Benedict Jacka - Cursed

It couldn’t have taken more than five seconds to make the dash to the tunnel entrance but it felt like an hour. I heard the shouts from behind me, saw the blackness of the tunnel mouth growing larger, expecting every minute to hear gunfire. Then just as I made it to the entrance, I heard Luna yell, “Alex!”

Luna had made it about halfway before one of the guards had caught up with her. Either Belthas hadn’t told them about Luna’s curse or this one was just really stupid because he was grappling with her. I could see the silver mist of Luna’s curse flowing into him and as I watched Luna snapped her head around at him. Suddenly the mist wasn’t just pouring into him, it was surging , and I swear it actually looked gleeful. At the centre of the room, Garrick had recovered. He lined up on me and fired a three-round burst.

As he did, Luna pulled at the guard, struggling to get away. The guard tripped and staggered, swinging between me and Garrick.

The guard saw the danger and tried to dodge, and Garrick was already pulling his aim away, yet somehow the two went in exactly the same direction. All three bullets hit, going through the man’s head in a spray of gore. He dragged Luna down with him, dead before he hit the ground.

For an instant everyone stopped, staring at the corpse that a second ago had been a living person. Garrick looked genuinely surprised for the first time I’d seen. Even if you know what Luna’s curse is supposed to do, it’s another thing to see it.

Then Belthas looked at me. “Kill him.”

His hand was coming up, blue light starting to glow around it, and I knew what was coming. I threw myself into the tunnel just as a wall of blue-white ice shimmered into existence, barely missing me and sealing off the tunnel entrance. A heartbeat later I heard the muffled bark of guns, and the ice wall shuddered as impacts spiderwebbed across its other side.

I could hear distant shouting: Belthas giving orders to his men. As I watched, the ice wall shuddered again as more bullets struck it. A fracture went through it from top to bottom with a crack. Luna was on the other side of that barrier, along with Belthas and his men. And in a few seconds more, the barrier would be gone.

I turned and ran, down into the darkness.

I run away a lot. It’s something you have to learn if you work alone and have a habit of finding trouble. Against these kind of odds-Belthas, Garrick, Meredith, Martin, and a dozen armed men on one side, and me on the other-staying to fight isn’t much different from suicide. I have absolutely no pride when it comes to combat. Running like a squirrel doesn’t bother me at all.

But leaving someone behind does. I’d been gambling that Luna and I could both make it out and now we’d been separated everything fell apart. I wanted to go back and help her, but there was nothing I could do against so many. Worse, as soon as Belthas realised I was there, he could threaten to hurt Luna unless I surrendered, and I knew he’d do it.

All I could think was to go deeper into the tunnels. Looking into the future, I could see that some came to dead ends, but others went down and down into darkness. If I was able to get deep enough, and if Belthas sent his men down after me, and if I could hide and let them go by and double back towards the entrance, and if Belthas hadn’t left enough men to guard Luna …

It was a desperate plan, the biggest flaw being that I didn’t have any equipment. I’d left my mist cloak back at my flat, and checking my pockets I found everything else had been taken. Within a few minutes the sounds behind me had died away and I came to a stop, looking into the futures ahead of me and hoping for some luck.

I didn’t get it. After only a minute I heard the sounds of movement again, this time in greater numbers. Belthas had gotten organised and he was sending every man he had down into the tunnels, sweeping each passage methodically from end to end. Looking into the future, I saw with a sinking heart that hiding wasn’t going to work. All I could do was back away deeper into the darkness.

The tunnels went down and just kept on going. It was pitch-black and sight was useless; only my divination magic kept me from tripping and falling. To begin with I kept trying to find a place to hide, but as Belthas’s men pursued me deeper and deeper I realised it would be all I could do to simply get away.

I don’t know how long that chase went on. It felt like hours, but deep beneath the earth there was no way to tell. The tunnels were solid rock, worn smooth, and they carried sounds of movement oddly. From time to time I’d hear the sound of Belthas’s men but at other times they’d fall ominously silent, and that spurred me on all the more. I didn’t let myself think of Luna or Arachne or Belthas or Meredith. All I knew was that to stop was to die.

As time passed the journey began to feel like a nightmare, one of those dreams where you run and run but never get away. Again and again I would stop and wait, hoping I’d lost them, and every time as soon as I stopped I would hear the distant echo of the men on my tail. It grew warmer as we went deeper and the air grew close. I kept staring blindly into the darkness, trying uselessly to see, until at last I shut my eyes and forced myself to rely on my magic. The only sound was my footsteps on the rock and the distant noise of Belthas’s men.

By the time I finally lost them, I was too exhausted to notice. The slipping, clambering path down the tunnels had drained my energy to the point where all I could think about was the next tunnel, and the next, and the next. I kept going, one ear open for the sounds of pursuit. Gradually I realised I couldn’t hear them anymore.

I stopped at last in a narrow, branching corridor and leant against the wall. My shirt was damp with sweat and I stripped off my jumper, tying it around my waist, before holding my breath and listening for a slow count of sixty. Nothing. I looked into the future and realised no one was coming. I was alone.

I’ve never liked being underground. Air’s more my element, even if I’m not close enough to it to use its magic; I like being high, able to see. Here beneath the earth, I felt tense, on edge. The air felt different: dry and stuffy. I could imagine the thousands of tons of earth and rock above me pressing silently down, and I forced myself to stay calm.

I think the only thing that stopped me from losing it was knowing I could find my way back. I was lost of course-there was no way I could have marked my passage in that flight, and the pitch-black tunnels would have turned me around in seconds. But as long as I have my magic, I can never stay lost. With enough time, I can always find the path.

Except in this case, the path led to about fifteen angry men with guns. I took stock of my position. No food, no water, no equipment, no friends. I had three choices: stay here, go forward, or go back.

In the end I went forward. It wasn’t so much a choice as a lack of one. I’ve been in a lot of really bad situations over the years and one of the small consolations is that you don’t have to worry much about consequences anymore.

The upper levels had had open chambers and rooms, which had narrowed down into twisting passages as I’d descended. Now, as I kept walking, I noticed that the passages were starting to open out again. They’d stopped sloping down, which was some consolation, but I knew I still had to be far beneath the surface. The tunnels would have to climb back up a very long way to reach another exit, which I was frankly starting to believe was pretty unlikely.

After a while-I couldn’t say how long-I became vaguely aware that something was different. I was making steady progress but it was getting harder to see what was coming. The corridors and passages were fuzzier, more difficult to tell apart. I felt as though I was walking down a long, straight tunnel but when I looked again I thought I saw a fork. I looked again and saw a T junction. Then I couldn’t see any tunnel at all.