When she left the ‘lightfall’ and walked out of the passage back into the main cavern, Kim was unpleasantly reminded of just how DARK this underground world was. Her guide was waiting for her and seemed to have anticipated this; he took he hand and carefully lead her back to the ‘Trog’ compound while Kim’s eyesight acclimated to the dim glow once again.
Starring around to let her eyes drink in what little ambient light existed, Kim again took note of some details of the compound. The ‘Trogs’ didn’t seem to have mastered the use of fire; she’d seen no cooking fires or any flame since she had awakened. They apparently caught and ate fish, some weird species of blind cave fish from the lake, and she could see plenty of drying racks between the tiny stone huts.
The Leader led her back to where Shego lay, and Kim stopped to confirm that her sleeping lover was still safe. Now that she had located a way to the surface, Kim racked her brain to think of how to get back up there. The only real choice se could see was to climb. But how could she carry Shego all that long way?
Nuts, she thought. If only it were as easy to go up as it had been for me to get down…
“That’s it!” Kim took off at a run, leaving her startled guide behind her. She had an excellent sense of direction and over the past few weeks she had learned to adapt that skill down here in a world of almost total darkness.
Shortly she was able to find the alcove where she had been allowed to recuperate from her own injuries. There, leaning a few feet from the door, was the only remaining piece of equipment to survive this long.
Kim took the ‘Moon Doggie’ and set I down near a shallow pool. The fungus tended to grow better in the vicinity of water and here she would have the best light to examine the rocket engine.
Because of her having succumbed to the hydrae venom, Kim knew that her memory of events out on the lake were incomplete. She didn’t remember the rocket board firing up and certainly not reaching this shore and the ‘Trog’ compound. Therefore, Kim had replaced memory with certain assumptions; one assumption was that the ‘Moon Doggie’ had been activated somehow and then carried them over the water until it had run out of fuel.
Upon closer inspection, Kim was heartened to see that she was not correct about all things; there was still a miniscule amount of fuel left in the board’s tank.
Kim prayed that it would be enough to propel the two of them up the ‘lightfall’ to the surface. Sure, it was a very dangerous prospect, but nothing was impossible for a Possible.
Her guide had long since caught up with her and had been standing at a respectful distance while she examined the board. Kim only noticed him when several ‘Trogs’ ran over to interrupt his observations. After a hurried conference of clicks, buzzes and grunts, the Leader ordered them away and they returned from whence they’d come. The Leader glanced at Kim and then back at him retreating minions, then seemed to make a decision.
Again motioning to Kim that she should follow him, the Leader took her in another direction through the compound. Once they left the relevant comfort of the huts, Kim saw that they were heading toward a rather barren and desolate area of the cavern that made the compound seem like Eden by comparison.
Here the stone floor was very uneven. Kim could see loose rubble everywhere and she scanned the cavern roof for signs of a cave-in. The Leader tapped the butt of his trowel-spear to get her attention; once he had it, he pointed to a spot on the stone floor a few yards away.
What Kim saw was a pit, approximately ten feet in diameter. The pit wasn’t open, however; it had apparently been choked with boulders and other loose rocks. For whatever reason they had done that, Kim noticed many ‘Trogs’ standing around the blocked pit, each of them watchful and attentive. That’s when she also noticed the weapons from the armory.
In a rough perimeter around the blocked pit, there were several cases of mortars, grenades, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers and mines. This was the ‘Trogs’ hoard of stolen munitions, apparently several months worth.
There were also weapons of the style conceived by the ‘Trogs’ themselves: more of the long trowel-spears, crystalline wafers just like Kim had learned to use as throwing stars, and several mottled gourds that she hadn’t seen before.
Kim lifted one of the gourds and looked it over carefully. She apparently wasn’t being as careful as her guide would have liked, because he rapped his weapon on the stones at his feet and took it from her.
“I’m sorry.” Kim’s verbal apology was automatic. Rather than being angry, the Leader gave her a demonstration of its use.
Singling out a smaller ‘Trog’ to act as a test subject, the Leader lobbed a gourd at the hapless creature. The aim was perfect and the gourd made impact. It burst in a cloud of vapor and the little ’Trog’ dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Kim was horrified. “No! Why did… ? How could you… ?”
The Leader raised his hand for her attention, his odd weapon at his side. With the immediate assistance of several other ‘Trogs’, the hapless creature was revived and on his feet again in no time.
