The Smiling Sword Chapter 3: Chapter 3: The Worst Drink Ever

Read chapter 3 of The Smiling Sword by IchorX on NovelPedia.

The Worst Drink Ever Time doesn’t pass normally in the pit. It rots. The first few days blur together into a grey smear of hunger, cramps, and aching muscles that never quite stop trembling. Neo and I try to count the hours by sleeping and waking, but sleep comes in thin, twitchy fragments that leave me more exhausted than before. There’s no food. No chrona tech. No soft beds. The cold is unrelenting, and the silence is even more so. The only thing that's keeping me sane is Neo's voice, and my own, but soon even our words begin to blur. The voice tells us whenever a new day dawns. At first we tell ourselves it’s just a delay. A test. Something will come down eventually, sooner or later the Guard will come and we'll be free. By the end of the second day, my stomach is eating itself. By the third we stop pretending. We try to start the climb. But a few feet up is as far as my hungry and exhausted body will allow, and I have to jump down before I go too high and get dashed to pieces on the way down. On the fourth, we can't hold off the hunger anymore. The dense, chrona-rich air's been carrying us… but even that has its limits. We start with the moss. It grows in thin, damp streaks along the lower walls, glowing faintly blue where chrona clings to it like frost. It smells wrong, metallic, bitter. When I scrape it off with my fingernails, close my eyes and shove it into my mouth, it tastes like wet coins and mould. I gag. Swallow anyway. Neo watches me, jaw clenched, then does the same. Neither of us says anything. The bugs come next. Small, pale things that skitter in cracks and vanish when the light flares. We catch them with bare hands, crush them between stones, roast them weakly over concentrated chrona sparks. They crunch, burst and taste like nothing and everything awful. My throat burns constantly. My tongue feels thick and sticks to the roof of my mouth. My hands shake so badly I drop more food than I manage to eat. Neo’s cheeks hollow out fast, his eyes sinking back into his skull like someone’s scooped the life out of him with a spoon. Every morning, something hurts that didn’t hurt the day before. My muscles waste away even as I keep using them. My joints creak. My fingers split and bleed from climbing, healing just enough overnight to split again the next day. The only reason we’re not dead is once again, the air. The chrona in the pit is dense and heavy. It clings to my lungs when I breathe, tingling faintly, like static under my skin. It doesn’t feed us, but it slows the decay. Keeps the lights on while everything else collapses. Barely. We train anyway. We have to. We climb the walls again and again, failing over and over, fingers slipping, shoulders screaming, vision swimming. Neo makes it higher than me most of the time, his combat training carrying him where my strength fails. Every fall knocks the breath out of me. Every fall hurts more. My body feels like its lagging behind my thoughts, struggling to keep up. We smell like we're already rotting. Blood runs under my nails, and the scratches build up, dirt and grime mixing with dried sweat. As the days pass I can't find the will to give a damn shit anymore. One time I miss a grip and slide almost twenty feet before I catch myself. When I land, my legs fold and I just lie there on the stone, staring into the dark, chest heaving. “I estimate about thirty feet,” Neo says from above, voice echoing faintly. “Barely three-quarters to catch up to me.” “Shut up,” I rasp. My voice cracks halfway through. He climbs down to help me up. His hands are shaking too. We don’t turn the lights on. I insist on that. “Do we really have to keep doing this blind?” Neo asks one night, slumping beside me, breathing hard, resting one elbow gently on my shoulder. “Yes,” I say immediately. “Yes. We do.” He looks at me, confused, exhausted. “If we survive this,” I continue, quieter, “there will be more dark. I want my eyes ready.” He doesn’t argue. Another day passes