There was an almost impossible wet hissing sound in the darkness around him.
Bard lay still, trying to understand where he was.
He had fallen backward into some kind of opening in the earth. Fifteen feet, maybe. By fate or mercy, a tree had happened to be growing at a strange angle from the side of the shaft. His spine was aligned with its trunk, his legs braced against the wall. There were no branches beneath him.
The hissing continued.
Then he felt it.
Warm mist sprayed from his pocket.
During the fall, one of his fingers had punctured the can of Monster he’d shoved in there earlier. He could taste it in the air.
Bard stopped his heavy breathing and tried to calm himself.
For a moment, he prayed.
Nothing elaborate. Just thanks to the Great Spirit for the tree, the angle of his fall, and whatever sequence of accidents had kept him from continuing all the way to the bottom.
Above him, rain began falling again. Moonlight poked through the opening of the shaft.
Bard looked around.
He was facing a man-made wall.
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Dozens of massive worked stones interlocked in a puzzle-like pattern. Even in the weak light, the construction was astounding. Beautiful, actually.
And by yet another grace, a small series of handholds had been cut into the wall beside the tree.
Bard looked up.
There was no way he was climbing out.
His only choice was down.
He stuck the Monster can in a branch of the tree.
He moved before the stones got too wet.
It was another fifteen feet or so to the bottom. Bard lowered himself carefully until his boots touched a rock floor covered by about an inch of water.
Something slithered past his foot.
He froze.
“Great.”
The chamber was too dark to see much of anything. Bard put one hand against the wall and began walking the perimeter, feeling his way around the strange circular room.
Eventually, his fingers found an opening.
A doorway.
“Good thing I left my phone. Didn’t bring a flashlight either.”
His voice sounded wrong in the enclosed darkness.
“Good thing I’m just standing here in pitch black with the tiniest fucking dot of moonlight.”
He looked up.
The moon was still moving into view above the opening.
“I guess I’ll wait.”
So Bard stood there in the darkness.
He let his eyes adjust.
They didn’t.
Nearly ten minutes passed before the moon finally emerged far enough to throw a little more light into the chamber.
Now he could see the doorway.
It was a stone arch built from more of the strange fitted blocks. Bard looked closer at the surrounding walls. Some of the stones appeared almost like obsidian. T-shaped blocks. L-shaped blocks. Geometric pieces locked together into larger squares.
The moonlight caught something beside the arch.
Bard stared.
A sconce.
With a torch sticking out of it.
“Well, that’s kind of ridiculous.”
He took out his lighter and stepped toward it.
“If I’d walked two inches farther, that thing would’ve busted my—”
The floor disappeared beneath him.
A section of stone swung downward on a pivot.
Bard dropped.
He grabbed for the torch on instinct. His hand closed around it, but the sconce tore free from the wall under his weight.
Then he was falling again.
Bard crashed through the swinging stone trapdoor and vanished into another dark passage below.