what's down below?

Content warnings for death, blood, claustrophobia, unreality, and semi-accurate depictions of grief.

This is an ask blog based on the Dogwarts Map made for the 2024 AUFest! Ever since the beheading, paranoia has taken hold of the Red King. To protect the heart of Dogwarts​​—the Enchanter—he orders the Red Army to begin digging a series of tunnels to hide it deep within.

This blog is also heavily inspired by moonstone & pyritebonds by llithiumstars (check out their work i beg of you.), and follows an askblog format similarly!

-Spectre

I don't think they're hungry unless hurt?

( Gave 6 [Carrot] to InTheLittleWood )

(That is enough to get Martyn moving. If he sits to take rest, the cold will take him. and so he forces himself on even as wave after wave of exhaustion hits.)

(He cries- somewhat because it hurts, but mostly frustration. He has this brilliant angry shade of purple webbing carrying vitality, a spiderweb of veins under his skin, with the epicentre in his hands.)

ah, ah, but time is so hard- be safe, littlewood, in this venture of yours. is there anything you need? anything i can give you?

even when i am gone, i am here

- Spectre

/give steak 10

- Spectre

( Gave 10 [steak] to InTheLittleWood )

- Spectre

- Spectre

- Spectre

Fuuuck. (He groans, tone a little tired and a little hollow.)

(Martyn curls in on himself. His entire body aches and flares in pain, the joints of his fingers and arms screaming out as he curls them down.)

- Spectre

My.. my lord?

(Martyn tilts his head to look around. The floor is cold, and the air is undeniably alive. Blood drips down onto the stone. Ah, his nose is bleeding. He moves to stand.)

(The heartbeat is back. Pulses of sound loud enough to stagger his own heartbeat, intersected with long periods of silence. But he catches it- around the third or fourth tremor.)

(It takes him a while to retrace his steps to the source of it, the winding intestines of the tunnels doing well to mask their inner-working, but he finds the staircase down. Eventually. He sits the pets outside.

Okay. We’re going to try this again. (He says, and he places his axe on the enchanter. The book opens, and the heat from it is almost cruel- He’s been so cold, it almost burns his cheeks.)

(It is cold, in the chasms.)

(Martyn knows cold. Cold is the thing that nips at his fingers and freezes his nose. Cold is something that once itched at his brain and forced him to put more work into his travel.)

Stay close to me. (He says, words short. The dog jumps around his heels, and the cat turns away from him, because it is a cat. Luckily, Martyn is not particularly paying attention to that.)

(He’s staring at the walls of the catacombs. At the dried markings that have bled from the cracks. Ren tried explaining it to him, once, something about the way the magic of the enchanter slipped into the cracks and eroded away at the caverns.)

(A cave noise plays.) SHIT! Not- not funny!

… Wait, was that a real one?