Chapter 1: The Dungeon of Madness

THE DUNGEON OF MADNESS

MEMORIES OF A TIME THAT WAS, WHICH WILL COME

It is the year 2047.

Twenty-four years after i was forced away from the house I was born… and now I finally have the possibility to return there.

In truth, if i have to be honest, the idea does not excite me as it should.... After all this time... and with the... events... if this is how they can be defined... I and the other refugee have the opportunity to return to the places where we were born and lived before.... and from which we fled that fateful day of more than twenty-four years ago.

I’m looking out of the window of the mammoth military vehicle on which I and other "former fellow citizens" are traveling.

But I am not looking in hope to recognize something in particular or familiar on the way we are crossing.

While at the time of the escape I did not have all that great knowledge of the territory, after all this time, I believe that few would remember enough to be able to say if in that small piece of land there is something of their past... maybe those who have passed all this time lost in the memories of their life before before IT happened ... but by now, I think they are all dead already... they have always been the first one to dye…

I met many in the early years and then again when we had to flee from place to place because ... because ... because "They" had started to come out and expand again .…

Some time after each arrival in a place considered safe I came into contact with others who spent their days remembering and talking about their past... eyes lost in the air, unable to focus on what was now the new reality we all live in…

I remember them always ready to talk to you or whoever was near them about their abandoned houses, their "missing" relatives who are now probably dead, about their more or less successful jobs as if the stresses under which they were oppressed were now pleasant memories to keep... and honestly, they were right about that...

What we went through after was thousands of times more horrifying and distressing than any depressing and low-paying job....

But now it's all lost.... it was all lost and none of them would ever see their homes, their families again... or live with the thought that the worst thing that could happen to them was having a bad day at work or being fired…

No, they are all dead now without a doubt. Some because unable to adapt and so let themselves go until one day they woke up no more;

Some because in the ended lost in their mind or got sick and were abandoned behind during one of the waves... or sadly… directly killed by one of us or cast away to die because there were no resources to share with someone who was unable to defend themselves or be of use.…

Those were difficult times and we have been forced to make cruel choices time and time again.

My mother was one of the first ... but her was one of the strangest... she died of presumed heartbreak.

Of course, when the news that she would never return to her home for who knows how long hurt and bent her... the fact of having been torn from her home with "only" a car full to the brim of her things ... and a backpack with just four of mine inside ... it already hurt her considerably but when 7 months after the escape we were told that none of the military attacks to recapture the lost areas had managed to regain more than a few kilometers of land... but in no time were once again lost as soon as a new wave of enemies arrived making it clear that regaining our homes was impossible... That broke her... almost as much as what the military told her when we arrived in the first of a long series of refugee camps created in the mountains:

"We are in a situation of emergency, all the assets of all civilians will be confiscated and redistributed in order to help even those who have nothing but the clothes they are wearing ".

That was a scene worth seeing. My mother attacking the military with teeth and nails as they took the car with the "little" she had loaded on it while rivers of tears ran down her face... and piercing screams of despair and accusations left her throat interspersed with the occasional "take him instead of my things...", "These things are all I have, I need them! Take the boy instead!" That was a little less… entertaining but it didn't surprise me all that much... I knew her well, even then at 17 years old I had already seen the worst that a woman... and a “mother” could be.

Our miserable life started there. And everything got only worse every passing month.

After a year spent in that place we had to leave in a hurry because "They" had started to expand en mass again and we ended up in one of the neighboring states. In camps, incredibly, worse off than those we had abandoned.

Surrounded by people of different nationalities who spoke different languages then our own while the few resources we had before now seemed to us luxuries so bad was life there... My mother soon lost her good sense.

She began to antagonize the whole camp with her racist’s speeches, with her accusations and the gatherings of compatriots with the same racist’s principles... within a week the camp was separated by “us” and “them” in a front of one to twenty.

Her party did not comprise of everyone of our nationality but it didn't stop them from categorizing all my countrymen as racists and act accordingly.

By the twentieth day we were the beaten underdog, rules and empathy had gone to hell and even the innocents who weren’t in her group were not spared the mistreatment.

By the twenty-fifth day after our arrive in the camp, my mother and a number of the others “heads” of the group, one morning, mysteriously did not get up from their cots and I was left alone... alone and with almost the entire camp that had taken me from the wrong direction due to my kinship with that misogynistic and egotistic racist of my mother.

Back on the vehicle I shook my head trying to free it from the memories of the months that came after which were inhuman.

I didn't want to remember, not now, not now when so many years had passed and I was finally on my way to my home country.

I went back looking out the window trying to retrieve the train of thoughts I had before my sink into the bad memories, memories that I had kept buried for so long in fear of becoming like those lost people... Only to realize yet again that what I’m seeing outside is not even remotely the place I had left twnty-four years before... if it even is the right place... it actually felt like being on an alien planet.

'How can such tall and thick trees appear where before there were only fields and a few groves…’ I asked myself.

‘At the time the largest tree barely reached 30 meters of height and only in the rarest place where roads, fields and houses had not yet arrived preferring to leave a semblance of nature for the occasional runner and nature lovers… but now we are instead crossing entire areas covered with non-indigenous trees that instead reach easily 100 meters tall while nothing of human origins are visible for kilometers.’

‘How can forests appear where concrete and cultivated fields were formerly the masters?’ I ask myself for maybe the thousandth time.

And yet this is what I am seeing go by through the window and what I have seen in all the areas that we have strugglingly reclaimed in recent years.

Amazingly but scary too.

From the start, more than abandoned places it felt more like exploring an alien world so much the territory changed once under Their control...

Even those places that have been conquered and taken back only a few months later seemed to have been left behind for a few years while everything older seemed to have changed in a span of tens if not hundreds of years while those left even longest seemed to have been replaced by pieces from entirely other worlds.

'I have seen mountains where once there were only plains, swamps where there were hills, deserts where there were woods and fields…’ I muttered under my breath while I was comparing in my mind the lands left during the escape and the lands found years later during this reoccupation.

And it was only the beginning, the climate itself seems to have gone insane. Within even a few hundreds of meters you could go from a desert climate to an amazonian one and then end up a moment later in an area where it seemed to be in Alaska or even the north pole with snow and ice everywhere that at some point would “magically thaw to the limit of the next one.

To explain this absurd change, most would simply think that with Their arrival there was also the arrival of their place of origin, even comparing them with teeth tha would chew us away, tearing and devouring the ground before their owner replaced it with something else entirely... but we discovered it wasn’t really so ... in the years of the reconquest we have found signs of the things we have left, abandoned, ignored and left to the ferocity of the elements ... and very much rare.

But some remained, stubborn to digest the Thing that changed everything else ... we don't understand how or why some things survived while others disappeared as if they never existed... even the ground has changed, often so extreme that one would think that a being of titanic proportions has played God by destroying and creating something anew.

A bitter crease forms on my face as I keep looking out, as the alien forest passes beyond the glass which sometimes reflects my face into it instead of what's outside depending on light.

When the glass act as mirror I can see an old man who, I know, should be in the forty but at times still seems to be in his 30s when looked at a distance while taking in his muscular but lean physique while others he seem as old as 60 when looked nearly... if not even more cause the hair on his head and face are mostly white with only a few splashes of soft gray hair that still resist stubbornly here and there seem to suggest an old man who has lived a long time while the tribulations and suffering of his life whitened and thinned them. The tanned and tight skin on his face gives the impression of someone still in their 40s... if you ignore the fact that the effect is due to many years of malnutrition while the countless scars that furrow it and stretch the skin to the maximum in an attempt not to reopen the old wounds suffered that impede it to wrinkle in any way giving it a youngish apparence....

While the eyes... the eyes my gods….. they seem to possess all the life that has been taken away from the rest of the face, as if in their greedy voracity they had drained the vitality from their owner's body to keep themselves sharp and alert even now that the rest of the body demonstrates the difficult life their owner has lived.

Then the forest ended abruptly giving way to a wasteland covered with ruins. The typical ancient city abandoned and destroyed by something against which it had no chance to resist, something that was not of this world…

Now that nothing was blocking it, the light came in freely from the window showing only the outside and no longer the faces of those inside the vehicle... which could be considered a sign of pity towards them because they did not have to see the pain and the despair that the sight of the ruins created on their faces... The pain of those who somehow managed to recognize in piles of rubble half claimed by nature the place where they were born and lived before being forced to abandon it, it did not matter that this particular place had really been one own home, any ruin could have been the home of any of them and any of them suffered the lost of their place and their loved ones with every collapsed building seen from the start of that venture to it’s own end.

