A Deadly Bite

36 || Bit By Bit

The underground passage is another world, one like a distorted mirror image of the void strung between the stars Sarielle has always dreamt of. The stars' realm is full of light and beauty and calm, graceful peace, but down here, the quilted sheets of darkness are speckled with only drifting dust and dirt, winking in and out of view of her wilting candlelight. They hang in the stale air like frozen ashes. Or ruined snow.

She breathes out a long plume of a sigh, watching the dust grow frantic as it scatters. As the only other thing that moves down here, the tiny particulates are beginning to develop lives of their own, zipping and dancing around her like aloof companions. They're a better toy for her imagination to play with than the long loops of shadow. If she lets her gaze linger on those for too long, they knot together to form a noose, snarling and grinning with the desire to strangle her.

The candle's plinth weighs in her hand. She shoots it a glance as she wedges it against her chest, grimacing at how much wax the tiny flame has burned through. More than a day has to have passed, though the hours are akin to candle wax in here: slippery, misshapen, and eaten through with startling speed and agonising slowness all at once. Day and night, time itself, are strangers to places the stars don't touch.

Was this what it felt like to live within Nathan's cell? Nameless days and months and years of dust? Sarielle pauses and twists to look behind her, swallowing hard as the thought skitters over her bones.

The weak, yellowish ring of light glides over cracked walls and bare-rock floors, all as grey as the rest of the passage has been. Further on, the corridor funnels into a black maw, the rest of the way sealed off by darkness and isolating her in the tiny pocket of where she stands. It's all felt so endless. Aside from a brief, restless attempt at sleep thousands of paces ago, she's kept walking, each limping step taking her further from the cascade that stole Dalton from her, and yet she still can't quite grasp escape. It's far longer than she could've imagined, and far more of a maze. She's already tried three other pathways, all which led to dead ends, whether purposeful or the result of other cave-ins. She isn't sure she wants to decide which.

Hand sweeping through her dusty, tangled hair, she turns and carries on, climbing the steady upward slope of the passage, tacking steel to her resolve. Just keep moving, she tells herself. It isn't endless. Everything has an end.

I have to make this worth it. She swallows again, biting the inside of her cheek until the ache of tears subsides.

If she's the one who has to make it out while the others fall, then she will make it out. Any pain in her legs and feet is inconsequential in comparison. All she needs is to escape, and then to survive, and then to fix everything.

She could almost laugh. "Just fix everything," she murmurs, wondering if the dust dives aside to dodge the bite of her sarcasm. "Easy enough. I'll just summon my magical world-fixing powers."

The silence leers back at her, and it's only in the echo does she notice the bitter drag to her voice. She exhales through her nose, wincing. "Stars, I sound like Fiesi, don't I?"

Neither the shadows nor the dust have an answer for her, but a hard lump drops into her stomach all the same. She shivers, pulling her cloak around her so that the fur lining its shoulders tickles her cheek. "I don't suppose world-fixing powers let me turn back time so he can taunt me for that."

Her words linger listlessly in the air, meaningless, simply filling the silence as paper to cover her grief. Even so, they relax some of the tension in her shoulders. She breathes again, in and out; the dust makes breathing something of a chore, but she's gradually growing accustomed to the itch in her lungs. Besides, she'll be free of this place soon. She will. Another few steps brings her within sight of a glint of light, one clearer and lighter than the muted battle her candle fights with the dark.