Time doesn't pass normally in the pit.
It rots.
The first few days blur together into a grey smear of hunger, cramps, and aching muscles that never quite stop trembling. Neo and I try to count the hours by sleeping and waking, but sleep comes in thin, twitchy fragments that leave me more exhausted than before.
There's no food. No chrona tech. No soft beds.
The cold is unrelenting, and the silence is even more so.
The only thing that's keeping me sane is Neo's voice, and my own, but soon even our words begin to blur. The voice tells us whenever a new day dawns.
At first we tell ourselves it's just a delay. A test. Something will come down eventually, sooner or later the Guard will come and we'll be free.
By the end of the second day, my stomach is eating itself.
By the third we stop pretending.
We try to start the climb. But a few feet up is as far as my hungry and exhausted body will allow, and I have to jump down before I go too high and get dashed to pieces on the way down.
On the fourth, we can't hold off the hunger anymore. The dense, chrona-rich air's been carrying us… but even that has its limits.
We start with the moss.
It grows in thin, damp streaks along the lower walls, glowing faintly blue where chrona clings to it like frost. It smells wrong, metallic, bitter. When I scrape it off with my fingernails, close my eyes and shove it into my mouth, it tastes like wet coins and mould.
I gag. Swallow anyway.
Neo watches me, jaw clenched, then does the same.
Neither of us says anything.
The bugs come next.
Small, pale things that skitter in cracks and vanish when the light flares. We catch them with bare hands, crush them between stones, roast them weakly over concentrated chrona sparks.
They crunch, burst and taste like nothing and everything awful.
My throat burns constantly. My tongue feels thick and sticks to the roof of my mouth. My hands shake so badly I drop more food than I manage to eat. Neo's cheeks hollow out fast, his eyes sinking back into his skull like someone's scooped the life out of him with a spoon.
Every morning, something hurts that didn't hurt the day before.
My muscles waste away even as I keep using them. My joints creak. My fingers split and bleed from climbing, healing just enough overnight to split again the next day.
The only reason we're not dead is once again, the air.
The chrona in the pit is dense and heavy. It clings to my lungs when I breathe, tingling faintly, like static under my skin. It doesn't feed us, but it slows the decay. Keeps the lights on while everything else collapses.
Barely.
We train anyway.
We have to.
We climb the walls again and again, failing over and over, fingers slipping, shoulders screaming, vision swimming. Neo makes it higher than me most of the time, his combat training carrying him where my strength fails.
Every fall knocks the breath out of me.
Every fall hurts more.
My body feels like its lagging behind my thoughts, struggling to keep up. We smell like we're already rotting.
Blood runs under my nails, and the scratches build up, dirt and grime mixing with dried sweat. As the days pass I can't find the will to give a damn shit anymore.
One time I miss a grip and slide almost twenty feet before I catch myself. When I land, my legs fold and I just lie there on the stone, staring into the dark, chest heaving.
"I estimate about thirty feet," Neo says from above, voice echoing faintly. "Barely three-quarters to catch up to me."
"Shut up," I rasp. My voice cracks halfway through.
He climbs down to help me up. His hands are shaking too.
We don't turn the lights on.
I insist on that.
"Do we really have to keep doing this blind?" Neo asks one night, slumping beside me, breathing hard, resting one elbow gently on my shoulder.
"Yes," I say immediately. "Yes. We do."
He looks at me, confused, exhausted.
"If we survive this," I continue, quieter, "there will be more dark. I want my eyes ready."
He doesn't argue.
Another day passes.
Then another.
On day eight, though, everything changes.
I'm resting, trying to keep forcing my lungs to take in breaths - it feels like if I stop thinking about it everything will just shut down by itself, and fall away into nothingness.
That's when I hear it - a spine-chilling hiss that echoes through the dark.
Alarmed, I scrambled to my feet, knocking my elbow painfully against the rocky wall in the process, eyes searching the shadow for the source. My bloody, torn fingers fumble with the crude stone knife we've somehow managed to scrape together.
