Chapter 7

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Sonic cried out on the way down. He couldn't stop himself.

The young hedgehog knew exactly what it would feel like to drown. He had been five years old and, although almost everything else from back then was lost in the haze of early childhood, he remembered it with perfect clarity. Perhaps because it was his very first memory- everything before that was not just hazy but completely blank; he couldn't even remember how he had got into the water in the first place- but whatever the reason, the moment was etched indelibly into his brain.

Time slowed to a crawl. Sonic had an eternity to relive the unbearable pressure in his chest as his attempts to expel water from his lungs only resulted in inhaling more of the stuff. His struggles had become increasingly frantic as he gasped for air that simply did not exist- he had known he was going to die, even though he was too young to understand what that meant.

In some ways he still was. But Sonic understood enough now to be even more terrified than his younger self had been, and somewhere between the edge of a ravine and the river below his body unconsciously echoed those earlier struggles, thrashing wildly and clawing at the air as if that could somehow slow his fall.

No, no, nonono-!

He had heard somewhere that hitting a body of water at speed was the same as hitting concrete. But he never expected the blow to be so hard or come so suddenly.

All the breath was forced from his lungs and pain spiked into his shoulder, ribs and back; for a few moments he continued to thrash, convinced he must have been driven underwater because his lungs refused to respond to his urging them to breathe. There was just no air.

Eons came and went. Then he suddenly coughed convulsively and wheezed a mouthful of glorious oxygen.

At about the same time he realised that the surface underneath him was far too solid- not to mention dry- to be the Emerald River.

Chest heaving as he fought for a full breath, Sonic opened his eyes- to find himself lying half-curled on a broad stone ledge that was green with moss and slightly damp, but nothing more threatening than that. He could hear the river rushing past uncaringly some distance below.

But the relief he felt quickly turned into boiling anger as he raised himself on his elbows and looked up. The sheer wall of the cliff rose above him, the rock barely visible through the curtain of slimy moss and plant life clinging to it. The cliff was completely vertical and looked slippery and unclimbable, but didn't rise very far; although his fall seemed to have taken decades, in reality it had been less than twenty feet. In Mobius' gravity that was enough to cause serious injury only to the very frail, heavy, or unlucky. Sonic was none of these, so apart from being winded and having a brand-new set of bruises for the collection he was relatively unharmed.

The same couldn't be said for his pride, however.

Sonic felt heat rising in his face, causing his fur to bristle as Lance peered down at him and howled with laughter.

"What do you know… you do have a hidden talent," the dog called down as soon as he regained enough control to speak. "That was the best impression of a stranded goldfish… that I've ever seen..."

"You…!" Sonic's breathing was still too laboured for him to manage more than a few words at a time, so he settled for flattening his ears and giving Lance a glare that could have melted titanium.

Lance had seen the ledge before letting Sonic fall. It was written all over his grinning face. And Sonic had never been able to hide how… nervous he was around deep water from the greyhound. Bullies had a sixth sense for these things.

That… that mangy bastard! Let me think I was gonna drown—

Sonic shook with fury and hurled himself at the cliff, fully intending to scrabble up the impossibly slick surface and give Lance more than just a few bruises. Or at least he tried to, but his exhausted legs had other ideas; the muscles cramped viciously the moment he was on his feet and sent him hissing onto hands and knees.

"Temper," Lance smirked nastily as he admonished the trembling, humiliated teenager. "It was just a little joke… you should have seen your face. It was priceless."

Sonic growled low in his throat, not trusting himself to try to speak.

"You could just have looked down, you know." The dog shrugged elaborately, scratched a floppy ear, yawned. "It's hardly my fault, is it? Besides, you've got that stupid map of yours… you should be happy," another snort of laughter.

Sonic ignored him, a brief moment of panic slicing through his anger. The map! He had almost forgotten. Where was it?

Glancing down, he was relieved to see the brownish silk still protruding from either side of his clenched fist. By some miracle he had managed to keep hold of the precious map.

"Not that it'll do you much good down there, though," Lance finished amusedly. "But don't worry… I wouldn't leave you there. I'll go fetch some help, shall I…?"

The dog was obviously enjoying himself. Sonic bared his teeth and staggered upright, defiantly ignoring the screaming protests from his legs.

