“Why do I ever trust anyone,” I muttered as I climbed back up the ladder. I knew that nothing awaited me at the top but disappointment, but I was going to try anyway. “Story of my life.”

  I told Amaia to wait at the bottom, which she did without a word. Either she was even more convinced that we were fucked than I was, or she really just didn’t care. Both, even. She stood there like a stone sentry.

  The depth of the tunnel was more visceral on the return trip. Before I could at least glance up at that square of light for some respite from the oppressive darkness. Now the only point of brightness to rest my eyes on was below me, the flickering torch which I’d handed to Amaia - but looking at that made me feel worse, not better.

  What made me feel worse still were the noises I’d begun to hear echoing from the tunnel mouth. The noises we had made did not seem to reverberate, and yet from the other direction I could hear amplified unidentifiable sounds, as if the acoustics of the tunnel were designed in such a way as to only echo in one direction. The sounds, whatever they were, quickened the pace of my climb. Perhaps it was only the sound of some rodent scurrying around. But perhaps not.

  It might seem cowardly that someone who threatens to melt a dude’s face off or burn a neck clean through is afraid of sounds in the dark, but a person’s imagination is always the worst enemy of all, and the noises hadn’t bothered me a bit when I still believed I could leave at any time. Now that I felt trapped, my mind made monsters of the noises, great monsters beyond any I’d seen before.

  Then, climbing, I started to delude myself into thinking it would be OK. Maybe the sun has set, I thought. It wouldn’t take much to make the interior of that building dark. Even if Hoyom lit a torch of his own, I might not see it unless he held it right above the hole.

  I was proven violently wrong. It was impossible to judge how near or far I was from the top, so I was taken completely by surprise when I banged my head against the trapdoor. I saw stars, which seemed to mock me and my desire to see the true stars above. The door didn’t budge. Locked.

  I, however, did budge. I had been scurrying frantically enough that the collision nearly sent me toppling off of the ladder. I surely would have died from the fall. If I had brought the torch with me, or for any other reason had held the rungs with only one hand, that would have been the end of me.

  Unfortunately for those who had wronged me, I lived. Worse still, I had an idea.

  But the near-fall had spooked me. I wasn’t sure that it would help, but I took the only precaution I could think of.

  Planting my feet as comfortably as I could on one rung of the ladder and holding tightly with one hand, I used the other to pour liquid nail onto my boots. I was afraid my boots might melt, or that my feet would cook inside like boiled sausages, so I poured only small amounts at a time, letting those cool before adding more. Still my feet were sweating by the time I was done.

  Some drops slid off and were swallowed by the darkness, but Amaia was far enough down that any which happened to land on her head would be completely cooled by the time they reached her. Though they might make her jump, which in hindsight I wished I had seen.

  I wasn’t sure how good the hold was. It was basically just glue, and I wasn’t sure if you could hold a full-grown man up with glue alone. I thought I might have seen someone lift a car with glue on the internet before, but I was smart enough to know that it may have been fake, or at least higher quality glue than whatever I was producing. The word producing made me shudder. I felt more monstrous suddenly, like a large spider producing webs. I hoped the webs would hold.

  I resolved to keep my footing and hopefully not need to test it.

  I turned my attention upward. My memory had been right. The trapdoor was wooden.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  I began flicking liquid nails upwards, igniting them just before they hit the door. It took a few tries and with many drops falling back down and giving me mild burns on my face, but finally the trap door caught. As the wood cackled so did I. They won’t see us coming, the fuckers.

  Unfortunately I was correct for the wrong reason. The trapdoor burned away while I shielded my eyes as best I could, flaming bits of wood falling down towards a hopefully-ready-to-dodge Amaia. But once the trapdoor was no more, I did not see the square of light I’d hoped for, but a tiny sliver of it. The rest, I quickly saw, was covered by a slab of stone.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “You still up there, Hoyom? Get this fucking stone off of the hole!”

  I hadn’t actually expected an answer, so I was quite surprised when I received one.

  “You’re resourceful, aren’t you?” Hoyom said. I saw movement above, and soon one eye was peering through the crack as he squatted and leaned down beside the trapdoor. I could see by the way the light danced around him that he was holding a torch of his own. “I barely finished stacking the rocks.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I yelled at him. “Let us out! What the fuck did I ever do to you?”

  “Nothing,” Hoyom said, and he might have been discussing some distant tragedy he’d seen on the news, for all the emotion in his voice. “And I am sorry it came to this. No one else was meant to get involved, certainly not you or the girl - we didn’t even know you existed before today. Supposed to be simple. You can blame Eitan for this. Bastard.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “Who is Eitan?”

