In the Belly of the Beast (1/2)

It always came down to dungeons.

This was just a fact of life for anyone who chose “adventuring” as a primary occupation. Sooner or later you ended up in a very dark place underground with assorted monsters and traps and if you were lucky, treasure. If you were very, very lucky you got to survive those places, return with some of the treasure, and live fairly well until you eventually had to repeat the process.

The place they were currently clambering down into wasn't, strictly speaking, a capital “D” dungeon. It didn't have core chambers, there were no respawning wandering monsters or endlessly generated treasures, and the only boss creature in there was the one who had doubtlessly devoured all its competition years ago.

“Treasure is mmmm... likely, and best avoided,” Dracosnack said, consulting his notes. “Mimics tend to find metals and crystals indigestible, and as such use them to hmmm, lure prey into places where they can be best consumed.”

“Kind like angler fish in the down deep,” Glub said, eyes wide and glowing in the darkness of the old, dusty secret room. “Pity. I'm pretty sure this sucker's got some good gear from all the guys it nommed over the years.”

“Well, we might end up killing it,” Apollyon said, eyes wide in the flickering light of his flaming sword. “Plenty of time to loot after that.”

“Pretty sure that's not gonna happen,” Buttons said, from her perch on his shoulder. “This critter's had a lot of time to get chonky.”

“In any case, rescuing our people comes first, wherever they are,” Fluffbear reminded them. “Do you see any peepholes?”

“No,” Threadbare said, studying his tracks in the dust. He'd made a full circle of this chamber, and aside from two archways leading into darkness, there was nothing else in this room that he could see. Just cracked, worked stone and exposed dirt. And that was a little worrisome, because he was pretty sure the walls wouldn't hold if the mimic sent tendrils this way. “We're going to have to be very sneaky,” he cautioned the others. “If it catches us down here there's no way to flee without taking casualties. We'll have to fight if stealth fails.”

“When stealth fails,” Buttons predicted.

“Threadbare,” Fluffbear said, having come to a decision, “do you have any more materials for cloth mice?”

“No. I'm out.”

“What do you need for them?”

“Well, I have some thread left, but no cloth.”

Apollyon shook his head. “That's all you need?” He sheathed his sword, transferred Buttons over to Mopsy, and shucked out out of his tabard.

“What's going on? I can't see?” Buttons asked.

“Apollyon's getting naked,” Glub helpfully supplied.

“Not all the way!” the human protested, and with his darkvision, Threadbare could see the young man blush.

“And I'm missing it? Dammit! I wanted another show!” Buttons howled.

“I'm not stripping much,” Apollyon grumbled, and relit the sword, handing his tabard over to Threadbare. “Here. They'll be green mice with some gold, but I don't expect that's going to matter much.”

It didn't, and one Animus and two Dollseye skillups later, Threadbare had two minions scurrying ahead and scouting out the corridors. The Dollseye skill let him see through the mice, and he switched between them as he advanced them through the halls.

The secret passages showed a lot of wear and tear. The slow crumbling of the keep above, and the weighty shifting of the massive mimic had definitely done a number on the stone walls. Fortunately, that mesh of metal rods continued down into the lower levels, reinforcing the walls and giving support to the structure.

And in the eastern one, Threadbare's mouse found something disturbing.

The wall had been breached at one point, and tendrils of dirty flesh poked through the breach, and fed into the ceiling like reversed roots. They poked through cracks in the stone, and as he watched they twitched and contracted. Stone cracked, just a bit, and dust trickled down. As he watched, the tendrils tensed up and flowed into the wall like rope being pulled through a hole.

“It's active,” he said to the others, and they stiffened and fell silent.

They stood there in the dark, with only one of them holding their breath, as the sounds of stone and earth moving filled the halls.

Then, silence.

“It's not moving closer to us,” Threadbare said, commanding the mice to go forward again. One slid right under the tendrils, and he half-expected to lose it, but the fleshy feelers didn't drop, and the mouse was able to continue on.

The corridor curved around and down, and through an empty archway Threadbare stared at a mass of twisted metal, set into an empty round room. A thought struck him, and he looked over to Glub. “Let me see the map, please.”

A quick check, some mental geometry, and he nodded. “I've found one of the towers.”

“That's good! Is there any way to get out through there?”

Threadbare took a second to search with his mouse. “It looks like there was one once, but it's blocked by rubble now. We could risk clearing it, but the courtyard's right there next to where we'd come out.”

“And our hungry buddy was all over the courtyard,” Buttons finished.

“Was. It's moving now, but I don't know why. It could have shifted.” Threadbare thought. “Let me finish mapping out the secret passages. With your help please, Glub.”

He found that each of the other three towers was reachable through the passages. And that there was only one place where the mimic had broken through, that patch with the tendrils in the ceiling.

More importantly, he found a peephole. Right next to what looked to be a still-intact secret door.

By then the mimic was shifting again, and dust was pattering down from the ceiling. Whatever it was doing, it was putting a lot of effort into things.

“Maybe it's going after that dragon that Anne shot down,” Apollyon offered, and that was an interesting thought.

“If that's the case then it'll be distracted,” Threadbare said, as he led the way down the westernmost passage, past the southwestern tower, and over to the unused door. Getting a boost from Glub he peered through the peephole.