Shadow and Memory

Part 2

The camped by the spring, bedding down to rest by its constantly rippling surface. Wulfric found the lack of a sky above increasingly disorienting. He looked up at the dark ceiling above and wondered what time it might be topside, it might be midday for all they knew. The still air bothered him as well, no wind to carry scents to him. This place felt deadened, unnaturally dampened and silenced. Carol was in better spirits now that she was a little cleaner and they had topped off their supplies of fresh water. He was glad that he hadn't worried her with his discovery about the tunnels. With any luck they would find their way out soon.

His sleep was less restful that time, curled up on a bed of moss. He wanted to blame it on the brighter light in this cavern, but in truth his sleep was disturbed by dark dreams. He jumped awake several times, growling despite himself, imagining wide eyes staring at him from the shadows, long fingers reaching out of the darkness to strangle them in their sleep. Eventually, after a particularly vivid nightmare he stopped trying to rest at all, rising from his makeshift bed to pace around the cavern on all fours, staring down each of the passages in turn. He sniffed the dank air and the ground, and growled at things unseen as he looked down the dark tunnels.

It was surprising how a few bad dreams could change one's opinion of a place so quickly. The cavern before had seemed like an oasis, welcoming in the unfamiliar underground environment. Now the place filled him with a foreboding, a place crafted by unknown hands for an unknown purpose. It felt like a meeting place or a waystation, and he expected at any moment for a troop of odd creatures to come out of one of the side tunnels to take up residence.

It was on his third full circuit around the cavern that he noticed something that he hadn't seen before. He paused for a brief moment, his eyes drawn to the spot where he had washed some of the dirt away to reveal the tool marks on the stone, the clean patch of rock standing out amidst the dark dirt caking everything else. He was about to move on, when his hackles raised, his subconscious detecting something he hadn't consciously noticed.

He walked over, sniffing the ground and inspecting it carefully. When he found it, he froze in place, staring at the floor. There, pressed into the dirt at the mouth of the tunnel, was a single human footprint. He stared at it, wanting to believe it might have belonged to him or Carol, but neither of them had walked around the room barefoot. And the print was facing into the room, as if left by someone crouched at the lip of the tunnel, gazing in at them. His hackles raised as he remembered his dark dreams of strange subterranean creatures staring at him as he slept.

He shook himself, heart thumping a little faster in his chest. He leaned down and sniffed at the footprint, examining it more closely. The print was human or... not quite human. It was hard to tell but the proportions seemed slightly wrong, the toes a little too long, the step a little too narrow. The scent was horribly familiar. That strange, earthy, organic scent he had smelled to a greater or lesser degree since he had entered the tunnels.

That was all the motivation that he needed. He went from the tunnel mouth and woke Carol quickly. They had broken camp and were on their way up one of the tunnels within minutes.

He felt that he had to tell her about his discovery. He explained what he'd found in short, clipped words, not wanting to spend time chasing down hypotheticals or discussing what it might have been for who knows how long. He knew that the horrors they invented in their own imagination would likely be far worse than anything they actually found down here. At least he hoped that would be the case. They didn't talk much after that, moving swiftly and fairly quietly. Wulfric's ears flicked about, straining to hear anything out of place, but the mossy, crooked passageway absorbed almost all sound. It felt like having bits of wool stuffed into his ears, muffling everything. They maintained a good pace, though Wulfric never let himself break into a panicky run, as that would squander their endurance very quickly.