so I wiped the blade on my pants and sheathed it. Then I put up my hand and smiled at her.

“It’s okay now,” I said. “They’re gone.”

“Who-- what--” the woman stammered in a soft, richly accented voice. She seemed to be speaking English, though, which was strange given her blue heart-shaped face and pointed ears that peeked through her wealth of wavy, white hair. “Who are you?”

“I’m Eddie,” I said. “I, uh, heard you scream and saw those things chasing you. Are you okay?”

“No!” the curvy woman wailed, and tears started to pool in her violet eyes. “The Nictors are gone for now, but they’ll come back with soldiers.”

“Nictors?” I echoed. “Is that what those things are?”

I pointed at one of the dead creators behind me, but that seemed to only add to her confusion.

“How do you not know?” the blue-skinned woman asked as she frowned at me. “What are you?”

“I-I’m a man?” I half-stated, half asked since I was caught off guard by the question.

“I can see you’re a man,” the woman said with a slight, rosey blush. “But what race are you? Your skin is such a strange hue… Where are you from that you don’t know what Nictors are?”

“I’m from the surface,” I replied.

“The surface of what?” she asked, and her frown only deepened. “Are you not from The Gloom?”

She spread her hands to indicate the forest, or maybe the entire underground world. I wasn’t sure.

“Let’s take this one thing at a time,” I said as I tried to make sense of the situation. “What’s your name, and why were these Nictors after you?”

“I am Ibseth of the Yennih, priestess of Llynoth,” the blue-skinned woman recited as if by rote. “The Nictors were sent by Ursenger to take me back to the temple after I ran away.”

Almost none of that helped me, but I understood “ran away” well enough.

“Do you need help?” I asked as I took a step toward her.

“No one in The Gloom can help me,” the woman sighed in despair. “What Ursenger wants, he gets at all costs.”

“Well, could someone outside of The Gloom help you?”

“What do you mean?” Ibseth asked in return, and she blinked those lovely violet-colored eyes at me.

I lost myself in them for a moment, but then I shook myself and focused on her question.

“I’m, uh, not from here,” I said. “The Gloom, I mean, if that’s what you called it. I’m from above, and maybe I could help you.”

“From above?” the white-haired woman gasped, and her big, violet eyes widened in fear again as she stumbled back away from me. “Y-You are from above? What do you want with me? I will not escape Ursenger just to fall prey to a monster who eats children and defiles women!”

“Woah, what are you talking about?” I asked and held up my hands.

“Y-You are from the above world,” Ibseth stammered in a terrified voice as she gaped at me. “A place of monsters, where the people make constant war and chaos reigns.”

“I don’t know who told you that,” I replied calmly, “but the only monsters I’ve ever seen are those Nictors. And I don’t eat children or defile women. I have no intention of harming you, but if you need help, I’d be happy to get you somewhere safe.”

A beat of tense silence passed as Ibseth studied me through narrowed eyes, but as the seconds ticked on, the suspicion on her face bled into desperation.

“Truely?” the violet-eyed woman whispered in a hopeful tone.

“Yeah,” I said with a soft smile. “I can’t just leave a beautiful woman like you in trouble.”

The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them, but before I could apologize, a lavender-colored blush dusted Ibseth’s cheeks, and she averted her eyes.

A kernal of pride unfurled in my chest at making a pretty woman blush. Even if she was blue..

“What race are you, Ed-die?” she asked as her gaze shyly skipped back to me. She elongated my name into two syllables, but I thought it was endearing.

“I’m human,” I said simply, and I hoped she would understand what that was.

“I have always heard humans were an intolerably cruel race,” Ibseth said as she took a tentative step toward me.

“Some are,” I said with a shrug. “But mostly, humans are just regular people who want to get on with their own lives and live in peace. I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to, but I am going to get out of here, and you’re free to come with me if you want.”

The blue-skinned woman’s face furrowed with thought, and I decided to give her a minute to come to her decision.

I turned to the big Nictor I’d killed and started to take the jewelry off him. I figured it would be a waste to leave it, and I did come down here looking for treasure, after all. The creature had a large gold ring set with a round red stone. It was maybe a ruby or a garnet, but I didn’t know how to tell the difference. There was also a pendant with a heavy gold chain, some kind of big, black jewel at its centers, and a couple of gold bracelets, studded with what looked like white opals.

