Bloodvines

[Red Reeve]

She comes to when she impacts water, swallowing her up and flooding her senses with stagnant putridness. She flails until her feet find ground, slip on the slimy surface before lifting her enough to breach her head from the water. Groping hands find a stone ridge and she pulls herself out, coughing up water as more of it drains from between the tightly woven branches and roots of her body. The smell is horrific, cloying and lingering. Not the full richness of crumbling wood and loam but the kind of infected rot that strangles all life. And it clings to her, seeped into her and refuses to fully drain. She feels her stomach turn but what she retches out is just more of the putrid, slightly too viscous water and for a while she just lies there, hung over a small stone wall while the occasional discharge she heaves from her shaking body disappears into the darkness below.

When she finally recovers enough to lift her head and take in her surroundings she finds herself in a dimly lit shaft. Much too wide across to be a well, she can barely make out the other side, but made of old and crumbling brick, rising far above and extending deeper still. She clings to some kind of basin built into the wall, a couple meters across and who knows how deep it’s bottom slopes, filled with that festering water. Up above she can see other structures sticking out from the otherwise sheer wall, mostly wooden platforms and scaffolding. Higher still, almost disappearing in the gloom are haphazardly constructed houses balanced on beams that stretch across the vast pit.

It takes her a moment to even realize what happened. Her memories of how she ended up here are hazy, just a sense of falling, slipping between the branches and roots with nothing to hold on to. When the Abyss swallowed her she didn’t even fall into the Dead Woods but the Drains. The realization makes her want to cry but she forces herself into dry sobs for anything shed or discharged in this place becomes rot and she does not much care for weeping pus. What she wouldn’t give for even just a cup of water to wash the taste from her mouth. She risks a glance over the edge down into the depths and in response a stale wind blows up at her, warm and reeking like a giant predator’s breath, making her recoil and slide knee-deep into the pool of water again.

The basin extends some distance into the wall like a sewer or overlarge pipe. What dim ambient light exists out here does not reach far into the tunnel, it’s depth and contents obscured by the dark. She’ll have to brave it or climb, neither of which appeal to her but she can’t stay here. Her vision swims at the thoughts and hazy dream-like images fill her eyes for a moment. Her legs splayed out into roots, filling the pool with a mangrove tangle and drinking the foul liquid. The rest of her twisted and gnarled into a tree, large pale leafs reaching for what little light there is. Flies and other vermin crawl over her, gnawing on swollen, oozing fruit that hang from her branches, squirming with maggots. She recoils and almost slips into the foul water again.

She should know more of the rules of this place but she’d never been one to listen to those kinds of tales. The Abyss gathers all that no longer has a place in the world, but it’s not one of refuge. It’s very nature is anathema. One could call it a cosmic compost heap but she would take great umbrage with that. What grows down here is not to change rot into life or the unwanted into something new. It simply grinds you down and you either fade or fill what’s left with… it. Everything chafes. There’s no comfortable way to stand or sit, always at danger of slipping back into the muck. Each breath heavy as if the air was literally thick with rot. Each sound wet and thick and–she startles at the sound of squelching footsteps echoing from the hole in the wall.

It insinuates into even her thoughts, ensnaring her, making her sluggish. But the footsteps are not imagination. Slow, heavy, approaching until she’s almost certain she can make out something in the darkness, then they stop.

“Ahee-hee-heeee.” a low voice sneers, trailing off into a gurgling wheeze. “A morsel in the through? A stuffle in the moor?”

“G-go away! I’m no good eatin’!” she manages. Whatever inhabitant has found her, chances are they’ll be unpleasant at best.

“Oooh! It talks!” the voice exclaims, pleasantly surprised, followed by the sound of something heavy sitting down in a puddle of filth. She can swear she heard something fleshy burst. “You wallow, then I’ll swallow. Seeping tallow, rotting marrow.” the voice gurgles and the sound of a thick, swollen tongue uncoiling and licking distended lips makes her shudder, foot slipping a couple inches into the rot.

