Move 339: Continuing Over the Glassy RockTunnels--Very Late, Day 35 (Marpenoth 20)
The party reached an agreement to continue going forward in search of a more defensible camp site. The glass-like rock was very smooth and slippery; the first few steps proved tricky, especially for Azrun, who still had invisible Arachne perched on his shoulders. It was as difficult to walk across the smooth surface of the glass rock as it had been to walk across the jagged edges of razor rock they had encountered in other places in the tunnels.
For some time, the group picked its way along without finding any side tunnels or caverns at all. In places, the glass rock seemed to swish up the sides of the tunnel, sometimes reaching the ceiling, sometimes not. The slow pace necessitated by the strange rock under their feet was almost as wearing as crossing the ledgeways had been. There was no sign of the glass rock coming to an end or of a place to be used to camp other than the main tunnel.
Aloysius trod along carefully, making sure as best he could that his feet were steady beneath him.
"Perhaps we should go back," he suggested hesitantly. "I like not the thought of being accosted whilst standing on this surface."
"Thank you, Azrun," Arachne's voice murmured in the bard's ear, as he continued carrying her. "This really is awfully nice of you...
Azrun smiled, "No problem, Arachne. It's kinda fun, actually."
"Did you ever pay much attention to snails or earthworms when you were young?" the gnome's voice continued idly. "I did, some. The spider pack, some of them, anyway, liked to hunt them sometimes. I was thinking... You know how they get around, on or under the ground? The snails and earthworms, I mean. They secrete a mucus and then sort of slide along on that. I wonder... suppose you had a really big snail or slug or worm, and its mucus were to kind of harden up if you left it alone for a while... I think there are side tunnels that this stuff is blocking, by the way."
Azrun's eyes grew large at Arachne's statement, "Ummmmm....ok. I'm all for going the hell back the way we came. I do not want to be worm chow.....I guess from the size of this tunnel I would be one little snack...if that."
Aloysius looked at the empty space above Azrun.
"An interesting hypothesis, Arachne," he said with enthusiasm. "Perhaps we could take a moment to check more closely."
With that, he drew one of his normal daggers and went over to a wall and began poking at the glass to see if he could break some off.
Echo looked around nervously. "I feel something again. It went away and now it's back. It feels weaker than before."
"So we're walking on giant-snail snot," Jana summed up, "while someone's checking us out magically? This is so not good."
Echo laughed in spite of herself then gave Jana a sheepish look. "Sorry."
"We need to make camp soon," she said. "Where are we going to do that? Can we break through the rock Arachne says is covering the side tunnels?"
Jana grinned at Echo. "It's hard to say 'snail snot' without laughing, isn't it?" She pulled out a mace and twirled it with a bit of a melodramatic flourish. "Want me to take a whack at the wall and test out Arachne's theory?" she asked the group in general.
"I'm not certain going back would be helpful." Olaf said. "Arachne just raised the possibility of 'worm snot', she didn't confirm that this is worm snot. Can anyone actually tell? I wish we had a dwarf with us right now. Or one of the deep gnomes. We should have asked for a guide."
Aloysius took a moment to poke at the funny rock with his dagger.
"Ouch!" he exclaimed, as he studied his finger and then put it in his mouth.
After sucking on it for a moment, he withdrew it and studied his finger some more.
"The rock is most sharp when damaged," he said. "I suspect that it is not . . . . uh . . . mucus-related . . . . at all but is rather a geological stage of development experienced by the so called 'razor rock'."
Wiping some blood from his finger onto his robe, he added, "Methinks that bodes rather well for us. If anything intelligent lived in this direction and could make advantage out of converting this rock into the 'razor rock', it would have done so. That leads me to conclude that 1). nothing lives in this direction or 2). anything that does live in this direction isn't very intelligent or 3). whatever lives in this
direction, if intelligent, dislikes 'razor rock' as much as we do.""Well, there's something ... inappropriate about that glassy stuff being placed in this tunnel," Arachne said. "I don't mind it not being hardened mucus, but... What is 'razor rock' and how does it get to be in an underground tunnel? Is it a kind of lava? I think some of those can fracture into sharp shards."
Aloysius shook his head. "Stargazer knows not," he replied, still intently studying his finger. "But what may seem 'inappropriate' to us, as outsiders to this realm, may in fact be quite normal for those who inhabit this place. I think it unlikely that anyone 'put' it here so much as certain denizens of these tunnels selected their lairs according to where the rock is located, depending on their fondness for it."
