Consciousness hit me like a truck as I jolted awake, choking as I tried to draw breath. My body ached in places I’d never even felt before and my lungs were on fire. I regurgitated what felt like a whole lake of water then drew a pained, rasping breath. The air was dank and musty, but it tasted sweet to me, like a long-forgotten luxury.
I tried to open my eyes. Nothing happened.
I tried again, feeling the movement of eyelids, but I could see nothing. Even in the caves at the Eyrie I’d been able to see clearly, so what was going on?
My chest tightened as I recalled my last memories – fighting the invaders at Grand Chasm, being overwhelmed… running, blinded by the storm of attacks… falling.
Faintly I recalled an impact that took far too long to come.
My other wounds from the battle and the plunge seemed to have healed, but I still couldn’t see anything! In a panic I felt for my eyes, feeling the skin of my eyelids and the orbs beneath. They were still there, but no matter how I peered out I saw nothing.
I was blind.
A whole new fear clutched me then. Had my survival and escape only been delaying the inevitable? Was I going to die, blind and helpless, lost at the bottom of a chasm?
I felt around for some lifeline, something to tell me I was wrong, that I had hope. I was lying on my front, something hard and wet under my chest, rough against my bare skin. Stranger, my legs were floating in a warm liquid that was flowing with enough force that it could have swept me away if it rose any higher. Its flow was the only sound I could detect.
Dragging myself from the odd fluid I tried to stand, only for my bare foot to hit a slimy, squishy substance that oozed between my toes like mud, slipping under my weight and sending me tumbling backwards into the rushing liquid once more with a splash!
As the current grabbed me I almost gave in to blind panic, but my hand grazed what felt like a smooth rock and I clung on tight, fingertips pushing a few inches into the surface to anchor me as I felt around for another. It was overkill but I was determined not to be swept away to gods-knew where.
Judging by the mouthful I got the liquid was just warm water, but it had a mineral, sulfurous taste and the temperature was close enough to that of my body that it felt very strange.
More importantly, once I had a hold on the stony side of the strange channel it was easy to pull myself back in the direction of the ‘shore’ again. The ‘shore’ wasn’t where I’d imagined however, my probing touch finding only solid rock.
My anxiety spiked as my lungs demanded air I couldn’t supply and my hands and feet fumbled for a way out they couldn’t find. The stone seemed to go all the way up overhead, as if I were trapped in some manner of pipe!
Having fallen in I knew there had to be a way back out somewhere, and I reminded myself that I could go a long time without air after my ‘training’. I clung on tight and kept searching around.
The rock seemed to rise up and part from the water a little way upstream, my fingers hitting a few air pockets I greedily sucked at as I climbed against the flow. After several of those I discovered open air once more. The relief was an even better reward than the oxygen as I returned to the ‘shore’ I’d awoken on.
Pulling myself back up out of the water I collapsed on my back, panting.
Once I’d caught my breath I felt around for whatever the wretched mass I’d trodden on was, and found a number of similar suspects, strange soft objects that felt similar to how I’d always imagined a beached jellyfish would. I had no idea if they were alive but they were sticking to the stone as if they were growing from it. I didn’t feel anything dangerous like spines or tentacles; the main threat they posed was that I’d step on one again.
The fear of toppling back into the water – or indeed falling into another unseen crevasse – kept me rooted to the spot for a while as I tried to think. Judging by my hunger I hadn’t been here very long, probably a day or two, but that was still enough time that I would have expected help to arrive.
The Harpies must have seen my fight. They’d probably even tried to intervene, but against so much massed firepower it would have been suicide to fly down into the middle of it all. I didn’t blame them for not throwing away their lives to save me from my own stupidity.
The important thing was that if they’d won the battle the survivors would have known where to look for me. The fact that they hadn’t found me yet suggested that I was somehow out of their reach. Or that they lost.
In the latter case Grand Chasm would have been overrun.
I recalled Agytha’s fears for her sister, and the exhausted ogre who was so worried for his parents and captain. I’d let them all down. If Chasm had fallen then everything I’d tried to do would have been for nothing.