With dawning realization, Kim knew that this must have been the weapon used on the soldiers at the Middleton Armory. They had been rendered unconscious, but revived quickly and with no after-effects. If one gourd would knock a small ‘Trog’ out cold, several must have been used on each human. Looking around her, Kim noticed thousands of gourd-grenades. She shuddered to think of what these tiny creatures were prepared to face in combat.
Kim’s trained eye evaluated the defense perimeter and the level of weaponry available. Though she had no clue what the ‘Trogs’ were on guard against, she was convinced that they felt it to be a substantial threat. She faced the ‘Trog’ Leader and made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the entire area. She then made the same non-verbal attempt to ask why?
Again the little man seemed to be making a decision. Then he spun on one heel and walked away from the danger zone.
Once they had returned to the center of the compound, the Leader led Kim to a pile of woven baskets, very crudely made from what looked like root fibers. Inside one of the baskets were several flat pieces of slate. On each of these were drawings and what might have been text, but Kim had no hope of reading that. The Leader began handing slates to Kim.
One slate may have been a map of he region; if so, the cave system it depicted was far vaster than anything Kim and Shego could have guessed at.
Another was a scene of compound life, with ‘Trogs’ fishing and building huts.
One was of enormous, subterranean earthworks. Now Kim saw the value of these trowel-spears. They were designed to cut right into the earth ad heave the dirt away, as well as for fighting.
The next image took some thought to interpret. It showed a pyramid made of ‘Trogs’. There was one very large ‘Trog’ at the top. If the drawings were to scale, it must have been nearly human sized. Below it were two smaller ones, more like her guide, the Leader, in height. Finally, at the next and subsequent levels, were ‘Trogs’ of the size that Kim had seen the most of.
Kim pointed to the little creatures on the sate, then at several of the live beings working all around them. The Leader nodded enthusiastically. Then he reached out with his sole hand and pointed to the two slightly larger ones. He thumped his chest and then repeated the motion. Point… thump…
Clearly to anyone, this was his level in the ‘Trog’ hierarchy. Kim’s only question was about the largest figure. She pointed to it, and then made a show of looking about the compound.
The ‘Trog’ did not immediately respond to her inquiry. His first action was to lay his weapon down and kneel before it. He then made a series of hand movements that looked oddly incomplete, until Kim realized that a one-armed being could only perform one half of such a ritual. Then, leaving his weapon where it lay, the Leader stood up and pointed to Kim.
“Me? I’m really sorry, but I don’t understand. What is it about me?”
The little man looked at Kim with softness in his eyes. He moved closer to her, oblivious to how Kim was forcing herself not to retch from his terrible odor. He gently reached out and touched her abdomen. Like a thunderbolt, his meaning was clear.
“This… ” Kim pointed back to the largest figure, “is a female? This is your… queen? Then you are a king, right?”
The ‘Trog’ removed his hand and performed the same one-sided ritual as before.
Waiting for him to stop, Kim again pantomimed, ‘Where?’
The Leaders only reply was to take the late tablet from her. Setting the tablet on the earth floor, he grabbed a nearby pebble and gouged a diagonal line across the piece of slate. Having thus scored the stone, he raised the shaft of his weapon and brought it down, efficiently cracking the tablet into two pieces.
One half of the image depicted the queen, one king, and many of the lesser ‘Trogs’. This piece he set as far from where they were standing as he could reach. Then he took the remaining half, the one with one king and a smaller number of the drones, and set it down closer to their feet.
Kim thought she detected a pattern to his movements.
“And what is right here? What are you waiting for?” She used her fist to pound a tattoo onto the rocky floor.
Nodding his approval at her ability to grasp his story, the Leader took one last piece of slate from the basket and set it before them. Kim had to lift the tablet and squint hard to make out the image in the dim glow of the cavern. She turned it this way and that, attempting to make sense of the carved slate.
When comprehension came, Kim felt sick to her stomach. She had noticed the tiny figures in the beast’s jaws… and trampled under its clawed feet… and being shredded by its talons.
“Oh, my… ”
Kim and Shego lived in the ‘Trogs’ encampment for about two days, by her best estimate. Time was still subjective in this sunless world, and was only measured by work and sleep. Kim had performed much of the former and little of the latter. She still didn’t feel fully prepared for what she had planned.
