[RQ] This is fine

When Tal had swung by the Hollowed Grounds he'd been happy to offer Fox a ride to Torchline, figuring it would give him a chance to ask the other man about his own quest.

That was before he found out that Fox got airsick, of course. Like, really airsick. Sick enough that Tal hadn't managed to broach his question because he was mostly trying to stay as far away from the nauseous Ancient as the little boat allowed for, and making sure Fox knew to throw up over the downwind side of the stern.

But hey, they'd finally gotten to Torchline and no one had died!

Sure, Tal was going to need to scrub the sides of his boat with a fuck ton of soap for a half a day or more, but she'd been due for a detailing anyways, right? At least that's what he told himself as he plastered a twitching grin on his face and followed Fox down to the sand. He still needed to ask the other man his question, so he'd offered to tag along and help wrangle something suitably voidy for the quest.

But instead of some creepy daisies or a frozen pineapple, Boreal had spotted a purplish lizard of some kind and taken off after it with a hiss and a scramble of broad talons in the sand, chasing the infected geckoloth down into a crevice that turned out to be a lot deeper and wider than it had looked from above.

So now here they were, two men and a dragon chasing a little scaly horror down into the damp and salten depths.

What could possibly go wrong?

"Does it have to be alive?" the courier asked Fox dubiously as he peered through his Goggles into the tunnel ahead where Boreal snuffled along the rocks, tracing the lizard's trail with single-minded determination.

Fox has been apologising for what feels like years on the journey between the Hollowed Grounds and Torchline, and he's already committed to helping his steadfast captain to clean off the side of his boat. More fool him for believing that a smaller vessel would provide a smoother ride - he'd found the opposite to be true, in fact, and whilst he's sure that Talyson is great company, he hopes the other man doesn't take offence if Fox decides to take one of the larger skyboats back.

(He has a feeling it might come as a relief to the courier, if he's honest).

Initially the hunter had been hoping he might be able to get away with a void plant or something less wriggly and bitey, but gods, by the time they're walking out to Rae's Fingers in pursuit of the geckoloth, he just wants it over. With a terrarium tucked under his arm and a complexion that still hints towards the green in the right light, he manages a grateful smile across to Tal.

"Unfortunately," he murmurs. "It's to protect the Grounds against the void creatures, so they need to be alive for it to work." That's his understanding anyway. "Believe me, I'd prefer to give them a swift death."

(Fox would be correct in his assumption, and for more reasons than one. Tal wasn't real keen on having a void anything on board the Peregrine, and would react with ill-disguised relief when Fox tells him that he'll be taking a different ship home.)

"Yeah? Huh... wonder if we c'n get somethin' like that for King's End," Tal mused thoughtfully. "Guess that might be worth lettin' 'em live for a little while..." He shook his head, flashing Fox a wry grin at their shared dislike of the invaders. "At least this lizard thing is small?" It beat a full grown Tangleweed or Walking Void Dude!

Speaking of which, he really needed to go check on Petunia...

The tunnel continued forward, wide and comfortable, but Boreal took a sharp leftward turn into a smaller side passage. The ceiling dropped abruptly so that Tal had to duck. His boots splashed through an extended puddle and then a second, after which a constant sheen of water covered the floor. He grimaced and rubbed his hands reflexively on his pants as the weight and closeness of it all began to constrict around his chest. Seeking distraction, he called back to his erstwhile passenger. "So, uh, gotta kinda random question for you. How would y'feel 'bout an Old Gods shrine in th'Hollowed Grounds? Since there isn't one there anymore now?"

Boreal's nose followed along the wall, just above the water line as she tracked their quarry through the darkness, heedless of the water beneath her talons.

"I don't see why not. The leader of the Grounds asked Dygra for it," Fox explains. Not that he assumes the ruler of King's End will want to ask the Ancient goddess for anything, but at least he can say he's passed on whatever information he has in pursuit of the greater good. "And I suppose you're right. We collected a pretty big raven from up in Stormbreak. Hopefully this thing isn't as... intense." He wrinkles his nose.

Following the courier through the tunnels, it's only as they grow more narrow and, er, wet that the hunter gets a little nervous, splashing after Tal. "What do they call this place again?" he asks, attempting conversational and failing spectacularly.

Luckily Tal has just the thing to distract him, at least momentarily, and he raises an eyebrow at the question. "Wouldn't bother me," he says honestly. "I won't lie though, most people there pray to Dygra these days, I think. I try not to do a lot of praying in general, but I'd not begrudge anyone their preferences."

You know, as long as it's not a new Voice shrine. Let's not be crazy.

"Oooh, yeah, one o' those fuckers tried t'steal my ring!" Tal grumped indignantly at the memory of chasing it through the treacherous roots beneath Stormbreak. "Least I didn't see any big talons or beak on this thing." He scowled into the dark, following his dragon as Boreal kept them on the trail of their violet-infused quarry.

