Barely seven hundred feet of descent, I feel breathless.
No surprise there. The air grows denser, the further I venture down into the chasm.
Denser and colder. I feel it compresses tightly against my lungs and muscles.
Worse still, from underneath me, the distorted gravitation from the chasm turned my legs figuratively into dead logs. Because of this, since embarking my descent earlier on, I had to stop a few times to massage my stiff calves.
It's worth to point out that everything I experienced up to this point, felt like I have crossed into another dimensional plane. I know this, because I'd travelled across realms ever since I was little.
Except, this experience feels much worse in terms of discomfort.
Visibility has also became very poor. I can barely see three metres in front of me the further I descend. It makes me nervous thinking about the large gaps between the stones. Which can easily swallow up my leg whole from a mere misjudgment of my foot's landing.
Don't think about it, I tell myself, don't let fear become a distraction. Just stick to the gifted path. Don't FALL off it...
Breathing laboriously, I march on. My weighty feet quicken with a renewed purpose. My eyes straining ahead. My pounding heart hopes to have sighting of an end to this extremely hazardous descent soon--
Swoosh...swoosh...swoosh--
Somewhere from behind me, closer to the chasm's opening I hear prominent sound of flapping wings.
Thud! Follows by a loud dull thud. Like a grown person's feet landing squarely on a hard surface from a shallow drop.
Upon reception, my mind dismisses it, thinking it must be a large bird. It's an epitome of normacy to have large birds nesting in and around a sinkhole of this sheer magnitude--
Except, deep down within my waking subconscious, I knew it wasn't a bird.
Still, it's the delusion I settle on to free my mentality to deal with my present crisis; the unbearable tightness in my calves. I have to stop to knead them--
Thump...
Thump...
Thump...
--Echoey footsteps falling on stones drift to my unprepared ears from behind me, higher up the steps.
Footsteps?
Feeling fully alerted not yet alarmed, I hasten my speed of descent instead of slowing down or pausing.
Is there really someone coming down those steps behind me right now...?!
My deluded mind immediately rejects this inconceivable notion. My rational mind cautions me I am no longer alone inside this otherworldly grave.
Undecided while hastening down the steps, I strain my ears, listening hard.
Thump...
Thump...
Thump...
Yes, they are definitely heavy footsteps that aren't mine--steadily closing our distance...coming directly at me from behind.
I've got a company it seems, admitting this, my heart and mind are promptly hijacked by mindless terror and sheer panic.
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Serpent In Love (🔞) - Completed
Short StoryBased on Greek Mythology characters. An impossible love? She is the happy-go-lucky serpent with limited emotions. He is the mighty eagle of Mount Olympus and natural predator of serpents and snakes. Converging on them is a calamitous war of worlds t...
