Wooden support pillars lined the cave’s interior, appearing at rough intervals as the floor slowly angled down. A few minutes of walking brought Dan to a steep drop. Darkness filled a desolate hole, bringing a rush of vertigo to the electrician. He was never one for heights, but always found himself able to stomach flying or climbing to the top of the rig.

Would he skydive or cliff jump? No, not at all. Looking down a vertical mine shaft was thrilling enough, aggressively so. Dan’s core shuddered as he looked through the blackness. He could feel something down there, something prowling, something… something…

He didn’t know. It felt different. The blood beasts, the monsters in the forest, even the hunters who captured him, they all felt one-dimensional. Like they were beings with emotions, needs, wants. They felt familiar, at least somewhat. Dan had made connections to movies and books, things like magic, zombies, wizards, and ghouls. Even though they terrified him, almost to the point of breaking, he still could compartmentalize things.

The darkness of the cave, the thing down there, was different.

Just a smell, just a glimpse, had sent him into a spiral of hysteria. The darkness was a void he’d never come out of. It was too much for him, it was a plague. He could feel it grow stronger as the rusty elevator sank lower and lower. He wanted to go back up, he wanted to find a different path.

But he knew that wasn’t possible.

The hunters, his captors, were a few steps behind him. He had a few minutes, the collapse doing wonders, but they would eventually get in. He would eventually be found. He’d be killed or enslaved, either way, Dan’s life was over if he got caught.

The void of the cave sang a tune of misery and despair, but so did the hunters. It was a hard choice, but the hunters had already given him so much grief. Killing Bob and the man, leaving him alone and without recourse. Stuffing him in a cell, doing things to him… Dan thought the choice was easy, forcing his body to do it, however, was hard.

But he did it. The elevator wobbled to a resting position. Through the blackness, through the cave, Dan’s feet moved in desperation. His movements were hesitant and deliberate, feeling with his toes before committing to a full step.

Minecarts with pedals of white crystal were lined in rows near a light source. Pickaxes, hammers, chisels, shovels, all set on wooden shelves or standing in molding buckets. Dan took the opportunity, choosing a shovel as a potential weapon. The pickaxes were too heavy, their tips not made of normal metal and were instead a bone-white material.

He snapped the green-red light producing crystal from the wall, squinting due to the pain it caused. It stressed Dan to know that he was becoming more used to the gloomy color. He didn’t want that, he didn’t want to be around the lights any more than needed.

With the light and shovel, he ventured further into the darkness. Corridor after corridor Dan walked. Some split off into new hallways, others opened into small alcoves. Most of the walls were smooth, but a curious few looked like they had been scratched by a pack of rabid dogs.

That didn’t sit well with Dan, as he passed the scratches, he readied his weapon. He thought he was paranoid, that everything was just in his head. The horrible feeling the cave produced, the fiendish scratches, the slight hum in his ears.

Maybe it’s just a cave… he thought.

A sleek screech instantly smothered that notion. Dan spun, hoisting the crystal-lamp towards a dark passage. Silver eyes met the reflection, along with the glint of yellow stained teeth. A rat, larger than a rottweiler, snarled at the human.

Its fur was twisted and mutated, giving the appearance it was flowing tall grass in an open field. It was covered in white dust, except for where its freakish tongue could lap. Its head was pointed into a rounded triangle, mimicking a crocodile’s snout. Human hands made up the rat’s feet, each finger with nails as long as scissors and covered in scabby ooze.

The sudden surprise made Dan’s body react faster than his mind. He smashed the shovel down, flattening it against the rat’s pointed head. The monster was slammed into the ground, kicking up white dust and loose gravel.

It stared at Dan with madness and aggression in its eyes. Blood trickled through its teeth, but it didn’t seem to mind. It roared, shaking the stone walls and causing Dan’s head to spin.

A lunge made the human fall back, dropping the crystal in the process. He staggered back, shoving out with the metal head of his shovel. It caught the rat’s open mouth and cut into the tender flesh that connected its upper and lower jaw.

Dan’s eyes lit up at the sight. He unconsciously pulled from his core, finding the extra strength needed to hop to his feet. He dragged the stuck shovel forward, like pushing piles of snow off a driveway. The rat collided with the back end of an alcove, the shovel right behind it. The force and angle bisected the rat in half, stopping just past the neck.

Dan ripped his weapon from the still twitching corpse and watched his prey awkwardly. He didn’t mean to kill the thing, honestly. Not that he wasn’t willing, he just didn’t think pinning it into a wall would have done so much. He looked at the shovel, finding it was purposefully sharpened.

