Some things you didn't need to see to believe. Just like Trevor didn't need to see the crushed rock next to him to know he'd nearly been killed. Another notch on his belt. Some people counted love, some violence – he counted how many times he'd failed to die. Lost count here and there. But the belief was firm now – more lives than a cat at least.

And the sound... He knew that sound. Meat against meat, dirt, and stone. A solo of metal that sang in thin notes of slice and slash and stab. Wondered if he even wanted to see what the stranger was doing. Perhaps it was better to leave it to the imagination. Some things weren't supposed to be known. The only marker in the darkness was a pair of blue eyes – too wild and bright to be sane. And even in this situation, he found that he didn't want to trust the fucker. Not even as a compass.

Rust and sweet hit him. Wet thwacks against a forgiving surface. The sounds belonged to something living. It was wet and angry. And as he...

DIG

...its misfortune was everywhere. Each stroke of smell soon followed by wind and an almost language. His breath was slowly accepting the truth and its shape. Of course.

A fucking shroudfiend!

There was no longer any time to be coy. Each land had its faults. They grew along lines and cracks, working their way through the earth. All of them content in the idea of allowing the briefest peek at the next chamber. But the the dazed fuckers were too eager in their DIG...

Why were his hands working the wall?

So he took the command, only not in the way the slimy shroudfucker would appreciate. Anxiety of cold compounded with the frustration of a stall ruined. Multiplied again against the hungry mouths filled only with dark thoughts. Grown into a weight above them. The suggestion growing clearer. That it was too much pressure. There really was no need to bear it all. That the land itself should just shrug.

When the screams of those caught dirt's indifference came back, they were half heard and half remembered. And they all had her voice. Slow and soothing.

DIG

And when the words came, they came like offered tea.

„You should go.“ Shake of his head absorbed by the gloom. „She's got me. You I'm not sure about.“

Would've said more, but ceiling started chipping between them.
 
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The other obscurata was not following. Was not protected nor shielding himself from 'the known voice' either, it would seem - the Shroud echoed through him and he was beginning to resonate alongside, caught in the web.
Maybe, the other obscurata wasn't persevering for long enough, after all. Maybe, he was not very clever, bullheaded about bumbling after him, it would seem, just to throw away his own precarious balance of calamity and its a sense - for what, exactly? The wraith did not know and, the more flesh melted like morning mist and bared what was under, the less he could feel about it.
Blue eyes weren't eyes, weren't dim halos in the dark. They were flames. Blue flames that did not spread the captured light, but had it, leaving illusory traces when they moved.

He turned the tip of his dagger to his own hand, where there was something still remaining. A low shiver passed through his weapon, and it was clean of shroud fiend blood. Only to spill his own. And slap Trevor with his open, wounded hand, across the face.
"WAKE UP."
He... It... Was not yelling, but then again, there wasn't very much that remained of Walter Thornley. The voice had its own reverberation, of many other voices trailing in unison, with Walter's guiding in the lead. It could have been anyone - man woman, child or elder, after or before. But it was him, now. What remained of him in the marrow of the hallowed bone. What remained of the anchor point to being, as anything that had a place, at all.

The slap's humiliation came with... Silence.
Silence cold as the deepest hollow between the distant stars, silence of a freezing, unmoving kind, because, in that hit landing, what could and was about to be ceased to matter. Everything that Trevor was - would be solidified in being true, and everything that stuck to the outer shell, tried to get inside and sing its own song with Trevor's blood and marrow - unwove, seeped with sweat through the pores. As simple and crude as the principle of transferrence itself.
There was a soft clack of bone against bone as the obscurata shifted posture in the dark, no fabric shifting, clasps clinking or even a leather creak.
"MAKE THE EARTH HOLD," it commanded with no breath but a trembling in the air weaving a voice out of every voice that lingered. "WEAR MY BLOOD AS SHIELD AGAINST IT." There wasn't anything left to draw more blood from. And later... would be later.

