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| Image Credit currently unidentified. Unable to find original artist at this time. All rights to original artist. |
The Chronicles of Jhool
Chapter 3
With the adventurers making their way further into the darkness beyond, it was not long before a deathly silence settled over the city's entrance. The silence of the tomb that it had once become fell back into place.
Light faded.
Dust settled.
The only sounds that infiltrated the darkness was an occasional boom from somewhere deep below, where the adventurers fought and bled against the unknown they had sought to find. And, infinitesimal to the veritable thunder-claps of far off combat, a soft chittering and scratching noise coming from the road leading in.
A ferret, lithe and furred, chipped, chittered, and squeaked as it moved along the hard stone road. Its fur was patched with blacks and browns against a dirty ivory and it moved with the uncertainty of any wild beast in a new world. It had never been in this city before, this cave of sorts, and it wished to take no risks of being discovered by something larger and more ferocious that might have a taste for mustelids.
Earlier in the day, it had seen the three humanoids, strange and goblin-like in their tendency to stand on two legs, pry open what the ferret had believed to be a sheer cliff-face. It had ignored the action as little more than a curio, an oddity the little weasel couldn't quite make sense of, in favor of hunting down something to fill its aching belly. But he was curious by nature and, once sated with a rather unfortunate field mouse, found himself returning to the scene a few hours later.
He was hesitant at first to enter the hole the creatures had made in the cliff. While it didn't mind the dark of the cave, there was something distant that lingered in the air that he couldn't quite identify. Something smelled wrong about the air.
Something dark.
Something far below.
The ferret's nose worked wildly, often catching a whiff of whatever it was that sullied the world of darkness, but occasionally finding something new and interesting. Very little smelled like food here. The most interesting thing thus far that didn't make his hair stand on end was the splattered remains of the elf's fists on the semi-broken statue.
After a brief moment of investigation, the little mustelid considered that he was a fan of the hole left in the statue's side and that the elven blood tasted strangely sweeter than the mice he normally fed on, but that the statue offered little else.
He moved on quickly.
Doing what he could to avoid any contact with the offputting smell and the sounds of screams and explosions from down below, the ferret followed a branching path off of the main road that led away from the stench and the noise. The path lead down and away, curving smoothly past any number of closed doors and sealed portals. Every now and again he'd slither or snake his way through the occasional ancient skeleton or over a pile of debris, and soon found himself at the end of the road.
The portal before him gave him pause, if only due to the ferret's attraction to shiny objects.
The end of the hall was mostly blocked by a massive set of double doors that appeared to be made out of a forged tapestry of golds, silvers, and blues. Gems glittered and shown, accentuating the edges of the doorway in sapphire blues and ruby reds. In its hay-day, the little weasel could never hope to get through the nearly foot-thick metal, but gave little thought to the door short of a quick and valiant attempt to pry a gem from its socket before passing through the cavernous hole that rent most of the doors' base inward.
What did it care of the obvious destruction? It knew nothing of the force required to cause such a hole. It just knew that the way was open.
Better yet, there were other shiny things inside.
With an excited squeak, he scampered through the destroyed door and promptly clambered up a glittering pile of gold coins and gems. He was so overwhelmed by his discovery that he tried to hop and accidentally rolled back down the loose terrain, buried in a tiny avalanche of gems.
The ferret held no understanding of the colossal wealth before him, but his excitement was baser than that. While it wasn't food, he had a love of shiny things, and this room fit that love quite nicely.
For as far as the ferret could see from the top of his little gold mound, the world around him shimmered. He could see golds and greens and blues and reds everywhere he looked, piled in veritable mountains that rivaled the hills and trees from the world outside. Everything seemed to buzz with an energy that, though he didn't know it, was the magic of thousands of different enchantments and items of untold power.
The ferret didn't know what to do with himself.
All thoughts of the sounds and smells from outside were gone. He lost himself running over, around, and digging through the different piles. He picked up and dropped coins and gems and baubles, replacing each with a new, more interesting one seemingly every moment. This world was overwhelming and he wanted all of it to take back to his den.
The cycle repeated itself countless times as he worked his way further back. While he was unaware of it consciously, he knew that he had to find something. The perfect something.
A green something.
Yes, he agreed with the thought, something green.
Something green as the trees. As deep as the forests. As alive as nature.
That sounds good.
The ferret snuffled and hunted. Sniffed and prodded. Licked and bit. Ran and scampered. The romp had become a hunt.
He had to find it.
Find me.
He had to find it.
Were the ferret paying attention as he had when he'd entered the city, the scent leaking through the walls might have given him pause or maybe even made him run back the way he'd came with the first shiny object he could find clamped in his teeth.
But his attention was elsewhere.
Find me!
Why would he pay attention to that squishing noise? He had to find it. Whatever it was.
Green as the trees. the voice whispered in its mind. Deep as the forests. Alive...
He cared about the green of the thing after all. Not the black oozing through the walls. That didn't remind him of forests at all. It looked like tar. Tar didn't matter.
FIND ME!
Only it mattered.
And find it he did.
The green something, a strange smelling green gem unlike any the ferret had seen, was buried at the base of one of the many piles of treasure. Staring into the starry center was like staring into the deepest grove of oaks at twilight. The green seemed to glow but the dark core glittered with unseen starlight.
Carefully, gingerly, the ferret closed his mouth around the iridescent green gem and felt a soft buzz of energy running through his body. It tingled and made him feel happy.
Rewarded.
Good.
And then the mountain of treasure before him exploded outwards, a mass of black tar and shadow filling the space before him, reaching for the squealing ferret as he was thrown backwards into the air.