Ibseth walked around the creature and kneeled down on the other side of it from me, and then she looked at me with her lovely, round eyes.

“You would let me choose?” the white-haired woman asked softly.

“Of course,” I said, and I paused from my struggle with the strange clasps on the bracelets to look at her. “You’re your own person. If you want to get out of here, then you can come with me.”

“My own person,” Ibseth echoed, as if the thought were foreign to her.

Then the blue-skinned women reached down and undid the clasps on the bracelets for me.

“Thank you,” I said with a smile as I put the jewelry in my backpack.

“Thank you, Ed--” Ibseth started to say, but a high pitched whistle sounded in the distance.

Both of our heads snapped in the direction the sound seemed to have come from.

“We must hurry,” the blue-skinned woman said in an urgent tone.

Guess she had made her decision.

Ibseth grabbed my hand and started to pull me away, so I took the cue and ran with her out of the clearing, into the twisting woods. Ibseth seemed to know where she was going, so I followed her as we ran hand in hand through the underground forest, past clumps of glowing mushrooms, and over a wide, trickling stream.

The woods around were alive with sound, and the echoes of the cavern added to the confusion of noise. The high pitched screeches of the Nictors were joined by distant voices and shouts, but I couldn’t tell if we were moving toward or away from them.

But Ibseth moved confidently forward, and I had to trust she knew where she was going.

Finally, we reached the edge of the forest, and there was a large cave mouth before us. While still holding my hand, the blue-skinned woman darted toward the cave, and we raced through the twisting corridors beyond. I tried to count the turns we took into side passages but quickly lost track, so I would have to rely on the strange, white-haired woman to get back.

When we did stop, it was deep within the cave system. Ibseth and I were both panting, and I had begun to sweat as we gasped for breath from our flight.

“Are we safe here?” I asked as I panted.

“For now,” Ibseth replied.

Her large breasts heaved under her gauzy white dress while she caught her breath, and I averted my gaze from the shadow of her nipples.

“What the fuck,” I sighed as I leaned against the wall of the cavern. Then I turned my head to address my new companion. “Why are they after you? You said something about a temple?”

“Ursenger,” the white-haired woman said as she too slumped against a stone wall. “He is my half-brother who forced me into religious service. He came to me in the night, and when I refused him, he told me I either had to submit to his manhood and take his seed, or join the maiden order of Llynoth and be cursed to eternal virginity. But I’d sooner die than give myself up to him.”

“Wait.” My face and stomach both twisted in shock and disgust. “What? Your brother tried to… uhh… with you?”

“My half-brother,” Ibseth corrected, but her expression was dark. “Ursenger, Chieftain of the Yennih. Now that I have run away, his underlings will stop at nothing to take me back.”

“There isn’t anywhere in the uh, Gloom you could go to get away from him?” I asked as I opened my backpack and took out two bottles of water.

“I could go to one of the other tribes,” the violet-eyed woman said with a half hearted shrug. “But they’re all afraid of Urseneger, and harboring me would be seen as an act of war.”

I handed Ibseth the unopened water, which she looked at in confusion until I twisted off the cap from mine. The blue-skinned woman untwisted the cap from her bottle with a fascinated expression and watched as I drank from mine. Then she took a drink too and gasped.

“How is this water so sweet and clear?” she asked as her wide, round eyes found mine.

“It says it’s spring water,” I replied, “but I would guess it’s just filtered.”

“It’s a wonder,” she breathed in an amazed tone.

“I know you’re scared of the surface world,” I said as I came back to the problem at hand, “but if you want to come with me, until we can figure something else out, you can.”

Ibseth was still looking at the bottle of water as if it really were a wonder, but then she looked at me with a wary expression.

“And… there are no monsters up there?” the blue-skinned woman asked.

“Not where I’m from,” I said as I shook my head. “It’s nice. There are a lot of trees and hills. My place isn’t that big, but it’s safer than staying down here.”

“And I could leave if I wanted to? You would not… imprison me?” Ibseth’s hesitance almost broke my heart.

What kind of life had this poor woman lived where the idea of making her own choice was a revelation?

“I wouldn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to,” I said as I looked into her large, violet eyes. “Where I’m from, people get to make their own decisions. It’s a protected right. But, if you wanted to live, I would at least want to prepare you for things you might encounter, give you supplies, money, things like that.”