Something white flashes in the dark and a snake glides forward, scales pale as bone, eyes glowing red like fresh wounds. It's thin, lean, deadly, and every instinct in my body screams to run.
I don't though, but instead my mind wanders back to the lecture three months ago.
Pale viper. Central Continent and a cave-dweller.
Enough venom in one bite to kill a hundred men.
Run, the professor had said. And pray.
How fucking helpful.
The viper lunges.
I barely see it move. One second it's there, the next it's a white blur hurling itself at me. I throw myself sideways, feel air snap where my throat was, and slam my palm down hard, wildly.
Something cold and solid writhes beneath my hand.
I don't think.
I stab down.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
The knife punches into the kite-shaped head and the snake convulses violently, body lashing, tail whipping stone hard enough to crack skin. Blood spills out, dark and thick, pooling around my fingers.
Then it goes still.
I sit there for a second, shaking, hand pressed to the corpse, gasping for air.
The rest of the lecture comes back to me.
Venom glands. Raw venom.
Elixir for frontline soldiers on the UFO front.
Bone and muscle density increased several-fold.
I stare at the snake.
At the blood.
At my own hands, trembling with weakness.
"I'm sorry," I murmur, and mean it. "I need to live."
Neo drops down beside me minutes later, eyes widening when he sees the body.
"Is that a pale viper?" he asks.
"Yes."
"You killed it?"
"Yes."
He stares at me like I've lost my mind.
"You're not… you're not thinking of-?"
"I am."
He swears loudly.
"You know unrefined raw venom has a ninety percent fatality rate, right?"
"I know."
"And the pain?"
"I know that too."
He opens his mouth to argue again, then stops. Looks at my sunken face. My shaking hands.
I wonder what he sees.
"…I'm not doing it," he says quietly. "You can have both."
I don't argue.
I cut the venom glands free with shaking hands.
The liquid inside is thick and dark, shimmering faintly with chrona. It looks alive.
I hold it up.
This is the line.
Slow death.
Or fast.
"Don't say anything," I warn.
Neo opens his mouth anyway.
"Ninety percent chance—"
My hand jerks.
The venom pours down my throat and the pain is immediate.
No, explosive.
It feels like molten glass tearing its way through my mouth, down my throat, into my chest. I choke violently, drop to my knees, clawing at my neck as my stomach folds in on itself. Something hot and painful rushes up my windpipe.
I vomit blood.
It splashes across the stone, steaming faintly.
My organs twist. My muscles seize. My heart stutters like it's forgotten how to beat. Every nerve in my body lights up at once, screaming, rewriting itself in fire.
I can't breathe.
I can't think.
I can't stop shaking.
Neo's hands are on me, shouting my designation, but his voice sounds far away, distorted, drowned under the roar of pain in my head.
My bones feel like they're being crushed and bent inward. My muscles tear, rebuild, tear again. Heat blooms in my chest, unbearable, suffocating.
Nari…
A name tries to surface.
I shove it down, but it keeps coming back.
Mom… dad…
Then everything goes dark.
I wake up choking.
Air burns my lungs. My mouth tastes like metal and ash. Every inch of my body aches, deep and heavy, like I've been compressed.
Neo is over me, eyes wild, hands red.
"You were burning," he says hoarsely. "Your chest was hot. I thought—"
"I'm alive," I croak.
Barely.
When I stand slowly, the world tilts, then steadies.
My body feels… wrong.
It's dense and heavy, like I've had my skeleton replaced with metal.
I flex my fingers, and pick up a stone from the ground.
"Do you think…?"
I look at the small rock in my palm, curl my fist around it and crush it to gravel in my hand.
Neo stares.
"…there we have it," I say grimly. "Our ticket out of this shithole."
I flex my fingers again.
There's resistance in my muscles I've never felt before.
My stomach growls weakly.
But it's quieter.
The gnawing pain that's been chewing through my gut for days has dulled to a distant ache, like it's been wrapped in thick cloth. I'm still starving, still hollow, but now, once again it doesn't feel that real anymore.
That scares me almost as much as the strength.
I turn to the wall.