Ah. Probably because of the rats, Dan mused.

Finding his only light source, Dan didn’t linger long around the corpse. If the hunters were following him, they would find the rat and know he was near. The quicker he left the area, the better off he’d be. With a newfound sense of urgency, he resumed his path down the maze-like cave.

He spent hours in the caves, finding a few more rats, only one of which he had to fight off. The others were gnawing on the stark white crystals he came across every now and then. He didn’t know what they were, but they were obviously being mined in the cave.

They were strange formations, and an even stranger material. It wasn’t until he found an unharvested node, that he understood. The node was a pimple of flesh. A pustule embedded into a stone wall at the end of an alcove. A single small branch of crystalline bone was within the fleshy bag of mucus and pus. It glowed with a dim red, highlighting dark veins in the skin like material.

Dan wanted to puke, but only achieved painful dry heaves. While the situation was ungodly gross, it wasn’t enough to make him nauseous. Instead, the thought of food made him gag. He didn’t know where it came from, other than not having properly eaten in a week.

The… rats are eating the crystal-bones… can I as well…?

The answer, Dan knew, was a strict no. Besides the fact that the pimple was raw, he had no semblance of a clue what disease the pus held. Honestly, he figured that eating the rat itself was a better option.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

He didn’t sit around the node long and continued through the cave. After a particular turn, Dan found a triplet of carved rooms. Unlike the alcoves, these rooms seemed to have a purpose. One was definitely a bathroom. The smell of excrement was astounding. The next was akin to a resupply room. It held extra tools and a few light crystals. The third was the most interesting.

It was a Foreman’s office. At the very least, it was a dedicated room with a desk table and a few shelves. Dan took the opportunity to take anything he deemed useful. A small knife was carefully set in an inside pocket of his jumpsuit. There sadly wasn’t anything else worth taking. He also found a barrel of what seemed to be water. He took the risk of drinking some since there was a ladle and set of cups nearby.

The boom of an explosion shattered Dan’s feeling of minute safety. He ran away from the noise, but couldn’t be sure. Every sound echoed off the stone walls and the hallways were interconnected. An unlucky turn and…

Dan fought back the fear. He was going to get out of here, he was going to survive. His self-motivation only lasted until he found another descending drop. While the previous shaft was pitched in darkness, through this hole he could see the flickers of fire. There was no elevator, however. He could climb down, but he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to make it back up.

It was a one-way trip.

A pang of anxiety found his chest at that moment. Something was down there, paranoia or not. He could feel it. His core sung in low wines, like a symphony playing at the back of a funeral. He thought he could hear the hunters gaining, he thought he could see their crystals of light. The darkness had tricked him before, but this time he wasn’t sure.

Echoes twisted into full conversations. Explosions turned into earthquakes. Shadows morphed into faces. Eyes in the darkness reflected the sparse light. The hum grew louder and louder. Whispers tugged at Dan’s hands and clothes.

He didn’t know, and as he held his core, all it confirmed was that this was reality.

He took the plunge, slowly climbing his way down the brisk cliff. A modest memory of being in college came to mind. He remembered climbing an artificial rock-climbing wall in his university’s rec center. It seemed so long ago, but he was glad for the memory. It gave him the briefest of reprieve, a moment of clarity during a dangerous task. He had fallen when he was a sophomore, but he didn’t fall this time.

He reached the bottom just as the memory faded, the situation came back to him. Fear pushed him forward, towards the light of fire. Twin wooden poles wrapped in oily cloth stood in Dan’s path. Each was aflame, each giving off heat he so desperately needed. He basked in the warmth for as long as his anxiety allowed, but ultimately moved on.

Deeper into the cave he went.

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The hunting party searching for the escaped prisoner ran through the cave’s claustrophobic interior. Only nine entered, each one being the newest recruits. The leadership had things to prepare, sacrifices to baptize. It would take a few hours until everything was ready, but tonight was a special night. Whether or not the prisoner was found didn’t matter.

The high priest was coming, and he’d find the escapee with his overwhelming zealousness.

One of the nine searchers blasted a rat with a beam of superheated water. She continued through the hallways, twisting and turning as the madness pecked at her mental shields. She hated coming down here when the high priest wasn’t around. He always protected his flock, having to do it herself was rough.

She came to a cliff at the end of a hallway and thumped her chin a few times. She pondered if the escapee had ventured down the dark hole at which she stood. It was a ventilation shaft, one specifically made for their holy site. There was no elevator or ladder, so she figured the likelihood of the prisoner going this way was low.

But still, she needed to be thorough.

