6-25 - 6.25
Posted June 11, 2017 at 12:00 pm

Liya and Yoshi followed Vlad away from the light of the construct, along a narrow path that ran farther underground. The wall rose unbroken to their right, and to the left the dark water stretched away into blackness. The blue light radiating from the float Vlad carried didn't travel very far, and Liya and Yoshi kept close behind him.

"I always wondered how to get down here," Yoshi remarked, casting an eye up into the darkness.

"What is all this?" Liya asked him, "These caves?"

"Some are part of the aquifer under the city, I think," Yoshi answered. "Some were dug out a long time ago."

Something ran past Liya's feet just then, something larger than her boot, something with big ears and little scrabbling feet. It squeaked loudly as it went, and she flinched, looking for it in the darkness.

"But why?" she said.

"Oh, we used to use 'em to hide," Vlad said casually, glancing back at them. The light hit his face from below, casting a deep shadow under his eyes and behind his glasses. "From these guys."

He lifted the float, and the light fell on the wall, illuminating a mural they hadn't seen until then. It was painted all in inky black, and showed the stark outline of a huge creature sitting in the boughs of a tree. The creature had uncomfortably long limbs, and it crouched with its long tail curled up and over its head. The light just illuminated its short, brutal muzzle painted full of needle-sharp teeth, and its odd, heart-shaped nose.

"They lived up in the trees and ate people," Vlad explained. "It was so bad, we tried to colonize a bit of Earth just to get away from them. And we all know how well that went," he added, rolling his eyes.

He continued on, Liya and Yoshi on his heels.

"That's why you guys went to Earth?" Liya said, surprised. "Y'all were gettin' ate."

"Yup," Vlad responded. On their left now a column had risen out of the dark water, and painted on it were the shapes of huge trees, with curling flames rising from them. "So we got driven from Earth, destroyed all those worlds, and then came home to find someone had started burning all the trees."

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