Peace, in feeling only little scraps of what Walter's heart could normally carry. Only the purpose remained, and a touch of consideration for this other, strange obscurata that seemed to create more chaos than order.
One of them had to be competent, then, if the other was so hellbent on wasting chances.
It moved faster in the dark than anything should rightly move, the shroud hissing and whispering in its wake, and tracked the frayed flesh scraps and slime where the tendril it had partially disrupted, the one it was planning to use to be delivered to the creature by the creature itself, if not for the delay.
Deeper in. Out of sight, should the ground collapse.
 
The blues were moving again. Frantic. They inscribed the air. It didn't much matter what they wanted to say, because there was only one word left:

D

I

G

Each flick spelling it again. Again. Again. Agai...

Slap came like punctuation. But not a full stop.

The chaos changed. Because someone had put their hand upon the scales. In the equal, he couldn't honestly tell what it was that struck him. But he knew blood for blood. It outlined his face in war paint. A thing wasted on a guy who wasn't a warrior. The liquid tasted like human blood – but then again, what the fuck did shroudfiend blood even taste like? Came with a quiet that made him miss the voice. Because the word gave him purpose and direction. Made him remember things he wouldn't mind dreaming of.

The work was no longer delicate in the slightest. Voice inside changed. To Trevor's own. Stranger's. But they were all lacking the allure of the original. One fiend wanted to dig. Another commanded for the earth to hold. But it was the third one that carried the decision. So he went deeper. His body couldn't much tell directions, but his feet knew down for what it was.

Tunnels shifted in kind. The ground sealed its throat, cough at a time. Exit too. Didn't need an engineer to know why.

Three fiends in the dark. And none of them ought to be let loose until this was done.
 
It would be quiet, then. The undulations and currents of the Shroud loosely woven by some giant monstrosity passed by like a breeze through hair, a song still sung, but nothing that could cling nor hook and make Trevor sing with it.
The caverns seemed to grow closer, the scent of dampness, disturbed dirt. Rust, acid and lilacs, the alien remnant of the wounds dealt to the thing. The heavy notion of - something there, in the dark, feelers spread on the floor ready to wrap around the ankle at one unfortunate move that would trample them... what concern could such a notion be to someone who knew his luck would shield him?

The one who warred - had dove into the bowels of the earth on the tentacle tail of his slithering prey, must have made headway to unknown means or ends. Easy to follow, so long as one wished to find the Thing.

A shiver passed through 'the known voice'.
A young man who was trying to dig with some piece of wooden rubble, a woodchip from a market tent pole perhaps, looked up. He did not start just a moment earlier, when a thin feeler wrapped around his dead friend nearby, yanked the body down the slippery, steep incline. Now his breath shook, panicked, disoriented - not able to see even his own bloodied hand with chipped nails.

The fog curled, thinned.
"Help?.." came a soft half-gasp half-sob in a female voice, down around one turn.
The fog thickened, rolled in like a forceful wave, the hum in the air piercing stone and flesh.
The young man returned to his work, tack-tack-tacking away with his piece of blunt wood at an angled, crumbling base of a sandstone slab.
The one who called for help returned to clawing at rocks and throwing them behind her.

Deeper.

Thinning teal and cerulean lights lined some cracks in ancient caverns. Glow worms, perhaps, or Shroud-infused fungi, that managed to cling to their centennial seats. Their light was not enough, nor did it welcome. But, perhaps, it was a reminder.

More and more black-purple flesh, glistening and slippery, covered in muddy brackish mucus that trailed and tracked behind the bits when they moved, detaching in stringent growths from one surface and reattaching to another.

None of the living still dug this deep in. Flesh gathered in larger clusters, but the path of least resistance - looked like a violent storm had passed through it. If they weren't ugly enough when whole, the dispatched shreds of flesh were torn, as if by turgid pressure, sliced cleanly open or apart with favor to the right side, while on the left it was a stranger sort of damage, the tendrils and clusters having been ripped through as if they, for a moment, were clay, soft thin tissue of paper solidifying to the consistency of molten glass.

