"Please don't eat me," I couldn't believe I was about to die already. I hadn't even made it out of the cave, and I was already attacked.
The dog stopped growling and slowly backed away from me as soon as he stepped off me, I sat up and reached for my inhaler.
"What were you thinking don't you know how dangerous pink crystals are?" the dog asked my mouth fell open when I saw him speaking like a person.
"You can talk?" I sputtered.
"Of course, I can!"
"Sorry sir, but where I come from only people can talk," I explained picking myself off the ground and wiping the dog slobber off my mouth.
"Just my luck, I'm stuck down here for three days and when someone finally comes around to help me, they're from the human world," the dog said miserably falling down onto the floor resting his head on his legs.
"You've been stuck down here for three days," I couldn't imagine being stuck here for even one day I was already going crazy "you must be starving. You can have some of my food," I dug around in my backpack looking for something a dog could eat then I found a package of beef jerky, I pulled it out and began shoving the sweet, dried meat in my mouth I set a few pieces on the ground for the dog but he didn't take it.
"I wouldn't eat that disgusting human food if you paid me," the dog said eyeing the beef jerky hungrily.
"Are you sure it's really good" I said holding out a large piece.
His nose began twitching and he licked his lips "Since you insist it would be rude not to eat it," the dog reasoned excitedly jumping up to grab it.
He pulled the jerky out of my hand and tickled my fingers with his slobbery tongue, quickly swallowing it. He chewed it up then stuck his face right in the bag and ate the rest.
"Do you have anymore?" he asked licking every last crumb out of the bag.
"Sorry, that's the only meat I have, but I got some peanuts." I pulled a pack of peanuts out of my bag then set it down for the dog to eat, he came over and sniffed it.
"What else do you have?"
"I have an apple, and some pretzels."
"What about those granola bars they look good can I have one of those," he asked trying to stick his face inside the bag, I pulled it away from him and held it closed.
"Sorry you can't have those"
"Why not? You have a ton just give me one," he said trying to wrestle it out of my hands.
"You can't eat any because they have chocolate chips and dogs are allergic to chocolate!"
"Oh yeah, sorry," the dog said backing off his ears held down "I didn't mean to attack you, it's your food and you were just trying to be nice to me and let me eat some, I'm sorry I'm just so hungry, there's so much good smelling crab in the air and I can't have a single bite it's driving me crazy," the dog jumped on one of the crystals and tried pulling it off with his teeth and clawing at it with his nails.
"I can get some crabs for you if you like."
"Good luck with that, those things are impossible to get I've been trying to get them for three days now!" the dog said angrily staring at the stones and growling. I pulled out my pocketknife and dug out a group of smaller crabs and gave them to the dog.
"Well, anybody could get them with that thing," the dog commented chewing on the crabs like they were popcorn crunching their hard little legs between his teeth.
After the dog had finished eating, we turned back around and headed away from the pink crystals and the only exit I had been able to find.
"What's so dangerous about the pink crystals anyway?" I asked looking back at them with their beautiful rose-pink glow, If Brandy knew they existed she would want to decorate our entire room with them.
"You know how an oven works don't you, how the walls get really hot and that cooks the food in the middle?"
"Yes."
"That's basically how the pink crystals work they just get hotter and hotter as you go further down the tunnel and before you know it, you're fried."
I flinched a little as the gruesome image flashed through my mind, "what if you ran down the tunnel really fast and didn't give them enough time to cook you?"
"That might work if you didn't catch on fire first!" I had always wondered what it was like to be on fire, but I never actually wanted to find out.
"So kid, you got a name?" the dog asked it was a little weird walking next to him his tail wagging back and forth along with his stride.
" Bailey," I muttered my parents always told me not to talk to strangers and to never ever give them my name, but this was a dog, so did it count?
I couldn't help but notice the dog wasn't wearing any clothes, I know he's a dog and all but since he could talk like a person, I thought he would want to dress like one.
"You can call me Seth."
"Seth?" I asked starting to giggle.
"What's wrong with Seth?" the dog asked obviously offended.
"Sorry it's just a funny name for a dog."