"You may think so," Arachne said softly. "You may doubt that your 'razor rock' could be anything but naturally occurring. You may even feel entitled to lump us all together with regard to our sensitivity to geology. You are, after all, a master of many abstruse realms of knowledge. I am merely a silly little gnome who didn't learn nearly as much as you know after spending an absurd number of years at the Spandelyon University... What do I know, after all? I may disagree and feel that there is something not wholly natural about the placement of the glassy rock in this tunnel, but it's no matter."
"'Silly' is a relative term," answered Aloysius with a grin. "As is 'little'. Grant do I that, in an absolute sense, thou art a 'gnome', unless ye be a master of deception."
He had finished inspecting his finger.
"'Twas not mine intent to disparage thy suggestion, Arachne," he saiod earnestly. "Nor was it to claim any type of absolute wisdom concerning any topic, let alone geology. Verily, our innate 'feelings' about our surroundings may serve us just as well as the senses we typically employ. Regardless, the rock is here, and we not not with certainty what it is. We shall have to deal with it in one matter or another nonetheless."
"Well, if you want to try testing, I think that there's probably something covered up back there," Arachne's voice said. "Um... There. Uh, you see that knob there in the ceiling? No, not that one --" There was an invisible sigh.
Aloysius threw his hands in the air and sighed. "Listen not to anything Stargazer might suggest," he said sarcastically. "Certainly, smite away on yon rock with your weapon, Janathell, but excuse me afore you commence so that I can avoid the shower of keen-edged debris that will issue from your efforts. And since these hidden tunnels may be at nearly any spot behind the rock, be sure and smash it all, or at least continue swinging until your arm can swing no more. Perhaps the noise will arouse some nearby denizen lethal enough to end our miserably stay in this hole."
He moved to the far edge of the light and looked ahead in the passage.
"Well, hells," Jana said, "stand back outta the way. And I'm sure anything out there's ignoring our footsteps, talking and lights but'll come running if I mash some snail-snot," she added in a somewhat sarcastic tone.
Azrun shook his head, "Ok, before everyone gets pissed off and we start yelling, listen to this theory for a moment....and I do mean theory as I can't prove it. Aloysius, has already stated the swirly rock is not snail snot but indead, rock. If that's the case, why is it a tunnel? Perhaps instead of a warm excreting a mucus, it was able to melt stone as it slithered through a passage way. That would explain why this is a tunnel and why we don't see it in some places. If lava poured through this area wouldn't it simply fill this tunnel and the side tunnels." He looked to Aloysius and then rubbed Arachne's leg, "If that's the case then both of you are correct. It is stone and was made by another creature."
"Works for me," Arachne's voice said. "That does too," she added.
Aloysius got as far away from Jana as he could without heading off into the darkness.
"Uhm," Jana said, trying to find the area Arachne was talking about, "maybe if you took some chalk and marked where you want me to hit?"
"If you need help with the smashing, let me know. All this tedious walking is making me tense." Blacky said
"Well, I prefer the walking to the not so tedious meetings we've had with most of the denizens of the dark so far," Renn said with an amiable grin. He shifted the pack on his back and watched as Jana prepared to strike the rock.
"And apart from the odd look to the rock in this tunnel, it's not been all that bad," he added. Renn looked back the way they'd come. "I'd prefer to continue our exploration, rather than to backtrack. That is," the elf said with a wry smile, "after we've rested. My legs are getting on the tired side."
"Me too," Echo said, smiling at Renn briefly. "I mean, I'd like to keep going this way too after we rest."
Echo gave Aloysius a concerned look when he walked off. "Arachne, can't you walk through walls sometime? That might be an easier way to see what if anything is behind the rock and how thick it is. Breaking it is probably going to be hard."
"Uh huh. I could do that," Arachne's voice agreed. "So we're looking for a safe campsite and figure that a tunnel which had been covered by this glass might be one such?"
Azrun patted Arachne foot, "Do your portals go both ways? Meaning that if you slid into one of the tunnels and opened a portal we could walk in there through the portal from this side? That would allow you to go in, look around, and see if it was safe to move in for some rest. If so, then you can open the portal and we walk through. How's that?"
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