The bottom of the pit had the same exact floor as Realmspace’s main surface, glossy smooth cold hard stone. Despite the apparent evenness of the ground, the walls around the outside of the pit were full of jagged edges and wide sharp spikes. It looked like someone had smashed out the pit by hammering on it, causing the normally smooth stone to become sharp and jagged like volcanic glass. It would have been such a pain to climb down.
It wasn’t all jagged walls though. Addie knew there was a complex system of tunnels around here. She swept her cone of spatial sense all around the room, looking for an opening.
There were three, in total. One really small, Addie suspected only an ant could fit through it in the first place. The hole was so small Addie thought she wouldn’t have been able to notice it if she was using her eyes, only her spatial sense made the spiraling pinhole tunnel obvious.
The other two were both quite a bit bigger, one about roughly Addie-sized, though she knew from her dream that tunnel became narrower the longer you traveled through it. Instead, Addie turned her spatial sense over to the dragon-sized tunnel on the far right wall.
That was where she and Squishy would begin walking down. She couldn’t help but be worried she would bump into some kind of spatial sense-evading creature like the Pigling. It really made Addie wish she had a light of some kind. If she ever came back here, she would definitely bring one.
Together, Squishy and Addie began walking down the tunnel. Addie hugged up against the far right wall and trailed her hand against the cold smooth rock that made up the inside of the tunnel. It felt like chilled glass. Unlike the entrance to the massive pit, this particular tunnel seemed to be carved out with diligent care. Addie didn’t want to do math right now, but she suspected the large tunnel was carved out in a perfectly circular shape, and each wall was similarly perfectly carved such that not a single jagged edge remained.
Squishy walked slightly in front of Addie, and he was similarly walking along the right side wall. Addie narrowed her spatial sense down just in front of her as much as possible, but she still couldn’t see the end of the tunnel.
They just walked like that, for a time. Addie knew if their magic ran out, the would likely have to start over at the start of the tunnel entrance since Realmspace would punt them out into Reality back on the surface. She didn’t particularly want to start walking from the beginning again, but she also didn’t want to run into a giant dragon headfirst if her spatial sense was blind to it.
She needn’t have worried so much. Soon, she saw a distant glow. She hurried a bit closer to the light and came across a marvelous sight.
Trails of glowing melted gold started embroidering themselves into the tunnel walls the further she walked. She didn’t remember that from her dream.
She watched them wriggle inside the walls. It was enchanting, watching the glowing gold spin itself into fantastic geometric patterns.
Idly, Addie traced her finger against one of the lines of gold, but it felt just as smooth and cold as the rest of the wall. If Addie had been using touch alone, she never would have noticed the gold was even there at all.
As they advanced down the tunnel, the patterns became denser, until the regular twinkling Realmspace stone (Realmstone?), until the twinkling Realmstone became nigh non-existent. At this point, it was more like the walls were gold and the Realmstone was drawing the patterns in the stone, though Addie knew from earlier it was actually the opposite.
It didn’t take long for Addie to notice the first creature. It wasn’t paying any attention to her. The sickly green Pigling looked exactly how she remembered it. It was doing something to the wall. At first glance, Addie thought maybe it was studying the golden designs, but as she got closer and closer to it, she realized it looked more like the creature was pressing its three stubby fingers against the gold and mumbling under its breath. For what purpose, Addie had no idea.
Addie gulped, now that she was getting fairly close to it. She hoped it might just ignore her and let her pass by peacefully, but just as she had that thought its head turned sharply. Its surprisingly human-looking eyes stared straight into Addie, causing her to freeze in place. After a few moments of studying her, the pigling went back to its earlier task, just prodding the wall in seemingly random locations.
Since it was so content to ignore her, Addie just kept walking past it until it was so far behind her that it went out of sight.
“That was weird,” Addie vocalized aloud, “I thought it would attack more or something at least.”
Wasn’t the pigling what had hurt her and Nettal’s soul in the first place? It didn’t make sense to Addie that it was content to simply ignore her.
“Indeed, if some random monkey creature intruded upon my home, I would not be so willing to leave it to its own devices.” Squishy agreed.
Addie wrinkled her nose, “I’m not some random monkey!” She protested.
“Truly? Odd.” Squishy seemed surprised.
Addie huffed out in mild outrage, “You know I’m human!” She tried to defend herself.
“Well, yes, but I assumed humans were some kind of subspecies of monkey. You look exactly the same to me.” Squishy spoke without any shame. His matter-of-fact attitude was like a splash of cold water directly in Addie’s face.
“Monkey? I don’t look like a monkey at all!” Addie half-shouted.
“And I do not look like a cat.” Squishy rebutted. Addie could even see a little smirk on his face.
Addie crossed her arms against her chest. Maybe Addie could kind of see his point.
“I’m not a monkey, but you are definitely a silly cat.”
“Of course, my lady.” His smirk was still there.
