บท 50: Awful
"Pwah!"
Earl spat out a mouthful of dirt, mud, and vomit and took deep, heaving breaths.
Before Morne had rescued him, he was on the verge of passing out. Now that he could breathe again, he did so liberally, panting like he had just run a marathon without rest.
"Thanks," he managed to eke out between breaths.
Morne nodded. "Think you can swim on your own?"
"Swim?" Earl asked, a hint of confusion coloring his expression. Then his eyes widened as he realized that they were, in fact swimming through dirt.
"Scuddins," Geleb said with a scowl. "Nasty little things."
"Scuddins, boss?" Earl replied, signaling to Morne that he could swim by himself now.
"Tiny little insects that like to trap their prey in the ground and suffocate them. They secrete a chemical that can harden the earth or soften it, depending on how much they use.
"If enough of them die at once, that chemical spills out and turns the dirt to this." He showed a handful of mud to Earl and Morne, and the other two watched curiously as it spilled out of his hand like syrup.
"Of course, that's easier said than done, especially when they prefer immobilizing you as completely as they can. Speaking of which, how did you escape, Morne?"
"One of my Spells," Morne said, squinting at the other end of the chamber a mile away. They were still close to the entrance, and that was a fairly long swim. "But I don't have enough Chimh to take us through the chamber, especially after using what I did to get you two out."
"Yes, that would be a problem," Geleb said thoughtfully. "I know a handful of Spells myself, but they won't help against something I can't see or touch."
"What about all those pouches you have, boss?" Earl suggested.
"No, nothing in there." Geleb shook his head. "There isn't much you can do to prepare for Scuddins when you don't know you'll encounter them. They're never seen in snowy regions like this, so I didn't even bother to think about them."
"We just need to kill them, right?" Morne asked. "What about poison or heat?"
"Their cover would protect them from heat," Geleb sighed. "And I didn't pack poison. There wasn't a need for it when I was gathering everything for this expedition."
The three frowned, looking around for anything that could help them out. None of them had given up, but the odds weren't looking very favorable.
Everything they had been carrying had sunken into the ground as well, the Scuddins having thought they were small animals. Only Geleb's pouches survived. The rope was gone, along with the matches, and even Geleb's journal and…
"Your pen," Morne said.
"What about it?" Earl asked.
Geleb's eyes widened. "Of course!" he exclaimed, and started fishing around in the mud. He soon found his journal and pen, and tucked the former into a pouch while holding the latter up in the light.
"The ink within this pen is highly toxic," he said. "I doubt such small life forms would be able to survive even a drop. I'd actually wager that a single drop is enough to kill dozens of the critters."
"You brought more, right?" Morne asked him. Call it a hunch, but he wasn't sure a single pen would be enough.
"Better," grinned Geleb. "You see its tip? The way it glows? I got tired of carrying spares around, so I had it enchanted to hold more ink. Normally it would've been enough to last the entire trip, but it should kill enough of the Scuddins to make it about three-quarters of the way there.
"Morne, do you think you can take us the rest of the way with that Spell of yours?"
"As long as we hurry," Morne said. "We'll only have about ten minutes when we get to that point before I'm out of Chimh."
The three huddled together in a single-file line. This way, Geleb could be more conservative with the ink.
"Ready, sir," Earl stated.
"Ready," Morne confirmed.
Geleb looked forlornly down at the pen in his open palm.
"Sorry, father," he muttered, and with a light sigh, he closed his fist and grabbed the tip, twisting it until it snapped. The tip didn't fall off, but the seal had been broken, and now a small trickle of ink started to spill out.
He held his fingers at the tip until the ink started to run down his finger, then said "guide your flow."
He let a few drops fall on the barrier between mud and solid ground, and pressed the broken tip into the puddle and the dirt below while at the same time keeping his finger in contact with the ink.
Releasing a breath, he closed his eyes and guided the ink into the dirt, spreading it as far as he could before his connection with it became too tenuous to continue.
Breathing in, he opened his eyes and started to swim forward just as the dirt ahead started to turn muddy, Morne and Earl following behind.
After the rough start, the first third of the journey was smooth. Then Geleb ran out of Chimh for his Spell, and they were forced to wait in one spot to allow the ink to seep into the ground naturally.
This entailed waiting about four minutes just to swim ahead for ten seconds, making their progress forward unbearably slow.
To pass the time, Earl had taken to asking his boss questions, one of which was "How did these Scuddin things survive this long?"
"I don't know," Geleb shrugged. "Like I said before, the majority of the ancient Nasnami's secrets were lost to history. It's not as far-fetched as you'd think, if you've heard some of the other things they were supposedly capable of doing."
In time, the ink ran dry and it became Morne's turn to lead the way. Their speed increased hundreds of times over, no longer required to sit in one spot for as long as before.
Morne pulled himself out of the muck and onto stone, turning to help Geleb and then Earl up.
Earl scraped some of the bug-filled mud off an arm with pursed lips, sending a glare at the mud.
"I hope we don't have to leave the way we came in," he grumbled. "That was awful."
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