The Peril of the Underground

[Lief Erikson]

Light cascaded through the leaves of the trees onto the broad shoulders of the warrior. The man was over six feet tall, wearing pants of thick deerskin leather, but wearing no shirt to cover his muscular, reddish brown torso. His large hands were clasped on the long handle of a powerful double edged broadsword. The keen edge gleamed in the light, and the hazel eyes of the warrior peered into the midst of a deep cave. The cave pierced the peaceful forest floor, a deep bluish black chasm encased in black rock.

The man crawled swiftly through the opening, allowing the darkness to engulf him. The light of the outside was cut off and no longer a part of the reality he was surrounded in. Wet rock was his only companion. The vague light of the deeps was a deep blue, faintly lighting the shapes of the jagged red rocks of the chasm wall.

Far below the warrior’s feet, the chasm opened. Thrusting his broadsword one handed into the sheath at his back, he grasped for handholds on the rock wall with both hands, scrambling with his buckskin shoed feet on the slippery stones for grip. Testing each hold cautiously before moving on, he slowly made his way further apart from the clear light of day shining from the gap over his head, deeper into the misty darkness.

The air was cold about him and still. The only sounds were those he was making, hands and feet slithering along the rock wall, deer hide on stone.




Three hours later, he completed the descent. He stood on a rocky ledge far below the forest floor above him. Following it for a few minutes, careful still to avoid falling off the edge into the chasm below, he found the thin mouth of an inner cave opening. The warrior squeezed in, his large body smashed uncomfortably between jagged, sharp rocks on either side. He grunted slightly as he squeezed. Small pebbles and dust fell about him onto the wet cave floor, and the blade of his sword behind his back skidded with a sharp ringing sound against the stone that tore through its leather scabbard. The noise was greater then anything he could afford to make here. He had to be swift.

It was too late. A small flicker of red light was becoming visible ahead of him in the cave. The warrior stopped, frozen in mid-movement. Then he attempted to reverse his direction, struggling outward with all the speed he could manage. His feet slipped on the steps in his effort. The opponents before him were too strong. He would make his attempt later. His buckskin shoes slipped in the water. The rock wall tore small wounds in his arms and shoulders as he squirmed free. He came out of the rock suddenly and his momentum carried him backward several steps— just two steps too far. The warrior’s arms were wheeling suddenly in open space, and there was no one to grab onto him and pull him back onto the ledge. He fell, flipping end over end into the unending blackness below. His scream echoed in the chasm long after his body had hit the rock floor to the abyss and been crushed.

[Tessar]

I've always loved stories with a light-hearted touch of whimsy.

In all honesty the story didn't really make much sense to me and left me feeling rather puzzled... I mean okay we have this dude whom we know nothing about except that he's a warrior (and is wearing buckskin). For unknown reasons he enters a cave that leads underground--he apparently knows something about the cave since he found it, knows where it's taking him, and we later learn knows something about the Underground.

Then he climbs straight down for three hours, tries to make it through an opening that's a bit too small for him, sees a red light (which he fears but we never learn what it is), tries to run and falls to his death. The End.

I mean WHY did he go into the Underground? Was he searching for treasure? Something to fight? Just kind of wanted to see what was up with the whole 'living in the dark' thing?

None of that even brings up the fact that if this warrior goes running around underground half-naked he’s gonna freeze his butt off. It’s cold down there. Also if he’s gonna be going through tight places I’d think he’d want a little protection from sharp rocks—true going through a tight place will tear the shirt, but better the shirt than his skin.

It's really not a bad piece of writing, but there's no 'reason' behind it. The warrior has no obvious motivation to go down, but he does and then just dies because he panics after seeing a single red light that, for whatever reason, means there are things coming after him.

Is this a background story?

[Lief Erikson]

I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote this story. My mind was thirteen feet from my body.