Dozens of needle-sharp claws dug into Don's skin from below while fat drops of rain continued to splash on him from above. The claws came in closely grouped sets of three and each set pulled on Don independently from the others. The claws penetrated deeply but they weren't able to split his skin, only pulling and stretching it as his new captors half-dragged him through the decomposing vegetation and underbrush which carpeted the forest floor. As he was still tightly bound, he had no way of resisting. He could only resort to pained yelps every time one of his captors changed their grip or the group clumsily changed direction. This was usually accomplished by a couple of sets of claws pulling him a new way while the others kept charging along in the old direction. A few seconds of tugging and squeaking ensued before a new direction was agreed upon.

Don had no room in his panicked, pain-racked mind for thoughts about his first kidnapper's fate. He could only squeeze his eyes shut against the thorns raking down his sides as the critters dragged him mostly face-first through the underbrush. Before long the crashing, rustling, scraping and occasional thudding noises produced by his escape masked any noise made by the increasingly distant guard.

Occasionally, his new captors would stumble and don would fall on them. He had the impression that besides the sharp claws, whatever had him was relatively small and soft. When he landed on one, it squeaked indignantly before it's fellows got Don moving again. After one such occasion, the monsters turned Don over enough to upset Cel from her perch on his back.

"Hey, Watch it!" She complained. It was enough to remind Don that he had a partner.

'Cel, Cel! Help!' Don pleaded.

Cel shook herself off and flew up into the air to follow the group. As she began glowing more brightly and caught back up, Don was able to get his first glimpse of his captors. They were small and darkly colored, hard to make out by Cel's soft illumination. He did see light shining off of black, bulging eyes, and he could make out the furiously working legs. They had comically elongated feet and they scampered along using their toes and the balls of their feet, only falling back on their heels when extra leverage or balance was required.

All around them, shadows leapt, Growing large and then shrinking back into nothing as Cel passed tangles of vegetation, gnarled roots and the rare rock formation jutting out of the dark soil. It gave the procession a hellish cast, like the shadows were excited spectators to the passing monsters. Cheering and exalting in the grisly parade. The effect was enough to scare the remaining wits right out of Don's head. He started to scream. The gag stopped most of the sound but the spine-tingling moans that got past it even gave the monsters around Don pause for a moment.

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Cel insisted with her hands clapped over her ears.

Don didn't pay her any heed as the little monsters dragged him right through a briar patch. It was the thorns that intruded into his mouth and caught on his gag and bindings which convinced him to shut up. Deprived of that most fundamental method of stress relief: abject terror and running, he automatically turned to another old standard, anger.

'This is your fault.' He growled at Cel through their mental link, blasting her with a concentrated wave of hate while he was at it.

She visibly rocked back in the air as the message and accompanying emotion reached her.

"Don?" She asked hesitantly

'Don't you rusting talk to me! Everything you have told me has led me from a bad situation to an even worse one. How the void is this better than when you first appeared? What are these things? This hurts, Cel, and it's YOUR FAULT!' Put me back in the crypt NOW!"

"I, I can't" Cel's voice quavered but then became more resolute "Besides, this is-"

'I don't want to rusting hear it! Why should I trust you? Who are you? What are you? Where do you get your authority?'

"Authority?" Cel asked confused. "I don't have anything like that."

Even with the rain soaking him to the bone, bones that were already chilled when he woke up hours earlier, Don's blood dropped a few degrees. Then it boiled.

'You don't have authority and you gave me instructions? Blasphemy! Sacrilege! How DARE you? Get away from me, I don't ever want to see you again!'

"Don," Cel started in a pleading voice

'Go away!' Don insisted

For the first time, Don struggled against his bonds. He gnashed his teeth against the gag and strained his muscles, jerking around trying to get one limb to slip free. A frantic squeaking started from his captors and in no time several new sets of needles sank into don. These sank much deeper than the others and in the next moment, heat spread outward from the puncture wounds. Wherever the heat spread, Don's struggling ceased, muscles went slack, his mind went hazy and Cel's light dimmed until the world was pure darkness once again. The cottony embrace of unconsciousness took him, and he welcomed it gratefully.

----------

With a start, Don's eyes snapped open. A comforting, soft, orange glow greeted him. He lay back on his soft recliner and breathed a heavy sigh. The rhythmic humming of machines surrounded him, reassuring him that the dream was just that. He just lay there, focusing on his breathing as his racing heart settled back down. Eventually, a rumble deep in his stomach prompted him to start his day. Don reached out absently for the auto wash controls. He would feel better when he was cleaned and well-fed.

He groped in the dim lighting for a couple of seconds before his hand sank into something warm, and covered in soft bands with rigid cores. The something squeaked and jumped away.

Don bolted upright and cracked his head on an unexpectedly low ceiling.

"Gah!" he called out, slapping his hands over his forehead before lying back down too hard and missing the soft patch he had been on before. Another sickening crack echoed through the small space and sent Don's head spinning. The soft, rhythmic humming was replaced by frantic squeaking and scrabbling. Small needles began sinking into Don's skin again as the creatures landed on him before bounding away. In moments, Don was alone with his unhappy thoughts.

