Chapter 4: Cannibals and Spelunking

Jason slowly crawled his way into the dank tunnel, a circular pipe of wet and slimy brickwork. It was wide enough to push himself along, but tight enough that he was pressed against the clammy sides. The darkness engulfed him as he moved away from what meagre light reached the bottom of the well. Edging down the tunnel, touch was the only sense with which he could navigate. With the ubiquitous smell of wet rot, he wished his nose was as useless as his eyes.

“This is not what I planned to do with my day.”

If it turned out to be a dead end, he would be forced to shimmy backwards, the tunnel far too tight to turn around.

“Admittedly, my plans for the day were fairly loose, but cannibals and spelunking aren’t things you just casually slide into the schedule.”

Talking to himself didn’t help much, but any distraction was a welcome bulwark against the encroaching claustrophobia. The gloom of the well had seemed stifling, but the dark of the tunnel was much deeper. He felt panic’s icy fingers crawl over his flesh as the tunnel closed in on him. He knew it wasn’t actually getting smaller, but his rationality seemed powerless in the cold, wet oblivion.

His unravelling nerves were reaching their limit . He was ready to start pushing his way back and risk the cannibals when his hand came down on slimy, wet wood instead of slimy, wet brick. There was still no light, so he probed with his hands. He had reached the end of the tunnel, but had no idea what kind of space it opened into. He had a feeling of open space, but in complete darkness it could well have been his imagination.

His hands felt out some kind of platform made of wooden planks. It was wet and a little slimy, although it felt reliably solid under Jason’s hands. The surface of the wood was rough, like sandpaper. Some kind of long-enduring adhesive had been used to apply sand or something similar, improving friction on the wet planks. Jason had seen something similar on bushwalking tracks. Feeling around as he crawled free of the tunnel, he felt the planks were lined up to make a walkway, a metre and a half wide.

It felt like there was enough room to stand, but even with the sand coating he didn’t trust the slick wooden path in the dark. He continued forward as he had in the tunnel, hands exploring in place of his eyes. Just a short way down the path he found a vertical metal rod sticking out the walkway, at the edge to his left. His hands traced the shaft upwards to a hooked end, from which was hanging some kind of metal box with a loop on top.

Item: [Crude Magic Lamp] (iron rank, common)

A simple lighting device fuelled by low-level magic. (tool).

• Effect: Casts light.

• Current charge: 00%. Requires a [Lesser Spirit Coin] to replenish.

Jason tried using the glowing window as a light source, but even hard up against the lamp it failed to produce so much as a murky outline. Jason fumbled about to unhook the lamp from the pole.

• You have acquired [Crude Magic Lamp].

• Current charge: 00%. Requires a [Lesser Spirit Coin] to activate.

• Expend 1 [Lesser Spirit Coin] Y/N?

“Please and thank you.”

As the lamp lit up, Jason discovered the hard way that he had been holding the front of it pointed directly into his face. He screamed as light blasted into his eyes, dropping the lamp from his hands. It clattered away as he fell back onto the wooden pathway, moaning with hands over his eyes.

“Good job, genius,” he croaked, waiting to recover. “Light a lamp right in front of your face. Real smart idea.”

He tentatively opened his eyes and saw the space around him illuminated from somewhere below. The light was largely obscured, but compared to complete darkness, even some shadowy outlines were bliss. It was at least enough to recognise that he was in a natural cavern. It didn’t have the conveniently smooth floors of a video game cave, which was presumably why someone had put in the walkway, raised on thick wooden posts. Jason was already laying on the walkway, so he rolled over to reach down and fetch the lamp from where it had fallen. The walkway was only about an arm’s length above the cave floor, so he fetched it up easily enough.

Jason pushed himself to a sitting position and examined the lamp, careful not to blind himself again. As the name suggested, the crude magic lamp was a simple affair, looking rather like a miner’s tin lamp. It had three boxy, metal sides, a glass front in a loop handle on the top. Dropping it didn’t seem to have harmed the glass at all. Inside, the light came from what looked like a round stone, glowing like a light bulb. Using the lamp to get a better look at the cave, it was spookier than Jason would have liked, with plenty of dark crevices and ominous shadows.

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“Hello?” he called out. Between the racket he had made and the light of the lamp, there was little point trying to hide from any denizens occupying the cave. The quest drove him down into the cavern, rather than back into the cannibal maze. He was hoping that meant whatever was at the end of the cave was worthwhile. A pirate ship filled with enough treasure to stop the local country club from foreclosing on the family home would be ideal. He would be willing to accept someone who doesn’t eat people.

“Is anyone down here?” he asked. “If you want me to kill ten goblins in return for an uncommon spear, I’m only really equipped for light gardening.”