"How much further?" Syaoran pressed his hand against the slimy wall, pausing for a second to catch his breath. Between the flickering lanterns and the rapidly narrowing corridor, they were all going to die in here from lack of oxygen.
Mokona paused in the middle of the passage in front of him. The little creature stretched its ears out and shook for a second. "We're almost there. The feather's really close."
The little meat bun's senses of the feather had drawn them into the yawning opening of this abandoned mine. Long since deserted, the tunnels were filled with debris, and the electrical lighting system that used to illuminate the deep caverns hadn't been used in years. Unfortunately for all of them, Sakura's feather was somewhere down here, but without an accurate location or map of the warren they'd wound up in, they'd had to backtrack three times now after reaching a dead-end or impassable rock fall.
The lanterns and their own labored breathing were rapidly eating up the little oxygen that was left in the mine. Sakura kept falling heavily on Syaoran's arm as the room swam. One more wrong turn, and they would have to find their way back out of the mine, map the tunnels they'd explored today, and try again in them morning.
Mokona paused at the branch of a y, turning one way and then the other before starting down the right-hand path, which had an arrow etched into the wall above it along with the words "Giant's Chasm."
Something clattered faintly behind them; the sound of rocks skittering against each other echoed back and forth in the long passageway. Both Fai and Kurogane spun around quickly and scanned the darkness behind them.
A startled shriek brought both of their attentions back towards their companions. Kurogane swung his lantern back in the direction they'd been traveling, throwing rapidly shifting shadows across the trail.
"Waaaa, Mokona was almost eaten!" Mokona was clinging desperately to Syaoran's shoulder, shaking and glaring at the two-foot wide gap in the floor that it had almost fallen into.
Syaoran held the lantern over the fissure. He couldn't see the bottom and wondered if Mokona had any secret techniques that would have allowed it to get out if it needed to. "Maybe we should go first?"
Kurogane planted a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I'll go first."
"Ne, ne, Kuro-rin's being such a good daddy!"
Fai let out a startled yelp when Kurogane 'accidentally' smacked him in the back of the head with the lantern as he went by. "Shut up."
Sakura and Syaoran stepped back against the wall to give both men space to pass by.
"What was that?" Sakura whirled around.
"What was what?"
"I thought I heard something…" Sakura continued to stare off into the dark.
Fai gazed in the same direction, but didn't see anything moving within the darkness; even so, he was still looking back over his shoulder as he began to move forward again.
His foot caught on a protrusion in the rough-hewn floor, and he stumbled.
Kurogane barked out a muffled curse as Fai slammed into his back. His feet scrambled for purchase on the moldy floor, but couldn't find any, and he tumbled forwards, bracing himself for the eventual collision with the floor.
But it never came. They continued to fall well past the point where they should have reached solid earth.
Fai twisted in the air, trying to find something, anything to arrest his fall. His frantically sweeping hands finally connected with the wall of the cavern, and he dug his fingernails into the stone. One finger caught in a deeper crack in the rock, and he choked down a scream as it snapped.
Kurogane felt the air whistling by his ears and wondered how long it would be before he hit the ground. His left hand was still clenched tightly around the handle of the lantern, but the flame had gone out moments after he had started to fall.
Something changed – perhaps the air pressure, perhaps his surroundings got a little bit darker – but he had this overwhelming feeling of impending doom.
Pain.
And darkness.
OOOOOOOOOOOO
to be continued! ((let me say again that I do not believe in character death...they may get beaten up, but they won't die)) It extends over the next two themes at least, and it's mostly written, I just need the Kakairu ones to catch up so I can post them together. ^^
