Sheltered From the Storm

Hiding behind a blanket of grey, the sky saw fit to let loose yet another torrent of heavy rain to the tired people below.

A fine mist formed over the asphalt roads and the cold winds of autumn added to the almost funereal atmosphere choking the town at present.

Most people saw fit to stay indoors, while a few daring souls hurriedly jogged by with hoods feebly failing to keep them dry for one errand or another. A few cars would pass by, cutting through the mist which swirled and mixed with the fumes left behind, it's passengers safe from the lancing cold that beat harmlessly against the metallic frame.

Away from the quiet roads and onto a quieter, but no less wetter, forest path a young man in a deep blue hoodie grumbled to himself as he trudged through the shortcut, keeping as close to the treeline which offered a more natural roof to protect him for the elements.

Fucking rain...

Only moments before the constant torrents that plagued the country seemed to let up briefly and the young man Quinton thought to head to the local One Stop for what was meant to be a brief and simple grocery run.

Armed with only a thin hoodie and a scarf, the young man was caught unawares by the roaring rainfall as he walked back, bag of milk in hand.

He took a side road familiar to him that lead to a patchwork of brown and gold juxtaposed against the metropolitan monochrome, leaping over a discarded fence that walled off the area but no one bothered to fix.

A trail of dirt worn into existence by several hundred passerbys over the years with the same mindset as the disgruntled youth led deeper into a grove ringing a bare field that was popular with school football clubs and dog walkers alike.

He had taken this short cut many times after moving to the town, but this was the first time he did so under such poor conditions and he realized it wasn't the smartest bet.

The mud at his feet clung to his trainers and made an effort to drag him down as he passed and the trees overhead did a poor job of keeping the droplets at bay for long.

He sighed, the sound lost amidst the downpour's clamour, and shifted walking just off the side of the trail, closer to the treeline and along piles of wayward leaves at the end of their lives.

"Fucking rain..." he muttered to himself.

After a moment of silence, where nature deigned not to respond to his quiet outburst, he repeated the line to himself a little louder.

"Fucking rain!"

Over and over again to fill the silence the somewhat juvenile mantra persisted. Quinton felt good about himself, he didn't mind how silly it seemed, it felt great to air his annoyance out even to no one at all.

As he walked along he noticed the roar of rain started to approach a crescendo as the weather - somehow - got worse than it was moments ago.

With the torrent bearing down on him through the skeletal trees overhead Quinton scanned around the trail to find anything that could act as shelter.

His right was a definitive no, past the trees it lead to a field with no cover at all so he turned his gaze to the left.

The trail lead towards and met up with a large hill which the treeline ringed. Though the top was crowned by it's own batch of bare branched trees, it's base was made up of clay and rock and Quinton could spy what looked like a cave built into the side of the cliff.

He sprinted towards it without a second thought, keeping his head low and his hood up, kicking up leaves as he dashed through the trees.

Fuckingrainfuckingrainfuckingrain.

He didn't think about how the cold bled through his clothes and into his body, how numb his hand felt holding the plastic bag unprotected in the storm, he just concentrated on getting to his destination as quick as he could.

The closer he got, the more the trees began to part, inviting the rain to strike their guest like sadistic hosts. Not that it mattered at this point, he was still soaked, a little more wasn't going to change anything.

By the time he reached the cave he was soaked down to the bone and could feel the cold gales bite into him even from the entrance of the cave.

He reluctantly parted from his hoodie, wringing it out while he huddled in a shivering mess watching the rain hammer down on the earth outside.

When he felt he got most of the water out of his hoodie he put it back on, jammed his hands into his armpits and huddled into as small and tight a shape as he could manage.

Whenever he felt he was conserving heat even a little bit, a gust of wind would remind him that he was freezing still. Desperate, he looked around the cave for any kind of solution. His gaze lingered deeper in the shelter, where darkness blanketed his view of the cavern but it was clear to him that it went way further in than where he currently was.

