Chapter 79: Dungeon Dive, part 8

As the enchantment took hold, Alcar – still holding Brutus bound up tightly in his robes – became smaller and smaller by the second, shrinking down below his companions.

The surroundings seemed to change by the moment, too. The cracks in the floor beneath them soon looked like massive ridges, big enough for him to fall right into, while the ceiling of the tunnel had rapidly disappeared far above, as if it had suddenly become many times higher.

Alcar then noticed a strange, low, moaning sound coming from above, and it took him a moment to realize that he was hearing his friends speaking. To his ears, it now sounded unnaturally low, and it reminded him of how one of their teachers used to imitate a Dubasan land whale.

He tried to make sense of what he was hearing, and soon realized that Olynka was talking:

“Watch out, Alcar – I’m picking you up!”

Moments later he was on Olynka’s hand, and he tried to resist terror and vertigo as he was rapidly lifted in the air as if by a giant. Olynka was holding him gently, however. He was no taller than the width of her palm.

She placed him down gingerly on the post; despite not having exerted himself, he was breathing hard from the momentary panic.

Now, Alcar took a moment to focus on maintaining the enchantment. The intense pain at the back and sides of his head couldn’t be explained by the various bumps and bashes that he had recently experienced, he knew. He didn’t have much left to give before he needed to rest.

Focus could only extend so far.

But for now, he just had to hold onto this for a little longer... Because if he and Brutus were to resume full size before reaching the platform below, they would both fall to their deaths.

Nodding sharply, Alcar decided that he was ready. It was now or never. Reaching out, he grabbed hold of his own belt buckle, which was still hanging down from the rope. The buckle was now large enough for him to sit on. And indeed, that was his plan. It was also clear to him that he was a lot less cumbersome and clumsy at this level of size, and he nimbly took a seat on the rocking buckle at the first attempt.

Brutus began to struggle a little inside the robes.

“Shh... Not too much longer, boy,” Alcar murmured, wondering if his own voice might sound like a mouse’s squeak to his companions.

Gripping onto the side of his belt buckle with his right hand, Alcar looped his elbow around the other side, so that he could cradle Brutus with his left as they moved. Then, as he kicked off from the top of the post, Alcar-upon-the-belt began to slide down the rope – a rope that from his miniaturized perspective was as wide as a rowboat.

Almost as soon as he had begun to move, he stopped again, however. A couple of yards out from the tunnel, friction had taken over. But then he became aware of a jerking motion; he turned his head to see the gigantic looming figure of Leppie, who had begun to shake the rope.

“Arrgh!” Alcar yelled, clutching on desperately as the belt began to buck around.

Leppie was no doubt unaware of how large an effect her agitation of the rope would have on him. Alcar felt very light in this form, as well as small. He knew that tiny creatures could often fall for some distance without being harmed – would that apply to him and Brutus? It felt optimistic to assume so.

And if he were to drop to the floor of the cave, he certainly lacked a bug’s ability to walk on walls and get back up.

In any case, Leppie’s actions had apparently done the trick; the belt began to move further along the rope, gathering speed as it now slid smoothly away from the end of the tunnel and out into the middle of the main cave.

Now, Alcar was looking around him. Even from this height, everything still looked strange from his shrunken perspective – the stalactites and stalagmites as large as hills, and the wooden post down below him – his target – like an enormous monolith.

But at the same time, there was no mistaking the gigantic toothy mouths of the waiting cave gremlins lurking below. He could see at least a dozen crouched on outcrops of rock.

Surely, he told himself, he would be too small a morsel for them to worry about? But almost before he had formulated the thought, one of the creatures began to rise up, perhaps alerted by the movement on the rope, and mistaking him for a moth or bat...

The creature flapped its enormous gray wings, hovering near the rope just ahead of him, a thin green tongue flicking out snakelike from its mouth.

From Alcar’s perspective, the monster appeared too large to comprehend – like a vast dragon, its wings as broad as the sail of a great ocean-going ship. He knew in his mind that under normal circumstances that it was no larger than him. But for now, it could easily swallow him in one gulp.

And what then?

And as the belt continued to slide downwards towards the lantern below, accelerating as it went, how was coming very close to that terrible mouth.

Still in his master’s arms, Brutus whimpered.

The cave gremlin seemed to be unsure what it was faced with, however. It snorted loudly, and hovered back a little, the air it expelled causing Alcar’s tied-up robes to flap around. But then, almost as soon as he had reached the beast, he was past it, the belt now having reached a rapid but steady pace as it moved down towards the last stretch of rope.

There was a great pain in Alcar’s head as he began to focus on the destination again, and he realized that the threat of the cave gremlin had caused some dissonance and distraction. And he was, unmistakably, now growing once more.

He was losing focus.

And now that the magic was unravelling, there would be no getting it back. If he didn’t get himself out of the belt buckle soon, he could be stuck inside it, and perhaps even sliced in half simply by growing.

The post and lantern below were only yards away, now. As he grew larger still, giving up on any further attempt to focus on the enchantment, Alcar clambered forward, his feet on the buckle and one hand on the dangling strap of the belt. He was ready to jump; the stony platform was so close now. Could his momentum carry him? Would the fall kill him?

Perhaps.

But he had no choice.

Alcar straightened his legs and leaped, growing still larger all the time, and finding the rocky floor of the platform approaching his face with terrifying speed. He closed his eyes and clutched Brutus as he fell, curling into a ball. And before he could think about anything else, there was a shocking and painful thump on his left side, and then the pair of them were rolling over and over each other in a tangle of robes.

“Ouch! Fuck!”

Alcar came to a halt, and then staggered to his feet alongside Brutus, who shook his fur and scurried to the back of the platform where they had landed. The wooden post and the lantern were near the front edge of the area facing the cave, which otherwise was around the size of his father’s workshop. A wooden double-doorway marked the back of the same area.

Groaning, rubbing at his left hip on which he had just landed, Alcar hurried back over to the post, and then stopped. The same cave gremlin had swooped closer to him once again, and was now hovering, flapping its wings just a yard from the post, its foul, evil mouth seeming to grin as it stared at him with the look of a predator.

Until it didn’t... for a well-aimed arrow pieced the creature from behind, smashing right through the back of its head and emerging out amongst its teeth.

It stopped flapping, and fell like a stone.

Alcar reached down and secured the rope, loosing it from the lantern’s handle and then forming a rolling hitch knot, just like market vendors back in Katresburg often used to secure covers over their produce.

Then, as he stepped back to look up toward his companions, the pain in his head flared up once more, flashing lights covered his eyes, and he felt himself falling limply backwards...