Flavor fic feedback

[Frank Sronce]

Here's a piece of flavor fiction I wrote for the Nuclear Beasts system I'm writing. It's supposed to be for the introduction to a section on monsters and monstrous races.

I'm not terribly happy with it, but I'm uncertain where to concentrate my rewrites, so I figured I'd ask for advice.

As far as the setting goes, it's a post-Apocalypse game where humanity is extinct, but genetically engineered humanoid animals are still around.

Anyway, comments & suggestions are welcome.

[Frank Sronce]

He crawled through the tiny, cramped tunnel, barely big enough for just his head, scooting forward with surprising speed. Born to the tunnels, they were both well adapted to them and what would have been awkward for others was cubsplay for them. But their task was not cubsplay; it was deadly serious. The hive was hungry, and the roots harvested from the roof of the earth this season were too few in number and too stunted in growth. It was time to seek additional forage.

The tunnels were lightless, round corridors, carved out of the living earth. Some parts were dirt. Some were hard rock. Others were ancient concrete. It didn't matter. Teeth had cut through them all. Harder materials just meant that it took longer. They were nothing if not patient. Strong, kicking legs shoved any loose debris backwards. The workers would clear it all away to keep the tunnels clear.

He did not need to see his brother to know that he was nearby, following a parallel path through the rock and hard-packed soil that would lead him to the chosen spot. They moved more slowly now, sliding through the earth as silently as possible. It was a poor hunter who announced his presence with the noise of his passage; their progress became slower and more silent the closer they got to their destination.

There had been good forage in this region once, but it was dangerous work and the prey had grown canny and suspicious. Hunters had been lost to hidden dangers here, but that had been a generation ago. The prey should have grown soft and complacent by now; their memories were short. The need for stealth was still paramount, but there was no fear in his heart, merely healthy caution. It was more than worth his life if he could save the hive.

His tunnel ended quite suddenly, the rounded corridor of soft earth jutting up against a concave area of rotting wood and crumbling plaster. He knew the scent and shape of the spot perfectly. He had been returning to this tunnel regularly for days now, clearing away all of the obstructions and slowly hollowing out the barrier. It was only a hairsbreadth thick, now. His brother was at the end of a nearly identical tunnel, facing a very similar wall. By a means for which he had no words, he knew that his brother was a mere seven feet away from him, directly ahead and facing him. He could not have explained how he knew; but he trusted the feeling as well as any of his other senses and better than his sight. They were here to play an old trick, but it kept the hive fed and they were both experienced with it.

They waited.

Kumuhl the wolf carried a slow-burning torch in one hand, using the other to search out the corridors and branches of the tunnel. Strapped to his back were four empty jugs, waiting to be filled at the end of his journey. He strode rapidly through the ancient corridors, following a route he had walked many times before. The torch cast only a dim light, having been crafted to burn as slowly and steadily as possible, but his memory knew the path by heart.

The walls dripped with moisture and were discolored by mold and peeling paint. Long ago, Kumuhl had furiously debated the meaning and purpose of the extensive, carefully built underground complex with the elders. He had not accepted their bland assurances that Man had left the vast labyrinth of underground corridors so that their tribe might have shelter from the dangers of the world above. The tunnels were too oddly arranged, the adjoining chambers too small and inconveniently placed for it to have been intended as a shelter for many people. Rusting metal pipes ran though it in enormous numbers and variety, generally attached to the ceiling. Noisome, turbid water flowed sluggishly through sunken canals that ran down the middle of most passages. No, this place had to have had a purpose, Kumuhl felt, though only the Ancients knew what it had been.

Fruitless though they were, his speculations helped keep boredom at bay while he retraced the route from the cooking chambers to the waterfall for the thousandth time. Pure, fresh water (or as pure and fresh as could be found anywhere these days) regularly poured down into the canals in specific spots, and his clan had long ago marked the most reliable and cleanest of the sources.

