Out on a small sandy island in the spookier part of the swamp, a lone tree has fallen over. Bits of masonry are stuck in its roots, and prove to be part of an ancient ceiling. Long roots still trail down into the dark hole, clogging one side of it.
Trilup sticks her head into the hole for a moment, that pulls out and reports, "I don't smell anything really dangerous. So should be safe to use a lantern without blowing stuff up."
Aviri looks from the boat to the newly-formed hole. "Do you have a lantern?" he asks.
"There's one on the boat," Trilup says. "The same we used when he came out at night last time."
Watching from behind her rock, Linyala debates going back to report once the explorers have entered the ruins or venture forth herself. She hunkers down and waits.
Aviri stays in place, deep in thought. "You wouldn't ... uh ..." He taps the oar against the ground. "Want to ... find the cup, would you?"
"Of course!" Trilup barks. "Is this the place? These islands could all be old buildings or tombs I suppose.. but gotta start somewhere! Want me to get the lantern and some rope?"
"I could. Should return this," Aviri says, indicating the oar.
There are few loud croaks from out in the swamp.
The otter spy cringes. "Stupid frogs." She mutters under her breath.
The otter takes the oar and drags it back to the skiff, then returns with the lantern and some line (it's a bit thin to be considered 'rope', but that does mean it's lighter). "Here, tie this to something sturdy," Trilup tells Aviri, and gets to work lighting the lamp.
Aviri loops the line around the fallen tree, making a few knots around the branches into what he apparently thinks is 'safe', which might be a little bit overkill.
Trilup gets the lantern lit (and it only took three tries with sulfur matches), and carries it by hooking her tail through the ring on top. This doesn't illuminate anything much besides the backsides of her shorts, but it keeps her hands free. "Sooooo," she says. "Who goes down first?"
Aviri holds out his hand for the lantern. "I'll go. Make sure it's safe. Live underground, you know." With his free hand he slips the talisman around his neck.
Linyala creeps forward, hugging the ground as she approaches the backside of the fallen tree trunk.
"Can you hold the lantern okay and climb down too?" Trilup asks, just making sure. She does hand over the lantern though.
Aviri accepts the light with a nod and leans over the hole, trying to gauge it's properties.
Aviri says, "Yes, I think I can handle it." He starts the descent, holding the lantern as low as possible while using the fallen tree for initial support to lower himself to the first stable set of foot- and hand-holds. There he pauses and looks farther down, planning.
The hole is pretty thick - there's nearly a foot of dirt on top before getting to the stone. And then.. space. The lantern doesn't show the floor or what's immediately below the Lapi, since it can't shine straight down, but he seeing old walls now. The passage isn't that wide.. maybe six feet across, with an arched ceiling (broken here and there by intruding roots). There's also the sound of dripping water echoing about, so that Aviri can't quite pinpoint the direction it's coming from.
The Lapi buck drops a foot and feels for another foothold--something to catch his weight as he lowers it ever more precariously.
There's nothing there but the roots, and those aren't exactly sturdy - more like thick vines. The walls are too far apart. But going lower eventually reaches floor - or at least a layer of dirt covering a floor. It's almost five feet from the top of Aviri's head to the hole above now. "See anything?" Trilup shouts down the hole, which echoes loudly.
Aviri, after testing the floor for stability (probably thinking it's but a ledge), lowers himself the rest of the way and looks around. "Fine," he says back. "Not too deep. Seems ... safe?" He shines the light around, trying to see past the roots and to where hallways might lead. The question-like statement probably doesn't inspire confidence in the safety of the hole.
That appears to be good enough for Trilup though, who slides quickly down the line and lands on her butt behind Aviri.
The lantern shows the corridor going off to the east and west, roughly, although it also seems to curve down and to the south in both directions, either by design or because the ground has shifted considerably over time.
Lin edges up around the log and peers down the hole, readying herself to slide down the rope the moment they're outside of her range of vision.
Aviri looks both directions carefully before seemingly arbitrarily choosing east, the lantern leading, his eyes flickering about madly as if trying to take everything in.