Fox's question was an equally good distraction, and Tal "ummed" thoughtfully, dark brows beetling together as he tried to dredge up the name. Giving it time to percolate, he threw a question of his own back, and heaved a none-too-subtle sigh of relief at having a solid answer from someone. "Yeah? Fair enough. I asked th'old gods about buildin' one an' Frey said I needed t'get permission from everyone there, first," he said, figuring he owed Fox an explanation.

"An' this place is Rae's...uh..." He hesitated, the name on the tip of his tongue. "Rae's... Sphincter, maybe?" That... that didn't sound right. That couldn't be right, could it? But the dark, dank depths that smelled of salt and rotting fish kinda maybe gave the name a certain tang of inspiration.

Boreal let out a sudden snort of predatory eagerness and lunged forward through water that was now ankle deep, bounding into a small cave that didn't appear to have any exits; a former bubble in the magma that had once carved out the tunnels. She tilted her head up at the ceiling, nostrils flaring wide as she started to draw breath for the classic draconic recipe for geckoloth a flambé.

"Oh? That's a pain - I hope it wasn't successful. We had to keep the thing at my place for a couple of days before ferrying it off to The Last Whisper with the other fauna, and that was rough." Wrinkling his nose at the memory, it's unfortunate that their present situation isn't much better when it comes to cheering him up - close, narrow spaced filled with water don't exactly delight him.

Tilting his head at the explanation, it makes sense to Fox, though he can only offer a gentle shrug in response to Tal's words. "You planning on moving to the Grounds?" he asks, naturally curious; it would make sense, with wanting to build a shrine there to the Old Gods. Why else would the courier be bothered with such a thing?

"Rae's what?" Fox begins, before the geckoloth is suddenly cornered and all their hard work is about to become charcoal. "Whoa, hey--" Wading forward automatically, Fox puts himself in the line of fire between the creature and Boreal - it's not like the fire will harm him, after all. And maybe the distraction will let him corral the creature into the terrarium he's brought.

"Well... it did steal my ring," Tal admitted reluctantly. "But we got it back. At least we could kill it. I dunno how you'd sleep with somethin' like that so close t'you at night." He shuddered, though it was only partially at the thought of a void critter, even caged, lurking in his home while he was unconscious. Mostly it was because the tunnels were tight and clammy and the water was only getting deeper the further they went.

It was the third or fourth time he'd heard the question, and Tal had to swallow the sigh that made him wonder... well... maybe they all had a point? But for the moment... "Not yet," he admitted. "But I'm there a lot on work an' I was thinkin'--" But exactly what he was thinking would have to wait as the geckoloth made a wrong turn into a dead end and they suddenly had other things to worry about.

Reaching the little cavern was almost a relief if it meant that they could get the fuck out of there sooner rather than later, even though the space wasn't nearly big enough to give the pair of claustrophobes much relief. It was even less reassuring when a burly dragon was readying a burst of flame that might not hurt Fox, but would definitely singe her human when the backwash rebounded off the rounded walls!

Fox and Tal moved simultaneously; as the hunter put himself between the dragon and their prey, Tal threw himself at his companion in a tackle that took her by surprise. She stumbled under his weight with a grunt, and burped out a small gout of flame that barely tickled the Ancient and missed the geckoloth by a mile. Her indignant huff was filled with smoke and she turned her head to blow it fully into Tal's face as she looked at her human reproachfully, momentarily distracted. "Now's you chance!" the courier called as he wrestled his recalcitrant companion in the shin-deep water.

Wait. Shin deep? Was the water getting higher?

"Oh, I see." Fox laughs softly. "Well, at least you killed it in that case. And we kept it in a room as far away from where we slept as possible. I still can't say I got a great night's rest, though." But it's all good - if their present trajectory keeps up, he'll be having plenty of new nightmares to plague him in the near future.

Luckily none of them involve being enveloped in flame (because that's actually quite pleasant, these days), but while Tal wrestles with his fiery companion in a splash of water somewhere behind him, Fox does his best to swallow up the geckoloth in his terrarium. "C'mere, you--" he snaps, and despite their combined bad luck - or at least it seems that way, a lot of the time - he does just about manage it.

Granted, the terrarium is also filled with a bit of seawater, but whatever. The creature might like that, right?

"I got it!" he calls, turning breathlessly to face man and dragon with a victorious smile, only to notice the suddenly deeper water. "This a bad time to mention I can't swim good?"

Conversation was replaced by chaos for a few moments as human met dragon and Ancient met geckoloth and no one was particularly happy about any of it. Tal was quickly soaked through, Boreal was indignant at being manhandled, Fox was trying to grab a slippery little bastard of a lizard, and the geckoloth was getting shoved in a tub. A fancy glass tub with a long, fancy name, to be sure. But a tub all the same.

Today was going great.

Tal looked up in relief at Fox's declaration of success, but it was short-lived as the hunter drew his attention back down again and the courier quickly let go of his dragon and scrambled back to his feet. "Uh... I mean, only if y'also can't run real good?" he suggested in the strongest possible terms. "Right, okay, we just gotta... Boreal, y'can find the way out, right girl?"

The dragon looked at her human for a long moment from pale reptilian eyes before she sat down in the water and began to scratch behind one horn. The tip of her pink tongue slipped out in a blep that spoke volumes.

