The water was getting deeper now with each step she took, but oddly Rowanne found herself quite unable to panic. Between the sheer cold and the amount of times she’d been scared that day, to say she was running on fumes would be generous.

So she let herself fall into a rhythm: prod, step, listen... until she found herself matching the beat on instinct. Prod, step, listen.........drip, prod, step, listen.........drip, anything to take her mind away from what lay behind her, anything but remembering Cutty, the Wyrmlings, and ten dead men she’d known since the day she was born. Names. Faces. All the times she’d laughed and joked with them. This was not the time — all that mattered was prod, step, listen..... drip.

She could almost swear she was starting to feel the shape of the drift from the echoes. She closed her eyes and kept moving — better to imagine that the blackness was the world's worst game of blind man's bluff than think about being all alone here. There were things here that made even Cutty seem like a meek little kitten.

For now, all she could do was keep moving, old George would have wanted that. Why did she have to think of his name? She had enough to water through down here without turning on the waterworks, and the last thing she needed right now was to start crying over things she couldn’t control. So far she’d counted 50 drips, 50 steps into the unknown, and she hadn’t died yet. That had to be positive, right? By her reckoning about 5000 steps to a mile, so if she could do that 99 more times she’d have made a mile underground. In all that distance, there had to be some way back up? Hell, at this point she’d settle for digging her own just to get as far away from here as possible.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

At this moment she really wished her bait* hadn’t been with the others. Not that she had much of an appetite in the circumstances, but it did mean she was definitely running on limited time. No food. Plenty of water, but definitely none that would be good to drink — unless she suddenly took a fancy to death by cholera or Weil's disease.

Well for now she was definitely making progress, 100 drips forward and barely a stumble. She was starting to get a feel for the darkness now, the echoing of the water was giving her hints, she could navigate like this...... Then WHAM. Rowanne bit back a curse as her elbow slammed across an odd spur of stone, OFFFFYABUGGEROHELLTHATHURT, BASTARDROCKGAAAAAAHHHHH....... must.....not......scream.

Sod's law at its finest, here.

Then, as she opened her eyes slightly while trying not to throw up from the pain, she saw light. It looked like the eerie glow of wyrmbone, and nobody worked down here so it couldn’t be a glinny. That only left one other possibility: she’d found a seam. Even better - the water seemed to be getting shallower in that direction.

Rowanne swore to herself that she would bring extra bait with her for the Bwyca every single day from now on as she carefully stepped towards the light.