Down in a Hole
-A Story of The Lizard-
The treasure hunter frowned. With a groan she sat up and took inventory of her pains. Minor aches in her right shoulder and side suggested a few bruises. Her right knee throbbed and there was a tightness that she knew meant swelling.
A sharp little pain stole her attention. Moving deliberately she reached across and carefully drew a splinter of wood from her left forearm. With a whispered oath she cast it away into the darkness.
A little light filtered down from above. The treasure hunter sat and waited for her eyes to adjust. When it seemed her ability to see in the gloom and shadows had reached it's potential, she considered her surroundings.
A jumble of rotted boards and timbers had broken her fall. There were chunks of stone masonry littering the ground nearby. The pile of furniture she had recently been attempting to traverse had fallen with her when the floor collapsed. From where she sat she could pick out two chairs and a splintered pine chest. Thankfully, none of the furniture had landed on her.
Casting her eyes upward, she was momentarily confused. When she realized what she was seeing, she swore again, and more angrily than the last time. She hadn't fallen into the basement, but through it. The ragged edges of board that formed the stark perimeter of the hole up there were at least thirty feet above her. The masonry scattered around down here must have been part of the basement walls or floor.
Leaning a bit she noticed a couple of stones, silhouetted, like the last teeth in an elderly man's jaw, marking where the floor of the basement must have been. She guessed those stones would be six feet over her head, were she standing. She hadn't counted on this sort of accident when planning to snoop around an abandoned mansion. If she had packed her little grappling hook... With a huff and a shake of the head she dismissed the useless consideration of hindsight, turning her thoughts back to her most immediate problems.
First a fire, for light, warmth, and to ward off any vermin that might live down here. Gingerly working the straps of her pack from her shoulders, she lifted it into her lap. She drew the slipknot that held shut one of the many little leather pockets she had built in when crafting the pack. As her fingers closed on the tinderbox tucked inside, a creak sounded from somewhere above. Then another.
Becoming very still and listening, the treasure hunter heard slow, irregular footsteps, accompanied by the creaking of floorboards. Then a masculine voice, speaking in the common tongue.
"...naked elf walks into a tavern with a poodle under one arm and a two foot salami... who heaps clutter in one room like this? How'd they even get that lounge through th-"
The voice had moved closer until it seemed to come from directly overhead, before being drowned out by the sounds of cracking, splintering wood. There was a brief cry of alarm as more of the floor and junk from the room above came tumbling down.
When the now familiar crunch and clatter had ceased, the treasure hunter again took stock of herself. A lot of dust and a few short lengths of floorboard had landed on her. Nothing had struck her swollen knee or head. Miraculously, no new harm done.
There came a human groan from several feet off to her left.
"Hello? Are you alive?" she asked while brushing the worst of the dust from clothes and hair.
There was a muffled cry of surprise, tinged with pain. This was accompanied by the scraping of shifted debris.
"Who's there? Not a dwarf. Are you... a spirit?"
"Huh." The treasure hunter nodded thoughtfully. "Should've thought of that. Tunneling. Unwittingly undermined the basement."
"What?"
"Just thinking out loud. Probably wasn't Dwarfs, though. Their tunnels are always properly shored up and reinforced. More likely goblins or stone reavers."
There was a long silence. Eventually her new company spoke up again, sounding put upon. His voice carried an edge that sounded like he was trying to hide how much pain he was in.
"You say goblins?"
"Eh? Don't worry. If they were using this place, you'd be able to smell them. And no, I'm no spirit, lad. Just a scavenger that didn't take care enough. Human." She waited a few moments, then added, "Call me Elizabeth. What's your story?"
The fellow lay quietly in the darkness for a few moments, considering.
"Near about the same as yours, seems like. What are the chances? Name's Weber. Andrew. Folk mostly call me Web. How long ha-ack!"
He broke off with a hiss of pain. Elizabeth was just able to make out movement in the darkness from whence his voice had emanated.
"Tried to get up, but you're hurt worse than you thought, right? Just lay still a couple minutes and I'll make us a little fire. Then we can have a look at you." she said.
There was some creaking from the jumble of debris amidst which the young fellow lay. Then a grunt which might have been agreement.
Liz gave a nod, then set to work. First she felt around for a flat surface that didn't shift easily. When she had found one, she drew a knife from a hip sheath and began cutting thin shavings from the edge of one of the less rotted floorboards. These she carefully mounded on the chosen flat surface -- a section of heavy floor beam.
Finally she set the knife down and returned to the pocket she had earlier opened in her pack. She fished her tinder box from the pocket and took a few pinches from the mixture of cat-tail fluff and ground pine resin inside. After sprinkling the mixture into a hollow in the pile of wood shavings, she took a sliver of flint from the box and used it to strike sparks from the spine of her knife.
She gingerly worked glowing embers into flame and saw to it that the wood chips caught before cutting some larger slivers of wood to feed and build the fire. A few minutes later she cast about and found a pair of legs broken from the seat of a chair and leaned these onto the burning shims.
Re-sheathing her knife and setting her pack aside, she turned to consider the young master Weber. He had been quiet the whole time she built the fire, and she vaguely hoped that he hadn't passed out from a head injury, or bled out from some wound. No sense hurrying and injuring herself further at this point, though. Cutting a strip from the tattered hem of her roughspun cloak, she found another chair leg and wrapped the cloth around one end to fashion a makeshift torch. After lighting it in the fire, she held it aloft as she made her way through the mess of wood and masonry between herself and the fallen man.
Stopping and lowering her torch closer, she found that Weber was squinting up at her. One cheek was marred by scrapes dotted with scabbing blood, which added a touch of character to an otherwise moderately handsome face.
"Still alive, eh? I guess by the way you're holding your side, you might've cracked a rib?" she asked.
"Er, maybe." he agreed noncommittally, slowly moving his hands aside.
A sliver of wood protruded from his side. The vest he wore had developed a dark stain around the spot.
"Well, there's your problem right there." Elizabeth quipped, apparently unperturbed.
Weber silently glared at her.