The rest of the walk was mostly uneventful, although the gold on the walls seemed to become more and more active the deeper they went into the tunnel. Where before it had seemed like trails of gold wriggling around, now it looked like giant sheets and ropes of gold undulated and in some cases crested into waves reminiscent of a small pond being disturbed by wind.
Another, what Addie guessed, twenty minutes passed by just like that. No more Piglings, just Addie and Squishy walking through an undulating golden tunnel. No matter how much it seemed to be moving, each time Addie pressed her fingers into it, it felt just as smooth to the touch as always.
They walked for so long, in fact, that Addie began to wonder just how long this tunnel was, anyway. She felt certain that each new expanse of the tunnel was different than the last, with the patterns on the walls being so different, but it almost felt like she would be all grown up by the time the tunnel ended.
What was stranger, every time she checked on the magic within her soul, the same magic holding her and Squishy in Realmspace, it never seemed to diminish. Even though she suspected it was getting close to an hour, the magic holding them within Realmspace was nearly as strong as it had been when they started down the tunnel.
After another boring twenty minutes, Addie began to grow frustrated. Even if her magic wasn’t going to disappear anytime soon, she didn’t want to keep walking down this tunnel forever.
“Squishy, can you claw at the wall a bit? Let’s make a mark on it.”
Without replying, Squishy went up on his hind legs and started to paw at the wall. Each time he raked his claws against the stone, the gold seemed to predict his movement and get out of the way before he dug in. Since all the gold seemed to evade his efforts, he was only able to leave big furrows in the cold smooth Realmstone of the walls. The gold avoided that area even as it writhed and undulated.
“Fascinating,” Squishy started, “Despite not making physical contact with it, I can almost feel the presence of the molten gold. Perhaps if I spend a bit more time digging at it I can figure out more.”
Addie cut him off, “Maybe later after we talk with the dragon.”
At this point, there was no denying it. The string of fate clearly pulled her in the direction of the dragon she remembered from her dream.
Thought, like the strangely similar walls, the string of fate on her soul shell hadn’t moved at all in the last hour or so. Usually, Addie had to make small adjustments to her course to keep in line with the changing needlepoint, but so far it had remained static.
Then, they reached a part of the tunnel with thin clawed-out gouges in the Realmstone, and Addie realized it was the same exact spot Squishy had dug at earlier.
“What?” Addie looked all around the walls, but the golden patterns were completely different than how they were earlier. She had been paying special attention just to make sure they weren’t going in circles, but somehow, they had been!
“That is certainly not what I expected,” Squishy mused over the bond, “I believed we were progressing forward just as you did. The gold in the walls must be moving and changing the patterns more than we thought.”
Addie huffed out in frustration and plopped herself right down on the ground legs crossed. On one hand, they weren’t in a hurry. Their magic still wasn’t close to running out (somehow). But on the other hand, they were wasting time. Walking through the tunnel had just proven to be pointless.
Squishy walked over to Addie and prodded her knee with his snout. Then, he sighed and laid down on his stomach just next to her.
It was so frustrating. Even with the string of fate guiding her in here, she was just wandering aimlessly!
Even with the string of fate. Huh. Wait. Even with the string of fate? Addie put her attention back over to where it attached itself to her soul shell. Just as she had noticed earlier, it hadn’t changed direction in quite some time. It wasn’t so much as moving in the slightest.
But it was still pulling on her, telling her to go out and find something, or someone. She focused on that feeling, the pull it seemed to have on her soul, and touched a bit of her magic into it. It reacted a bit, and Addie opened her eyes.
The molten gold in the walls all at once halted its movement. The gentle rhythm of its undulations finally came to rest. Then, all at once, the gold rushed out of the walls so fast that the displaced air rushed against Addie’s face as a gentle breeze.
At first, the molten gold just pooled out on the ground a few paces in front of Addie, but then it started growing upward. Just as it did in the walls, the gold pulsed and writhed up into the air in front of Addie, forming a giant circular structure. As the entire structure grew upwards from the ground up, either side became entrancingly structured in the same patterns Addie had grown used to from walking down the tunnel. Geometric shapes of brilliantly shining molten gold formed into patterns like a carpenter might make to decorate a particularly ornate table or bed frame.
And that is exactly what the gold was forming into, Addie realized. It was making a giant frame, a big archway frame that reminded Addie more and more of an ornate doorway as the patterns finished completion.
Then, the top of the left and right sides of the golden archway met together, completing the impromptu entrance. The entire thing flashed once, blindingly bright golden light forcing Addie to turn her head and close her eyes. Then, the flash was over, and Addie looked back at the now completed archway.
For the second time, the gold completely stopped moving, now looking as solid and sturdy as any normal metal. And past the archway, was a cavern filled with gold, books, and magical trinkets that Addie didn’t recognize.
Most strikingly of all, was a giant black dragon staring out from what Addie now knew was surely a doorway into his domain. The string of fate finally went taught, and then snapped and whisked away.
AN: You can also find me on RoyalRoad and on my discord.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/82948/whispers-from-realmspace
