In the Darkness
In the Darkness
~~//~~ A Tale of Redwall~~//~~
Characters Involved
Aden, a female squirrel
Magramba, a male squirrel
Jibella, a female pine marten
Assorted martens, spoofed by Magramba
Castle Kotir: Ancient Hall: The Window
The Hall continues on, past piles of rubble from cave ins. The further you go, the more you start to question the stability of this place. The wall to the left is partially collapsed here, but amongst the dirt and rocks you can just make out what once the sill and frame of a window. The very same window that Verdauga Greeneyes hid his treasure in long, long ago... Unfortunately for any would-be treasure hunters, the lost Treasure of Verdauga Greeneyes was long ago found and removed. The hall stretches off into pitch darkness in both directions.
The blackness pressing against the dim, orange glow of a torch seems overwhelmingly expansive; even where walls and pillars of stone may stand mere feet away from the tiny group, the darkness offers the infinite possibilities that often accompany the unfortunate pairing of blindness and imagination. Aden has found one such wall, preferring to travel without the aid of the flickering light, instead adopting an old pirate trick: She's fashioned a makeshift eye-patch out of cloth, and switches eyes every several hours to force an acclimation to the inky black of the underground castle.
"Daddy say, dese ruins our home now. Say we belong here," jabbers a energetic, feminine voice, much younger than the rest of the group. Jabilla scurries ahead, filling the space between Magramba and Aden with dibbun-dynamo antics. "Does he?" comes the older squirrel's calm reply, coolly surveying the bit that he can see, at least. A weathered lantern hangs from his paw, housing a lone candle and protecting it from any sudden drafts. Not as dramatic as a torch, but a fair sight more efficient.
"Where was home before?" Aden presses, flicking her tail playfully here and there, trying o floof Jibella in the face as the dibbun plays in the spaces between and around the squirrels. Flicktail was hanging back to make sure that they weren't being followed, a possibility that would flit across the female's mind every now and again, playing with her head, stroking petty fears in the darkness. This is something that she works to ignore, a task which becomes more difficult the longer they spend under the ground. "Where do you suppose we are, Mag? In relation to...you know, the above-ground that we're used to, at least."
"Somewhere under the woods, I think," Magramba replies, holding tightly to the ring of the lantern with one paw and keeping his other on the hilt of a knife. "The ruins start at the south wall, and we seem to be going more that way." Jibella blithely ignores Aden's question, or maybe her response is an answer of sorts. "Ain't got no real home dese days. 'Cept here!" she adds brightly. "We foun'a way in frum da woods'n all dat where dat is." Vague and vaguer.
"Oh you come under from somewhere in the woods?" Aden's ears prick forward. That could certainly be a helpful tidbit. "So you can still go outside and play in the trees? I would give a bag of nuts to see another tree about now." Ah, the squirrel's lament. She can't help but feel a pang of pity for the young one - what would drive a horde to live in this dismal type of place but the pressure of having nowhere else to go? This doesn't bring much more than a dim hope that a peaceful solution can be found, though the kidnapping of the Abbot doesn't seem to preclude that as an option. Speaking of which... "Did y'know Flick had no idea about everything that happened with the Abbot?"
Jibella cackles gleefully as she scrambles over the ruins, apparently delighted to have friends. "...what?" Magramba has stopped short, his large brush twitching agitatedly behind him. The whole situation has the squirrel on edge, and things just keep. piling. up. "How could he not know that? Everyone in the Abbey knew that."
"I dunno, but I brought it up th'other night and he freaked out. Thought th'Abbot was here now." Aden laughs with a shrug, scrambling over a fallen hunk of stone. "I wasn't here and /I/ knew about that." She stops short as the wall to her left falls away from her paw, opening up into another cavernous room. "Jibella, do you know if anything is this way?" She waves a paw towards it.
"Sometimes I wonder what in seasons' sake we're doing down here," Magramba mutters to himself, stepping carefully over the pile of rubble Jibella so merrily traipsed over. "Jibella no know dat way," the marten maiden answers, coming up against Aden's leg to peer curiously into said cavernous room. "Dat way's big." A moment passes. "Let's go!" Suddenly, she tears off into the darkened space, pushing off of the squirrel for speed. In the rear, the warrior's eyes dart after her, panic crossing his face. "Grab her!"
"Jibella!" Aden tries to catch the dibbun in the crook of her arm, but the warning comes too late for that to be possible. "Jibella, come back!" Her voice, tight with distress, echoes in the empty space, ringing in her ears after so much strained quiet. "I've got 'er." Aden grumbles, taking off at a run after her, should she happen to have found a great way back to alert the horde from which they would prefer to avoid detection. "Jibella?" She hisses into the dark, peering around the gray and shadowy shapes of the ruin about her.
