Swords, Sorcery, and Sex in the World of Greyhawk - Chapter 3 - Part 1

Chapter 3: Transformations - Part 1

"Well, I reckon you can start work right now." Casmir said, handing two of his canteens to Erica. The others smirked and handed theirs over too. Peter staggered as he stood, but none of them paid much attention. Loads shared, Casmir led them up the slope, to where their sledges lay with their burlap-wrapped loads.

"It's a couple more cycles to the face, so we'll take turns pulling. Ye be fresh, so you can start pulling now." Casmir said, making clear that he was in charge and they would be taking orders.

Steve took one; Peter took another one, grimacing as he walked. Ashley crossed her arms and frowned, so Mickey grabbed a sledge before Maria and Erica started a fight over it. Thankfully, Wenzel and Ademic picked up the other two sledges.

"Um. Sir?" Peter raised his hand.

"Yes?"

"Could we have a bite first? We haven't eaten in a day, maybe more."

"Seems fair. This mushroom loaf 'll have to do till we rest." Casmir opened up one of the bundles and pulled out small loaves of grayish bread. He tossed one to each of the six, who wolfed them down.

Even Ashely and Erica, who didn't usually eat very much, found themselves licking their fingers for every last morsel.

"Right. There'll be plenty when we rest, but that's not for a good ways yet." He said, setting off down the tunnel.

Peter moaned, but lifted his sledge handles and went after him. The others eventually followed suit, not without some grumbling from Maria.

He led them through a seemingly random procession of tunnels, none of which showed evidence of any human passage. Their path generally sloped upwards, but none of the six could decipher any pattern or direction.

"Doesn't he have a map?" Steve asked Taman during a rest. The older man gave him a sharp look.

"You fixing to steal the claim?"

"Wha-? I mean-"

"Be a damn poor dig boss if he couldn't remember the way to his own claim, now, wouldn't he?" Taman said, walking away and shaking his head. Farther to the front, Mickey approached Casmir.

"Um, sir?"

"Milka, wasn't it?" He said, genially.

"Um, yes. I was wondering, well, do you really have a season's worth of food in these sledges?" She didn't know how long a "season" was, but there didn't seem to be enough for even a week.

"Carrying food for a season? Wouldn't want to do that, now." He replied.

"But..."

"Ach, like babes ye are, runaway. Look around." He waved his arms expansively. Mickey peered around, but even in the relatively bright green light from the lichen that grew thick here, she couldn't see what he meant.

"There's plenty to eat here, with a little work."

"You hunt?"

"Animals? Nah, There's some around. Rats and the like that the Kith hunt, but not worth the trouble of catching, if you ask me. Look, girl! What do you see?"

"Rocks?" Mickey said tentatively.

"What else?"

"Fungi?"

"There ye have the meat of it." Casmir laughed, pleased with his own joke.

"The green--"

"No, no. Not the foxfire. We'd end up seeing by the light of our own crap, wouldn't we? There's plenty of other kinds around. See, look up there, on that stalactite. See the ridges coming down?"

Mickey looked where he pointed and sure enough, she could see what looked like gray moss, that she hadn't noticed before against the similarly-colored stone.

"That's edible?"

"You'll find out tonight. Cheven, scrape that stoneleaf off and we'll have dumplings for dinner." The digger complied, drawing out a small knife to collect it.

"Milka. You run ahead, over there where the water pools by that wall." He pointed ahead. "See the butterball there? Those knobby things, around the water? Scoop up as many as you can carry in your shirt and bring them back."

The knobs felt rubbery under her fingers. When she pulled, a section of them came up together in a sheet. Looking underneath, she saw a forest of tiny cilia, damp from the rock. The whole mass was gray, like the stoneleaf moss Cheven had gathered. She scooped up several more sheets, holding out the hem of her shirt and dropping them in. On the way back it was hard to ignore the diggers staring at her bare belly, but she didn't feel comfortable saying anything.

"There you go. Find a place for that in the sledges. Wenzel'll show ye how to cook them tonight. You watch what he does, and you learn to find these yourself and cook. You girls, that'll be one of your jobs at the face."