  “We’re the pirates, you poor fool. We ambushed you at the warehouse because we thought you were our third man, Eitan. Bastard took more than his fair share. By the time we realized who you were, it was too late.”

  Suddenly I felt very calm. The tension in my face and shoulders dissipated, and my mind honed to a point. Not because the explanation satisfied me, but because the reality of the betrayal had reached my heart.

  Perhaps I should have asked why he stole the crates, or what he planned to do next. Perhaps I should have stalled him with questions until Ikhamon came looking for us.

  Instead, I asked, “Do you remember what I told you, Hoyom?”

  “What,” he said, “You mean about trying my food? I appreciate the gesture, but that’s not getting you out of there.”

  “No,” I said. “About what I’d do if you messed with us.”

  He laughed. “Oh, that. Yeah. Burn my face off, right? Hey man, it isn’t personal. And who knows? Maybe that tunnel leads somewher-“

  The next sound he made was one of agony. I had flicked the fingers of my right hand at him, and the liquid nails ignited on the skin of his face before he realized what was happening. I’m pretty sure a drop or two got in his eye.

  I didn’t let up. It was petty and senseless, but I really didn’t care. It felt good to get back at people who fucked me, almost good enough to make up for getting fucked in the first place. For the moment I just relished it.

  As he reeled away from the trapdoor I stuck my hand up through the gap and did my best to flick more in the direction I’d seen him flee to. He made little yelps that told me I’d struck true.

  I was not ready for his retaliation. He must have dropped down onto his back, and now with a scream and a number of expletives he stomped sideways at my hand, smashing it between his boot and the stone slab.

  I let out a yell of my own and recovered my hand. Then he was back over the gap - peering, I noticed with glee, with the other eye. I smiled despite the pain, and hoped his other eye was blind forever.

  “I tried to be nice!” Hoyom yelled. “I tried to give you a shot! But alright! You asked for it. Goodbye, Miles.”

  He put his palm against the gap, and almost immediately afterwards a gust of wind shot out towards me. If I hadn’t glued my feet to the rungs I probably would have immediately fell. Instead I was whipped back, buffeted by the wind, but kept upright by the coating of nails.

  Until they cracked. Then I fell. The glue had bought me only a second or two.

  I heard Hoyom yell some angry curse at me as I fell, but I didn’t hear it. Soon there was nothing around me but darkness, and I was enveloped like a child in the womb. I had an eerie sense of deja-vu, but that was understandable enough. It wasn’t that long before that I had fallen into an even greater depth.

  And lived. The memory sparked my faculties into action, and I slipped on the ring which still lay inside my pocket - new pants, but I’d been wise enough to remember and transfer it over.

  Eventually I landed, stopping just millimeters above the surface of the hard ground, which I now noticed was something like concrete. Amaia was just beside me, staring.

  “Welcome back,” Amaia said, and I had the distinct impression she was making fun of me, though I could make out no emotion on her face.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  -

  I tried again to climb up and yell at Hoyom, but he was gone, or at least made no sign of his presence. Then I tried to dislodge the stone, but it was impossible. I could just get my fingers out of the gap, but no amount of strain and effort moved the stones even an inch. From the sounds of what Hoyom had said he had piled them on top of each other, so it was unlikely I would have been able to move the whole pile even if I had good footing and a solid grip, which, standing on the ladder, I didn’t.

  I made Amaia climb up as well, in case the stones had metal cores which she could manipulate with her magic. She knew as well as I did that there was no way we’d be so lucky, but she shrugged and indulged my hopeless hopes. It didn’t work, of course, and I stomped and cursed while she climbed back down.

  Next we searched the old crates around us, but found nothing of value. It seemed that everything useful had either been long ago looted or else rusted or rotted away into nothing. I’m not sure what I expected. I couldn’t even think of something that would be useful in that situation. A cell phone to call for help? A stick of dynamite to blow up the stones?

  I ascended one last time to shout out into the now-dark opening, hoping that somehow Ikhamon had survived and would hear me. In all likelihood the two pirates had killed or captured him, overpowering him with superior numbers, but the man was strange and could have surprised me.

  No answer. I couldn’t even hear the calls of birds or the chirping of insects. It was as quiet as a grave.

  Finally I relented, climbed back down, and did what I had feared from the beginning would be our only course of action - I stepped into the tunnel.