He hesitated briefly but another lashing cold breeze urged him to his feet. Leaving his groceries at the mouth of the cave he ventured deeper in, holding his still soggy hoodie as tight as humanely possible.

He was at least sure he wouldn't have to worry about wildlife, or at the very least nothing like a bear so close to civilization, but he couldn't help stay afraid as he shuffled carefully and slowly into the darkness, sticking to the sides of the cavern to avoid tripping on or bumping into something.

He bumped smack dab into a wooden post.

Crying out in shock and frustration, his voice bouncing deeper into the yawning abyss, he reached out with a hand to get an understanding of what he ran into.

He felt the sturdy but soggy texture and realized it was a wooden post. His eyes adjusting to the gloom he noticed the post extended up to the ceiling where a crossbeam fitted against it and bridged itself with a neighbouring post on the other side.

He looked past it and saw a shape resembling a second archway like this one and maybe one before that.

Iron fixtures jutted out around head level and he noted two parallel metallic sheens snaked deeper into the cavern like the tails of an industrial beast that named the depths it's den.

It was a mine.

Quinton had heard there was once many mines nearby but never cared for details. All he knew was that at some point before the Second World War they were shut down and the miners were forced out of their jobs.

It certainly fit the description of "spooky-ass abandoned mine", like the setting of a horror novel.

He had hoped he could find a lantern deeper in the cavern, something that could provide warmth but realized that even if he did, he had no means of lighting it or keeping it lit.

He focused on the cave deeper in, feeling the ceiling get lower and bearing down on him oppressively.

The mine continued further in and seemed to go further down which was more than enough for Quinton, he didn't feel desperate enough to go spelunking today.

He started to turn back, keeping a hand against the wall to keep his bearings. At least this time there was a light to give him a sense of direction.

Focusing on the grey light ahead of him, Quinton took one uncertain step into the darkness after another, reaching out with his hand towards the natural, bumpy wall.

He kept reaching out.

Into the abyss where the wall ended

His body stumbled into a hole in the wall and he could feel it slope down deeper into the earth rather than see it. He flailed wildly to catch himself and his hand bounced off the mouth of the hole.

A sharp jolt of pain raced up his forearm but he managed to hold onto the wall. But between momentum carrying him backwards and the numbness of his fingers Quinton inevitably fell into the gaping void, screaming all the way down.

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He was deposited onto cold, hard floor, feeling sore all over.

He sat up after a brief, shocked respite groaning in pain, taking in his surroundings as he did.

Though there really wasn't much to take in so to speak, the cavern was darker than the mine and the shapeless gloom offered nothing that could help him identify the layout of where he currently was.

He stood up, finding the ceiling was low enough that he was forced to remain hunched over as he walked, all thanks to a sudden bump on the head as his skull greeted the roof.

He moved back to where he came from, fumbling through the dark until her reached the hole.

Unlike the walls surrounding it, which were course, rough and jagged to a disturbing degree, the tunnel itself felt smooth to the touch, like someone or something had carved out a large portion of solid rock with a giant ice cream scooper.

This however made it difficult to get a grip, and any attempt to climb back up could only be called admirable but pathetic.

After a few more failed attempts, Quinton bitterly accepted his defeat and, judging that there must have been at least another way back up, faced the darkness with reluctant steps forward.

He held his arms out and fumbled his way to the wall of the cavern, once he could ascertain where the edges of the void he was in he could follow it around until he - with all hope he could muster - find a way out.

He didn't dare linger on the dreaded thought that there was no way out of the cavern.

He shuffled along on uncertain feet through the malefic darkness, shapeless shadows loomed all around him in the onyx coffin he found himself in. With his hand running tentatively along the surface of the stone wall, jagged yet smooth like a sculpture of warped glass, Quinton ringed the large area until at least his hand reached into the void feeling nothing.

Making a decision that it was best to stick to the right, Quinton nervously followed the newly available route deeper into the darkness.

Though Quinton never once considered himself a claustrophobic person, he couldn't help but feel a spark of panic as the corridor narrowed and pressed in around him.