If that was the case it would be the invaders who would come looking for me, and while they couldn’t fly they seemed to be highly adept at tunneling.
I shivered involuntarily at the thought of them bursting out of the ground while I was helpless. It wouldn’t even be a fight this time.
That resolved me. Blind or not, I couldn’t stay put and hope for a rescue that might not be coming. I had to find my own way to safety. Even if my regeneration had failed to restore my sight, perhaps with healing magic I could be cured?
The thought made me wonder; I had a form of healing magic of my own. The water of life wasn’t healing in the technical sense, but amplifying growth and regeneration was at least worth a try!
I was excited and anxious enough that I flubbed the incantation and my spell petered out uselessly. Even if I only had to speak the words correctly, I still had to concentrate. I forced myself to take a deep breath and try again, slowly.
The cool liquid poured out from my palm, directed over my face and eyes, the sensation of getting water in my eyes quite unpleasant. I kept at it until the spell expired, then sat there blinking, straining my eyes.
Nothing. My sight was gone. I cursed my failure, a tantrum of invectives pouring out as I remembered the many mistakes leading to this point.
I just lay there a while afterwards, until I felt more composed. I wasn’t going to give up. Sight or not, I had to get out of there.
If I couldn’t see, perhaps there was some magic I could use to help find my way? Some magic to….
Realization came to me with the sober certainty of one reliving the night before with agonizing clarity.
“Light!”
Blinding white radiance burned into my retinas, making me gasp in searing pain.
Once the flash of light had faded I started to laugh. I wasn’t sure if I was laughing at my own foolishness, or just at the overwhelming relief. Perhaps it was the irony of overdoing a spell and almost blinding myself for real.
I wondered what Ael would have thought. She’d probably have been in stitches. But I didn’t want to think about her.
What was important was that I wasn’t blind.
I was just in a strange place that didn’t even have the slightest glimmer of light. That meant I simply needed to provide my own. A second light spell cast with my eyes closed turned the world bright red. Over the span of a minute or two I opened my eyes and let them adjust to the illumination provided by a floating mote of light hovering overhead.
What I found was a small spherical cave, what I guessed was an underground river flowing through one half of the floor. I was lying on the floor, naked as the day I’d been tossed into this world. I’d figured that was the case, but I still felt a pang of sorrow for my green dress. It was my first dress after all. There was probably nothing left of it after all the magic and projectiles that had hit me.
My only companions in the space were the strange jelly-like objects, grey and immobile, clinging here and there to the floor, walls and ceiling. When I peered closely I could see some sort of disruption in the residual mana from my light spell around them, as if they were slowly absorbing it. They seemed liked they must be alive, but they looked harmless.
The space we shared was like a bubble in the rock. Based on what little I knew of volcanology perhaps it was just that. The water flowing through seemed to have hit a slightly harder stone and been deflected, creating a natural shoulder in the waters and a small shore on which it must have deposited me.
It was an incredible stroke of fortune, borne from a still greater misfortune. Anyone other than me would have been dead. Even if the fall hadn’t been fatal I doubted there was anyone in Arcadia with as bizarre a body as mine, ‘trained’ to survive without air.
It was a strange ability for a supposedly human girl to have. My best guess was that I’d been altered somehow by the awakening of my mana back when I was first kidnapped – it had certainly altered a lot of other things about it after all. Not that I was complaining.
In my subsequent sojourn in Myr’s hell-realm (of which I had numerous complaints) I’d survived suffocation for extended periods and I could hold my breath an impressively long time, but my body still needed air to think and power my muscles. When my breath finally ran out I’d collapse the same as anyone else, even if I might not die.
I say might as I’d certainly never tried to suffocate myself indefinitely. After coming to Arcadia I’d discovered a lot I didn’t understand about myself, but destructive testing was not the way to get the answers.
Even if I’d survived getting in, that still left the question of how I was going to get out.
The only opening was the river, and there was no way I was going back in there. I had no idea where it went, but I doubted it was back up to the surface. Even if it emptied into some lake or eventually reached the sea, there was no way I could hold my breath long enough to navigate it.
