Prologue
It wasn't the dark that scared me. It wasn't even the things in the dark, the ones that scratched the stone and snapped their jaws and pursued. It was that I was running. To run, to me, was to give up. To say you had no cards left to play, you had no words to taunt with and no strength to fight. It meant you could only see escape by running from whatever wanted you to run, and as a general rule I refused to. Stubborness has always been one of my most defining traits. Yet I was running, my converse slapping on stone as I forced air into and out of my screaming lungs, palms cut from slapping into the bare rock in front of me as I ran blind through this passage, this thin tunnel carved from the rock miles below the surface of the Earth. The things behind me grew closer, some with slick bodies that wispered across the walls, some that crushed the stone to either side as they forced their way through a passage barely a meter across at its widest point. Some screeched and some were silent, some howled and some seemed to weep, to beg pity that would draw you in, trap you and destroy. They all had a feverish exitement so strong you could taste it in the air as they gained ground, coming closer to their quary. I ran, as quickly as I could, faster than was safe and yet far to slow to get to safety. There was blood on my lip from where I'd bitten it after running full pelt into a rock wall. My hands were outstretched for that purpose, but the pain that raced up my arms from my palms still made me cry out; the sound made the monsters pursue with renewed enthusiam. I'd tried not to cry out after that. Still I ran on, the stitch in my side and my screaming muscles almost enough to convince me to slow, but the creatures would be upon me in an instant. No, to slow would not do at all. The tunnel narrowed suddenly and I scraped my forearm on the rough stone. I could see the blood well up to the surface, black as oil in the dim light. But there was light. The tunnel turned sharply and I leapt around the corner, ignoring my screaming muscles as the sounds of the hunt grew more exited at the sent of my blood. There, way ahead, an opening. The light from it flickered and danced along the walls of the tunnel, tinted amber in a way that left it immistakable. Fire. The cavern beyond that narrow opening was lit by fire, which meant I was going the right way, that all of this could be for something after all. I ran faster, pushing my exhausted body past its limits to escape the ravenous horde behind me; the twists and turns of the narrow tunnel had slowed them enough to keep me ahead, on the straight path to the cavern they would gain ground quickly. I knew the cavern was huge, extending almost a mile from the towering ceiling to the stone floor, all freshly excavated from the solid rock deep underground. In the center, there was a huge bonfire. I ran, and the end of the tunnel loomed closer. I could hear voices from the cavern below, thundering echoes of bloodthirsty shrieks and cries. The sobbing of a young girl. I was crying too, I realised, with the knowledge that this could only end one way, that I would only allow it to end one way. It was for the best. The creatures loomed closer, shadows given life and forms, and still I ran, converse pounding the rock in time with my racing heart. My feet flew over the stone, through the opening, and the shadow creatures followed. Over the short ledge of rock, and still they tried to catch me. But my feet had left stone behind and they couldnt reach me. They howled their disappointment, their outrage, to the cave roof as I hung for a moment, as if gravity couldn't quite decide what to do with me; then it made up its mind, and took me in its grasp. And with nothing but earth below me, and earth above me, I was falling.