All that answers Aden is a faint echoing giggle as the little marten makes her way unbeknownst through the darkness. "Every. /Single/ time." That's Magramba back there, grumping away as usual. The squirrel hurries forward, a bad-tempered grimace wrote large on his features as he peers into the blackness, holding his lantern higher. A muttered curse and a whispered oath as he stubs his toe against something hard and unseen.
Aden is hot on the chase, clumsily retying the cloth over her opposite eye, allowing for a degree of renewed sharpness to attach itself to the edges and crannies around and beneath her. This doesn't mean that she isn't spending a good deal of time swearing over stubbed toes, but at least she is moving quickly, scrambling in a slowly growing panic. She sniffs at the stale air, ears pricked forward, trying to will echolocation into her genes as she stumbles through the ruins.
That eerie giggle rings against the stone walls, intermittently overlapping with the sound of whispered curses and muffled yelps. They're setting a terrible example for the little marten maid, though it's no doubt much the same as what she's used to, having grown up in a horde. Might even make her feel more at home! "Jibella!" It's Magramba this time, raising his voice to a hoarse whisper, not wanting to shout and give the game away to any nearby hordemembers. "Jibella, come back! You win!"
"Jibella!" Aden calls out as a final effort, slowing to a stop and looking over her shoulder. Hopefully Flick doesn't get lost back there. Squinting through the black, she finally finds the shape that she assumes to be her friend, groping a paw out to grab at his shoulder. "Mag, I'm sure she'll come back. She knows how to get around in these conditions..." The possibility of her finding her own kin once more is something that she leaves unsaid, though the anxiety of this is not lost in the tone of her voice.
The shoulder she grabs is furry, but not the same consistency as Magramba's. This is longer hair, and greasy. "Oh, I wouldn't be too sure about that," growls a low feminine voice, a sultry rubbing of velvet over a ragged surface, smooth and gravelly at once. The figure takes on shape, almost by absorbing the light rather than being illuminated by it, a lean, lanky mass with a soft jingle to its movements, the musical lilt of bangle and chainmail. A sudden thrust of her wrist moves to send Aden back against an adjacent pillar, meaning to pin her firmly to the rock. "/Where's Jibella?/"
Ugh, she somehow knew this would happen. "She ran off down this way." Aden grunts, clutching one paw at the arm against her air pipe and wiggling uselessly. "If I knew exactly /where/ she was I wouldn't be chasing after her in a panic, would I?" The acrobat demands angrily. She had grown fond of the scamp in their time together, and the anxiety of her disappearance in the underground was cutting at her nerves. "You want to find her, or do you just want to kill me?" She goes slack, begging against all hope for Mag to make his usual appearance at the exact right moment. The knife at her belt would offer a nice way out, but she would prefer to avoid that.
Two more figures dissolve out of the shadows around the first, these lacking the sounds of armor. She must be the leader, and she presses harder against Aden. "Tell me where she's /gone,/ or you will have no more wind for words." The two lackeys alternately stare at Aden and cast about the chamber, clearly on the alert for Jibella or another intruder. "/Where?!/" The female is losing her composure, growing more erratic and shrill as the interrogation continues, pressing harder against the acrobat's throat.
So, this must be mummy. Aden gasps around the arm, clawing at it as she squeaks out. "I..told...you..." She waves, uselessly, in the direction she thinks that they were going. "I could....still hear her -" With a growl, she finally kicks out, hard, at the marten's middle, managing to force her into loosening the death grip at her throat. "I'm trying to find her, if I knew where she was then I would /have her/. I found her wandering around looking for the bloody treasure, I wanted to take her back to 'er family and was followin' her back to where she said home is. Couldn't just leave her alone in the dark." Aden explains this all rather quickly and rushed, her voice horse and raw, giving her that edge she's always lacked. Mag would have heard all this ruckus, and she hopes he has the good sense to hang back and let them think it's just her. Thankfully an occasionally sketchy past may be able to work to her advantage here, if she is able to get enough time to talk her way out of this.
Magramba occasionally has the good sense not to charge in shouting these days. This is one of those days. The squirrel lurks nearby, his lantern extinguished and abandoned, ears pricked forward and waiting to see if he's going to have to rescue her and blow their cover. The female marten recoils slightly at the kick, loosening enough for Aden to get her breath and start explaining, which gives the armored vermin time to think her story over a bit. "What in hellsteeth are you doing down here," she accuses with a flat tone, glaring bad-temperately at the squirrel.
