Chapter 4

Another hallway. Empty, ending in another distant and dismally blank wall. Scorio blinked blearily, then rested his brow upon the stone floor and closed his eyes.

Another damn hallway.

It would be so easy to drift off. To rest. To lie to himself and say it was just for a moment, a blessed minute.

But he couldn’t.

Not knowing from where he summoned the strength, Scorio lifted his head and forced himself to study the corridor once more.

Nothing remarkable. Porous gray walls, as if carved through the heart of a mass of ashen coral. Smooth wooden floor. Recessed lights in the ceiling above, providing a general and pleasant, ambient illumination.

Where was the danger? No foes. No objects. No markings in the walls or ceiling. The lights? Would his death manifest as he made his way down the hall?

Dragged his way down the hall, he amended.

His mouth was parched. He’d have killed a dozen times over for a sip of water. With a grunt, he pulled himself forward, arm over arm, out onto the heavily polished wooden floor.

The wood was slick, smooth, and cool to the touch. Perfectly joined so that he’d not have been able to insert a nail between the seams.

But still, nothing happened.

On he crawled. The hallway was just twenty or so yards long. But in his current state, it felt a mile. His breath came in ragged gasps, and he was drenched in sweat.

Or maybe it was blood.

Or both. Probably both.

He managed two of his body lengths forward before almost blacking out. Stars danced before his eyes, his head spun, and he felt like he was going to vomit. But instead, he focused on his breathing, and the nausea passed.

On he crawled, then paused. Had the floor… moved? Frowning, he looked back and saw that the wooden boards now terminated a foot below the thin ledge that marked where the door had been.

He stared blankly, not knowing what to make of it, his thoughts sluggish. Had the ledge drifted up? Confused, he looked ahead. The end of the hallway still looked the same.

What he’d do for a glass of water.

He could barely think. Too much blood loss. Too much pain. And why waste time thinking? Not like there was anything he could do about any realizations he might have.

So he resumed crawling, dragging himself bodily along the wooden floor, and felt it shift again, growing steeper.

Definitely steeper.

With great effort, he looked behind him and saw that the ledge was now two feet above the wooden boards.

He crept forward again while looking behind him, and saw the floor descend slowly, at roughly the rate he was progressing.

Blinking the sweat out of his eyes, he looked ahead. As steep as the hallway was becoming, it still terminated in the same blank expanse of wall.

But was it? Was the end of the hall moving up the inside of a wheel?

Dizzy, he shook the thought away.

Resumed crawling.

The hall grew steeper. By the time he reached the halfway mark, it felt like a forty-five-degree incline. He had to press his palms and fingers flat against the wood to keep traction, to resist the pull of gravity.

He looked back. A black rectangle a foot high had appeared just above the sharply inclined wooden boards.

A hole.

Despite the pain, despite the feverish delirium that was descending upon him, he felt a chill of panic.

A hole.

Desperate, he looked back up. Still a blank wall.

What the hell was he supposed to do?

“Where are you, Leonis?” His voice was little more than a croak. “Could use some encouragement right now.”

The sound of his voice only made him feel lonelier. He crawled forward a little more, felt the floor grow even steeper. Soon he’d have to start actively fighting the urge to slide back.

Deep breaths. He closed his eyes again, holding on tight. If he was going to die, it wouldn’t be sliding backward on his belly.

Scorio reached deep into himself, reached for strength, for resolve, the last vestiges of his willpower.

He saw again that hunk of obsidian, hanging in the center of his soul. For all the good it did him.

Then Scorio began to stand.

His legs shook like reeds in a storm. He had to climb up the wall, leaving dark blood marks on the gray stone. Hauling himself up, he gasped at the pain, vision doubling, until he stood hunched over, staring up the hallway.

Scorio’s lips writhed back from his teeth in a silent snarl. He pushed off the wall, fell into a totter, and tried to stagger up the incline.

It grew steeper, ever steeper as he stumbled up, reaching out with one hand as the far end of the hallway indeed scrolled up the inside of a subtly curved surface.

He made it two-thirds of the way before gravity won the battle.

He slipped, felt his center of gravity pass too far behind him, and fell.

He let out a harrowing cry as he fell backward, the distant wall flying away, and then, like hitting the surface of a black sea, he plunged into darkness, the hallway a rectangle of light that rapidly became smaller, smaller—

Then impact.

Sudden, vicious, and merciful.

A brief spasm of furious, impotent rage, and all went dark.