In the slowly pulsing aura of the crystal’s light, Alex pushed further into the caves. The pool of water from the previous cavern drained out through a narrow passage, forming a slow-moving underground stream, and Alex reasoned that that stream must eventually empty itself outside of the cave system. And so, Alex stuck close to the stream, which led him further through a series of small passageways eroded out of the stone.
But, in keeping so close to the water, Alex couldn’t help but be confronted with his reflection more often that he wanted to. Still completely nude, his reflection showed his heavy balls and half-flaccid cock wobbling between his worryingly thick and muscular legs, showed his rounded belly bouncing with each step, and he could swear that each time he glanced at his face his stubble looked thicker and his sideburns fuller.
Something strange was going on, that was for sure. And considering he’d already been been whisked away to Wonderland and chased around by a bunch of sex-crazed wolves, the fact the Alex considered this peculiar was saying something.
Trying to push the oddness aside and focus on the matter at hand, Alex pushed on, stopping every now and then to drink some water or enjoy a few bites of sweet tubers he’d scavenged earlier. And with each step he took, the less he felt like he was stumbling in the dark, and the more he felt like he was making progress toward a destination, despite having no clue what that destination may actually be.
After what felt like hours, but could have been anywhere from a few minutes to half a day, Alex stopped. He frowned, feeling… something. He planted his feet against the cold, smooth stone and closed his eyes, not even knowing why he was doing it.
“...Close. Something… Someone is close,” he murmured, his voice gruff and steady. He slowly crouched down, pressing first his hands and then his cheek to the stone. With his entire body flush against the rocky ground, he waited and listened.
Or, it seemed like listening to him. But rather than simply listen with his ears, he felt the rock around him. Tiny vibrations from the ground echoed in his body, vibrated his very bones. It wasn’t a sound that he detected, per se, but it was something in the distance, something that he could sense even with a million tons of solid rock separating him from it.
He rose to his feet and looked around, seeing a few small passageways branching off around him, and for a moment he was unsure of which way to go. But then he felt a tug, a twitch in his abdomen, and looked down to see his now thick, bulbous cock peeking out from his new foreskin and pointing straight down one of the dark caves ahead of him. Insistently, invitingly bouncing up and down.
“...What the fuck is this?” Alex said. He thought he was growing numb to the ridiculousness of this situation, but this was something else entirely. And the truly absurd thing was… He was actually considering following his dick. The one thing he’d always been told not to do, and here he was being literally letting his cock tell him where to go.
“Fine, whatever. But if I get lost, I’m blaming you,” he sighed, hiking up the backpack onto his slowly broadening shoulders. With the crystal’s light showing the way, he followed the narrow passageway further. Somehow, he knew that he was descending very quickly, moving deep into the bowels of the mountain. Without the underground stream to guide him, he no longer knew if he was moving toward fresh air, but the strange sensations he felt while listening to the stone told him that, at the very least, he was moving toward something.
After a moment, he felt a warmth on his face, and the scent of smoke and sweat tickled his nostrils. Reinvigorated, he was practically running down the passageway at this point, his big feet never slipping against the rock as he moved with ever-increasing confidence. Finally, he saw a point of flicker orange firelight ahead, a point that steadily grew larger and larger until he finally came out into a truly massive cavern.
All around the cavern, wooden bridges criss-crossed and wound their way around, forming a web of walkways that spiraled up and down the huge area. Along the ground and dotting the shelfs of rock around the sides of the cave were small, brick-and-mortar buildings, lights glowing behind their windows to let Alex know that they were, indeed, occupied. And even if they weren’t, the dozen or so small, stout figures roaming around along the walkways made that point abundantly clear.
They were all clearly male, with broad bodies and thick limbs that gave them a rather squat appearance, and nearly all of them wore long beards, many of them braided or styled rather than allowed to dangle freely. Some of these short but muscular people were pushing carts piled high with rock along the ground, others were sorting stones into different piles, but all were moving and none were idle. Even from his high vantage point, Alex could see the sweat dripping from their muscular bodies as they worked, filling the air with the ripe, earthy scent of male sweat.
Suddenly, one of the men, a red-haired fellow with a particularly intricately braided beard and an impressively round gut, spotted Alex spying on them from above and peered upward at him. Alex quickly pulled back from the ledge he was looking over, but it was too late. He’d been spotted. And if his experience with those wolves back in the woods told him one thing, it was that he did not want to be spotted.
But to Alex’s surprise, the red-haired man didn’t call out an alarm or order his companions to try to fuck him or something equally distasteful. Instead he put his hands on his hips and just sighed.
“'Bout time you showed up! We’ve been calling for fresh hands from Dicktin for a month now!” the short, chubby man growled, only to notice Alex’s lack of clothing. “...Did you lose ‘yer trousers on the way down here or something? I swear, city dwarves have no sense… Well, come on down, let’s get you suited up. We’ve got a big quota of ore due, and we need all the hands we can! Move it, move it!”