“This is it. No going back. No take backsies. It’s delve or die.” Well, delving still had a higher risk of death than going back, but that’s inconsequential. It was go-time. Felix snuck into the tall meadow.

Despite an urge to put more distance between him and the camp, Felix slowed to search the ground. “Bii, keep an eye out for blackroots, the ones that sucked light.”

“Bibii!” Bii leapt off and began snooping the ground, feelers twitching.

Just then, Saga’s whistle rang in a continuous loud note, no doubt rousing Elina and Daniel. Felix’s heartbeat climbed. He didn’t dare to imagine what might happen if they caught him now, and found him to have betrayed the Knights.

The whistle remained in the background, warbling in intensity and tone, as if she might burst out of the thicket any second. Felix browsed the ground with desperate haste, until Bii let out a sharp ping. His paw patted a veiny dark root.

“Good job!” Felix picked him up and followed the roots, his gaze homing on every speck of red.

The thicket warped around their path, blades of grass shriveling into gnarly roots. Scents of earth and decay grew. Twilight faded into a lightless night, where Bii’s glow became the sole speck of light. Saga’s whistle quieted under the sounds of Abyss. Long gnarly chirps. Undulating chirrups. A thumping pulse under the soft black soil.

Alone, Felix’s mind began to conjure nightmarish creatures to match the sounds. Great worms underground, clawed abominations amongst foliage, and fanged nightmares in the lightless blackness overhead. Only now did his brain internalize the fact that should he run into anything hostile, he’d end up much the same way as the longcat knight.

“Oookay. Not going to say I’m having second thoughts but—” Felix jumped at crunch.

A crouched silhouette glanced at him, and sprang into the opposite direction, chirping.

“This was such a great idea,” Felix told himself, suppressing a nervous laughter. A flush of panicked adrenaline thumped through Felix’s veins. “Positive thoughts. Positive thoughts… Oh, have I told you how beautiful your glow is Bii? And those paws. Perfect little widdly things. Every time I see them, I get this urge to wiggle them around.”

Bii pinged smugly and wiggled its paw at him.

“No shame, huh?”

Bii pinged affirmatively. It wasn’t afraid to admit it was gorgeous. Smug little bastard.

Chatter quieted as they trundled through darkness. Lack of light made the search for redmoss tedious at best, and at worst lethal.

More than once, when turning roots and rocks, Felix’s fingers were nearly snatched away by mawed worms. Worse yet, colossal beings stalked this maze of roots. Whenever the stench of rot and soil intensified, heralding one’s approach, Bii tuned down his glow, and the two crawled into a crevice to hide, hoping the massive denizen would pass by. Wherever those creatures trod, they left a trail of fungal matter, and chunks of decayed flesh and wood.

Felix and Bii made the mistake of lingering and investigating the leftovers only once. Lesser denizens rushed to squabble over the droppings. One shot of the terror glowing eyes and sounds chasing you in utter blackness was enough for a lifetime.

Felix manifested his dream relics in short bursts, only calling on them when needing to climb. With no chance to safely recharge, every shot of intent was precious. Desperate for any advantage, he kept using Thought Threads despite barely having a handle on its most basic ability.

Pale threads extended from Felix’s fingertips and hair. When they brushed the ground, sharp jolts of scrambled thoughts flooded his brain. Impulses of the Abyss around him were too much to handle, but what about the air? Keeping the threads from touching ground was a trick in and on itself, but after some fudging, Felix managed to keep them mostly afloat. And when he did, air whispered to him.

A cacophony of echoes. Entangled scents. Vibrations. It was a language he had never listened to, but always heard.

For the most part it was a confusing background noise, only amplifying the sense of unease in the dark of the Abyss. But Felix caught bits and pieces from the chaos, glimpses of patterns. A certain mood heralded those great lumbering titans of decay, like one a bar might have the minute before an argument escalates to fisticuffs.

Unfortunately, the relic quickly began to overshadow Felix’s natural senses. When the edges of his vision started to dim, he had to release it.

Exhaustion began to seep in. Steps grew heavier. Breaths deeper. But they could not stop.

