Journey Through the Underdark - Eric EarthScorn Book 1 - Chapter 14 (Patreon)

Huddled among the stones, Eric waited to hear the screaming of the two men. For long moments he hesitated hunched over wide-eyed and just listened. But all the boy could hear was the few sounds of their scuffing feet as they left and the annoyed tones of two men done with their duty and heading home. Despite everything suggesting that he was free from the two men, he continued to wait.

They could be ambushed by the creature on the way back. This might be some elaborate trick to force him out into the open. But despite all the possibilities which Eric considered, there was one truth about why he waited.

He was afraid.

For Eric, the dark had never been something to fear. He had often snuck out of the inn after his duties were done and wandered the small town. He had even snuck over to the little tin mine and walked through the tunnels. The dark had never had anything to fear. It was a place where he was in control, and others would fear.

Now though. Now, Eric felt fear. That creature had faded with the shadows, melted into the dark, and disappeared from his sight. If it had magic that let it travel through the darkness, then it could be anywhere around him, and he would never know it. Everywhere around him was in darkness. No longer was he in control in the dark. Considering the dark shape he had seen from the corner of his eye, it had been stalking him before the two men had even arrived.

Biting his lip, Eric slowly slunk out of the stone maze and started up the tunnel. Keeping an eye out for the creature, he carefully stepped to avoid making noise. He wanted to follow them out to at least the tube leaving the sewage cavern. If he had to fight off the shadow creature, being near two other humans sounded like a good idea. Either for them to be additional targets or as his rescuers.

Once he found his two trackers, Eric trailed behind them. He followed as they approached the cavern door and spied on them as they used a device to unlock it. The young wizard leaned against the cavern’s wall while keeping an eye out, he needed them to reach further up the tunnel before he opened the door. Once he did, though, he would continue his hiding plan from inside the tube to the surface.

Given another day or so, he would be able to sneak out and escape the Academy. The cover of night would once again be his friend, and he could make it to the countryside. While he hadn’t learned foraging and hunting like some of the other boys his age. He had listened as the hunters talked about their craft. Hunting with magic on his side couldn’t be that hard, right?

After an hour’s wait, Eric opened the door using his shield spell and stepped into the outer tunnel. He wasn’t looking forward to waiting on this side of the door. It would be easy for someone to sneak down while he was sleeping and surprise him, but it was better than waiting on the side with a creature that could hide in the darkness. Grumbling about his empty stomach, Eric laid out his equipment and prepared to sleep. The carefree and comfortable night of before was nowhere to be found this time.

During the night, Eric found himself being startled awake in confusion only to roughly flop over and go back to sleep. The ground felt too hard, the stone too cold, the blanket not covering enough of his body. The only real improvement was the reduction in the smell.

In the morning, or whenever he decided he was done failing to sleep, he rolled over and summoned water to wash his face. After vigorously rubbing his face, he turned to fold up his blanket only to come face to face with a dead Shield Rat.

“Ah!” Eric shouted as he scrambled backward.

The dead rat was more surprising than frightening. It wasn’t even particularly gruesome, the neck was at an odd angle, but it was still whole. His surprise had more to do with suddenly finding a dead animal when there hadn’t been one when he had gone to sleep. Feeling the hairs on his arms raising, Eric looked around for footprints. He even considered for a moment that someone was playing a prank on him, but rejected the idea quickly. Shaking his head, he drew closer to see if he could discover anything else about the rat or who left it.

Beyond two small punctures in the rat’s throat, the only injury the rat had was the floppy neck. It was just a rat, placed near him. While he was sleeping.

Shuddering for a second, Eric rubbed his hands through his hair and considered what he should do. He couldn’t go back into the sewers or the stone maze, but he didn’t want to wait here either. His grumbling stomach made it clear that Eric should do something. Squeezing his eyes shut for a second, Eric considered all the ways that he had screwed things up. It had been an impulse to rush out and try and escape, but now he had to deal with it.

The young boy paced up and down the tunnel for a few minutes before he made up his mind. He would travel back to the Academy grounds and see how late it was. If it were actually morning, he would wait until the next day. But if it were early enough, he would check if he could sneak into the dining hall and snag some food to continue hiding.

The boy tried to ignore the obvious flaws in his plan, the main one being that it had far more to do with the hunger in his stomach then it did with careful reasoning.

While he marched his way up the long tunnel, Eric kept an eye out for anything suggesting he was being stalked. He made sure to be silent as he moved around the blind corners of the tunnel. The door should have locked out the creature, but the dead rat still had him spooked. When Eric reached the second locked door, he spent a long time with his head held against the stone and listening for anyone beyond the door. After using the shield spell to unlock the door, Eric returned to pressing his ear to the entrance. Either he couldn’t hear anything through the thick stone, or there was nothing to hear.