To the unseeing comprehension, everything converged into a large subterranean hollow. Once a dome, with tunnels above and the square on top, it was now deeply dented, and the center mass of the collapse - well that rested squarely in the middle of a... a Thing.
It had too many eyes along its sides, no head - half a body of a mouth that could not quite open due to its predicament, and a proboscis that shot and speared something it'd just pulled close enough from the front.
It had too many legs below the line of its mouth, covered in carapace, shiny like river pebbles.
It had too many feelers, enormously long, that grew from its belly pale and darkened the longer they got. They spread so far along the floor that they turned into a tangled carpet close to its resting.
It shifted, parts popping in with squelching noises, tremors passing through its entire form and making the surrounding ground shake - and parts grew fresh elsewhere, only vaguely following its own pattern.
The Shroud around it made the smaller stones slide from the resonance, slow, chaotic currents manifesting enough give for gravity and light to bend.
And when it opened its mouth, though so slightly, fog would come seeping from it, Shroud manifesting into whole clouds of stretching fog that traveled through any passway it could find, carrying 'the known voice'.
It was larger than a rathaus, and viler in waking.

The other Thing was there, too. Harder to pinpoint.
It was the cause of the Thing Below detaching the tangles of its tendrils, growing chitinous spikes in trying to run the source of irritance through, jerking whole swaths of mass in an attempt to trap and crush. At times, it seemed to succeed. At times, it squirmed and screeched and warbled, sending painful ear-splitting echoes outward. They'd muffle in the fog, but the fog would thin when it could not catch its breath.
The other Thing didn't seem to breathe at the moment, nor did it stop. Launched into the wall, bone that wasn't bone crashed into rock, and then the Thing rebalanced itself and angled right into another counter-assault.

Later would be later. Later would be the price for every scratch and crack that ran too deep turning tenfold as it would manifest all the way through flesh. Later would be every bit of Shroud that would not linger enough to un-fray. Later would be humanity colliding violently back into the fallible body. Later would be later.
Now, he had to make it far enough, close enough, to get past the tendrils and the legs - and land a strike through that carapace.
There was too much of it. It was too awake. It had somewhat fed.
Nobody will come to help you, a soft whisper of what remained of Walter Thornley, to himself, when he'd almost gone to join the lingering whispers under the starlit sky. Nobody is coming. It's just you. Get up. Get it done.
 
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The blackness gave way to a bruiselight. Even that light was sandpaper. Took a moment to notice the sight return. Barely. Thin tendrils of glow hung at the edges like teeth.

And the glow had form – thin, squirmy things. They threaded the dirt like veins. Fucking worms. He reached for one and it flinched – like it hated the contact as much as he did. But then it tired. Let him. Picked them like flowers and one became three became five, until the cupped hand could barely contain them. A handful of writhing light. Like a bouquet no one sane would offer, each member slimy and twitching. Romantic, if you had a thing for mucus.

Tunnel sloped down. Wormlight bobbed, just enough to know where not to die. They lit up just enough to see what he'd missed before. Fleshy bits claimed sections of the floor, maybe tentacles, maybe roots. Walked right over them. Hadn't touched a single one. Some would say lucky. He knew better.

The sound changed as he got deeper. Digging. Voices. The darkness in his veins reached as far as the elbow now. Wasn't sure when that happened. Worms came too late to explain.

„Trevor?“ Stopped clean. Head turned around as if it had been a ghost. And it was. Not her voice. But close enough. So near that it cut him before he was ready. She stepped from the next bend. Too tall. Wrong sway to her hips. Her dress no longer clung. Eyes forgot what color they were supposed to be. No rope marks. And he noticed – all of it. Didn't matter.

Because he heard his name again. Followed by the same smile she had when he turned eight. The year with the floods and that horrible rye bread. Could almost hear the air hum a song only the two of them knew.

Arm shook and grip weakened. Lightbearers writhed across his fist, inching down the wrist. She opened her arms, but he didn't come. Didn't know how to.