He kept to the path quite carefully. He scorned the old stories of monsters in the deep, considering kobolds and night-stalkers to be things that mothers invented to frighten their cubs into behaving, but he knew that there were other, more mundane dangers here. The floors and walls of many of the tunnels were cracked and there were areas with razor-sharp rocks jutting up from a shattered floor, or weakened walls that could be brought down simply by resting your weight on the wrong place. So he followed the same route as everyone else, sticking to the well-travelled path and not poking around the dubious side corridors or alcoves.

The pads of his feet made little noise as he traced his way through the maze of passages. He walked alongside the slimy waters of the canal for some distance, then took the appropriate sidepassage on the left and began traversing a long, plain corridor. It was refreshingly dry after leaving the sludge-filled canal behind. It was small and narrow and his tribe kept it clean and unobstructed. The ancient white paint was actually whole in places here; without the moisture of the canal nearby, the areas of mold and discoloration were scattered rather than everpresent. Two more turns and a side passage would take him to the inlet, where he could fill the jugs and start the long journey back.

A tapping sound distracted him, bringing his progress to a sudden halt. He raised the torch uncertainly, casting its dim light across both sides of the corridor. More vermin? Sometimes there were tiny, scavenger animals that infested the crumbling walls, but rarely in the dry areas. They would come out to gnaw on stored food; Kumuhl's tribe sometimes poisoned them or dug out their lairs. The lips of his muzzle retracted in disgust at the thought. Ugly, disgusting things.

Yes, there was the sound again. A scrape, like something digging in the innards of the wall. His ears flicked back in annoyance. They'd have to dig the damn things out. Even if they weren't close enough to find the tribe's food, they would weaken the stability of the wall over time and spread disease in their droppings.

With a disgusted sigh, he unstrapped the jugs and laid them down on the stone floor as quietly as possible. Any loud noise was liable to spook the swarming vermin into silence and for the moment he needed them to continue making noise. Standing up again, he carefully extracted a tiny lump of black charcoal and held it in his hand. He leaned against the left-hand wall, ears perked forward to listen. He'd mark the wall at each spot where it sounded like a burrow was present, then come back later to dig them out.

He pressed one ear against the crumbling white paint, listening carefully. Yes, there it was again. A hard tapping sound. He slid along the wall cautiously, trying not to make any noise. The tapping sound was louder, but he didn't hear any other sounds. That was odd; perhaps there was just a single animal? He pressed his ear up close to the source again. It didn't sound like gnawing. More like someone tapping on a wall with a rock or a bit of metal. He leaned closer.

It got louder. Now it sounded like someone hitting the drywall, hard. He backed away from the noise, uncertainly. His eyes widened; there was a crack in the wall now, and it was spreading in time with each blow. He had a good mental map of these tunnels, built up over more than a decade of roaming them. There wasn't anything on either side of this tunnel except dirt, so far as he'd ever known.

The smashing sound became violent. Bits of plaster flew off of the wall as the pounding intensified. His mind raced; despite his wishes, he remembered the stories that the tribe told to frighten the cubs, stories of strange monsters in the earth that could burrow through concrete like it was soft dirt. Kobold! he thought, shuddering. Dropping the lump of charcoal, he hurridly backed up against the opposite wall, leaning against it. His mind raced. Could see he something of it through the gaps in the wall? Was there the glint of an eye, or something wet?

Something burst through the wall behind him, and seized him by the throat with a mouth wider than his head. The discarded torch clattered across the stone floor, guttered for awhile, and went out.

[jhertsch]

My critiques, FWIW:


Jarring. The jump from itals to roman was too jarring. The first part made me think of weasels, and then I'm following a wolf around?
The first part is far too wordy. You try to tell us that he acts on instinct, and then you showed us. Since the itals focus on very id-driven creatures, don't explain "he didn't know how he knew." Just let him say he knew. Maybe his whiskers sense air currents or something.
The narrative sounds too human. The itals are less so, but overall it feels like a person telling me about what's happening. Shouldn't the animals, though anthropomorphic, have some perception differences from the humans? Here's one idea: Why don't you play up the differences between the two perspectives? Make the weasels even more animal-like, while the wolves are more human-like.

[Frank Sronce]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm kind of hoping that I'll get a chance to go over it again this weekend, so maybe I can work on those points.