"You want us to go look for mushrooms? I'm... but we don't know which ones are poisonous."

"Poison? This part of the Hestmark would be a sorry mess if these were poisonous. Wouldn't be much to eat, I reckon."

"Really? Most mushrooms are poisonous back home. Lethal even."

Casmir swung around.

"Where did you say you were from? Never heard a story like that before, and I've picked up my share of runaways."

"Well..."

"It's a long way away." Erica hurriedly interrupted. "I'm not surprised that the plants are different. Mickey looked annoyed, but quickly subsided when Erica frowned at her.

"Y'er story be y'er own, I reckon." Casmir said, but his curiosity didn't disappear entirely.

Erica watched Mickey for a while to make sure she didn't spill any more information. She still couldn't read the red-head. Peter and Steve were guys, she could handle them - a little flattery, a little skin, they'd do what she wanted soon enough. Maria and Ashley could be played off against each other, with Erica playing the trusted middle. She didn't have a hook for Mickey, though, and it bothered her.

When Casmir estimated they'd walked enough, he announced a halt and told the girls to watch as Wenzel prepared their dinner. From the sledges, he took a pair of tin pot and a flat round stone. Putting the pot under a dripping stalactite to fill, he found two flat rocks from the cave floor and used them to mash the butterball into a pulp and dropped it in the empty pot. When the first pot was half full of water, he shook in a mix of seeds, flakes, and a reddish powder from a sealed jar and set it on the round stone. Shredding the stoneleaf Cheven had gathered, he ground it into the pulp. The whole thing was a disgusting gray slime, a sticky cross between bread dough and jello.

"Ugh." Maria said, looking at it, but Peter's mouth was already watering.

"Hey, why is it getting hot?" Ashley asked. They could see bubbles forming at the bottom of the pot.

"The hearthstone? You don't use those? Put any metal on it and it heats up." Wenzel shrugged, too accustomed to it be impressed anymore. When the water had reached a rolling boil, he drew out his knife, scraping bite-sized globs of the pulp into the water.

"Dumplings!" Peter said, excitedly, wiping his nose. The six huddled around the pot, stomachs growling. They'd managed to put hunger aside while walking, but with food this close it was becoming almost too much to bear.

"How long is it going to take?" Peter asked.

"Not too long." Wenzel said, scraping more of the mushroom pulp into the water. When he finished, he rocked back on his heels and watched the pot, stirring occasionally.

"You think it might be ready?" Peter couldn't wait.

"Is he always such an idiot?" Cheven asked Erica in a loud enough voice so Peter would hear.

"Hey, I just-"

"Piotr. Sit down and wait." Casmir interrupted his angry response. Cheven smirked.

Erica turned to look at him. His hair was sandy-blond - darker than hers, but probably real - and it wreathed his head in short, messy, curls. He was almost as thin as Ashley, the only of the diggers that wasn't bulky with muscle, and he had fairer skin than the other diggers, too. His face was narrow and sharply-defined; in the right light he'd be cute, in the wrong light he'd look like a rat, she thought.

Finally, Wenzel judged the dumplings had boiled long enough. Ademic made a production out of slowly preparing the bowls and spoons, and Cheven laughed again at Peter's impatient expression and Erica decided on "rat." Wenzel spooned out the dumplings, serving the six first and watching them eat feverishly.

"Well?" He asked.

"It's..." Mickey began.

"Ish food." Peter interrupted, spooning more into his already overfull mouth.

"Tastes like nuts." Ashley said.

"Nah, not nuts, like those rice cracker mixes they sell at Earthfare--the not so spicy ones." Erica said while she chewed. Steve mutely nodded his agreement, and Wenzel looked pleased.

"We'll rest here. Next work-cycle we should arrive." Casmir said, taking his portion and sitting back down.

"Work-cycle?" Ashley looked up from her bowl, curious.

"Day doesn't mean much down here, no? We work, we rest. That's a full cycle."

"So a work cycle is 12 hours?"

"Nah, it lasts until the face boss - that's me - says it's over. Same with the rest cycle."

"So how do you count how many hours or days you work?" Ashley kept asking questions.

