A Trio of Anomalies - The Quest for Paradise

CHAPTER 20 - THE INVENTOR AND HIS LAB RAT

"It'll work this time, I swear!" Erwin heard a young boy's voice coming from above, realising that Quicksilver's idea worked. What he didn't expect was the broken chair being placed in a storeroom of some sorts, and thus his surroundings were nearly plagued with darkness, the tiny gap under the heavy wooden door towering above providing him with just enough light to make sense of where he was. He certainly didn't expect the splinter to land him mid air next to the wooden chair leg, and once the charm wore off he found himself falling into a crevice of some sort, disappearing into a deep pile of ash. It shielded him from injury, but in return gave him a coughing fit and powdered him and his backpack in a thick layer of grey dust.

"You say that every time, Dud!" It was a girl's voice this time. The ash was soft but abundant, reaching past his waist and even burying him completely at times. He spent quite a while trying to crawl out of the deep crevice as mountains of it would crumble suddenly and pile atop him, dragging him back to square one as he fought against suffocation, constantly choking and sneezing as he struggled to see past his dust caked glasses. The sides of the crevice seemed tall and daunting, and it took him a few tries to scale it through the same method he used at the Fortress, for his water would absorb the ash and render it useless, and oftentimes random noises would cause a tiny avalanche in the crevice, yet still enough for the dust to knock him off the wall and crush him under the weight of the grey powder. 

"Tis the mind of an inventor, big sis! I've just gotta try again and again until I get it!" With a small sigh of relief he stretched his right arm and clawed at the icy cobblestone floor, littering the already dusty ground with more grey ash as he dragged himself painstakingly out of the crevice, still choking on powder himself.

"It's almost nightfall, big sis! I'll put this in the storeroom and you'll see that it'll work tomorrow!" The sudden loud footsteps of the excited young ogre sent the tiny sorcerer clutching at the ground again, dust falling off him like a storm. It was too dark above the floor to see anything, but he could trace the two ogres making their way down the stairs above, their footsteps orchestrating the rumbles of broken furniture that followed, their shadows looming over him as he sprinted across the floor, hunting desperately for a place to hide. Everything seemed so huge, so far away, and each cresending stomp outside sent him further into a frenzy as he struggled to maintain his balance once the rumbles sent him off his feet. All he saw were two legs breaking up the light underneath the door before he took cover behind the spout of an old teapot, it's shadow just large enough for him to huddle in as the door opened.

How he wished he could take a deep breath to rid the dizziness that came with sprinting, but he remained silent as the ogres crept into the room. Peering from behind the spout he saw Dudbelly cowering behind the door as Lilitrick tried dragging him in by the hand.

"Come on! You're the one who wanted to test it out!" she cried. Erwin eyed the maze of furniture, and seeing the two ogres facing the other way he decided to make a run for it.

"What was that?" With a giant leap he dove out of sight of Lilitrick just as she turned around, for out of the corner of her eye she spotted a tiny figure sprinting across the floor just before it vanished. Keeping his head low Erwin backed away, holding his breath as he watched her creep closer. Not daring to move, he watched as she searched the broken furniture, wincing in fear when she bent down to peer into the very gap he was in, him curled up in a corner while hugging his legs, fingers white from straining to pull his jacket so that it covered him completely. He counted the seconds as they trickled by, hiding his head in his knees as he waited for capture.

"Well, there's a lot of mice in here that survived all your traps," she drew her head out of the gap, "I think I found one, but he escaped."

He watched as she picked up the cracked spout and placed it somewhere else, "I think it survived the "Grey Crevice" as well! There's a trail leading out of it."