Trilup stays close to Aviri, playing out the rope as they go to keep from getting lost. Of course, that means anyone up top could just follow the rope to find them as well. The lantern light dims at the entry hole, as the two explorers begin rounding the curve of the wall.
Linyala gives the knots a quick once over to make sure they'll hold and, finding them adequate if not excessive, slides down as fast as she can without burning her paws. Even with the fadeing lantern light she can make out the shadows of Trilup and Aviri heading down a passageway. She takes a moment to look around for other routs.
Aviri moves farther into the corridor, ever watchful, holding the lantern as far ahead as possible to light the way without glaring too much on his eyes.
So far the corridor seems like it's going around in a circle.. or rather a downward spiral. "We should be underwater by now," Trilup points out, since the floor and walls are just a bit damp instead of there being a flooded corridor.
"Afraid of water?" Aviri asks, but he glances nervously at the moisture.
"Well, no, not in general," Trilup notes. "Just when it suddenly pours in and we have to try swim back to the surface in the dark. That's why I'm letting out the rope as we go.. oops. We just ran out of rope."
"Don't worry," Aviri says. "I know the way." He looks around again. "Basically just back up the tunnel, honestly." He stops talking and looks at the end of the rope. "Want to go back up and take the whole length with us, in case we need it elsewhere?"
Lin decides to follow the receding voices and scurries after them. She pauses to scratch a wall with her claws to see if the stone has gone rotten.
There's some crumbling from the otter's claws, but only the outer layer.
Further ahead, Trilup notes, "If we take the whole rope, how will we get back out? Oh.. did you want me to cut it?"
"No, I can climb up and untie it. Then, going back, I could go up and tie it again for you," Aviri explains.
"Oh.. I forgot you can climb," Trilup says. "Let's go do that."
Lin ducks into what she hopes is a sufficiently concealing shadow and waits for them to pass.
The problem with shadows.. is that the walls of the passage are fairly uniform. The only place to hide is on the ceiling!
Aviri turns around and heads back up the corridor at a faster pace, sure that at least this section is safe.
These underground tunnels are exhibiting a dismaying lack of handy shadows to hide in. Linyala runs on all fours, ducking and dodging to avoid hanging roots as well as stay out of the searching beam of the lantern. She dives down the coridor on the other side of the rope and rolls to a stop, hopeing that she didn't make enough noise to get noticed.
The hole and roots and rope are still there when Aviri and Trilup return.
Aviri slows as he approaches the hole--and the other tunnel. The unexplored, possibly dangerous tunnel. He hands the lantern to Trilup. "I'll be right back," he says. "Watch that tunnel ... er, both, I guess." With that he begins the climb, quite a bit faster now that he has two hands and knows exactly where the holds are.
"Don't get eaten!" Trilup calls up, feeling a bit less secure without the handy magic monster repellant that Aviri carries. She swings the lantern around, peering into the darkness.
Aviri is quick, also knowing the knots he tied and how exactly to undo them. Within moments the rope twirls down and lands at the bottom of the hole. Given another few, Aviri is right back at her side.
"Ah, now we have rope!" Trilup says, then jumps as something falls on her back, causing her to spin around cast shadows wildly as she swings the lantern. "Ahhh! Something touched me!" she wails.
Aviri spins around, too, trying to find the offender, his hand clutching his talisman tightly.
It seems there is some dirt dripping down from the hole in small clumps. One of them hits Aviri on top of his head.
Aviri looks up and sees the falling dirt. "Come on," he says, ushering Trillup into the 'safe' passage, eyes ever upward. "It's just dirt." But he watches the hole closely, wary of whatever's causing this sudden destabilization.
One of the dangling roots looks out of place. And then there's a 'clunk' as stone from the ceiling falls, ushering in more dirt!
Lin checks that her knife is secure in its sheath before having to do any more acrbatics to avoid detection. She tenses and lays as still as possible, readying herself to spring out of the way should the tunnel colapse.
It's a good thing Lin is ready.. because something falls on her tail. There's also an ominous crackling sound from behind her.
