CHAPTER TWO: GURGLESPLAT, SWEET GURGLESPLAT
The tunnel was troublesome to climb as it was cylindrical and thus more of a large tube than a proper flat path. On the other hand, the surface of this tube was rocky and irregular, as if cobbled together from a thousand different quarries, with pockets and veins of what appeared to be the metallic glint of iron. This made for slick spots under their footing and added to the precariousness of the ascent.
The Captain stopped momentarily and rubbed a finger over a rounded knot of the ore. Only able to proceed in single file, the Captain was forced to glance back over his shoulder to remark, “Look how smooth and polished. Some of this hematite seems to have already been smelted.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m baffled, Jobi,” the Captain answered. “Most assuredly baffled.”
They moved on. The only sound beside their footfalls was the soft whoosh of wind moving into and out of the tunnel. Now this might disconcert your average 19th century citizen of the Western World. But it was commonly understood to those adventuresome sorts that tended to find themselves in such subterranean environs that many larger caves breathed, as it were. For those with a more scientific bent to their adventurous nature, that also tended to find themselves in such subterranean environs, it was further understood that this breathing was caused by multiple openings into a cave system and the barometric pressure outside drawing in and forcing out air from the cave. For the truly transmundane sort of adventurer, such as the Captain, that always seemed to find themselves in such subterranean environs, a breathing cave would only evoke the response: “I’ve once encountered an entire paraverse that was alive. What of it?”
That is, he would have asked such a question if he was not baffled by other mysteries of this breathing cave himself. “It smells something awful!” he remarked, curling his nose over his well-waxed mustache. “Shouldn’t that be fresh air moving through here and not these kennetseeno gusts?”
“Perhaps the Gurglesplat is dead and rotting,” the lanky Anasazi hoped out loud.
“Pah! It’s like a hippo’s breath!”
“Then again, perhaps we smell the rotting of the last folk who came in here seeking the Gurglesplat,” Ghost-Tongue added.
“Death-dealing! An absolute pong of the highest magnitude!”
“The thing could be so repulsive and vile that it dens amid its own scat.”
“Or perhaps,” the Captain opined, “the Gurglesplat has come to stay in this remote place because it was driven from its home in a quaint little village by its neighbors due to its unavoidable and offensive stench. Mayhap it was a curse laid down by some criminal witch or a deformity spat upon it by nature. But by no means do I imply that this malady is the fault of its own. Perhaps this poor and tragic Gurglesplat was forced into this hermetic lifestyle for no one can long stand its odorous whiff!”
Actually amazed to hear such consideration leap from the lips of Tripp Vaguely, Ghost-Tongue was forced to ask, “Is that pity I hear?”
“Ibis-headed god, no!” the Captain barked. “I’m with the villagers. Run the stinking varmint out of town. Anyway, it’s hard to pity a fellow who eats bears.”
Ghost-Tongue nearly breathed a sigh of relief as they continued on their way.
And what a way it was. While certainly not near the distant summit of that gigantic heap, it had to have been several hundred feet of sheer twisting incline before the tunnel leveled off into a sizeable cave. Just like the tunnel that spawned it, the floor of the cave was uneven and seemed to consist of any number of rocks and debris, not one similar to the next, forming a sort of egg-shaped chamber more than a dozen yards wide and even more so deep. It blossomed before them in a myriad of color and shadow under Marybelle’s yellow torchlight.
The faint drip of water into various tiny pools reverberated around them as the Captain slowly waved the light back and forth, scanning the area. It all seemed rather barren and uninteresting until the light fell upon a mound of sticks and straw in the distance.
“A bed!” the Captain hissed.
His cohort nodded. “And there, two more tunnels.”
“Perhaps we have caught the beast when he is not at home.”
Then a splash resounded and the glint of two silvery eyes flashed in the yellow light. Something man-sized and quite quick was headed for them. “Be ye insane?” the blur of motion whispered through a raspy throat.
“The Gurglesplat!” the Captain announced and furiously spun a gear on Marybelle’s side. Mere seconds later a crackling band of electricity appeared between the prongs of Jacob’s Incapacitator™; a handy, mechanical attachment to Marybelle brought to you by Vague Enterprises. Alas, the seconds involved in producing this effect allowed the frantic blur to close in and, after shunting under a jab of Ghost-Tongue’s spear, it dashed directly into the Captain’s chest.
“Go ye must!” it whispered frantically as it landed solidly upon the Captain, who was now flat on his back. Marybelle sparked in the air like a rabid lightning bug.
“We’ve only come to ask you a question!” the Captain barked.
The creature, visible now, was a nervously twitching wreck of green, slimy skin and tufts of black hair. A gnarled crooked nose hung over twisted fangs and its eyes were wide, bright silver. “Quiet!” it demanded, but kept its voice to that same harsh whisper. “Ye be quiet and go!”
It deftly leapt aside when Ghost-Tongue struck at it with his spear again, rebounding off the wall and back onto the Captain’s chest, evoking a loud “Oof!” from him. It turned its silvery orbs on Ghost-Tongue then and quietly insisted, “Go!”
“Or what, you maniacal troglodyte?” the Captain growled and landed a solid blow to the Gurglesplat’s jaw. Again, it bounced away only to spring off the face of a wall and come slamming back down on Tripp.
“She’ll wake up and kill us all!” it rasped.
“Who will wake up?”