In that time, between seeing to Shego’s care and well being, and offering some assistance to the ‘Trogs’, Kim had been making repairs and modifications to the ‘Moon Doggie’.
These repairs consisted of making sure that there was indeed some fuel remaining in the storage canister (there was very little), as well as disengaging the throttle. While Kim had friends and associates (and enemies) more capable than she at rocket mechanics, she was always a fast learner and not afraid to do her best.
Her plan was to use the rocket board to propel Shego and herself straight up the walls of the natural chimney and up to the surface. There would be no control of the velocity since there was only enough fuel for a single, prolonged burst. There would be little protection for Shego because she would be secured to the board by lengths of wrapping obtained from the ‘Trogs’.
There would be even less protection for Kim; she would have to cut Shego loose before they flew too high after reaching the surface… or if they ran out of thrust and started to fall back.
Kim had moved her base of operations to just beyond the opening to the passage to the chimney. She needed the light for more than just her work on the board; Shego had reacted well to the dietary ministrations of the ‘Trogs’, but was still very week. Right now Shego was propped up against the rocks with her back exposed to the light, keeping it out of her eyes but hopefully giving her the benefits of its power.
Shego was sleeping most of the time. She would waken for a few minutes, sometimes for as much as an hour, but rarely as long as that. When awake, she was still confused as to where she was. They would talk about events that were relaying themselves in Shego’s mind, often resulting in shared laughter and tears.
The time had come for their escape. Kim approached Shego and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
“Wake up, sleeping beauty.” Kim brushed stray hair from her wife’s face.
“Mmmm, I like that… ”
“Baby, it’s time to go. I need to carry you. Tell me I this hurts.”
Kim gently lifted her spouse in her arms, just as Shego had once carried her the threshold on their wedding night. The taller woman was as light as a feather. Kim had lifted Shego before, both in battle, in rescue, and in passion; never did the natural born warrior feel so vulnerable.
Shego didn’t say another word until Kim leaned her up against the ‘Moon Doggie’ and began to lash her down. Shego roused herself and looked down at the bindings.
“No… ”
“What, baby? Is this too tight?”
Tears were flowing down pale cheeks. “You’re not leaving me are you?”
Kim embraced her bride of several years tightly. “Never, sweetheart. We’re going home.”
“I… I had a dream that you sent me away, told me… to leave and… ”
“We’re going home. We’re going to see the girls and our house and get you patched up. You and I are both leaving together.”
Shego made as if to return Kim’s embrace, but her arms were already bound.
“I do want to see the girls. If it weren’t for the three of you I would have killed myself long ago… ”
Seeing and hearing Shego in this condition was making Kim heartsick.
“I just want to see my babies again… !” Shego’s voice rose to almost a howl.
Kim clung to Shego’s bound form like a second skin. She cradled the taller woman’s head in her hands and clamped her lips against Shego’s mouth in such a fervent kiss as to make further hysterics impossible. Kim needed a distraction to keep Shego from panicking.
“Baby, what is it that we sing at bedtime?”
Shego had begun fighting against her bindings, but the question made her pause.
“You… you want me to sing that now? Don’t you want me to put on the ‘Betty Boop’ costume first?”
Kim choked on a laugh; Shego’s face was so serious. It was through a heartfelt grin that Kim explained what she meant. “No, baby, what we sing for the girls.”
“The itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout,
Down came the rain, and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain,
And the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again.”
Since her hands were too securely bound to make the finger-thumb motions, Shego sang and Kim made the motions with her own hands. Kim loved to hear Shego sing; the woman’s voice was so clear and strong, even now. Their heads were touching by the time the song was finished.
“Princess, please take me home to our babies.”
“You got it. I’ll be right back.”
Kim had nothing to keep them here except a desire to say goodbye to her protector, the Leader of the ‘Trogs’. Shego was calmed now, tightly bound to the ‘Moon Doggie’ and leaning against the inner wall of the passage. The ‘lightfall’ was directly overhead; maybe she would benefit from it’s meager down pour of sunlight.
Kim quickly made her way back towards the encampment. She was almost halfway there when she felt the ground shudder beneath her feet. In he distance she heard a blast, not from anything incendiary or explosive, but rather from an enormous impact. Kim ran the rest of the way towards the ‘Trogs’ defensive perimeter.
It was a scene of devastation. The pit as no longer choked with boulders; they had been flung up and outwards in every direction. There were ‘Trogs’ laying everywhere, some apparently wounded, many probably dead.
