Chapter Text
The physical shock of surfacing wailed against every sense they had, the ice water making way for warm air, and the need to breath ached at every piece of flesh they possessed. The sound of gasping, water splashing, and wood groaning echoed into white noise, fading to a ring. The taste of brackish water was replaced with the metallic tang of red iron. Bright spots for color grew and shrank against the dark walls around them, and the stench of mud was almost enough to choke.
As they regained sentience over the creatures of howling fear and pain, they first noticed that there was no longer an entrance to give light to the cave, as well as the lack of a colossal crab attempting to drown them. Then they noticed that the walls enclosing them were far closer together than the cave they had just been in, much too close to ever be mistaken as the same place. The last thing to notice, was that the boat was completely devoid of water, they weren’t even wet. The cat lay curled at the bottom, purring in sleep.
“What,” gasp, “the,” pant, “FUCK!” The loud exclamation and exhale of air sent Ava into a coughing fit, speckling wood with tiny droplets of blood.
In response, Cordie spit out a mouthful of blood into the water and groaned, “I bit my tongue.”
Ava retched, spilling brine back Into itself purging her stomach of the foul liquid. For minutes they sat in silence of mouth and ears, but not of mind. Terror, confusion, and guilt rioted in their heads, scattering sensible thoughts, only their bodies recovering from the shock and strain.
“Where are we? What was that? What’s happening?” Cordie croaked, pulling herself out from the bottom of the boat. Ava followed suit, but she stayed quiet, looking around and trying to see past the spots.
They stayed that way until the water around them went still, not even a ripple disturbing the surface.
“Are we in a different cave?” Cordie asked, taking Ava’s previous silence as an answer.
“It has to be, it’s smaller, we must have gone through an underwater passage or, something, I think, that dark patch over there is a tunnel, it might be our best chance of getting out…I wish I knew.”
“Well, we should go, before that, thing comes back for dinner.” And so Ava rowed, hand burning where the crab had picked apart her skin, and Cordie had been correct, the furious rowing at the waves before had widened and deepened the wound, turning it from a smooth cut to a jagged tear. Blood ran down her arm and to her elbow, where It would get thrown off in the movement and fall to the bottom of the boat.
The tunnel twisted and turned, keeping Cordie looking ahead to keep them from running into a wall in the pitch black light.
Dim light slowly trickled into their vision, slowly enough to not have them realize that they could see.
As they rounded the final bend, they found themselves at the entrance, the dull light showing them the outside.
Gray clouds encompassed the entire sky, light In some areas and black in others. But no attention was paid to the sky as they saw what lay before them.
Brown rocks and ground for as far as the eye could see, completely different to the grasslands and forest that they had been around. Boulders, ridges, and crevasses the only break in the flat landscape. The tunnel ended in a large pond, but no plants or animals were to be seen. Black haze rose up from cracks at the bottom of the water, the only thing disturbing the unnaturally blue waters. As they left the shade of the overhanging stone, and into the flat light, they saw that the ground was not dirt, but solid stone.
“Where are we?! There’s nothing!” Cordie said, hugging Sloane close to her, who mewwed the only reply she was to get.
Ava’s mind spun with ideas about what could be happening, another world being at the forefront of her imagination. Those thoughts were disturbed by the sound of a hammer hitting rock, and a red and green crab stabbed the ground, walking out from behind a large boulder. It was the size of an S.U.V. and still only a fraction of what the last crab had been.
The sound of more pointed legs hitting stone came to their ears, ranging from the small clinking of the house crabs, to the crashing of the colossus.