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Post by Jack on Mar 23, 2021 7:25:05 GMT -6
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Post by Alma on Jun 13, 2022 20:51:46 GMT -6
They had told her to take a quick jaunt to the mines.
It was important, they had said. Alma remembered how they stressed that third word, separating each syllable like no one part was any less important than the whole. She had not commented on it, standing stiffly at attention as the bastard who had realized she had not been making full use of the ‘free revival’ policy since the last month sought to fix that. He had continued on as though he was not ordering her into a potentially dangerous situation with nothing more powerful than her mining familiar at her side, with no weapon more pointed than her blunted shovel and unwieldy pickaxe.
She had arrived at the mines that same day, without any time to retrieve a dagger or to convince him that wearing armor to the mines beyond a hard hat was common practice for her. He hadn’t even been willing to let her bring her other mining familiar, a crossbreed with a few talents greater than burrowing through stone.
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Post by Alma on Jun 13, 2022 20:52:08 GMT -6
And now they are here. Alma hefted the bundle of her tools over one shoulder, a small trail of dirt dusting away from the sack as she picked it back off the ground. “Well,” she said to Walker, the gem drake glaring at the mouth of the cave with his empty sockets, claws digging into the softer earth outside as though he already sensed a mound of gemstones waiting for him.“Well,” Alma repeated, looking at the hole in the ground as what words she wanted to say slipped away. If the mining familiar noticed her sudden lack of noise, he did not seem to care, falling in step beside her as she walked to the hole.
Then he was ahead, and the rope that leashed him lost its slack as he tried to enter the cave. He swung his head back to focus his stony glare on her, and Alma laughed, a smile as weak as her laughter had been forced across her face. No point in waiting, she wanted to say, but she only switched on the flashlight and followed the mining familiar into the dark.
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:45:56 GMT -6
Jeff was an asshole. It wasn’t just because he looked a bit like once as he tried to chew his way through the reinforced plastic that formed the boundaries of his cage, chewing away at it as he had done to the crate he had been transported in. She had wrangled him easily enough despite his size, his fleshy body wriggling in her grasp with all the power of a crying tailypo kitten. It was not because it had taken a while to figure out how to keep him from burrowing off through the caves once they reached the mines, his body able to undulate through the tightest knot she had been willing to risk. It wasn’t even that she had been forced to hold onto him for the entire trip down to the mines, one hand keeping his gnashing teeth from finding purchase on anything, the other resting on the four-wheeled chest that held her supplies for the trip. 1
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:46:48 GMT -6
She could have even tolerated him spending the entire trip trying to bite her, to bore into her flesh with teeth meant for dirt and gravel. Or that, at the end of the cart ride, he had decided attacking her scarred and dusty wiurn-skin boots was his top priority. Or the fact that she could not just kick him away due to how easy it would be to harm him. She could tolerate all of it, if only he showed some interest in finding gems.
But he hadn’t. Unlike the living sculptures that forgot about the world as they dug into the ground, or the buzzing karzik that snatched whatever sparkling thing caught their eyes, the worm only seemed to have eyes for her. A great deal many eyes, paired with a great deal of teeth, and one slick body that made her glad she wore gloves as she held him just beyond the scattering of red eyes on his head.
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:47:32 GMT -6
Jeff was an asshole. A stupid, violent, eternally hungry asshole, and it was only the thought of riding back with a chest empty of anything beyond the tools and the supplies she had brought with her, and an entire day wasted on nothing but riding around in a cart with an angry worm and chatty miners, that stopped her from finding a cart returning to the city proper immediately and hopping on it to return and rest and bring some mine-beast that was not trying to kill her. But that would be a day off wasted, shoving aside some other plan she had for free time to try it again.
So she sat there, the light of the moon and stars doing their best to imitate a cavern filled with rare gems and her chest doing its worst to imitate a comfortable chair, waiting for Jeff to stop throwing his murder tantrum. He was not going to be allowed to eat her.
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:48:18 GMT -6
Eventually, as he had done several blessed times on the cart ride up, Jeff fell limp. She dropped him onto the chest, not in it, she was not going to risk her pricey tools and wrapped up meals to his jaws if he found the wheeled chest more restful than the pasha-drawn cart, and flicked on her flashlight. The cave mouth she had chosen was not a popular one, the set of tunnels and caverns connected to it not known for precious metals or stones, and what lanterns and torches that had been left on the walls had long since burnt out.
Which suited her fine. Less gems meant less living things wandering around, less things for the worm to be distracted by and slither off. She paused as she walked down the tunnel, aiming the flashlight at her tooth-marked boot for a moment and sighed. Well, at least it meant she would not need to worry about losing him.
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:48:51 GMT -6
The first cavern was a short distance down the tunnel, a stone mezzanine protruding from the farthest wall. Countless claw marks scarred the lip of stone, and her flashlight caught many other such marks as she panned it around the small cavern, the rattling of the cart echoing off the walls. There had been a sarane nest here once, a miner-hunting hen with a gaggle of hatchlings, but they had long been claimed by adventurers wishing to own a cave-dwelling sarane. The room still held the musty, dry scent of their bodies, and Alma was unsure if she only imagined the hint of the stench those who had come before her to clear out the bodies must have experienced. The room was clear now, though brown stains still lingered in places, and Alma quickly located the proper tunnel mouth out.
With a look back at the still worm, Alma set off down the tunnel. That room had been carefully stripped of all valuables by the kind souls who had collected the bones, and few miners were willing to work the stained stone within.
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:49:39 GMT -6
Jeff remained asleep for a while longer, long enough for Alma to pick her way through the ‘puddle cavern’, an irregular shaped room with moisture-slick fungus on the walls and a floor littered with puddles of water that stalactites stretched down towards. The worm had been tied onto the chest before she made her way through, not wanting to risk that the unconscious worm would roll off into a foot of water and drown. She had just gotten the cart to a drier explored room, one filled with empty pits in the stone from previous expeditions made by previous miners, when Jeff woke up.
