The descent scares him more than the destination. It is dark and small and confined, and his memory swims with images of the boat in the Amazon. He has to put a hand on the wall and comfort himself with the feeling of cold, somewhat moist rock, and remember: Deus Ex Machina. Not the Amazon. Alone. Not with them.

He whimpers quietly, trembling with each step down. He can’t help but feel like it’s the throat of some old whale long since hollowed out, ancient and well worn. How many other people had passed through? Was it possible to die trying to get a weapon? Like say slip and fall and hit your head just too many times? It’d just be his luck to be the first one if not, right?

Here lies Dawson Kimberly Grace, who totally fell down the damn steps to get his weapon and died before we could do anything with him and also it’s kinda ironic since his name is Grace when he had anything but, so maybe that’s best for this organization. Grace was once crowned a hero in his local hometown of Milton, Georgia, when he accidentally fell on top of a Bad Guy trying to rob a gas station while trying to run away from said Bad Guy. He is survived by no-one except a disappointed Clipboard Cutie (probably), two hunting dogs, and a horse called Daisy Duke Nukem. Grace was 20 years old and a hairy fatass anyway so move along, folks.

But he manages to move without incident. With a deep and bracing breath, he enters the bottommost chamber.

It reminds him of the planetarium he visited a few times in the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The room seems impossibly wide and high above him, humming with power and pretty lights. He half expects a show to start and freezes at the threshold, waiting for someone to come get him. Ten minutes later, he hedges more inside, hyperalert of every noise. The darkness bothers him more than a man his age should allow, but at the moment he feels more like a little boy than anything else. It doesn’t help that he swears he hears whispers coming from the walls themselves.

Dawson is tracing the outline of what looks like a Pointy Thing when a rumble disrupts the silvery stream of noises. He yelps and stumbles back, immediately looking for someplace to hide; he grasps at nothing but air.

The rumbles begin to sound suspiciously like suppressed laughter.

He’s torn between embarrassment, fear, and annoyance: the by-product is an indignant but high-pitched squeak. Dawson allows many things to make fun of him (he is, after all, pretty laughable to be honest), but he had to draw the line at a dang wall. His balls his fists. He’s not sure how that’d help against a disembodied voice or a stone wall, but it sure makes him feel better.

The rumbles continue, but this time he notices there’s a different timbre to it: a sibilant undercurrent, like two voices at once trying to speak. Fists quivering, he pulls them close to his chest and slides his feet across the floor as he follows the sounds. Somehow or another, he ends up in front of a tablet at eye-level: seared in red is something that looks like an arrowhead with a few too many spikes at the end and, most importantly, an angry looking face in the middle.

He wonders if that was like that before, or if it was somehow already annoyed he was there.

The soft growls die away, leaving just the hypnotizing sound of a snake’s hiss in his ears. And for some reason, Dawson doesn’t feel anxious about it. He’d dealt with cottonmouths and rattlesnakes before, but while theirs had been the warning sounds before a strike, this seems to him more like his own mother’s voice: hushed, gentle, coaxing him to sleep after a bad nightmare. He could almost make out words even, just the barest of letters strung together.

Against his better instinct, he touches the tablet. Immediately he jerks his hand away as it lights up, but nothing happens at first. The more he brushes his calloused hand along the design, however, the more he realizes that something is transpiring. The noises—rumble, hiss, and for some reason now bleating—coalesce not from within the object itself but in his very mind.

In three different voices he hears her say, Hello, cub, and nearly drops her tablet in the process. Sheepishly, Dawson clutches it as tight as he did Abbi's clipboard to his chest, controlling his breath so he didn't accidentally hyperventilate. The presence in his mind seem to unfurl like...the only way he can describe it is the fuzzy feeling he always got in his head after a little too much whisky, but even nicer than that. Like curling up by a fire in the winter after a long day at work. And also there is a vaguely spicy taste in his mouth, but he's not entirely sure if that’s part of the process or just him slightly freaking out. Yeah, definitely slightly freaking out.

She laughs again, and a frail one from him joins in. Eventually it will hit Dawson just how awesome the experience is in hindsight, but for now he’s as nervous as when he goes to ask girls out. Except this lady was his mother. Sort of. Not quite. That came out wrong. Please don’t judge him, scary hissing growling baa-ing Angry Face.

Rough, throaty chuckles and rattling. I wouldn’t dream of it, my sweet. Come, let’s greet the world together. Let them look on in jealousy, for you have three protectors, not just one.