Ducked down behind the well, Jason didn’t let out a breath until the voices faded into the distance. He ignored the fact that they were talking about elves in the face of their casual discussion on the pros and cons of eating people. Was that real, or just a couple of guys with a weird sense of humour?

“Cannibals?”

He gave it some consideration. Normally cannibals would be right at the top of the crazy pile, but with the day Jason was having, it was at least a familiar horror. He considered it some more as he started climbing down into the well.

“What kind of lunatic place is this?”

Jason was not happy with his options. A quest with the explicit objective of ‘don’t die’ wasn’t great, but wandering blindly through a maze with cannibals roaming about struck him as an even worse option. What was he going to do? Fight them off with their own trowel? There were two of them, and they were a lot bigger than a tyrannical pheasant. It might have been an evil monster chicken, but it still barely came up to his waist. Even then it got some savage pecks in. He didn’t have a weapon then, so he had to get in behind, reach around and savagely choke the chicken with both hands.

Jason started reconsidering his choice to go down the well when only the second rung down shifted in his hand. It was set into the brickwork at the top, the shaky mortar apparently ready to give way. Then he thought about himself hanging from a butcher’s hook and kept going.

“Going down a creepy well or dodging cannibals,” he muttered unhappily. For what felt like the hundredth time he wondered where he was, what was going on and what evil prick dumped him naked, right in the middle of it. The well was quite deep, judging from the diminishing light coming from above. He kept a careful grip on the cold metal rungs as the interior of the well became dank, the sides slick and wet.

“I’m definitely getting Legionnaires’ disease.”

The light did not penetrate far down the narrow well, and Jason was soon moving entirely by feel. He descended cautiously, each foot carefully seeking out the next rung down. He would occasionally glance up at the shrinking blue circle that was all he could see of the sky, reassuring himself it was still there.

“Maybe they’re not really cannibals,” he told himself. “Maybe they’re just talking themselves up.”