Kim felt a pang of sadness and grief in her chest. While she had never grown especially fond of the little creatures during her short time with them, they were relatively harmless and had treated Kim and Shego very well.
And had saved their lives. Kim took off at a run towards the center of Hell.
Without warning, one of the many boulders reared up in front of her. The beast was as dark and vague as the gloom surrounding it. It towered over Kim and bellowed in rage.
Several back flips later, Kim stopped and looked back at where she’d been standing.
Brief impressions flashed across her straining eyes: hulking and bear-like, but bereft of hair or fur. Bloated flesh caked with grime and dust from the tunnel that spawned it. It had no eyes; instead the nostrils were enormous craters that covered most of its face. The monster’s ears, the outer folds of which were so convoluted as to mimic the appearance of an exposed brain, were repulsive.
The scream tore from her throat without restraint. The beast was a walking horror, a thousand monster-under-the-bed nightmares rolled into one.
It had sensed her passing and had risen to attack. Having narrowly escaped, Kim watched the beast search for her, twisting this way and that. Apparently homing-in on her scream, the horror opened a maw that was more a wound than a mouth. There were no lips. Long spiky teeth projected randomly from shredded gums, blood smearing the teeth as the creature chewed on its own lolling tongue.
The thing grunted deep in its chest, a subsonic growl that Kim could feel in her own stomach. She wondered if the behemoth was confused, if maybe she could use the advantage to escape.
The grunt was a signal. Moving as silently as an avalanche on trunk-like legs, several other beasts came up from behind the first, joining it. Kim could not count them all in the gloom.
The beasts made a blind appraisal of Kim, and apparently found her appetizing. The first creature shifted forward and…
… and was struck with over a thousand flying crystalline wafers, as sharp as razors and as true as love’s first kiss.
The beast clawed at its wounded hide with jagged talons, ripping deep lacerations in its own flesh as a result. Its howl split the air of the cavern. Kim risked a quick backwards glance to see whence came her salvation.
More ‘Trogs’ than Kim could recall having seen in all her days trapped down here were charging in her direction. Lead by the ‘Trog’ she had come to think of as the Leader, each and every one of them was brandishing a trowel-spear like the Leader’s own.
The vast bulk of the tiny horde surged around her on both sides, but Kim barely had time to duck as she saw the Leader run right up to her, use his sole arm to ram his weapon blade-first into the rocky cavern floor, and vault over her head. He landed, still running, on the ground before her and continued his charge towards the waiting behemoths.
Kim had no breath at that moment to call a warning. She fully expected the tiny warriors to break and shatter upon the monstrous invaders like a wave on breakers. The beasts had sensed the oncoming attack and had hunkered down to better greet the defenders with their slavering jaws.
To a ‘man’, once they reached a point only a few feet away from certain death, each ‘Trog’ duplicated the maneuver performed moments ago by their Leader. Planting the blades of their weapons into the ground, he running figures literally vaulted up and forward onto the towering monsters. It was at this point that Kim bore witness tone of the most vicious battles is her young life.
The ‘Trogs’, using their weapons to gain purchase on the beasts by stabbing into their flesh, climbed up the vile creatures and began to dig. They were digging into the monsters.
Bloody gibbets flew in every direction. The beasts were hampered by the fact that the defenders were clinging to their own hide; to attack the ‘Trogs’ was to risk damage to themselves. Not that the attack was one-sided. Kim saw many ‘Trogs’ perish such as was depicted in the slat tablet shown to her.
Kim watched in fascination and horror. The ‘Trogs’ fought silently, the only sounds they made were of blades tunneling into flesh, or of their broken bodies striking the rocks.
The Leader was no less capable for the loss of his arm. True, he ad to use the weapon as a climbing aid more than his subordinates, but he made is way straight to the crown of the first beasts head and went right to work. His weapon struck down, down into the skull of the living nightmare, until he reached his goal. The beast went rigid, claws flung outward as if hit by a bolt of lightning, and then it toppled.
With barely enough time to run out of the way, dozens of ‘Trogs’ scattered from the falling corpse. The Leader stood on the back of is vanquished foe and made a half-turn to inspect Kim where she sat, stunned from the ferocity of the attack. As he looked towards her, Kim saw that another beast was fast approaching its fallen kindred. The Leader did not see this and the beast raised its talons to rend the little man.