Not that I had a lot of money to be giving around. At least not yet. But maybe I could sell the gold jewelry I’d looted off the Nictor?

“Your chiefs allow this?” she asked. “Even for women?”

“Of course, everyone, I said emphatically, “men and women are free to do just about anything they want, within reason.”

I really wondered how backwards this underground world must be.

Ibseth came close and took my hand, and I was once again made very aware of how revealing her thin dress was and how seriously big her breasts were.

“Eddie of the surface world,” she breathed as her violet eyes stared into mine. “Will you take me to your strange world, where people are free and there are no monsters?”

I felt the heat of a blush rise in my cheeks and was glad there were only a few, small mushrooms providing their light to the tunnel we were in.

“Y-Yeah,” I said, a little embarrassed by her earnestness. “But, just so you know, it’s not perfect up there. We have our problems too.”

“Anywhere is better than The Gloom for me now,” the white-haired woman murmured.

“Alright, then now, we just have to figure out how to get there,” I said as the blue-skinned woman released my hand. “Do you know a way to get to the tunnels on the west of the forest without going back the way we came?”

“No,” Ibseth said with a shake of her head. “I had never been this far from the Yennih city before today.”

Fuck. Were we lost in the caves now?

“Can you get back to the forest from here?” I asked with a sinking feeling in my gut.

“Of course,” the blue-skinned woman said without pause.

“But you said you’ve never been to this part of The Gloom before,” I replied.

“No,” Ibseth said as she cocked her head at me. “But we only took seven turns to get here. Did you not count them?”

“I tried to,” I said. “But I lost track after four. Where I’m from, we don’t spend a lot of time in tunnels, so I got turned around pretty quickly.”

“That is the strangest thing you have said yet, Eddie of the surface,” Ibseth said with a giggle.

“Do you think we can safely wait here for an hour or two?” I asked. “Until things calm down out there. Then maybe we can sneak past any of the remaining guards and get out of here.”

“That might work,” Ibseth said, but her wide violet eyes were still clearly afraid.

Ibseth and I sat on the floor of the tunnel, and we spoke quietly as she told me more about the wild, underground world of The Gloom. The blue-skinned woman was a Night Elf, which seemed to be the dominant race here. The temple she had served at was for a fertility goddess, but the order she’d been a part of was only made of virgins.

I felt sorry for the woman, because it seemed her life had been beyond sheltered.

“Why did you run here, then?” I asked. “Where were you going?”

“I don’t know,” Ibseth said with a sad, little shrug. “I was just running. I knew none of the villages would let me stay. Wherever I went, Ursenger or his men would be there. But being a hermit in some forgotten cavern was preferable to the life I had been living.”

The image of the beautiful woman crouching in a dark, lost cave for the rest of her days stabbed at my heart, and I felt an even greater urge to get her back home.

My humble home might not be much of a castle yet, but it was better than waiting for death in the dark.

I looked at my phone and hoped the time was accurate. It said it was close to midnight.

“What is that?” the elven woman gasped as she shielded her eyes from the light.

“Oh,” I said, and I wasn’t sure where to start. “Uh, it’s a… device I use to get information. I’m checking the time.”

“It tells time?” Ibseth squinted at my phone in my hand. “Is it magic?”

“Not really,” I said, but then I thought about it. “Well, kinda, I guess. At least, it might as well be. I couldn’t explain exactly how it works.”

“You must be an important man in the above world to have a magic device that tells you the time,” the blue-skinned woman said, and her tone was beyond impressed.

“They’re actually pretty common on the surface,” I said as I rubbed the back of my neck in embarrassment. “Let’s go see what things look like out there. Maybe you don’t have to become a hermit just yet.”

I offered the white-haired woman my hand to help her off the ground, and she accepted with a shy smile. I barely knew Ibseth, but there was something about her quiet, unassuming character that I found strangely appealing.

The blue-skinned woman led the way back through the caves and tunnels, back to the edge of the forest, and there were no high pitched keens of the Nictors, or sounds of calls from guards. I checked my compass on my phone and found west, and I hoped I would be able to recognize the tunnels that would lead back home.

But there seemed to be openings and caverns everywhere, and my heart was starting to pound at the idea of being lost down here forever.