With a wave of her hand, a bubbly eye formed at the tip of her staff. The construct blinked its watery eyelid as the connection between it and its caster formed. The hunter had to close her own eyes, having an extra sensory organ always gave her a headache.

Slowly the eye floated down the hole and into the darkness. It came across two unlit torches, then a second pair, then a third. It entered the cavern at the end of the maintenance hallway and did a once around. It found nothing and dismantled itself.

The hunter shrugged, continuing to search.

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Dan’s heart felt like it was going to burst. He had just entered a massive cavern when all of the lights suddenly winked out, even his green-red crystal. The hum in his ears grew louder and louder when he noticed the torches around the perimeter didn’t let off any smoke. They had simply flipped off, like a light switch.

He didn’t have long to think about that, however. A spherical wad of flesh flew out of the hallway he had just exited. He hid in the shadows, crouching to make himself small. A stalagmite helped him go unnoticed, even when he had to circle around to retain a broken line of sight.

As the flesh neared, Dan could see that it was an eye. The hum blazed in his ears, tickling him to move. His core lit the way, drowning out the madness’s voice and keeping him still. He could hear his heart beating in his throat. Each pump acting as a sonar ping in a silent ocean.

As the eye turned to the stalagmite he hid behind, he pulled at his core. He could make an orb of magic light He could… blind it? Run afterward? He’d die instantly. The thought pierced his internal monologue with a vengeance. It was the hum, the madness. It whispered horrible things to him. It made self-doubt look like a virtue. It made fear real and nightmares absolute.

The eye popped, splashing the rocks below in thick mucus.

Dan let out his held breath and sucked in more air than he knew was possible. Slowly his heart returned to somewhat normal, the return of the lights helping as well. They just came back, like never having been turned off. He took a few minutes for himself, but inspected the nearest torch. He touched it, feeling the wooden poles, feeling the parallel grains, the waxy finish, the hand sculpted unevenness.

Torches don’t just turn off and on, Dan thought with a waterfall of paranoia gushing in the back of his mind.

There was warmth, he even burnt his finger testing the flames. He didn’t understand, a fact that seemed to be only growing as he encountered new things. Magic, monsters, endless caves.

Dan could only shake his head at the situation and decided to move before the eye came back. Ignoring the torches, he looked into the cavern proper.

It was lined with stalagmites and stalactites, encircling the antechamber like railings at a sports colosseum. The very center housed a marble slab, fitted with carved circles and symbols.

He recognized what it was instantly.

A sacrificial table.

It was then that six new torches flickered into light, allowing Dan to see the far end of the chamber. There, reaching from floor to ceiling and stretching larger than most houses, was a set of double doors. They were painted crimson red and faceted to the wall with bone crystal hinges. Black and gold trim painted the picture of damned souls cast away to endless torture. Skulls, femurs, spines, each framed the doors along the floors and walls. Hundreds, like the catacombs.

Then Dan felt it. The madness frolicked from its source. The hum cut into his ears, rattling his brain. He had to look away, he had to run away. The hunters or the cultists or whatever they were, they were child’s play compared to the door. The door was something else, something infernal. The images painted into the red wood were nothing but what was to come.

Anguish.

It was anguish. The worst pain Dan could imagine was beyond those doors. His core was no help, nothing was any help. The hum told him things. He was going to be sacrificed. His bones were going to be used as decoration. He was going to be-

The hums – the madness – stopped. Dan’s core flared with power as his mind forced itself not to crumble. The torches flickered, almost fading from existence. In the brief moments the cavern was dark, he gained a foothold. His core was light, just like the three stars past the endless blood rain clouds. He followed it, trusting in its needs and methods.

A white-gold orb of light bloomed from his palm. It hovered up, just above his head and acted as a lamp - as a guiding light.

A rush of wind pushed against Dan’s back, the sound of yelling echoing along the carved hallways. This time he knew they were real. The cultists were here, he needed to decide. Stay still and let them sacrifice him, or rush into the unfiltered unknown.

The choice was easy, right? Even his fragmented mind knew as much. His core hadn’t led him wrong yet. It was weak and pitiful, but he had survived until this moment following his instincts, following his core.

He stepped out to the door just as the cultists entered the cavern. As he lay his hands on the red wood, he reminded himself that he was getting out of here. He would survive, he would escape. There was hope as long as he could manifest it.

He pushed.

The door was massive, much more than he could ever hope to move by himself. But it shifted at his touch, like it wanted to be open.

Or, like someone opened it for him.

Dan slipped inside, through a gap he could hardly fit through, just as a silver ball of electricity was sent to kill him. The door closed with a waft of air, halting the attack.