Up close, the stone looks the same as it always has. Smooth, cruel and mocking. The handholds we've scraped out over days of blood and skin are still there, faint and shallow.
Nothing's changed except me. I take a deep breath, step forward and reach up.
My fingers bite into the rock.
They don't slip.
I pull.
My body rises easily, like the wall has lost some private argument against me. I climb steadily, methodically, not rushing, testing every movement. There's no burn in my arms. No screaming protest from my shoulders. My muscles work, cleanly and silently.
Below me, Neo lets out a low, incredulous laugh.
"You're not even shaking," he says.
"I know," I reply, and my voice sounds strange in my own ears.
I climb higher.
Twenty feet.
Thirty.
Forty.
The pit falls away beneath me, the darkness stretching out, familiar and hateful. Normally, this is where my hands would start to slip. Where fear would creep in, whispering about gravity and broken bones.
It doesn't.
I feel heavy, anchored. Like the wall would have to break before I do.
When I reach a natural ledge, I stop and look down.
I can't see anything. Darkness has closed in around me on all sides, and I can't see Neo below either.
I swallow.
"Alright," I call. "Your turn."
"…right now?"
"You wanna stay."
Silence, then a shuffling sound, and his pale, fragile face appears in the dark some twenty feet below.
He makes it maybe five feet more before his arms begin to tremble. I see it immediately. The hunger hasn't eased for him the way it has for me. His breaths come sharp and shallow, fingers scrabbling desperately for purchase.
"Don't rush," I call down. "I've got you."
That used to be a lie.
Now it isn't.
Just as he reaches the handhold beneath me, his foot slips.
Neo yelps, body dropping suddenly, and without thinking I let go of the wall with one hand and catch him by the collar.
The impact barely registers.
My arm dips an inch. That's it.
Neo hangs there, eyes wide, gasping, his weight pulling against my grip.
"…holy shit," he breathes.
I haul him up like he weighs nothing.
He clings to the ledge beside me, chest heaving, staring at his own hands like they've betrayed him. I crouch beside him, steady, solid, and for the first time since we woke up in this pit, I realise something quietly, deeply unsettling.
I could do this alone now.
The thought lands in my head fully formed.
And I hate it.
"Again," I say, more sharply than I mean to. "We keep going together."
He nods, swallowing hard.
"Don't you dare think about letting go."
"I know-"
"We're in this together now, whether we like it or not, so promise me you won't ever let go."
"Sword-"
"Don't leave me."
It comes out more weak-sounding than it's supposed to. But Neo looks at me, and says,
"…I promise."
This time, I climb below him, positioning myself carefully. When he falters, I brace him. When his grip fails, I lift him. It's not graceful. It's not fast. But it works.
Thankfully, a small ledge just barely big enough for him to perch on with a sliver of his ass appears, and he can rest for a minute, before we continue.
The wall that once felt infinite starts to shrink.
Foot by foot.
Hand by hand.
The hunger keeps retreating, not gone, but muted. Like my body has decided this is more important. That climbing matters more than eating right now. My mouth is still dry. My stomach still hollow. But the weakness no longer owns me.
We rest again, for the final time, clinging to the wall, Neo's forehead pressed briefly against my shoulder.
"You feel… different," he mutters.
"I am."
I don't say anything else.
Eventually, the stone above us changes texture. Rougher. Broken. My fingers find something new.
A new ledge.
Then light.
Faint. Weak. But real.
I push Neo up first, then haul myself up beside him. We collapse onto the stone, lying there side by side, staring at the ceiling we couldn't even see a few days ago.
The pit breathes below us, as though trying to pull us back.
"Like fuck I'm going back down there," I spit through gritted teeth.
"Agreed," he mumbles weakly.
As we catch our breath, my exhaustion clears, and gives way to something else.
Anger, rage, hatred - a kind I don't think I've ever felt before. I feel like I want to tear someone limb from limb.
You fucking bitches who kidnapped me. If you wanted me to rot in there… you failed. I'm gonna kill you.
224 'Sword' and 225 'Neo' have completed the first objective. Rankings have been updated. You are now ranked 007.