"Same thing as the kid." Aden growls, spitting to the side. "Seeking a fortune." In one fluid motion, she yanks her dagger free and holds it at the leader's throat. "Now, back off an' I'll help you find her. Believe me or not, I've become rather fond of the little furball, and she's eaten too much of my food for me to just let her disappear." Her voice is low and dangerous, an effect aided by the temporary damage done by the pressure to her throat. "Don't make me make her an orphan. Even the soft old fools at Redwall see the vermin kin as outsiders." She's really appreciating the whole eye-patch approach right now, for both fashion /and/ practicality. Huzzah! She should have been a pirate.
The unnamed female growls at this most recent turn of events, and her two floozies lower their speartips at the squirrel, menacing her carefully to avoid having their boss's throat cut. A surprisingly strong arm sweeps the blade aside, glaring imperiously down at the squirrelmaid. "You're lucky I don't have them spit you here. But since you're so keen to help, why don't you lead the way?" A sneer and an inviting gesture of the paw.
"Well, then. Works for me." Aden grumbles with a shrug, tucking her dagger back into her belt and raising her paws in a helpless manner. "Assuming you didn't swing me around and disorient me /too/ much before asking me for directions in the /pitch blackness/, she ran off this way." Aden trusts a mother's desperation to not stick a spear into her back, and turns it to the martens and heads forward into the dark. "Jibella?" She calls out, still a strained half-whisper, between cupped paws. What are her options here? Return Jibella to her family? Mag would kill her if they didn't. Slay the martens before they meet back up with their offspring? Fat chance. But...Well, she was never half bad as an actor... "Soooooo.../Is/ there any credence to this whole 'treasure' business?" She asks, sniffing as she peers at the unidentifiable shapes shifting through the dark. "And what in the blazes makes you think /this/ is the environment to raise a kid in?" But for real. "Jibellaaaa?"
"Would you shut your fat mouth?" the female hisses, following behind the squirrel. "We do not know who else may be watching!" Magramba's ears perk up at that. Aren't the martens the only bad guys down here? Unless they're referring to him, in which case... yes, he's absolutely watching. And following. "Any treasure belongs to me and my people," she continues, voice low and menacing. "It is not for treerats like yourself."
"Well then, I assume that 'you and your people' will just do away with me as soon as I help you find your kid." Aden drawls, her voice lowering to stave off the echoes. That /is/ some helpful information. "Which /really/ doesn't make me want to help. So, I will tell you what: I help you find Jibella, and /you/ show me the way out of here - since I got turned around trying to keep /her/ out of trouble. That way, I keep /my/ skin, you keep 'your' treasure, and she doesn't hate you for doin' away with the nice treerat who helped her when she was /lost/." Aden stops, straining her ears for any signs of the dibbun, but the black emptiness offers only blind silence. The crackle of a stone slipping against stone, the soft patter of footfalls - anything would be appreciated. How far could she have gone? Ugh, never have kids.
"Aid-aid?" Kids have weird minds for making up nicknames, and Jibella, it seems, is no exception. The little marten comes tumbling out of a windowsill in a cloud of dust, grinning innocently and prancing about. "Dat's mum!" she observes, a moment later, rushing forward to leap at the armored female, who manages to scoop her up rather than being half bowled-over.
"There? See? Safe and sound." Aden can't hide the relief in her voice, though if it is the result of finding the dibbun, or the decreased chance of death that accompanies that fact is unclear. It's probably a little bit of both. "So, nice old family reunion, eh? Alright, so you can see I wasn't trying anything funny with her, yeah? So you should probably let me go." Directing her attention to the fluffy dibbun now clinging to her mother, Aden sighs. "Are you okay?" She whispers, even though mum can definitely still hear her. "You scared me 'alf t'death." She leaves further chastisement to her mother.
That's right, throw in a little bit of empathy to show the mom you really /do/ care, Aden. "Jibella, there you are. We'll talk about you running off again later," the armored marten warns, starting off in a purr and ending in a ominous half-growl. Turning to Aden, she gives the squirrel a suspicious glare, thinking over how best to deal with her while the little dibbun clings tight to her neck. "...the exit is that way. Three rooms down, up a winding stair, left at the end of the hall and up a fallen tower." That was easy enough, right? "And treerat. Do /not/ let me catch you down here again."
Breathing a sigh of relief, Aden snaps to a salute. "Yes ma'm! An', Jibella, if you're ever back up aboveground, send me a letter or something." She starts to back away, still unsure of the groups intentions. "And always eat your vegetables!" She is calling back in a strained whisper. "An' go to bed at a decent hour! And listen to mummy!" And when she has reached a respectable distance, the squirrel turns and runs in the direction that she's been instructed. While she wants to regroup with the others, she also wants to sell her routine. Plus, stumbling around in the dark is much easier when you know where to find a way out. The marten's warning about other dangers lurking in the shadows, however, sticks at the forefront of her mind - what /else/ could be down there?
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