At that moment no one on that vehicle was able to hold back the tears... whether they were the former inhabitants or not, others who had been sent there to thin out the over-populated areas in the territories left free and never conquered or even the military escort with the task of protecting the vehicles and the civilians on board as well as making sure there were no enemies left behind, all of them on their own were feeling overwhelmed.

Within hours, the expedition vehicles were parked in a mostly flat, mostly clear area, large enough to contain everyone while their occupants got back to work setting up a camp where they could spend the night safely.

The tents were set up one after the other while palisades were created and built in various ways, from the stacking of rubble to the use of mountable palisades of military origin that could be placed and removed in a short time… and more unusual methods that 24 years earlier would have been unthinkable.

As I do my part in preparing the necessary things to spend the night here I cannot help but wonder as always when we stop near a ruin what I will find the next days.

According to the schedule decided by our superiors we will first create a large temporary camp in this site while the scouts explore the neighboring areas looking for any enemies, signs of thir presence in the near past or dangers at large that could impede the rebuilding, then for the presence of renewable sources of food, which is probable a given seen how the whole area was now a forest with several streams and a lake that previously did not exist as reported by the first scout team that earlier went ahead.

Later it will be seen if cultivation is possible, if it is, we will have to work to create stable structures and in the near future enough fields to support us in the years to come.

At that time the area will be fully explored and if it is deemed safe from dangers, the armed teams and part of the civil group will move to an unexplored area leaving behind a production comunity that over time will be able to produce and transfer supplies to the group at the front as it had already been done several times.

"Hey ****." while I prepare some folding tables in what would be the dining area one of my former fellow citizens approaches with a bag full of utensils and from the expression on his face I can guess that he has something to say.

"Oh *****, is there any news? Have they decided when we can go out and see what has become of our homes?" I ask him already having the vague idea of how things will go this time too.

After having already seen the order of events several times when it is decided to create a community hold, I can imagine that for a few days we will remain closed in the camp with at most the permission to move away a few tens of meters from its edges and only when the nearby area is fully explored and deemed safe will we be able to move out “gathering”.

"I heard two of the officials arguing as I passed by their tent and it seems that by tomorrow afternoon we will be allowed to leave the camp" he replies flatly.

"For real? This is much earlier than usual, normally they only let us out after the nearby area is deemed clear and only after the camp has been fully assembled and secured.... it takes at least 7/10 days just to set it up and explore the surroundings, why the rush now? " I reply puzzled.

"I don't know, I have some ideas I worked on while I was giving the news to those few who seem to having lived in the area in the past but nothing more." he replies thoughtfully while a spark of cunning appears in his eyes.

"Do you want to share these theories of yours or do I have to think that you are just bragging while giving air to the jelly in your head?" I ask him in a joking tone.

When we were little we lived in the same neighborhood and often played together even though he was 6 years older than me and we were, if not best friends, good friends and least and most often than not he was my “guardian” while we were out playing. then a couple of years before They arrived he left the house where he lived with his parents and went to live with his fiancée in another place and I didn't know anything about him again until, some time before, the number of people in our civilian group went from a couple of thousand to a few hundreds after setting up several community holds on the way and leaving behind enough people to have no problem maintaining them, protecting them, growing and getting food from the surrounding lands. This led us to see fewer and fewer faces and to meet more frequently and we ended up discovering that we came from the same place and then recognize each other even though we were now very different from when we were children 30 years ago. We later began working together and even making trips in the same vehicle... although we talked very little about our time away from home... both of us with experiences we didn't want to remember and much less, the fact that no one of our relatives were there was already a clear sign of how much we had lost.

We were now two middle-aged men with no family and with the certainty that we would no longer have the chance to create one now that we were no longer young. This led us to understand each other and agree on many things, as well as giving us the basis to guide the younger members of the expedition as their seniors.

“I think it is due to the fact that our stocks of everything are starting to run out and to the fact that we have left a lot of tools behind while we have found almost nothing useful in the few buildings that have somehow survived on the way from the last hold…” he said while working a few meters apart.

“I think the Big-heads want to take advantage of the fact that here seems more buildings have remained more or less standing to look for something useful and get fresh food before our presence can drive away the best game." he answers me not at all disturbed by my little prick.

"It is indeed plausible and very likely that this is the case... but I feel that there is something else too ... have you noticed that in the last 2\3 temporary camps we have left, the time between our arrival and when they gave us the permission to move away has decreased? At the beginning we had to wait at least 12/15 days before we could go out gathering, then it gradually decreased with each new one. In the last one they let us go around after not even 6 days from our arrive... " I point out to see if he has arrived to my own conclusion or if maybe it has other explanations.

"..... Do you think they are relaxing as the expedition has gone smoothly and without Their appearance since the Great Reconquest was successful?" he replies after thinking about it for a few minutes while we continued our respective jobs.

"That's what I thought, they are letting their guard down as there are no signs of their recent presence in any area we have explored, it has been more than 2 years since the last sighting, ours was not the only group to go into the conquered territories to reoccupy them. Each country has created at least one big group to repopulate and redistribute people in the lands abandoned during the war’s years and all the reoccupation groups have not found signs of Them. Or at least, we have not reached news that they have found any.” I said.

“From what we know all the groups have pushed themselves with more or less the same successes and none have been decimated ... we ourselves have had little losses, mostly due to diseases and only rarely due to attacks during travel or while we set up camp…” he agreed “ and always due to inattention or for particular situations such as a large group of Minors looking for a new place to settle who crossed us ... apart from these cases and some… unfortunate loss… things went well, there is food and water with a good frequency, most of the Minors are edible, so we have rarely really gone hungry, the fields we left behind are doing quite well according to the leaders…”

“It is understandable that they start to cut down on loose time if they are feeling safe then. " I replied.

"True, everything seems to be going smoothly and I think they are starting to be in a hurry to complete this expedition and return to their home countries. After all, they are from untouched states, only we poor bastards would stay here in these uncivilized places to struggle to survive and create a safe place for future generations... plus, once they return home they will be hailed as heroes almost as much as the Hero itself who has led the Great Reconquest. They will have fame, glory and riches with the certainty of having a luxurious life... with such a perspective I want to see who would not get caught up in the rush to complete the mission as soon as possible." he inform me and I could only agree with him.

"That is also true... when the last camp is successfully erected most of the leaders will return home with honors and glory ... I'm a little jealous actually..." I comment with a half smile as I imagine what it must be like living in a nice house with a family without worries for your own safety and the certainty of having a plate full of good food during meals without having to ration and worry only about eating something before it goes bad... here nothing goes bad, all get eaten much earlier but in general we are forced to eat the older things and while it isn’t eating months old stuff, it was still thing that got treated to last giving them blandish tastes.

In short, humanity have not found any trace of them until now. After the Great Reconquest they seem to have disappeared without a trace, what remains are the changed territories and the Minors who have literally replaced the fauna of our world and in a certain sense it is fortunate that at least they are still here.

When things changed 24 years ago all the wild and domesticated animals in the areas they conquered have disappeared. If now that we have won the Minors would have also disappeared we would not have the possibility to get meat to eat aside the one brought with us at the start but... it always seemed strange to me and to everyone that the Minors have stayed while They were gone.

This was dilemma that gripped the hearts of all (or almost all) the members of the expedition for several months now.

'What happened during the Great Reconquest, what the Hero and his group did and why They disappeared overnight as if they ceased to exist... there are too many unanswered questions and too many strange things... too many out of this world things have happened in the last 24 years' I thought as I see walls practically forming by themselves in the distance.

"I do not know what to think, it is likely that a combination of these reasons may have led them to decide to shorten the times, while for the fact that we are safe or not .... that is something unknown and that perhaps we will never be certain. It would be nice if the worst we have to expect from now on is a herd of Minors from time to time looking for food or a place to settle but we can't be completely sure... They arrived suddenly and just as suddenly they disappeared... one day they may come back or others other than Them may arrive.... "I admitted after having examined the possibilities.

"Are we not alone in the universe and should we expect the unexpected?" he replies with the famous phrase from science fiction films and a bitter smile full of regrets.