She approached anyway. And hugged him way too tight. Didn't fight it. Simply grabbed back. Even smelled like someone else. Held her regardless.

„It's alright. You did the right thing. I'm...“ And that's as far as she got before a rock found the back of her head. Couldn't even remember where he got it. From her, maybe.

Their goodbye would have to be a quiet one again. Almost said her name. But the air didn't deserve it. He'd already given it far too much weakness.

Laid her to the wall, away from the fleshy bits.

There was no time to feel. That would come later. There were more diggers and a bastard below. And he'd get them all, one thunk at a time.
 
And so he went along the diggers, one by one.
The fog would thin, and billow up and fill the lungs again.

They would come for him asking, praising, pleading. Some would come and try to make him dig. There was treasure in there. There was their son in there. There was a way out.
If only they went deeper.
The rock crumbled away.
The people crumpled up faster.

The tendrils seemed to have fallen dormant unless stepped on or kicked up by mishap - more and more of Thing's attention had to be concentrated protecting its core. Minutes passed, sounds of battle interspersed with screeching, slicing through flesh, wet squelches of parts hitting the ground and new parts erupting in a rabid turgor of the Thing Below regenerating like one of those oceanic depth monstrosities. Or so the merfolk said.

Pauses in the assault went longer by the beat, as well. A shift in an attrition match, the Thing Below bellowing and crackling, trying to free itself or shifting into the path of the Other's retreat. Fog billowed, tendrils would come alive in distant tangents of the caverns.
Then, the assault would renew.
Shorter. More desperate on either side.

The one Trevor was about to rock down seemed to snap awake, sweaty in the air that felt stale to the taste.
"Where...?.. Don't come closer! Don't-!"
A quick scurry, rocks disturbed, no tendrils stepped on - but the young man had lost his footing all the same, and seemed to land right on his ass.
"I can hear you movin'!" What should have been in warning, spoiled by a trembling voice.
 
What gentle was left in him stayed with the slumped shape of the first woman. The next few tried to wear faces he knew again – but it was all a lesser guilt. Smaller hurt. Shake left his hand by the fifth. By the seventh, he wasn't even pretending not to remember.

Only rage was left, and even that he had to chain by the sticky bit of rock in his fingers. He hoped he hadn't knocked the diggers out too harshly – but even if he had, all of this needed to stop. Who in the everloving fuck kept a shroudfiend under their city? Something was seriously wrong with these people.

Midstep and well past midswing, Trevor was caught off-guard by the latest guy. The worms allowed him to see sense come back into the glazedover eyes. The man didn't try to play on his emotions – simply feared being struck. Stopped digging, too.

„Awake? Good.“ There was very little patience left. „ Don't touch the fleshy bits. And don't foll....“ Ow.

Seemed like Luck was coming full circle. In his highandmightiness he stepped onto one of the feelers and got yanked toward the main body. Most of the wormlight dropped as he was scuffed and dragged down the slope. Even the rock betrayed him – accomplice meet temple as he ragdolled through the widening passage.

Wouldn't be long now until he was staring the bastard in the face. Both of 'em.
 
"A-alright, b- Wait!!.." The shout's echo died around the bend of a tunnel.

The scales tilted. Not for what Trevor'd done, but for every time he didn't stumble, every time he knew his way, every time he didn't slit his forehead open against a low-hanging piece of ceiling. And they were balancing out. The tendril didn't care much for Trevor's comfort on the turns, yanking indiscriminately, bumping and tugging ribs and head, tossing around until it suddenly stopped - the fight started again, alongside a cracking of the earth. The dipped in ceiling sunk lower, crushed the thing more.

The glow worms nested everywhere on the sides, many lay on the floor still alive, their dim light enough to make out dark silhouettes of many appendages moving, and a far, far smaller thing weaving between them in leaps and bounds that left quick-fading trails of dimmed light where it moved too fast.
Finally, it seemed to connect with the monster's center mass.

