Edgewise

25

Calponia spent an inordinate amount of time tasting dirt while she felt somewhat sorry for herself. The dirt tasted faintly smoky, with a hint of eau d' mildew. She listened to the footsteps draw close to her cell. In the pause, she braced herself, flinching at the captain's snarl as he took off, roaring at the top of his lungs about her escape. That he didn't immediately check the hole in the wall was nothing short of a miracle. It certainly wasn't luck, though she began to suspect her luck was so monumentally awful, it had swung back around on the upswing of good.

The opening was so obvious she wasn't sure it met the requirements for secret passage. Of course, she hadn't seen it until she fell through it. Come to think of it, unless you were feeling along the wall, you'd miss it entirely, a trick straight out of Labyrinth, minus the cheeky inch worm. Somewhere, Henson was turning in his grave. When the captain's presence had well and truly receded, Calponia carefully rose to her feet. The passage yawned before her and she'd didn't exactly have a flashlight tucked into her binding. Muttering to herself, Calponia leaned on the wall, taking a step that immediately slammed her toes into an uneven stone, the same foot still tender from kicking the bars to her cell. That nixed her good fortune theory.

Trying to ignore her throbbing foot, she inched forward in sliding steps, her progress marked by pebbles stabbing through the thin soles of her shoes. Beneath the overly loud scrape and drag of her foot steps there was another sound, a soft grinding that sent her imagination into overdrive. The small sound bounded off the walls echoing in what she thought was a closed space. She stopped moving, certain there was something in here with her. She swore six ways to Sunday as she blinked hard at the dark. It didn't get any better. A silly reaction since there was no source of light for her eyes to adjust to. Why must everything be so damn difficult?

Frustrated, she finally gave into the urge that had been plaguing her since she stepped foot in this blasted realm. Calponia yanked her hands off the way and scratched her face, sticky from the failed glue. Sparse tufts of fake hair stubbornly clinging to her skin like a puberty smackdown but hurt too much to peel free. No one was around to call her on being a wuss. Besides, why add more pain to her ledger? She bent back and let her fingers scrabble at her sore skin, hissing softly at the pleasure-pain sensation. She was still in prison, lost in the dark, alone, but dammit, she'd scratched the itch. She was fairly certain she'd broken a toe on that last rock. How far had she made it in? She glanced over her shoulder.

The darkness had swallowed up the entrance. That meant progress. Didn't it? She sighed and reached for the wall, barely catching herself when her fingers met nothing. What the hell? The same faint grinding sound echoed through the air. She froze, eyes wide despite being unable to see anything. Her heart pounded as she reached out and met stone directly in front of her. Well, at least she was fairly certain it wasn't a beastie closing in on her. It was the whole damn room.

The walls were moving. She was in a shifting stone maze, in the dark. She'd laugh if she wasn't so royally fecked.

Swallowing, she forced her chin to stop wobbling and felt her way along the wall, shuffling along. Twice she tripped on dips and raised stones. She barely caught herself when the stone wall opened, but she kept moving. Not like she could go back. Every time the walls ground to a new formation, she paused, silently praying under her breath they didn't squish her between two big slabs. Calponia was struck by the conflicting sensations of going backwards and being hopelessly lost. There was an urge to scream bubbling up in her chest, one she choked back since the only thing that could make this situation worse was to draw attention of the captain or something worse. There was always something worse. The walls started shifting. Calponia paused, bracing her hands against her thighs as she panted through the anxiety strangling her.