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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 5:17:50 GMT -6
Fiera hissed with rage as she saw the entrance of her branch. Sure enough, it hadn’t been left untouched. While she had neatly used stone cutting to widen the entrance, someone else had gone to town on it with… what looked like bite marks? Did they have a tamed tunnel worm, perhaps? They were rare, but not unheard of. Considering how small and low down the cuts on this tunnel entrance had been previously though, Fiera had to wonder if the tunnel worm was new, or if… this was another, third person that had been through. “Well, they’d better not STILL be in there.” Fiera grumbled, eyeing the tunnel entrance covetously. Seriously, if she found anyone else in there, she would bitch and whine until they left. Fiera was not a woman to be messed with in that regard. Hesitantly, she stepped into the side tunnel, pulling her mine cart along with her.
Fiera 2 Victor 64.2/66.2 57
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 5:18:12 GMT -6
Victor sniffed loudly as they traversed the tunnel, practically snorting with the hair on his neck puffing up and his tail held high and alert. He wasn’t to the point of giving a warning growl yet, but it was clear that he did NOT like the smell of the tunnel worm. Fiera couldn’t blame him- they were such bizarre creatures, certainly not mammalian in any way. And their secretions, while useful for slipping past sharp rocks unharmed and helping them travel faster must certainly smell terrible to a rakai sarane’s nose. As a result, the humanish found herself trying to send Victor calming messages through their connection. She wasn’t going to stop and say “no danger”, but there was no point in the rakai sarane freaking himself out. It was fine. The tunnel worm was probably well under control anyway, so there was no chance of them getting attacked by it.
Fiera 3 Victor 64.3/66.3 58
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 5:19:46 GMT -6
And that was only if it was still here! Fiera supposed it must have been pretty recent though, based on Victor’s reaction. Had she really just missed the person who had been plundering her tunnel? She huffed. There were marks on the wall here too, but only a few here and there. For the most part, Fiera had found that the tunnel short of the large room was too hard for her to mine. If you hit it with a pickaxe, you were more likely to get a pickaxe to the face than any gemstones out of the rock, and any work you did manage to put out would take hours to complete. It was more worth it to just keep trekking and find a spot with softer stone. Which she had, eventually. That larger room was still hard, but soft enough that Fiera could actually mine it with some efficiency.
Fiera 4 Victor 64.4/66.4 59
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 5:20:05 GMT -6
They were coming up on that room rather shortly, now that she thought of it. Fiera clicked her headlamp on and set it to the brightest setting in preparation for it. The room had a sharp drop in it that she and Victor had nearly toppled off of the first time, with a rather lethal drop to the ground. There were some steps around the side though that she was able to clamber up and down with little trouble however, so if she left her mine cart behind it was easy enough to get to. The longer she walked though, the more she realized that she just… wasn’t reaching the room? Something was off here. After a little while though, she realized that the ground was sloping, and had taken a distinctly rough texture. She looked down, and found that the ground was covered in scrape markings, making her cart bounce over it roughly.
Fiera 5 Victor 65.0/67.0 60
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 5:20:23 GMT -6
Had the tunnel worm chewed up… the floor? She wondered why it would have done that, until she stepped into the room. She stepped back, agape. How had she gotten here? She looked around, wondering if she could have somehow possibly fallen off the cliff and not noticed, but when she looked around it turned out that it just… wasn’t there anymore. She saw the first of the steps far up above her instead, with the tunnel roof being nearly forty feet up. It was then that she realized what the tunnel worm had done. Instead of dealing with trying to get a mine cart down a forty foot drop or a million stairs of varying heights, they just… carved the floor to a smooth slope to make it easier. It was a MASSIVE amount of work, but Fiera couldn’t exactly disagree with it, considering how many more gems it would get you.
FIera 6 Victor 65.1/67.1 61
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 5:20:39 GMT -6
And how many more gems it got… them. Fiera sucked air in through her teeth as she surveyed the room. In the better light of her crystal torch, it was clear that this place had been completely ransacked. She groaned as she turned slowly, both glad that she had gotten away with some gems last time, but furious that someone else had come back to get the rest first. Technically, whoever came into the mines had the right to go anywhere they wanted and take whatever they wanted- there was no real set of restrictions other than “don’t bring the whole place down on top of us, please”. But whoever had come through here had really taken that to the greatest degree. Every boulder that could have had a geode in it was smashed open and the pieces left scattered around, or was otherwise gone entirely, leaving the floor empty and full of pebbles.
Fiera 7 Victor 65.2/67.2 62
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 5:20:57 GMT -6
Random holes were smashed in the ground, indicating caches of gems that had been there but were since pulled up and taken away. The walls were similarly smoothed out or pitted inwards, all with the distinctive scrapes of tunnel worm teeth. As far as Fiera knew, tunnel worms didn’t eat gems (though she noticed that the mummified corpse of a karzik that she saw last time she was here was now gone), which mostly confirmed that this was not a wild beast, and instead was being led and commanded by a miner, resulting in the appearance of the room. Fiera huffed, examining its handiwork. Maybe she should try training one of hers up- if this is what one could do in short order, she was sure that she’d end up with a lot of gems a lot faster… but then, of course, she’d have to leave dear, sweet Victor behind.
