"Hey!" he shouted. "You can't leave me here! Throw me the rope!"
A glance back down the tunnel showed the horde closing in on him.
"Hey!"
There was no reply from above; they continued working in silence, ignoring his pleas.
Fuck!
Logan looked frantically about, searching for another way up. He grabbed the rock face in front of him, tried to pull himself up with his bare strength, but there were too few handholds, and he slid back down in seconds.
Turning, he put his back to the wall and watched the pack of mummified warriors getting closer with every step. If he didn't get out of here, he was a dead man!
The Mayans were less than twenty feet away when he spotted it--a small hole in the wall at floor level to his left. He hurried over and bent down to check it out; it was a tunnel, leading heaven knew where, but wide enough that he could probably fit in it if he squeezed his shoulders tight.
Without another thought he threw himself into the opening, squirming forward as quickly as he could, reaching out and pulling himself forward with his hands while pushing with his feet.
The Mayans didn't hesitate, either. The lead warrior followed him right into the tunnel; Logan could hear it scrambling along in his wake.
If he didn't do something, the creature was going to grab his feet, and it would all be over pretty quickly after that. Even as the thought occurred to him, he felt the thing's fingers scramble across the sole of his boot; another few inches and it would have had him.
Logan did the only thing he could think of. He relinquished his hold on the spell illuminating his torch, pointed his hands back down the tunnel behind him, and sent a bolt of power into the ceiling just above his feet.
The walls shook around him as the little tunnel was plunged into darkness, and Logan prayed to every dark god he could think of that the entire rock wouldn't come crashing down on his head. He scrambled forward as the ground beneath him bucked and swayed and the tunnel was filled with the rushing roar of falling rock.
And then, silence.
Logan lay still, the neck of his shirt pressed over his mouth, doing his best not to breathe in all the dust filling the narrow tunnel around him. He listened for pursuit but didn't hear anything beyond the occasional settling of the stone behind him. He could see nothing.
Hopefully this tunnel went somewhere and he hadn't just entombed himself beneath hundreds of feet of solid rock. Escaping one horrible death to suffer another wasn't his idea of a good time.
First things first; he needed light again. He felt around ahead of him until he located the torch he'd been carrying, then reached deep inside and tried to call forth a bit more power to light it up.
Nothing happened.
Uh-oh . . .
He tried again, but the well had run dry. The bolt of power had depleted his energy reserves. He wouldn't be able to conjure up a light for some hours now, not until his body had a chance to rest and regenerate its energy stores.
Crawling around down there in the dark was not his idea of fun, but at the same time he didn't want to just sit still and wait for his mojo to return. If any of the Mayans had survived the rock fall--and why not, they were already dead, right?--they could have been digging through to him at that very moment. He didn't want to be there when they managed to dig themselves out from under.
Best to keep going and look for a way out while he still had the strength to do so.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, Logan slithered forward as best he was able. The darkness was absolute, and he began to feel like it was a living thing, surrounding him, hemming him in, pressing against every inch of his body until he wasn't certain where it ended and he began. He wanted to scream and shout in fear and frustration but was afraid the second he opened his mouth the darkness would swoop down inside him, diving deep into the depths of his very soul, and that would be the end of him.
So he gritted his teeth and clamped his mouth shut and kept crawling, ever forward.
After what seemed like forever, the tunnel slowly grew wider, enough that he could get up on his hands and knees and move forward a bit more expeditiously, but the lack of fresh air combined with his physical exertions soon pushed him into a haze of dizziness despite the extra space. All he wanted to do was lie down in the middle of the tunnel and go to sleep, but something inside told him that if he gave in to that urge, he might never rise again, so he pushed on, moving forward little by little. He lost track of time and then lost track of the fact that he'd lost track of it, until it felt like all he'd ever done was crawl forward on his hands and knees, feeling for a way out.
When the tunnel floor disappeared from beneath him, it was almost a relief.
He reached forward with his left hand, just as he had a thousand, maybe ten thousand times before, except this time there wasn't anything there to hold him up. His hand went down, down, down farther still, and by that time the weight of his body had tipped forward and he fell right out of the end of the tunnel he'd been crawling along and dropped into nothingness.
He let out one short, sharp cry and then slammed into the stone floor many feet below, knocking himself unconscious in the process.
Logan woke to excruciating pain, his right leg broken in two places. He screamed when his hand accidentally brushed against the shaft of bone sticking out of his shin and promptly passed out again.
Time passed.