Dream

She comes in with a body. She's been hunting for the sacrifice. It's a man, unconscious. For a moment I think it's a trick, the way she holds back and delays about the knife. Maybe it's someone she knows or loves, maybe he will spring up and kill the priest and save us. The priest tells her to kill him, and she cries and begs and screams not to as he holds her hand and forces her through the motion of cutting his throat. It's done, and she is screaming in remorse and agony. She did not want to be a killer.

He throws the body down the hole in front of the carving that takes up the whole wall of the temple. And then he turns to me.
"It will be easier for you. Here, drink this, and then climb down."
I know it's poison. It even has the poisonous wasp still floating in the clear liquid. I take the small shot glass sized glass goblet, and step back as he tries to put a hand on my back and the glass to force me. I step toward the hole, and throw the glass down, dashing past and climbing down.  There are alligators down here, I'll have to be careful.

I wander the tunnels, many close encounters with water creatures, alligators, etc.  Then I hear people. There it opens to a great underground lake and cavern. Across the lake are many open topped boats, like water lilies, but with people, in ball gowns and dressed up. The far shore is the beginning of their city. All of them are white.

Above ground, the dark skinned are prominent, in charge of all the ceremonies of the jungle and the demands for sacrifices. Here underground, with no sun (but somehow it's still well-lit), the people are all pale and ghostly.  Maybe they are ghosts.

All the children (but not their children? It seems they don't have any around them. Maybe it's in preparation) must go through the challenge, the underground maze, to prove their worth. And to thin out the amount of people, as there isn't room for everyone. We will supposedly be facing the adults, but they go in another way. We each get a box, for safekeeping. We have to arm ourselves.

There are all kinds of rooms and tunnels here, it's like a city. How much time do we get? We don't know, and we aren't supposed to speak or help each other, although later someone refers to me as 5-blue, because the vest I've been given (with all these pins and award pins on it, that maybe were mine before, but now I don't remember) is blue fabric, and I begin to team up with and help the other blue vests. My vest has one pin I remember, and it's a D20, and on the back in pen is written "Scanlan". The rest I forget.

I find a giant wooden root at first, in a workstation room, but it has a curve to it, and is much bigger than I should be wielding. It's 2handed for a normal person, but for me it's tough to even lift. I think about cutting it down, there's a saw in this room, but it would attract attention, and take a while, and leave me vulnerable. So i just take it as is. I'll look for something better as we go along.

One giant boy attacks me, and I fend him off and make my way through a smaller tunnel he can't fit through. He has a stone club.

I make it into a "kitchen" area, run by an adult woman. I don't trust her, and eat nothing, even though the other children are accepting all kinds of things. How could I trust them, they sent us here to die, and are supposed to be on a different team. Someone comes in with a huge butcher knife, but huge, and has a 2 foot handle, and she just tells them if they want food, they cannot use knives to fight or defend in her kitchen, sanitation purposed, she doesn't want blood everywhere. And it works. Everyone trusts her. She hides us once, but I still eat and drink nothing. Some people take knives as we leave the kitchen.

We head down more tunnels, there's a few of us now. I find a baseball themed room. I trade out my heavy staff for a baseball bat that feels solid but is in my weight range. I even find a baseball helmet in the next room.

A tunnel opens out again, and we see the first group of adults. (the children have basically all begun attacking each other, and trying to thin us out before we even face the real challenge). It's a golf course. The adults (and lets face it, a lot of these people are OLD) are golfing. It's an interesting golf course, since it's all underground. It's more like long range putt putt than actual golf. No one has the guts to attack them, and we have this foreboding that we should hide and wait for them to leave.

After they go home for the day (we are still stuck in these tunnels, lost and hungry), our group beds down for the night, with plans to explore this golf course for useful things after a short nap. The chef/nurse woman comes back, and reminds me to open the box I've been given. Inside is the goblet of liquid from before, and there are live wasps in vials in each of the four corners of the box, built in like corner pillars. I am so thirsty, I almost want to drink it, but I again stand firm and refuse, and am certain that this is poisoned. The others in my group have opened their boxes, and are drinking their drinks, of various liquids they know and love from their home. purple, blue, all kinds of various juices.

She tells us the challenge we must complete to make it out. We have to run the course from 1 through to the end. She tells us where challenge 1 is, it turns out the vest I was wearing has a map on the inside. It's way deep down into the caves, and the whole challenge winds up and down for miles. But we can't complete it "during the day" when the adults are out and might catch us. So we have to go now to get started, and each challenge will help us in some way.