Pen takes a deep breath, allowing herself that luxury now that the creature seems to be gone, now that she has a decision to make. Now that it was…

 

The thought comes to her as she looks around the shaft. There are no hallways, no corridors, no left, no right. There is only up and there is down. The bot, it was a climber. At least a D-class then.

 

Pen feels a cold chill run along her body, a warning sign from her subconscious telling her that she really is in over her head here. She should turn around and go back the way she had come from right now. Right this very second and for a moment she’s ready to listen to its advice.

 

But then she shakes her head, too strongly willed to listen to that nagging voice anymore. As soon as her foot finds its grip a single step back behind herself, the thoughts of what she would be walking back to return. The intensity of her wishes to break free return. The want. The greed. The need for more. More crystals. More money. More medicine. More life. She inhales, putting her foot back forward and then, with all the courage she can muster, she takes another step towards the breach; placing her bare skin onto the stinging latticework metal floor, which somehow feels even colder than the stones do.

 

The ancient catwalk creaks and groans as she places the meager weight of one leg onto it, half expecting it to collapse down at any moment; to rip out and to tumble down into the void below. Mustering the rest of her courage, she places her other foot down onto it and waits for another fearful instant, as her whole body now presses its weight down onto the suspended platform.

 

Pen waits for it to collapse, to send her falling to her death. But the old construction holds on tightly, not like some of the other segments that she can see missing from back here already.

 

No matter if she goes up or if she goes down it will be a long way to go in either direction. The only question is; which way is safe? Neither probably. The bot had gone in one direction though and she would be very wise to go in the other.

 

Looking up at the spiral ring of stairs, stretching on for as far as she can see however, Pen quickly makes up her mind. She’s going to go down. It will be easier. Faster. It will use less energy, at least until she has to go back up them later on. But by then, hopefully she’ll find enough crystals for it to be worth the effort.

 

Wiping the sweaty, greasy hair out of her clammy face again with her shoulder, Pen turns right and goes down the first, creaking metal step. Then the next. Then the next. Each step she takes becomes quicker, faster, lighter. Each step she takes sends a jolt into her heart, that tells her that the end will come at any second, that she will fall through and die at any second. But it doesn’t and she doesn’t.

 

Nonetheless, Pen goes as fast as she can, her bare feet slapping loudly against the metal steps of the spiral staircase. The sharp echoes seem to ring out from the far side of the room, even at this great distance throughout the empty tube. The dull hum of the crystal, however, trails off into the darkness rather meekly, diluting and fading away like a vivid wine poured into the ocean. It is just overwhelmed by the crushing amount of everything else. By the crushing presence of the ink that seems to swallow all of those noises, before they can escape their origins, smothering them in the cradle of her arms.

 

Her fear never quite leaves, but instead it becomes distant and numb, simply by virtue of her state of action. By her being active and pacing quickly down the spiral stairway without thinking, by descending down the crumbling, decrepit, ancient metal infrastructure, her mind has no time to focus on things like the fear that is festering inside of itself like a bubbling poison.

 

---

Minutes pass.

 

The deeper she goes, the more it becomes clear how cold the air is becoming now as a rising current of wind always wafts up from the bottom of the abyss. It is a wind blown from the frozen over hell-mouth, a wind that shears against the brick walls, projecting an occasional witchy whistle, as it finds a sharp corner; some broken light or a brick on the way. A wind that bites through her ragged dress from below, nipping and gnawing away at the little warmth she is managing to keep in her bones. Pen presses the crystal tighter against herself and keeps on descending.

 

Something creaks and she stops in her tracks to listen. She listens to the few noises that there are to hear in the darkness. There is the steady howl of the wind from below, of that winter sting. There is her raspy, heavy breathing. There is the gentle hum of the crystal she holds and then, there is the creak. A strained, painful metal groan from above her head; from the spiral-rung of the stairs just above where she stood that she had walked over before on the way down. They groan and ache in agony like a weathered elder with pain in his joints.

