64. Chapter 58
Chapter 58
Tanead
I crawled until the green light ceased and only darkness surrounded me. Until the pain in my lost horn dulled to a thudding ache. Until the scent of moist dirt replaced the stagnant scent of moss on dragonstone.
The tunnel was so narrow at points that I could hardly squeeze through. At others, it was wide enough for me to stand up and stretch. I had no idea of its direction.
The hatchling had not followed, but I was filled with questions and despair.
I, Tanead Tajawl, Prince of Snakes, had helped Anu return to the world.
Guilt was not a familiar emotion to me, but I felt it now like hot, flushed skin. Like a weight on my shoulders that never let up. It made me want to curl up and close my eyes and give up. It made me keep going on.
Time, time, time. I knew of it only by noting the increasing weakness of my body. The slow retreat of the pain in my horn. Even my finger was healing. My mouth was very dry.
I kept expecting the tunnel to run out and make me turn back, so of course that’s what I thought had happened when I ran into a wall.
The blackness was complete. I’d long ago stopped bothering to feel with my hands to protect my face, so my nose slammed into the vertical rock first.
I felt about the obstruction. I was in another pit.
Excitement fluttered in my chest. I hadn’t actually expected to get out of the dungeon alive. If I could scale the vertical wall, I’d be free.
I stood, stretching tired limbs. Many things cracked. Just standing upright felt like my body was being pulled apart by a rack.
“Ahhh,” I moaned. The sound echoed up. I took a deep breath and then another. The air here tasted stagnant again, the moisture of natural earth banished.
My fingers found a tight ledge and curled around it as best they could. They were bleeding but that pain, like all the rest, seemed far away in the background.
I had to succeed. I had to correct my mistake.
I began to climb.
One hand in front of the other. Hand, foot. Hand, foot. I searched for the ledges with fingers, rather than eyes. The eyes saw nothing. Was the Crust dark like this, or bright with the awful light of Anu?
Hand, foot. I paused when shaking too hard to go on. The shaking subsided. The thirst didn't. The pain didn't. The guilt didn't. It gnawed harder, chewing me to pieces. I came apart, inside and out. Skin sloughing off and blood trailing behind. Identity sloughing off and left behind.
Tanead Tajawl, proud prince. Left behind.
Hand, foot. Hand, foot.
Oh, an exit. Should I explore? No, new tunnel. Perhaps to a new pit. I needed light. I needed water.
I went until the sky—vaguely pink, darkening, dusk—appeared as a rounded promise above my head. Why was there sky so quickly? There should be a dragonstone corpse above me. I should climb out only to be buried alive once again. Was it the third time? I couldn't count anymore.
But the sky was there, undeniably. Behind it was the statue I expected—dark, heavy dragonstone blotting out that sky. I laughed when I saw who it was. Fucking Anu. I’d arrived at the Corpse of the Father.
I could not escape him—it was like he followed me here. For a moment, I felt madder than I had down in the pit when he sunk his hooks into my mind.
But then I got ahold of myself. Of course he followed me here. He would follow me for the rest of my life, for as long as I lived. Our destinies were intertwined now. Mistakes created responsibility and my responsibility was now a heaping pile of shit that it would take me a lifetime to shovel. My mother taught me that.
At the thought of her, I started to come back to myself. Relief flooded my shaking limbs as my arms crested the top and touched the grasses growing in the real ground above the pit. My elbows pressed to real earth. The moist smell was back. It had been a long time since I smelled anything but my own reek. I sucked the tiny dew droplets off the grass desperately, wiggling through them like a snake.
It was enough for now, just for now. I needed to move west.
But I collapsed instead. My muscles relaxing, my eyes closing. The darkness returning. You can’t escape it, in the end.