Unable to see his own hand right before his face, Vidar swore and shoved the map into his coat pocket. The heat was getting to him as his heartbeat picked up and his limbs buzzed with energy. He wanted to run, to flee, but there was nowhere to go. Just shit and darkness. He took a tentative step and almost fell. Somehow, he’d been turned around without realizing it and that one step almost put him into the run in the floor. If he’d gone in, he would surely have been carried over the edge and into the abyss.

  Vidar screamed and slammed the lantern down to the floor. It was a wordless wail that just had to get out of him. He screamed until the breath in his chest ran out, then he breathed in and screamed again, clenching his fists and turning his face up to the ceiling. No matter what he did, everything turned to shit. A worthless pile of it. Once he got a couple of more screams out of him, a chill settled in his gut.

  The lantern!

  Yes, the rune was spent or broken, but that didn’t mean it was worthless. If, no, when, he managed to get out of that forsaken place, Embla would have him killed if he turned up without that rune. Carefully searching with his foot, he found the lantern almost immediately, but when he lifted it, the rune was not in its place. It was gone.

  Vidar got down on his hands and knees, desperately feeling around in the darkness. “Where are you?” he screamed.

  Vidar placed both palms on the floor and roared in frustration. “Where are you?!”

  The stone underneath his hands went cold for a second, and a flickering light filled the tunnel. Just for a second before going out again, but there it was. A little further off, near the edge of the groove in the floor. Even in the dark, Vidar didn’t have trouble finding it once he’d seen its location.

  Tears of joy streamed down his cheeks as he clutched it in his left hand, holding it tight to his chest like a baby. Snot ran from his nose and Vidar wiped it with the sleeve of his coat, not caring in the slightest.

  “I have you, you little bastard.”

  The light had returned for a moment. That meant it could do so again. His thumb brushed the rough surface of the grainy wood disc, tracing the slightly smoother part of the inscribed rune and the thin crack.

  He thrust it forward. “Light!”

  Nothing happened.

  Vidar shook it. “Trigger!”

  Nothing.

  The stupid thing would not trigger again, no matter what he tried. That sound rang out again in the silence, stone on stone or perhaps metal on stone. He wasn’t sure. Its origin wasn’t anywhere near, as far as he could tell.

  “Hello?”

  When no reply came, Vidar put the wooden disk with the rune on it in his pocket. Navigating the darkness was not something he wanted to attempt with only one hand free. The sound frightened him. He could admit that much to himself, at least. For a moment, he considered keeping the knife out in front of him as he walked the narrow passageways, but decided against it. With the luck he was having, he would probably trip and stab himself. Instead, he kept one hand on the wall and one hand out in front of him. If he never stopped touching the wall, he should be safe from falling into the running gray water.

  Traversing the darkness, he soon found an opening in the wall and smiled. Vidar was relatively certain this was the path from which he’d come.

  Continuing like that, he walked, and walked, and walked. When he made it to a long tunnel where the air smelled a little better, he could no longer deny it. He was hopelessly lost.

  With no better option, he continued straight ahead. Without being able to see the map, he didn’t have the first clue as to how to navigate the underground system. Even with light, he wouldn’t know where on the map he was, or even if he was still in the bounds of the hastily drawn lines. All he could do was continue walking and hope his hand eventually hit a ladder.

  Vidar emerged onto another narrow passageway, but this one was different. Water roared right in front of him, far more of it than what passed through the much smaller run in the gray water part. The floor was wet and slippery, but he still reached out tentatively to touch the water.

  The stream was powerful, but not so powerful that he’d be swept along merely from touching it, as long as he was careful. He washed his hands and face in the clean water before cupping his hands to drink. It was cold, almost freezing. Vidar didn’t mind. He was incredibly warm and his throat begged for moisture.

  The roar of the water drowned out any other sound, and once he’d had his fill of water, Vidar frowned and listened closer. Sure, it was a lot of water passing by right in front of him, but not enough that it should make such noise. Most of the sound was coming from a long way upstream, he thought. With how much water was rushing in, its origin could only be in one place. The sea.

  He didn’t know why it didn’t taste salty, but that still had to be it. If the water entered the system from the shore, that meant an opening. Heartened by the idea of leaving the darkness, Vidar set off, moving upstream.

  The corridor continued on straight for what felt like an eternity and Vidar upped his pace after a while, sure he would see light streaming in through the dark at any moment.

  From one step to the next, the ground disappeared beneath his feet.

