DESCENT

I just play tested this solo.

Cameron Richard was a carpenter. There were not many that knew his name and while he was skilled with his small carpenter's hammer in making sturdy ornate furniture, it was unsuited for combat. His only companion was his rat Ben, a sizabe rat that helped keep his workshop free from pests.

He knew he had to descend into the pit as the forests were stripped bare and there was no more wood for him to work with. There was nothing left for him but starvation and poverty. The only thing that could give him riches was to descend into the woeful pit and dredge up whatever he could find. People seemed to find what they most desire in that pit, though it's hard to tell if these rumors are true as few ever return.

The chambers near the surface were not too dangerous. His rat ate the carcases of the spiders ad the bats and grew larger, more aggressive. His hammer grew heavy with the blood of the monsters he slew. Even the name of cameron began to echo in the chambers as whispers of the triumphs of this meger carpenter rose back to the surface like the bubbling scum rising in broth... Though it was with the serpent he faced his first crushing defeat. 

It was humiliating, where the shambling creatures that shifted in the upper levels seemed to pop like ripe fruit at the fall of his hammer, the serpent played with him, hurling insults belittling his name, until his name carried no weight. Word had spread that against the serpent he flailed against the feted floor of the serpent's lair like a salmon. Many began calling him Salmon Richard behind his back. It was no matter... he still had ben and his hammer.

He continued to descend, breaking the fingers of the many hands and Ben chasing away the many phantoms that accosted them both. It was the cave of teeth that took richard's hammer. Smashing against them chipped away at it until all that was left was the wood handle, It was his father's hammer, his father who taught him how to cut and join and saw and nail. He began to wonder what it was that he hoped to find in this place. He could have just moved to a place where wood was plentiful, to a place where he could continue to craft wood in peace. Was he unsatisfied with that life? all he had left was ben. Ben who had grown much larger now the size of a mastiff. 

He then descended one final hole that led to the deepest chambers of the pit, a deep blackness darker than his cellar during a starless night. It was warm and wet, all he could hear was the breathing and the sounds of massive eyelids opening and closing as wet tears dripped from the walls. There was nothing here but hunger and madness. in the teeth there was silver and gold that one could scrape off... was it even worth it at this point. But it was not just the hunger of the massive maw that he heard.

He had hardly noticed it at first but a hot wetness poured down his leg. Richard looked down and saw that a piece of his thigh was replaced with a waterfall of red. Seeing it now the wires that filled his brain with searing hot pain made contact causing him to fall to the floor, his screams echoing against the walls of gold and enamel. How had he not noticed what Ben had become, this creature was no longer his friend, the teeth grew through his skull piercing his brain. A wave of saliva and blood sloshed from his mouth as he scurried towards Richard. The one thing he had left, Ben needed him one last time. His size made his hunger grew and there was no more meat to feast upon, save richard. 

The last thing Richard said, as ben's dislocated jaw wrapped around his shivering body, the only words he managed to leak into that horrible chamber was "I wan to go home"...