Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 55551 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55551 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
I start to explore. It’s dark, and I don’t have the best sense of my surroundings, but that’s no excuse not to escape. Running my hands over the nearest vertical surface, I note that this feels like a cave. There are solid earth walls all around me, and a passage up ahead. Curious. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for a flying saurian to take me to an underground location.
I take a few more exploratory steps, the floor runs out, and I realize he did no such thing. In a rush of adrenaline, and a flash of light that threatens to blind me as I push past a heavy leathery curtain, I discover that this place is the polar antonym of underground.
I grip the edge of the wall and lean away from the void, my heart pounding as gusts of wind whip my hair back from my face and the ground drops away beneath my feet. I am up very, very impossibly high.
You could fall and fall forever from this vantage point. Without wings, you’d be worse than dead when you hit the ground. You’d be absolutely obliterated, every bone in your body turned to a soft mush. I know this, because I’ve seen the effects of such a fall before. People explode like water balloons if you drop them from a high enough place.
Vertigo assails me, but I don’t let it win. I breathe deep, and I remind myself that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Not here. Not ever. Captain Sullivan taught me that.
Following her over the years has hardened me in ways I didn’t know I could get hard. But I have to admit, seeing her standing naked in that cage was a shock. It’s the first time I have ever seen her in any semblance of what you might call humility. If these creatures can humble her, then they can humble me. I’m not hanging around to find out how.
The place they’re keeping me in is obviously calculated to function as a prison for a creature like me. They think they don’t need a cage to keep me here. They think I am stuck in this tower of rock because there’s no way down. Maybe that’s true for most people. It’s not going to be true for me.
The more I force myself to look down, and up, the more I make my brain stop freaking out at how high up I am, the more I actually take in. These rocks are craggy and full of outcroppings. They’re obviously naturally eroded by wind and rain, and that means that they’ve effectively been designed with a million different hand and foot holds all the way along them.
What would Captain Sullivan do? I don’t even need to consciously ask myself that question anymore. I’ve asked myself it so many times I already know the answer. She’d get the hell out of here, no matter what the risk and no matter what the cost.
I lower myself to the edge, ease myself over it, and start to climb down.
I tell myself that the hard part is going over the edge. That’s all. Once I’m on the rock face, it won’t matter. Nothing will. All I’ll have to do is climb.
Clinging to the rocks, I am glad for the naturally chalky texture of them. That coats my sweaty palms in a light covering of dust that stops me from slipping. I start to work my way down, knowing this may very well take hours. Holding fast to these little vestiges of solid ground, I think about things that make me brave. I think about revenge. I think about riches. I think about the crew. I think about everything and anything besides the thousands of feet stretching out below me.
The funny thing about starting to fall is that it takes me a moment to notice it is happening. I don’t so much slip as simply become unmoored as the rock beneath my digits and toes crumbles in a clean sheet, taking me with it as it starts its inevitable descent.
In the little seconds it takes to register that I am falling, my mind comes to a very old animal place of acceptance. It’s like it knows there is nothing it can do about this sort of thing. If I had anything to fight, I’d be fighting it. But gravity is the ultimate dom.
I’ve got time to think before I hit the ground.