  He’d gone too quickly and missed a new run of water coming from his left. Vidar screamed as he tumbled into icy water, but it was abruptly cut off as his head smashed into the stone floor on the other side. He spun around in the darkness, going under the surface of the powerful, frothing stream. Never having been in any body of water larger than a brass tub, Vidar didn’t know the first thing about swimming. He kicked and screamed, coming up over the surface before going down again, swallowing enough water to make him cough it back up, which only led to him losing what little air remained to him.

  Thankfully, the water wasn’t very deep, and once he regained his wits, Vidar got his feet under him and drew a proper breath as he was carried farther into the dark. His body struck the side of the run and the impact made him gasp as the current changed direction. Again, he tumbled around. The floor he’d been walking on right by the water’s edge was too slippery for his hands to find purchase as he clambered to get out of the water before it killed him.

  Vidar lost count of how many times he’d gone under and had no way of knowing how far and in what direction the water carried him, when his watery journey through the dark came to an end.

  The end was in the form of a drop.

  As he tumbled through the air screaming, a clear thought stuck him. This was just like the place where the gray water emptied into that impossibly huge basin. Water splashed in all directions as he went under the surface. He kicked desperately to get back up.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The clothes he wore weighed him down and struggling upward took every ounce of power in his almost frozen limbs. It was too much. Just as his vision was starting to go fuzzy around the edges, he broke the surface and drew in a desperate breath, his hands clambering for something to grab on to, anything that’d let him escape the water before his clothes pulled him under again.

  He found it. Metal.

  Vidar heaved himself to what turned out to be a short ladder up onto a narrow ledge. Safe for the moment, he collapsed into a heap.

  Now that he was no longer in the water, it wasn’t cold enough to be dangerous, but his teeth still chattered as he searched his pockets to make sure everything was still intact. It was.

  He breathed a sigh of relief but then remembered where he was. That was quite the fall he’d taken. Carefully, he inched his legs out until he hit the end of his platform, no more than a stride from where he lay. Reaching forward, he found the other end. This small plot of floor was tiny, and from what he could tell when he felt around the wall, there was no ladder to climb, either.

  Vidar sat with his back to the wall, feet dangling in the air over the edge without touching the water, considering his situation. His situation was not great, he decided. Water roared all around him, with several streams coming down from different tunnels above him, judging by the sound. Thankfully, the water landed far away from the wall, so it did not splash him.

  After undoing his coat and shirt to allow himself an easier time of breathing, he clutched the light rune in his left arm and held it tight against his chest.

  Vidar spoke in a low murmur. “Trigger, you bastard. Trigger or I’m dead. Go on, do it now. I’m not dying here, not after all this!”

  He squeezed the wood, willing it to light up the darkness. In his mind, he forced his dread, anxiety, loneliness, and downright exhaustion into the rune, taking from himself and giving it to the symbol. All of it went into the damn thing, every ounce Vidar could muster, until his chest ached.

  His arm grew numb then, and his chest seized. What felt like an empty area right around his heart fluttered, then squeezed so tight it might as well have been a hand crushing his heart.

  Brilliant light exploded from the rune. It immediately filled the previously dark basin, showing all that’d been obscured as it glittered over the surface of the water.

  Vidar immediately fell unconscious.

  * * *

  When he woke to a basin bathed in light, Vidar sat. He blinked to get out of the foggy haze and brought up his hand to massage his temples. Glancing down, he saw his hand, the one where he’d held the rune, lying limp against the floor. The skin on the back of his hand, and on his fingers, was an ashen, bluish gray that drew his thoughts to the pallid complexion of a corpse.

  To his horror, he could not move it. Not even the fingers twitched at his insistent attempts. It cleared his mind instantly, and he reached for the light rune that’d fallen near his foot with his only working hand. The light coming off it was far stronger than it’d been before. So strong, in fact, that it hurt the eye to glance in its direction. Holding it out in front of him with the rune pointing away, he still saw its glow through the piece of wood.

  “I did it.”

  He laughed, holding the rune high above his head, shouting, “I did it! Now who’s a failure, father?”

  The fingers on his previously thought lost arm twitched, and began to tingle, and Vidar laughed again. It was coming back to him. It wasn’t dead!

  Vidar calmed himself and finally took stock of his surroundings. It was a cylindrical basin he’d fallen into, with walls going in a circle around him. The ceiling, somewhere far above, was beyond sight, even with the strong glare from the rune. Finding the way out of this predicament proved easy with the aid of the newly awakened rune.

