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CHAKKA-CHAKKA CHAKKA-chakka. The noise was loud now. Fluppit shook. Was it another cave spider? Something worse? She didn’t dare wonder. She cradled Sari’s unconscious form, head on her lap. The last whole span was fuzzy in her head. She had the slick dagger in her hand, she must have gotten that out from the corpse of the spider somehow. Gods, that thing was massive. She leaned against the wall of the side-pipe they were in. Their trolley sat sideways in mouth of the pipe. It wasn’t the Dark’s best defence, but she’d take it right now.
“It’s okay,” she said, stroking Sari’s hair. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”
The chakking got closer, and the noise resolved a little. Echoing up the main pipe from downstream, so to her left. It was same wall of the pipe she was leaned against. Should she stay hidden against the wall and hope whatever it was had a poor sense of smell, or should she drag herself and Sari over to the other wall to at least face her fate head-on? Could she move anyway? She was tired, bone-tired, every part of her ached. She still wasn’t a hundred percent sure the spider hadn’t bitten her somewhere too, but even if it hadn’t, she was scratched bruised, battered, and exhausted. Left-hand side of the pipe it was then.
The noise was more than one lot of chakking. Two, maybe three creatures, definitely creatures, the noise was too, odd, distinct, textured to be a machine or something bashing in the breeze. Were they talking? Almost in response to Fluppit’s thoughts, the chakking stopped. There was a sssshhh, then the sound of sniffing. Fluppit held her breath tight and the knife tighter.
“Chack”
“Chack-chack.”
“Chakka-ka.”
Then, silence. There wasn’t often silence in the Dark. There was always a fan or creaking or dripping or something. Even the water that she knew was running in the main pipe a few strides away from her ear was quiet and it had no breath to hold.
“Click.”
“Ka.”
A trail of liquid ran down Fluppit’s brow, towards her nose. She hoped it was sweat. She unclenched and clenched her grip on the dagger.
Then the silence again. What were they doing? Except, there was no way out because of the spider. Was there? Did they know that? She cradled Sari’s head tighter.
The perfect round shape at the end of the pipe in her Air-sense got a bump in it. She twitched her whiskers. It was gone again. Come on Fluppit, hold it together. No, wait, there really was something. She felt it as it edged back slowly into her air space, it moved, so as not to attract attention. I’ve got your shape, creepy. She had nothing to throw except the dagger, and throwing was not her strength. She might hit it, but then she’d have no dagger. And with her current unlikely fighting tally of Fluppit 1 - Enormous Cave Spider - 0, she figured the knife was safest in her hand. If she’d stop shaking. The shape was growing. It was coming in. At least the trolley was in the way. Shreds. She remembered, that the trolley contained all their foraging so far. If it got trashed in a scuffle, they’d never have time to find all the samples again to save OneLove. Gods, quests in real stories weren’t this frustrating.
A person. The shape resolved itself as it stood to one side of the pipe wall. Why did it do that? It had no way to tell she wasn’t packing a crossbow. Was it so cock-sure of itself that it would risk being shot? Or was it just stupid? Or animalistic? Another shape began the same way as the first, a head from the same side. They were cock-sure because they had back-up and this one didn’t have to scout. It joined its friend in the middle of the pipe. Fluppit wished any of the bottles contained anything she could weaponise, but they were here on a sneak-in-quick-pick-the-plants-and-get-the-hell-out kind of mission. She was not prepared for a fight. Especially one where she was outnumbered. Update that thought to completely outnumbered as a third shape stepped into the end of the pipe, obscuring the rest of the main pipe from view. There were about three strides between the edge of the trolley and the main pipe. Now was probably the wrong time to realise that she’d have had a slight technical advantage if she’d put the cart right at the end of the tunnel. Did this always happen in real-life adventures? Instead of careful plans and schemes with just a whisper of a chance of success, folk really just bodged the hell out of whatever hole they found themselves in and just winged it? The ‘story Fluppit’ she’d imagined was not going to die shivering in a pipe.
Maybe the real one shouldn’t either. While the creatures shifted uneasily, working out what was in the pipe before them, Fluppit gently laid Sari against the edge of the pipe and stood. If she held the dagger with both hands, she didn’t even shake.