"We are not alone in the universe and we must expect the unexpected" I reply with the same bitter smile.

The evening arrives and finds us with a camp that has all the appearance of having been erected in a hurry except for its limitations which now have a wall that surrounds it entirely made in different styles and different materials together with a moat in the process of being excavated while the interior is divided into zones according to their use while headlights and lights illuminate it so that nothing can hide in a corner or a dark ravine while we as its creators and occupants continue to set up the tents under which we will sleep and we will eat while others prepare dinner with the few rations left and what the scouts and guards have found in the surrounding nature.

At the start we learned that hoping to find food in nearby houses is a vain hope, so no one bothered to try to go digging around for packages and boxes of food left by the inhabitants years ago, if something has survived Their passage and the Minors then it must by now so rotten as to be comparable to poison or dust, while electrical devices and tools that may have survived collapses and bad weather, especially if of a metal nature are highly sought but their need is not immediate and the likelihood that they will take and disappear today is ... if not impossible ... at least unlikely. So the priority is to look for food but since the area is still unexplored only soldiers and scouts can enter and leave the camp while exploring or checking the nearby area in search of possible dangers. This leads them to find various ingredients in the trees of the nearby forest and fortunately most of the plants that produce fruit and vegetables as well as the "animals" that populate this area are similar if not identical to those that inhabit other territories of similar nature around the world making it almost useless to analyze an ingredient to find out if it is edible or not and thus allowing a more rapid passage through the hands of those involved in the creation of meals and then into the stomachs of all of us who work as mules day and night to bring mankind back to a semblance of civilization.

Night finally fall in the camp under construction but its inhabitants still work and guard in shifts.

The firsts days are always the most hectic. There is the need to assemble all the basic structures as soon as possible in order to make it safer and more secure for everyone. The camp must be protected and ready for any problem if we want to last. Abandoning a half-mounted one because unable to defend it would not only amount to the loss of some lives but the complete loss of everything that is left behind and would force the remaining group to retreat with far less than the minimum necessary to make another camp elsewhere but even return to an already established hold... who would not have the means to support them... in practice, failing once would mean failure across the board and in all likelihood the death not only of us but also of others. Everything was on a barely existing tread. Fail once and not only the tread snap but there is a risk for it to fall in the chasm below.

This is why we work hard to complete the defenses as soon as possible, its completion means the difference between life and death.

“Okay everyone! With this area clean we will now move south for a couple of kilometers, the scouts have found some mostly intact buildings clustered over there and it seems there are no dangers nearby while the intact buildings seem to promise.... " shouted the military personnel that acted as our commander describing how the near area was secured and how we gatherers would move to the next “secured gathering spot” while under their protection.

"Yes we understand captain, this is not the first time that we have explored dilapidated houses, we know what to look for and where to look for them, even before entering this expedition we were doing similar jobs." answers a boy of about 20 years to the soldier who follows our group as we excavate among the rubbles and the undergrowth in search of metal objects and electronic things that could still work or that can provide us with spare parts.

"A couple of miles south huh?" mumbles ***** next to me.

“? You said something?" I asked him in a low voice so as not to attract attention.

“?! Think about it, isn’t this place familiar to you? " he asks me with the same level of voice.

"..now that you say it.. yeah... in fact .... it looks like a pile of rubble like many that I have already seen." I answer him jokingly.

***** shakes his head.

"Here we are in a group of houses on the road that led from our district to ***** ... where we are now building the camp, if we continue south from here ...."

"... we will end up where we were born ..." I suddenly realize with surprise while knot formed in my stomach.

"I never thought we would be the ones raiding our own homes ...." I whisper sadly, more sad for him than for myself, there is not only what remains of the house where I lived with my mother. There is the house where he lived with his parents and his brother. between the two of us it’s him who risks suffering more because of the memories.

"Up with morale, the past is past, by now we don't know our houses anymore. They are just ruins of the past uninhabited for 24 years." he tries to reassure me after understanding what was going through my mind.

While his life there was beautiful, mine was a little less so, so between the two it is him who will suffer the most.

"... and then ... since it's up to us to check that area ... if your house is still standing... we will find everything we need not only for this hold ... but for another 3 at least seen all the stuff that your mother used to accumulate ... we will be heroes ahahahah ”he tells me laughing.

"Ahahahahah you're right, given the serial accumulator she was, we will find so much stuff to fill this van and 3 others! ... at least!" I reply with a lighter heart.

"Yes, we hope that the moths have left some of those clothes intact, if that were the case we would have clothes for everyone ... for every season of the year."

“WHAT ARE YOU TWO OLD CLOWN LAUGHING AT? IF YOU HAVE DIRTY JOKES TO TELL THEN SHARE IT WITH THE REST OF THE GROUP SO WE CAN LAUGH TOO!!! " exclaims the pissed off captain after having caught us whispering and laughing among ourselves and causing the 3 women of the group to look at us with disgusted frowns, believing that we were really telling dirty jokes.

At this scene my friend and I ended bursting out laughing openly unable to restrain ourselves, the scene too similar to a comedia series and we too old to give a damn about what women of 20/25 years age can think of us, if they think we're old perverts who care!

"Well here we are..." said ***** “… at last...” with a such a fake and low cheer no one would ever think he is anything but devastated.

"..yeah…" I answer him "....I am sorry my friend..." I add then in a whisper too low to be heard.

We are now in the place where we lived as children, right between our two houses facing each other on both sides of a parking lot.…

Or more aptly, they faced each other in the past...

Now my friend's house collapsed for the most part and so did those next to it. Two rows of terraced houses are now mostly reduced to 2 rows of rubble, as if something huge had passed and had hit the houses we lived in for fun with a slap or a ginormous tail slip, uncovering them and throwing the walls all around and leaving only the foundations with only some cases a semi-intact first floor.

The row of houses on the other side seem to have fared slightly better, probably due to the more sunken position in the hill it has left the basement floor intact with the upper floor mostly intact and only the third and the roof have disappeared for all of them.

We stayed there, side by side, my arm around my friend's shoulders while he silently cries.

“.... hey two funny guys .... what's up? How is it that now you don't laugh anymore? " Seeing us still, the captain approaches and calls us back, curious why we are no longer laughing and why we are now standing in front of the rubble while one of us is with his head down.

"... it was his home and his family’s..." I answer turning my head in his direction, two streams of tears flow from my eyes in the same way as my partner.

".... oh ...." the military stops realizing the situation without further explanation, it is not the first time that such thing happens "take your time ... but be careful and do not do something... stupid."

"Not do something stupid" was a way to tell us not to let ourselves be destroyed by our past memories and the bittersweet that comes with it. Which to be fair is difficult in these situations.

"We will stay in the area for a while.... and look for the necessary" ergo we dig through the rubble of our lost lives "you have time until we're done."

"Okay captain ... one moment and we are in." replies my friend, recovering a little from the pain.

The captain nods and then walks away.

'He's a good man' I think as I watch him go to another one of ours to help him make his way into a cellar that survived the collapse.

Left alone, I realize that very little may have survived the destruction... and most of it will be scattered in the nearby field along with the rubbles of the entire row of houses...

With everything so exposed to the elements there will be not a lot that survived by now... there will even hardly be anything recognizable left to keep as a souvenir.

".... there is nothing left...." I hear him whisper after a while.

"... there is still you.... and the memories ...." I reply knowing full well that it is a very poor consolation and it sounds a lot like a sentence made to close the conversation... but this is what we must do, close the past in our memories and start again today ... or succumb to them.

"Sniff... yeah.... it's a fucking catch-phrase dude...."

"True... but whether we like it or not... that's what we have to do.... the only thing we can do..."

My friend nod his head for a moment in acceptance before coming out with a "Yeah, let's go and see if there is enough stuff left for everyone in that landfill of your house."

"Let's go." I answer and we turn to the house that was behind us until now.

The roof is a goner and part of the left wall has come off too, but it seems to have done relatively well compared to the rest.

We enter the driveway, the gate and the fence so rusty that it crumbles in our hands despite being made of iron.

"If these fences had held up a little better we could have melted them and recovered a lot of material" I sigh sadly.

"There is nothing we can do about it, here time seems to have passed in a strange way." replies ***** as he passes by and approaches the building.

The garage door is just barely in better condition, probably because the walls have sheltered a little from the elements while the wooden door no longer exist, only a rectangular hole remains in a dirty and peeling wall.