"I said… I don't want… your help," The hedgehog managed. It was slightly reassuring to see that Lance still looked a little unsteady himself. But only slightly.

The smug look on the older Mobian's face didn't help at all.

"It looks a bit different from up here. Maybe I'll make sure your little friends know where to find you. In a few days. If I feel like it. Unless you want to ask nicely…?"

"…Up your Asteroceras, Lance."

"Suit yourself, then." He sniggered and raised a hand in a parody of a childish wave.

"Bye bye, runt. Try not to fall in the river. If there's one thing we don't need around here, it's pollution."

The pointed yellow snout withdrew from sight. Sonic gathered himself and yelled after him- "You'll regret this, Lance-!"

But either his breathless shout didn't reach the top of the cliff or Lance simply didn't care. Sonic scowled up at the place where he had been, but it quickly became obvious that the dog had gone.

If anyone had overheard the tirade Sonic sent up the cliff with each breath over the next few moments, they would have been impressed by the sheer volume of insults that one small, out-of-breath hedgehog could produce. Some were directed at the cliff itself as well as Lance, but fortunately the cliff was incapable of hearing them.

Sonic quickly ran out of steam, however. Deflating, he sat down heavily, unable to stay on his feet any longer.

"…Oww." He winced. He'd run too fast for too long- again- and now he had to pay the price; he spent several minutes trying to massage the cramp out of his legs, before flopping onto his back with a groan. It was an uncomfortable position for any hedgehog, but at least it made breathing easier and the stone felt pleasantly cool through his quills.

Ugh. Total burnout…

Sonic had overstretched himself often enough to know that the fatigue would pass quickly, and that he hadn't done himself any real damage this time- he would be in a lot more pain if he had, he knew that from experience as well- but for now he couldn't do much more than lie there and stare at the sky while he waited for his body to stop taking revenge on him for pushing it past its limits. Everything throbbed dully, especially his wrenched shoulder and the various bits of him that had slammed into the rock. Through the fingers of the hand resting on his chest he could feel his heart thudding at a frightening rate. The blood roaring in his ears made the sound of the river fade in and out in time with his racing pulse.

It had been worth it, though. A tiny smile appeared on his face. He'd beaten Lance- sort of- and got the map back. Better still, he'd reached a pretty good speed back there.

Sonic wished he had some way of telling exactly how fast he had been going, but it had to have been much faster than his usual thirty mile per hour sprint… close to one hundred, maybe? He had no way of knowing. But he was sure that even if he hadn't beaten his previous best, it must have been very close.

After a moment's thought he decided to give himself the benefit of the doubt and assume that he had. After all, there had been a lot of rings.

Still wasn't fast enough, though. His expression soured.

Stupid ravine, getting in his way like that. Stupid rings, running out at exactly the wrong time! Again!

Next time. His eyes narrowed. Next time I'll be faster… and it'll be Lance who gets run off the flipping cliff!

Eventually his heartbeat and breathing began to slow to something approaching normal. Sonic sat up gingerly, then tried to smooth down his quills and shake out the grass and dirt that had become caught in them. Red, blue and pink bits of crushed flower petal flew in all directions; he must have rolled through a patch of brightly coloured Mobian daisies on his way over the cliff. Most of the debris, however, remained lodged in his stubbornly messy quills and a sickeningly sweet floral odour wafted out, making him sneeze.

Great, now I look and smell like a flipping Solstice tree. Sonic brushed at himself ineffectively, wincing. Some of his thick spines had been wrenched the wrong way on impact, adding annoying little stinging pains to the rather impressive list of injuries he was racking up today.

So… I'm stuck half way up a cliff. Now what? He wondered. He knew that Lance would be back, sooner rather than later despite his claims. He would return to the village only long enough to brag. Any minute now he would start telling anyone who would listen about how he had made Sonic scream like a baby…

The hedgehog seethed, a growl bubbling up uncontrollably in his throat.

…And then, once Lance had finished publicly humiliating him, he'd come back here. His idea of 'bringing help' would no doubt be to bring Brindle to help him gloat, and probably stones to throw as well.

What did that stupid mutt get out of tormenting him, anyway? Sonic had nothing against practical jokes- he'd played enough of them on unsuspecting villagers- but those had been harmless fun. What Lance had done was far from harmless. It was downright cruel.

