I panic. The fear which I’ve been holding at bay by the skin of my teeth for the last half an hour – if not longer – escapes my grasp and takes over. I thrash, my fingers scrabbling for any handhold, my feet searching for any possible purchase. My upper body is pinned in place, even my most violent movements unable to shift the main part of me.
I only stop when I run out of energy, having chewed through my stamina at a fast pace. I haven’t bottomed out, but using a big chunk in a short space of time tends to make me feel tired and a bit nauseous anyway. I rest my head on the rock before me, tears of fear trickling down my nose. I don’t cry often, and even now refuse to truly acknowledge them: they’re salty drops of sweat, nothing else. I’m not great at lying to myself, though.
My throat is sore from shouting with breath that would have been better kept in my lungs; it’s not surprising that my head is swimming a bit with oxygen deprivation. Now I’ve pulled back from the edge of complete abandonment to fear, I feel the waves of concern battering me from Bastet’s direction. I send back a sense of exhaustion and hopelessness, the tinge of fear creeping into my message despite myself.
The reminder that I’m not alone helps to steady me further. If I can’t go forward, Bastet can always pull me backwards – even if she has to break my ankle to do it, I’ll be able to heal myself. The thought gives me the courage to try again. Taking a moment to rest, I attempt to bring my breathing back under control. I still can’t take full breaths, but I can stop myself from panting uselessly.
I relax bit by bit, forcing my muscles to melt into the rock below me. The fewer muscles active, the less oxygen I need. The more relaxed my muscles, the less the ceiling presses on down on me. The easier my breathing becomes, the less confined I feel, the easier it is to push my fear back. I’m not in the right state of mind to meditate, but I sense the similarities.
With Bastet’s continued waves of encouragement and my own internal monologue, I find my heart-rate slowing and my breathing coming more and more easily. Finally, I feel like I’m ready.
I first try shifting backwards a bit. It works easily now I’m not all tense and taking up more space than absolutely necessary. Now shifting sideways a little bit, I try to press forwards again, hoping to avoid the little rounded spike of rock which had so impeded my previous progress.
This time, I’m not stopped. I keep going, millimetre by tortuous millimetre. I refuse to pay attention to how far I’ve come or how far I have yet to go. Instead, my world has narrowed once more to my finger and toe tips, the rough slide against rock, and focusing on controlling my breathing and fear.
When the ceiling stops pressing down on my shoulders, it’s a surprise. I lift my head, the fact that I’m able to raise it fully feeling almost like a leaving a dream – or nightmare. The whole experience must have only lasted a few minutes, half an hour at the most, but I’ll be the first to admit that my sense of time went a little screwy back there. Despite how short the experience in objective terms, it almost seems implausible that I once lived in a world in which I could stand and move freely. There’s something about this tunnel which has narrowed my existence to its confines.
Now with my shoulders through, I move eagerly to pull the entirety of my upper body out too. Once my arms have more leverage, pulling my hips and legs the rest of the way is easy. I take big breaths as soon as I’ve managed to push myself to a sitting position, luxuriating in the ability to breathe freely that I had always taken for granted. I rub my hands up and down my arms, my head, my legs, making sure everything is present and accounted for.
The touch makes it feel more real, the realisation that I conquered that horrific experience finally dawning. I look back at the hole through which I’d exited and marvel that I got through it. If I put my hands against it, it’s only barely higher than my two hands piled on top of each other, fingers straight and parallel. A gap of perhaps twenty, twenty-five centimeters, tops. The human body is amazing, really.
After the tightest spot, it opens up fairly quickly, a small dip down to the tunnel floor I’m sitting on and then a steep angle upwards to where the tunnel ceiling is now, high enough for me to almost stand up bent double. It would be uncomfortable as hell to walk like that, though, so I’m going to stick to crawling. I gulp, though, as I look back at the hole through which I came. Do I really have to go back this way? I’ll just have to hold out hope for some other exit.
I watch as the raptorcats come through too. The cubs don’t have much trouble, of course. They’re about the size of large Labrador puppies, so they just have to crouch down a bit and then can make it through easily enough. Bastet, on the other hand, being about the size of a leopard, has to do a strange sideways movement which really doesn’t look that comfortable for her. I remember seeing videos of cats going under doors and, though the gap is not nearly as tight as that for her, the motion of her paws and body is not dissimilar. It’s still more a crouch than anything else, but a...sideways crouch?
Her head comes out first, her front paws reaching for purchase through the gap, propelling her body forwards. By the time she’s halfway out, I’m surprised to see that her wings are actually helping too: I thought they would just be problematic – hazards which could get more easily caught. But no, they’re also helping propel her through the space.
