She awoke on uneven ground, face down in dark red sand. She placed her hands on the ground beside her and lifted herself up into a sitting position. A stabbing pain resounded through her palms. She winced and examined her bloody hands. The sand had cut her skin. Her blood dripped onto the sand, staining it a darker shade of red. She dusted the sand from her palms. Ground sharp enough to cut skin. Where was she?
She glanced around, examining her surroundings. She was in the middle of what appeared to be a desert. Jutting out from the sand rose pointed rocks, each coming to a sharp tip some distance from the ground. Hanging high above her head appeared a mockery of the sun. It was a pure black sphere which radiated a dark light that barely illuminated the landscape. It appeared to be dusk, although with the sun being directly overhead it was hard to tell how much light she would have at real dusk.
She rose from her seated position, careful not to touch the ground with her bare skin. Luckily, she still wore her leather armour which prevented any contact with the sand on her feet. The last thing she remembered was the battle. She shivered at the memory. She had fallen through a rift; the thought came to her suddenly.
‘So this must be…’
As she stood, her weight shifted on her right ankle, which quickly gave way as she found herself falling back to the ground. Her fall splashed sand into her face as a new abrasion lacerated her cheek. She brought her hand to her face, only to remove it mildly bloody.
By removing her leather calf guard and military designated combat socks, she was able to examine her ankle which was noticeably swollen and turning a reddish-black colour. While she was no doctor, she had seen a few injuries in her time on the farm. Once, a stable boy, whom she may have met with behind closed doors on occasion, had sprained his ankle after falling off a horse, her father had cast it and gave him a walking stick. She looked around, looking for anything which might be able to act as a makeshift splint or stick. Nothing.
She rose again, much more carefully this time. Making sure not to put any weight on her ankle, she managed to hobble forward. She needed to find something to cast her ankle with but more importantly, she needed to find some drinking water. She wasn’t certain that wherever she was actually had drinking water, but she had to hope. Her throat was already burning from dehydration, and she didn’t feel like leaving this thirst unquenched would help her situation. She chose a direction at random, the overhead sun proving useless at providing directions.
The black sun remained overhead, blasting an uncomfortable heat onto the dry wasteland. She had been walking for around an hour now. Though it had become unbearable even to hobble on her ankle. Her surroundings remained constant however. The same red sand and sharp rocks blanketed the ground. She had seen no signs of life as of yet. Though she was very mindful of the dangers posed by ape-monsters.
Her pace began to slow. She had been walking for too long now to continue. As she was about to collapse, both from dehydration and pain, the sand around her started to shift. At first, she panicked, thinking that she had walking into the trap of some sand-dwelling fiend. Then the sand below her began to sink. Eventually, the ground gave way completely and she found herself falling once again.
She crashed down onto the rocky ground, the hole she fell from hung tauntingly overhead. Well out of reach of the girl. Her dark hair had pooled in front of her face during the fall, protecting it from the sand and rocks. She stood once again, winded, gasping, and aching but prepared to run at the first sign of danger. It was dark, wherever she was. She glanced upwards, towards where she had fell from, only to find the hole, which provided the only light source in the place, to be twenty feet above her head. As she took a closer look, she found that she had fallen into a large cavern of sorts. The ground was a smooth rock floor which gently enclosed an underground pond.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
With the illumination from above, she could see that the pond was several dozens of feet across, an unhealthy coloured brown water corrupted the surface. A colour of water that she would not have dared to think of drinking before. But in as desperate a situation as this was, she was not certain if she was going to get another opportunity to drink any form of water before dehydrating completely. Maybe she could find a way to disinfect the water? She had no wood for a fire, but she could figure something out.
The girl approached the water, careful to be as quiet as possible. She saw something out of the corner of her eye. It appeared to be a rat-like creature. Only warped in a horrifying way, being almost five times as large with a set of claws that could rend flesh from bone. The rat-thing had no eyes. But it was sniffing the air around it. Searching for a scent. It had clearly been disturbed by her fall. After a few seconds, the rat-thing turned in her direction. It started skittering towards her, fangs bared.
The girl screamed in alarm. She had no weapon. Nothing to defend herself with. The noise only seemed to encourage the monster as it increased the speed of it assault. It was within ten feet now. She started to back away, but with her ankle she knew she could not get far. The deciding factor in her doomed escape was the cavern wall which appeared behind her, leaving only a snarling beast and its cornered prey.
The rat-thing came within striking distance and lunged at her, claws extended, execution on its mind. The girl reacted fast, quickly throwing her body out of the way. She was rewarded with the sound of flesh meeting stone as the rat-thing smashed into the wall. Whatever satisfaction she could have garnered however was dashed when the rat-thing rose up again, snarling in frustrated anger. It looked at her with hatred as it advanced. The thing lunged once again. She was too slow to dodge this time, her ankle failing her at the pivotal moment and the rat-thing brought her to the ground.
It quickly became a ground struggle. She was bigger than the rat-thing, though not by much, and was luckily able to keep its vicious claws away from her vulnerable body by grabbing its disjointed wrists and holding them as far away from her as possible. The thing brought its face down, inches away from her’s, before its neck ran out of extension. She managed to worm her feet under the body of the rat-thing, and by using all the power of a one-hundred-twenty-pound terrified farmgirl she extended her legs with all the force she could muster.
The rat-thing flew off her, landing a few feet away with a satisfying splash. It had landed in the pond. The water was evidently shallow though, as the rat thing had no trouble touching the bottom. It once again began to approach her, this time with the full intent to kill its convenient meal. She had little options left. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t fight. And she doubted playing dead would help her here. For the second time in her life, she was trapped in a life or death situation, completely out of her depth, as her next decision would decide her fate.
She found the choice taken out of her hands. From the back of the rat-thing, a spike appeared. It looked like that of a spear tip. The rat-thing’s body was lifted out of the water, and she could see that the spike did not originate from the rat’s body but rather from the whip-like tentacle which snaked out of the pond. Whatever the tentacle came from was hidden beneath the murky depths of the pond. The tentacle began to drag its prey into the water. The rat-thing, now on its last breath looked at her. Beady eyes locking with her own. It still seemed like it wanted to kill her, even as the corpse sank into the deceitful depths.
She breathed in. Then threw up what little food remained in her stomach. She had almost died. Twice. The rat-thing would have killed her with just a minute more, and far more terrifyingly, she had almost walked right into that tentacle’s reach. If the rat-thing didn’t attack her, she would have drunk from the water, right into reach of whatever horror lay below the surface. She threw up again, unable to keep anything down as she came to terms with just how close to death she had come today.