It Ain't A Mine, But There is Crafting

Or: Mysterious Enemy #2

The First Week

I was dark down here, dark and cold. The cold was worse than the dark though, you couldn't grow accustomed to it the way you could the dark. There was nothing down there with him, he knew that, he had walked these cramped tunnels a dozen times after the lock in. It was safe and monster free and he could calm himself by reminding himself and reasoning that he would hear something invading his darkened hole. You couldn't reason away the cold though. It crept in, sapped strength and vitality, made you lethargic, which made it hard to get up and move around to lessen its grip on him.

He started digging almost immediately, breaking apart boards from the tables and bunk beds and using axes and knives from the armory to fashion them into crude shovels. That hadn't worked, the earth was too hard, packed too well by the builders. For days he smashed his crude wooden tools into the earth, but even if they didn't immediately snap apart, the ceiling was too low for him to get much leverage on it. He couldn't break through the door, it was solid metal, amazingly constructed, and shut irrevocably.

It was quiet and he was alone and that was hard, but he was healthy and uninjured. The vents brought him fresh air, and there was a cistern full of crisp clean water, the foodstuff was mushrooms and dried jerky, but there was a lot of it and it was fresh enough that it was edible. He had enough, the necessities, he would survive and find a way.

He had to keep active, that was key. If he slumped down and let the cold take him, he would die down here. He needed to exercise, to practice in the training room, to keep his blood pumping and his muscles firm so he would have the strength to get out of here. If he grew fat from sloth, or weak and sickly from rationing, he would die.

The deep freeze refrigeration unit, built by the builders of this place, was still functioning. His main thought was the eventual stench when he threw the bodies in there, but he would have been lying to himself if there wasn't just the tiniest little niggling thought in the back of his mind that said he might have need them before he got out of here.

When he finished putting the bodies in the unit, he threw up and cried till sleep came.