Chapter 9: How to Remain Lost and the Hidden Dangers of the Orange Least Chomper

Unaware of the pursuers sent after them, the three frulids began capturing a few chompers.

“Be careful not to disturb the ones sleeping!” Ismi said.

Yerdl and Kejo both bobbed their pots in agreement. While a single orange common chomper wasn’t enough to worry them, it wasn’t impossible to get buried and trapped under a whole mound of the little chompers.

It was easy enough grabbing the first few stray chompers and tying them together, after all the chompers were more interested in trying to chomp their would-be captors. However after that, uncharacteristically a few of the chompers sensed something was amiss and began moving away from tremors they felt through the ground.

However as the orange least chomper can only move via whipping their tail about, opening and closing their mouth or hoping that they start rolling about, it didn’t make this that much harder.

Ismi hummed happily as they got quite a nice haul, all of them bound together, mouths facing away from each other of course.

Kejo naturally obliterated her good mood with complete innocence.

He was looking about the cavern.

“So, how do we get home now?” he asked.

Yerdl grinned and stroked his whisker-antenna.

“Same way we were getting home when we were on the surface!” He proclaimed, tumbling into the back of the Caravamel. After a distressingly long amount of time he emerged, a dim brown crystal roughly pointed at one end.

“The pointer! Of course! Now we just need to see what way is the right way!” Kejo exclaimed.

Yerdl put a finger around his son’s pot.

“That’s right my boy!”

They both laughed happily.

There are a lot of ways the denizens of Elcon have made in their endless battle against getting lost, some of them even kind of work, the pointer shard is one of them. A pointer shard is an object that has an impression of a location imprinted on it, and thus, when pointed at that location, will glow! Seems wonderful and perfect doesn’t it?

Yerdl slowly turned around and around, but the pointer failed to light up.

“W-what’s wrong Dad? Why isn’t it working?”

Yerdl tapped the pointer against his pot and frantically tried again, but nothing happened.

He began to panic a little bit, as did Kejo.

Ismi watched all of this silently, though she seemed to be growing angrier by the moment.

“W-what we gunna do? We ain’t ever getting out of the underground! I wanna see the sky Da, I feel safe knowing the Hargle and the Sun are watchin me, and Jack O’ the moon looking over at night! Nobody sees me here underground!” Kejo worried.

“Now calm down Son, I gotta think about this clearly. Calmly” Yerdl himself was shaking and sweating buckets.

Yerdl paced back and forth, his fingers sending him scuttling across the dirt of the carvern.

At this stage Ismi was quaking, but it seemed there was no longer anger radiating from her.

“Ah!” Yerdl began “I’ve got it! We’re underground so…”

Yerdl tilted the pointer up slightly and turned around and around, he repeated this several times until finally the pointer shone merrily.

“I did it! We are underground so the village is above us!”

“Good thinking Dad!” Kejo cried, hugging his father’s clay pot happily.

Ismi was rolling around on the ground at this point.

*OHOHOHOHOHOHOHO*

“D-dear?”

“What’s wrong Mama?” Kejo asked, genuinely worried.

“That…” *Ohohoho* “…That’s pointing…” *Ohohohoho!* “…at a wall” She just managed to get out between fits of laughter.

Kejo and Yerdl both looked and sure enough the pointer was pointed right at a wall.

“Oh no, we’re trapped!” Kejo said.

Yerdl looked around and then smacked his pot with a finger.

“Oh of course, this place only has two ways in or out, where we came and that place over there”

Yerdl pointed at the other side of the cavern, which was heavily ringed by lightvine bulbs, though for some reason the vine wasn’t growing in the tunnel beyond.

*OHOHOHOHOHOHO!* Ismi laughed heartily until she almost choked.

*Whew* *Ahem* “Well, we’ll need the pointer if we encounter any forks or anything, so good that you found it dear” Ismi said, clambering onto the caravamel again.

Yerdl didn’t say anything and got on silently a bit embarrassed.

“Why would we need it for a fork? Aren’t forks for eating with?” Kejo asked, nonplussed.

“Other kind of fork son” Yerdl said kindly.

“Oh”

A whip of the reigns and they went off, Ismi still suppressing laughs.

…

Not long after that, there was a swooshing sound and three balls of white with a black streak rolled out of the fissure slide. In mid air they transformed into the snow knights with feather plumes that Fancy Chill had made!

They landed on their feet, alert and swords of ice flickered and cracked out from their right hands.

Unfortunately for one, it had landed right in the midst of the sleeping chompers, which as it quickly turned out, was a pit dug by said chompers eating dirt. The chompers shifted at being woken, thus the Knight lost its footing and slipped into down amid the pit of chompers, soon the only thing that could be seen was an arm reaching a scrabbling outwards as the snow knight was covered over by the Chompers.

One of the chompers would transform upon eating the dark plume and a few others would reach variant mutation from eating snow with magic coursing through it, but that would be another small story, or animal documentary really.

Fancy Chill for her part fell off her pet blizzard as she twitched with rage and urged the remaining two snow knights to chase after their quarry.