The Tunnels of Yggdrasil

Down the Rabbit Hole

The TV droned on as I started tying my shoelaces, "-o the power of 61 chance that your hand might seamlessly traverse the table, defying the conventional expectations of solid matter. It's a minu-" Mom has fallen into a bit of a science rabbit hole recently. I finished getting ready and walked to the front door.

"Love ya, Mom! Going for a run," I shouted towards my mother as I walked out the door. I hear a quiet 'Be safe' just before closing the door behind me.
It is a cool morning in San Diego, the sky was clear, and a light breeze. Perfect running weather.

I began my stride, bounding over cracks in the sidewalk until my foot continues through the sidewalk, and instead of landing face first into any ground, I find myself upright again, my downward momentum now forward. I stumble a bit. The world is now dark, colder than it should be, and my stumbling steps caused echoes from all around. I stand still wherever I am, the air is very moist, almost hugging me, preventing me from even trying to panic.

It took a little time to orient myself. I shuffle forward with my arms extended, making sure not to trip or walk into something. I found a wall quickly; it was hard and damp.
"Is this a cave?" These words reverberated for a while, echoing off the wall. I press my left hand against it and start slowly walking alongside it.

I don't know why I'm not scared. Is it because of adrenaline? I don't think it is; whenever I get an adrenaline rush, I get all shaky. Why am I focusing on my not being scared and not where I am? Oh, I think I wiped my hand in something. Now it's moving...

"EW!"

I start shaking my hand around violently in attempts to get this 'thing' off. Eventually, I scrape it off onto the wall again, and I look in its direction and notice whatever it was is very faintly glowing. I still can't tell what it is, but whatever it is, is a pale blue. Maybe green, too faint to tell. Whatever it is makes me shiver, so I continue walking, this time trying to avoid touching more 'filth'.

As I continue, I notice a few sparse glowing patches on the rock walls and stone floors; they're faint and hard to see, but they provide some guiding light and direction that isn't tactile. The further I go, the more patches of mystery glow there are, and the brighter they become. With each step, I see more patches of blue, green, and yellow light. Eventually, these guiding patches are so frequent and bright that I no longer need to brace against the wall to go forward.

Now that the lights are bright enough, I can see without straining my eyes or mind. I shuffle over to a yellow patch on the wall and stare at it fairly intensely; it looks kind of fuzzy. A glowing moss? That doesn't explain the other one moving, so I poke it.

Aside from feeling kinda damp and hairy, nothing happened. Maybe it was something else that I got on my hand? I check another yellow patch, and it's still the moss, so I check a patch with a blue glow and discover glowing mushrooms. So it must be the green one...

"Yep, those are bugs. Gross!" My shout began reverberating down the tunnel, puttering into silence.

The silence was short-lived as a rumble filled the air, echoing through the tunnel in a cacophony. I flinched, and the bugs scattered; an unusually dulled fear licked my heart. Maybe there was a cave-in? I should move.

I resumed walking in a more hurried pace. It didn't take long to find a crossroads. The cave I've been in let out into the side of a larger tunnel that seemed to host plenty of crevices that might lead into more and more caves. To mark the path I had come from, I fashioned a marker out of yellow moss and a few stones. Then I chose to walk down the right of the original cave. In this larger tunnel, the mushrooms were larger and brighter, and I could see some orange flecks of light darting in and out of rocks and crawlspaces. I didn't want to investigate them in case they were some sort of venomous creature, so I left them alone.

While walking, I noticed a passage that stopped me in my tracks, not because of any sight, sound, or smell, but because being in its presence felt wrong. While everything in this cave system has been small and meek, something about this specific offshoot was... predatory. Realizing that, I turned to continue walking with a slightly more hurried pace until I heard loud and rapid bangs and a roar of a sound coming from somewhere behind me!

"Shit!" I cried as whatever muted my fear has left entirely and I turned around to see nothing but somewhat illuminated caves. I might not see anything, but I hear something, a gallop coming from that side branch of the tunnel, and it's getting louder, closer with each second. Fear coursed through my veins as I rooted myself in place, my face contorting into an involuntary smile. I am immobilized by fear, and a big something is coming this way. As the gallops and roars continue, I begin to hear something else echo from behind me; it's very faint, but I think it's the sound of screams.

"SHIT!" As control returns to my body, I shout the expletive again, even louder, and take off running, stumbling a little on a few rocks but running nonetheless. It wasn't long until the shouts and screams became fairly clear, and it was a far shorter time that I heard something akin to an explosion, and a few of the screams were silenced. I glance over my shoulder and see a large, animalistic creature pulsing with a red glow. It has six limbs, a great snout, and its maw is dripping with blood and gore. Humans were running from it; some ran from where I came from, and others are running towards me... guess which group it followed.

I redoubled my running efforts; my heart was in my throat, and my lungs wanted to leave my body, but I ran and I ran. I would have run into a side tunnel, but in the back of my head, something screamed not to. As I ran, the sounds of my fellow man got quieter with each scream, until the only sounds not of me were from the monstrous charge of the beast.

A hundred yards ahead of me, there is a doorway with a faint purple glow behind it. The red beast is nearly upon me, each gallop rattling the ground with a mini earthquake and its breath on my back an inferno. It was so close to me but despite this, I reached the doorway. As I entered, I heard the snap of its powerful jaws and felt the beast burst through the wall in an explosion of stone. The warmth that is my life began to leak out and drip to the floor.

It bit me in the torso, and I looked into the beast's eyes, crying. It was happy for my death. The hatred I felt for this creature was great, with the last of my strength I threw my hand towards its eye to gouge it out. It stopped me by biting harder. Most of me fell to the floor, and in my last moments, I looked up to see a black and purple mass on the ceiling descend onto the red beast.

'Damn it...' I wordlessly mouthed as my tears mixed with my blood.

That's a cute cat...