You can run freely around it, but it has your deer pinned against one of the old stone walls with its sprawling antlers. You watch its sturdy hooves as it moves this way and that to cut off your deer, looking for your chance.
You nimbly dash in and manage to sneak yourself beside your deer, who is holding its bad leg tight to its body and flipping this way and that, attempting to slip away while still facing its attacker.

Now you are both pinned against the wall.

o make noise at it
o attack it
o run out

When you first raise yourself to your hind legs and flail with your hard little hooves, the beast doesn't even seem to notice you. Once you connect with the bone of its face with a sharp CRACK, however, it raises its head, eyeless sockets staring down at you coldly. You jump at it and flail with all your might, but it just shakes it off, turning its head to avoid being struck in the face again. It has given your deer a small window of opportunity to escape, which it takes, bolting from the wall, around the corner, into the ruins.

The creature moans with a long, terribly loud cry that sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

o make noise at it
o attack it
o follow your deer

You jump to flail at it again but it has already started moving to chase your deer and your hooves hit empty air. You run after it, trying to bite it, but its flashing hooves clip your jaw once, drawing blood. It stings terribly and brings tears to your eyes.

As you go deeper into the ruins, the stone debris slows it down and you are able to leap and headbutt it. It ignores you, listening.

You jump in front of it and start flailing again. The creature finally looks at you, only to bring itself back on its hind legs, its hooves so high over your head the creature might as well be part of the construction.

o stand your ground
o run

A salty tear runs into the cut on your jaw and the extra sting snaps your attention away from the near-celestial height of the semi-translucent creature. Your hind legs send you flying roughly into the stone nearby, but its hooves miss you and you're able to scramble up and over a broken column and across the shattered stone floor.

Before you can check if it is following you, your feet find nothing to land on and you drop like a stone into a deep, dark hole. You can feel and hear the presence of something beside you and by smell you know it to be your deer! It pauses what it was doing to run its nose across your cheeks and its long, warm neck wraps around your sore little body as it sniffs you down. The unexpected fall set your heart racing and at its touch you can't stop the tears from flowing down your face.

o curl up and cry
o inspect the hole
o look for the beast

((fawns really aren't impressive fighters...))

You curl up in the narrow space, feeling very small and sorry for yourself, and the deer goes back to what it was doing. You press yourself as flat to the ground as you can, trying to shut out the dull scratching noises your deer is making, when splat! Some moist dirt is scattered over your face. Shaking it off, through the dim light you make out that the deer is pawing repeatedly at the earth, digging deeper into the hole. The going is slow as it can only make limited use of one of its legs.
You become unable to see what it is doing at all and realize something has significantly dampened the light from above. Although a shadow is cast over you, it is like that cast by cloudy glass.

The ear-splitting cry of the beast confirms what stands above.

o leap out of the hole
o assist your deer in digging
o curl back up into a ball

((i'm really glad, I've never tried something like this))

Your gangly limbs are a blur of motion as you help to deepen the hole. You can feel the deer's energy, which spurs you on, and the earth is soft and gives easily. Above, you hear a clatter of hooves, but no sound of the beast dropping down to you follows. Instead, there seems to be another creature up there, its hoarse bellow guttural and deep.
As you dig deeper, you begin feeling a very slight drop in the temperature and a scent you have no knowledge of seems to be coming from the earth at your feet. Above, there is a noise of impact, and then the crashing of bone on bone.


o keep digging
o check what's going on above

((Thank you... trying to stay objective so you can lead the story in the most desirable way to you))


The sounds above intensify, but your deer doesn't stop and neither do you, the earth now practically dissolving before you, until you are crawling to dig deeper, until nearly your entire body is surrounded by the rapidly chilling earth. The deer's heat is behind you, but ahead it is getting colder and colder, darker and darker, the smell very strong now. You can also hear very strange growling noises, as if from within the earth itself.

o turn back
o continue forward

(thank you for playing along, things may get fishy from here so please be patient with me)


You continue even deeper, chills running through your body. You can barely hear the clamor of the creatures above, but now the odd moaning growls are unmistakably coming from in front of you. You are getting tired of digging and the places you were struck and where your body hit the ground ache. Your deer pushes ahead of you, carefully maneuvering around your little body and making slow but steady progress. You realize both of you must be upside-down, a thought that makes you a little dizzy.

Unexpectedly, the scent of flowers drifts to you. You picture the vibrant lavender color in the dark.

You rally your strength and wiggle past them to push away more earth with your thin forelegs. Just as your endurance fails, one of your legs punches into something bitterly cold. You pull it back in surprise. You can't see anything, but you hear the alien sounds with perfect clarity and cold air is pouring freely from what you determine to be the hole your leg left behind.

o go through first
o wait for your deer to go first

Wow this is exactly like mine!

Maybe I will play later...

Have a look inside.

Look for the other deer.

Stay where you are.

I am very much enjoying reading it as well. :3 I must track so I don't miss anything. X-D

You stand absorbing warmth from your companion, peeking out again at the dizzying sea of lights. It is as though a billion tiny fires burn, each a different color, yet they never spread. Some seem to connect, or make lines, but the pattern gets broken up and lost the more you look at it.

You realize your aches have grown quiet, and already your young body is regaining vigor.

Becoming more familiar with the constant drone and thrum of this place, you can hear the water nearby burbling and rushing, and you can see light flickering and snaking by beyond the embankment you stand on.

o stay where you are
o investigate your surroundings

You leave the shelter of your deer's belly slowly, your feet making loud noises in the blue-gold stuff on the ground.
As you move forward, you can see more of the rapidly moving lights before you, blinking and shining in and out of the darkness with perfect fluidity. You realize you are at the edge of the solid ground, and before you drops into an open space filled with the lights. To either side of where the lights slip in and out of visibility is a strip of pure darkness.

