>>5274859>>5274862>>5274957>>5274973>>5275024>>5275780>>5275165>>5275154>>5274978To rest here long enough to recoup your mana would take time… And, if you are spending time down here anyway, risking discovery of your little jaunt down into the deeper underground, you might as well get the most out of it.
‘Besides,’ you think, glancing upwards at the peer eyes of the Green Dragonborn, ‘it would be a shame for the Great One to not see any adventure, aside from wedging himself in a corridor while I shot arrows into a bug.’
You loot the corpses here of anything valuable, shuck yourself of the glow-worm gunk as best you can, and then summon your elder brother. He allows himself to drop, sliding free from the passage and spreading his magnificent wings to slow and control his descent. His impact still shakes your stone shelf once more, and you think you hear it crack a little under the weight of the two of you and the bodies.
“Quickly,” you say, “let us descend.”
He chuckles happily at the decision, seemingly relieved to not be turning back yet. You clamber aboard his back—to the MOST dignified situation, but faster than climbing down, and without the ability to <Jump> just yet, this is your only other safe alternative.
Your natural affinity for such lightless conditions parts the veil of the unknown to reveal the contents of that deeper darkness: a wide basin pockmarked by eroded pits and mineral-rich stalagmites which jut up like punji sticks; one such deadly stone spike impales the great-worm which you earlier slew, while its guts and insectoid fluids pour forth and puddle beneath it. The Great One carefully avoids a similar fate, and you hop down from his back to collect your arrows from your deceased adversary.
Casting your eyes about, you see a few more cocoons scattered about. Your hoarding-instinct summon you to each of them, but their contents have been dashed upon the rocks and scattered, and any valuables are broken or washed away by the slow-moving water.
Two passages lead from this place which are large enough to accommodate you—well, three, but only two large enough to accommodate your big brother, also. The first is a passage with a slight upward incline, which seems surprisingly well-worn; a closer inspect reveals evidence of hit having been carved, intelligently and with stonecunning, but Reptilians (or some other race, but who else would dwell down here in the depth, and so close to your own settlements?). The second is level, but wreathed in the faint and eerie glow of more glowworm goo—implying more beastly bug-beings like that which inhabited the realm above your head and feasted on your fellows.
Which passage do you take?
>The carved path, upward>The level path, aglow and infested>The small path, your brother and you need not adventure TOGETHER>The path from whence you came; you changed your mind about progressing further 