15 - FEARFUL EXPLORING

There were many holes in every pathway, and having fallen through many such holes in the past, Edgar had already learned how to avoid falling.

“Damn, there’s no light in sight,” he lit up his hair with lightning and looked up at spaces or holes that took him higher, toward the surface.

“How many days has it been since I made a viper retreat?” While keeping watch on holes beneath his feet, especially by not going any closer to those that leaked out gasses, he continued to explore.

He walked on delicate pieces of random rock joining rifts, hearing his own heartbeat more than anything, for falling from such a spot would take him hundreds of feet deeper, assuming the fall wouldn’t kill him. So, he was extremely careful, as some of these rocks were creaking and moving.

And then there were smaller and more deceptive holes to be worried about. One wrong mistake, and one of these holes would take him through a tunnel to a place that will have a lot more similar holes, and he would have no idea where he might end up, probably even at his Master’s room, though it might get him killed for his inadequacy.

The whole valley of vipers was like a never-ending maze of a place. One small slip up, and he would likely find himself in a life-or-death situation.

Some walls had teal, orange, green, blue, and different colors. He came across a horizontal tunnel that helped him walk easily for a while, and after going deeper, to his surprise, it opened up a bit, and there was a small pool.

He started drinking the liquid hastily, but his mother’s words, ‘even cold water must be drunk slowly,’ came to his mind. He slowed down the pace with which he drank.

Though the water was of a strange brown color, he drank it until his stomach bulged. Back when he was a little guy, he always used to demand his mother to cook food in just a couple of minutes, and though she said that’s not possible, he still kept asking her. And she would pull his cheeks until he understood that he was being unreasonable.

“Do I still have the haste in me?” he wondered.

He could see a hole high in the ceiling. It was forty feet high. “How will I get there?” he climbed the walls and eventually managed to climb out of the tiny hole. If he was any larger in size, it would have been impossible to fit through that hole.

Not surprisingly, though, he was still in a dark place.

“Damn it, man. Just how far am I from the surface?” his shoulders slumped. The thought of being trapped in this place squeezed his heart.

He was feeling down, greatly, worrying about himself and his sister. However, he knew he couldn’t just stand and do nothing. He took a deep breath, but that didn’t help much, as there wasn’t much vital air around.

There were plenty of paths he could take, but every way seemed dangerous. He chose the thinnest horizontal gap. With arms to the side, he squeezed himself through the gaps to get to the other side, which took him thirty minutes of grunting and struggling to just cover forty meters, and on the other side, there was dirt and bones.

It was a monster resting spot. There were old, broken egg shells, and small spiders. It didn’t look like any viper lived there recently. There was only one way leading out, so he had to take it.

While the tiny spiders were fazed by the light of his lightning, he didn’t care. It was either him or them. He surely couldn’t stop and turn around because he was disturbing the peace of some spiders, which by the way, looked very small, thin, and ugly. The presence of these spiders actually made him feel better, as it didn’t make him feel alone, and he could also feel that the air in this pathway was slightly better.

There were some rocks, blocking the paths, and he had to chip them away with his bare hands, using the drive.

Then came tighter and longer passages that were going up, and as he kept climbing up through them, he was beginning to wonder if he was going the wrong way. After all, going up, didn’t necessarily mean he would surely reach the surface, as he could still reach a dead end. Since the paths were all a mess, with seemingly no pattern to them, they could keep him trapped here forever.

But as he kept going, he sometimes used drive to force himself out when he got stuck, and through this, he realized that covering himself with drive actually made squeezing through the gaps easier.

He was beginning to get excited as he quickly passed through half-dozen narrow passages, but his excitement hit a break, when he squeezed himself into a large opening that was actually a resting place of vipers. There were dozens of these scaled beings sleeping, probably hibernating. He undid his lightning first. Luckily, the vipers weren’t awake, or they would have attacked him for sure.

Edgar felt his heart ringing in his ears. He would have turned back, but he had seen a large opening in the wall on the other side, and he felt like that would lead him to somewhere better.

There were lava formations that rose up everywhere like large candles in that space. Edgar used them to hide himself, and he didn’t hurry. After two hours of patient and careful effort, he reached the opening and escaped through that on his toes.

As he kept going, he heard hissing sounds and slowed down. He reached a junction and peeked ahead. There was a medium-sized viper that was stuck under a giant rock.

“Did the rock fall from the ceiling?” he didn’t feel bad for the viper, though.

He looked up, wondering if there was any passage, and there seemed to be one. Without hesitating, he stepped out and charged at the beast.

The viper hissed in surprise and tried to swallow him, but he axed its mouth down with the foot, jumped over the rock and grabbed onto the rough edge of the ceiling and carefully climbed it up.

The tunnel kept going straight up. The farther it went, the more excited and also the more careful he got. Falling from such height, at least three to four hundred meters, would likely kill him, after all.

He controlled his breathing and tried to stay calm, but for some reason, bad memories kept coming to his mind, probably because of the gas that had accumulated in his lungs. The time when his mother died right in front of their house, and when he and his sister had to run away and continually face troubles from monsters disguised as men, and how they were betrayed and brought into slavery.

He thought he had long accepted the fact that his mother was gone, but now, he couldn’t quite digest it. And when the thought of his sister probably already dying crossed his mind, he faltered. Hope was replaced by tears in his eyes. His hands were shivering, and he couldn’t find the strength to keep going, but he still didn’t stop. And at that moment, his foot slipped, and he fell.

“... I am sorry.”