You know I survived the fall or I wouldn’t be telling you this story, right? Back when I used to read a bunch, I sometimes got pissed off at the plot armor many of the main characters had. It didn’t matter the depth of the challenge or how insurmountable the odds were. The hero could fistfight a whole pantheon of gods and come out on top with a bunch of new abilities and a ton of loot after a couple of pages of pithy dialogue.

But now I am the one living this. If I didn’t survive one of my encounters, then there would be nothing to read at all. Perhaps none of these things happened. They could be woven of whole cloth from the fertile imagination of an unreliable narrator. I wish that were true because I wouldn’t hurt so much all of the time. If I was pulling this straight from my imagination, I definitely would have chosen a more competent version of me.

When I regained consciousness, I was splayed out on the irregular rocky ground of a deep canyon. I shifted my eyes from side to side, and could see the portion I was in was about fifteen feet wide. Ahead of me a pair of worked stone doors penetrated into a sheer rock wall. The doors had obviously not been opened for awhile, as a pile of rocks and scree had drifted up to cover the lower third of their height. I felt a sharp stone wedged uncomfortably behind the back of my neck, propping my head up slightly. Glancing at my left shoulder, I could see the quarrel still protruding from it, but its fletchings had been broken off in my tumble. My skin was pretty gashed up, with blood staining my new clothing. I guess I should have bought two sets. Pain throbbed deep in my body, like several of my bones were cracked or broken, but I couldn’t feel my clothing against my skin.

I tried to roll to the side into a more comfortable position, but then I realized I couldn’t move my arms or legs. Fighting off my initial wave of panic, I swept my eyes along the visible part of my body to see what was holding me down, but I couldn’t see anything. Thinking I was just stunned, I marshaled my will and tried again. And that’s when my new reality started to set in. A sharp rock was behind my neck, right behind my atlas joint. Trauma in the cervical spine can cause paralysis. I was at the bottom of a canyon, wracked with internal injuries and there was nobody around to help me. Glancing upward, I saw that I must have fallen at least twenty feet.

I started to panic. Would I succumb to my internal injuries first, or would I die of thirst? Maybe a predator would wander by and find a tasty, helpless snack. Or perhaps there was another way into the canyon and the orcs would locate me, even though I thought their bodies were too broad to reach here through the narrow tunnel. Oh, and let’s not forget basic hypothermia. That was also high on the list of possibilities. Maybe it would rain and the canyon would flood and I would drown, or perhaps a rock would tumble down into the canyon crushing my skull. Let’s be honest, the possibilities were endless, but I didn’t see me finding my way out of this one.

Of course, I was applying logic, but my reasoning was based on Earth standards. On Earth, I knew that spinal cord damage and the resultant quadriplegia was usually incurable. Earth logic didn’t necessarily apply now, though, in a world where magic was real.

The orcs never found me and no large predators happened by, but it freaked me out when I saw ant-like insects crawling all over me and when a snake slithered across my legs. I could see it all, but I couldn’t feel any of it. It got worse, though, when the insects scurried across my face, or decided to just hang out on it for awhile. That I could feel, and it was creepy and disgusting and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

I grew so very thirsty and hungry. Sometimes, when the insects were crawling across my face, I purposefully held my mouth open hoping that a few would wander in and provide me with a succulent treat. I soon stopped doing that, however, because the obnoxiously bitter taste of the few I managed to chomp down on was anything but succulent.

Day turned into night and back to day in an unceasing succession. Nights in the canyon were cold. The white stone around me easily absorbed heat from the sun during the day but it dissipated just as quickly at night. The orcs never showed up and neither did any critter large enough to eat me. My time there was tortuous, but the only salutary effect was that I could feel my body healing. First, my bones and internal organs stopped hurting, although the pain deep in my shoulder where the quarrel was still lodged never went away. Then, spreading from the neck down, I started feeling my skin again, but I still couldn’t move. When I started to regain feeling in my lower extremities, I realized that I was resting in a puddle of my own waste, which was upsetting and explained the fetid stench that I smelled. Soon, I could feel the bugs on every exposed area of my skin. My lips were parched and cracked and my skin was burned by the cruel light of the sun.

Nothing comes for free, however. The energy that fueled this healing had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was my body. First, I felt my excess fat melting away, but that wasn’t enough because I had sustained a ton of damage. Then, my muscles became the fuel. Soon, I was emaciated and about to lose the tenuous grasp that I had on my sanity. I started seeing and hearing things that weren’t there, flashes of movement, whispers right on the edge of audibility. I had conversations with my parents and my childhood friends. I talked to Sara and convinced her to get clean with me. All the while, my body inexorably healed. It was a race to see whether the healing would be finished before my body devoured itself.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Sure, go ahead and believe that.

One day, I felt an intense itching on the side of my neck, and without thinking I raised my right hand and scratched it. Then, I went back to lying on the ground, surfing through the labyrinth of my mind, until the fact that I could move again penetrated my sluggish consciousness.

Rolling weakly over on my hands and knees, I began frantically swiping bugs off of my skin. Surveying my surroundings, I could see my pack about twenty feet away. Crawling on my hands and knees over rocky terrain was painful, but I didn’t trust my ability to stand and balance myself yet. When I reached the pack, I felt like I had run a marathon. Digging into it with shaking hands, I retrieved my waterskin and fought my urge to guzzle all of its contents. Slowly, I took small sips of sweet relief until half of it was empty. Then, digging further into the pack, I retrieved my provisions and had my first solid food in uncounted days.

