I knew I shouldn’t have gone off the beaten path.

I just couldn’t help myself. In Eisreisenwelt, the foot traffic is so bad that there is a literal path worn into the stone. Sure the walls are pretty, seafoam white with blue limestone and ice running through that gave it its name. Only problem was, I could barely see the walls with the legions of tourists snapping pictures on disposable film that they would never develop.

I was an explorer, an adventurer. I didn’t need to be directed like cattle.

So when I saw my chance to duck under a rope and head out into the great beyond, I took it. Gravel crunching under my feet before turning back into the natural limestone. The guide’s voice faded behind me, the tourists too caught up in their cameras to actually see anything.

There wasn’t really a path here anymore. More just amorphous bubbles of air where water had made its march to freedom, patiently waiting thousands of years to rejoin the sea. It was nice here, cool and open. I switched on a lantern on my pack as the light faded to nothing behind me.

There were several forks and I always took the left one, “Left is right,” I could hear my dad say. I chuckled to myself then immediately hit a dead end. God damn it old man.

I stomped in anger but stopped when I heard an echo. It was a dull thud followed by a tap a few moments later. Weird.

I stomped again and again heard the thud. This time there were many taps, hundreds of them. What a weird phenomenon. I tapped again. It almost seemed holl---

The ground beneath me split open suddenly like hungry jaws. My hands scrabbled for a handhold, but the limestone was too smooth, the ice too slippery. My nails skipped over rock and the abyss swallowed me up.

I fell through darkness, the lantern on my belt doing nothing to give faces to the stones that struck me from all sides. I closed my eyes and rolled into a ball, rock and bone meeting over and over again.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Then, after what felt like an eternity, the chute levelled out. I rolled to a stop, still laying in fetal position. There was a pounding in my head and my heart. I kept my eyes closed for a minute, taking stock of the damage. Afraid to feel too much and be broken.

It was dark when I opened my eyes. The type of night that only happened in prehistoric times when the world was too young to remember the sun. I groped for my backup flashlight. 

The tapping noise was back, I realized after the ringing in my ears subsided. Thousands of tiny taps like a chorus of metal against stone. I turned on my flashlight.

Thousands of faces looked back at me.

I turned off my flashlight.

The dark had always been a place that I could hide in, That’s what made me such a good cave diver. I took solace in it. If I couldn’t see them, they didn’t exist.

Someone cleared their throat.

Not real. Not real. Not real.

“You know we can see you right?”

I jumped out of my skin and turned the flashlight back on, flattening myself against the wall. The beam fell on the floor so I could only see hundreds of bearded folk, not the thousands I knew were waiting in the shadows.

They were short and stocky, with beards and pickaxes. I frowned in recognition and relaxed despite myself. “Are you…?”

We’re the dwarves, laddie,” A blonde bearded one with a kind face towards the front confirmed, “It’s been a while since your kind got sentenced” His voice was like grinding rock and rolling thunder.

The rest of the group got bored and went back to work, tapping the rock with such precision that it opened to them like a chest of drawers.

I stood up and immediately banged my head.

“Careful son,” He gave me a hand up, “Can’t have you breaking down before your contract is up”

“Contract?” I asked, bent over awkwardly, “And what do you mean sentenced?”

He gave a rolling laugh, “Don’t try any excuses, we’ve heard them all. You’ll fulfill your sentence and we’ll send you back, good as new.”

I tried desperately to convince him there was some sort of mistake, pleaded with him, begged him, but the dwarves are stone. They spend their millenia mining for gold with the patience of glaciers.

He handed me a pick then banged his against it with a clang like some sort of toast.

 “Ten years flies by!”