Vix hopped to her feet. “Nothing’s broken.”
“Same here,” I said. “Let’s explore.”
The innards of the hill had been hollowed out, seemingly a long time ago. There were overturned mining carts in a few places, and tunnels that quickly turned pitch black with darkness.
“Ah!” Vix yelled. “There was a bug on me.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I felt it!”
“It’s just creepy down here,” I said. “It makes your skin crawl.” Then I felt something. “Ah! See, now you put the idea in my head and it’s freaking me out.”
“Ah!” she yelled again.
“Shhh!” I whispered. Something landed on my arm, which was definitely a bug. I shuddered to think what kind. All my experience with roaches in the catacombs told me that’s what it was, but I didn’t want to tell Vix that. “I hear something.”
In the deep of the tunnel, we listened.
“So you see,” said a woman’s voice, “it would be much more in your interest to dance in that direction, as my skin is too soft and velvety for your tiny little legs to get the traction you deserve.”
“Who’s talking in there?” Vix whispered.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back.
A faint skittering sound turned into an avalanche. Something big, or a lot of something small, were rushing toward us.
“Cockroaches!” Vix yelled. We turned tail (literally, in her case) and ran back the way we had come. As we neared the light from our collapsed hole, we saw hundreds of cockroaches scurrying along the walls, floor, and ceiling. Thankfully, they stopped following us once we got closer to the sun’s protective rays.
“Hello?” called a woman’s voice. It could have been a ghost for all I knew, trapped in an abandoned quarry or mine or whatever this was, for gods only knew how long, seeking revenge on the living for discarding her here.
The hole in the ground above us was too high to climb toward. The only other options were to run down another dark tunnel or to stay put.
Gradually, the voice got louder as it called to us. Then the woman herself emerged from the darkness.
Her skin, if one could call it that, was green and semitransparent. Her body was made of improbable curves, like a body of water in constant motion. Her hips we wide, her waist extremely narrow, and her bust was enormous. A black evening gown hugged her body in ways that made me blush.
“I haven’t seen anyone here in years,” she said. Her face was as full as her figure. Thick lips pouted when her face came to rest. Long eyelashes batted from twinkling green eyes. And her hair wasn’t hair at all, but an extension of her green body, shaped in an elegant, short style.
“You’ve been trapped in this underground tunnel for years?” Vix asked.
“Well, I didn’t stay for the ambience,” the green woman said.
“How do you tolerate all of those cockroaches?” I asked.
“They are pests when I’m sleeping, but at least I can reason with them when I’m awake. The name is Cindra,” she held her hand out as if I would kiss it. I reached forward and took her hand, shaking it at that awkward angle.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” Vix said. “I hope that’s not rude to say.”
“The feeling is mutual,” she said.
“I’m Vixette Volpia, a builder and a fox lady from the beastkin territory of Denvillia,” she said. “You can call me Vix.”
“I’m Arden Hochbright, a skillmeister from the human free city of Meadowdale,” I said.
“I am a slime gal, conjured in this very cavern,” she said.
“Conjured?” I asked.
“A great and wise mage crafted me from the ether,” she replied, “but I must have done something wrong because he abandoned me here and sealed the earth so I couldn’t leave. I never did figure out what I did to displease him. I hope one day I do.”
“That’s awful,” I said. “He doesn’t sound great or wise if he did that to you.”
“He gifted me with a rare ability for which I am grateful, even if his departure still breaks my soul. I am a negotiatrix. You may have heard me chatting with the resident roaches.”
“Yes,” Vix said. “We didn’t know how many there were until they charged toward us.”
“Oh?” Cindra said. “I suppose you don’t see in the dark then, like I do.”
“No,” I said.
“Then it’s a good thing you made it here where the light is,” she said. “I’m afraid all the ruckus will attract a brockerball, and you don’t want to fight one of those in the dark.”
“I’m not sure what a brockerball is,” I said.
The ground vibrated beneath my feet. “Oh, honey, you will be,” Cindra said.
A boulder as high as my waist rolled toward us from the tunnel ahead. It was a darker brown than the surrounding rock, and it had a series of small protrusions from its spherical body like pincers. It bent them against the floor and the walls to propel itself toward us. We all dodged in different directions to avoid being bowled over.
When the rock monster reached the light filtering in from overhead, it unfurled. Two thick legs supported its bulbous body, and four burly arms extended toward us.
“Hey Vix,” I yelled. “How about giving Wallop a try?”
She and I converged on the rock creature as it spread its limbs out from its body. She swung her hammer behind her, then forward with full force. It exploded in orange light as her skill activated, whacking the fiend backward a dozen feet.
I stood ready with my polearm, which was still just a wooden pole with a knife on the end of it. It was pathetic, and not at all the type of weapon someone should bring to a brockerball match. Nonetheless, when the thing came closer, I speared with all my might.
The monster winced, so I knew we were having an effect. Cindra didn’t have any weapons on hand, but she did have the power to negotiate. “Cindra, can you convince this thing to leave us alone?”
“Oh, Mr. Brockerball?” she asked. The monster looked at her. Vix tried to hammer at it while Cindra conversed, but the monster swatted Vix away. She landed on her ass and banged her elbow against a rock wall.
“Look at you,” Cindra continued, “with your big bulging muscles and a nice hard rock for a face. Be a dear and protect a girl like me from the deep dark tunnels.”
The monster shook its head. Then it charged at her. I ran into its path to protect her. My back made a terrible crunching sound as the monster rolled over me, but I had slowed it down enough to let Cindra get out of harm’s way.
“You’re being a bad, bad boy, Brocky,” Cindra said. Her tone had gone from pleading and weak to stern in no time. She was trying a different strategy. It wasn’t working.
“We need to destroy this thing,” Vix said.
“Agreed!” I said.
The brockerball rolled itself up again and tumbled toward me. Vix stuck her hammer in the monster’s path, forcing it off trajectory. It slammed into a wall.
Cindra ran, into the tunnel she had come from and away from the light. Vix and I couldn’t follow her there. Only Cindra could see in the dark.
When the brockerball unfurled again, it was angry. It started stomping on the ground, shaking rocks loose from the ceiling and crashing them into me and Vix. They started to bury us before we could even get back to our feet.
The monster stepped forward. My leg was jammed between rocks now and I wasn’t strong enough to lift them off of me. I would break my ankle trying too hard to get free.
It stepped closer again. The various pincers on its body pinched and fiddled, eager to get their grippers on me. I held my spear up. The best I could do was hope to push the monster away. Unless… I activated Piercing Blow and aimed at the rocks by my foot.
The spearhead smashed into the pile of rocks. The rocks, however, didn’t budge. Instead, they snapped my knife blade from the wooden pole it was tied to. My weapon was done for.