24/04/25 - Elrim: Level 1: Overgrown Caverns
AHHHH! You’ve accidentally fallen into a spike pit. Classic. How do you avoid being impaled?
Discord URL: https://discord.com/channels/1231358092071932004/1252714797296910439/1277154600931033101
Submission URL: link
Suggested Reward: x coins
Rewarded: x coins

It all happened so fast.

Quill had been chatting excitedly about something that he had seen in the foliage, trying to point it out, and Elrim’s vision had started to spin. Icy claws had clenched at his stomach as his attention focused on the younger horse prancing ahead without a care in the dungeon. Elrim’s breath had grown heavier. His lungs begged for more air than he could take in as his nostril's flared. Everything inside him screamed, an incoherent sound that resembled a banshie’s wail. Then his legs started moving of their own accord as he rushed forward in a frenzy, barely able to notice the details in the room as his vision narrowed to the single point of a horse and his goose.

He had felt the collision of the two of them. He had heard Walter's indignant honk as he shuffled out of the way. Felt Quill's scramble to remain on his feet as he was knocked to the side, a loud 'hey' shouted into the room.

Then thin planks covered under a veneer of loose debris gave way and he was falling.

Quill's shout changed pitch, became more shrill, more insistent.

"Elrim!"

He swore that he could hear him calling his name as Walter's wings drowned out part of the sound. His hooves scrapped against the sides, digging for a purchase that he couldn't find as a shadow reached from the darkness and wrapped itself around him, hiding the depths of the pit from sight.

Elrim gave up. His body stopped fighting. It wasn't purposeful, but he couldn't bring himself to move.

A couple of seconds passed by like minutes.

"Elrim." The voice was feminine, dry, weak.

His mind shuddered as it began to gather the shattered pieces of a different voice and a different courser. Fragments of images of a rope looped around him, hooves digging into rock forming grooves in the ground. The hemp pulling against his teeth as he tried to hold on.

———————

"Elrim," the voice snapped, "let me go. Don't let it take both of us."

He felt the tug on the rope as his hooves were dragged forward. He strained, finding the point of resistance where he balanced himself and her.

Her whose name he couldn't remember. Her whose voice made him want to turn around and run away.

Don't look too deep.

The voice that made him want to stay on the surface of his thoughts as it coiled around like a snake, dragging him down into the depths of his own thoughts like an rock dropped off a bridge into a river.

He couldn't hold the rope.

No.

He dropped the rope.

Suddenly he was tumbling back, the rope loose on the ground in front of him. It was still for a moment before it was pulled across the floor, dropping out of sight into the depths of the trap. The rock stretched out in front of him, taunting him. Five simple steps and he'd know if she was holding on. If she was somehow…

His mind reeled. The fragments of the memory falling like grains of sand in a desert, everything broke around him.

He had taken a step. He had to have. He wouldn't have left her behind. That's, at least, what he wanted to tell himself. Yet there was that voice that said that he hadn't. There was that voice whispered that there was a reason why she had walked in first instead of him. He'd known it was in the room.

———————

He crashed into the side of the wall and fell down onto the ground, head heavy. Everything aching. He felt Dream sliding across his face, barely coming into the periphery of his vision as he waited for the rest of it to catch up to him.

"Elrim! Are you okay?" Quill screamed above him.

Elrim's head dropped to the ground, more exhausted now than he had ever been. Bones mingled among the spikes nearby; solid ground beneath him. He felt numb.

"Elrim?"

Blue eyes watched the silhouette of a head reflected off of a lantern's light appear through the pit's open maw. He could almost see the whites in his eye as Quill stared down at him in fear.

A snort was the only reply he could muster as he stared at the blue snail on his nose staring back at him. He was sorry that it was in here with him, but at least it'd be able to get out easily.

"Hold on, I'm going to find a way down!"

"Don't!" Elrim barked, pulling his legs back towards himself, feeling no spikes piercing their limbs. He moved his hind legs and they too felt free. "You're only going to get hurt." The thought of Quill trying to come down spurred him to move.

It took him a couple more breaths before he lifted his head, trying to assess the damage and instead finding himself in a small area of the pit where the spikes were broken. An area large enough for a courser to lay and another to move around them. His chest ached as he got himself to his feet, trying not to think of the implications of what it all meant.

He shifted Dream to his harness as he looked around. All he knew was that he had been here before. This was the second time that he would have to crawl out of this pit. He shied away from the thoughts as he scanned the walls as a little voice in the back of his head whispered 'history didn't repeat itself'. He'd made a difference.

"Are you okay?" Quill's voice quivered lightly as he tried to hold onto his bravado.

"We're going to need some rope… And we'll have to get creative." Elrim couldn't answer the question, but instead he gave the courser something to do.

"Okay, we'll get you up! I'll be right back!"

Elrim was quietly grateful when he heard Quill's footsteps retreat. He'd take his moment, and then get to work on destroying more of the spikes that had remained.

The shadows created by the lichen seemed to come to life. Elrim watched a courser move closer to him, standing as tall as he did, head high, strong lines.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I-" He wasn't ready. He wasn't strong enough. He didn't remember her name. He'd let her down.

The shadow moved as if it acknowledged him, head lowered, before it vanished.

In time, perhaps, he'd be brave enough to face her. For now, he was going to get to work ruining someone else's trap, and finding a way out.

It was all that he could do.