Aviri tilts his head at the root, not noticing the rock. He looks around the tunnel, searching for more things that are ... off. His eyes find the dent in the stone, recently scratched out by Lin. He looks at it, then back the way he came, toward the ominous crackling.
Lin is starting to consider a career in toomb raiding as she rolls to the side and lunges forward away from the falling debris.
This gives Aviri a wonderful view of Linyala rushing towards him, as the tunnel behind her starts to collapse.. and the collapse isn't stopping at the hole, either..
"RUN!" Linyala shouts as she rushes past the Lapi.
Quick as a spring the Lapi grabs the otter as she passes, catching hold of Trilup as well as he starts running. They may be in peril, but he's not letting the otter escape again.
It's pretty crazy, what with the lantern swinging around in Trilup's trailing hand as she tries not to trip on the rope. Shadows flash everywhere, and it seems like the corridor spirals on forever. Once Trilup has enough, she yelps, "Hey! We've come far enough!"
Aviri slows, keeping his grip on Lin as he does so. A quick check of the tunnel shows that Trilup is right and they're safe. Ish.
Trilup holds the lantern up, and finally notices Lin. "You were following us!" she accuses.
"Yep!" Lin chirps then pokes the lapi with her free hand. "Mister Avery, might'n I ave my arm back?"
Aviri lets go of the spy. "Meet again, Linyala," he says, anger creeping into his voice. "Was spying worth collapsing the whole tunnel--and our way out?"
Linyala leans around and listens to the last few stones plinking into place up the tunnel then does a quick inventory of herself and the other two. "Emmett told me ta follow you'n see what you'se about. I didn't mean to colapse the tunnel." She starts to tear up, "Please don't be mad Avery, none of us were hurt and you still have the lamp." The otter shifts from side to side nervously.
"Maybe we can dig out?" Trilup suggests.
Aviri looks around him and thinks that he's basically running a daycare at the moment. He clenches a fist tightly at Linyala. "Just remember," he says warningly, "anything can be down here with us. I might have a way to keep us safe, but if you go running off, I can't do that." He looks back at the wall of rubble. "We could try, but I'd rather not. We ran quite a bit, and this isn't chalk or clay. There might be a way out deeper in, though."
"If this is the right place, there must be a way for Swampy to get in," Trilup agrees.
Linyala makes a fist of her own and bumps it against his, cracking a smile. "Then let's be 'bout it then!" She exclaims and makes to march off then swivels back to Aviri when she remembers his warning.
"At the very least," Aviri says, glaring at Linyala, "this isn't the way out. Lantern goes first, I think. Should I take it?" He directs this to Trilup.
"Okay, I'll hold the rope," the other otter says, handing over the lantern.
Aviri takes the lantern and heads down the tunnel slowly, careful to looks around the tunnel carefully.
Lin is still shaking a bit from having a tunnel nearly come down on her tail and makes a point of scratching the walls every now and then to make sure they're still mostly solid. She also watches the tunnels past Aviri in case he misses anything big and scary.
The walls are a bit different, in that the stone is gradually changing. The clay-based brick is giving way to real stone.. and some of that stone looks very precisely cut. There's less debris on the ground as well. But they're still going deeper. Things change when the reach a door. Well, it was a door. It's made of broken stone and lying on the ground now, the archway it belonged to looking a bit battered as well.
Aviri stops at the door, looking at it carefully. "Looks sturdy enough," he says, and walks through carefully, lantern-first.
There's a long room beyond the doorway. There are alcoves in the walls, each with a pile of moldy debris in it, and a few long stone sarcophagi along the center aisle. Another arched doorway is at the opposite end.
Aviri stands in the entryway, still as a statue save his head which twitches about almost imperceptibly.
Lin peers around the lapi, "Are those?" She trails off.
"They appear to be graves," Aviri says. "Also, appear to be safe."
"Wow, a tomb!" Trilup chirps, whiskers twitching in excitement. "It must be from before the Necromancer Wars and stuff!"
"Okay good, I thought they were monsters!" Lin wriggles past Aviri and starts poking around.