 

Something gives and a single piece of metal falls from above, a single tiny screw strikes down on the stairs behind herself with a surprisingly loud, sharp, clear clash that shoots out like a ripple through a black ocean. The noise echoes through the chamber with an acuteness, with a distinct intensity that none of the previous sounds could achieve. A single ding, like a glass struck before a toast.

 

Pen tentatively takes a step further downward and away from the spot she was standing at. Her body is tense and her overly sensitive hearing rings from the slight metal strike of the screw. Her fox ears perk up again, as she hears the forbearance of the next trouble to come.

 

They make themselves clear to her. The beginnings of life’s newest aches to come, of the happenings she can foretell by the continued pained groaning from above herself. Pen turns back towards the downward path and runs. She sprints as fast as she can now, down the steps and over the occasional flat segments, completely ignoring the potential of a future collapse before herself now. The possibilities of the floor falling out from beneath her feet weren’t as real and as imminent as the thing about to happen behind her.

 

Pen runs as fast as she can, her feet slapping the bare metal grid painfully and then she finally hears it, surprised that it took so long. The second part of the construction’s final dying act. The loud, labored screech of the walkway above is clear to hear as it shifts, loosening from the stone, as it is finally ready to rest eternally. Its eons long hold to the wall is finally beginning to let loose, its grip finally releasing; perhaps due to her movements across it a few moments before. Gritting her teeth and clutching the crystal that holds more value to her than her life, Pen runs, jumping down staircase after staircase in her panic. She gets as much distance as she can befo-

 

The world explodes as an iron dragon roars to life. A vibration shoots through the platform and her mind stings with the incredible pain of the wrenching, scraping metal sound shooting through her ears. The crashing, clashing steel, the jagged metal scraping against stones and against itself, as the catastrophe unfolds above, falling down onto the layers below – All of this fills her senses. Everything begins to collapse, falling down just behind her; starting from down where the screw fell a second before.

 

Now, as the staircase behind her, above her, begins to collapse down unto itself and fall apart piece by piece, hurtling down into the maw of darkness waiting down deep in the abyss; there is a fresh sound, like a deathbound howl that seems to never leave. A shrill, shrieking scream that never grows quieter. Only as her chest burns and her head becomes light, Pen realizes that the scream is her own.

She runs as fast as she can, the world around her literally falling apart as she sprints down the breaking walkway, her hands never leaving the crystal to grab onto the railing or to try and steady her balance. Rather she opts to run in full sprint, to jump and land with bent knees on the walkways below, that creak louder and louder the deeper she goes, as the sounds of the collapse behind her continue. The sounds of the collapse behind her become louder and louder, like the trampling of a metal beast hunting her, hounding her down to the last pit of hell itself where there would be no more escape.

 

There!

 

Just a little further below! Just a little further down, she sees an opening in the wall, an arched doorway. Gritting her teeth shut in determination, Pen leans forward and bursts out the last of the speed she has left in herself, running as fast as she can. Everything depends on this. A thunderous chorus fills the room, as if the gods that had abandoned her so long ago had sent lightning down into these deep reaches to stop her. The entire walkway now crumbles and groans, tearing itself apart in all directions. Metal rains down like water from the sky, flying off into the abyss, as bits of rusted scrap begin landing at her feet.

 

The world spins as her body suddenly thuds down onto the catwalk. A sharp bite of white-hot pain escapes her throat in an instant, taking form in the shape of an alteration of her screaming. A searing pain shoots up through her body, up from her foot that got caught on some jagged rung of metal. The large crystal smashes against the latticework beneath herself, slipping out of her grip and spinning across the corroded metal platform with a loud scraping noise, as it spirals. She feels that sound in her soul. She saw it in slow motion as it left her arms, left her reach and now watches with pain in her heart, as if her own newborn child was becoming lost to her, as it slides away. Pen screams as it slips away, she screams as it slips over the edge and falls down into the abyss; she lunges forward to try and catch it in that second as the platform she is on wobbles about to give out entirely.