It might have been possible to just jump in and let the flow wash me along, but even if I could be certain it wouldn’t kill me the odds were I’d end up stuck somewhere along the waterway, or get dumped into some vast underground aquifer. No, exiting via the river was madness.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
That left the cave walls. They were solid rock, but that was no problem for me. The question was what I’d find if I started breaking them. It was surprisingly hot in the cave even with no clothes, making me worry that if I was careless I could end up punching a hole into magma tube.
Another worry was that I might never reach anything at all. I could be surrounded by nothing but mile after mile of solid stone. I’d heard of cave-ins in tunnels on Earth, and being buried alive under a whole mountain range of rock sounded about as terrifying as deaths came.
It would have been easy to start panicking again as I reflected on my predicament – I certainly would have back on Earth. But even if I was in real trouble, I was far from helpless. Arcadia wasn’t Earth. I had magic.
To avoid meeting a grisly fate I spent a while trying to compose an incantation that would allow me to sound out the area around me. The goal was to put together a sonar or ultrasound effect. Unfortunately the magical language I was most familiar with was that of the Harpies, and their incantations were generally much more direct, focused on attack and defense.
The closest spell I knew of was the one they used to carry their voices across wide areas, but I couldn’t find a suitable modification for my purpose. Certainly I could describe in words the effect I wanted, but when it came to incantations there were subtle rules that seemed to change depending on the situation and context quite independently of the actual grammar and vocabulary of the speech.
Failed attempts quickly piled up and while I had mana to burn I was growing increasingly frustrated. That didn’t help either; with my inability to accurately control my mana, forcing the incantation to work would be a non-starter.
A vague memory stirred at that thought however, a recollection of the fight back in Grand Chasm. I had done something with my mana, moving and focusing it in my hand as I tried to pierce one of my enemies. It had been instinct and emotion more than anything, but it seemed to have added to the power of the attack.
Aellope had told me about supernatural techniques, using mana without casting a spell to accomplish the otherwise impossible. I was unsure if that was what I’d done, but it was worth a try. If I could apply mana directly to sharpen my hearing I might be able to check for other cavities in the rock.
Gathering magical essence to my ears was a slow and clumsy process. Once I had it there I wasn’t sure how to proceed, but I tried to just focus on listening intently as I knocked on the wall.
At first it didn’t seem to have helped, but as I adjusted the movement of the mana bit by bit I thought I could hear the sounds growing minutely louder and fainter. Latching on to that result I was able to tune out the water sounds and amplify the knocking.
The results were unstable; a waver in concentration or a clumsy maladjustment ruinning the effect easily, but my hearing was definitely enhanced. The difference was similar to holding your ear up to a cup, not a world of difference, but cupless as I was that was still something.
I started moving around the chamber, striking the stone walls and listening to the resonance.
The process was slow and after what felt like a few hours I was starting to wonder if I really was just surrounded by solid rock in all directions save the river, but when I started checking the upper reaches of the cave, climbing up the slippery walls to press my ear to the roof overhead, I heard what sounded like a cavity!
As best I could tell it sounded like a large open space on the other side of a thick layer of rock. It might just be another bubble like the one I was already in, but even if that was the case I could always start searching again from up there. The important thing was that I needed to make sure I broke all the way through and didn’t just get myself buried in a pile of rubble.
I crouched under the point I’d identified, gathering all the strength I could into my thick, powerful thighs.
The ground shattered underfoot as I leapt, but the resistance had still been enough to give me impressive speed. Impacting the ceiling in an instant I threw a punch, all my strength going into both the jump and the rising blow. My fist met the uneven rounded surface and rock shattered with a boom, my body shooting through the breaking stone, rising through what felt like a dozen foot of stone to burst into the chamber!
It seemed I had rather overdone things however, as I kept on going to slam into the ceiling of that room too, breaking it apart. I crashed back down to the floor of the new chamber alongside a shower of boulders, the noise deafening after the quiet of the first cave.
The partial cave-in covered over the hole I entered through, but I was just glad I hadn’t fallen back into it first.
