LAMIAE

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE: TUNNELS

She sighed resignedly and entered the tunnel. The enthusiasm to look for the place Victoria wrote about in her diary diminished as soon as she felt the chill on her body caused by recent contact with cold water. She was soaked.

She went through a tunnel that was high enough that she didn't have to bend down. The water got there too, but it only reached her calves. Moving on to the next corridor, she noticed that the water had an outlet here. There were bars here that let her through. The girl bent down to find out what was below. However, she saw nothing in the darkness and she heard nothing dangerous either.

She was glad that she wouldn't have to fight the water any longer. Passing into a very winding tunnel, the only wet traces were those left by her.

It was easy to get dizzy in the tunnel. Every now and then the tunnel would twist, turn and connect somewhere, probably just to completely confuse where one was. Dagmara lost track of where north and south were as she weaved between the paths. At some point, something even stranger happened - she felt as if she had just been burdened with extra kilos. Her shoulders were giving out, her legs were resisting - it was becoming too difficult for her to move in this state to continue. She sat down in the tunnel, although she didn't think it would help. She smelled the air, but it wasn't polluted or too thick. Something bad happened to her. She started to move forward, crawling right to the floor, but it got even worse. As soon as she lay down, she couldn't get up anymore. She gritted her teeth, trying to lift at least the front part of her body. Unfortunately, her arms that were supposed to lift her chest were not strong enough. They trembled intensely, disturbing and distracting her more than helping her.

Lying on her stomach, she reached back as if she expected it to actually touch the cause of her problem. Of course, her back remained, there was no indication that a troll had sat on it. She crawled onto her stomach, immediately determining that the center of the pain had moved to her chest. With great effort she managed to sit up and lean against the tunnel wall. It wasn't hard for her anymore, only her stomach hurt mercilessly and she felt dizzy. She didn't want to stay there any longer. Leaning on the wall behind her, she stood up and moved forward. She had not walked a few meters when the pain disappeared completely, as if the event had never happened at all. All that's left is the tedious spinning. Due to it, she didn't notice at what moment the ground changed. The tunnel she entered was not concrete at all. She walked on the ground - on the ground, and densely planted ivy grew on the walls and ceiling.

"Ouch," she muttered when, due to the dizziness that plagued her, she didn't notice that she had stepped on something. This thing broke through the sole of her shoe.

She bent down, trying to assess what was causing the pain in her leg. As it turned out, it was a tiny thorn growing out of the ground. She was surprised what the thorn could be doing there, but, resistant to being cut, she kept marching. She had to admit that the tunnel was nothing like the previous ones. The road turned again and again, revealing new paths like last time, but this tunnel had something more to offer. It looked like a maze with a series of intricate corridors. It was no longer a tunnel.

Even though Dagmara decided to stick to the main path from the beginning, if it could be called one, after a few minutes she got lost and realized that she had definitely been walking there a while ago. She recognized it by the ivy, which artistically composed braids from its leaves. She moved forward once more. Her head throbbed with a dull pain, spinning images like in a kaleidoscope. The deeper she went, the thicker the ivy grew. It also stuck out from above here and there, but the vast majority were branches. She couldn't understand where those branches had come from under her grandmother's property, but the more she thought about it, the more convincing the theory of the forest that spread around the house became. Dagmara had to walk so far that there were ancient trees above her, not a residence or cobblestones. Unfortunately, there were also more and more thorns and not only were they sticking out of the ground; every now and then she encountered some large stalks with thorns sticking out of the ivy, or worse, from above, next to the branches. After some time, there were so many of them that the girl capitulated. She turned back, retreating to the exit. However, it turned out to be just a pious wish. She couldn't find it, and although she was convinced that it shouldn't be difficult at all, unfortunately, she couldn't get out of this maze due to fatigue, dizziness or hunger that began to bother her.