The Shroud howled. It was no longer a singing bowl, no longer a whale song. A tectonic, existential stutter. The thing's many eyes blinked out of sync and popped. The figure, meanwhile, seemed to hold itself upright by that hand that pushed the way into flesh, and the knife dug between chitin plates like a climber's hook. It screamed, too, in many voices and one. A pulse, like a deformed heartbeat, rolled along the cavern ceiling, again and again, uneven, impeded, trying to pick up pace to push through an obstacle - until it finally failed.

The Thing Below shuddered, its tendrils swiped wildly, blindly in a convulsion that rolled through its form, still trying to grasp and reach without full control over the limbs. And then, it slackened. A familiar sinking motion, last exhale of the dying ending and the death setting in. The small figure, after a beat, collapsed behind the mounds of flesh and sagging tendrils, too, the dagger - left stuck into the monster like a statement.

*

He had to claw back. Against the end of despair. Anything, anything that made Walter Thornley, that remained of Walter Thornley.

An autumn night, looking up into His face, both dirty and bloodied in the aftermath, His broad shadow more comforting than the magnificent blanket of stars behind. A calloused hand against the fever, softening the edges of grounding back into himself. Another 'later'. A memory all but drowned in pain of loss. But at least he could still feel pain.

Flesh came back to bone, and with it, pain of every sensation starting anew. All but his right hand came back, strange matter of the cloak replaced by clothes and few possessions digging into his wounds.
And the wounds... his left hand was torn up at the side, more than the blade inflicted. His left side, it would seem, was none too stellar, forearm bruised if not cracked, a gash on his shoulder that avoided the artery. Right leg outright broken. The ribs screamed against each other, it felt like.

A memory of family. Sneaking treats from the kitchen to share with Dolores, his large hound Garreth poking the long nose under his arm but smart not to make a sound. Richard going too strong at fencing, Garrick's scolding in the background as Anthea would tend to a deep cut on his shoulder. The love was still there, if not in the present, then in missing them and the rare moments of Home.

The core returned. A sudden realization that he had lungs, and needed for air. A choking, desperate gasp came immediately, another and another. Gods, the air was stale. It stank. But it was life.

A memory of belonging. They were a crude bunch, but loyal. Their Captain, tossing him around into the dirt each time his snotty talented face thought it got too clever. Keeping him on his toes. Reminding him that no one could get up for him. Teaching humility. He wouldn't earn a victory, or respect, until he'd earn it. Until then...

Heartbeat drummed against his broken ribcage, each beat painful as if unfamiliar. With each beat, he'd eat away at the lingering Shroud. Mend the most grievous things, slow and agonizing, to conserve as much as he could. There were so many grievous things on the mend. There was so much Shroud. Another battle, much quieter, commenced.

*

When the stench became too much, he could barely turn to the side, retching between suffocated inhales, but nothing came out of it. And then... then he realized that the cord on his neck was torn, the most of it pinched between the collar and his neck, but the rest...

The pendant was gone.

A wordless, anguished sob as existential dread of what had just transpired slammed against him and sharpened every renewed sense tenfold. No, no, no, no. He floundered, trying to push himself with his right arm alone. "N-no... wh...where..." Words floated to the surface in a whimper, and sunk back into the obscure depths where they always went when violence arrived.
He was in shock, veins pulsing purple but eyes blind as he checked and re-checked that the cord was empty, then tried to feel around, tears streaking down his dirty, bloodied face. It was gone. Gone, and he couldn't even get up to look for it.

The dented ceiling cracked with further promise.
But it didn't matter. The pain and heartbreak crushing over anew, like water splashed onto a flame, turned into sinking, powerless despair.

A few beats later, the man's movements slowed to a stop. A hissing groan escaped in struggle against his own limp body, neck and sides of the face still pulsing with the purple. He was alive. Full of Shroud coursing through him. And he was also spent.
 
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The gloomy fucker had killed the fiend. Must be why Trevor was no longer being bounced around like a nut needed cracking. There were men that had the courage to fight monsters head on – and then there was Trevor. He had...er...worms? Well, some of 'em. Those that didn't get squished by fist or wall, no longer trusted the nest of his hand. They nested all over his forearm instead. Far as light goes, this was a nice way to do it – long as you weren't squeamish. Left hands free.