Looking around my new surroundings I found myself in a much larger chamber, however it was utterly unlike the one I’d come from. Every surface was coated in a strange black substance, shiny and chitinous, partially transparent at the edges.
It had been shaped to create forms that looked organic but couldn’t be natural, striations and tube-like structures lining the walls, round and bulbous nodules emerging intermittently. The floor was smooth, a thin layer of mist wafting about it, through which raised platforms with concave bowl tops, taking up much of the floor space like rows of tables. There was even a disturbing segmented orifice on the wall that might have been a door. The only surface not covered was the ceiling where I’d broken it.
I’d lost concentration on my spell and the warm glow it provided had faded out, but there was still light in the chamber, glowing glassy patches on the walls providing a sickly blue illumination. A musk hung on the air too, one wholly abnormal to my olfactory senses.
I was relieved to see that I was alone, however the room had not been empty – the raised surfaces held what appeared to be clutches of huge eggs, black and shiny with an unpleasant grey-blue sludge around the base of each.
Worryingly the rocks I’d dislodged have smashed several tables and their eggs to bits, scattering half-formed viscera all over the floor. The contents were a pallid grey-white laced with dark blue that might have been blood, but thankfully none seemed to have been well developed.
I didn’t have the chance to investigate further, as with a wet noise the ‘door’ peeled itself open. Whatever lived there couldn’t have missed the racket I’d made, and it was coming to investigate.
The first thing I saw was a face.
Hairless and inhumanly cadaverous, the apparition had eyes sunk deep into craterous sockets, glistening malevolent icy blue. The pupils were elongated and bulbous like those of a goat, fierce with intelligence yet showing no sense of understanding.
The creature’s gaunt face had the elongation of a goat’s too, but horns sprung out all over it, not just over the brows. Spines burst out around the eyes and jaws like thorns, while thicker protuberances formed curling branches emerging from the upper third of the cranium, covered in more spikes. All were formed of a similar black substance to the chitin of the walls around me.
Even setting aside the nest of thorns any caprine similarities were passing. The jaws that hung down under the muzzle were far too long and large, overflowing with a forest of black blade-like fangs, while the nose was concave like the eye sockets, adding to the skull-like visage of the entity.
Behind the head the body was in shadow, but even a glance revealed that the shape was all wrong.
The being’s neck spread back behind it as well as to either side, forming narrow shoulders. The torso beneath was elongated like a naga, yet if anything it bore far too many limbs. From the first set of shoulders emerged two arms, and from the second set below it two more, and on down in doublets, all the way to the base of the thing where the pairs were subtly different in shape, more legs than arms.
Each limb had two elbows or knees spaced evenly along the length to let it fold flat against the body to which it belonged. Each ended in a ‘hand’ of four long, doubly-articulated fingers in opposing pairs, the clawed tips tapering onyx as the teeth were. On too many legs the being stood twice my height, but it was likely longer than it was tall.
The ghastly thing scuttled forward on a dozen legs like some monstrous centipedal man, a pasty worm of flesh with a nest of wicked branching spines along it’s back, undulating repulsively as it moved, a sickly scent wafting from glistening pores on its sides.
I found myself taking several steps back from the creature.
But the creature wasn’t mindless – not if it had built a place like this.
“Hello? Can you understand me? I’m very sorry I broke these eggs, it was a mistake. I’m lost and confused.” I tried, doing my best to imagine my speech as whatever language it might understand. But all that came out was English.
The creature wasn’t speaking back. It hissed like an angry cockroach, rearing up on its hindquarters, arms reaching out with a languid precision like that of a surgeon.
“Get away!” I screamed, recoiling, stumbling over one of the ruined eggs as I backed away, falling atop the horrid mess.
The monster gave a screech and lunged forward, ejecting jets of something grey-blue from its sides as the tips of its horns glowed with ghostly energy!
I rolled out from under it, scrambling to my feet on a floor slippery with the evidence of my crime.
The gas was revolting, but didn’t seem to have done anything to me – yet – I wasn’t going to wait and see what happened. Even if it was harmless those horns certainly weren’t.
