Free Fallen Angel of Mine by John Corwin

pulled me toward what would likely be a
horrific death.
    The walls of a narrow tunnel surrounded
me. I tried to grip them, but mold and slime coated the surface,
mocking my feeble attempts to save myself. I broke free of the
water with a loud splash. The achingly cold clamp around my ankle
vanished. I tumbled along a rocky passage, each jolt sending a wave
of agony into my naked skin as I slid along it until the upward
slope of the passage arrested my momentum. Gasping each breath of
air like the treasure it was, I pushed myself up and examined the
surrounding passage.
    A warm yellow glow illuminated the
tunnel. It reminded me of the small square room and I wondered what
purpose it served. But even more immediate on my mind was the
location of my insidious-looking kidnapper, the black tentacle, or
whatever the hell it was. Had it gone back after Elyssa
now?
    "Dah nah?" croaked a tiny voice from
the direction of the water where it lapped against the
downward-sloping sides of the tunnel that, presumably, led back to
the cavern.
    Cold, awful dread snaked into my
abdomen, and I backed away as a small black creature with the body
of a chubby toddler dragged itself from the water and stood. Its
arms reached out as it gained footing and limped toward me. A huge
head tottered on a thin, elongated neck while its body wobbled on
unsure, knobby, and malformed feet. The tiny body shimmered with an
ultraviolet halo. The aura flickered and danced, occasionally
giving the creature the appearance of having insubstantial wings,
misty shadows that spread behind it and vanished. I wondered if my
eyes were playing tricks or if this creature was a demonic cherub,
crawling from the depths of hell to scare my pants off. A black
orifice opened in the smooth, featureless surface of the
head.
    "Dah nah," it said in a whimpering
moan.
    I screamed like a little girl and
backed away. The dark cherub wobbled toward me, little nubby arms
grasping.
    "What the hell are you?" I
shouted.
    Cupid's evil little brother made a
high-pitched screech and kept coming.
    I turned and raced down the tunnel, my
bare feet slapping painfully against uneven rock, until I came to a
branch where the tunnel floor smoothed out from the rough-hewn
passage behind me. I could go forward, left, or right, but if any
way was better, I had no clue. Maybe one of the passages was a way
out. Maybe none were. My chances of guessing correctly didn't seem
too great, though. I went left. If my sense of direction wasn't
totally messed up, I should be moving away from the granite quarry
and maybe, just maybe, toward an exit. I could always believe in
miracles, right? My brain presented the cold, hard math, reminding
me a thirty-three point three percent chance of guessing the
correct passage likely meant a sixty-six point six percent chance a
horrible, gruesome death awaited me in a dead end down this winding
corridor.
    I told my brain to kindly shut up and
leave me alone.
    The tunnel curved around a long bend
and ended in a rectangular room the size of the school gymnasium.
Bands of silver metal set in perfect rows encircled sections of the
room, each one set apart from the other by about five feet or so.
At the center of some circles stood black arches. Some lay
shattered or in crumbled ruins, others were completely missing.
Only a handful looked whole. To my left stood a lone arch, a large
one easily three times the size of the others. Where they measured
ten feet tall by the same distance wide, this arch towered over
them, the silver circle around it claiming far more real estate.
Not only was it larger, but the coloring was bizarre—snow white
veined with shiny obsidian.
    "Please be a way out," I said, not
caring if the thing was orange with purple polka dots.
    "Dah nah!" echoed a tortured scream
from the tunnel.
    I rushed into the room.
    Each of the intact arches looked shiny
and black, just as I remembered the Obsidian Arch. It was like a
huge terminal of the things, maybe a transport