Darkness: Chapter 8 - Depths

Each foot-step was preceded by nervous, frantic grasping. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t see what was ahead, he had to feel for it constantly. Pawing over each rough stony surface he countered while his feet drudged through icy water with hesitant steps. He could just as easily step into a bottomless pool and drown as well as smash his skull on an unseen wall of stone.

Miles, This thing goes on for miles...

The air wasn’t much better. It thinned sometimes, radiating strange chemical smells while it felt as if it would suffocate him with pressure in other parts of the passage.

Vrex had best save me my meal if they throw anything down today.

He grumbled. The meals had been few and far between, every day or two as best he could judge. And each time, more and more hungry faces peeked out from the shadows around the main chamber, growing steadily more ravenous. Fresh, bloody meat had not been theirs for nearly a week now. Those hungry eyes had worried him on both his dashes to the pool, but he could not let doubt hold him back. He was adapting.

Next time they pounce on me they will get a shock.

He snorted, probing a low hanging rock with his hands before he ducked under to continue. Gentle, calm shuffles all the way. Vrex had mocked him, told him several times before each of these little trips. “the tunnels lead only down and to nowhere, do not waste your time”, over and over.

Find a way. Search. You can’t sit idle no matter what he says or others before you have done.

It was true, as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t climb up to the entrance of the main chamber with his bare hands and no tools, so there was only one other option.

Explore.

And explore he did. This was the third tunnel he had ventured down after his turn waiting for the garbage drop. The first had led to a cold, still pool of water that acted without intention as the inmate’s water source. The second however spiralled down a short distance to a honeycombed maze of criss-crossing paths that led ultimately nowhere, it had taken him a whole day to memorize its corridors and find his way out.

Two down, many more to go. There has to be one that goes somewhere...

This tunnel was mostly straight. Granted, it had dipped somewhat while it ran its course, water rising to his ankles, but it was straight. Only the occasional minor obstacle lay in his path as he moved forward through what his eyes perceived as only the colour black, and nothing else. Until he came to an incline, and crawled his way up with agonizing care.

The air began to thin, and surge ahead, sucked forward...

Is this perhaps the end of it?

He placed his right foot forward after a cautionary grasp with his hand, only to find air, and the void below. His body plummeted, both arms spinning to grasp, clutch and grab something, anything!

”Spirits!” his voice burst forth in a startled gasp, the sound carried out up the tunnel the way he had come, and then thundering into nothing and worse in the vast nothing below.

His hand grasped, scraped and caught, with only half a fingers width of dry rock to spare. His strained, the sinews stretching to tearing point in wrist, digits and thumb while his body rocked and reeled, dangling in that black open space. His voice echoed all around, deep and menacing... a lost, hopeless ghost.

compose yourself.

He took a sharp breath, summoning the reserves of strength he had to hold so precious, thrusting his other arm upward to search and grasp. He found sharp rock, but it was enough to give grip while his feet found the rocky wall he had stepped over.

With worn, strained hands and the push of his legs he clambered back onto the lip of the ledge from which he had tumbled. Air dragged into his lungs like molten steel. Vrex would mock him for his stubbornness, how many other inmates had nearly fallen here, or indeed plummeted to their death?

Do not give up, do not ever give up.