All four of us stomped down the corridor, one ahead of the other as there just wasn’t enough room for even two of us to walk abreast. The walls were made of some dark grey stone that seemed to swallow up the words that you spoke. For a little while we tried passing sentences back and forth, but that became too exhausting. The corridor seemed to stretch on forever, and as we continued down it, I could swear that it was getting even narrower.

From what seemed like a massive distance away, I could hear Cal grunting. He was easily the biggest of the lot of us, and if I was starting to feel the walls press in on me, I couldn’t fathom how uncomfortable he must be. We passed a clump of moss on the wall, and I could have sworn that we’d already passed this clump a while back.

‘Dad?’ I tried to turn my head to ask him about the moss, but realised that as we’d continued walking, the tunnel had grown too narrow to even do that.

‘MmmmHmmm?’ came the muffled reply, from behind Cal. Dad had insisted that he take the rear of the party in case of any surprise attacks, but that now meant that he was stuck behind what sounded like a VERY stuck Cal.

‘I feel like we might be going round in circles??’ I asked, my voice rising just a little.

‘Can’t be, Solde, we’d have noticed going down a tunnel this narrow befo-‘

Dad’s voice cut off, and one second later I realised what had happened. As though me asking about it had triggered some sort of reaction, the tunnel was actively getting tighter even though I wasn’t moving forwards anymore – even though I couldn’t move forwards anymore.

The cold grey walls were pressing in on me, making it harder and harder to breathe. I could hear nothing other than the sound of my heartbeats and the laboured breathing of my breath. I’m sure that even if I could hear more, all I’d hear was the others struggling to breathe too. I looked around, desperate for anything that might be a way to stop the uncaring crush of stone. I felt Lapin push up behind me, and felt him scramble as though he was reaching for something. He shoved a foot hard into my back to give himself a boost up, and his triumphant voice managed to get past the deafening sounds of my struggling body as he yelled ‘GOT IT!’.