Probably, the hedgehog mused, Lance picked on him because he knew he would fight back. Sonic shook his head. Well, there was no way in hell he was ever going to cower before the greyhound like Porker, or bow and scrape and agree with everything he said like that idiot Brindle. If Lance thought he had won he had another think coming, because that was not going to happen. Not now, not ever.

Stupid mutt can do what he likes, he told himself determinedly. By the time he gets back here I'll be long gone.

Sonic would show that sad excuse for a canine that he didn't need his 'help' or anyone else's. He would get out of this mess by himself.

The question was, how?

Sonic looked around, frowning. The ledge was long and wide enough to accommodate several hedgehogs and seemed solid enough, so there was little chance of him falling off. But he couldn't see anything that would allow him to climb back up, either. There were no obvious handholds higher up that he could hang on to, only sheer rock, moss and thin, fragile-looking vines.

Sonic shuffled closer to the edge. On the opposite side of the gap were more ledges, as if the ground had fallen into a series of steps as it collapsed, or parted, or whatever had happened to create this inconvenient bit of geography. But the gap was far too wide to jump- especially with that water down there, he thought with a shudder- and that side of the cliff looked even less promising than the one he was on. He couldn't see if there were any more ledges on his side.

Only one way to find out. There was no point in putting it off any longer.

Sonic steeled himself, and looked down.

The ravine was deep. More than deep; the sides seemed to plunge down endlessly. Here and there jets of water fountained out of cracks in the stone, and there were indeed more ledges further down- a whole series of them on both sides of the cliff. Sonic still couldn't see if they led anywhere useful, though; the sunlight only reached so far, and the deeper he looked the more the stone walls disappeared into shadow.

At the very bottom was a glint of water, a hint of white foam. The river.

The ledge was scattered with clumps of soil and small pebbles. Sonic carefully toed one over the edge; there was a very long pause, then a very tiny splash as the unfortunate pebble vanished into the river.

Sonic's ears went flat against his head. He gulped and hastily drew back until his quills pressed into the damp moss that covered the cliff.

"Okay… straight down is definitely not an option."

He thought he could reach some of the other ledges on his side. Maybe they would lead him to a place where he could get back to the surface.

Or maybe they would lead him straight into the river.

Well, you do have a map, remember?

Of course! Mentally kicking himself, Sonic leaned back against the cliff and shook the map open. He smirked- this was exactly the kind of situation where it would come in handy. And how good would it be to find a way out of here using the very map that Lance had scoffed at as useless?

That would be one way to get revenge on the greyhound, he thought. Congratulating himself for coming up with such a perfect idea, he held the frayed square up to the light and squinted determinedly at it.

The sunlight shining through the aged silk revealed details that had been too small or faded to see before. Normally Sonic would have had little or no interest in how the map had been made, but even he couldn't fail to be impressed by how fine some of the outlines were. They must have been drawn using a single hair. Now he could see a sort of network of faint lines running through the Zones. They looked a little like veins- rivers, roads or just the effects of age on the fabric? He had no idea.

He was less than impressed to notice the new grass stains that had appeared around the edges of the map. Sonic scowled and called Lance a few more choice names in his head, but didn't dwell on it for too long.

As he had already noticed, Emerald Hill was not marked out as a separate Zone on this map. He located it easily enough, however, and his brow furrowed as he tried to figure out exactly where in the Zone he was.

Sonic had a reasonable sense of direction and knew he must be somewhere north of the village because he had been heading away from the sea. But the village wasn't marked, either. It probably hadn't existed when the map was drawn.

Eventually he shrugged and made an 'educated' guess, ringing a tiny area that looked promising with a gloved fingertip. There was a mess of fine lines there that could represent the broken ground in the area and a bolder, jagged one that might have been the ravine. Next to the possible ravine were two tiny symbols. Sonic brought the map closer to his eyes, trying to make them out.

The first mark was a black blob beneath a curved line a bit like a wide letter n. It looked vaguely familiar, but Sonic couldn't remember where he had seen it before. The second symbol was a group of five lines, three of which were vertical, one leaning to the side and one horizontal. It looked like a collection of rods stuck in the ground, a couple of which had fallen over.

And obviously, the teenager thought, these two symbols together meant that…

…What the heck did they mean, anyway?