As we carefully snuck into the gnarled trees, I listened carefully for any sound that could be a patrol, and I kept an eye on the space above the trees for the monstrous Nictors. There were sounds in the woods, chittering, the occasional crack of a branch, and the buzz of insects, but I didn’t hear voices, so it seemed we were alone in the woods for now.

“Do you think your tribe will accept me?” Ibseth said after a time.

“My tribe?” I asked as I picked my way through the undergrowth and over the exposed roots of the purple trees. “We don’t really live in tribes. But I have some neighbors who will probably ask questions. You’ll probably have to stay indoors until I can figure out how to explain you to the neighbors. We don’t have Night Elves up there, just humans.”

“Only humans?” Ibseth asked, and she blinked her violet eyes at me in surprise as I helped her over the tree roots. “There are no gnomes, dwarves or orcs?”

“We have stories about all of those up there,” I explained as I checked the compass app again. “But that’s all they are, stories. It’s just humans on the surface.”

“If you do not have tribes and chieftains, then how does anyone survive?” the elven woman asked. “Who makes the decisions for the people?”

“We have communities and leaders,” I said as we crossed a small stream. “But we choose them together.”

“Everyone has to agree?” Ibseth snorted. “That is strange.”

“Well,” I laughed, “I guess it is strange. Not everyone agrees all the time, though, but I try to stay out of politics as much as possible.”

We walked for over an hour, and one part of the forest looked much like any other, so I prayed we were going the right way. Every creak of a branch made my heart skip a beat. The three Nictors had been scary, if somewhat breakable, but I suspected the element of surprise had played a part in my fight against them.

I really didn’t want to face a Night Elf guard, who might be harder to deal with.

As if my thoughts summoned them, the elven priestess and I suddenly heard the sound of voices up ahead.

“Stay behind me,” I whispered to Ibseth, and when I looked behind me at the blue skinned woman, I could see the fear in her eyes. “I won’t let anything happen to you.

We quietly approached the place where the voices were coming from, which was easy, since whoever was up ahead was speaking quietly, and that meant the echo of the cavern wasn’t an issue. Then I saw the clearing where I’d fought the Nictors, and I peered through the branches and thick undergrowth to see the two beasts still lying where they’d fallen dead.

But the corpses weren’t alone.

Three men in primitive armor stood in a semicircle around the bodies, and these men had the same blue toned skin and pointed ears as Ibseth.

I crouched down behind and shrub, and Ibseth did the same. The white-haired woman held on to my arm, and I could tell from the tightness of her grip that she was scared out of her mind at the sight of the men.

The tallest of the three men carried a huge sword slung on his back and wore the most elaborate armor, so I assumed he was the leader. The tall man’s long, black hair was half pulled back in intricate braids while the other half flowed down his back, and the other two men were equipped with short swords and had white hair, cut short and shaved on the sides.

The leader seemed to be giving the others orders, and I strained to hear their conversation.

“Search the villages and have the Nictors explore the tunnels,” the black haired elf said in a gruff voice. “The priestess has to be somewhere.”

“The Nictor scout said she had a man with her, Captain,” one of the shaved headed elves replied. “A pale man, about the height of an elf, dressed in strange clothing and armed with a curved sword that easily cleaved through his two compmainions.”

“Could it have been one of the half-breeds?” the leader demanded. “They often use strange weapons.”

“It is possible,” the other elf said. “But the Nictor said nothing of horns or a tail.”

“Nictors are stupid and unreliable,” the black-haired elf scoffed. “But given the brutality of the attack, we must assume he is a capable warrior. The question is who would be stupid enough to defy Chief Ursenger in this manner?”

It seemed I’d made a name for myself during my brief time in the Gloom, but I couldn’t think about that now.

I knew we’d have to get past the three warriors, but I didn’t like the look of the big-ass sword on the leader’s back. These were professional soldiers, and I probably wouldn’t have as much luck against them as I had when I got the drop of the Nictors.

I looked around on the ground for something to throw. Luckily, this was a massive cave, so there were rocks of varying sizes everywhere on the ground.

I picked up one about the size of my fist and took a deep breath.

“When I throw this,” I whispered to the frightened elven woman behind me, “we’re going to go around the clearing as quietly as we can in the opposite direction of wherever they go.”

