At the top of the stone pile, she glanced back to see the others following her lead, digging their own gloves out before coming up after her. Then she turned back to the dark opening and, with a quick prayer to the sun goddess Dol Arrah to light her way, she bent down and crawled inside.
The everbright lantern on her helmet threw the rocky passage into sharp relief, painting the low roof and narrow walls with harsh blue and black angles. As she made her painstaking way across the shattered stone, she peered forward for any sign of Xujil, but she could see nothing ahead of her but darkness.
Sabira’s world soon compressed into the small island of light cast by her helmet’s lamp. The walls were so close now that all she could hear was her own labored breathing and the scrabble of her hands and knees against jagged, unforgiving rock. Stinging sweat trickled down her forehead and into her eyes, blurring her vision. She could feel the tons of earth above her pressing down, eager to crush her for her temerity in daring to traverse the depths. She crept slowly along, becoming convinced with every passing moment that the drow had led them into a trap and that the tunnel would never end. That it had somehow closed up behind her, cutting her off from her companions, and that she had no choice but to crawl eternally forward until she ran out of food and water and the everbright lantern gave out, leaving her to die alone in unending darkness.
As if in response to her fearful thoughts, the lamp flared and then went black. Sabira froze in place for long moments, her heart in her throat. But then the more rational part of her mind broke through the sudden, foreign terror, telling her she’d just entered another region of magical darkness. All she had to do was keep moving and she’d soon be out of it. The everbright lantern would work again and she’d find her way out of this tunnel and into… well, another tunnel, but at least it would be bigger and less oppressive.
She allowed the calm, logical thoughts to wash over her, repeating them to herself until her breathing was even and she could move forward again, no longer paralyzed by fear.
She made it about a foot and a half before she heard a low, hungry whisper, right beside her, where no one could possibly be.
Saaaabaaaa…
With a yelp she couldn’t contain, Sabira scrambled forward, blind. She felt the sharp rocks slicing through clothing and flesh, but barreled on, heedless. She slammed against the wall as the tunnel made an abrupt turn to her right, and then she was out of it, tumbling down a steep slope and landing on her back in warm, sticky mud.
Xujil stood above her, his head cocked to one side as he looked at her curiously. Then he held out an ebon-skinned hand to her.
She took it without thinking, so grateful to be out of the crawlway and back into what passed for the open down here that she didn’t even mind his clammy grasp as he pulled her up from the sucking mire.
“Are you well, Marshal?” he asked.
She took quick stock of her injuries and nodded. The cuts and bruises were nothing compared to the blow to her pride. In all her years as soldier, with all the horrors she’d faced, she had never felt as terrified as she had in that moment, trapped in that tunnel with something unseen as it whispered her name.
Rationally, she knew the fear had been Khyber-wrought, and not her own-or, at least, not entirely. But that knowledge did nothing to lessen her shame. She was just glad none of the others besides Xujil had been there to see it.
Once on her feet, she turned to survey her surroundings. She stood at the base of a curving cavern wall that stretched up into the darkness high above her and off into the distance on either side. The chamber was easily three times the size of the one that housed Trent’s Well; the largest that she had ever seen. Multicolored fungi glowed on the rocks, lighting up the vast cave with muted hues of violet, gold, emerald, and ruby.
She’d landed in a subterranean swamp, fed by an unseen water source. Thick, ropy grasses grew at its edges. Beyond it, wide-boled gray trees thrust up out of the rocks, towering over the bizarre landscape as their full, domelike canopies scraped against the sparkling stalactites that dripped down from the unseen ceiling. It took Sabira a moment to realize that the strange forest was actually composed not of trees, but of gargantuan mushrooms.
There was a sound behind her and Sabira looked to see Greddark emerging from the high tunnel and making his way carefully down the rocky slope. She searched his face carefully, but saw no trace of the terror she’d felt. Apparently, the dwarf had not heard his name called in the darkness as she had. She tried to ignore the disquiet that followed on the heels of that thought, but was not entirely successful.
The others exited from the tunnel one by one and soon they were all gathered beside the swamp.
“What is this place?” Jester asked, his voice full of wonder. Though she knew it was inaccurate, she could easily imagine tiny gears whirring in his head as he struggled to find a rhyme for “fungus.”
“Gharad’zul,” Xujil supplied, “the Forest of Decay.”
“Lovely,” Sabira said. “How fast can you get us through it?” She didn’t even like mushrooms in her food; she certainly didn’t relish the prospect of traipsing around the gigantic fungi like tiny garden bugs begging to be squashed.
“As fast as your people can move,” the drow replied, and Sabira thought she detected a hint of alacrity in his voice. Considering the guide could travel much faster through his native environs without them, she supposed it was warranted. That didn’t make it any less annoying.
“Well, let’s put word to deed and see, then, shall we?”
The drow nodded and headed off at a brisk pace, skirting the swampy area. Bubbles rose from the surface, trailing them as they walked, but nothing emerged to confront them. Xujil led them under the forest canopy, which was really a series of overlapping mushroom caps with gills the size of the mainmast on a House Lyrandar galleon. Smaller mushrooms the height of a man grew about the trunks of the fungal trees and more of the variegated luminous fungus carpeted the forest floor like moss. Fluffy spores floated in the air, disturbed by their passing, and Sabira didn’t have to tell the others to cover their noses and mouths to keep from inhaling them. Who knew what the tiny things might begin to grow once inside a humanoid host? Sabira suppressed a shudder just thinking about it.
The forest was eerily quiet. No birds trilled in the nonexistent branches and no animals scampered through the absent underbrush. Even their footsteps were muffled, sloughing through wet fungus instead of crunching over pine needles or twigs. The air was stagnant and smelled of sweet rot and old dirt. Sabira found herself picking up her pace almost unconsciously, and the others followed suit, casting wary glances about them as they hastened through the alien woods.
Before long, she began to hear a soft, rhythmic sound. It started so gradually that she didn’t mark it at first, but when she found herself swallowing several times to moisten a suddenly dry palate, she realized what it must be.
“Are those… waves?”
Just as she asked, they broke free of the woods and found themselves standing on the rocky shores of a vast lake that stretched out into darkness. Black water lapped sluggishly at the jagged beach, driven by some unseen force out upon its impenetrable surface.
Xujil had mentioned traversing a body of water with Tilde’s group, but he hadn’t quite conveyed the size of said body. Sabira had been expecting a river like the one in Trent’s Well, or, at most, a pond. Nothing like this.