Tal groaned and sank to his knees in the water, too soaked to care that it was nearly up to his ass. "Please?? I'm sorry about th'tackle, okay? We can go burn down a whole grove o' void pineapples after this, I promise!"

Satisfied with his groveling the dragon finally rose and shook herself, sending water spraying liberally over the two men before she began to half-trot, half-wade out, head raised above the slowly rising water as she began to backtrack.

"Let's go!"

That, at least, Fox has an answer for - and a very confident one at that. "I have had a lot of practice with running," he assures Tal, not that he's ever tried it in water that feels as though it's rising far too quickly to be funny. Not that he finds any of this particularly funny to begin with (though he imagines others, dear reader, might think it hilarious).

Busying himself in wrestling the terrarium properly shut while Tal tries - and fails, and grovels, and succeeds - to get his dragon moving, it's blessedly not too long before the two men and the reptile are wading their way to what he hopes very much is light, open air and safety. "You know what," he pants as he schleps his way forward to the distant opening in the tunnels. "Fuck Rae's Sphincter. And any other holes it's got, too."

If the situation hadn't been so dire, Tal might have grinned. As it was, he flashed Fox a look of deep and heartfelt understanding. It was like looking into an older and more handsome mirror of his future, sometimes.

But that was one awkward thought that could wait until after they'd survived their current situation.

The courier hoofed it after his dragon, who moved with confidence in spite of the pressure of the water flowing past the bottom of their kneecaps. It was lapping against her deep barrel chest, but she was able to put four powerful legs into the business of moving ahead, and her talons gripped the rock of the tunnel floor as she led them through another tunnel that just might have begun to angle upwards.

Fox's oath drew a surprised snort of laughter from the courier that verged precariously on the hysterical. "I mean. S'kinda what they're there for, yeah?" Well, maybe more Frey's than Rae's but... you get the picture.

The water reached waist deep and Boreal was swimming by the time the tunnel she was following led upwards once more. The tide had reached the hole they had slipped and slithered down at the start of the misadventure, trickling in with each wave at a slow but steady rate. Tal was on the verge of hyperventilating by the time he scrambled out and flung himself down on a patch of dry sand beneath the open sky, drawing great lungfuls of air in as every muscle in his body trembled with reaction-shakes.

"So, uh... let's never do that again, yeah?"

"Yeah, but I don't want it to be enjoyable," Fox pants as he wades after Talyson to what he sincerely hopes is the exit to a tunnel exploration that is quickly becoming nightmarish. "It should be a really unsatisfying fuck." Scowling and already feeling the burn in his calves and lower back as they begin to fight their way in an upward trajectory, he clutches the terrarium all the closer against his chest, because if he loses the thing now, there will absolutely be hell to pay.

Tal and Boreal manage to make their way out first, and the glass box quickly follows them, Fox shoving it to the side on the sand, before finally - blessedly managing to haul himself into the open air. Throwing himself in the opposite direction of the encroaching tide, for a few moments all the hunter can do is try to catch his breath, his clothes soaked, his boots filled with seawater and sand.

"You couldn't pay me," he blurts in response to the idea of doing it again, Fox reaching up to grab at a bit of seaweed and pull it out of his hair. "Pretty sure that claustrophobia added to the list of fears I have, too."

"Y'mean like what just happened to us?" They were out and into sunshine and fresh air again and that made it easier to joke - kind of - about the subterranean nightmare they'd somehow survived. Tal rolled his head to look at Fox a short ways across the sand from him, a weak grin kicking up the corner of his mouth at the seaweed the other man was removing from his hair.

Keep smiling, Tal. The courier had his own hair decorations to the tune of some brown kelp clinging to his shaggy mop that he hadn't realized yet.

"Yeah, well, join th'club. Meetin's're every other Wednesday at six sharp." He snorted and rolled his head back-- just in time to receive a facefull of dragon muzzle as his companion snorfled him over to make sure he was okay. "Aw, c'mon Boreal! Stop it!" He shoved her blunt, heavy head away and sat up, shaking the weeds out of his own hair with a grimace.

"So. Drinks? Maybe we can stick th'lizard under th'table an' no one will notice it."

Unable to help himself, Fox finds his laughter ringing across the sandy outcrop at the joke Tal makes - call it a release of adrenaline or just relief at being alive, but the other man is absolutely right. They have been unsatisfyingly fucked over by a hole in the ground. "The meetings had better be in a wide open space, or I'm not attending," he says in a voice made rough by laughing and inhaling no small amount of salt water.

Slowly, wet and covered in sand, Fox rolls himself onto his knees and manages to sit up somewhat, raking a hand through his dark hair. "Drinks," he confirms with an earnest nod, casting a quick (and rather upset) glance down at the terrarium and the geckoloth brooding within. "If it wasn't so important I'd hope we left it there by accident," he grumbles.

But it's with a nod - and while collecting up the glass box - that Fox commits to having a glass of liquid courage (or two) before considering his next steps.

Maybe he can even pass out on the flight home. One can always hope.

~FIN