Slowly, he pressed against the door until there was a thin line of an opening that he could peek through. The sky was barely visible from his angle, but it appeared that he had gone to sleep before he expected and woke early enough that it was still dark. Despite the darkness, there was another sight that had Eric holding back an exclamation.

Tents.

Even in the small sliver of the open door through which he could see, the Academy field was lined with tents. Marked out in row after row where the iconic military tents. Even with the sounds of the wind and the ajar door between them, he could hear soldiers snoring from the tents.

Pulling the door closed and once again locking it, Eric began to softly curse. Of course, there were soldiers on the Academy grounds. Terry had said they station them here for deployment during times of trouble.

So there it was. Eric was trapped. The soldiers on the outside, the creature in the Underdark below, and starvation in between. He had water, and he had heard that you could survive a long time with just liquids. He also imagined it was unpleasant. The real question was, would he be able to survive for a week or more with only water? If he could, would he be in any condition to escape the Academy at that time, or would there still be plenty of soldiers wandering around?

It was only while he was considering what he would do under these conditions that Eric realized that he had been holding his head and pacing. Smoothing down his hair, and flattening out his clothes which were starting to smell, he tried to think ahead and deal with his problems.

He needed water, food, shelter, defense, and he needed to escape. The army wouldn’t take him back, that was a death sentence. So he couldn’t go that way. All that was left was going further down. He couldn’t wait this out, he had to try his first half-formed plan and escape through the Underdark.

Trudging his way back through the tunnels, Eric hesitated when he reached the stone door. The rat was still lying there, and while he had been considering his needs, he had had a truly horrible thought. One that might be necessary. Gulping down the bile that had started to reach the back of his throat as to what he might need to do, Eric grabbed it by the tail and carried the rat with him.

If he could figure out how to start a fire or learn a spell for it, then a well-cooked rat would suddenly be on the menu.

After Eric opened the stone door again, he glanced around, trying to see if the shadow creature was close. Though he was happy to see nothing was near, he also hadn’t seen anything before, and it had been close then. So the young boy was no longer as confident as he once was. Pushing open the door, he stepped in and closed it tight. Leaning back on the door, he took a deep breath to calm himself and started to search through the dried plants and twigs on the closest island. If he could find a sturdy piece of wood, he could rub the wood together to start a fire. At least, that was how the hunters had described it. This seemed unlikely to Eric, but it was all he had to go on.

After a couple hours of searching, he still had not found something wooden that was strong enough to survive rubbing, let alone two pieces. The closest he found was a broken chair leg. Unfortunately, it was still bobbing in the sewage, and even if it could be used to light a fire, it would need to be dried out first.

Despite his vigilance, Eric was also surprised to find three more rats, each with broken necks. He had been distracted, pulling back on a bush or kicking away some of the dried dirt on the island. Then he had turned, and suddenly, there was a new dead rat. Each time they had been left near him when he was looking away, and each time, they had been dropped silently without Eric catching the perpetrator.

By the third time, Eric was shaking, his hands nearly unable to clutch the fist-sized rock he had found. Rushing to the corner of the cavern, Eric wedged himself in and held tight to his stone and his magic. Scanning back and forth into the cavern, he prepared for something to attack. After huddling for more than an hour, a shape formed beneath a bush and expanded into a large feline-lizard. Black and scaled, the creature reached nearly to Eric’s waist. The head was angular and sharp, with two prominent ears and golden slit eyes that stared at the young boy.

Stalking forward, the creature slowly approached. When the beast had approached to less than a handful of paces, Eric cast his shielding spell. The bright white glow wrapped around and tightened into a bubble of force. Tilting its head at the shield, the creature opened its teeth, exposing large fangs, then it bent down and dropped a rat’s severed body. Sitting back on its haunches, the long flexible tail rhythmically flicked behind it as the creature stared at the boy for what felt like an infinite moment in time.

Moving forward, the feline creature sniffed at Eric’s shield as the boy huddled in frozen fear. Once, twice, three times the creature sniffed, its upper lip rolled back in a look of seeming disgust at the boy’s shield. Finally, its slit nostrils blew out a loud burst of air, causing Eric to flinch. Before he could recover from the sudden noise, the creature swatted at the shield, its nails glowing a sickly yellow for a brief moment. In that silent flash of light, Eric could see that the beast had used a spell. His moment of fascination was short-lived as his shield peeled back at the scratch, the magic unraveling in front of the creature.

With his only protection from the creature unwinding in front of him, Eric panicked. The young wizard pulled all of the magic in his body, everything he had, and flung it at the monster. He failed to create a spell or form it to any particular color or flavor, he let his magic burst from his body and wrap around the creature. At the sudden shine of color, the animal stopped in its stalking of the wizard. As the magic wrapped around both of them, it arched its back in surprise.

The last Eric heard as his eyes rolled back in his head was the creature hissing.