Sliding into the abyss

The group had closed ranks after Jaisyl’s discovery. Dustin now led the way with his pistol held low, eyes on a swivel. Rye had fallen in alongside him, while Aricia and Yril’k took up the rear, the unarmed princess surrounded by the others as they made their way through the last corridor before the T-junction leading to the way back out. It was this junction, one corridor, and then they’d be back at the blast door; on the way in it’d been an easy walk, albeit one where the roughness of the walls had drawn Yril’k’s attention. On the way out, it was a different matter entirely.

Dustin paused, looking down into the hole that had appeared in the floor. It angled sharply to one side; judging by the map it was designed to avoid the chambers of the floor below and just descend deeper underground. It was also completely covering the junction - they could jump across without too much difficulty, but the presence of a void beneath them did nothing to still the feeling of dread that was creeping up his spine.

“We’ll have to cross. There isn’t another route out of this level except through those blast doors, right?” The lack of answer from the others told Dustin he was correct. Getting across would be a challenge - it was a wide gap, but if they took a run up, it should be doable for even the least athletic of them.

Rye and Yril’k had no such problems. The bunny girl flexed, sprinted and cleared the gap with room to spare, powerful thighs driving her over the void as if she was just taking another step. The Vex’ess warrior on the other hand clicked her blade arm covers open, jumped and hooked onto the wall before she climbed horizontally around the corner and over the pit as if it were a casual stroll in the park.

That left Aricia, Dustin and Jaisyl on the far side. Opting to be the rear guard, Dustin gestured for the others to go first; Aricia nodded, holstered her weapon and ran full pelt at the gap before throwing herself across it. She almost didn’t make it, but Rye and Yril’k leaned out and caught her arms, dragging her to safety without any significant issue.

The Tho’unn princess was practically vibrating with worry by that point, staring back into the corridor behind them and then down to the void beneath with a look of utter terror on her face. “There really is no other way…?” she asked, before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath at Dustin’s answering nod. With a whimper, she took a run up - but as she reached the edge the Tho’unn woman lost her nerve, skidding to a stop right at the very precipice, her feet half over the gap. Dustin moved forward to grab her and drag her back to safety - but as he moved, so too did something from the pit. The edge beneath Jaisyl’s feet suddenly crumbled, a dark shape moving downward beneath her as she lost her balance and fell.

Dustin didn’t hesitate. The instant Jaisyl’s footing was sabotaged he shoved his pistol against it’s clamp and dove into the void after her, his helmet torch revealing an ice-slick rock slope down which the princess had clearly slid. The cries of the others echoed in his communicator as he tumbled, the form of the Tho’unn woman barely visible ahead of him in the glow of his suit light.

The path twisted and turned, and for a while it was all Dustin could do to keep his head and feet the same way around as they descended into the dark heart of the planet. Were it not for the lack of light and the sense that something lurked in the void beneath them, he’d almost have been put in mind of one of the more **** waterpark slides as he and Jaisyl slipped and slid downward.

Ahead of them, something glittered in the light of Jaisyl’s helmet torch; the pair had just enough time to realize they were hurtling towards liquid before they emerged from the passage, slid across a rocky shore, and half-submerged in a silver lake. Struggling upright before bending and helping Jaisyl up, Dustin was glad they’d had their visors closed tight against the cold - while running on internal oxygen was a stuffy pain, it beat taking in mouthfuls of what looked like liquid mercury. It especially beat liquid mercury that had it’s own frozen crystals forming on the surface as the temperature in the chamber dropped; the tunnel they’d slipped and slid down appeared to be acting like a reverse chimney, funnelling cold air down into the cavern and beating the natural insulation of the rock above.

Splashing their way back to the shore as the silvery liquid dripped from their suits, Dustin pulled his gun once more and swept the cavern. “Did you see where it went?” he asked the trembling woman beside him, slowly backing them up towards one of the walls.

“Wh…where what went?” Jaisyl’s voice sounded like she was on the verge of hysterics, which wasn’t good.

“The thing that broke the rock beneath your feet back there. Something lashed out and caused the edge to give way - it was just ahead of you while we were sliding down, but I lost sight of it when we rounded that last bend before we splashed down in the mercury lake.” Dustin glanced behind them to check the wall was clear, then made sure they were both standing with their backs to it. “Something is down here with us, and I need you to keep your eyes open - if you spot any movement, shout.”

His suggestion that they weren’t alone in the icy darkness did little to help with Jaisyl’s panic, his suit beeping to inform him of her skyrocketing pulse and rapid breathing - but he didn’t have time to deal with it at that point. Something had just moved under the surface of the lake, ripples spreading through the mercury as he’d spoken. Dustin tracked the wave, keeping his gun pointed in it’s general direction but not willing to assume that whatever was causing the ripples was also whatever had tumbled them down here. The facility had been set up to investigate silicate life in these lakes after all, but his scanner hadn’t detected anything silicate on the body of Heran.

It was a good thing he hadn’t been fully focussed on the wave; Jaisyl’s scream dragged his attention to the other side of the cavern, his pistol coming around to track what looked like a blob of flesh crawling along the wall in the light of her helmet torch. But, before he could fully process what he was seeing, the sound of a splash caused his gaze to flicker back towards the wave. Dustin’s eyes narrowed as he took in the sight of a rising tendril of silvery matter flexing it’s way out of the lake. It looked like in addition to whatever the fleshy blob was, there was also some kind of silicate worm - all refractive angles and segmented body.

Neither of the creatures appeared to be particularly fast nor interested in Dustin and Jaisyl at the moment, but he was pretty sure that’d change as soon as they realized that the human and Tho’unn inside the icy-cold space-suits were actually composed of nice warm squishy flesh. He needed to think. He had limited ammunition, and in any case the pistol wasn’t nearly as strong as a pulse carbine. Their route back was a long, slippery climb up an icy slide, or possibly to try and find a way to blast through to somewhere the research base had been investigating and pray the locals had left a means of getting back into the facility down here.

“Jaisyl…” he hissed, grateful for the internal communicators keeping their voices from being overheard. “I don’t know if either of them is friendly, but I doubt it. They look pretty primitive. We’re going to circle towards the fleshy one.”

“Why?” her answer came back instantly, her voice shrill with terror.

“Because,” Dustin began “that one looks more likely to take damage from the pistol, and it’s the only one like it I can see. Who knows how many of the worm things are lurking under the surface. Plus, it’s closest to the shaft back up - we take it out or slow it down, maybe the worms will hunt it - but either way it won’t be coming after us if we try and climb back up.”

Jaisyl glanced at the glittering ice-dust that was falling from the mouth of the slide. “How exactly are we supposed to climb back up that thing, even if we’re not eaten by the monsters?”