"I wasn't always a dog, ya know. I was a person until I got cursed by a witch. Word to the wise boy don't ever break a witch's heart because they have some twisted ways to get back at you. Real sick creatures all of them," He shook his head in disgust, I watched his tongue as he talked, and it seemed to move like a person's.
"What did you do to break her heart?"
"I did some stuff I wasn't supposed to, and she got upset and cursed me for it," he said with an angry sigh "So what are you doing down here anyway, fall down by accident?"
"No, I came to rescue my sister she was kidnapped by the ghost queen."
"I'm so sorry," Seth said sadly, this was the first time I heard him sound concerned and it only deepened my worry.
. . .
We continued walking through the green tunnels for what felt like hours but there didn't seem to be a way out.
"We're never going to get out of here!" I started to cry, I already felt hopeless, and we came to another split with another three tunnels which I'm sure only led deeper into the maze of twisted caverns.
"Don't cry it's alright," Seth said rubbing his head on my leg. "We'll find another way out of here, then I'll help you get your sister back."
"You will?" I asked through my tears quickly wiping them away on my sleeves.
I couldn't believe my luck I was so happy to have someone from Luminari to help me out, I threw my arms around the dog's neck in a hug and began thanking him.
"Kid let go, come one I don't like being touched get your hands off me," Seth said starting to squirm.
"Sorry," I said wiping snot from under my nose.
Seth grimaced at my snot then began sniffing the ground. I followed him carefully watching his long black tail swing back and forth as he walked his nose stuck to the ground like a magnet.
We were utterly lost absolutely one hundred percent doomed, at least that's how I felt. We made it out of the green tunnels and into the blue and purple ones. I didn't know whether or not we were passing the same stuff, everything looked familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Hours passed and my feet were really starting to hurt so we took a short break.
"We have to think about this! If we wander around aimlessly, we'll just get lost" Seth commented passing back and forth sniffing the walls to try and find the way out, but so far he hadn't been able to smell anything at least not anything useful.
"We're already lost," I complained rubbing my incredibly sore feet it felt like I walked to school a hundred times.
"Not helping," Seth said still pacing back and forth smelling obsessively.
"If we could find the way you came in, then we would have a way out," I commented unenthusiastically slipping my shoes back on.
"I don't want to go back the way I came."
"Why not?"
"Let's just say I was being chased by some very unfriendly people and I had to run in here to get away. Let's try and find the way you came in."
"I fell through a tree and landed in here."
"Wow you picked the absolute worst entrance into Luminari didn't you," Seth dead panned with a human like sigh.
Hearing Seth say we were in Luminari really lifted a weight off of my shoulders. I don't know why it made me feel so good, I clearly wasn't in the human world anymore, or I had hit me head really hard.
"There is a way to go back through the daed trees, but that wouldn't help us we have to get out of here if we're going to rescue your sister." Seth sighed "I guess we'll just keep going forward."
I tied my shoes and we continued on our way.
We found another tunnel full of blue and purple crystals and walked down it. The tunnel felt very familiar even the muddy ground felt the same. We came up on a fork in the road one way was a tunnel full of solid green crystals and the other was a blue and purple tunnel with what sort of looked like a human bone.
"I've been here before!"
"Bailey all these tunnels look the same," Seth muttered cynically.
"No, I recognize that bone, last time I took the green path because I was scared to go down the one with the bone."
Seth walked up to the bone and tasted it.
"Seth!" I shouted in disgust.
"What I'm a dog aren't I?"
The bone was very old looking with a yellowish tint, it was much bigger than any of the bones in my body it looked like a leg bone belonging to a full-sized person, like somebody who was over six feet tall.
"Do lots of people die down here?" I asked looking around cautiously.
"Yes, usually from lack of food and water, although you could survive in here for a long time, by eating the crabs and drinking the mud," It was hard to understand Seth because of the bone in his mouth.
We continued walking down the blue and purple path, it was long and straight the tunnel seemed to go on forever and ever it was almost like we weren't moving at all, the end just never got any closer.
We finally made it to the end of the tunnel where it split in two, there was a tunnel full of purple crystals and one with blue. The purple tunnel had a staircase leading up and the blue tunnel had a staircase leading down.
"We should definitely take the purple staircase since we're trying to get above ground," I said turning to go up the purple stairs, but Seth didn't follow me.