Saga’s whistle haunted Felix’s ears. He couldn’t be certain if it was conjured up by stress. Either way, he wouldn’t let them catch him.

Bii was the one to spot redmoss first. Patches of it coated the blackroots, nullifying their light absorbing qualities. Felix paused briefly to peel off a few veiny bits, to test if they worked with Thought Threads, but alas. They were inert. Had he had a little more time, Felix could’ve crafted himself a light absorbing cloak.

Sadly, they had to press on. Neither kept count of the turns they made.

Redmoss led them to caverns half-root half-stone. Water dribbled down the walls. Strange denizens scurried amidst the flowery spore-stalks protruding from the red mats. Translucent worm-beetles. Colorful spheres covered in light fuzz. Twisted Abyssal reflection of the bugs that lived within moss. Felix recognized a few. This was somewhere within the Squirming Abyss, though Felix couldn’t say for sure where.

“Lightposts… lightposts…” Felix tripped on a slippery step. “Ow…”

Bii pinged urgently, pointing at a cross-section. It bit Felix’s sleeve to pull him up, but it was no use. Felix’s legs trembled and ached and burned all at once. Weariness anchored his body to the ground.

“Wow…” Specks of light swam in Felix’s vision. “Abyssal sickness. Think that’s it for today, buddy.”

He wanted nothing but sleep. Heck, Saga catching up didn’t even matter anymore, so long as she didn’t wake him up for the next ten hours.

Soft patch beneath his feet tempted like a freshly made double duvet. Unfortunately, the area buzzed with denizens.

“Bii, you think they’ll eat me if I snooze here?” Felix asked, still sitting on his ass.

Bii nodded and began pinging and pointing at various critters around them, probably explaining all the horrible ways they might devour him.

“Gotcha. Well. Dunno about you but, I’ve gotta crash. Let’s look for a spot, but not too hard. Don’t wanna accidentally end up in the Dreaming Abyss.”

They found a spot for the tent where it wouldn’t touch the ground, and by some miracle, managed to set it up. Felix pulled up the zipper on his hood and fell asleep instantly.

The rest was surprisingly good. All Felix’s limbs were intact, when he roused. No denizens had bitten him. Nothing extra had crawled in his butt hole, though the crawlies did scurry beneath his tent with suspicious curiosity.

Felix stretched and winced at a sting of pain. Everywhere hurt. But it was the good kind of hurt, and not the kind inflicted by angry Linda’s with rolling pins.

There, surrounded by sounds and smells of the Abyss, Felix had his most surreal breakfast yet. Never in his life had he imagined himself to be sitting in the Abyss with a denizen, dressed like a Knight with an unlit copper torch, while munching on what could be the last mombar in his life.

Pancakes, whipped cream, and raspberry jam. Delicious and over far too soon.

Felix folded the Andersson & Andersson wrapper neatly and tucked it in his backpack. Blinking rapidly, he chased away a rush of melancholy and started to pack up his camp. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. No doubt he would come across countless wonderful breakfast desserts in other surface lands. Maybe even learn to cook them so he could share them with his family, when he reached them.

When. Not if. You can do this.

Felix hefted the backpack on his shoulders. It was heavier than yesterday. He drew a deep breath. “Another joyous day in the Byss, isn’t that right Bii?”

Bii pinged drowsily. Little guy had stood guard all night.

Felix picked him up and scratched his tummy. “Thanks. You can nap if you want. I’ll try to find that lonely streetlight.”

After another Byssal day of delving, Felix set his tent behind a wrought-iron bench standing beside a lonely streetlight. Exhausted, scuffed, and missing a left glove, he jolted down the day’s adventures in case Abyss claimed him.

Felix Andersson’s escape diary. 18th August 563 (I guess)

I fully admit to betraying the Knights, but I regret nothing.

Today, we delved roughly eight turns. A room of living moss would have devoured us, if not for the bell-butterflies. Ten of them planted themselves in the room and grew into huge shrubs in a span of seconds. I ended up wasting sixteen more to distract a creepy humanoid bug. Might’ve been one of those cockroach monkeys. It didn’t work until I let one fly off with my glove. Guess it tracked me with the sense of smell? Those two were the closest I came to dying today.