I didn’t understand why I couldn’t speak to the thing, whatever it was, but if communicating was impossible all I could do was flee.
I sprinted out of the room and into stygian corridors, ceilings ridged as if they were the ribcages of living things, alien growths all over the walls. Malodorous gases wafted all about, mixing and being redistributed by strange semi-organic sphincters that seemed to be parts of the walls themselves, gulping in puffs of gas here, and spitting it out there.
I had no time to observe closer. At first I had one pursuer, but more quickly emerged from side passages, or rose up out of orifices in the floors and dropped down from the ceiling, scuttling after me. Some wore shaped plates of the same chitin that lined the walls and carried weapons of the stuff, warriors perhaps.
I wasn’t stopping to find out – every moment my situation grew direr, ever more foes emerging to pursue me!
My mind went back to Grand Chasm, to how the invaders surrounded me, to how helpless I’d been against their sheer numbers…. How I’d almost died….
The same would happen here if I let them catch me.
One rounded the corner ahead of me, gnashing malevolent jaws and spitting oily black liquid!
Moving too fast to stop myself on the slick flooring, I kicked at the head as it struck, shattering black horns and slamming the monster back against the wall.
I didn’t stop to see if it got up again, I just ran right past. Some of the oil was clinging to my skin, but it didn’t hurt so I ignored it.
Ahead I saw a larger space, a chamber that rose up to stand hundreds of feet high, circled by balconies and spiraling walkways.
From the gloom overhead a huge stalactite of chitin descended, fleshy veins breaking up the surface like organic pipes, disgorging what appeared to be water. They formed a series of waterfalls emerging from the sides of the edifice to flood the bottom of the chamber, where they formed an artificial lake.
Below and between the waterfalls the lake was spanned by a number of rail-less bridges. I sprinted across one, looking about for some way up, some path towards the surface, towards sunlight and fresh air.
I found only more foes, and beyond the reservoir more of the hive-like tunnels, a honeycomb of chambers of all sorts.
Through open ‘doors’ I could see into a few.
Some rooms I could parse, such as egg stores and what were likely rest chambers, others were totally alien.
I passed down a corridor lined by rooms where strange corpses were laid out on slabs, grotesque webs and horns of fungal infestations bursting from eyes and mouths and any other soft tissues. Beneath each body the feculent slurry of the decaying remains flowed down the sides of the slabs to be collected in a reservoir.
Would that be my fate too, if they caught me?
I ran on, slipping between enraged, hissing guards, leaping over some and skidding under others.
In the tight quarters I could perhaps have stopped to engage them without their numbers counting against me, but it was far too dangerous.
I couldn’t let them catch me. I wouldn’t. I had to get away, to survive and escape back to the surface. I had a lot of apologizing to do if I ever made it back there.
The complex was all lit the same way, the glowing patches of the walls casting their spectral fluorescence, but turning into a wider corridor I saw light of another hue up ahead, refracting off the glassy edges of the resinous walls.
My heart leapt at the promise of the surface, of escape, but of course it wouldn’t be so easy. The external glimmers faded as a huge portal clenched wetly shut, sealing the passage off as if a vast beast has closed its gullet to trap me.
Dozens of armed and armored foes were waiting at the foot of the opening, guarding the twenty-foot tall gateway against my escape!
An order of magnitude more of the grotesque caterpillar-like beings were just moments behind me, that number only growing, so I had no choice but to break through.
The clammy white flesh of the creatures seemed ill-suited to fending off heat, so I shot out a ball of flames from my palm with a simple chant.
The guards scattered, scuttling back from the heat, but like a wave of displaced water they soon swept back in once the heat had dissipated. I fired again, and one of the armored soldier-types slithered out between its allies to hold up a thick shield of chitin. The shieldbearer seemed confident, but its goat-like blue eyes glowed brighter with alarm as the fireball hit.
The fire carried little physical force, but the heat as the projectile burst against the surface of the shield was enough to liquefy the material, gouts of molten resin emerging from the other side, drenching the creature and leaving it hissing and writhing as it tried to brush off the scalding goop.