If one of the wiggles tried to bite him, well... Trevor had had teeth too.

Darkest of his thoughts were interrupted by a cry further in the dark. Took a moment before wormlight would give the sadness a shape. The cree... no, the guy was falling apart. A relieved breath. So he was human after all. He could see a rock with the stranger's name on it since the moment he met him. Simply seemed too alien, more curse than a man. So there was hope yet in the fact that he remembered how to leak.

There were images a man saw that he couldn't forget. Stranger bathed in so much shroudshit that it had physical form was one of them. Hadn't seen that much leakage since...

Blinked the thought away.

Slipped once, then twice. Even dropped one of the worms in something orange and sizzling – Didn't stick around to find out. The octofucker died in a most unelegant manner. Left long strings of flesh on the walls, the floor, the high ceiling... wherever he stepped the ground was sticky and slippery both. When he finally knelt by the broken guy, he could hear a splash under his knees.

„Shhh.“ Patted the shoulder gently as the worms slowly moved to the calmer guy. Quite fed up with all the jittery movements of the previous landlord. „You won. It's done.“

Looked relatively unharmed. Also seemed to be a fucking meat grinder.

Right – so how do they get out?
 
The man who lay with barely shaky struggles to breathe clearly had no fight left to even try moving. His left hand was all bloody, but the fingers looked alright- once the pinky seemed to snap into the correct position by itself. Barely a shudder, a tiny noise of pain, eyes that began to drift open rolled back again.

His right hand, however, was... it moved like a hand should, though it had narry enough of strange, dark purple-grey skin wrapped aroundbone and not flesh. And every tiny end of it was covered in old, similarly withered scars from cuts, bruises, ridges from flaying, burns and rips. The scars were faint, ruby at the darkest, on the hand itself, but more prominent, less healed as they crawled over the wrist and all the way to the elbow in a twisting pattern of greyish-pale crests and darker reddish-purple grooves, as if once straight cuts healed in curving lines that interwove. A working, close enough approximation of what a hand once thoroughly maimed should be once it was healed - but not the correct final outcome.

Words would not come between those agonized attepts to reap aid into his lungs, but more tears came. The withered hand clawed at the man's own throat with blunt-nailed fingertips, then slowly curled around the empty cord around his neck. Tugged at it, unevenly, until it was freed, and extended its torn remains to where the voice was coming from.

It was so dark.
He needed to find it. What remained of his spring.

He couldn't have known that the oak-engraved medallion was snapped in three uneven parts by one of the blows taken, could not have known that those were buried in the muck right by the Thing's side where he'd left the dagger.

The world dove into darkness again, hand with the cord landing listlessly in what must have been obscurata's blood and the fiend's mixing together. It was soaking his clothes, who knows how many wounds were hemorrhaging unseen. And how many unpleasant, wet noises were his own bones slowly, ever so slowly, righting themselves before beginning to knit.
His eyes closed again, breaths shallow, darkness too inviting as a respite from the pain his mind refused to process.

There were noises in the tunnels. Maybe someone waking others. Maybe someone panicking. Maybe someone digging again.
 
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Wasn't sure what to do with a man that looked like a mirror learning to unbreak itself. So Trevor wrapped him in his own coat and threw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. They could do all that gentle shit later. Now was the time to get out, before Trevor too collapsed from exhaustion...or Luck just got bored.

Made his way up the tunnel he was dragged through. „Oi, Diggy.“
„My name...“
„Don't need to know. Take this fucker right here and carry him as we make our way up.“

Handed the unconscious killer over to the now awake digger. During all of it, he couldn't stop wondering whether that was all there was to it. For something so momentous, the catastrophe fizzled rather quickly. They may not need to dig if Trevor had a few threads left to spin. But it wasn't in Luck's nature to be forgiving, and he had a lot to account for. Diggy tried talking a few more times, but there weren't many useful words left to pass between them.

