Into Darkness

Roots

"...So. What now?"
At Knife's words, the rest of the group looked around at each other and grimaced. Before them stood a split in the path, two tunnels leading further downward and diverting away from the center. A few hundred feet behind them, something new had been working its way into the environment. Fleshy roots, almost vein-like, were poking through the surface of the soggy dirt. They were a deep purple, threading through and around each other, and the closer they had gotten to the fork in the tunnel, the thicker the roots had gotten. Both entrances were encircled with spidery roots, and in the rightmost tunnel, a solitary root was hanging close to the floor, swaying in a breeze that couldn't be felt.
"I don't like this," Suitcase muttered out. "We need to go back. We can- I-I'm sure can find a way to..." As Suitcase spoke, Lightbulb suddenly strode forward and reached out to squeeze the hanging root.
"Hey, this ones all loosey-goosey! I'm gonna pull on it." Before Suitcase or anyone else could form a response, Lightbulb yanked down on the root.
The sound of wet, sloppy dirt hitting
the ground filled the small space as the group collectively yelped and jumped back. Lightbulb could barely scramble out of the way as the musty soil cascaded down around her, brought down by the dislodged root. Lightbulb stumbled to her knees and collapsed, coughing violently. The torrent just seemed to keep coming and coming, and the deafening rumble of displaced earth filled the tight corridor. As the last few clumps of dirt rolled into place around her, the others looked up to find the right tunnel entrance completely blocked with the filthy black substance. Suitcase, nearly tripping over herself, ran over to Lightbulb and crouched down next to her. "Lightbulb! Oh my gosh, Lightbulb, are you okay?!" Still coughing, Lightbulb pushed herself up into a sitting position and thumped her chest a couple times with her fist. "I'm fine, I'm fine, I-" She coughed again and spat out something black. "I got some dirt in my mouth when it- when it came down, aheh."
As Suitcase and Test Tube helped Lightbulb to her feet, Knife snorted and jabbed a thumb towards the now-closed tunnel. "It didn't HAVE to come down, y'know. Nice going, Lightbulb." Microphone, rolling her eyes, pushed past him and peered into the leftmost tunnel. "Don't make a big deal out of it, we were gonna have to pick one or the other, so now our choice is made
for us." Silently, the group gathered behind Microphone and stared into the tunnel. Despite how confidently Microphone had approached, she didn't take another step, and nobody spoke a word. The silence dragged on, the only thing breaking it being the steady breathing of the contestants as they tried not to make themselves sick from the moldy air.
After a few prolonged minutes of anxious silence, Knife finally let out a flustered grunt and shoved past Microphone, stomping down into the tunnel. "Enough of this, ENOUGH of this. We're in this far. We need to stop being a bunch of- GYAH!" As the others gasped, Knife suddenly stumbled forward and fell, mashing his face into the black soil. His momentum carried him forward several feet, forcing him to roll over a few times before finally digging his palms into the dirt to stop himself. As he grumbled and pulled himself to his feet, the rest of the group hurriedly surrounded him. Suitcase was the first to speak. "Knife! Oh, you poor-" Immediately, Knife threw up a hand to cut her off. "I'm FINE. I just tripped on one of those roots or something. Can we just move on?" A few feet behind them, Test Tube spoke up. "I don't think it was a root, Knife." As the others turned to look at her, Test Tube crouched down and started poking at something black and shiny that was sticking out of the dirt. "This is stuck in pretty tight, but... I think it's metal." "Is that important?" Microphone crossed her arms and frowned. "Like, does that tell us anything?" A moment of silence passed, and Test Tube huffed and stood up. "I don't know! Sheesh, what do you expect me to get from that? Let's just move on..." Test Tube ushered the group forward, and Knife nodded his agreement. "Yeah, it's getting stuffier in here by the second."

As the group gradually made their way deeper and deeper into the depths, the rotting smell of their surroundings only seemed to worsen. Every twenty or so yards, the five of them would slow to a halt so a few of them could catch their breath. Every time their wet, squelching footsteps stopped, the group was overwhelmed by the smothering silence. The air felt thick with tension and anxiety. Every desperate gulp of the musty air brought in grains of black dirt and specks of dust. The worst part, by far, was that since Lightbulb's initial fall into the pit, her light had gotten slightly dimmer. When asked, she simply waved Test Tube off and explained that she merely needed to put a bit more work into keeping herself lit than usual. She made it sound like it wasn't a big deal, but it was obvious that the tunnel entrance collapsing had worsened her weariness. Lightbulb was the group's only source of light, and so they had wordlessly formed a more protective formation- instead of pushing forward close to the front, Lightbulb found herself smack in the middle. Knife and Microphone were taking point now, and Test Tube and Suitcase followed close behind her.
Lightbulb had considered saying something about it- she didn't like being treated like she was fragile- but she didn't want everyone to start arguing again. Mercifully, Suitcase had stopped murmuring to herself, and Knife didn't seem to be in the mood to instigate anything. What stuck out to Lightbulb in the silence, however, was the distinct lack of Test Tube being a weird nerd. The self-proclaimed scientist had taken to idly patting Suitcase on the head, seemingly trying to keep the poor thing from losing her cool.
As the caravan continued forward, their surroundings once again began to change. This time, it wasn't as gradual. As quick as anything, the contestants stopped to look around and take in the scenery. The winding tunnel was still tightly cramped and claustrophobic, but now there was a series of branching paths, and they didn't seem to be limited to the walls. Indeed, one of the new holes was in the middle of the floor a few yards ahead, and two or three visible tunnels adorned the ceiling. The fact that the dirt around them was staying in place was almost certainly due to the roots- they were significantly more tightly woven around the more vertical tunnels- and as Lightbulb's glow reflected off the new surfaces, Test Tube noted to herself that there were a few more scraps of that black metal embedded in the walls. They didn't look as natural as the roots, but that made sense, she thought, because they were metal, and metal had a tendency to be less than natural.
"Hey, are you done staring at nothing?" "Huh?!" Test Tube sputtered out, blinked rapidly. Knife was giving her a bemused look. "I said, are you d-" Test Tube laughed nervously and put up her hands. "I heard, I heard! S-sorry, golly. I'm just... taking things in." "Yeah, well,  keep it brief," Knife grumbled. "I don't like the way these tunnels are looking at me, and it's still way too damn quiet in here." Behind them, Microphone turned away from one of the ceiling tunnels. "Not to mention it still reeks like OJ's sink in here. I can take the horrible enclosed spaces... for a while, but if I have to put up with this smell for a second longer, I'm seriously gonna puke." Lightbulb frowned from a few feet away and put her hands on her hips. "Aww, how do you know about the sink? You're like, totally new the hotel and stuff! I was gonna sinkpill you!" "OJ made us scrub down the whole stupid building, remember? Soap and I were on kitchen duty for a while." Microphone frowned. "Also 'sinkpill?' What's so special about OJ having a gross sink? Why did you wanna share that with me?" In response, Lightbulb scoffed and leaned back on the dirt wall with an unpleasant wet sound. "Uuhhm, because we're girls, and sniffing gross sinks is what girls do! It's girl behavior. We were gonna have a girl moment together!"