That was one taken down, but thanks to its sacrifice there was no time to fire again, the others already driving their spears at my chest and head as I ran.
I tried to watch the movements of each foe, to read how they would attack and evade each in turn, but my mind was too disordered, my calm and focus disturbed. Real combat had proven nothing like training with the Harpies.
Ducking under a few spearheads I weaved between foes. One moved to cut off my path and I kicked it away, blue ichor spilling out where my heel split its skin, only for another to drive a lance of chitin straight into my chest, the impact hurling me backwards!
I landed on my feet, skidding back several paces. Blood marked my abdomen, but the wound felt light, a pinprick. There were plenty more pins coming however, their wielders charging with angered, sibilant cries.
Reciting an incantation I prepared the largest blast of fire I could muster, but in my haste my tongue slipped and the magic disintegrated into nothing!
Fear threatened to take my reason then. The urge to panic, to stop thinking, was so seductively simple, as it had been back in the first cave.
But I already knew that was suicide.
I had only seconds before the pursuers were upon me and I was be totally surrounded. The guards ahead were already closing in again. I had to move.
If I couldn’t outfight them all with skill then I had to be smarter. The lead foe thrust its chitin spear at my head; I grabbed the shaft in one hand and yanked it out of the creature’s grip!
The thing reared up, hissing and venting noxious fumes in distress. Others circled around to flank me and assist it, but they were too slow. I jumped over their attacks and kicked off my disarmed foe’s horns, slamming its head to the ground and sending myself soaring upwards. The spines needled my foot but failing to break the skin.
Overhead was only the ceiling of course, but the rib-like struts that supported the structure gave me a target to drive in my pilfered spear, the hardened glassy head punching into the softer material and the rock beyond.
Ignoring a spray of visceral fluids from the ceiling I pivoted around the spear and used it to hold myself against another rib and kick off hard. The structure broke from the force, but it sent me clear across the huge tunnel towards the sealed door!
Knowing what was coming I had already started manipulating my mana, and as I met the opening with a kick I was well anchored. The door burst apart, musculature, ligaments and carapace splattering down on the guards below as I blew a hole right through, momentum carrying me out!
I had hoped to emerge into the glorious sun on some grassy hillside, but of course it wouldn’t be so easy.
I was out of the hive, that was clear, but I had a feeling I was a long, long way from the surface.
What I saw was a cavern bigger than anything I’d ever imagined, a vast gulf in the rock so high and wide a city could have fit with room left over. In places at the edges it branched out, linking to other caverns.
The ground was uneven, hills and crags rising up here and there, flatland like plains spreading elsewhere. Strange glowing plants grew all over, mushrooms, vines, reeds and grasses and many more unidentifiable species besides. More clung to the surfaces of the walls and ceiling. Combined their luminescence lit the whole cave with a soft glow in a hundred colors.
Had my situation been less dire the vista would have been magnificent. It still was, but in my hurry I couldn’t afford to stop and wonder at the sights. If only I’d been there as a guest I would have been thrilled to explore the alien world spreading out before me, but already I could hear the monsters struggling with their ruptured gateway, trying to retract the damaged flaps and continue the chase.
I set off running again in the hopes of losing them before they could open it.
The areas immediately around the hive were covered in the strange chitin the creatures used for everything, the edges where it ran out giving way to a thinning meshwork, then natural stone.
A well-worn trail led down from the hillside I’d emerged onto and into the valley below, wending through a glowing forest of ferns the size of trees and weaving around smaller chitin structures. Further out I saw flocks of animals that might have been livestock, but I ignored that route in favor of heading through the rocky hillocks around the edges of the chamber towards areas that looked less inhabited.
In that direction the other plant-life soon gave way to a single dominant species, a mossy growth that had only the faintest green glow to it, sticky droplets on the surface clinging to my skin wherever I stepped on it.
Soon I had lost myself in the rocky terrain, all sight of the hive obscured, but I was still close enough that couldn’t relax. I kept up the pace as I headed towards areas with the least signs of habitation.