“Just go!”
“Listen here, old boy! We’ve stomped across half of Arcadia to get here and then clambered up an eternity of noxious stench for added measure. So I can assure you, we are not leaving until we are quite satisfied!”
“Shhhhhhhh!” it begged. “Fine! What is it ye want? Just ask it quietly!”
“Then get off of me, foul monstrosity!”
It scampered off of the Captain and shrunk into the shadows, nervously glancing about in every direction.
Standing back up, and uselessly wiping at the grime that had smeared across his britches, the Captain growled as lowly as he could remain audible, “You are a most unwelcoming host, sir. But certainly less violent than I anticipated when the pixie sent us here.”
Ghost-Tongue eyed the anxious humanoid and considered his Spartan surroundings. “You live here?” he asked in a soft voice. It nodded and grunted an affirmation. “On your lonesome?” Again it nodded and grunted. “Then who is it that you fear?”
“Who? Are ye mad?” it squeaked. “Look around ye!”
The two men did so and thought perhaps they were missing something. They looked back to the green monster and it groaned, “The Mother Fomorian! The Slumbering Slag!” Hunched and quivering, the Gurglesplat began nipping at his yellow fingernails and muttering fearfully.
“He’s as crazy as a loon,” the Captain muttered. “Let’s just get on with it.”
“By all means, Cap’n,” Ghost-Tongue nodded.
So the Captain reached into one of his belt pouches down to his elbow and began to rummage. The Gurglesplat saw this and forgot his nail-biting in wondrous appraisal of the Captain’s deep pockets. “Firbolg!” the monster whispered. A moment or so later, the tiny wood and brass cannon sat in Captain Vaguely’s open palm, which was help out before the Gurglesplat for inspection.
“We are looking for the gnome that made this.”
“Dhamnú,” the creature spat.
“Excuse me?”
“His name be Dhamnú,” the Gurglesplat moaned and dragged his fingers fretfully th
rough its glossy black hair. “In Kettle’s Knob, just over the hills, toward the sunrise, beside a great oak tree, you’ll find his hut. In Kettle’s Knob. Where everyone hates him. Now go!”
“Well why didn’t you say so to begin with,” Captain chuckled.
Ghost-Tongue, on the other hand, pursed his lips and wondered aloud, though quietly so, “How does a mad hermit know so much about a gnome?”
“Very true,” the Captain concurred. “How is it-“
“Shhhhh!” the Gurglesplat demanded.
Clearing his throat, the Captain lowered his voice and asked again, “How do you know this gnome?”
Almost instantly, the Gurglesplat reached behind itself and pulled something from the waistband of its loincloth. “Because he made me this!” it explained, and in its hand, the frantic green creature held a thin brass fife. “He made it for me when my wooden one had fallen apart.”
With a few twists to the dials of his goggles, the Captain looked it over and then reexamined the tiny cannon and soon resolved, “I’d say he did. Bravo, old boy. You’ve earned your lot.”
“Shhhh!”
“Yes, yes, yes. The Slag Mother or what-have-you. Here,” the Captain replied and reached into his pants pocket. “For your trouble.”
For the Gurglesplat he held forth a butterscotch candy wrapped in wax paper. The gasp that escaped the creature was more than expected and it gobbled the thing up instantly. “Ye’ve sweets!”
“Well sure,” the Captain explained. “I wouldn’t travel Arcadia without proper currency.”
“You have… more sweets?” the Gurglesplat wondered, his voice having risen above a raspy whisper.
“I suppose I do for a helpful fellow such as you.” The Captain retrieved another candy and handed it over. The morsel disappeared before the wrapper could even be removed.
“More!” it groaned.
“A ravenous nature,” Ghost-Tongue remarked under his breath and began to take a defensive posture leaning toward the tunnel through which they had arrived.
“It would seem so,” the Captain agreed, winding the spark-igniting gear again. “Now see here, old boy. I’ll give you one more and that’s it, alright? You can’t leave me penniless in the Land of the Fey after all… as it were.”
He pulled from his pocket one more piece of butterscotch and showed it to the Gurglesplat. But before the thing could snatch or pounce or otherwise devour the candy, he flung it to the far side of the cave.
The Gurglesplat spun and dashed after the butterscotch, and just as swiftly Ghost-Tongue and then the Captain started the hazardous descent down the jagged tube. “Ugliest damned stairs in all the realms!” he cursed and took a precautionary glance behind them.
“More!” the Gurglesplat howled and appeared at the top of the tunnel.
“I guess we’re not required to be silent any longer, Cap’n,” Ghost-Tongue observed.
“That’s good because Marybelle is feeling a might talkative.”
As the Captain turned again to see where the Gurglesplat was, he realized it was already upon them. Bouncing and rebounding off the walls, using both its arms and legs, it launched itself at him and slammed hard into his back. This sent him flying down onto Ghost-Tongue who in turn began a swift plummet down the winding, stony passage, joined shortly after by those that struck him.
Sharp stones cut flesh and knots of iron bashed bones as Marybelle sizzled and popped. Fists were flung and heels were kicked in a dazzling flurry of airborne combat. A trio of whirling violence, they took shots when they could distinguish an enemy amid the many blurs of motion passing by but the tunnel itself proved more an adversary than any of the three could be. In the end, gravity would be the victor and their brutality would end when they collided with the ground as a singular mound of pain.