"No, we'd better take the blue path, the maze is extremely complicated taking the upstairs is too easy, besides I like this color better," Seth said turning and walking down the blue stairs.
"Seth!" I shouted but he kept walking away.
Even though my better judgment was telling me to go up the purple stairs I followed Seth down the blue ones. Let's face it I was scared of being alone and besides Seth lives in this world, so he should know what he's doing.
. . .
The blue stairs seemed to go on forever, we continued walking down further and further into the ground, we must have traveled at least a mile under the surface. It was getting noticeably colder. I could feel goose bumps growing on my exposed flesh. The tip of nose began burning.
"Are you absolutely positive this is the right way?" I asked trying not to sound as scared as I felt.
The tunnel was getting darker, and the air was getting mustier and harder to breathe, the stairs had changed from sparkling blue crystal to gray stone, and there were less and less gemstones on the walls as we walked.
"Don't worry I think I can smell the way out" Seth said confidently.
We continued traveling down the stairs and soon there were no crystals left. The tunnel was pitch black like the night sky. I had to carry the empty crab shells from the crabs Seth ate just to see my own feet. Soon we stepped off the stairs and were walking along flat ground covered in shiny black rocks flat as man made floors.
"Can you smell the outside?" I asked I was shivering from both the eerie cold and fear, something didn't feel right.
I was scared of small dark spaces, and it was only getting darker I didn't know how much longer I could go before I had an asthma attack.
"Well, when I first smelled it, I thought it was the outside but now I'm starting to think it's something else."
"What?" I practically cried.
Before Seth could answer we walked into a very large cave room. The room was bigger than the lobby at a five-star hotel, it had super tall walls made of solid rock, it was dark so you couldn't see the ceiling, but the floor was filled with thousands of empty crab shells lighting it up like a ballroom. Though the light from the shells had begun to fade and some of the shells had even burnt out.
There were bits of crab meat strewn everywhere and some of the shells looked like they held truck sized crabs, in the middle of the room was a swimming pool sized hole full of bubbling black liquid. The cave smelled terrible like shellfish and new tires. Randomly among the crab shells were the bones of other animals, even some entire human skeletons.
"I think we should turn around, I don't see a way out," I squeaked quickly turning to leave but Seth was going through the pile of crab shells eating the scraps of leftover meat.
"Seth come on, I don't want to run into whatever lives down here."
"Don't worry," Seth said through a mouth full of crab meat "there's nothing but the smell of tar down here, whatever lived here is gone."
I have a very bad feeling about this place. Something was definitely wrong, and Seth really didn't seem to care. Whatever lives down here is capable of killing humungous crabs, those things are big and tough, and it would take a lot of strength to take even one down let alone a whole army.
The lake of tar continued to bubble and boil letting out the putrid smell of burning tires and dead skunk. A very large bubble blew up in the middle of the lake and refused to pop, the bubble came up to the shore and began crawling out. The shape of the tar bubble transformed into a person with two long bony arms and two thin and scraggly legs, the tar fell off the person as they stood up. They were pale as the moon with long black hair and soulless eyes, they had no nose, and their lips were missing revealing their dark yellow teeth and bloody gums.
More creatures started crawling out of the lake until there were at least a dozen of them I just stood there horrified my heart frozen in my chest I wanted to shout out and warn Seth, but I couldn't make a sound, there was a lump of fear lodged in my throat preventing me from screaming. I had never seen anything so horrible in my entire life it made the zombie movies I've seen look like something out of Brandy's unicorn cartoons.
"Phooey! Something smells like death!" Seth complained pulling his head out of the empty crab shell he was licking.
"What's the matter?" he asked after he saw me clutching my heart.
I started coughing too hard to speak but I was able to lift up my arm and point to the tar creatures. One of them was much smaller than the other's the size of a baby his skin was sagging off of his face and arms like he used to be fat.
"Run!" Seth shouted heading for the exit.
I turned to run with him but tripped on a human rib cage getting my foot stuck between some of the bones, they were still fresh only halfway through the decaying process. I began having a panic attack and I couldn't stop coughing. I was coughing so hard I thought I was going to cough my lungs right up. I heard the creature behind me and felt its long sharp claws scratch my shoulders as it grabbed them.