Avere awoke in a dark corridor, the metal lamps fixated upon the seemingly already decaying stone walls, once fashioned to resemble simple brickwork and made with steel, old and rusty for some reason, parts of the intricate design long since having decayed.
The air was cold and humid, freezing his lips as soon as he stood up, quickly noticing that he no longer wore the outfit of a pirate, or whatever it had been that he had been waring, instead being much smaller than he had been before, his skin smoother and without any hair, his body without the normal smell any person innately sent out after not having showered in, well, at least three months as far as he could remember.
Wait... there had been that bath on the wooden world...
It had probably been more like one and a half months, not that it mattered at that point and in this place where his own smell was neutralized by the dripping of water that he had only begun hearing right now, the darkish mould and some mushrooms around, larvae wriggling in some of the puddles, none of which he really wanted to step into as he wore sandals, simple and fashioned to hang onto his feet using a brown string, slightly cutting into his skin.
The dark corridor, as he stood up, having no idea where he was, was a few hundred feet long in front of him, so much so the exit, or what he hoped to be the exit, was smaller than an ant from where he stood, caused a weird feeling in his heart, as if something was about to happen that was so much more wrong than anything he could ever imagine.
He hesitated with walking ahead, as he knew he probably should, and looked around, thinking that would hurt him, either physically, or, even worse, mentally, he'd prefer being prepared for something to happen than being prepared for nothing at all.
There were some holes in the wall, most being covered in countless spider webs...
Could spiders even exist in such damp spaces?
He wasn't sure, not that he trusted in anything that was situated around here, it was most likely all just lies and fabrication of something else, something he should not trust, though he had to admit that he found Lila to be very sympathetic...
Then, he realized, that he was so very suspicious and careful right now, without even really knowing the reason why...
There had been a sudden change in his entire emotional base from what eh could tell...
How long had he even been out of order for something like this to happen?
Well, did it really matter?
Avere didn't think so, right now he really just had to move froward, his mind refusing to look behind him, his ears picking up something that seemed to be, very silently, barely noticeable, growling like a dog, powerful and low, but terrifying him to his core and making his heart jump a bit when he had first heard it.
He took a few steps, his now tiny body moving through puddles that were a few inches thick in some places, and just as often stepping onto spaces that seemed to be as dry as could be in comparison to the constant flow of water in this space.
The ground was uneven and he even fell once, but after a bit, he already made it to the end, the growling only having grown louder and louder, his body having become almost numb of an unnatural cold that he almost knew should not be in this place, one of his sandals having been ripped off after getting stuck in a piece of rocky mud, having been taken from him as if they had glued themselves to that watery slide.
Finally, though, he came to a bigger room, the growling quickly dispersing.
It was as high as a mountain, or at least it was so high he had to crank his neck back all the way to see the end of the walls that went up hundreds of feet, perhaps even thousands, the circumference of the room being in the thousands as well, actually, being wider than higher from what he could tell.
The walls were decorated with once beautiful pieces of art, with paintings once cherished by many people, not carried here by long dead collectors, rotting, devoured by insects that could not differentiate their worth from any normal book, perhaps finding them even more useless than rotten fruits and bread.
On the other hand, however, the ground was covered in countless coins, both silver and gold, copper and shining in a weirdly powerful light, some rotten pieces between that might have once been made of paper, and so much more, for example copper cylinders with weird numbers on them, or at least with markings that seemed to resemble numbers of ehetria.
In the middle of the thing there was something glimmering in a powerful but pale light, as if blemished by something he was not keen on figuring out the nature of, something standing in front of him with what seemed like spikes standing of the entire person's body.
After going closer and closer, coming to be about fifty feet away from the person, they finally turned around, and Avere almost fell back, believing himself to be about to be attacked by some kind of monster.
The person was covered in endless amounts of moist, dark hair, smelling as if they had died long ago, which, according to his experience in this place, they actually had, extenuating their wolf-like snout, their hunched back that stopped them from standing at their full height of a dozen feet and turned them to be eight foot tall, a bit smaller than the place he had previously passed through.
They had wide shoulders and powerful tendons he believed to be able to rip flesh apart with ease, perhaps their intended purpose.
A moment later he had already calmed down, having realized that this was special for another reason, because this had been the first time in what felt like forever that he had met someone with an actual species different from whatever he was cursed to be right now.
But the man, or woman, unperturbed, bent over, lowering their hunched back and moving their arms, covered in a kind of dark cloak made with fur, as if they wanted to look naked, to pick up a single coin, stretching themselves upwards, still hunched, moving the tendon-like fingers elegantly and flipping the coin once in the air, turning towards Avere...
Then, without warning, across over fifty feet, he threw the coin like a miniature discus using only his fingers, hitting Avere straight in the face and knocking him over, his head quickly colliding with the coins that let out a rassling sound with metallic undertone in return, as if laughing at him.