Wild Berry Meadow You're not gonna make it.

a spray of gravel and dust erupted around his rounded shoulders, pattering to the ground in tinny clatters that ceaselessly bounded down the slithering caverns. his paws thudded, each impact with stone an insult -- sounding at once like an entire host of armored beasts pounding out the hammer of doom;

boom, boom, boom.

the light grew stronger, larger. an iridescent sliver now a bright swath of grey sheen.

thirty meters, boom. twenty five. boom fifteen. boom --

five.

boom.

and then the concussions ended; a blackened pit opening up as if the fell mouth of a leviathan, jagged stone its teeth and a black, impenetrable void its maw -- shardik felt his paws fall through the ghost of a floor, and the cave air rifle ---

here the beast fell into obscured darkness, as if swallowed whole.