Around 8 days after entering the tunnels

  The silence of the tunnel was more deafening than any roar. The absence of sound assaulted her ears, and the pangs of hunger assaulted her stomach as she rubbed it. She hadn’t eaten for at least two weeks. While she knew that that was far from true starvation, it was the longest she had been without food. She drunk water from the bottom of the tunnel, but it was disguisting and bitter.

  “Man, I’m hungry,” Kane said, putting one foot in front of the other.

  “Me too,” Eri grunted, running her hand through her hair. “I’ve never been without food this long.”

  “I have,” Kane said. “When I was in prison awaiting trial, the guards forgot to feed me for thirteen days straight. Having experienced it doesn’t make it any better.”

  “Thirteen days!” Eri exclaimed. “That sounds painful.”

  “It was,” Kane sighed. “It was.”

  “How are we gonna find food?” Eri asked.

  “Good question,” Kane said. “We’re just randomly walking in a line.”

  Indeed, they had walked down the tunnel in a straight line. It just kept going on and on and on into the distance. The Lux-lamps and the silence were the things Eri had come to know in her travels. It had been only a week, yet the monotonous nature of the environment made it hard to keep track of time.

  “Maybe we’ll find food at some point,” Eri said. “This tunnel can’t go on forever.”

  “What even is this place?” Kane asked. “I wasn’t expecting an artificial structure this big to be located beneath the world’s surface.”

  “It’s so alien,” Eri mused. “There’s nothing like this.”

  “I’ve been to a lot of places,” Kane said. “Almost everything on the surface is constructed out of stone. Granted, the buildings and such are large and intricate, but there was hardly any metal. Metal is such a rare commodity, that we mostly used it to make coins. It’s amazing that the beings who built this tunnel had enough resources to construct it entirely out of metal.”

  “It’s certainly not a natural phenomenon,” Eri said. “Nothing in nature has so many straight lines and curated repetitiveness.”

  “I hope that whoever built this anticipated that there would be travelers without food,” Kane said. “Aside from the entrance in Mossflower Hold, there’s no in or out.”

  “We can’t go back; it’ll take days,” Eri said. “The only way is forward.”

  And forward they did walk, placing one determined foot in front of the other for hours on end.

  2 days later

  Eri smelled it before it came into view. A salty, pungent smell that reminded her of the sea flooded into her nostrils. The silence of the tunnel was broken up by the echoing sound of running water gradually getting louder. She looked down, for no apparent reason. She swore that the water level at the bottom of the tunnel was higher than it had been before…

  Indeed it was. After another quarter hour of walking, the water level had doubled. The smell was positively overbearing, clinging to her nose like an overprotective parent. The sound became noticeable on its own, not just for being simple sound in a practical void. And then it came into view.

  “What is that?” Kane exclaimed.

  A few hundred feet ahead of them, there was a great hole in the ceiling of the tunnel. Countless gallons of seawater spilled into the hole and down the tunnel, creating a raging curtain of deep, dark blue. The water level shrunk as it flowed away from the breach, but the sheer might of the ocean kept pouring in through the hole.

  “A hole!” Eri exclaimed sarcastically. “Do you know what a hole is? It’s when something is hollowed out and stuff goes through it.”

  “I’m not a baby,” Kane said. “I know it’s a hole. What else, it’s an obstacle.”

  Eri looked closer at the torrent of seawater. The latticed walkway near the tunnel was intact, but obscured. A sudden flash of movement in the small stream of water in the bottom of the tunnel caught her eye.

  A fish! It flopped and floundered in the shallow stream. It was around a foot long and had pale grey scales. Without thinking, Eri jumped onto the fish. The water moved fast, but Eri moved faster. She brought her hands down, grabbing the fish as it tried to orient itself. The current was very weak, and Eri was able to get her balance. She gripped the fish in both hands and bashed it against the wall repeatedly. It died rapidly, its bones cracking as she pulverized it.

  “Food!” she shouted, raising the dead fish.

  “Yes!” shouted Kane, turning to look. “Where did you get that?”

  “It fell into the tunnel,” Eri said. “Let’s eat it.”

  “Have you ever eaten raw fish before?” Kane asked. “Because I haven’t.”

  “I’ve eaten raw clam before, and I didn’t die,” Eri countered. “It’s probably safe to eat without cooking.”

  She got up onto the lattice, and closely analyzed the fish. She had caught and cleaned fish a few times before, when she had visited a neighboring village for New Years when she was a teenager, but hadn’t cooked or eaten them raw.