Sonic's face fell. He didn't have a clue. Weren't maps supposed to have instructions that told you what all the symbols meant, or something? Eyes scanning the map, he found nothing but some very faint markings right on the edge of the silk square.

If this map had ever had a key, it had frayed or been worn away long ago.

Sonic struggled with it for another minute or two, but it wasn't long before his short supply of patience ran out. Huffing in irritation, he let his hand drop.

"…Great. Well, that was a fun waste of time."

He hated to admit it, but Lance might have been right about the map. This time. It was just too small to give much more than a general idea of where something was, even if you did know what those odd little marks meant. The line-and-blob thing and the fallen-over-sticks thing, whatever they were, could be right where he was sitting- or they could just as easily be miles away.

That might be enough to help you find something, Sonic mused sourly, but not when you were trapped on a ledge and weren't even sure what you were looking for in the first place.

But that did not mean he was going to give up. No way. Not for all the rings on Mobius.

So that leaves me two choices. The hedgehog stuffed the map into his glove pocket, thinking. The easy way would be to jump from ledge to ledge and see where he ended up without the map's help. Normally he would have done just that without a second thought, but he kept remembering the nearly inaudible splash that the pebble had made as the river swallowed it up. Those other ledges might not be as solid as this one. He'd had bits of the Zone unexpectedly fall out from under him several times before…

Yeah, death by stupidity, Lance would just love that. Sonic made a face at the sheer cliff. The hard way it is, then. Straight up.

He got to his feet slowly, testing his legs; they still felt tired and shaky, but at least now they were listening to him. Then he turned his attention to the cliff.

It didn't look any more scaleable now than it had earlier. Apart from a few bare patches, slimy green growth covered the entire surface. The vines stopped just above his head and looked like they had all the strength of damp noodles.

A fringe of drier vegetation marked out the top of the cliff, twenty feet up.

Twenty feet. Sonic mulled it over. He knew he could leap perhaps twice his own height, and that was when he hadn't just run himself into the ground. Or over a cliff.

Even he could do the math.

Forget the math. Sonic eyed the hanging vines, and rolled his shoulder until something clicked. I can do this. It's only twenty feet. If I can't jump that high, I'll just climb the rest of the way. Easy.

His first leap was only just high enough to grab handfuls of the dangling vines.

The thin tendrils took his weight for about half a second before tearing free of the cliff face. Dumped unceremoniously back where he had started, he quickly scrambled as far from the edge as possible.

Great. Now he had a sore tail to think about, too.

Globs of moss and earth rained wetly down on him. His spines bristled.

This time Sonic crouched and tensed in as close an approximation of a coiled spring as a hedgehog could manage, and put all his remaining strength into the leap.

It was a good effort, considering. His hands stretched upwards, dug into the moss and held firm, leaving him clinging to the cliff face almost half way up.

Although the effort had left him panting again, Sonic smirked to himself. So far, so good. Now if he could just pull himself up the rest of the way…

He would have to hang on with one hand while the other searched for something to hold on to higher on the cliff, before hauling himself upwards. This was the tricky part, as any real muscle power he had was in his legs rather than his upper body.

No such thing as impossible, the hedgehog reminded himself firmly. This was just like climbing a coconut tree, and how many times had he done that?

He flattened himself against the cliff, dug the toes of his shoes into the moss and pushed upwards while the fingers of his left hand scrabbled for a new place to grip. The surface seemed to give way a little beneath his feet; perhaps the spongy vegetation was thicker than he had thought.

His searching fingers eventually discovered something that felt a little more solid, perhaps a small lip of stone beneath the moss. Just what he needed! Sonic shifted his weight to that hand in order to free the other, hissing between his teeth as a sharp ache shot up his arm from the much-abused shoulder.

I can do this. I can do this.

He lifted his right foot, preparing to inchworm his way up the cliff. The left sunk further into the moss.

Unfortunately, treadless shoes and wet vegetation were not known for working together. Or perhaps his tired leg muscles were simply making their opinion known again.

There was a jolt as his foot slipped. His knee banged into the cliff, and suddenly he was only hanging on by his hands.

What-? Sonic's eyes widened and he kicked wildly, but his smooth soles could not get any purchase on the slippery green surface.

Then came the soft tearing sound that he had learned to dread, and the moss beneath his fingers began to peel away from the rock wall.