And, being Jeff, his first instinct was to wriggle towards the first thing that had caught his eyes, his toothy maw undulating as he tried to latch onto Alma and tear off some flesh. That she was several feet away, clearly nowhere in range of his teeth, was of no concern to him. Nor did he notice the ropes wrapped around his body, slowing his progress as he forced each of the larger segments through the loops like he was sliding through a cramped tunnel.
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:50:30 GMT -6
Alma heard the shifting, rustling sound when she paused in dragging the cart, looking down into a stony pit with steep, straight sides as though someone had punched a hole her height straight into the stone. She turned to see his head now past the rope that had bound it, waving in the air while gnashing his teeth in the reflected light, which was damned intimidating, even on something so small and with the strength of the much smaller larva he resembled.
She aimed the flashlight at him and he twisted away, coiling his head and, was it his neck, over and behind a loop of worm. Turning the flashlight beam away from him, and back at the pitted floor, she watched as he uncoiled and resumed his slithering-motion under the rope. “Don’t suppose ya would be willing to go back to sleep for a bit? The kid who told me about this spot said it’s just a few minutes beyond this part.” The worm did nothing but continue to sway it’s freed segments drunkenly in the open air.
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:51:16 GMT -6
She angled the light away from the worm, and he immediately resumed squirming as she tried to get a better look at the room. Lots of pits, which she had already noticed, and likely few if any gems or rare metals to be found if the previous miners had brought in mining familiars. Assuming they had been useful mining familiars, Alma thought as she pointed the light at Jeff and watched him recoil again.
This time, she reached out and grabbed the segment just behind the one with his eyes and wriggling teeth, and dragged him the rest of the way free. She pointed the flashlight down into the nearest pits as he fought her, and found one that looked to be shoulder deep, with walls of chipped stone and a floor wide enough at it’s narrowest point for her to lie down if she wanted to, if she wanted to imagine how those who had first found these mines had last seen them.
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:52:08 GMT -6
He fought her the whole time, writhing and squirming and all kinds of verbs that could be done by a worm or snake. He did not attempt to slap her with his tail nor coil around her arm as she considered her options, though he did loop and twist as his body sought to find purchase that was not there. And he did not snap at her, his ringed maw of teeth ranging in size from shards of a river stone, his tunneling teeth or so she assumed, to the needle fangs that ringed the deeper parts of his mouth and promised pain if only he could latch onto her.
So she dropped him into the pit.
Jeff threw himself forward as the hand released him, as he had been trying to do from the moment he had woken up to find moving meat in front of him. Unfortunately, cave air provided much less to push off from than cave floor, and he wiggled in the air, not making a sound beyond a quiet “paft” as his soft body struck the bottom of the pit.
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:52:54 GMT -6
Alma wheeled the cart closer, then squatted down at the lip of the pit, careful to aim the flashlight beam at a random spot on the pit wall rather than the mini tunnel worm. “There is a chance,” she said, looking down as the worm looped over himself, “that you can just dig into the ground ‘ere and vanish.” She watched him raise up the upper segments of his body like a wobbling salaves, seeming to taste the air. “Maybe even find me a few gems, yeah? But, if you leave, no hard feelings.” She paused again. The worm kept his head and a few segments behind it off of the ground, his creepy mouth making the same motion as before as he slithered to the wall she crouched over.
She looked away, playing the flashlight beam over the hole-ridden room. When she was satisfied the slipping sound of something on stone must have just been an echo of the worm’s movement, she aimed it back at the pit, watching Jeff recoil from the light and fall away from the wall.
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:53:46 GMT -6
“A foot away from my boot. Don’t think the second round woulda gone any better for ya.” Alma flicked the flashlight beam back to its original point on the wall. She might not mind if Jeff left her in the creepy caves, but the hundred credits he had cost her was enough incentive not to force him away. With only a bit of the light reflecting off his slimy skin now, Jeff ceased his panicked loops and drew his teeth away from the ground, bits of stone and dirt trickling downward. This close to the wall, there was no time for anything else to distract her and he resumed his climb, mouth gaping as he sought to rip and tear.
“I take it,” Alma said, watching him with a mix of annoyance and mild horror, for she could not help but remember that there were giant versions of him sliding through the caves, worms that would not have such a hard time ripping through boots and might casually return to a cave that had a larder of spare meat a year ago, “you ain’t gonna stop naturally.” He reached the lip and twisted his head to bite, to shred, and she aimed the beam directly at his red eyes.
He fell to the ground in silence, landing with a “paft” on the stony earth.
[Jeff: No Bites-1, Start] 11
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Post by Alma on Jul 23, 2023 22:54:33 GMT -6
While the worm reoriented himself on the ground and after the beam was pulled away, Alma stood, took a few steps away from the pit, and pulled the lid of the unlocked cart open. Inside were all the supplies she had brought, ranging from mining tools like the pickaxe, though she was starting to think mining might have been too optimistic a plan for that day, to food like a bucket of cold meat chunks with a packet of something cold and unmelting beside it to keep it that way.
Not that Jeff deserved fresh meat. She was pretty sure he could safely eat rotting meat, but she didn’t want her cart to stink of dead murp in future trips.
Another move of the flashlight treated her to a clear picture of Jeff lunging for her, teeth spread wide as though he planned to engulf her boot, then the worm reeling backwards and over the lip of the pit as he retreated from the light. She threw in a little “No” that time, though she was hoping she wouldn’t have to sing it out every second the worm was near her.
[Jeff: No Bites-2] 12
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