Ibseth nodded at me, but her violet eyes were still wide with fear. Then I winged the rock as hard as I could to the left and hoped it would fall short or hit a tree.

The rock sailed several yards and fell to the ground with a loud clatter. The three elven men looked around for the source of the sound, and the two underlings drew their swords.

“Go see what that is, you idiots!” the black-haired elf barked.

The two elves with shaved heads ran toward the sound, and for a heart stopping moment, I thought the dark-haired man wouldn’t follow. He looked around the clearing as his red eyes tried to pierce the darkness on the gnarled forest, but then he too followed after the other elf warriors.

“Come on,” I whispered urgently to Ibseth, and the two of us began to skirt the edge of the clearing to try and make our way back west, and back to the surface.

Luckily, we reached the edge of the woods by the exit tunnel without incident, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I took out my phone and opened the notes I’d made earlier. I had stuck to the main tunnels, but I wanted to be sure I didn’t mistake any of the twisting passages for the ones I wanted. I was ready to be back in my house, get a shower, and change out of my bloodied clothes.

I led Ibseth back through the tunnels leading to the surface, and she stuck close to me as we walked. I could hear her quick breathing and sense her nervousness.

“If your neighbor’s find me, Eddie of the surface, will they kill me?” the blue-skinned woman asked breathlessly.

“What?” I asked. “No, of course not. They’ll think you’re… unusual. But that’s not the way people act on the surface.”

Really, I had no idea if there would be a way to explain Ibseth to the neighborhood. In the movies, there’s always a wild assumption the alien or magical creature from outer space would be taken by the government, dissected, and experimented on.

But I was really more worried about anyone finding out about The Gloom.

I could explain away Ibseth’s odd appearance as her being into extreme body modifications, or that she was a dedicated LARPer. The internet was full of all kinds of people with real wild looks and life choices, after all, but the secret of The Gloom, and all the strange people and treasure it might hold, had to stay a secret.

That was the kind of attention I wanted to avoid.

I had to pull out my flashlight again as we left the area where the glowing mushrooms grew, and the blue-skinned woman started with surprise at the bright light.

“Fire!” Ibseth gasped as she covered her face and backed away.

“No, no,” I said as I pointed the beam away from her. “It’s just a light.”

“It burns my eyes,” the white-haired woman moaned with her hands still over her face.

“I’m sorry, give your eyes a bit of time to adjust,” I said. “Maybe walk behind me so you can get used to it.”

We were halfway to the hidden door before the elven woman didn’t have to partially cover her eyes, but eventually she seemed to adjust to it, though she stayed back as if I was holding a torch instead of a flashlight.

Finally, we came to the deadend where the door was hidden.

“Where do we go from here, Eddie of the surface?” Ibseth asked as she looked around nervously.

“It’s Eddie Hill, actually,” I said as I fished the key out of my pocket. “But you can just call me Eddie. And this is the fun part. Check it out.”

I found the right crevice in the rock wall and put the key in, and then I watched the elven woman’s surprise as the wall opened and the door swung backwards.

We stepped through with Ibseth practically glued to my back, and the door swung back closed on its own. Ibseth stopped to watch the door close itself, and then she took a step closer to look at the weird script written on it.

“Do you know what it says?” I asked as I watched her.

“I cannot read it,” the violet-eyed woman said as she reached up a delicate hand to trace the lines of the ancient letters. “But I recognize it. It is of the old dwarves that left.”

“Where did they go?” I asked as I looked at the iron door.

“No one knows,” Ibseth replied. “Some say they went to the above world, others have said they died out.”

“Weird,” I said and filed the mystery away for later with all the others. “Let’s keep going. There’s still a ways to go, and I’d like to get into the house before the sun comes up.”

“The sun?” the blue-skinned woman asked as she turned to look at me.

Oh, God. We were starting from square one here, weren’t we? I thought for a moment about how to explain the one thing that everyone took for granted.

“It’s a big light in the sky,” I finally said as simply as I could. “The sun is how we tell time and what marks the beginning and end of the day in the above world.”

“What’s a sky?” Ibseth asked and blinked at me innocently.

I realized my explanations could quickly get away from me here.

“Come with me,” I said as I held out my hand to the beautiful elf. “I’ll show you.”