Otherwise, it’s been a blast! Bii and I caught this little hoppity hippity insect-thing. It keeps on trying to run, and is bursting with intent to flee. I tied it up and turned it into an intent battery! Recharges every ten seconds.

So, inspired by this, I obviously wanted to catch every denizen we came across and get myself a collection of various intents. Unfortunately, we couldn’t catch anything portable.

We did, however, find some slimy grabby variants of blackroots. Bii nearly got himself pulled into a mouth of roots. Hideous thing. Anyhow, it stopped wiggling once chopped, so I collected myself nine meters of slimy root. It accepts intent commands, but it’s been tricky to feed it the right kind of intent. Guess I’d have to imagine myself as a root before I store it in Intent Bank?

Learning to use Thought Threads has been… a progress. The relic’s senses keep overwhelming mine after some ten minutes of use. If relics need a relationship, this one seems to require a pretty one-sided one. Joking. Linkworm wants to link up, so maybe its tail wants to link me with everything around me. Really wish I’d have time to properly tame the relic...

Anyhow, if you’re reading this, I’m likely—————

A loud crunch startled Felix to scratch the paper. Felix manifested Thought Threads. Metal whined. Wet crunches echoed from a dark mossy alley, followed by a pained groan cut short by a thump.

Thought threads tensed. Air vibrated with dread. Bii too curled up beside Felix, pinging anxiously. For several moments, Felix listened, hoping the creature that made the sounds was gone. His knuckles tightened around the shaxe.

A deafening crash sent a jolt through his spine. Sounds quickly intensified. “Oh drat it’s coming this way.”

And fast!

Felix tore down the camp, snapping one tether and tearing fabric. With the messy bundle in his arms, he scrambled out of the way. He jumped to hide in a decaying shrub, seconds before a chaos flattened his former campsite.

A titanic monster of rot and decay wrestled with something that made Felix recoil with a primal sense of unease. Dark smoky tendrils squeezed bony limbs of mushrooms and mold into mush. Roaring and bleeding sickly phlegm, the great carrion beast bit into its foe. An arm blacker than night pummeled its head with a mangled streetlight. Limbs and rot splattered the scene. Where the carrion beast’s droppings fell, shrubbery and moss died.

It was a wrestling match between the void around the stars and a dragon-shaped mass of pure decay.

Bii pinged aggressively, almost hissed at the black creature, from his spot inside Felix’s shirt.

“No. Nu-uh. We aren’t getting involved with that.” Felix whispered and began to sloooowly crawl backwards.

Streetlight pierced the carrion dragon’s heart and pinned it to the ground. It let out one last groan, before the giant of night stomped its face into paste. It knelt to pick up something from the corpse. Molds slugged away from and individual mushrooms ran, leaving behind nothing but brittle bones.

Bii swung his tiny little paws, encouraging Felix to… launch a surprise attack?

“Are you crazy!” He whispered, “Didn’t you see it swing a streetlight like a stick? A streetlight!”

Bii went into a pinging and gesturing frenzy with both paws.

“Two paws.” Felix nodded, following the wiggly paws. “You and… you and me? No? You and S!”

Bii nodded and played a scenario with his paws. One of them, presumably S, wanted the other paw to flee, but Bii didn’t want to. Then the streetlamp wielder attacked, and Bii was forced to flee.

“How in the Byss am I understanding you…” Felix blinked.

Bii returned to discussing ambush tactics.

Felix grabbed Bii and continued his crawling retreat. “Still nope. Even if we somehow got a jump on it, I’d put my chances at ‘dead within a second’. We can try to follow it, though that might not be a great idea either. We don’t even know what it’s doing here.”

The hastily bundled up tent got snagged on shrubbery and rustled it.

In a snap, the creature turned to face him. Two purple circles, like nightmare stars against the void, drilled into Felix for a heartbeat, before it charged at him.