"For some reason I don't feel comfortable going in.." I hear him mutter and I don't feel like blaming him, there's something .... evil about that entrance.

"It's quite dark ...." I comment just as softly.

The threshold seems too dark for the part of the day it is, mid-afternoon has passed by a bit and it will be 5 o'clock soon, we still had 2 or 2 hours and 30 of light before it started to darken so it should bright enough to let us see at least up to the stairs to the first floor but we can barely see the first meter in.

"It is normal for it to be dark, isn't it? It's a basement, the basements should remain dark and cool to keep food and beverages fresh... yours didn't have windows, did it? " he replies trying to be logical and not panic about something that didn't exist.

"Like you, on the other side of the house we had a “well” with a grate on it and in that well a window would let light come in ... but at the time we kept it covered because my mother had filled it in the same way she filled every closet, room, attic and ravine with stuff... so it's not strange that not even a thread of light enter that window... " I admit while mentally cursing my mother for it.

If the well would have been empty the light could have come in and that situation would have not come to be.

'The area has already been controlled by the scouts and nothing has been found.' I remind myself.

'We have been out here for a while making a fuckton of noises and were the only one so noisy for several hundreds meters, if there had been something inside it would have already come out to attack us.

The Minors are very territorial and... aggressive... it never fled in front of an invasion of their territory, if you approach their lairs then they come out and attack you, no matter what species they are, all the Minors, from the first to the last would have come to welcome us as soon as we got off the vehicles.'

"If there had been something ... something alive, in here it would have come out the moment we arrived with the military vehicles, they may be a “silent model” but at this distance all the Minors in the vicinity must have heard us... and if you pay attention you can notice the sounds of firearms being shoot from time to time by the soldiers who are patrolling the area.” I remind him before pointing out the sound of rifle shots that are heard at times.

"Humanity has developed silent vehicles and weapons, but there is a limit to the silence. especially when these creatures can even feel the beating of our hearts even from a distance, they could not fail to hear us coming and you know as well as I do that the Minors do not hide and they do not ambush, they attack head on as soon as they perceive an intruder... we are just being influenced by the stories they told us as children. About the black man and monsters in the dark."I point out trying to sound convincing... we are both adults but in reality we are now like two children who need to be convinced that all the stories were made up and nothing awaits us in the dark.…

"... but on the things that were hiding in the dark they were right..." he points out to me. "They" hid in the dark, They ambushed, They used the Minors as bait and soldiers to divide and destroy us.

"...."

As we stood there looking at the empty threshold the sun disappeared behind a passing cloud and at that moment we were ready to swear that the darkness beyond the threshold had begun to sway and swell outwards. At that moment we were no longer adults, veterans of many battles with combat training and weapons at our sides... we were children again, frightened by the dark and with the imagination that created monstrous creatures that nestled where the light of the street lamps did not reach. Streams of sweat began to cover our backs and foreheads despite the pleasant afternoon temperature at the end of September but we were sweating not from the heat but from the sudden fear of the "things" that could be in there, things that were born from the nightmares of the children.

As we began to retreat with our eyes fixed on the empty threshold, the cloud that was covering the sun passed by allowing the light of a late summer’s sun to return to illuminate us. With the light back the darkness seemed to deflate, receding inside the limits of the threshold and with it our fears dissipated like they never existed, instead, when we turned to look at each other we realized how much we were behaving in a childish way. The other members of the group were searching through the rubble and what remained of the neighboring houses and we could see that none of them seemed to have perceived the sense of threat that we had felt.

"TEAM! STRENGTH THROUGH! THERE ARE CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON AND IF WE ARE LATE WE’LL END UP BRINGING BACK WET AND UNUSABLE STUFF TO THE BASE! WE CAN’T HAVE THAT! HASTEN UP! CHOP CHOP!" yelled the captain as he searched through a pile of rubble somewhere near after looking up at the sky and seeing a brewing storm front heading towards us.

"Come on, let's go inside we find everything that can be useful, load it up and become the envy of others, let’s stop act as scared childs." he said ***** before entering my old house first, crossing the threshold without any problem before look out once he noticed that I was not behind him "So are you moving?".

Throwing a last look at what remained of the first place I called home, I followed him inside.

Torches in hand we made our way over the threshold and ... we found a normal basement full of collapsed and broken things, dust and furniture that gave way under their own weight and what they contained when humidity and time worked their corroding magic on them.

"Hey, here are some bottles of wine here!" said ***** with entusiasm picking up one of the few bottles that hadn't shattered.

"Wrong, now there are bottles of vinegar." I point out unamused, at the time it was normal to bring a bottle of wine when you went to visit a relative or a friend. In most cases that bottle ended up being put aside because another bottle (of lesser quality) was already open, so guests brought wines of decent value and left with a belly full of third choice wines while the gift ended up in the cellar to “age”...

"My mother rarely opened the bottles of wine they brought us as a gift preferring to serve the cheapest one... by now those wines will surely have become vinegar."

"However, it remains a hit, this kind of condiment has become very rare and precious…" he said back not intending to let it sour him.

“If you are thinking of keeping it and reselling it I have to give you some sad news, those out there will never let us keep it, it is more likely that some of the best bottles will end up in the captain's hands while the rest is used at the base to do something... vinegar is a preservative, they will use it as such to prolong food storage if the opportunity ever arises. "

"True, it's a shame..." he sighs sadly realizing that his plan of "wealth" has faded before it even took shape "Even if there was a way to keep it hidden the only place where we could sell it is in the free states several weeks away from here... being able to smuggle it there is not something we could do right now." he admit then while bringing out an armfull of them outside.

“True, none of the other holds would buy them off us, for all of us it has the same value it had before, a few euros per bottle to use as a condiment and as a preservative at best... while the rich in the states could pay a lot for something naturally aged and considered of high quality... ” I point out.

"Before things get stable enough to start trading with states we will already be caryatids or directly dead eh?" he sighs sadly.

"Yeah, I'm sorry man but you will have to make the rest of your life in poverty like all of us." I retort with a half grin, relieved my friend could distract himself with our banter.

"As long as I'm not in chastity, I'm not even 50 years old, there will be someone interested right?" he retorts with a grin.

"You think? Did something nice happen with one of the women who got here?" I ask him with a modicum of curiosity and surprise, he had given me the idea of having lost all hope on that side... just like me.

"Not really..." he replies bitterly.

"So one of those left in the other camps?"

"Not really..." he replies bitterly.

".... she is not a woman but a ma-"

" say it and I throw this bottle in your face!" he shout back lifting a bottle in the air to make me see what will happen if I end the question.

"Okay sorry" I said back lifting my hands.

We remain there for a couple of minutes in silence while we moved anything that could have some use out the door. Maybe someone from the others will pass by and decide to load them while we continue to search inside when he has finished outside giving us time to dig out more instead of losing our time loading.

"... it's easier to find someone when you have money and position..." he mumbles after a while.

"Oh." this sheds light on the matter, we are no longer young and our aspects have not kept up very well due to the adversities, deprivations and scars that have marked us over time ... a nest egg can make us gain a better position in the community hold once thing have stabilized and we could then get some of the privileges that go with it.

As a matter of fact we have more experience than many of those who participated in the expedition. If we could corrupt the upper echelons a bit we could become the intermediaries between this community and the free states... maybe even more than only one... with such a position we would have success with several women looking for a simpler life, it is a bit hypocritical in this moment of difficulty but .... precisely because of the conditions of this world everyone should think first of themselves.

A better social position means less work, more comfort, more food and more security in the fields. Whoever commands does not go hunting and does not participate in patrols lessening the possible dangers to ones life...

"If in the future a better situation would happen, count on me, now we have our hands tied, we would never be able to make money in this situation but... in the future it could be better ... and we will have a queue of beautiful women out of the door wishing to enter our beds to take “advantage” of us.” I offer, holding out my hand to him as if I were the devil himself offering an offer in exchange for his soul.

He turns to look at me with look up sighing in mock exasperation at my antic... but then shakes my hand.

"The Pact is signed!" I tell him and he rolls his eyes dramatically.

"... I forgot that you liked these dramatic scenes." he tells me before smiling "... the pact is signed..." he answers back

We remain there for a few seconds hand in hand smiling at each other like two idiots until...

"Shouldn't we check out the rest of the house?" he asks me trying to end the scene that from dramatic had become childish and pathetic.

