“I’m in a tunnel,” I said over the comm. “Looks like it is heading due north. Concentrate your search there.”
A burst of static sounded in my ear, obscuring a garbled response.
“Come again,” I said.
Again, the response was garbled so much I couldn’t make it out. Hopefully, Chiraine and Narcissa were hearing me better than I was hearing them.
The tunnel continued for fifteen more meters before turning ninety degrees to the east. As I walked, I studied the walls, floor, and ceiling, but I didn’t see any sort of signage or directional markings. I also didn’t see any footprints—other than my own. That was a bit surprising.
The last expedition to come through here was nearly thirty years ago. I would have thought there might be some sign of them. But maybe not. Maybe this place generated a lot of dust. Especially if the roof caved in.
The tunnel turned again, back to the south, and I realized that telling Chiraine and Narcissa to search to the north might not have been the smartest thing to say. Like the streets above, this tunnel was a jumbled maze.
A maze.
I remembered something my father had told me when I was a kid. We were visiting the Dwarhoon caverns on Mimbala. In one of the caverns, there was a labyrinth with walls carved from dense fungus. These walls were less than a meter tall—probably because the ancient Mimbalans were not very tall—so there was no danger of getting lost. But still, the place freaked me out.
When I asked my dad why there was a labyrinth built inside a cavern, he told me something about the labyrinth being constructed as a protective measure, almost like a jail cell or a trap for some malevolent creature. I couldn’t remember the details of our conversation, but I remembered being really scared. What were the Mimbalans trying to keep locked up with that maze?
And it got me thinking about the maze-like alleys above and this twisting tunnel. What if the mazes here in the Coliseum had a similar function? What if they were some kind of symbolic protection?
But from what?
The tunnel turned again—to the east—and opened into a chamber, roughly ten meters by fifteen. The chamber was empty except for some broken pieces of pottery, but there was a wide passage in the north wall with another staircase heading down.
I was heading deeper and deeper underground, but I felt like I didn’t have a choice. I needed to figure out where this tunnel led.
The staircase continued downward for a dozen meters or so and then the passage leveled out. It was tough to determine where I was in relation to the Antrum. What I should have done was set a marker on the Aura’s geo app, but I hadn’t been thinking.
After more twists and turns, the tunnel ended in a T. It seemed like I could go either east or west. This was frustrating. Each section of the tunnel looked the same. No marks in the dust. No marks on the walls.
Screw it. I keyed on my judder knife and etched an arrow pointing west. Why the hell not?
I didn’t get more than a dozen meters when the tunnel branched again. This time it forked into three identical-looking passages all heading north.
I investigated all three and discovered that the center passage went straight north, while the others veered gently off to the east and west.
After marking the center passage, I proceeded to jog down it. I was getting really antsy now and just wanted to find a staircase back up to the surface. This northern passage splintered off into two more and then two more after that.
I spent the next hour or so wandering through the maze of tunnels and even some small empty rooms, before I had to admit defeat. I was just going to have to retrace my steps and figure out a way to climb out of the Antrum. Chiraine and Narcissa must be freaking out by now.
Moving quickly, I headed back the way I came. After ten meters, the northern tunnel terminated in an east/west passage.
My heart froze. There was no mark on the wall.
I looked down. No bootprints in the dust.
How could this be?
Maybe I missed a turn. I walked back south, following my fresh prints. After five minutes of walking, my bootprints were gone. They didn’t fade away, either. They just stopped.
This was impossible.
I doubled back again to the T-junction where I had expected to find a mark on the wall.
There was no T.
The tunnel just turned west. There was no mark on the wall, no bootprints. Nothing.
My head began to feel light. What was going on? I slumped down, seated on the ground with my back against the tunnel wall. Sweat trickled down my spine and my ears began to ring. I gulped air, trying to calm myself.
Once again I tried to reach Chiraine and Narcissa on the comm, but this time there was no static and no garbled audio.
There was just dead air. Utter silence.
I leaned back and closed my eyes.
I’m not sure how long I stayed like that—on the ground, in some bizarre underground maze that seemed to shift and swallow up my bootprints.
But I knew I had to pull myself together. And I had to do it right now.
The only option I had was to move forward. And I had to try to keep moving in the same direction. I set a marker on my Aura as a reference point and set the geo app to record my progress relative to the marker. That might help me stay on course. Should I also risk activating the emergency distress function? The range of the low frequency signal was less than a hundred kilometers, but if a Mayir survey drone was in the vicinity, it would certainly pick the signal up.
Better not to risk that yet. I wanted to see how much progress I could make trying to travel in a straight