 

The scream continues, spit flying from her mouth. Wet flying from her eyes and she falls back down again, as the pain in her foot makes itself known once more. The rusty, metal hook keeping her there lets itself be noticed again. She looks down to her leg, seeing why she fell. A jagged, spiked piece of razor-sharp metal, which she had run right into, had cut into her leg on the front-side, just above her ankle. She can feel the rusted scrap touching her shinbone.

 

There is a lurch in her core, a shift in the platform she is on that tells her that there is no time. With a yelp she grabs her leg with one hand and the metal with the other and rips herself free at the cost of a pain she’s sure she’ll never forget if she survives.

Not once does the thunderous omen of the collapsing world stop, not once do her shrill screams and agonized yelps stop. The metal pulls free from her bone and carries with it a sickening red, that shines against the corroded metal in the bright lights just above her head. It lets out a sickening wet noise, as it is removed from her skin, out from the meat. Red seeps out in a stream from the wound.

 

Getting up she ignores the agony and braces herself against the railing, hobbling as fast as she can now with a bad leg, going as fast as she can now with the sounds of the shattering world drawing closer and closer. They reach towards her like the maw of a striking viper, only milliseconds away from her jugular. The ground beneath her begins to shake, the metal platform beneath her begins to shake as the reckoning has finally caught up with her. The punishment for her greed.

 

Time seems to slow as she presses on, torment is all that she feels in her body. Blurry darkness is all she sees through her wet, stinging eyes. Thoughts race through her mind. Thoughts of death, of this now having been it, of this life having been the one that was hers. That there is no more than this to come. There is nothing but those wretched days that she had to give testament to her having once been alive.

 

Why did she even have to exist? There had been nothing here. Nothing good. Nothing worth it.

 

Pen lets out a final scream as the walkway beneath her gives way, as she feels the lurch in her chest from the fall now beginning. With the last of her strength, with the last of her willpower she jumps towards the only opening, towards the only shot she has left.

 

Her body slams painfully against the edge of the stone wall and she grips on tightly, her teeth clenched, the pain in her body numbed by the adrenaline, as her fingers claw against the rock, digging in to the crevices between the masonry, just as the entire walkway behind her gives way and collapses downward, shrieking as it vanishes into the void like a falling dragon. It shrieks like the cry of a damned soul reaching out, clawing out to take her down with it. Her mind is still racing, her sense of time is still slow. Her feet kick against the crumbling wall, as her body, which is a quarter over the edge, slides downward and she lurches closer towards the abyss that she is just now barely dangling above.

 

Her good foot finds a crack and Pen sticks the numb appendage inside of it and presses herself upward, not having the upper body strength to pull herself to safety with just her arms. The girl rises a little higher and claws forward, digging into another groove with her fingers as she kicks against the wall, searching for another foothold to help her.

 

There!

 

She presses against it and pulls herself up again, her waist now coming over the corner edge. Crawling forward, heaving and crying, she pulls herself upwards with her arms and legs, not daring to stand up until she finally reaches a distance of a full meter away from the precipice.

 

Sitting upright, Pen leans against the wall behind herself, staring to the side at the darkness that had almost consumed her. At the darkness that had taken her only prize and had sealed her escape for good.

 

With her legs bent, her head falls down onto her knees and she sits like that for a while, until she notices the cold gnawing at her bones again. Until she feels the sting of the leaking gash on her leg, that she needs to take care of.

 

Remembering a sentence that she had heard a long time ago from a merchant on the go, she whispers the words beneath her breath in a defeated droll, as it has no meaning to her anymore. But she has nothing else left to keep her going except for that motivational statement.

 

“- I'm going home…” mutters the girl to herself, sitting alone in the looming darkness.