She’s quickly out and we take a moment to breathe together, Bastet coming to rub heads with me and the cubs. Pack bonding time, I suppose. Moments like this make me realise that I haven’t so much ‘domesticated’ Bastet as she’s adopted me into the pack. It kind of feels..nice. Almost like family, though I shy away from that thought, my wounds still raw where family is concerned.
We take a moment to munch some meat and drink some water. It’s calm and peaceful right now; who knows how long that will last? Better to make sure we’re all well-nourished when possible. After my panic, the routine actions of eating and drinking are reassuring and help in settling the parts of me that aren’t quite back to normal.
Feeling more like myself, we continue. I’m starting to wonder if even salt is worth this journey, for all the uses that I have for it, but I’ve come this far; I might as well continue. Besides, if I’ve interpreted Bastet’s scouting impressions correctly, I’m past the worst hurdle so it seems ridiculous to just give up now. Plus, giving up now means facing that narrow tunnel once again, all too soon.
The tunnel changes dimensions regularly, often bulges from all sides protruding to narrow the passageway in one way or another. Most of them are easy enough to get past, though some pose more trouble to the cubs than others, especially the times when the bulge protrudes from the floor. A couple of times I have to lift them over when they fail at climbing over by themselves. Bastet, of course, has no difficulty.
The tight spots I come across are almost a breeze now. Once more they’re choke points where a bulge from one direction or the other narrows the passageway enough to really cause an issue for us. Well, me. Still, at their narrowest they’re still about my forearm’s length in width, so they’re easy enough to wriggle through.
My torch is doing a great job, though it starts guttering in between tight spots three and four. I quickly light another one. No way do I want to risk being stuck in the pitch black with little chance of striking my flint and tinder in the right spot to light the resin. I hope I have enough torches – I only prepared five of them, not thinking that I’d need too many.
Smothering the old one by rolling it rapidly on the floor, I tuck it back into my Inventory just in case I’m really in trouble later. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stack with my other fresh torches – another Inventory slot used.
The passage seems interminable, even though I know logically that it has an end. Time means nothing down here in the dark, not even my status screen seeming to indicate that time is passing. A thought occurs to me that the Energy required per percentage point must have increased again. I conclude that based on my certainty that I’ve been down here for at least two hours and the observation that my Energy store hasn’t showed any change.
At least my ordeal with getting stuck in the passageway has earned me a point in Willpower. I realise that when I take a moment to check my message box. Sure, it takes about seven percent of my Energy – another indication that the objective amount of Energy I now need to accumulate to increase my Energy store has increased significantly – but I take the point happily anyway.
Finally, after a final tight bit of passageway that requires a bit of wriggling, I emerge into a space that’s almost too high above my head to see the ceiling. The light from my torch illuminates a cave that soars above my head, its light catching faintly on stalactites or something above. Stalactites? Stalagmites? I can never remember which is which. Either way, there are both and I have to walk carefully to avoid stepping on a pointy bit of rock.
The sound of plinking echoes through the large space, water falling drop by drop into some sort of deep puddle somewhere. The air is damp and, even better, briny. As I step delicately between the calcified structures, my foot crackles. Bending down, I investigate what I’m stepping through. My heart starts pounding in excitement as my finger comes away covered in white crystals. Licking it, my eyes light up. After all the stress and pain, it’s good to know I didn’t endure it for nothing!
Looking around eagerly, I realise that there’s salt encrusted around the bases of all of these structures, lapping just below where I’d climbed through from the tunnel, where the cubs are just now tumbling out. At the sight of them, I suddenly wonder whether it’s OK for them to be walking barefoot through all this salt and rock. Then I remember that their feet are more scaly talons than something like a cat or dog’s paw, and decide that if Bastet is worried, she’ll tell me.
Instead, I crouch down to start harvesting my bounty. I want to investigate the rest of the cave, sure, but I’d also like to make sure I collect some salt. By this point, I’m familiar with how quickly a situation can go downhill, so decide to take advantage of it all seeming calm for now.
Using my knife to scrape off salt crystals, I deposit handful after handful of salt into my Inventory. Wondering if the stalagmites – or stalactites, whatever – would be useful for heading weaponry, I snap off a few tops and deposit them in my Inventory too. I discover that as long as their sizes are vaguely similar, they stack. Not wanting to take more than one slot, I proceed to just searching for uniformity while focusing most of my attention on collecting my white bounty.
Rounding a corner, I see that the cave isn’t as completely closed as I’d thought. There’s a natural archway which is opposite a paler stretch of rock, but it’s hidden from the tunnel. Walking cautiously towards it, I look through and see something that makes my eyes go wide.
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