Prompt 14: Unlikely Place
Like a nightmare, ghosts started to appear in the tunnel's fog. Biscuit thought he was hallucinating -- he felt like he was hallucinating -- but abruptly the ghosts became more Dwarvonians, carrying a stretcher carrying a young girl. She was maybe 10, a while she wasn't dead, she looked drained almost of all color. Her eyes followed his as she passed, and then was gone, fading away with the sound of the wide dwarven feet scooping at the water pooling on the floor.
Soon, another ghost became another set of Dwarvonians carrying a boy, also drained. His skin was blue, and Biscuit suspected this one was dead, until his eyelids flickered. After that one, more came and passed. Biscuit stopped looking at the children.
Someone behind him pressed a cup of water into his hand and he drank it. That made him feel better. "Keep going," the person behind him said with a voice like grinding rocks. Yes, he nodded a little. He would keep going, though his knees were long since numb.
The girl and boy that he had been walking behind had disappeared some time before and for a long while, Biscuit was alone, except the compelling shadow behind him. And now the returning Dwarvonians and the sick or dead children no longer passed him on their way back out. He barely noticed that the tunnel became smaller and smaller until he had to duck to keep his head below the ceiling.
Finally, when the ceiling was so low he had to crouch, an extra white glow of light formed out of the steaming air and abruptly he had arrived at the end of the tunnel. A single dim spotlight seemed to keep the encroaching fog at bay, revealing two very short Dwarvonians, covered eye to toe in black dirt, standing at the wall as if waiting for Biscuit. One held a clipboard and wrote down notes as he examined the Biscuit, who pretended not to notice by looking around. There was another tunnel, to his left and unlit, which intersected where they stood. The sound of other voices drifted out from its darkness.
Biscuit remembered in the back of his thoughts that he was wearing the disguise of young human boy. He scratched his neck to touch the necklace that cloaked his true form. His back was aching from standing at a crouch so he knelt on one knee, which was immediately soaked in ground water.
The other Dwarvonian moved aside and revealed a large hole in the wall behind him. It was half the diameter of the tunnel. The miner pointed at the hole. "The purer your heart, the further you can get," the dark dwarf said. His voice was more watery than the voice Biscuit's shadow but just as grinding. "If you reach the end, return with a stone. You will know which stone when you see it."
Biscuit came forward and put his head down to look into the hole. "There is no light," he said. The speaking Dwarvonian answered by holding up a white plastic stick. He bend it nearly in two, breaking the crystals within. Biscuit was enraptured with the resulting brilliant but soft green glow. He accepted it happily from the miner. He stared blissfully into its light as another Dwarvonian attached a rope to his left leg.
At the order of the dwarf with the clipboard, Biscuit leaned into hole arm first, using the glow light to reveal a horizontal crawlspace within that continued on past the illumination. Even though he had already stifled his claustrophobia -- which was surprisingly easy, thanks to the soothing words of his shadow - it started screaming a little in the back of his mind and was maybe gasping for air, but Biscuit ignored it. He was very excited about finding the stone the miner told him about.
He was a little irritated when the tunnel started getting even thinner. His shoulders were already scraping the slick, muddy walls. At least there was no fog and the air here even smelled different. It smelled like cleaning chemicals instead of old roots. That was okay. The bitter tang in his nose refreshed his sense of discovery. He was practically grinning despite only having enough room to wiggle in order to move forward.
The texture of the tunnel began to change. The floor and the ceiling was less traveled. In some places the original chiseled markings were still obvious. And there was less sign of dragging in the dirt of the floor. Pride filled his heart. He was going further than the others. He was sure the Dwarvonians weren't going to have to pull him out with by the rope.
His breath caught when he spotted a new light in the darkness ahead. He hid the glow stick in the folds of his sleeve so he could be sure. He wasn't sure of the color at first but after a little bit more wiggling, he could make out the purple blue spot of color practically at the end of his fingertips. The stone!
He reached forward, stretching his hard to touch it but it was still too far away. He tried to creep closer, twisting his body like a worm, but he was stuck. He gasped for air, trying to empty his lungs so he could squeeze just a tiny bit closer, and yet the dark glow of the stone remained out of reach.
He was so desperate that when the solution occurred to him, he laughed. It was perfect. He had to squirm a bit to get his fingers to his neck. He felt along the silver chain until he found the clasp and pinched it awkwardly between the edges of his index and fore fingers. When the necklace fell away, his disguise melted into the darkness. He was elf sized again, and could comfortable crawl the few feet to the purple-blue glow of the stone still mostly buried in the furthest tip of the tiny tunnel.
He jabbed his finger into the dirt, digging around the perimeter of the stone's shape. After only a few moments, it popped loose from the earth and rolled into the palm of his hand. He was going to use the glow stick -- now much larger in his sleeve -- to examine the ore but the black surface was illuminated on its own with waves of purple and blue light that rotated around the surface. "Oh, that's nice."
The claustrophobic end of the tunnel suddenly felt a lot more comfortable.