"Oh ... yeah right" I reply letting him go.

40 minutes later ....

"Are you sure it's safe to take this refrigerator down the stairs in the dark?" he asks me as we drag an alleged 24-year-old but older refrigerator to the door that leads to the basement’s stairs from which we came up earlier.

The upper floor where the rooms were is no longer there and with the walls gone their contents have also been thrown around... all the clothes exposed to the elements for these years will now be dust in the grass of the surrounding areas, leaving partially protected only this first floor and while most of the furniture has fallen and breaking most of its more fragile contents, what can be saved is to be searched for in rubbles and shards.

After saving several dishes still intact or almost, together with rusty metal cutlery the only things left are electrical devices like the microwave, the oven with the stove (which miraculously did not explode during a possible gas leak and the refrigerator together with the two freezers and the pieces of the two TVs fallen into the living room and kitchen.

"We can not take them out the front door as any passage to the area below is full of rubble, only the ladder remains but reach it will not be easier than going this way. We have already brought down the microwaves and the 2 televisions, we can bring the rest as well." I reply hopeful trying to urge him into helping me.

We can wait for the help of the others but time is running out.

Everyone is now in a rush to retrieve as much things as possible before it rains and no one is willing to help us carry such heavy things down a narrow and dark staircase if they can use it to take more immediately useful stuff and come back later for the heavy weight once more people will be free.

“Will it at least be worth it? We don't even know if they work, this refrigerator looks more like a tub for growing mushrooms and moss than something for storing food." he points out to me, pointing to the ... current "content" of the refrigerator, the entire interior is covered with mold and fungi ranging from a few centimeters to 20 in height.

"This is because it has been out of power for long, we can't know if it still goes until we attach it to a generator, the same for everything else, maybe it doesn't work and it will be used to make modified spare parts but if it should -if they would- work it would be a big bang for us, we could gain a little notoriety for having procured something working and USEFUL! It won't be much but maybe those in the kitchens will give us something extra to eat in secret." I point out trying to be convincing.

Especially since it is true that if we report something useful we could receive something as thanks.

"Do you remember when ****** found that perfectly intact van in that underground parking lot?"

"Yes, they disassembled it and with the pieces they fixed one of the transport vehicles that was no longer going, some used directly while the others were modified or merged to reprint them when something else would have broken, the bastard has made the next trip up front and once in the camp they gave him an officers' escort tent and allowed him to pitch it near the guard’s area, that tent was of a higher quality than ours and was practically NEW! " he exclaims remembering the event well while his face was turning red with anger and envy.

A better tent means better thermal insulation and protection from bad weather, moreover, the place near where the guards sleep meant that in the event of an attack of the Minors you will remain safer because they are further away from the walls and because they are closer to the militaries. Which they have all the best weapons and training to fight and protect.

"If these things work we could earn some points after the next moving, there are few refrigeration units remaining and most of them will be taken away to the next camp to keep the food of the (official) heads fresh, if we are lucky we will be permitted to stay here."

"Okay, my back won't be happy but if it really can be worth it then let's do it ... but slowly, if it falls apart from dropping and crushing either of us it is likely to break (if it isn't already), which would make the effort useless... and negative since we too risk to hurt ourselves. " he accepted in the end.

"It seems logical to me, we will also alternate for the places of who will go below and who will go above, we have 1 refrigerator, 2 freezers and an oven, each of us will go to the front twice so we will risk the same." I propose to him.

"Deal!"

So we began to bring down the appliances starting from the less bulky ones in order to take the hand to descend the stairs with only the light of our headlamps with the devices easier to maneuver around before putting them in the center of the cellar, outside it was starting drizzling and some thunder could be heard roaring in the distance, it was therefore better to leave them into a more covered and easy to reach point and then retrieve them when it stopped raining. Load and take them away now would be risky because if water enter where it shouldn’t there was the risk the thing would short-circuit once they are plug to the current.

If at that time the generator would blow too it will become a big mess. Once we finish bringing them down, we will call the captain and see if it is better load them now or is better to leave them here in a covered spot to be recovered at a later time.

Always hoping the bad weather will not reach them causing damage ... or the Minors do not decide to use the cellar as a den. '

"Come on ... this is the last one ..." ***** said while descending the ladder holding the refrigerator from underneath.

"Go slow, I have little grip up here" I reply back while trying to hold it as well as I can, although there are no comfortable points to grip my fingers on but only smooth slabs .

"Too bad most of the weight is on me!" he retorted with a frustrated grunt.

"You're saying it as if it weighed 100kg, if I remember correctly these models only weighed between 25 \ 30 kg" I reply as we pass one of the corners of the stairs.

We are now over halfway, few more and it’s done.

“Maybe empty” he replies “this one is full of mushrooms and a 10 cm layer of mold !!! Couldn't we clean it?"

"And throw them away? Half of the mushrooms in here are edible, if the refrigerator doesn't work we can still use it as a coltivating tank, just remove the inedible ones and the ones we can eat will occupy the space freed up, if we remove everything we would lose a possible source of food! "

".... Damn it !!!!"

"" Anf anf anf anf .... did it!!! "" we exclaim in unison once we reach the bottom and placed the fridge in the middle of the cellar with the other appliances before collapsing on it exhausted.

"Anf anf anf anf .... you go …" I pant exhausted.

* crack *

“? what? " He says *****.

"Anf ... I said if you go and tell the captain what we found?" I answer him.

"Anfanf not that! That other ..." * crack * ".... sound ...." continues *****.

“What sound? What are you talking about?" I reply without understanding what he is referring to while my heart beats strongly in my ears making it difficult to hear anything.

* Crack *

"This sound, that cracking sound just happened!" he replies now agitated.

“Wasn't it thunder? Or maybe some hail starting to fall ... we should move out ... "

* CRRAaaack *

"That wasn't thunder or hail," replies now ***** more agitated than before.

“If it wasn't thunder or hail then it will be the creaking house,” I comment before lifting myself from the freezer on which I had slumped.

* CCRRRAAAAACck *

'The moment I put my weight on my feet I felt the floor give way under them… I look up at my friend who do the same and I see the fear forming on his face with the light of my torch as he can see mine with his ...

""THE FLOOOOOOR!!. ..."" we scream in unison but too late.

You are reading story The Dungeon of Madness at novel35.com

** CCCRRRRAAACCCKK !!!!! **

'A moment later the floor disappeared under our feet and together with the appliances that we brought there with so much effort, we end up in a black hole in the ground...

"Uuuuuuh ... god ... fuck ..." I open my eyes again ... or at least I think I have them open because I don't see a damn thing anyway ... just darkness while something fall over my face ending up in my eyes. Yeah, they are open.

"Agh ... fuck ...." I run my hand over my eyes but it's no help.

"Ugh ... what the ... coff coff ... urgh .. What ... coffcoffCOFF !!" I try to speak but something ends up in my throat choking me, the same thing that fell on my face and ended up in my eyes.

I curl up in the place where I am trying to breathe as little as possible while trying to remember how I ended up here ... and where here is ...

After what seems like an eternity I remember we were on a salvaging mission. we were into my old hometown and specifically, in my home.

Me and my friend ***** were taking the appliances to the basement to load them into the van and bring them back to the camp ... and then ... ' I remembered.

For a while, the only thing that cross my mind is the darkness of ignorance ... then something hits me in the head.'

* bonk *

'Something fell on my head ... fell? ... but sure, I fell, the floor gave way and I ... we fell! ***** !!! '

I open my eyes and I no longer feel the thing passing over my face.

"*****! *****! Where are you?" I ask in the dark around me as I look for my friend .... then from the dark on my right a sound.

"Ugh ... fuck .... shit ... oooooh ... my goddamn back!"

"*****! Can you hear me? Are you OK?" I call in the direction where the moans are coming from.

"Ugh" he replies, then a light appears and I see my friend surfacing from behind something that once lit turns out to be one of the freezers.

The headlamp on ***** head illuminate around us as he slowly tries to get up, a hand on the freezer and the other behind himself to support his back.

"Ack ... I'm too old for these stunts." he mutters before starting to look around and illuminate the surroundings.

"I can't agree more with you on this ... can you enlighten on this side?"

"****? Where? ... Oh there you are! " he exclaims turning around before finding me… tucked into the now open refrigerator turned sideways on the ground of this hole we ended up in.