He was quite a ways in when he felt his shoulders brush against the sharp, jagged edges of his stone coffin, closing in around him like the hungry jaws of a patient beast. A little further and he was forced to twist his body sideways or risk being stuck, or cut by, the hostile claws of the cavern walls.

The oppressive corridor bit into and clawed at his body under his hoodie and once or twice he winced at the sharp feeling poking at him. It was a while long under those conditions before Quinton reached out with his hand to grasp open air.

Gripping the serrated lips of the corridor walls he pulled himself out of the tight space and tumbled into...more darkness.

Excellent.

He remembered hearing an old story that if you were ever stuck in a labyrinth the best method to escaping was to stick with one side and keep going.

He wasn't sure if there was any structure to the caves he found himself in, much less whether he could call it a labyrinth, but he found it more comforting to wander around the darkness with his hand on the wall.

He pressed on into nothing, some caverns had a distinct shape to their structure while others had the same circular shape. Some were large, open areas that he could tell stretched high above him while others where little more than crawl spaces that forced him to his knees.

The caverns and their connecting passages lead deeper into the earth, looped back on themselves and banked upwards in a complicated map of interconnected tunnels that seemingly lead to nowhere.

Quint tried to avoid the caverns that lead downwards but he eventually came upon areas that just ultimately came to dead ends, forcing him to back track.

His head spun keeping track of his position.

He always reckoned himself to be great with directions, always able to remember where he came from and find his location on a map from small landmarks.

But here, he was lost, with no idea of where to go.

Panic gripped him the longer he went, his breath began to catch and soon he found himself breathing louder and louder, the rasp of his lungs echoing in the empty chambers, if only to comfort himself with a sound - ANY sound.

He found himself taking longer and longer pauses when in tighter spaces, controlling his breathing before pressing on, and once or twice mistakenly thought he was stuck.

His clothes had a couple of tears, his skin was also scratched by inconsistently jagged surfaces biting into him; they were like a chamber of knives pressing down on him from all sides.

Twisting in the darkness alone, Quinton felt his sanity slip further and further.

Then as he emerged from another compacted, claustrophobic corridor, he thought he spied light at the end of the cavern he emerged in.

The room was a wide straight that banked up into an incline and just over the ridge emanated a warm, amber glow like a welcome sunrise after a dismal night.

All sense and caution left him in his delirious joy and Quinton sprinted with renewed energy towards the glow.

His leg muscles burned with the ascent but he urged them to move faster, scrabbled at the ground with his hands to move faster, eventually coming over the ridge to find...more cave.

He stood there panting, scanning the cavern to find any trace of the outside but failing.

When he focused on the glow he mistook for daylight, he realized that it wasn't the outside as he had initially hoped but a large crystal, longer than his hand, impeded into the black rock.

It emitted a bright yet soft and soothing glow that compelled him to draw closer to it, like a campfire in a cold, oppressive forest.

He found himself reaching out to it without thinking.

As his palm hovered over the radiant stone, he could feel a gentle heat emanate from it's surface as if a flame had been caged inside the glass-like walls of the mysterious crystal.

He gently caressed it's surface before wrapping his fingers around the whole thing once he found his hand didn't burn upon contact.

He decided it was best to have a light as he walked and did his best to prise the glowing rock from it's place in the wall.

In spite of the fact that only the bottom part of the crystal seemed joint to the cavern wall, it remained stubbornly attached, Quinton sought out a loose stone to pound at it's base and break it free but there wasn't anything on hand. Not even a pebble.

After arduous straining that pushed his muscles to their utmost limits, Quinton felt the crystal give slightly in it's perch. He renewed his efforts more and more until, to his fortune, the crystal broke loose.

He stumbled backwards and fell to the ground, holding the crystal so tight it was like he embedded it into his own flesh.

He smiled like a tool as he looked at it. Maybe now it'd be easier to make his way through the cavern.

But that smile quickly faded as the light inside the crystal began to dull, then dim and finally died out into darkness.

He was left holding a useless rock, as black as the rest of his surroundings. He could almost cry.