"Oh you have got to be kidding…"

He had just enough time to wonder why the plants of Mobius were out to get him today before he fell, taking a strip of green stuff with him, and landed heavily on the ledge again.

On his back. Which pushed several hundred of his own quills painfully backwards into his skin.

Sonic howled some very special expletives at the world in general, hastily rolling onto his stomach as large lumps of mud and moss pelted down all around him.

"Ow! Dammit!" Soil pattered onto the top of his head. Sonic's fist thudded against the stone ledge in time with his words. "Stupid! Flaming! Cliff!"

The cliff still didn't care one little bit, but the hedgehog's anger was not really meant it anyway. Mostly it was directed at himself.

He should have been able to scale the cliff. He should have been able to beat Lance much more easily, without running himself ragged in the process. Sonic knew the potential was there. He could feel it. But it was as if something was blocking him, preventing him from achieving that potential.

Rings could unlock the barrier for a while, giving him a brief taste of the near-effortless speed and ability he knew he should be capable of. But it never lasted long, and it was never quite enough.

He felt… incomplete. And it was slowly driving him crazy with frustration.

Sonic punched the ledge again. He shot an accusatory glare at the now-smarting fingers and the grass and mud stains on the once pure white glove. He lifted his head to glare at the indifferent cliff face as well.

And froze, blinking.

"Huh?"

A sheet of vegetation had torn away from the cliff and now lay in clumps on the ledge around him, exposing the grey stone of the cliff itself, glistening with moisture and streaked with brown trickles of mud.

And where there had previously been nothing but featureless moss, a Mobian-sized opening was now visible directly in front of him. A perfectly circular tunnel cut into the solid rock, barred by a rusted metal grating that still had bits of greenery clinging to it.

Sonic's ears twitched forwards as he got to his feet and approached the hole in the cliff. Now he remembered where he had seen that funny little symbol before- it appeared on modern maps as well as his ancient one, and it meant cave entrance.

If going up or down the cliff was out of the question, he thought as his anger evaporated and his face split into an incredulous grin, then he would just have to go through!

...

The grating turned out to be just as flimsy as it appeared. When Sonic pushed at it experimentally, the mortar holding it in place crumbled away and the mesh clattered forwards into the tunnel- nearly taking the hedgehog with it, since he hadn't expected it to give way so easily.

Now that problem was out of the way, Sonic peered into the opening. The tunnel- which actually resembled a tube or pipe- was slick with condensation and obviously Mobian-made; it appeared to be constructed of the same dressed stone as the ruins dotted around Emerald Hill, although without the decorative tiles. It sloped gently downwards until it was consumed in shadows; he couldn't see how long it was or what might be at the other end.

A more educated mind would have said the stone tube appeared to be ancient, then marvelled at the way the stones fitted together so precisely and the tiny stalactites that had formed on its roof since it was constructed. But the young hedgehog was so used to seeing (not to mention getting lost in) tunnels like this all over the Zone that they were not something to marvel over- to him it simply looked old, dark and wet, although to his credit he did notice that the metal grate that had blocked it was far more modern, even if time had not treated it nearly as well.

Sonic's eyes gleamed with curiosity. Finding a part of the cave system that he hadn't explored yet was exciting enough, but someone had actually gone to the trouble of blocking this one off- that was the really interesting part.

His logic was simple. The tunnel being blocked meant that there was something at the other end that he was not supposed to be able to get at. That alone was enough to get his attention, but whoever had put that something there probably hadn't intended to leave by way of a dingy little tunnel that led to nowhere.

Therefore, there had to be another way out.

Take that, Lance, he thought triumphantly.

He hesitated a little before venturing into the tunnel, however. Water, of course, was right at the top of Sonic's list of Things To Avoid, but enclosed spaces were high up on the list, too. The young hedgehog hated the feeling of being trapped. Not to mention the things that lived in enclosed spaces; they were also near the top of that list, and he was sure he could see some cobwebs in there…

Sonic's quills rustled as he shook himself. He was not going to let Lance beat him for fear of a spider or two. And as for the small spaces… well, he assured himself, as long as he kept moving he'd be fine.

His foot came down on the metal grating that had fallen into the tunnel.

And immediately went out from under him as the grating slipped against the smooth, wet stone, his backside meeting the ground yet again as he toppled over and went skidding uncontrollably down the slope into the dark…