Without conscious thought, Kim was on her feet and moving, only slowing down long enough to grab two of the trowel-spears from the bodies of her tiny saviors.
She drew her arm back and let fly with the first weapon; her target was one of the flaring nostrils of the lumbering doom and her aim was true. Distracted by the intense pain, Kim attempted to launch herself at the beast.
But her energy and intentions exceeded the grasp of her strength; although not infirm, the prolonged entrapment beneath the earth had sapped her resources greatly. She fell short of the mark and rolled to the feet of the second beast. Kim recovered quickly, using her unexpected position to stab upward into its filthy underbelly.
Its lack of sight did not prevent it from knowing exactly where Kim was. Opening the enormous wound in its face that it used as a mouth, the beast lunged downwards. There it met Kim’s weapon, which had been aimed directly at the rapidly descending head. The flat blade sunk deep into the massive skull.
Not wanting to lose her only weapon, Kim found herself hauled to her feet when the bellowing creature reared upright and started to fall backwards. Within seconds, she lay across the chest of her first kill in this netherworld battlefield.
The sounds of death were all around her, but Kim noticed very little of it. The world had gone numb for her, and the gentle tapping on her shoulder was startling.
It was the Leader. He had moved close and was pulling her away from the huge dead thing. Kim let herself be led away from the battle; eventually he noticed that the fighting between invader and defender had spread across the cavern floor. She and her guide skirted the melees, but they often stopped to assist a handful of diminutive ‘Trogs’ that had lost the upper hand.
They met their foes head on, Kim hitting low and the Leader hitting high. Kim noticed, although without much pride, that she was becoming rapidly proficient in he ‘climb / dig’ maneuver.
Her guide eventually brought her to the passage of the ‘lightfall’.
Once there, he gave her a gentle push, away from himself and away from the death that raged behind them in the darkness. The battle was not that far behind them however, and Kim felt as if she had indeed done her best to repay the ‘Trogs’ to a small extent for their assistance.
Taking a knee, Kim lowered herself to eye level with the Leader. He was filthy, covered in tattered blood soaked rags of hide, and smelled like loose bowels. His black eyes were piercing in their intensity and what skin she could see through his wrappings was dead white.
Kim threw her arms around the little man in gratitude. She stared to cry with the realization that if she left now, he and his minions were likely going to die. But if she didn’t leave now, that was one more second for Shego to be left down here at the mercy of the hideous invaders.
As if sensing her indecision, the Leader gave her a firm shove onto her backside. He used his weapon to point towards her way home, and then turned away. He strode to the battle, which was rapidly moving closer.
Keeping a firm grip on the weapon she’d salvaged from her last fight, Kim ran the short distance to the passage. She still had the strip of cloth that she’d used as protection for her light-sensitive eyes from the last time she’d been here. She lifted this from around her neck and entered the narrow cleft in the rock wall.
There was Shego, propped in the pale sunlight right where Kim had left her less than an hour before. In her reclining pose, albeit lashed to a rocket-powered surfboard, Shego looked just like she’d fallen asleep while sunbathing. In truth, the meager light falling down from the chimney was terribly faint, but it was the first sunlight Kim had seen in many weeks.
Kim wedged the shaft of her weapon in the bindings around Shego; she would need it to cut her wife free when they gained the surface. Kim was going to wrap her arms and legs around the board with all her might, keeping a secure grip on their only means of escape while also providing Shego with additional protection from the rocks. Kim moved to the board.
The beast must have hit the passage so hard as to hopelessly wedge its body into the tight space. It was likely trapped there and would have died, but in doing so it had brought its teeth within striking distance of Kim and Shego. The beast roared at them, slaver and gore spitting from its hideous maw. Kim clung to the board and desperately felt for the throttle with her foot, praying that she could at least launch Shego to safety
The blast was deafening in the enclosed space. The green discharge of plasma was visible through Kim’s closed eyelids. When she opened her eyes, she saw the blackened stump where the beasts head had been, smoke still curling from the cooked tissue. Kim also saw a familiar arm wearing the tattered remains of a green and black uniform.
“Princess… can we go home now?” Shego asked, weakly.
Kim gripped the board with everything she had left in her. “Your wish is my command. One express elevator to Heaven, going up.”
Shego closed her eyes and smiled.
“I knew that sticking with you would get me to Heaven some day.”
One kiss later, Kim found the throttle and the board fired.
To Be Continued…