After a moment's rest and a brief dealing with despair, Quint willed himself to stand up again. He found another tunnel, narrow but offering enough space to squeeze through, next to where he pried the crystal from the wall and, still gripping his prize as if hoping it would flare back to life any moment, proceeded onwards deeper into the earth.

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The tunnel burrowed downwards and twisted back on itself like a spiral, it was incredibly uncomfortable to navigate, made even worse by the jagged rocks clawing at him from all sides, but there was little choice in the matter.

Rocks poked into his side, tore at his legs, back, into his face - he earned several scratches from that tunnel alone.

And still it continued ever deeper.

Quint had brief visions of being stuck underground, unable to escape to the surface and starving to death in the dark or worse still, if the tunnel ended at a dead end and he was trapped in the narrow, confined space until he wasted away.

A prick at his side shook him awake and he kept moving.

It was useless to think those thoughts, just as useless as turning back in the jagged space he was stuck in.

Fucking spikes.

Yeah, that was it. Just focus on the anger. Not the fear, the fear only slowed you down, made you panic.

Just focus on all the things you hate to get through this, like you've always done.

Think of your overprotective mother and her stricter-than-the-military rules.

Think of Kyle, the man you thought was your friend only to scam you into absolute debt.

Think of your boss, your monotonous job, your monotonous life, the weather.

Fucking rain.

Blocking out the darkness and the helplessness Quinton climbed ever deeper into the abyss, every jab and every spark of pain brought with him a heightened sense of determination to reach the bottom.

And after a long, agonizing descent, Quint had reached the end, collapsing out of the tunnel into another cavern, sampling the air while his lungs were no longer constricted by the infernal shaft.

After his respite was over, he finally looked up and his breath, which had come out in droves, caught in his throat at the sight.

Crystals - much like the one he had found earlier - lined the walls and the ceiling of the cavern, illuminating the zone with a starlight sheen.

The crystals shone with a multicolour splendour: Orange, crimson, violet, deep blue, sea green, rosy pink and so many more that the lights cascaded and coalesced into an almost purer light than the sun itself could offer.

It was a magical sight, far beyond what anything on earth could offer. It was it's own world.

Quinton wandered, taking in the sight, noting more and more holes that lead into tunnels that branched off into unknown parts. Some of these tunnels decorated the higher points of the walls too, places he couldn't naturally reach on his own.

Too transfixed on his surroundings to think straight, he ended up picking a random direction and entered the tunnel.

He emerged into massive caverns one after another, each bristling with a lustrous coat of luminous crystals and equally as spellbinding a sight as the last.

He came to note that not only have the caves started growing larger now but so too have the tunnels.

It had been a while since he encountered a tunnel that ruthlessly crushed him the whole way, rather each tunnel appeared wide enough that he could outstretch both arms and barely touch the ends while extending to twice his height.

Another thing he couldn't but note was that the tunnels and caves had smoother walls and floors and he no longer dealt with jagged spines clawing at him as he passed.

It was enough to make him drop his guard and relax.

The anger that had helped him press on through the darkness and the fear that he choked on when he wandered lost had all but faded entirely.

In the back of his mind, he seemed aware of the danger of such a state, but he found he couldn't help himself.

He passed through enormous caverns wreathed in kaleidoscopic sheen one after the other, hypnotized by the beauty of the sight and the less oppressive atmosphere.

It may have been hours before he came to a stop or maybe it was simply minutes - time had seemingly dissolved to a formless haze.

The reason for his cease in progression was that for once, in the vast emptiness of the underground Eden, he finally heard something.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

In the distance, incredibly faintly, the sound of liquid dropping into more liquid reached his ears.

He took off for a sprint, slipping a few times on the smooth ground beneath in his carelessness but single mindedly latching onto the only other source of sensual stimulation he had discovered since being trapped in the caves.

It didn't take long to find, sound travelled extraordinarily clearly in those caves after all and he could tell the sound came from tunnels to his left.

He eventually burst into a cave quite unlike the ones he had been in before.