An antiquated yew, gnarled and knobbly.
Some untended goats, grazing happily.
Long, waving grass mixed with tenacious shrubs, green and yellow in the midsummer evening’s sunlight.
Beautiful, rugged karst topography, with a commanding view of the surrounding lowlands.
Six feet of water-carved limestone, rich with age.
An overhang, slow-shaped by erosion to shrug water off to either side and send it streaming down the rest of the cliff face in little vertical rivers.
Six partially dismembered carefree travellers, careless trappers, careworn woodcutters, and careful hunters, dangling from exposed yew roots and already missing their most delicious and fatty parts.
A yawning portal into the stone of the plateau, formed by the dissolution of softer rock and tremendous amounts of time.
Small trickles of wall-borne moisture caused by evaporation, condensation, and complicated thermal interactions between the depths of the cave system, the flow of outside air, and the rise and fall of the sun as it penetrates the cavern’s mouth.
Two slivers left behind by Kwarl in bygone days, embedded at the terminus of a now-aged crevice in the wall and very very demonstrably sharp enough to cut stone.
Forty-three giant bats, sleeping calmly among the stalactites and dreaming of giant mosquitoes and/or a world free of giant white nose syndrome.
A long guano-spattered slope that is steeper than it looks and is covered in loose scree that is less solid than it looks.
A drop that is exactly as steep as it looks.
A scad of small metal climbing pitons, hastily hammered into the wall of the shaft and already a little looser than they should be.
One hundred ninety-six and three quarter humans, two hundred forty-nine deer, seventeen horses, three dozen oxen, innumerable sheep and goats, and a single careless giant bat, all skeletonized and heavily dismantled, most with their long bones smashed for marrow.
Surprisingly large fungal colony feeding on bone detritus, rendered obscure by the discreet nature of its fruiting bodies as opposed to the hidden pervasiveness of its roots.
A hidden squeeze in the wall that leads to a cramped cell containing a nest made of half-rotten pelts, a stack of gnawed bones, a little shrine to a broken tooth of the Lime Beast, and the still-leaking body of Morribo Henk, unasked-for worshipper of unwholesome things and scavenger of his own kin.
A trailing dribble and splatter of fresh blood from an unwisely uncleaned unsheathed blade.
Open gallery with uneven stone floor clogged with fallen stone, illuminated by sunlight filtered through small brush-choked ceiling openings that dapples beautifully all over the dried leaves littering the floor.
Alcove catching the last rays of the sunset, containing the fresh body of goatherd Treb Porf, arranged peacefully with its remaining (left) hand crossed above the remnants of its breast and the open abdominal cavity covered with an impromptu blanket of discarded shirt.
Two purposefully discarded backpacks, laden with bulky supplies, perishables, and heavy clothing.
Gaping sinkhole, worn heavily by claw marks around its rim and filled with the quiet sound of tiny waves splashing in the scant airflow descending from the gallery.
Thousands and thousands of gallons of water, devoid of light and filling a sump that forks in several directions.
A dead end.
A dead end.
A dead end with Kwarl’s name carved on the wall.
A dead end.
A very dead end containing the very dead body of scout-at-arms Blort MgGort.
A swarming colony of stygobite fish that can’t believe their luck.
A tiny airbell, illuminated by a single patch of glowing fungi surviving on whatever scraps float up from the rest of the sump.
A mercifully dry and air-filled twisted meander – low-ceilinged, uneven-floored, and absolutely crammed with stalactites and stalagmites to the point of nigh-inaccessibility.
Dormant nest of one million seven hundred thousand ninety-eight thousand six hundred and thirty-one gigantic troglobite fleas, slipping back into slumber after consuming the vital fluids of seven hundred and sixty-two of their crushed brethren.
One discarded and sodden boot, absolutely encrusted with gigantic troglobite fleas desperately trying to suck any drop of blood they can find to reach equivalent value on expended energy awakening from dormancy.
Flat corner housing a midden filled with dry excretions and quicklime-rimed pellets, each containing coarse-turned-fine dust that once was hair, feathers, or other keratinous matter.
Subterranean vault, ceiling raised high by ancient waterfall that choked its own exit and moved on, floor eaten deep into the very guts of the plateau.
Jagged, ragged cliffs, conspicuously speckled with worn footholds for long, lunging legs.
Geodesic hollow of the Lime Beast, formed of ancient reefs and weathered by unsapient habit to be as smooth and round as a potter’s masterpiece.
Wilderanger Clorice Hummli, soaking wet with stagnant cave water, blood, sweat, and tears, torn of shoulder and arm, weaponless, squireless, and shaking from their toes to their teeth.
Kluus the Lime Beast, six foot at the shoulder and sixteen feet from nose to haunch, five-legged, mare-faced, sabre-fanged, bear-clawed, moon-eyed, coat armoured and crusted with ancient stone adhered to its exoskeletal secondary ribcage, mouth still fragrant with primate blood, currently supine with a sword jammed through its gullet out the back of its skull and directly into the limestone behind it.
A boulder long-ago displaced by a tiny amount of force transmitted over an incredible number of year, perfectly choking a narrow vent.
A hundred-and-six foot vent, untouched even by dust.
Catacomb of the Lime Beasts, seventy former, one current, eighty still encrusted and waiting undreaming in their slaked lime lacunae.
Tomb, ripped open and contents consumed to the last.
Hidden compartment in the bottom of tomb, half-exposed by ancient bearlike clawmarks
Small stone ring that is much larger on the Outside than it seems on the outside.
Hundreds of feet of deep-rooted limestone, sinking far past the soil of the valley floor and merging with its bedrock.
Subterranean temple to Kwarl, geologically compressed from former height of seventy feet to current height of seventeen inches.
Thousands of feet of solid stone.
Kwarl.