Abigail attempted to wring the swamp water out of her hair. She smelled nasty. Wet curls fell in front of her eyes as she let out an exasperated sigh. Maybe the Kelpie king would find it alluring. The Full Moon was tomorrow night and her date at Kirk’s Well was imminent. She had yet to procure any gifts. She didn’t have time to screw around.
She let her mind go blank as she stared at the diverging tunnels. One smooth, one with the faintest sound of harmonious singing. She had watched too many episodes of classic Star Trek with her older brother Darrill to not be reminded of the dangerous creature, the Horta, that used its acidic slime to tunnel through solid rock leaving the sides amazingly smooth. She may be a skilled magical practitioner but she wasn’t a telepath like Spock; she couldn’t reason with a creature like that if she came upon it unprepared. Being reduced to a pile of gelatinous ooze didn’t fit in with the current plan.
Abigail’s ears strained to listen to the sounds coming from the other tunnel. She also heard what sounded like rhythmic tinking that she hadn’t picked up on before and a sweet pleasant smell as a light breeze played across her face. Air flow was good. At the very least she wouldn’t be knocked out by poisonous underground cave gasses. Her options weren’t great but this one seemed pretty obvious now. She reached down and pulled up her wet socks and headed into the left hand tunnel.
As she proceeded down the tunnel it alarmingly seemed to get smaller and smaller. The sounds of singing and what she could now tell was hammering were getting more discernible so the tunnel couldn’t be petering out. A dim light began to develop which was reassuring. She had never been afraid of the dark or even the things in the dark which were central to her family’s vocation, but this small nod to something civilized gave her hope that she’d soon be done with this unanticipated side quest.
The diminishing tunnel continued, slowly veering off to her left, and as she rounded a tighter turn to her dismay it did indeed end at what appeared to be a dense pocket of the the most glorious crystals she’d ever laid eyes on. Light from behind the wall of crystals she had come upon created an illuminated scene of shimmering purple amethysts and quartzes of varying hues. They filled her with such wonder that stupefied, she nearly ignored what was now very loud hammering and jovial singing reminiscent of sea shanties but ALOT dirtier. Abigail smiled to herself as she examined the deep fissures within the crystal bed. She always did appreciate a good limerick. Her father had loved them and they never failed to bring her good memories of him.
Her reverie was broken by a loud clunk and crack as the amethyst in front of her fissured. Peering out at her from the other side was a gnarled and bearded face. The face screamed. It screamed like a little girl and she couldn’t help but burst out into hysterical laughter. The screaming stopped and was immediately replaced by a confused and then intensely angry expression on the face of what Abigail now perceived to be a gnome.
As Abigail turned to run, the gnome’s gloved hand reached through the hole he’d made in the dense crystals and reached for her collar, grabbing the amulet around her neck. Its burnished leather cord couldn’t take the strain and it snapped sending Abigail crashing to her knees. She yelped with pain, and as she struggled to rise she heard the gnome’s now overcompensatingly masculine voice say “Hey I recognize this!”
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