And of course Trilup goes to the first alcove and starts rummaging around in the remains.
Aviri half-raises a hand to stop them but doesn't follow through. Instead he starts walking down the center of the room, looking left and right to peer at the alcoves as he passes.
Linyala runs up to examine the sarcophagi. Patting them and sniffing to try to find an opening or latch.
"Don't open the tombs," Aviri says. "Spirits aren't ... I'd rather not wake any if any are here."
There are markings on the sarcophogi at least, but they appear to have been painted on and just broken bits of color now. The stone lids are.. well.. stone lids and not easily moved. The most telling detail however is the size of the stone coffins: no more than six feet long, and with the likely thickness plus any additional coffin inside would mean the departed would be in the four-to-five foot height range.
Trilup confirms this when she shows off a skull from an alcove. "I think it's a Skeek!" she says. "Maybe a Skreek.. hard to tell the apart, and the witches made Emmett stop doing the How To Identify Skulls Badge.."
Aviri stops his trek and looks back at the children. "Come on," he says. "Exploring for later, with Jack. Escape first, explore later."
Giving up on the coffin, Lin looks over Trilup's shoulder. "Find anything good in there?" She asks, pawing through another of the piles.
"No shinies," Trilup laments. "I guess they only put the poor ones on the shelves?"
Aviri looks again at the otters. He twitches toward the far door but swiftly goes to the children. "We'll come back when we've found a way out," he promises, his voice once again hinting at anger.
"Well, we should come back here if we don't find a way out too," Trilup jokingly suggests.
"No" Aviri says, apparently not in a joking mood. "Then we dig. This way." He, again, walks back toward the far door, checking the alcoves from the center of the room for hidden doors.
The next chamber is an atrium of sorts, with four doorways at the compass points. The ceiling is high and arched, and the pillars are carved into the shapes of four.. animals? One of them is a saber-toothed rabbit. The others are more monstery.
Lin runs ahead this time. "I found the monsters!" She calls back, poking around the weirder of the pillars.
Aviri heads straight across the room, pausing in the center to look through the north and south doors before heading to the east one. "Through here," he says.
The lantern doesn't reach far into the other rooms.. but they also look like crypts. Heading east brings them to another crypt.. but this one has been raided. The alcoves are bare, and one of the sarcophagi has had its lid cracked open, as it lays on either side of the stone coffin in pieces.
Without pausing the Lapi strides into the crypt, searching for another way out of this room.
There's a doorway at the far end, heading further east. It also has the broken remains of the stone door itself scattered around.
Lin runs after them after getting no reaction from the statues despite her best funny faces. She lights up when she sees the bkoken sarcophagi and climbs up on the edge of the one nearest the door to see inside better.
Aviri pauses beside the eastern door with its broken portal to see if Trilup has kept up.
Trilup is distracted by the open sarcophagus. "Hey, bring the lantern back!" she calls to Aviri.
Aviri looks idly at the broken door. "Is the exit in that coffin?"
"Could be!" Lin chirps, waving a paw over the shadower open space.
Aviri sighs. "Well, stay there if you want. I'm going this way to see if there's a way out." He steps through the door and starts walking, albeit slowly, away.
"But there's a hole here!" Trilup calls.
Lin looks across the sarcophagus at Trilup. "Is he always this mean?" She asks.
"Does the hole go up?" Aviri calls from the corridor, still walking away.
"I don't think he likes people," the other otter notes. "It came up from below," she replies to the Lapi. "So.. uh.. it goes up from somewhere.."
Aviri stops and turns back around. "The outside is up from here. We'll explore down once we've found up." He continues his walk.
"Lapis have no curiosity," Trilup complains, and goes after Aviri. "But the hole is behind us now so whatever dug it can sneak up on us."
"Yes," Aviri says. "So you'd better stick with the protection, yes?"
"C'mon Lin, he's right," Trilup concedes. "He's got a magic amulet thing that protects him from the undead."
Lin runs to catch up. "I heard you sayin' something about that before. How does it protect you? Fire, explosions, bolts of lightning?"