As he moved, Trevor checked all the people he'd knocked out earlier. The first one they came across was dead. And he understood the price of passage well – hated paying it all the same. Second one needed some help, like the Barrowborn did once upon a time. So he lent a hand and another body settled. Diggy seemed to abhor the idea – but dying quickly was preferable to becoming a potted plant up there. In an ideal world he never would've been struck in the first place. Khurun left much to be desired.

The third one felt correct to the touch – like even the air knew he was going to live. Too weak to move, he was put into the killer's previous spot and dangled lazily from Trevor's shoulder. Things were getting better – but shit, it was still two too many. The next two leaned on each other for support. Looked almost like drunken lovers, waddling through the barely lit passage. Only it wasn't lovespirit that struck 'em. No no – it was a different kind of asshole.

The sixth was already moving around, groping blindly in the dark. By some shroudboon, he wasn't too chatty. His head still bled from where Trevor hit him – and if his eyes were to believe, the guy was quite concussed. Which only left...

„You hurt me.“ Voice came before vision could. And he had – he'd hit all of them. But what the fuck do you say to that? He'd stone 'em all again if it meant stopping this. But then again – there wouldn't have been anything to stop if he'd chosen another place to poke around.

„Yes. Now walk.“
 
The crackling intensified, until the dented cavern collapsed further, burying the fiend, many glow worms, and whatever was left behind. Someone repeated Trevor's enlightenment about grabbing a bunch of glow stuff from the wall. People were aware the fog was thinning, and so, slipping step by cautious grab, they made their way past the inclines and turnarounds in the caverns.

It was almost as if disaster called by chance was counteracted in part by... whatever was unleashed to counteract it, albeit with delay - effort? Some kind of, gods forbid, will to overcome?

The source of that expenditure was now as limp as a sack of guts, flung on the back of one of the healthier folk mostly because he didn't know how to carry someone handy over just one shoulder. He was breathing, sweaty like the rest of them in this crowded, narrow space that didn't seem to end with air that didn't seem enough to fill the lungs.

Until something righted right under the pressing hand, and the man who carried him dropped him, staggering to the opposite tunnel wall with a yelp and a curse.
"What the-!! I just felt something move inside his leg!"

The only recently panicked people were easy to frighten - the remnants of dark-streaked creature that was dead caught in the pallid blue glow brought about the half-remembrance of them digging while it moved, and yanked some of them down its tunnel gullet, never to be seen again.

That was just about when Trevor felt a thin, arid wisp of smoke. Good news, perhaps, for the implication. And, worse than bad.
 
They were getting chattier on the way up. And even as his mind refused communication – keeping them all tuned down to an illegible hum – he couldn't help but notice the growing unease in the stuffy passage. He'd stoned all of them. Diggy had seen him kill a guy. All it took was four Rockies wanting to get even. Five of them in total, and only one of Trevor. But in games like this, one was the bigger number. Still – reaching the surface with all his passengers alive would've been preferable.

There was nothing to do but climb. And each step that carried him so easily down worked against him now. Probably for the best. He'd rather pay for balance in rolled ankles than the alternative. The soil had dried and learned to crumble. Slips and slides underfoot. And when the earth felt changed, the air too shifted.

A smell he knew too well. Smoke. And this wasn't just any exhale. Notes of wet pine paired with hints of burning cloth, bolstered by a roast he hoped to be tallow rather than flesh. All it missed were the screams for seasoning. Homeburn.

Didn't have to say a word. They all smelled it too. Climb got faster after that. Urgency dulled the pain and steadied the feet. Even Diggy shut his fucking mouth. Because even as the air above reminded them they weren't welcome, it still smelled better than being buried alive.

Trevor couldn't trust the quiet when it came. The burst of light and the gust of air could kiss his cheek all they wanted – didn't make them any more approachable. Because he knew that once they were back up, the nightmare would no longer be a dream. Daylight would make clear what he'd done, as above, so below.