To your left a ways, there is a large, geometric structure that is especially prominent. It is unlike the ruins you just came from, looking more like a cut out than a building. Silhouetted in the light you can make out its gracefully arching structure and the many criss-crossing lines that make up its airy form.

To your right, past the glowing light floating overhead, there is what looks to be a path cut through the cold stuff on the ground, leading to a dark place. The black triangle of an impossibly tall, angular hill is cut out of the pinhole lights in the sky.

o go check the moving lights before you
o go check the structure to your left
o go down the path to your right

((wow... thank you. I don't have any education in writing so maybe my advice isn't good to follow. But when I write, I picture a place or thing very clearly in my mind and use my memories of how that place felt, smelled, sounded, as well as looked. Then my mind wanders to some other thing that reminds me of it in some way and I try to use words to combine the two, to bring more feeling to the thing than just physical details... I also use a thesaurus if I see I'm overusing a word. Best luck Minimuh))

The incline before you isn't very steep, and you carefully set one foot on the slope to test how much weight it can hold. The tiny sound of sand and dirt skittering down raises the hair on your spine as you set another foot down. It seems steady, but when you set down your hind foot, your hoof hits something hard and glassy, slipping your foot sharply forward. Righting yourself, you feel the ground beginning to slide beneath you and although you try to jump away, the extra pressure only sends you slipping faster through the cold air.

o try to go back
o try going forward
o keep your feet steady

((the best advice I have is finish first, hone later. A perfect toenail is useless. An imperfect body can move. etc))

You keep all four planted to the ground as it slides, carrying you down with it, but your front feet are dragging more slowly than your back ones, and a bleat squeezes out of you as you are flipped end over end, the world whizzing by in loops as you roll unstoppably in a breathless tangle of legs, the hard earth pushing your body as if to shape you into a ball. After several flips, the whirlwind of motion slowly winds down and you unfold as you stop, the black world still spinning recklessly around you.

o jump to your feet
o stay still

Legs sprawled willy-nilly, you rest until your head stops whirling about. You hear a crunching thump nearby as you deer lands delicately on its hooves beside you, having leapt from somewhere above. It sniffs you and you shake out your ears.

You test the flat ground, which is definitely solid, before getting back to your feet and hesitantly marching towards the streaming lights. They slither and disappear, hiccup to life and then vanish, black as ink. With the sound and smell so immediate, there is no denying that this is a body of water moving quickly before you, away from the tall dark hills and towards the geometric structure and world of twinkling lights. Across the water, several feet up, the lights are bright, but somehow eerie in the chill dark.

You move further forward, but a single punctual stomp from behind draws your attention. Something in the back of your mind snaps to attention at this sound. Without thought, you find you have returned to your deer.

o head towards the structure
o try to cross the water
o head towards the dark hills

((thank you very much))

You turn to head left, but you feel a pinch on your flanks. Your eyes must be adjusting to the darkness, because you can see a dim orange outline distinguishing your deer from the hill it stands poised at. As you watch, it easily straddles the incline and stands staring back at you, a silhouette in the warm radiance of the hovering light.

You cautiously climb, sliding backwards here and there, but ultimately making it back up to the mound where the hole back to the tunnel and the path are. Your deer doesn't stop you as you prance towards the structure, crunching away through the stuff on the ground.

As you get nearer, you realize it is far taller even than the ruins you left behind, the blackness blocking out the pinprick lights so tall and so massive that you get a little dizzy staring up trying to fathom it. You can feel the size of it looming over you as you proceed slowly, your hooves making little taps as they touch bare stone, echoing loudly, but barely audible over the dull roar and rattling coming from above and the rush of water below and to your right.

o proceed inside
o turn back

Putting one foot slowly in front of the other, you are now surrounded by the terribly loud noise, like humming amplified a hundred times, or repeating thunder. It is as though the world above you is rocking and quaking, though the stone wall to your left does not move. Further inside, to your right, you see a trail of square yellow lights coming up from the ground a ways apart, symmetrically even right and left, lighting the seamless stone floor. You can hear the water coming from below and bouncing from the ceiling high above. You can feel the air moving through. Far at the other end there is a wall of illuminated dirt.

Straight ahead, the structure opens to gentle hills, warm lights cast down on the orange stuff which covers the ground in a smooth blanket save a single shaved out path, and the same dots and tiny speckles of light above it all.

o go to the right
o go straight

((i'm glad))

Fascinated, you make your way across the smooth stone, looking upward with a start when an extraordinarily loud, unearthly noise crashes directly over your head. Your spine tingles and your heart is shocked into double time, yet nothing seems to change. The noise continues. The lights are perfectly steady.

You see tiny dark circles on the flawless surface below you and realize you are dripping.
You shake some of the the chill and wet away.

You get in close to one light. No heat comes from it. A strange, faint scent like burning. The light seems to be trapped inside something. It reminds you of the body of the creature that chased you.

You stop at each light along the way, jutting your head above each and looking at the shadows cast in quadruple around you, spider-legged sprites with rapidly flitting ears.

While stretching your neck out over one light, you see that you are now directly above the water. You are floating in the air, a tiny, vulnerable thing of bones and hide, sandwiched between the terrible noise and the sloshing black water.

o hurry to the other side
o turn back
o take your time

You scramble to the illuminated wall in a clatter of hooves all but lost in the din pressing down from overhead. Your shadow splays out on the wall in an angular, bizzare shape. You stop suddenly and turn to realize your deer is still on the other side, now approaching slowly, turning its head about, appearing and disappearing as it walks.

o go on ahead
o call to it
o run to it
o stay put

Tracking. ^^

Right :3

proceed