Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

I move before I hear the snap.

Half a second before. Muscles ahead of conscious thought. I’m already airborne, lunging flat across the stone, when the rope cracks above me and the whole line goes dead in the air.

My right hand finds it.

The rope is already running—loose, no tension, sliding through my fingers fast enough to burn. I wrap my forearm twice on reflex and the coil bites into my skin through the sleeve.

Then the weight hits.

It yanks me forward across the stone, face-down, the coarse grit of the cavern floor scraping my chest and stomach raw through the layers of my gear. I’m sliding toward the edge of the chasm, hand fused to a rope that has Lola on the other end of it.

I dig my boots in. Rotate my body as I slide. Plant both feet against the grain of the stone and brace.

A stalagmite. Small, leaning, maybe three feet tall at the very lip of the chasm. The last one between me and the drop.

I jam my boots into its base and lock.

The rope goes taut with a sound like a snare drum being struck. My shoulders pop audibly—both of them, at the same moment, the joints snapping into an angle I didn’t choose.

The force of Lola’s weight coming up through the rope makes a lever of my planted legs and yanks me upright. Standing. Face to the chasm. Rope stretched tight from my hand down past my feet and out into open air.

The shock wave travels back down the line.

I feel it hit Lola from here. A whole-body tremor that travels through the rope into my palm like a telegraph signal. She’s shaking on the line hard enough to lose her grip.

I hear her voice.

"Whoops."

Flat and casual. A commentary on a minor inconvenience. Lola’s way.

The chasm is a foot in front of my boots.

My feet are holding, but the rope is still pulling me forward. The weight of Lullaby and a fourteen-year-old girl is a lot more lever than I have legs in this situation. I’m tipping toward the edge in slow motion.

"Shit... Shit... Shit!"

I throw my other hand onto the rope. Lock both shoulders. Haul back in one movement that draws every piece of muscle I own into the same line of force. The rope comes up maybe six inches. The tension stabilizes. Lola is held.

But I’m standing upright, straight-legged, leaning forward, both hands on a rope that wants to go over the edge. Gravity has already made its decision. The rope is pulling me in by inches. I can feel my center of balance lose its argument with the chasm.

This is it.

Then a body hits mine from behind.

Arms wrap around my ribs and pull backward with everything they weigh and more. A warm face presses against the side of my back neck. A voice—barely a voice at all, just air shaped into a word—breathes into my ear.

"Pull... Please."

Rhayne.

She’s giving it everything. I can feel the small tremor in her arms from the effort she’s spending, feel her heels biting into the stone behind me, feel her grip on my shoulders tighten every time the rope takes another inch.

Between the two of us, the line holds.

I haul. She anchors.

We drag Lola up inch by inch, hand over hand, breath over breath, until the little weight at the end of the rope stops being a drop hazard and becomes a kid climbing the last few feet of slack. Lola’s boots find the edge of the stone.

Rhayne lets go of me just long enough to reach down and lift her clean over.

I drop to one knee. The rope comes out of my hand in a slow uncurling.

Lola plants her feet, adjusts Lullaby’s case on her back, and looks at me.

"Well," she says. "That was almost a long ride."

The delivery is completely flat. No shock, no relief, no adrenaline bleed.

"You okay, Lola?"

Rhayne is already checking her—running her palms over Lola’s arms, her ribs, her legs, looking for anything the rope might have torn or wrenched while she was being shaken on the line.

"Scary. But fun."

Not a single flicker on her face to go with the words.

I exhale long. Let Rhayne keep Lola. Push myself back up to my feet and walk to the remains of the hook.

The old stalagmite has a crack running all the way down it. Hairline. Whatever split the rope wasn’t the rope—the rock itself gave up. I untie what’s left and walk the line to a second stalagmite, fatter, solid, no visible fractures. I wedge the hook into the base and test the tension with both hands.

This one isn’t going anywhere.

"Oliver. We’re set. Throw me two torches and a flint while you’re coming across."

Oliver tosses both. I catch the flint one-handed and strike the torch to life on the third try. Then I light a second one off the first.

I keep the first torch with me.

The second, I throw down the tunnel ahead of us—hard. It arcs out into the dark and skids to a stop maybe forty feet into the passage, burning steady, throwing a low orange glow along the walls.

Now I can see what’s coming before it reaches us.

"Go."

Oliver hauls himself onto the rope and starts across. He’s older than any of the rest of us and the traverse is rough on him—he’s breathing hard by the halfway point and there’s no color in his face at all by the time he drops onto the stone on my side.

He leans on his knees and sucks air.

I give him a few seconds.

I’m watching the far torch.

The flame is steady.

Then it isn’t.

Something passes between us and the light. Not close to the torch—halfway between. A shape of absence blotting out the glow for a fraction of a second before the fire reappears behind it. Then it happens again. And again.

Something is walking in front of the torch, between us and it. Back and forth. Patient.

And the chuffing we’ve been hearing for the last half-hour—layered, wet, coming from a hoarse throat—has stopped.

Oliver lifts his head. His breathing is still ragged but his eyes are on the tunnel.

"Boss..."

"I see it."

The far torch flickers again. Something bigger this time. The whole flame disappears for a full second, comes back, disappears, comes back.

Whatever’s in there isn’t hiding anymore.

It’s taking its time walking into the light.