  Vidar’s platform was broken, part of it having fallen into the water at some point to be washed away. A short leap across would see his hands grasp the metal rungs of another ladder. Climbing it with only one arm would provide a challenge, but Vidar was up to the task.

  With the whole arm already tingling, life returning to it, perhaps he might not even need to climb it with only the one arm if he only waited a few more moments.

  Going back to searching his surroundings, he saw that part of the wall directly opposite him yawned open. The opening stretched down into the water and reached up to about twice Vidar’s own height, giving him a glimpse of the darkness beyond.

  Water spewed through at tremendous speed, going into what appeared to be a huge, open chamber. Directing the light of the rune in that direction made the light glint off something in the far distance. Vidar’s breath stopped in his chest and his beating heart picked up. When he moved the rune back and forth, the glint in the darkness moved with him.

  Eyes. He was peering into a massive pair of eyes.

  Vidar yelled and stood, pressing himself to the wall. He looked about wildly and then threw himself over the gap in the platform to reach the ladder. One hand was plenty to climb, he decided, plenty indeed.

  Breathing hard, he pulled himself up and up until some strength returned to his other arm. The arm and hand felt as if he’d slept on them and they were just now waking up, full of pins and needles. It wasn’t much help at first, but eventually he was able to use it to aid in his climbing.

  He wanted to shine the light downward, but with only one hand fully under his control, Vidar was afraid he’d drop the rune in the attempt. Going up with no light was out of the question, as was descending back down to fish it out of the water. Instead, he climbed into the almost pitch-black darkness. Only a little light escaped from his coat pocket, not enough to see by.

  The climb just went on and on for what felt like hours. Once he regained the full use of his arm, he checked the darkness below him, seeing no eyes. The beast had not followed.

  “What in the fallen angel’s tarnished wings was that thing?” he asked the dark.

  The dark did not respond.

  By the time he made it up the ladder, his arms and legs were burning with exhaustion and Vidar was ravenous with hunger. All sense of time was lost in the dark, and he didn’t have the first clue as to how long he’d been out cold down there in the basin. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he now had light to see by.

  He’d emerged into a small chamber just large enough to climb up and turn around in, and then stepped out to another corridor with water rushing past. Perhaps it was the same one from where he’d fallen in. There was no way of telling.

  It didn’t matter. The powerful light showed the way and soon a sign appeared. The text refused to sit still, of course, but it was shaped like an arrow, giving him a direction to go by. That was all Vidar needed.

  Another arrow appeared, then another. He hurried on stumbling legs, eager to leave this limbo of darkness, water, and shit. The path took him upstream and directed him to a new corridor that was of the smelly type. Vidar ignored the stench and continued, more and more anxious to get out.

  Then he came to a stop. Two pointing signs appeared before him, one pointing left and one right. Even with all the concentration he could muster, the letters just would not let him make out their meaning.

  He screamed in frustration and headed left, since he heard the roar of water coming from that direction. Vidar followed the water upstream. The sound got louder and louder until continuing forward was difficult without putting his fingers in his ears to block out the worst of it. That obviously meant he couldn’t use the light, so he soon gave that up. The corridors crossed more and more often, and the risk of falling in again was far too great when traversing the difficult terrain in the dark.

  When another ladder finally appeared in the distance, Vidar almost fell to his knees in relief. There it was. A way out. The crashing of water was deafening, which told of an intake being near. That, in turn, gave Vidar a pretty good idea of where he’d emerge at the surface.

  The hatch at the top of this new ladder clicked open without issue once he finally found the key after an anxious moment where he thought he’d dropped it somewhere.

  Vidar pushed but found the blasted thing stuck. He moved up a few rungs and put his shoulder against the metal, pushing with his legs to finally get the thing to budge. Water rushed in, along with a seemingly endless cascade of wet sand. The water was salty and it, along with the sand, threatened to push him from the ladder, and the weight of the lid itself still pushed down on him. Vidar refused to close it back up. He would not go back down there with the escape finally in his grasp.

  He hacked and coughed, choking back the water while trying to breathe, forcing his legs up another rung, then another. The lid finally opened enough for him to pass through, but still it weighed down his back. Vidar struggled for air and waved his arms in the air, trying to push the water off him.

  Something grabbed his wrists, and he found himself yanked upward and out of the watery, sand-filled trap.

  “Wat faenden aer yew duing haere?”