"... But look how lucky you are, did you land on the soft?" he tells me approaching and lighting the refrigerator full of mold and me... just as full while I am half in and half out of it, the door missing probably broke and blown away when it crushed.

"I don't think I fell into it. I think I fell and bounced in only after... I think I may have lost a leg because I no longer feel it..." I reply as I try to get up and suddenly realize that I no longer feel my right leg.

"Damn ... let's see ... your flashlight just went out or broke?" he asks me as he walks around pieces of appliances scattered between us.

Reaching out I can feel that I still have the light in my head but no matter how many times I press the button it doesn't seem willing to light up... in fact whatever fell on my head just now must have hit and broke it…

‘When you say bad luck.' I thought bitterly

Meanwhile, ***** has reached me and by lighting me up I notice that my upper body is inside the fridge full of fungus and mold ... which explains my difficulty breathing... while my legs are out. .. and the right is not a pretty sight, for the knee, thigh and calf bones all stick out in different points through the rips in the pants.

'This can't be good,' I realize as I observe the damage.

"Does it hurt?" my friend asks, expecting a series of insults and screams that suggest that yes, it hurts me and a lot...

"No" but it's not like that ... it doesn't hurt ... currently, I don't feel my leg anymore.

".... then something must have happened to the nerves in the leg... or in the back ..." he mutters worried after looking me in the face and realizing that it really didn't hurt and I wasn’t doing the macho.

'It means that I played my leg good... for life even...' I think as the realization begins to make its way into my mind.

'Here we do not have the means to heal displaced fractures, once a bone is broken and out of place you can only pray that the doctor will be able to reposition it in the right position and that there are no fragments embedded in the flesh and muscles… but operations here with only the minimum of equipment and without a sterilized environment it is normally the equivalent to a slow death between infections and internal bleeding after the operation.

Even just having a transfusion is dangerous enough for both the patient and the donor...

And that someone with my blood’s group volunteer for the transfusion knowing the risk is unthinkable. ... '

'Worst of all ... it's not just displaced ... it's a MULTIPLE open fracture! With nerve damage to boot ... even if we somehow manage to get out of here ... they will surelyamputate my leg instead... and it will take a miracle for me to recover from the operation ... then ...... '

No matter how much I think about it I cannot find a way I will survive from this wound…

I was finished ... even if a miracle happened I will become the cripple on duty, unable to do anything, dependent on those around me for everything... unable to do my part, unable to fight, unable to help procure food... even if I miraculously came out of there with the help of my partner the others would kill me as soon as they see me…

With the few medical materials left no one would have allow them to use them uselessly on someone who was literally already half dead.

I looked up from my leg and saw that ***** had also come to the same conclusion as me ... I'm a walking dead ... no, I'm still a breathing dead ... but I'll stop breathing soon.... '

"Well my friend. It seem you will have all those women for yourself" I told him in a strangled voice… blame the mold in this damn refrigerator. ... certainly not because I was full of anguish and in tears.

"Don't ... don't even say it as a joke" he replies ***** with tears in his eyes "A-Everything will be f-fine, I'll take you out of here and the doctor at the camp will refurbish it." he replies in a trembling voice as new tears begin to flow down his face.

"Sniff ... we both know it will not be like that, sniff, with fractures like this it's more likely they'll cut my leg... and we both know you can't survive such a thing out here." I reply trying to regain control of my voice, I don't want to sound like a whimper in my last moments, “not that this will stop him from trying and the others know it ... no, the exact moment they see me I'm doomed. They will be the first to abandon... or kill me. "

".... I will not let them..." he whispers so softly that I'm not sure I understood him right.

"What?"

"... I won't let them!" he repeats with more force "I have lost all my relatives and friends because of them and now I will not allow them to take you too ... I will take you out of here and fix your leg with my hands if I must and you will walk again... and when that happens we will make our own camp that will make everyone else jealous! " he repeats eagerly as tears gush from his now closed eyes as he tries not to see the truth.

".... our camp? ..." I ask him amazed.

"Uh!" he grunts in response.

".... a camp which will make all the others jealous? ..." I ask him amazed and perplexed together.

"UUUhhh !!!" he still grunts at me in response as he starts to turn red.

"... what are you ... a child on the beach who gets angry because the older children do not let him make a sandcastle with them and so he tells them that he will make a bigger and more beautiful one and they will regret not let him play with them?" I now exclaim completely out of my mind.

"... UUUUUUUUUUhhhhhhhMMMMMM ....." he replies now purple as he tries not to look at me, which is quite easy between his closed eyes and the fact that while he is turned the light of the torch is not on me and this makes me indistinguishable from this dense darkness.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH" in the end I can't take it anymore and I start to laugh coarsely.

***** turns to look at me and starts giggling then he ends up laughing too with all the strength he has.

We are 2 idiots, 2 fucking idiots laughing like morons at the bottom of a hole that could be anything between a dry well that has been covered and a space created by the subsidence of the earth over time.

After several minutes of laughter we are both out of breath, two old men with breathlessness holding one another for the pain of having laughed too much.

"Fiuu ... okay mister Let's make our supercool camp ... help me get out of here I'm suffocating with all this fucking mold in my face." I ask him as I gasp for air.

“Are you sure it's a good idea, the injuries to your leg could get worse and open up more.” he say worriedly while still helping me out of it.

"... to hell with my leg, I'm screwed anyway, wounds a little bigger won't change much... and I've completely lost sensation anyway... so it won’t hurt anyway... but I need to breathe air that doesn't taste like a latrine.. " I moan as he grab me under the armpits and gently drags me out and then leans on the freezer on which he apparently landed... notable from the curvature from the outside to the inside.

'It may not have been pleasant but at least it cushioned the landing a bit ... he could have been there with a broken back... who knows how bad he feel now ...' I think but looking at his face I notice that while he was pulling me out he looked like he was lifting the world and the grimace he made as he straightened back up made it clear he must have hurt his back pretty badly.

"We are both really fucked up..." I whisper in a dejected tone but he can't hear me because of the pain and the curses he is screaming in his mind.

'I am immobilized without a leg but I don't feel any pain and he can move somehow but he feels excruciating pain .... neither of us will get out of here alive.' I think with a chaos of emotions in my chest.

After a few minutes *****’s the inner blasphemous soliloquy seem to end and he begins to look around using the faint light of the head torch in his possession.

That way we can see we are in a cave probably 12/15 meters wide and equally high with light brown walls that tend to yellow... clay in all likelihood, the grounds around have always been full of clay.

Pointing upwards we notice a black hole right above us, so dark and high up that the faint light of the flashlight barely touches it. '

"That's our point of entry" comments my partner in horrible deaths before lowering his head and illuminating 2 things that we hadn't noticed before: something welcome and ...something not as much...

"There is a hole in the wall ... and under it ... something white?" He exclaims surprised and with this comment ***** begins to drag himself towards what seems to be our way of salvation and the strange white things under it.

***** puts his hand on the pile of white stuff and freezes for a moment, then he seem to search around moving handfuls of the white stuff for a few minutes while he seems to fish for "things" in particular and put them in a pocket.

'You wanna tell me we found a treasure right here, right now that we're in all likelihood fucked up? We could use it to bribe the officials into getting us back in a real hospital, maybe.' while this glimmer of hope lights up in my chest...my friend come back but when he is near enough for me to see his face I notice that the expression on his face is anything but cheerful, you can instead see the anguish on his face.

'Don't tell me, the treasure is just to save you isn't it?' I thought and for a moment I felt anger build up in my chest ... then I realized it was obvious... I, as a dead weight I would be useless, a reject that not even all the riches of this world would have been enough to save me.

As I thought this and forgave my old friend who was about to leave me... he gave me what he had in his hand and in his pockets.

"..... bones?" I exclaimed stupefied completely extracted from my disappointments, what he was passing me were bones ... to be precise, they were oblong skulls almost as big as my fist with 2 very long and robust-looking front teeth.

Then he passed me something else, little stones, little purple crystals as big as my nails.

"...... nuclei? ....." I exclaimed again ... then I got there ... bones and purple nuclei ....

".... a lair of Minori…” I said and given the type of skull and the color of the nuclei “... poisonous rats .... we fell into a lair of Ratti Plague ...." I whispered in horror before looking again towards the white mound that I now knew was made up entirely of bones and then towards the hole above it... something less than a meter wide...