It hadn't been a plan. Reaching for the surface just within grasp was an instinct. Somehow, he felt he'd pass easier if his hand cut the crust separating dark and day. Wasn't a cry for help. Someone grabbed anyway. Long nails dug into the forearm. He could feel them peeling as much as pulling. Didn't even have time for gratitude as he was dropped into the dirt like a sack. Midwife, true face hidden in blinding lights, was already turning to pull the next poor bastard out.

Dirt herself birthed them all. One by one.
 
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You won.
Somebody picked him up again, pressed on the wrong spot. He didn't resist, flail in a visceral animal attempt to avoid the pain, did not have enough air to waste in a scream that could spook further.

Darkness came, and swept him up like an ancient mother. Many feared her for everything dangerous that she hid. But she hid him, now, her gentle embrace obscuring what remained of Walter Thornley from the pain trying to claw that away into disgraced ferality.

His body, this skin and bones and flesh, housed a flame. An echo of the stars, cradled in the immeasurable vacuity. Not a man-made flame of ambition that sought to strip all shadows away for good, make Order manifest from flawed want. Not the aspect of the sun, which affixed Order in refracting light and disallowed forgiveness of the unknown and dreams of wonder; a temporary arrogance, for as sure as its lavish caress brought about the greens and red of life, it burned through greens and reds all the same, emerged from night, and to the night returned.

His vessel, this frail porous eggshell with many cracks and scrapemarks on its surface, could only house but a tether to the Firstborn Night. Terrifying to the mind's eye, incomprehensible in scope. Enough to contain all. Enough to obscure all. All for naught if there was no one to Know what lay within, in the most primal and true form; all for naught if there was no one to err, to forget, to misjudge.

His was not to look at the abyss, for it is Nothing, only grand by being naught that's known; but part the shadows just enough, to discover and relish in knowing what was concealed. So long as there was starlight. So long as there was someone to know.

His eyes opened when he was pulled from the ground. Closed, immediately - nothing like loose bits of dirt getting under the eyelashes. Blinked it out, along with tears. Lay where he was dropped, head turning just enough to see the lightening sky. Dawn would come. There were people doing what people were wont to do, some good, a lot selfish.
He could be a little selfish, now, mayhaps. And so, Walter didn't even try moving, waiting for the pain to recede.

There was still too much Shroud that escaped, was scattered. Half-manifested Shroud, one that filtered through him to return into the ambience clear. Half-imbued Shroud that carried the chimes of things that it was contained in, that it passed through. And people were breathing it, and it sought to be contained again, so it stuck to where it knew. Where the fog and the Thing Below claimed domain, it would seek to root and alter, though it would take time before changes became apparent.
Minds.
Lungs.
Limbs that dug.

Smoke billowed into the aquamarine sky in dirty-grey, edges of those dark clouds vaguely outlined in pale-golden promise of the sun soon to emerge. Amber, red, orange hues framed the ground's events as the fire spread, and people that could move - were in a hurry to save their posessions, or claim others'. Save themselves, and rarely others, too.

"Obscurata," the dry lips moved, offering a hiss-whisper that could be easily overruled by the noise and the hurried pace of life and dying, "I... lost something precious, down in that pit." Mouth thinned into a line, quivered. "Can you... make it found?"
 
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Kept his mouth shut. Glad all of them made it out alive. Significantly less so after the broken stranger opened his. Stared down at the sheer gall of it. Mouth started moving wordless, a few curses uttered mute long before breath caught up with the voice:

„Not even a good fucking morning. No thank you for taking me out of the damn fleshways!“ Trevor needed more air, but anger was still combusting. „Just hello Obscurata, please go dig through hell for my trinket. What the fuck is an obscurata?“

Looked up, resigned. Wanted to clock the guy in the head, but something was already loose in there – no need to pile on. Why couldn't Luck ever aim right?

But he wasn't blind. Just angry. And the trinket would find the other man. Might take a day, might take ten years – but it would find him, one way or another. Certain as the shit Aragor was in.
 
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