Rodentia Adventures

CHAPTER 1: ALONE IN THE DARK

A faint glow drifted down the narrow passageway. Well, it was not actually just a glow, but wouldn't that be something? A sentient little ball of light, floating through the darkness, in search of others of its kind, getting into wacky adventures? Unfortunately, in this case, the little ball of light was not a plucky young adventurer trying to find its way home. It was simply held at the end of a crude torch, held by another creature, still quite small by most standards, but downright huge compared to the wisp of flame. She stepped carefully, the terrain uneven, the shamefully non-heroic light-source barely illuminating the space in front of her. The crude road regularly raised and dipped without warning, the rough earthen walls curling up around her, constantly dripping, putting her in knee deep in wet mud at best, waist deep in filthy water at worst. 

The tunnels seemed to go on forever, branching paths few and far between. In spite of this fact, they were still frightfully easy to get lost in. Even from an entrance to sunlight, it was said that on a bad day, one could walk three paces, turn around and find only pitch darkness behind, with no hope of ever again reaching the surface. Everyone knew this was silly of course, and would simply make such statements as jokes. The sort of jokes which everyone would awkwardly laugh at, so as to not embarrass themselves, but secretly take very, very seriously. One could say that it was incredibly fortunate that the young mouse had a map, but on the other hand, it wasn't doing her much good. She narrowed her eyes, drawing the green plastic hood over her face to shield it from the falling soil and drippings overhead. The mouse stared at the tattered page intently, as though through sheer force of will she could have made the turn that was supposed to be right in front of her appear, or better yet, reveal the prank that the map had been pulling all along, and have it show that there was never meant to be a turn here at all. Surprisingly, neither of these perfectly reasonable options ended up happening. She crumbled it up in her paws and tossed it into a nearby puddle. An easy task, seeing as how virtually everything around her was a nearby puddle. 

Back over her shoulder was darkness. Sure, she knew that it didn't go on forever, eventually were she to retrace her steps, she would find sunlight, fresh air and civilization. Except, of course, she didn't 'know' that at all. It would have been much easier if the passage were pure black, but she knew full well that there was nothing 'pure' about it. It would have been more comforting (well, marginally so), were the emptiness entirely silent, but it wasn't. Looking into the shadows, she saw shapes which would vanish or drift away the moment she tried to focus upon them. Listening closely she heard voices, not the happy chattering of friends and family, but the sort of voices which didn't speak in true words, yet beckoned to her, nonetheless. She continued forward, clutching a small plastic dagger on her hand, drawn up to her chest, her last torch flickering to let her know that the journey of this little glow of light was finally nearing its end. 

Jerin the mouse quickened her pace downwards into the tunnel. This was a bit of a problem. It felt as though she should be going upwards, that her goal was towards the sky, rather than down towards, well, towards who knows what, but whatever lie in the deepest of depths, surely it couldn't be pleasant. Clearly, the tunnel had other ideas in mind. She let out a surprised squeak as the ground slid out from beneath her feet despite her best efforts to grip it with her toes, similarly trying to grab onto the wall which crumbled away from her furless fingers. She was sent sliding down into a pool of grime, struggling to keep her head above the water, and especially struggling to keep the torch above water. In a place like this, she'd sooner go without her head than a light. The torch brushed up against the ceiling, with small dead roots poking down through it, the flame flickering and blinking out of existence. Just for a moment, though. It quickly flashed back to life, as though warning her not to dare try that again. What's worse was that the water kept getting deeper the further she went, and right now moving forward was her only option. There wasn't another sudden drop off, which was fortunate, but the ceiling just kept getting lower and lower, the water rising from her stomach to chest at a rate where from one step to the next, she felt no real sense of depth, just the ratio of her submerged to merely soaked fur steadily tilting in favor of the first. It was proving harder and harder to fit the flame between that ever shrinking space between earth and water. It wasn't another drop-off which caught her, quite the opposite, a small stone (at least she had hoped that it was a stone, the sort without teeth or eye-holes, unlike so many she'd passed by on her trek) tripped her, completely invisible in the murky pool, and sent her tumbling face first into the water. The small wisp of flame joined her for a tragically brief swim.