  She immediately ripped off its tail. The head soon followed. The pungent smell of raw fish began to fill the air as she worked, and Kane coughed and turned away.

  “What’s the matter, too gross for you?” Eri teased.

  “No,” Kane said painedly. “I mean, I’m gonna eat it, so might as well get used to the smell.”

  Eri removed the skin of the fish, then ripped a piece of meat off the bone and took a bite. It tasted savory and the texture was rubbery, but choked it down. She waited a minute, but didn’t feel nauseous.

  “It’s safe to eat,” she called to Kane. “Come try it.”

  Kane sat down, crossing his legs. He looked repulsively at the fish, then ripped off a chunk and put it in his mouth. He gulped, then chewed and swallowed. He cleared his throat.

  “Not bad,” he said with a disgusted look on his face.

  The two took turns ripping meat off the fish’s bones and eating it, then they licked and sucked on the bones until every last morsel had been consumed. When they encountered guts, Eri gingerly peeled them off and discarded them. When the meal was finished, Eri flung the tail, head, skin and bones into the water.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Ahh,” she sighed, patting her belly. “Food. Feel better”

  “Maybe there’s more fish,” Kane said. “We should leave this place with a full belly.”

  “Good idea,” Eri said. “We don’t know when we can get more food.”

  Over the next hour or so, they caught and ate another fish and a clump of dark green seaweed, which had a rubbery texture but was edible. By this point, Eri’s belly was full, and she reclined against the shiny metal wall.

  “Much better,” Kane sighed, doing the same. “We ate like flamingos.” He giggled.

  “Raw fish and seaweed galore,” Eri said. They sat in silence for a few minutes, closing their eyes. “We should continue on.”

  “How are we going to get through that wall of water?” Kane asked. “It’s so huge.”

  “It isn’t powerful enough to wash away the walkway, so I guess we’ll be fine,” Eri answered. “I also stepped into the water, and the current wasn’t too bad.”

  “I’ll go first,” Kane said.

  “No, I’ll go,” Eri replied. “I’m bigger and stronger than you, and I’ve spent my whole life in or around water. I’ll probably have better footing and won’t be washed away as easily.”

  “Good point,” Kane replied. “Good idea.”

  “All right,” Eri said. “I hope I won’t drown.”

  Kane giggled. “Well, drowning sounds less painful than being burned alive or withering away from starvation.”

  “You know, we could live down here,” Eri said. “There’s a lot of fish, and we wouldn’t starve.”

  “The constant light would drive us insane,” Kane countered, “And there might be parasites or disease in the water. As far as I know, berries and stuff on the surface are safer to eat raw than fish.”

  “And we’d be sitting ducks if the Rain Caste ever decided to look down here,” Eri replied. “So anyway, I’ll go through the wall of water.”

  “Good luck,” Kane said. He stood up in a pose of alertness.

  “Thanks,” Eri replied. She stood up. She steeled herself, took a deap breath, and walked towards the curtain of falling water.

  Even as she arrived there, the sound of falling water was deafening. It was like a thousand beasts roaring without pause. The sound made her hesitate for a split second, but she once more steeled herself and stepped into the water.

  She suddenly felt like she was being pelted by tiny rocks or grains of sand. It hurt only a tiny bit, but was still painful. What felt far, far worse was the pressure. It was as if a great wind wanted nothing more than to slam her into the ground. She gritted her teeth and ignored the pressure. She stepped farther into the wall.

  As she continued, it became harder and harder to breathe. She tried to find an opportunity to hold her breath, but she kept inhaling droplets of water, making her cough. She stepped back a few feet to where there wasn’t as much water, and took the deepest breath she ever had had in her life. She set her shoulders, and determinedly pushed forth into the water.

  As she continued, it felt more and more like she was swimming. She eventually was completely submerged, and the salty seawater surrounded her body, rushing into her eyes and making them sting. Nonetheless, she continued her determined trek, making her way through the worst of the curtain. As she pushed farther, the water became less and less dense. She was able to let out her held breath and take another breath, greedily sucking air into her lungs. She eventually made it out of the curtain and onto dry land. She emerged onto the other side of the water, gasping and drinking down air like a fine wine.

  The area on the other side was identical to the area where she and Kane had eaten fish: the tunnel extended on endlessly into the horizon. She took a few moments to relax and breathe deeply, then she re-entered the water.

