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Deli

Okay, so like, shit was boring. Like real fuckin boring. All Deli did day in and day out was sit on their ass and maybe paint something, fuck around with their attempts at drugs a bit, sleep, and eat. Fuckin. BORING. The drugs were really not going anywhere, anyways. No matter how many times they puffed out hallucinogenic spores, no matter how much they concentrated on keeping it to "the good trips", it was always a toss in the air on whether it was going to give someone the time of their life, or get them absolutely assfucked by some horrifying hallucinations. And, to be honest, the negatives way outdid the positives here.

So, they'd put the bottles upon bottles of spores they now had, got themselves up out of nightmare land, and wandered. They used to do this a lot when they were younger, just search around and wander places and just explore. Maybe find more places to graffiti.

And eventually, they came upon the ruins of Cassiopeia.

What a grand, weird room that was so eerily quiet and strange. Not a lot of Lessers running around, and they didn't run into a single Greater. And the very fact that they didn't even KNOW this place existed, oh yeah this was a definite boredom destroyer!

After some poking and prodding at some of the ruins and the workshop and peeking into some of the crumbled buildings, they found themselves before an entryway to something much different then a tunnel leading out. It was pitch-black, yes, but they could see faint light, juuuust down the way of the tunnel.

A smile curled their lips. Oh, they were definitely checking this out.

Stepping in and being immediately assaulted with the pitch-blackness was a bit of a problem. The glowing light wasn't much - fungus creating a bit of a pathway, they realized as they approached. Remembering that they had something that might help, they quickly flipped their satchel open and snatched up one of the many dyes at their disposal. This one was a base glow and it did...something? Not too much, but with magic, perhaps, they could see better.

And, of course, it didn't really work.

Eh, whatever. This would get them through for now.

They set off, one hand brushing the wall as they went, the other holding the glowing bottle in front of them like a very shitty torch. For a while there wasn't...much. Just prison cells and broken crystals. At some point, they realized that the tunnel split off into a few different directions. And they could hear...voices ahead. Soft murmurs.

Nah. Not in the mood to prank right now. They had the spirit of adventure going for them!

So, left they turned, where the trail of mushrooms died out and into the darkness they went.

---

Deli

As soon as the mushroom trail disappeared, Deli knew they were sure as fuck getting into some dark shit in this prison. Quite literally. Their glow-bottle was doing something to help, but it was the tiniest light against overbearing, overwhelming darkness. A shiver ran up their spine and they grinned wider. This almost felt like claustrophobia.

Their vision flickered, trying to catch more of the light, but alas...darkness it would be. They continued following the left path, as far down as it went. They noted the entrances to other rooms, and the amount of debris scattered about, how they had to squeeze through some of the parts of the tunnel to continue on, but continue on they did.

Hopefully, they wouldn't get lost without the use of their fuckin eyes.

---

The scent of damp stone was the overwhelming odor in this place: wet rock, with an undertone of mold and moss, and then something like stale, old blood faint and far off in the distance. "Old" being maybe a few days, and not so much of it that it would be worrying--but something lived and hunted here, it seemed.

The sound of Deli's own footsteps were nearly the loudest thing here, tied with the gurgle of water that ran below the floor they walked on. Beneath, the cisterns emptied into the sewers and those ran beneath the tunnels, a second set of tunnels below the first. It was faint, but audible.

The dim light of the Voidlit Garden marked the point Deli turned left. From there, they found themselves picking their way down that dark and dusty corridor, one wide enough for large Valkhounds to stride down, huge in the dark yet claustrophobic in that anything could lay in wait. Crumbled pillars and boulders occasionally barred their path, and furrows in the dust showed where others had clambered by in recent cycles. The dark mouths of prison cells lined the walls to the left and the right, some showing tracks fresh on the old stone, some unexplored.

The first hallway, narrow, went off to the right. A second crossed Deli's path soon after, running both north and south; the sound and scent of running water southward was strong, and this tunnel was unexplored.

Farther along, to the right, a massive gap in the wall led into a huge open space, one that again sounded like running water; distant light shone on stone, but whatever lay in that light was blocked by crumbled columns that would take some time to bypass. Should Deli continue on, the narrow gate to The Pit lay just beyond, southward, fresher tracks very visible here. Something small, canine scent barely lingering from cycles prior--and something large, enormous tracks scuffed in the dust from only days ago. The scent of blood came from this place.

Farther on, to the right, another long hallway, unexplored--and then a large, open doorway to the right, with more light and running water. This place smelled more... alive than anywhere else thus far: like plants, but also rot.

The end of the corridor then simply... ended, crumbled and fallen away. Deli would need to be careful not to stumble where the hallway had collapsed: beyond was a steep fall that plunged into darkness. The cistern water below, with its drainage tunnel, had also broken away, so that a narrow waterfall trickled from below Deli into the dark. Far beneath, it hit more running water, more a river than drainage: the slow flow of what was almost a river could be heard.

@Deli

Deli

Hm, the "old" blood was concerning. They didn't really want whoever lived here to find them creeping around. This felt a little more like breaking and entering rather then exploring ruins. Not that they had a problem with that, only that it made it a little more tricky. They'd have to be quiet.

About halfway down the tunnel, their magic finally behaved and the space around slowly brightened from their perspective. It wasn't much, and fairly short range, but the glowing bottle at least gave them some light to play with. They could see the walls and the floor and, more importantly, the footprints. They made a full stop in front of them, eyes flicking from the little canine ones that were familiar and unconcerning, and the really big ones that certainly were. They glanced towards the opening they came from, smelled the blood in the air and. Yep. They were walking right past. That was not their business.

They probably would have walked right over the edge of the hallways if they hadn't been able to get magic to respond. Thankfully, they saw the sudden change from dimly lit hallway to pitch black and stopped in time. Their grin twisted down a bit as they leaned slightly over the edge, smelling water and mud and the must of a dark, forgotten tunnel. Boring. Well, this was the end of this hallway - time to properly explore.

They had tasted something like life somewhere back, and made to find the entrance to that place. There was light there too - that would make things a little easier.

---

The room into which Deli ventured was vast: so wide that it was hard to see to the other side, even with the light shafting down from its broken ceiling. Somewhere in Cassiopeia, the floor's cracks let light shine down; further glowing orbs were strung above the reservoir that had once run beneath the area's edges. Now, that wall had completely fallen away, so that crumbling stone heaped down in the running water far below, the room's edges on two sides a treacherous fall.

Half-fallen walls stood to Deli's left: a huge area that had once likely been a storage room, now little more than crumbled markers. To the right, piles of rubble from a half-collapsed ceiling rendered the southeastern edge unusable.

But the rest...

The stone changed only a dozen yards in, becoming thick dirt that reached down deep. The waters that flowed just beneath kept this damp, and mosses and thin, dry grass clung to life where the light also hit. It was sparse, to say the least; most was dead and brown. But it was useable space.

If someone wanted to plant large amounts of plants of some kind--crops, or something less pleasant--this was even more hidden than the Voidlit Garden... if more difficult, and dangerous, to reach. Of course, that soil would need to be tilled, fertilized, and tended; and the light spread further for plants to grow. But Deli had stumbled, quite by accident, upon a place that could be used as a wholly hidden farm.



Deli has discovered THE DEAD FARM.

@Deli