"Never tested it," Aviri says. "Why I said might have protection. Still, more than you have." He walks on. "You kids ever hear of science?"
"Is he that one-eared Lapi that lives in the woods and carves frogs out of wood?" Trilup asks.
sp Linyala bobs her head and chirps, "That's the stuff that the Wingnuts are on about all the time right? I was trying to get into their compound but there are too many traps."
Aviri's silent at Linyala's comment but manages to compose himself again. "Science, be it stuff or a one-eared Lapi, says to go about a task orderly. Gather data, eliminate impossibilities, and find the answer. If we took every detour, we wouldn't be ordelry, and might miss something."
"How could we miss something if we look at everything?" Trilup asks. "That.. doesn't make sense? What if there's a map or something in one of the other rooms?"
"Or a way out or that cup thing you were talking about before." Lin adds.
"If this is a way out," Aviri explains, "our search ends and we can do whatever you want down here. If not, we'll be back and get a chance to look at the hole. Either way, we'll look down the hole. But a hole downward isn't likely to lead to the surface above us."
There's another crypt to the east.. and another one further east.. until they finally reach something different. A stairway! It spirals up and down through a round tower.. well, an underground tower.
Aviri nods upon seeing the stairs. "Right. Up we go!"
The stairs are stone, and extend out from the walls themselves with no other supports.. and certainly no handrail. It's a long drop into darkness if one isn't careful.
"Right then!" Linyala chirps and grabs Aviri's hand, trying to pull him forwards. "The faster we get up, th'sooner we can come back down!"
Aviri pulls back a bit and says, "You climb trees, Linyala. Go on, stay as close as you can to the outer wall. Trilup, can you do that, too? Keep to where the stairs meet the wall?"
"Of course," Trilup says, hopping onto a stair. "I'm not an idi-" CRACK. The stair falls out from under the young otter, who grabs the edge of the next one just in time.
Lin lunges forwards and grabs what she can of Trillup and tries to pull her back up.
Aviri, holding onto the doorframe for support, makes to catch her if she falls. "And ... don't jump," he says more to himself than to her.
"Rope?" Lin asks Aviri.
"You had it during the cave-in," Aviri says to Trilup. "Or, I think you did. I was carrying you and Linyala at the time, remember?"
"Yeah, let's tie ourselves together," Trilup says, sounding a bit embarrassed after she's back on her feet.
Trilup unspools the rope from around her shoulder. "Okay, safety line time!"
"Should I go first then?" Linyala asks, holding out a paw for the end of the rope.
Aviri looks at the stairs again. "Yes, Linyala, you should lead. Climb the walls, if you have to. Trillup, keep close to the walls. And don't jump. I'll ... follow when I can."
Lin ties one end of the rope around her waist and passes the rest of the coil to Aviri. "Hold this?" She takes a step back from the ledge and goes at a fairly quick walk, planting one foot on the wall to keep from putting a lot of force on the step. She skipps up the next three to stop properly and get a solid grip on the rope incase Trilup slipps again.
Trilup follows carefully, testing each step as she goes. "Should be safe, Aviri," she calls as she proceeds.
Aviri wraps the rope around his wrist and steadies himself against the doorframe for the maneuver.
Lin moves up a few more steps to give everyone enough room.
"Okay," Aviri says. He carefully leans over and starts crawling up the stairs, hands and feet, trying to distribute his weight along more steps than just one. In this way it's fairly easy to get across the gap.
It's slow going, especially since the lantern doesn't illuminate upward. Unfortunately, the stairs do not go all the way up, since they stop where part of the tower wall has been torn out, exposing a large, dank cavern.
Linyala steps off the stairs and unties herself from the train. "How far down does this thing go?" She asks, not remembering if the step that fell hit anything at the bottom.
"I'd rather not find out," Aviri says, standing up in the tunnel. "But we're higher, and swamps aren't known for their tall mountains, which means we're closer to the surface." He leands out over the tower, looking down. "Might be able to use the rope to get down again, if need be. Anyway, we should keep moving."