October 13, 2020, 12:12 PM
Vaguey timeline still.
She was back where it ended, and it where it all began.
Raleska surveyed the cold walls. The unwelcoming path that sloped downward. The old, decaying air.
A foreboding sense seeped down into her throat, settling like a cancerous pit at the bottom of her belly.
She thumbed mindlessly along flowstone ancient and familiar. Somewhere in the waterlogged crypt she heard an intermittent splash.
Drip, drip, drip...
Back up the gradually lightening tunnel. Back up the throat of the Grotto, whose mouth set eternally open like a grim and contorted fellbeast’s jaws.
Here Raleska set to work, moving stone by stone and placing each in the hairpin bend that marked the tunnel’s drop into the flattened curve of stone that once had been called the Ceremonial Chamber. She moved gingerly. With purpose. Always facing the Grotto’s opening, as if any minute the sunlight above would be extinguished and the jaws of the Grotto slammed shut.
At last her work was done. Grim work, but work all the same. An unearthed root remained at the foot of the rubble, and it was this Raleska paid special mind to — stepping over it as if it were a live wire.
Raleska slipped carefully out of the darkened foxhole, which from the outside still remained undisturbed.
Now came the next chapter of her mission; she swung back towards Rusalka at a low and efficient clip.