For the first twenty seconds or so, those thoughts consisted of the simple idea: 'owwwwwww'. But then, they turned to his hopeless and seemingly very real situation. The botched, poorly conceived escape plan had in fact happened. His thoughts then turned to where he was now, and what plans the creatures had for him. It was around this time that he realized what he was feeling.

Two rising tender nobs on his head stood as testaments to his rude awakening, but besides them, he was uninjured. The bruises he had woken up with, the ones he had accumulated during the various stages of the 'escape' attempt were missing too. Even the scratches from the numerous claws and brambles were suspiciously missing. In their place, Don was caked in a ripe-smelling paste. That didn't mean his head was devoid of suspicious lumps. As he was clutching his head, he noticed for the first time, two separate centimeter-tall growths a little above each temple. They were hard but smooth. When he pressed on them, instead of pinching a layer of skin, the force transferred directly to his skull and down to his neck. They didn't hurt so Don filed that away for later.

Don tentatively reached for his ruined shoulder and found only a small, greasy tear. He winced at the pain and the smell of the unguent smeared liberally over the wound. As he was trying to scrape some of the pungent grease off of himself without aggravating his wound overly much, he finally realized that his coarse bonds were gone and he was moving freely again. He did feel oddly weak and even moving a little was a chore but he was much more mobile when compared to the condition he was in back at the crypt.

Shifting his focus to the ceiling, Don reached up. His arm didn't even extend fully before his thumb pressed into the glowing moss and scraped some of it away. The light from the moss was barely enough for Don to see the ceiling by, It was nowhere near enough for him to make out any other details around him. A scrabbling sound rapidly approached Don and pushed all other thoughts out of his head. The sound grew louder and closer before abruptly stopping.

Don turned himself over and oriented himself towards the noise. He stared into the darkness, fear drying out his throat as he tried to see what was approaching. A soft push on his shoulder caused him to start with a yelp.

"Oh good, you're awake! Grey wants to see you. Follow me" Squeaked an unfamiliar voice. The scrabbling started up for a second and then stopped again.

"Follow me, I'll show you the way!" It squeaked again.

"Where are you?" Don asked into the darkness and winced at the growling that came from his mouth. His guide didn't seem to have any trouble understanding him though.

"Over here! Follow me!" It said excitedly. Don squinted in the direction he thought the voice came from but when it scrabbled back towards him it tapped him on the shoulder showing that he was in another direction entirely.

"This way" it insisted "Follow the light" A bit of the moss fell off the ceiling. It didn't fall to the floor however, It stopped a foot away from Don's face, waved back and forth, and then bolted off to the left erratically. It stopped again, bobbing slightly back and forth. The voice repeated "This way!" and Don followed, mostly for a lack of anything better to do. Don spent a few minutes trying to navigate the uneven but smooth floor without banging up his knees too badly. He had to stay low in order to avoid the uncomfortably low ceiling. The moss advertised it's position, but the low light and lack of any other cues made it very hard to reliably judge the height of any given section of the cave system. 'At least I'm not claustrophobic' Don thought to himself after he had to get fully down onto his stomach to slide through a few exceptionally narrow passages.

Don found his arms tiring very quickly. The low ceilings and his injured shoulder conspired to force Don to adopt an awkward sort of crawl. Don needed several quick breaks to catch his breath. His guide waited impatiently each time, urging him on as the floating moss flicked back and forth as if that would entice Don to chase him.

After what felt like an hour of crawling through the darkness, intermittently hearing squeaky voices muttering something just out of Don's hearing, he began to see the faintest glimmer of light. Patches of orange moss painted the ceiling almost constantly but this light was different. As he approached, the stale air gave way to a few whiffs of something a little fresher and Don increased his pace without realizing it. When he reached the source of the light, he stared around in disbelief.

He was under the impression that he was in a natural cave formation up to this point, but the uneven floor and pervasive moss ended as abruptly as that assumption. A smooth stone dome opened up before him. Its peak was riddled with cracks letting in a minuscule amount of light. A few scraggly roots poked through the cracks. bundles of drying vegetation and bulbous gourds hung from these roots in clusters.

Don could see his guide hopping in little bounds to the center of the room where a small mound lay. A flapping tail, its tip smeared with faintly glowing moss, gave Don an answer as to what he had been chasing so far. When it reached the mound, it put it's front paws on it and pushed gently a couple of times.

"Grey, It's awake! I brought it like you asked." The guide squeaked.

The Mound shifted, yawned and thanked the other little monster.

"Hmm" it agreed, "So you did, go back to sleep little one"

Don's guide bounced past him but just before it left the light spilling from the large room, it turned back. Don got a view of an angular face tapering down to a black nose. A few long hairs sprouted out on either side of that snout and they trembled as the monster considered Don for a long moment. It's pitch black eyes had no white to them, and they popped out almost comically. like they were too big for its head. He also noted the strange flaps of material running from its nose back over its entire body, only ending before the tail which now swished from side to side as it regarded the Demon. In a flash, the giant, feathered, mouse turned back to the darkness and was promptly swallowed up by it.