Fiera 8 Victor 65.3/67.3 63
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 5:21:10 GMT -6
Forbidding the thought, Fiera decided to throw a temper tantrum instead for a little bit, tossing her tools and hat around while screaming wildly. Victor took it all with his signature coolness, waiting for her to finish. It was certainly satisfying, she had to admit- and would likely scatter anyone else who was trying to come down here, and intimidate any possible thieves that were hiding around. After just a little while, about half an hour (one of her shorter tantrums), Fiera finally picked her things back up huffily, shoving them all back in her back while thinking of where to go next. This room was pretty much a bust. In her flailing and screeching, she had only managed to find two small gem shards that had been left behind. She put them in her cart anyway- waste not, want not- but it was clear that she wasn’t going to get much more out of this area.
Fiera 9 Victor 65.4/67.4 64
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 5:24:27 GMT -6
“Guess we have to move out again then, Victor.” She grumbled, picking up the lead for her mine cart. The rakai sarane yawned and stood up again, ready to go. Fiera hadn’t actually explored the perimeter of this room before. It was pretty big, but she had only mined in one spot. Her lighting had been pretty bad at the time, so she didn’t actually know what was over on the far side. And as she walked around, it turned out… not much. The previous miner hadn’t just cleaned her spot out, they had mined up EVERYTHING around here with the help of their tunnel worm. Fiera could just barely see metallic shimmers at the borders of some of these holes, indicating that they might have once had metal ores, or softer sandier areas where fossils may have once rested, but wasn’t able to find any veins that were still intact.
Fiera 10 Victor 66.0/68.0 65
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Post by Nadia on May 21, 2021 6:29:19 GMT -6
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 8:05:36 GMT -6
She was only able to find two things of interest in the whole room with everything else having been emptied out. Specifically, two tunnels leading out and away toward the far side of the room. They were rather short; only about as tall as Fiera’s mine cart. If she was going to go in them, she would have to crawl. Even Victor would likely have to duck his head to get through there, and if it got any smaller than it looked from the outside once they were further in, they’d have to back out again. Fiera sighed as she looked at it. Might as well give it a go. After all, they had already come this far- why not stick her head in a dank, dark hole? Maybe the tunnel worm had been on the trail of something good. So she crouched, suddenly glad for the knee pads she had shoved into her pants as an afterthought before she left the house.
Fiera 11 Victor 66.1/68.1 66
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 8:06:07 GMT -6
“Come on, Victor!” She called behind her as she started crawling in. At first, the rakai sarane didn’t move, as if in disbelief that she was doing this. Similar feelings flooded through their telepathic connection. “Oh yes we are doing this!” Fiera called back, crawling forward through the tunnel. She tugged the mine cart behind her. Victor could follow or not- his choice. If she found anything interesting though, she’d have to go back for him… and probably shove him in first. The tunnel was, as she predicted, dark and small, and with a strange sticky sensation under her hands. “What… is that…” Fiera muttered to herself. Then she remembered what Victor had been freaking out about earlier- the lubricative slime of tunnel worms. Oh, right. This tunnel was probably still fresh enough to be coated in the slime. It had mostly dried by now, but still left a tacky sensation on the tunnel walls.
Fiera 12 Victor 66.2/68.2 67
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 8:06:37 GMT -6
Fiera let out a small gag of disgust, but didn’t let it stop her from moving forward. Surely there had to be something down here worth grabbing, right? Soon she met a part of the floor that felt… hollow in a way. The tone as her hands and knees went over it was different, wrong. She watched her “step” with that. She didn’t want the floor caving in on her and sending her to god only knew where. Still, if this tunnel ended up as a dead end at least that might point her in the direction of another spot she could mine. It looked like she wouldn’t need to worry about it though, as she saw a light coming up in the tunnel ahead! Had she found the miner that had done all this damage to her room? She picked up the pace as the tunnel got lighter and lighter.
Fiera 13 Victor 66.3/68.3 68
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 8:14:05 GMT -6
She was determined to give this guy a piece of her mind, that was for sure. When she finally shuffled out of the tunnel, she already had her mouth open to complain… only to find the pet sitting before her. It was Victor. At the OTHER end of the tunnel. Fiera glanced to her right- the entrance she had just crawled in through was sitting right there. She had just crawled through a huge loop! All that wasted time and effort just to get a bunch of half dried glue on her pants and palms. She hissed with frustration, resting her forehead on the cool rock. Victor licked the back of her head comfortingly, the canine equivalent of a brief pat on the back that was only a little bit patronizing. She sighed loudly and rolled over, trying to get the willpower to stand back up again. “Okay, so that was… a little bit of a bust.” She said, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Fiera 14 Victor 66.4/68.4 69
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 21, 2021 8:14:42 GMT -6
It was pretty much a dead end. But there was that hollow spot in the ground, right? Maybe she could dig through that, get to another untouched area. And yet… after all this heartbreak so far, the last thing Fiera wanted was to mine straight down in a cramped, sticky tunnel and probably break a leg. No, if she was going to put all this effort in, she might as well put the EXTRA effort in and make it so she could stand up first. “Okay Victor, let’s get this done.” She sighed, finally hefting herself up off the ground. How far in had that hollow patch been? About ten feet? She… she could do ten feet in one day, right? “At the very least, it gives me a DIRECTION to work with.” She grumbled, going through her bag for her pickaxe. “Something to do today, eh Victor?” She said. The rakai sarane yawned again, getting ready to settle in for the long haul.
Fiera 15 Victor 67.0/69.0 70
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