I caught my weight and Sarina’s on my elbow as I tipped sideways, gritting my teeth and straining not to give in.
Darkness mugged me.
Chapter 30
Consequences
Iwoke up disoriented in darkness, a musty stench assaulting my nose. I was no longer at the outpost. That’s right, they’d drugged us. I blinked, trying to understand where I was. There was only black in every direction, had the drug blinded us too? No, as my eyes adjusted I could make out a faint light in the distance. They’d taken us somewhere underground.
I reached up to try to brush sand off my cheek, frowning when my arm didn’t move. Tugging more forcibly, rope binding nipped my arm.
Bound. They’d tied us up. My ankles and wrists were both bound together behind me, I was hog-tied.
The faint light in the distance was undulating. It was familiar, but I couldn’t pin down exactly why.
I tested the rope’s tightness, wriggling until I was able to pull my arms forward over my feet to the front of my body. Feeling the knots with the tips of my fingertips, I recognized the pattern. It was a figure eight knot. Pulling at the edges of it with my nails, I grimaced when the knot only pulled firmer onthe other side. The lesson details on knots came back to me in a rush. This knot couldn’t be untangled with my hands restrained, only cut.
I didn’t know where I was. I was tied up, alone, and had no idea how much time was left until sunset.
The caustic lights in the distance continued shifting. My inner thigh warmed as I channeled Perception Skinscript. There was something recognizable about the dim and distant light. The ebbing and brightening paleness was identical to miasma waves.
Panic sharpened my fear. I slammed it down.
Stay calm and take inventory.
First, I needed to free myself from the rope. There had to be something I could use to cut myself loose. Using my elbows I pushed myself up onto my knees, groping, rocking, and hobbling in the dark.
Sand, more sand…a rock that was too small and smooth to help me, and yet more sand. A wriggling millipede. Shuffling and hopping forward on my hands and knees, I kept going. Progress was slow.
There, a wall. It felt like it was made of rock. This was a cave, likely near the coast. The rock’s surface was rough, maybe rough enough to fray the rope.
I cupped my hands toward me, rubbing my wrists against the wall where the rope stuck out. Pain bloomed along my wrists, skin scraping apart with the rope. Clenching my teeth, I tried to angle the rope closer to the rock, but I was still nearly blind in the darkness. The cord binding my feet and hands snapped loose.
The swooshing and hissing of miasma as it hit the sand reached my ears. A terrifying thought struck me. If miasma was nearby, Sanguirs might be too.
My heartbeat thrashed against my ribs.
I froze, moving my arms higher so I could lick at my skin. It was torn, but it tasted grainy and salty like sweat and sand, not coppery like blood. I released a small sigh of relief, I wasn’t bleeding.
Best not to borrow trouble.
Using my teeth, I twisted the rope around my wrists until the frayed edges were facing me instead of the rock wall. Biting at the rope, I tore at it with savage desperation. It was almost halfway torn apart already. Holding my hands as far apart as the rope allowed, I pulled it taut.
Spitting out chunks of cord, I kept going, minutes pressing down like weight on me as I did.
There was no way to tell how long I’d been here, or if it was high or low tide. No use thinking about it, or whereherewas until I was mobile again.
Briefly, I wondered where everyone else was. Were we all bound and scattered throughout this cave? Even though I had managed to stop myself before I started to bleed, that didn’t mean the others had reached the same conclusion.
Relief washed through me as the rope ripped with a satisfying snap. I yanked my wrists apart, reaching down to explore the knot between my ankles. The sting of sand against my raw skin burned, but I could feel the rough ends of a square knot. This could be untangled with my bare hands.
It took longer than I expected given my relative blindness, but as I pulled the rope away from my boots, I couldn’t help feeling more confident now that I was ambulatory again. Bracing my palm on the rock wall, I slowly stood, not sure how high the ceiling was. At full height, I couldn’t reach it with my hand stretched out above me.
I chewed my lip, turning over the next problem. Should I go toward the miasma, or deeper into the cave away from it?
If I went toward the miasma, which was the closest light source, I could orient myself and figure out how much time I’d lost. There was a risk I could get trapped into this cave if the tide was coming in though, and I’d lose extra time backtracking. And of course, there was the risk of encountering miasmic monsters.
But if I went deeper into the cave, there was no guarantee there was any other exit. And I’d be equally trapped if that happened when the tide came in. There was also the possibility I’d get lost, depending on how deep this cave was. And given the proximity of this cave to the miasma, I didn’t want to rule out the chance that some miasma inhabitants might have taken refuge deeper in this cave.
