Welcome back, intrepid explorers of Xeirin!
Prepare to be captivated once again as we journey deeper into the enigmatic world of The Queen of Xeirin. The next thrilling installment is now available on Kindle Vella, and Misa’s adventure is about to reach new heights. Brace yourself for more intrigue, suspense, and unexpected twists as we follow her path through this near-distant future.
Happy reading!
Episode Two: The Endless Hallway
She was falling. The door had opened quickly; a hiss of decompression her only warning, and she’d been too numb, too distant, to save herself.
Behind the door had been the opening to a dark shaft. It was seemingly endless and barely large enough to fit a fully grown man. Certainly, her brother, Boris, who was nearly as wide as he was tall, would have had a difficult time navigating the narrow space, but Misa was small if not petite. She was of average height for a woman at five four and though midsized she wasn’t large enough to save herself from what happened next.
Her first attempt to grab hold of a ladder rung embedded into the opposite wall of the shaft failed midfall. Her arms were too heavy, her reaction time was too slow. In the end, she fell down the shaft at an awkward angle so that she landed with her neck twisted oddly against the opposite wall.
Her shoulder jammed into a rung three down from the one she’d failed to hold onto. The blow was jarring. It deadened Misa’s arm from shoulder to fingertips. Her cry of agony echoed up and down the shaft, ringing in her ears until it gradually faded away, leaving nothing but the heavy sound of her own labored breathing.
She was left with her knees pressing down into the hard lip of the shaft. It bit into the soft space just below her kneecaps, sending painful prickling up and down her calves. A strangely intense burning sensation had enveloped the bottoms of her feet where they dangled inelegantly in the air through the open doorway.
Wedged with her shoulder, face, and knees against the unforgiving metal of the rung, wall, and shaft lip, she thought for one briefly hopeful moment that she might be able to hoist herself back up and into the study. Her remaining arm was weak, but she could push herself backward if she could grasp one of the rungs on the wall she was pressed against. Attempting to do just that, Misa struggled against the lack of feeling in her fingers.
She beat her hand weakly against the rung, hoping to encourage blood flow, desperate for control of her hand. Finally, she settled for pressing her palm against the wall next to where her face was smashed harshly between rungs and put all her remaining strength into pushing back against her knees.
Desperate to slide more of her body into the study, Misa shifted her feet and calves. Her toes knocked against the plush carpet. The lip of the ledge bit deep into the tendons underneath her kneecaps, and a sharp buzzing pain shot through her legs.
“Come on, come on, push Misa. You’ve got this!” She grunted, trying to drum up the effort to free herself. It hurt!
Despite the pain, for a moment, she thought she would make it. Her feet banging into the study floor lifted her knees over the lip, and she was propelled backward, her kneecaps shifting and scraping over the hard lip. The pain caused her body to jerk. Her already numb arm went weak. Her legs spasmed violently. Suddenly, in a free fall, she plummeted into the darkness of the shaft.
Thick thumping thuds and crunching thwacks punctuated her fall down the shaft. The scream locked in her throat as each impact knocked the air from her lungs.
~
She came to sometime later, the sound of her blood rushing noisily in her ears. Her head felt cushioned and buoyant. She gazed for a while up into the shaft she’d fallen from. It was pitch black. The door must have closed. It must have been after she’d slipped free of the frame. If she called for help now, it wasn’t likely that anyone in the house would hear her.
Stupid! You should have called for help when you were stuck in the shaft Misa! Why don’t you think, you never think! It’s too late now. She knew she would never be able to climb back up the saft. Even if she could reach the bottom rung, the parts of her body that weren’t numb ached fiercely. She was in serious trouble, and even more seriously injured. Misa knew that if she didn’t start moving now, she would soon lose the ability completely.
Before her, a long, bright corridor stood empty. It seemed to go on and on forever, silently mocking her. How far had she really fallen? The tunnel must have cut through the basements of dozens of townhouses, possibly extending further into the commercial districts beyond.
Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. Not even Father has the power to hide something like this! There's no way this could be real.
The fear and adrenalin had cleared her mind enough that the sheer improbable nature of her situation caused another wave of vertigo to wash over her. Even as her mind cast about desperately for some sort of purchase in reality, she sought to come up with a logical explanation. Each possibility was discarded one after another almost as quickly as they came. The swirling of her mind brought back the nausea she’d felt in the study what felt like ages ago.
The fluorescent lights of the hallway seemed to grow brighter, and the distant scream came again, louder and closer than before. Agony ripped through her body. The pain radiated from all the wrong places and felt bone deep in a way she knew she shouldn’t yet be able to feel. She felt herself flying through space, away from the body splayed haphazardly at the end of the hallway. Her body, that was her body lying there in a mangled heap.
Her astral journey ended suddenly with a wrenching suction and a confusingly out of place pop. After a terrifying moment, her disorientation cleared, and she found herself in another room, someplace unknown to her but somehow infinitely familiar. She seemed to know the white, white walls and cold tile floor of the small room as intimately as she knew the plush brocade carpeting in the study above. Just as familiar was the terror that flew through her, or was it above her, beyond her? There was a figure hunched over her, their face obscured by the bright incandescent lights buzzing behind them. Misa desperately wanted to cry out to them, to beg for her father, demand answers.
No, no, no. Don’t make any sound, don’t make any sound. Please... please!
The thought slithered like oil through Misa’s mind, foreign and alien in a way that made her inexplicably aware of herself as something separate and distinct from the body splayed across the filthy tile floor of the room. Had it always been so filthy? Had she always been so afraid? Terrified? Fear was all she knew; all she’d ever known.
No. No! She fought hard against the foreign thoughts, the alien fear. Before her was the hallway, endless and uncaring of the horror its existence had inspired. The figure loomed larger in her disjointed, fractured vision. A menacing, nameless instrument in hand. The scream that came now was closer than it had any right to be. The scream was hers, and it was not hers. It tore her throat to shreds as efficiently as it ripped her soul apart. Misa felt herself fracture and fall apart. Shattering like so much glass.
Step into Misa’s world and immerse yourself in the next thrilling episode of The Queen of Xeirin, coming soon to Kindle Vella! Discover more about Misa’s identity and the unfolding mystery of the Xeir as the story deepens.
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J.M. 
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