  Now that she knew what it was like, she found it easier to keep both her footing and her cool. She exited the falling water slightly faster, and emerged to find Kane standing a few feet away, with a mix of excitement and worry on his face.

  “Did you get through?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Eri replied. “It was like going through a shower, then a river.” She subsequently explained the condition of the water in greater detail.

  “I think I can do that,” Kane said. “But I’ve never been in water deeper than my waist, and never in running water.”

  “How about you hold onto my arm,” Eri offered. “That way, we won’t get separated.”

  “Good idea,” Kane said. He locked onto Eri’s arm, gripping her forearm. Eri felt slightly embarrassed, but remembered that it was completely normal to lock arms during a hazardous incident, much like when she had pulled Sye and another little girl out of a sinkhole when Eri had been 12 or so.

  “Let’s go,” Eri said. “Follow my lead, and try to keep your movements in time with mine.”

  “Will do,” Kane said. He took a deep breath and steeled himself, much like Eri had when she first walked into the unknown. Eri steeled herself too. It was one thing to walk through a gigantic waterfall, another thing altogether to walk through one guiding another person. But she set those thoughts aside and stepped into the waterfall once more.

  Immediately, she could feel Kane falling behind. His grip on her arm was like a vice, and she felt her arm being strained. She paused and waited for Kane to catch up. They continued to move slowly. They inched along like a caterpillar, taking careful, delicate steps and ensuring that they had ideal footing.

  Unfortunately, Kane’s foot had different ideas. Eri felt him slip, and it took all her effort as well as that of Kane’s good leg to pull him up. Once they were up, Eri gestured to continue, it being almost obscured by the torrent of water.

  The interior of the curtain was still watery, so Eri held her breath and made sure that Kane saw her do so. He gasped in a deep breath and followed her.

  They were a few steps after the halfway point when Eri slipped. She started and tried to regain her balance, but it was to no avail. She fell into the water, dragging Kane behind her.

  Instantly, panic surged through her, raw animal fear spreading to every corner of her brain. O god o god o god o god o god, it screamed. Help, help, help!

  She thrashed around as the water pulled her, and with a sickening jolt of fear, realized that Kane had let go.

  Abruptly, she was out of the watery tube and was facing sideways in foot-deep water. She got to her knees, holding her head up high and coughing. Some seawater had managed to get inside her lungs, but not enough to worry about.

  Suddenly, she felt something bump against her. As she was coughing, she fell backwards. As she landed, she realized that the form was Kane, lying facedown in the water. For a few terrifying moments, she thought that he had drowned. Then, he stirred, rose to his knees, and coughed out a waterfall of seawater.

  “Sundamb, thad wadder god id by dose!” Kane indignantly exclaimed, spluttering and hacking.

  “You’re alive!” Eri said. She looked around her. “And we’re on the other side of the water. See there, the shape of the hole connecting the tunnel to the ocean is different.”

  “Good,” Kane sighed, blowing his nose. “I don’t want to do that again.”

  “Me neither,” Eri admitted. “Are you all right?”

  “Me?” Kane asked. “Just got some water in my lungs and nose. You?”

  “Same,” Eri replied. “Are you good to go? ‘Cause I am.”

  “Yeah,” Kane replied, “Just need a couple seconds to rest.”

  He waited for a couple seconds, greedily gulping down great gasps of glorious breath. Then he said, “I’m ready.” He stood up.

  “All right,” Eri replied, also moving to her feet. She realized that she was in the bottom of the tunnel, not on the latticed sides. Fortunately, each of the regular bridges connecting the tunnel’s two walkways had a small ladder extending from its center. She began to walk towards the ladder, Kane following close behind.

  She slowly clambered up the ladder, the exertion of which burned her lungs. She had well-developed leg and core muscles from years of wading through difficult terrain and bending down, but her arm strength left much to be desired.

  As she got to the top, she saw that Kane was faring even worse. His face was red and he was inhaling sharply. Eri extended her arm down below, and Kane grabbed onto it. She hauled Kane up, with him climbing the last few rungs with ease. They got onto the bridge and collapsed.

  “Man, I’m out of shape,” moaned Kane.

  “Me too,” Eri grunted. For a few seconds, they just laid there in silence. After a few wordless minutes, Kane got up and began to walk. Eri stood up and followed suit. The discomfort of being in such a monotonous place began to return to her mind as they began to trek longer and longer. Although her belly was full, the feeling of dread began to gnaw at her stomach. What other trials and tribulations would they face in this endless tunnel?