“No bones in this one, nor fat nor meat. Just sticks and twigs and wilting leafs.” she manages, voice wavering, but what choice does she have. Throwing herself over the edge and fall for who knows how long? The deeper down the worse the Abyss becomes.

“Fruits and sap for my sluicing fats!” the monster exclaims but the last word is mixed with a sinuous sliding sound that makes it trail of into struggling burbling, followed by a slow, wet tear that goes on for several seconds. Then a grotesque head easily two or three times the size of her own is casually lobbed into the pool, trailing ragged muscles and spine, sinking slowly in the foul water, leaving streaks of blood that only slowly diffuse. For a couple moments there’s only the sound of something wet being slapped and wrung and squelched before a short figure emerges.

They’re maybe 3 feet tall, shorter than she is, clad in torn rags that are woven and knotted into something at least approaching clothes, even including a pale belt. She can’t make out the face but pointed ears and an almost spiky nose stick out from underneath the wide brim of a bright-red hat. In one hand the figure clutches a serrated sickle, still dripping with blood. As is the sopping wet hat, brim drooping from the weight and shimmering where droplets are forming and congealing.

“Not the cleanest but what can you do in a place like this.” the redcap snickers. “I’d recommend you eat and drink your fill before it turns to mush. Not a lot of other options left, my dear. Take your due…” it gestures behind itself to the opening, “...or lap up what’s left for you.” it tilts its head towards the fetid pool. And with that it turns and disappears back into the large hole in the wall.

“Hey! Wait! What…” she starts but the only response is the echo of a fading cackle.

[Red Reeve]

Ultimately she's left with no choice but to make her way to the sewer tunnel. Blood is dripping from it's opening into the stagnant pool and as she climbs into it she can see the remains of the monstrosity the Redcap disposed. Bloated flesh, riddled with festering sores. A brute that gorged itself on the rot until it barely fit into the tunnel, now deflated as if it's bone finally gave in under it's dead weight. And the blood that gushed from the ragged stump of it's neck pooled mostly behind it, trickling past it's bulk, filling the air with it's smell. She presses her back against the curved wall, trying to move past without touching any of it. There's little purchase on the sloping ground, only where ancient bricks have cracked and partially crumbled, the rest coated in a slimy film. In inch by inch she squeezes past, trying to ignore her back sliding against the muck on the wall. The carcass, infested as it is, still feels like the first thing not filling her with inherent disgust and that is exactly why she doesn't--brick crumbles under her foot. Her arms spread out, hands scrabbling at the wall at her back, she tries to back away, find new footing, feet slipping over and over on the filth-slick ground to no avail. She slides and once she does there's no stopping it. Her feet sink into the blood, find soft ground that gives way as pale skin bursts open until she's knee-deep in offal.

Just as the rot before it seeps into her but regardless of how grotesque this meat once was, her roots thirst. How long has it been since she was last offered tribute? This is no healthy goat or cherished elder being surrendered to the loam but in this place it's a feast. She sinks to her knees and onto all fours, letting her hands dig into the meat. It's tender, comes apart too easy, seeps up in rivulets winding through the grains and whorls of her living wood. Faded, wilting grow turgid and brilliantly red, small inflorescences open all over her shoulders and upper arms as five round-petaled blooms around a central cavity of pistils. The putrid stench finally leaves her mostrils, replaced with the sweetly rich smell of death.

She knows this was a mistake. Just another way the Abyss seeps into the empty spaces. Alters her very being. But she will live. It inundates her against the putrid rot. A compromise. An accord. She'll never not be of the Abyss now but she will be. She rises from the deflated, almost desiccated remains, leaving only what was too rancid to save and steps deeper into the darkness of the Drains to seek a way up. Up after the Redcap. Up towards the light. Up towards those who wouldn't offer. Up to take.

On a sagging beam spanning across the giant shaft, far above, the Redcap laughs.