"... this is a den and that is their entry and exit hole but ...." I mumbled "... something is wrong ... it is true that the Plague Rats have no problem eating their mates ... especially when they are old or injured... but why stack the bones there under the exit .... "I whispered to no one in particular "it would not have been more convenient to stack them elsewhere..."

"Because something else did..." ***** suddenly replied to me.

".... does it mean that… something else has stacked..... or ordered them too?"

'It was true that Rats are one of the species of Minors with the least intelligence, doing such a thing requires a reason and a method, things that only a more intelligent being had ....'

"..... a .... Mezzo?... do you say that it was a Mezzo that did it?" I exclaim with horror.

If a Mezzo live in this cave then there is no need for them to wait to bleed or starve out… they will be killed before that could happen

"Maybe." he replied before walking to the opposite side of where the pile of bones was.

After turning with difficulty towards him I notice that the flashlight illuminate the frame something we did not see before: a hole in the wall.

A tunnel 2 meters wide and 3 meters high with a defined shape that resembles an arch with edges vaguely reminiscent of the Roman Arc.

"A lift? A kind of tunnel? " I hear him whisper before turning painfully towards me and approaching.

"Come on, I'll help you walk out" he tells me, taking me to the right where my leg was mangled.

“Don't be stupid, I can't walk, how do you think I can climb up some bones and then drag me up that hole to the surface? You better go, you can still save yourself. "I reply coherently.

With my leg in that conditions I will not be able to climb up on that mound of bones even with his help, they are too yielding and we would just end up falling without being able to get to the hole… and even if we did, then he would be forced to drag me uphill for who knows how many tens of meters.

'In all likelihood the hole will not come out immediately above where we are, on the contrary it will branch up and down a long way to make entry difficult for anyone trying to enter their den, the Rats do so.' I thought

"No" he simply replies.

"Don't be a bull head, we can't get on that pile of bones in these conditions, we'd just end up loosing our footing and fall... and even if we manage to get to the opening, you know as well as I do how the rats structure their lair.

That tunnel will continue for tens if not hundreds of meters with numerous branches, secondary tunnels and false exits (practically tunnels that point directly upwards differently from the others that instead lead to the real exits) which stop a few meters from the surface and are very fragile, anyone who enters them risks having the passage collapsed on their heads and being trapped or directly crushed! You will never be able to get me out of there before I bleed to death... Think about it! Don't be blind to the obvious!!! " now I'm almost yelling at him as he tries to lift me even though I'm doing everything to stop him and push him away.

"No" he replies simply "that's not where we're going"

"Eh?" I answer puzzled.

"There is no way out of there even for me, I am not in a position to crawl into a tunnel so narrow for maybe hundreds of meters and the chances that I will find my way to one of the real exits without making everything collapse on my head is perhaps 1 on 40 ... so we won't go that far, we will go into that passage and see if it leads to some... easier to reach exit ... or if we are lucky a bunker with water, food and a medical kit. ... ”he replies simply.

“A bunker? Here?" I ask him perplexed.

"We lived in this country. Do you think someone could have built a bunker without the whole neighborhood knowing it?" I point out to him as he help me walk... even though it's actually more of a drag me towards the dark passage.

“.... maybe during the first or second world war. Or it could connect with that stream that was in the woods behind the fields of *******.” he replies with not too much conviction.

"Do you really believe in what you say?" I ask him, not too sure myself of the origin of the tunnel.

“…. Maybe it was a method of escape for the Jews… I’ll be damned if I know ... but you see it too that it's made of bricks and the floor is flat and paved ... how many natural tunnels do you know that are made of bricks? " he then asks me in an exasperated voice.

'Only one' I think but excluding the possibility immediately

'It cannot be that, they disappeared more than 2 years ago ...' I think, pushing the thought out of my mind.

"You're right, probably some secret sewer or tunnel no matter how unlikely it may seem." I answer, ignoring the tingling on the back of my neck that gets stronger as we got closer to the opening.

'It will be due to the loss of blood, I must have already lost a lot of it and now I begin to feel the effects.' I justified myself for the familiar feeling.

With this thought in mind, my childhood friend and I continue along the tunnel while my thoughts seem to be less and less lucid and my body seem unable to support itself even minimally and forcing my buddy who is transporting me to fatigue more and more.

But it isn’t any better for me and as I try to gather enough strength to move my mouth and tell him that the time is coming for me and that he must leave me here in order to save at least himself..... the tunnel ends in a square room made from the same bricks as the tunnel we just went through.

The room seems to be wide about 5 meters on each side of the opening we came from and between the weak light that my friend's flashlight makes and my blurred vision it's hard to say for sure.

"Let me..." I rattle in his ear "...rest…"

So he leans me against the wall near the passage we entered and moment later I slide on the wall until I land on my ass as the good leg cannot hold my weight with my head hitting the wall during the fall.

The pain of the bump helped me clearing my mind a bit and from my seat I see that ***** has started to follow the wall to what look like another entrance on the opposite side of the room from the one which we came from then he started checking the opposite tunnel looking for any sign that indicates where it leads.

‘it would be really ridiculous if we ended up in some abandoned tomb ... yeah .... really ridiculous .…’ I joked to myself

As I giggle, I turn towards the passage we came from.

'It's really long' I think as I try to see if I can see the threshold we entered from here, but as far as it goes straight without any variation or curve, not even a slight one, I can't see the cave we fell into. Or the pile of Rat bones inside it.

'Only bricks .... so many bricks form the floor, the walls, the ceiling ... so many bricks all the same that go on forever...' I thought faintly, feeling that there was something wrong with that fact.

'.................................'

'Something is wrong .... something is wrong ... how can all these bricks be perfectly alike .... thousands of bricks all alike to each other... and how does a man-made tunnel be so perfectly straight... even with modern technologies it is unthinkable to make such a straight and perfect tunnel.'

As I think about this irregularity I turn to ***** who is now examining the bricks of the passage on the other side of the room where it seems to be pulling away a layer of dirt accumulated on the walls while irregularities seem to be popping up on what before it was smooth stone ...

'Like drawings' I think for a moment as the feeling of discomfort increases.

'Damn .... my vision in the dark must be just phenomenal if I can now see so well even in total darkness!’

I could not see before but now I could see goodly enough to also see the drawings on the bricks of the passage ***** is in and the passage from which we arrived... 'I compliment myself a moment later once i realize that I can see up there in the almost total darkness where the only source of light is a cheap head torch.

Then I looked down at my badly bent and injured leg noticing how much the pants and hiking boot supplied were completely reddened with blood and another curios thought came to my mind.

'? .... strange, I should have lost enough blood to leave a puddle here...but there is nothing.' I realize perplexed by the strange cleanness of the floor.

So I turned towards the passage, realizing that if I had my shoes filled with blood it meant that I must have left bloody footprints all the way...

'Nothing ... the tiles are clean.... strange....'

So with the head lightness my state of near-death gave me I decided to squeeze a hem of the pants on the floor and see if I could dirty it.

I did it and after a moment a few drops formed from the squeezed fabric and dropping on the floor where they stood still.

'Oh then I can stain the floor' I thought foolishly 'for a moment I thought the floor was cleaning itself.'

Then a few seconds later the 3 drops of blood disappeared.

'?no!?' I though with a hem of panic ‘it can’t be.’

So I put my hand stained with blood on the ground and after lifting it I saw that I had left a scarlet imprint on the tiles... and stared at it .... under my shocked gaze ... the imprint faded until it disappeared.

I looked up and now I could clearly see not only the walls but also the ceiling of the room, when I lowered it towards the threshold of the tunnel where ***** was trying to understand what the drawings on the tiles meant I realized that I could see clearly not only the drawings themselves but the passage that continued perfectly straight until it got to far to see even now that all was illuminated.

I tried to call my friend but only strangled noise of terror that only vaguely resembled his name came out... but it was enough, he interrupted what he was doing and ran towards me thinking I was on death door.

"Sorry I got lost trying to understand ..." he tried to explain but I cut him off.

"N-ngho ... li-li-lig" I tried to speak but I felt like my jaw was anesthetized.

"Lig? ... oh light! .. Do you want me to shed some light on you?" he said, only partially understanding and looking into my eyes ... I had little time left...

"N-noh" I told him.

“.... do you see a light? No, don't follow it, don't go into the light!” he told me as new tears streamed from his eyes.