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My left shoulder still hurt like hell, so I tried to pull the quarrel out, but it was stuck in pretty deeply and the tissue had healed around it. Gritting my teeth, I dug out my folding knife and began excavating the wound, my whimpers and screams splitting the silence of the canyon. Eventually, I was able to pull the quarrel free and within a few minutes the bleeding had stopped.

It was only then that I took full stock of my surroundings. Peeking out from portions of the canyon’s floor were the remnants of a cobblestone road. The road led nowhere, however, as the walls of the canyon were collapsed a good distance from my position. The rock walls around me, which rose sixty or seventy feet above the canyon, looked climbable on my best day but I was not having my best day. Strewn on the floor of the canyon was a bunch of jewelry that must have flown from my pockets as I spun through the air.

I spent the rest of that day and the entire next day regaining my strength and cleaning myself up the best I could. My shoulder was healing, but my supply of water was soon gone and I didn’t see any source for more on the canyon floor. I didn’t have any confidence in my ability to climb the walls, and when I eventually made it to my feet and wandered over to check the debris blocking the roadway, I didn’t believe I had the strength to clear it. That left me with only one practical option, the stone doors.

I spent some time retrieving my scattered belongings. Then, I wandered over to the doors. I noticed that they had rusted metal rings affixed to their front, which to me indicated that the swung outward. After spending a couple of hours clearing the blockage in front of the doors, I was ready to try to pull them open.

Reaching out to the door on my left, I grabbed the metal ring and pulled with all of my remaining strength. The door remained immobile but the ring promptly snapped, causing me to fall backwards onto my rear end. I reflexively jumped back to my feet and glanced around in embarrassment. Then I realized that there was nobody around to witness my pratfall. Mustering my dignity, I stood and grasped the ring on the right door. Pulling mightily once again, the door began to grind open, having been silted in by the passage of time. After opening a couple of inches, that ring snapped as well, once again dumping me to the ground. This time, reason took over and I didn’t bother bouncing right back to my feet.

I was assaulted by a musty smell that wafted its way out of the crack in the door. Getting back on my feet once again, I rushed over to the door and tried jamming my fingers into the crack that had formed. There was just enough room for me to grasp the back of the door, which was several inches thick. I was in business.

Recalling one of my father’s frequent sayings, work smarter not harder, I decided to excavate around the base of the door. After loosening the sandy soil with my belt knife and significantly dulling it in the process, I dropped to my hands and knees, scooping dirt and rocks from the base of the door with my hands.

Then, after taking a break to eat a little and gather my strength, I sat down next to the door. Planting my feet on the left door, I wedged my fingers into the gap and used the larger muscles of my legs in an attempt to swing it open.

It took several attempts, but inch by painstaking inch I forced the door wider. Finally, after numerous tries, it was open enough for me to slip through sideways. The feeble light from the crack in the door barely illuminated a sliver of the entrance room. What I could see, though, was a long and narrow room ending in another set of double doors. The rusted remains of a deployed portcullis blocked the room approximately halfway to the other side, and along both sides of the far doors, high on the walls, were a set of firing slits cut into the wall.

Creeping over to the portcullis, I could see that it had known better days. The bars were rusted, and some of them were bent as if the position had been assaulted some time in the distant past. With a few kicks, I was able to knock a couple of the bars loose, giving me passage to the rest of the room.

After crawling through the portcullis, I made my way to the wide double doors at the other end of the room. These were crafted from wood and fragile and bowed with age. The air still carried a heavy musty scent, and it was much more humid within the walls than it was out on the canyon floor. Did that mean that there was a source of water somewhere in here? I truly hoped so, because otherwise I would be forced to put my meager climbing skills to the test, and if I fell again I doubted that I would have the reserves to heal and recover.

When I reached them, I noticed there was an ornate plaque affixed to the wall, but there wasn’t enough light to read it. I cursed myself. What sort of noob goes out into the wilderness without a light source? I was obviously never a boy scout, because I was anything but prepared. There was no indication whether the doors swung in or out, so my only option was brute force. I began kicking at them, and weakened by age they were unable to withstand my strikes, splintering inward. Reaching in through the hole that I had made, I felt a heavy crossbar securing them from opening. After a couple of more kicks, I was able to reach both hands through, lifting the bar from its brackets and dropping it to the floor. Then, pushing on the doors I was able to force them open, the crossbar sliding back along the smooth stone floor.

I stepped into the next room and nearly fled screaming when a series of sigils on the ceiling illuminated with a diffuse blue-tinged light. I was clearly in a guard room. Wooden fighting platforms spanned the length of the wall on both my left and right about head high. The rotted remains of furniture – armor and weapons racks, tables and benches – occupied the rest of the room. Another pair of doors exited from the back of the room deeper into the building.

I poked around the room, looking for anything useful. The only thing I found was a thick coil of some sort of fibrous rope that would maybe make things safer if I was forced to climb back out of the canyon. Everything else in the room was ravaged by time and not worth much except firewood. Maybe I could fashion some crude torches from the splintered remains

As I was gathering my nerve to go deeper into the complex, I heard the loud squealing of rusted metal hinges. Spinning around, I noticed that the doors deeper into the complex were opening. Quickly, I drew my sword. Into the room marched a pair of humanoid skeletons dressed in the remnants of decaying armor. Their eyes glowed with a greenish light as they stepped through the door and began to move towards me.

I fled, screaming as I bolted towards the natural light of the canyon.