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“Good?” Garin’s voice echoed down to him.
One foot down, the other foot down, one foot down, the other foot down. “Good.”
This was fine. Sazahk could do this. His back bumped against the cave wall. “Wait!”
The hiss of the rope through the ratchet ceased. “What’s wrong?”
“The passage is narrowing.” Sazahk craned his neck around to look down. “I can’t walk down that. I won’t fit.”
“Will you fit feet first?”
Sazahk snapped his head up, even though Garin was far out of sight now. “You mean if I hang?”
“That’s right.”
“I—” Sazahk didn’t want to even consider the possibility. But he did. He analyzed the gap below him, zipping his gaze across its width and length. “I think so.”
“You got this, Sazahk,” Garin called down the chute to him. “And I got you. You know I won’t let you fall.”
Sazahk did know that. He did.
“Drop your feet down. Let me take your weight.”
Sazahk closed his eyes, pressed his forehead into the rope gripped tightly in both his hands, and dropped his feet from the wall. He didn’t move. He’d half expected the rope to give or snap or for Garin to disappear and send him plummeting to the cave floor. But when his feet lost purchase against the stone, he only swayed back a little. He didn’t drop even an inch.
“Here we go. You ready?” Garin’s voice had an edge of strain to it. Maybe. Or maybe Sazahk’s fear-addled mind imagined that.
Sazahk unclenched his jaw. “Ready.”
Sazahk sank with a tiny lurch, and he gasped. But then he lowered evenly, down into the narrow pinch point. The smooth sides of the ancient cave wall brushed his shoulders as he slipped through. Cold air eddied around him as he entered a massive cavern so large his headlamp illuminated nothing but vague shapes in the distance.
A new scent hit Sazahk’s nostrils. The sweet damp of decay and something tangy. Sazahk inhaled deeply. Familiar but not.
Curiosity dragged Sazahk away from his terror and his fear of falling became an impatience to hit the floor. “I’m alright, Garin! You can go faster.”
Garin barked a laugh. “I can’t, actually. I don’t want to lose my grip.”
That thought tempered Sazahk’s enthusiasm considerably, and he shut his mouth as he lowered. The floor would wait.
After several minutes, it came into view and in moments, Sazahk’s feet hit solid ground. “I’m down!”
“You’ve reached the bottom?” Garin’s voice came from so high up, vertigo hit Sazahk in the gut when he looked up through the shaft to the pinprick of light above.
“I have.” Sazahk tugged the rope Garin had told him to and his harness slithered off. “This room is immense. I’m skeptical that it formed naturally, but the floor is clearly unpaved. It’s rather gravely, but by the smell, I assume I’ll find detritus nearby.”
“Don’t wander off!”
Sazahk halted his straying feet. “I’m not!”
“I’ll lower you our packs.” The rope lifted back up into the darkness.
Sazahk spun around at a sound.
But his headlamp didn’t pierce the gloom, and he saw only hazy, stationary forms beyond the beam of light. A small rock knocked loose by the vibrations of their passage?
With the silence pressing in from every direction, Sazahk frowned, unsure he’d heard anything at all.
“Heads up!” Garin called as the two bags blotted out the light from the shaft. The zip of the rope filled the silence before the bags landed with a thud.