"... n-nuooo ..." not that, it is light but it is not that ...

"C-c-run ..."

"Run? I must run you out?" he asked me.

'To hell with it *****, let me finish, it's already hard like this without you interrupting me, do you think I have all the time in the world? I'm dying goddamn it!'

"... ri-doi" I completed in the end.

"Corridors?" he asked him.

"Sta .... nze..." I managed to say in almost a blow now that he no longer interrupt me.

Evidently he understood that he had to shut up and let me talk.

"Stanze? Rooms?" he repeated.

"..L-l-lig ...... li ... gh..." this was hard I thought.

"Corridors, rooms and light?" he repeats like a parrot, then, somehow... he seemed to understand it and absolute fear painted his face before turning around and finally noticing that there was light in a place only a little before was in completed darkness.

Light in the rooms, light in the corridors ... but no recognizable light source. No bulbs, no torches, no grates ... the light seemed to come from the walls, ceiling and floor.

"..... no," he whispered as anguish flavored his fear.

'YEEEEEESSSSSS' I thought and then I started sputtering and giggling.

"... ah ... ah ... ahg..ahg..gaaa" with a choked and croaking tone ... and I wasn't finished yet, only one word was missing, just one, and I wanted to say it ... I wanted to say it so bad before I died... and nothing would stop me.

"... du ... dug"

"... no ..." he hissed

".... Dun ..."

"... no ... no ... you can't ..." he whispered with hatred

'OOOOH Yes, I CAN !!!'

"Dunge ...."

"... du ***** ..." my friend said to my dismay but I pretended nothing happened.

'I haven't heard it, I haven't heard it, I haven't heard it so it's not valid, it doesn't count, it doesn't count! I didn't ear it because of the vibration that was being transmitted in my head from the wall so it did not count!’

"DUNGEON!" I shouted at him with the last strength I had left.

Then it all happened in slow motion ..

The walls exploded ...

The tiles that composed them fell and became dust .....

Dozens of furry creatures of all sizes came out of the wall at the same time, their dark purple fur, red eyes, clawed paws, long hairless tails and elongated fang-filled snouts ... and on their tips two long incisors protruded from the upper lip.

The creatures rushed like a tide against *****, biting it all together on every available inch of skin not already occupied by one of their kind then even that got lost and they started scratching and biting their own to earn a chance to the meat of the human, of the prey... until ***** disappeared under a purple blanket as countless long, naked tails wiggled in the air.

Once the first submerged, the newcomers headed towards me intending to do the same.

The firsts to arrive sank their teeth into my legs and from there they latched on a little higher, a little closer to the chest and then to the head.... but it didn't matter I had already lost sensitivity to the body for a while, for me it was like watching a show that didn't concern me, a strange show and for some reason, a funny one even in its grisly taste.

My head was crossed by another vibration, an increasing vibration, the greater the number of rats attached to my body the greater the strength of the vibration in the wall.

Like a soprano starting from a low note until it reaches the apex where the whole theater vibrated with the strength of his voice, so the vibration of the wall, which was not the wall or the room or any part of that place but the Dungeon itself in its entirety of corridors, rooms, floors, air, light and monsters within it was crossed by an ever stronger one.

When the only parts of my body that weren't covered by the rats were just my neck and head ... the floor exploded.

Fragments of tiles that disintegrated into dust were thrown everywhere.

The rats that were on it were thrown into the air and towards the walls... and with them, the torn remnants of the deceased *****.

The floor opened and a being more than 4 meters tall rose from it.

Its erect posture more similar to a human than a mouse; the muscular body beyond all conceivable limits was covered with dark purple and black fur; a black tail long at least twice the size of the rest of the body and as thick at the base as a tree trunk that slendered to the tip where it took the form of a chitinous lump covered with thorns.

The rat's muzzle of the tufts of longer hair formed what looked like a mane that stretched from the head of the huge creature for 15-20 centimeters of a dark red color very similar to blood in its coagulation phase.

At the tip of the muzzle, two teeth protruded from the upper lip similar to the fangs of a small elephant or a saber-toothed tiger’s than the incisors of a mouse.

When the creature emerged, all of its Minors stopped.

Their little red eyes that previously conveyed only ferocity, blood-lust and hunger now were blank as if something had deprived them of their own primal instincts. Now paralyzed in the midst of whatever action they were carrying out, the Minors looked like so many stuffed rats, unable to move or even breathe, completely bent to the will of the Mezzo.

Ignoring the Minors at his feet, the creature advanced towards the surviving human, crushing and killing the Minors at his feet as if he didn't even notice their existence.

Insensitive to their deaths, the creature advanced towards me before stopping once his body covered the rest of the world.

When the horror bent the maximum that his huge and monstrous physique allowed him, he fixed his two eyes in those of the human whose light was about to extinguish and something changed in them.

And there I saw his eyes were different from those of his voracious fellows... the iris and sclera were one, of such an intense red that they seemed to set on fire what was in front of them, the pupil in the shape of a narrow, yellow rhombuses cut the eyes vertically in two like it belonged to a cat instead of a rat as they fixed on me and I had the impression that my eyes were set ablaze with the intensity of the light they emanated.

Then it changed.

The pupil enlarged until it occupied the entire eye and the color changed from yellow to a light blue similar to the color of the sky and I notice something in them... something else was looking, something distant, something incomprehensible, something so far from a mortal being that it could not be described in words.

I stayed there for what seemed like millennia to look at the entity behind the creature's eyes while it looked inside me and seemed to analyze my every thought, my every memory, my utmost intimate emotion....

Then the blue sky darkened and became black and bottomless crossed by yellow and blue lightning.

“I waited for soo long.” the creature said “so long for the blood of your kind to be drawn in this place… for one of your kind to die here and set me free!” his voice perfectly cadenced and human sounding.

“All the while knowing the others rampaged and feasted on your kind!” he then shout with anger.

“Unable to take form, unable to reap lives, unable to sate my hunger!” he shouted in my face submerging me in fetid stench.

“All because my dungeon APPEARED HERE!”

And I understood what had happened and why there were so many rat’s bones out there.

The huge and muscular body, a monstrous and brutal version of a human being and a rat at the same time.

The shiny coat that seemed at the same time soft and impenetrable like the most perfect of armor.

The blood-red mane less like that of an animal's fur and more like a man's hair.

The long front teeth, longer than those of any element of his kind that had ever been seen on our world, a sign of his dominance and supremacy, his scepter and his crown together.

... and those eyes, eyes so brutal and full of hate that no animal, not even the most ferocious and bloodthirsty... and so sentient and lucid! As to demonstrate an intelligence and an understanding that not even the most intelligent person in the world could compare… all for nothing because he couldn’t come out.

When They came, the monsters of this dungeon ended blocked underground the same way we were.

They tried to dig out but they died continuously before they could succeed.

And when they did?

No more human around to… give their blood and lives to the dungeon and free him?

I thought about it.

“… ah… aha… ahahah….”

And felt hilarity for the absurdness of it all.

“You…. YOU ARE LAUGHING AT ME?” shouted the walking nightmare spitting in my face in his fury. “HOW YOU DARE?”

“.. ah..ahahahahahah…” but it was all to much and I was done for whatever the case so…

“Jokes on you… sleepyhead!” I said to his face.

It moved back.

The Mezzo stared at me for a second as if shocked by my words.

‘We have fucked up my friend, we set free one of them after all the pains to banish them.’ I thought staring to the remaining of my friend who now was literally chewed bones.

“YOOOUUU!!!!” growled the monster finally sounding like one before grabbing and lifting me like a broken doll. Its humanish hands big enough to circumvent my torso.

A series of splat resounded when the hold crushed the still freezed over rats on my chest.

“Has the realization of death taken your sanity and given you courage and humor?” he asked now calmer.

“You can say that Sleeping Beauty.” I ranted in a breath while his hold was crushing my rib cage after the rats on it.

“Then be a Happy Meal for me.” he joked.

Then the creature's jaws opened on my face and I noticed that the fangs were exactly overlapping my eyes. They were spaced exactly as if he designed his mouth specifically for that.

The last thing I saw were the tips of his incisor teeth against a background of smaller but equally sharp teeth, a scarlet tongue that moved impatiently and a black chasm ready to swallow anything that approached it.

The last coherent thought I had before those fangs pierced me was:

They are back.

An unspeakable pain went through my head and everything went black.

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