LAMIAE

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR: INTRUDER

She woke up on a cold floor. She hurt inside and felt nauseous from the fall from on high. Her lip was also bleeding a bit. She stood up with difficulty, surprised she was still alive. Believing Victoria, she just fell a hundred meters.

She looked up. She couldn't notice any light, but clearly saw a tight, dark tunnel stretching in front of her.

The long corridor, which most likely connected with others, was the only possible option to choose, so without thinking for a long time, she entered it. She had to admit it wasn't comfortable. Her head was almost touching the ceiling, and as she stumbled to the walls, she felt the musty dampness on her hands. After a few minutes of mindless wandering, as she expected, there was a fork in the road. She could choose the path. She took the tunnel to her left, as it was even tighter than the previous one. No one in their right mind would choose it. And she had a goal, she had to find an oak door without a handle and pray that it would somehow open.

A wonderful plan, she reprimanded herself, only now doubting that she would manage to find anything here. She had her phone with her, so from the very beginning she decided to write a note in her cell phone wherever she turned, so that in case of problems she could come back at any time. Her phone also served as a flashlight, illuminating her path. For a moment, she even turned on music to drown out the overwhelming silence, but she noticed that the cell phone was draining too quickly, so she gave up this function, sticking to the flashlight and the map it created.

She moved on to the third tunnel, finally more spacious, where she could straighten up. She breathed a sigh of relief as she made a remark about it on her phone:

"Straight ahead, big T," she wrote down briefly.

Just as she was putting away her phone, a noise caught her attention. It came from somewhere behind her, making her heart pound in fear. She heard squeals, not one, but a dozen or so squeaks at the same time, squeals that she had heard before, because a friend of hers from her former school had those animals. She knew that it was rats that squeaked like that, rats that expected pain.

She threw herself into flight, running through the tunnel to turn as quickly as possible and avoid confrontation with the swarm of rodents. She knew that rats could be dangerous, and not only because of the diseases they carried. If they encountered any obstacle, they could simply attack people.

She had reached the fork in the road when she saw them. They ran squealing from the tunnel where she had been a moment ago.

Four tunnels stretched out in front of her. Without thinking for a long time, she turned into the one furthest to the right. Unfortunately, a moment later she noticed that a couple of rats had also taken her tunnel. She couldn't breathe anymore, she had to stop for a moment. She slowed down and the rats began to catch up with her. She looked back, a couple of them pressing into her, as if not expecting her to stop running. Maybe one of them bit her because she felt a burning sensation in her ankle, but most of the rodents ran away, ignoring her at all. This worried her. Rats were considered smart animals that detected danger faster than humans. So what were they afraid of?

She moved forward, breathing with difficulty. It felt like the air was getting thicker as she went deeper. She took out her phone and wrote down the directions.

This tunnel wasn't long, and at the end she found another one, so tight and low as if someone had constructed it especially for dwarves. She had no choice; if she didn't want to go back, she had to go in there. When she put the phone in, she bent down so that she was almost crouching while walking. She heard something again, but this time it wasn't squeaking. It was the sound of water. After a moment, she felt a cold stream enter the tunnel, flooding her shoes. She looked back, wondering whether it would be better to retreat to the fork in the road that she had seen while escaping from the rats. But she didn't even have time to make any attempts before even more water poured in, filling half of the low tunnel. Fortunately, she managed to save the phone from flooding by stretching her hand upwards. Fear gripped her again. If the water kept coming more and more, it would soon fill the entire tunnel and she would run out of air. She sped up as far as her condition would allow, subconsciously feeling that the worst-case scenario was about to come true. She trudged forward, listening to see if the water had an outlet somewhere. Unfortunately, she heard nothing of the sort.

For two minutes, the water level didn't rise, so she believed she was about to get out. After all, so far every tunnel had an end somewhere.

And suddenly she felt an icy wave of water hit her, flooding three-quarters of the tunnel. The water level has reached a critical point. She began to look frantically for a fork in the road. The water was already up to her neck. Thinking soberly, she noticed that the water was going somewhere because she could clearly feel the current. She gave in to the water a bit, just trying to keep her head up and her right hand that was protecting her cell phone from the water.

I don't want to die here, she thought in desperation as the water slowly began to touch her lips. Why didn't Victoria warn about this? she asked herself questions, even though she knew they were groundless. Victoria was here in the company of her grandmother, who probably knew how to avoid traps and knew how to get to the room she was looking for directly, without wandering around.

She no longer had the strength to hold her cell phone up. She also couldn't tell anyone that she was about to die, because the phone didn't have reception here. The most she could do was try to text her dad so that people who found her here would see her note. But would anyone be able to find her?

She took a deep breath as the water touched the ceiling. For a few seconds she swam with the current, but quickly lost faith that she would survive. And just as she was choking from lack of oxygen, she saw the end. It wasn't light, but rather a slightly brighter area about twenty meters away from her. This was definitely the end of the tunnel, because the water immediately began to recede. So she inhaled hungrily, never in her life having craved it as much as she did now.

The current of the water sped up, as if on a slide in a swimming pool. In fact, it all went downhill like a slide. Dagmara reached the end of the tunnel. Along with the water, she fell into the largest fork so far, resembling a small reservoir. Fortunately, the water there neutralized the fall so that she almost didn't feel it.

She stood up; this time the water reached her cleavage but didn't rise. Where she was now reminded her of a circular swimming pool. Still slightly unconscious, she climbed the wall that separated the water from the entrances to the subsequent tunnels.

She looked into her tightly clenched hand, where her phone was covered with water. The display didn't work and neither did the keys. She clutched her head, wondering how she was going to get back now. Not only would she not be able to climb the wall to get to the tiny tunnel, but she wouldn't be sure if she could recreate the entire route from memory.

None of this would make any sense anyway. There was no point in going back. The tunnels had to be designed to prevent the daredevil from returning.

At that moment she realized what a big mistake she had made by looking for the entrance. How stupid she was to think she would find out the secret on her own. Because... if magic really existed, wouldn't magic defend itself against intruders?