The Passage, the Deep Dark
For Spooktober 2024, word "deafening"
Dielo felt it first in his chest.
He thought it was more imagination than reality. He was alone, really alone, for the first time that he could remember. He was underground for the first time ever, in the dark, with an entire mountain pressing down around him and squeezing the air from the stone passage. It was only natural that his chest was constricted with a strange pressure.
But as he concentrated on his breath, counting the beats of his heart and the steps of his progress, he realized it was more than the disorienting combination of thrilling reckless escape, unfamiliar autonomy, and reasonable terror of both nature and pursuing punishment. There truly was a thick pressure on his chest, nearly a vibration, as if he were singing in the lowest part of his range.
As if someone else were singing in a lower range than he could imagine.
The sound--if it could be called a sound, though surely that was what it was--persisted and even grew, not louder, but more powerful, as he descended. As the stone tube plunged under the Sung Range, leading into impossible deeps and calling him west, the sound with no note pressed upon him, squeezing his heart and making him scoop at his ears as if an insect had crawled inside. But nothing could ease the sound he could not quite hear.
He had heard stories, he eventually recalled. He'd had little reason to listen closely or to remember, but he had heard stories of the song in the deep, the "Voice of the Mountain." He remembered warnings, and speculation that it was not the mountain which sang.
Empty void, if it was not the mountain which sang...
He was in the dark, alone. He had only the vaguest trail to follow into a strange and hostile land. And something might be hunting him, singing a song he could not quite hear.
He had used up all of his courage in leaving Saragu and the palace, stealing money and himself to follow the master who did not want him. He had little left to face the hungry dark.
But his thin hope for belonging lay before him, and only humiliation and pain could come of his retreat, and if he had no courage, that made ample room for fear.
He walked on, in the dark, with his ears and his chest vibrating with the chilling song.
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