Descent

When the glass grows hot under her soles, she knows. Her fingertips burn loud, but nothing halts — her frail ship leads her downwards, uncaring, without any exceptions.
It is the pain that truly awakens her guts. It takes her less than one second to tear this concrete oven apart. She does not seem to know fear in this, and you know right here, right now — she will do anything to keep her wretched life away from that fire.
The test is over, and nothing is burning yet.

Rotten stairs, locked doors she cannot pass; the first minutes are way too simple. She crushes them to leave their remains behind, with no regrets.
Nothing can be done — you have to start hoping. She has to reach her doom, somewhere lower. Later on, when it is dark and you can no longer hear her, she will fall to meet the end she was always bound to find. This is your place, and she cannot escape for long.

Down she goes in the elevator shaft, and with her the last hope to get her back. The noise of the pistons is too loud down there; you are overwhelmed by cries and laments, rusty metal, until the audio brings back a blank.
That is when you lose track of her, and when the cameras are replaced by nightmares. It is the thing you hate the most — the silence, the darkness and the static, the impossibility to picture someone else's actions.
You send more steam, more flames, while your mind is wrapped in ice and horror.

The turret voices are the last thing you hear die, and if she climbs the last walls and sees the broken pipes, well, that means she has fallen in the core of this lie.
You cannot interrupt the flood of anxiety, even with your defenses ready, still under your control. Her steps are noise in this terrible silence — she looks too real, face to face with you.
She is still small, bleeding, wounded; she has bruises and scars, and on each limb she bears the signs of a different pain. It is not her, however, that makes you recoil and swing — it is the certainty.
She could never end down there. She has lived through her journey, and her last stop is you.


I am in a Portal 1 writing mood these days. Yet another story about the Escape section.
(OH MY GOD ENOUGH, my poor bored readers should be saying.)
Kiwi's Seventh Circle, one of the most precious pieces of fanfiction I can remember in my reading experience, often hinted at Dante's Divine Comedy, title included. I thought about that and came up with the idea behind this story: a sort of, but not really, evident metaphor, with Chell's descent in the Aperture maintenance areas depicted as a descent in Hell and back.
Thank you, Kiwi, for the inspiration and your very wonderful story :3 and thanks to Self Esteem Fund, my usual accompanying track for my Portal 1 writing.