"We don't. Why should we? If ye don't find any ore it doesn't matter whether ye worked for an hour or a whole cycle, ye still got zero."

"So...how long is a season? I mean, how long will you be digging?"

"Till the rains come again in the fall."

"How do you know that down here?"

"When my dick gets furry from the mold - then you know the water is a'comin'. You're welcome to check as often as ye like." Cheven answered, grabbing the waistband of his trousers and embarrassing Ashley into silence.

When they finished eating, Casmir insisted the girls clean up the bowls and pot. Maria objected, but when he pointed out the men had been hauling sledges, her complaints faded to low grumbles. Erica volunteered to scrub the pot, and the others looked at her gratefully.

At Wenzel's direction, they took bedrolls from the sledges and spread them out to sleep, the girls finding a darker corner to take their toilet. None of the six slept much that night; the borrowed bedrolls offered little padding on the stone floor, the noise from drops of water falling at irregular intervals kept startling them out of a doze, and the constant light didn't help.

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After the long, sleepless night, it was a relief when Casmir and the others woke. He sent the six out to gather fungi for breakfast, and they groaned as they worked the kinks out of their sore muscles. Casmir, on the other hand, was positively buoyant as he led them through a new series of tunnels and chambers.

Steve thought they were still moving upward, but he couldn't judge how far or in what direction they had come. They walked most of the day - too tired to pump Casmir for more information. The men alternated pulling sledges; it was especially hard on Peter, who still limped on his twisted ankle.

The cave's natural beauty offered some compensation. They marveled at what looked like a multi-tier wedding cake, made by millennia of flowstone flowing down in layers and walked through forests of tall stalagmites. Crystals in the walls sparkled like emeralds in the green moss-light.

Eventually Casmir called a halt in a large chamber, at least fifty feet across, with several exits. The generally low ceiling rose in a dimple along the far wall; water trickled down the curve, forming a ring of stalactites and stalagmites around a dry patch--like a mouthful of sharp teeth. The water ran across the cave in a shallow stream to vanish down another tunnel.

"Here we are!" He spread his arms and turned around. "We'll pitch camp there, on the dry patch. Kitchen in the center. Lean-tos around the edge. The dig is just down that tunnel." He pointed at each in turn. The other diggers looked around, nodding in agreement with his choice.

"We're short of covers, what with leaving some sledges behind. I get one. Wenzel, you're with Piotr, Taman with Stefan, Cheven and Ademic. You girls split the other two."

"I'm not gonna sleep with her, no way." Maria jerked her thumb at Ashley.

"I got room in mine, honey." Cheven leered and Ashley rolled her eyes.

"You pick a spot and I'll get the tent." Erica told Maria, gently touching her arm. With Ashley acting like such a bitch, a little kindness and Maria would be eating out of her hand, Erica calculated. It wasn't like they were sharing a room at the chapter house or anything; she just hoped Maria didn't stink like Darlene, that fat girl that somehow got into her sorority. Not while I was VP for recruitment, she scowled at the memory.

Mickey and Ashley looked at each other and nodded, moving to help unpack the expedition's gear. When the sledges were unpacked, Wenzel showed them how to prop the burlap covers over the sledge poles to form a lean-to.

"Not much shelter." Peter said when he finished the one he and Wenzel would sleep in.

"What else do you need? No wind, no cold. Just something to keep the water from dropping on your head." The old man replied.

"How do you know about wind and rain?" Peter wondered.

"You think I've always lived down here? Nope. Used to live up top." Wenzel cocked his head, remembering. "Not that I miss the upper world, mind you."

Whey they were done, Casmir called them together.

"Wenzel, show the girls how to gather food. I'll take the others up to the face.

"So we're just here to gather and cook for you?" Maria asked.

"Ho, ho. You won't be getting off that easy. When you're done with the cooking you can sort ore chips from slag rock we bring back from the face." Maria frowned, not liking the sound of that.

While Wenzel led the girls out, teaching them to indentify the more common food mushrooms, Casmir led the men out to the face.

"Next cycle we start work. Either of you runaways know about digging?"

The two men shook their heads.

Continued in Chapter 3: Transformations - Part 2

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