Every breath I took felt like hot acid and my overtaxed lungs burned.

I had long since lost all feeling in my legs and yet they continued to move, if I stopped they would kill me or worse, they would take me back.

I could still hear them chasing me, the crashing of the under brush behind me.

I was almost at the edge of the treeline, the only thing beyond it were boulders then the jagged rocks of the mountain slope.

The vague thought crossed my mind of what exactly I would do once the trees were no longer there to interfere with their arrows, I would be exposed to them unless I could somehow manage to keep behind the rocks of the mountain.

I lifted my leg higher and pushed off the ground with the other to jump onto a particularly large and gnarled tree root.

The upright slab of stone just beyond it was too high for me to jump onto without first having something to stand on.

I tried to get my foot onto the root, then continue over it onto the slab of stone but the lack of feeling in my legs betrayed me.

Instead of my foot coming down on top of the root, the toes of my foot caught on the side of it. My momentum sent me tripping over the root, I didn't even have the breath the cry out.

Falling over the root my arms shot out to catch myself before my face hit the loamy earth between the root and the slab of rock, instead of stopping my fall my hands sunk into the earth.

To my horror the small patch of ground gave way and I fell through completely.

As I fell, time seemed to slow for me as a witnessed a threefold darkness.

The first darkness was the seemingly endless blackness of the pit I had fallen into.

My body twisted around as I fell, as if seeking the only course of light which was the hole I had fallen through.

Falling in that timeless moment I witnessed my second darkness, the slab of stone I had tried to jump onto from the gnarled root toppled forward, the loamy earth I had broken through disturbing it's balance.

As if it had been created by nature to be the perfect trapdoor for the hole, it closed off the light completely sealing me away.

This day had supposed to be one of freedom, not one of entombment.

This day had been the day I had escaped my uncle.

The man who had supposed to care for me when my parents had died.

And as if in keeping with my life, my gambit, my chance of freedom from that bastard had also turned to rot and ruin.

Fourteen years of life, six of them a living hell under his care and now it came to an end.

I knew my life was over, I knew this was how I died.

I could feel it in my soul that this was the end of me.

My fate was; to love, to lose, to suffer, to be given hope, to fall here, to die sealed away.

Though I did not know it at the time, I was wrong.

This was not my end.

This was the beginning of me, the chance at changing it all.

No, not at the time.

The only other thing I knew at the time was...

Well...

The third darkness, of course.

The third darkness came as I hit the bottom of the pit, it overtook me and I knew no more.

“Where is the little bastard?” One of the ragged men shouted.

The four of men stood panting beyond the treeline looking up the slope of the mountain.

The boy was nowhere in sight.

How the little shit had managed to make it this far was mystifying.

He just seemed to keep going no matter what.

The traitorous whore of a maid who had fled with the boy had died when the travel carriage flipped. So had the horses.

It was the bitch's own fault for trying to take it off the road and into the trees.

It was a pity she had died, Marran had wanted to have some fun with her before he killed her.

Lord Hendrik, the boy's uncle would have been only too happy to hand her over to him for 'punishment'.

The Lord would only be slightly annoyed that she had gotten off so lightly.

But that wasn't such a big deal, the Lord would be furious if they didn't bring the boy back or at least make sure the little fucker was dead.

He knew it and looking around at the other men he could see in their eyes that they knew it too.

If they didn't find the boy, only torture and death would be waiting for them if they returned back to the estate.

“Look around the rocks on the slope.” Marran told them. “The little fucker is probably hiding.”

The four men looked but they found nothing in those hours.

First there was frustration, having chased the boy all this way only for him to vanish.

It was followed swiftly by anger, then by fear.

As the sun was setting the men stood around the wreckage of the travel carriage back in the woods, the body of the maid and the horses before them.

The men had been talking and had come up with a plan.

One of the three chests the boy had fled with had burst open when the carriage crashed.

Scattered all around the area were the boy's spare clothes, they took from them one of the boy's shirts.

Draping it over the maid's body each of them plunged their daggers into it, they pressed down and rolled the body and shirt over.

Dirt and blood covered the boy's shirt.

With their 'proof' of the boy's death, they would return to the Lord, back to the estate.

They swore to each other that they would reveal nothing of their failure, that to the Lord they would all be 'witness' to the boy's death by their hands.

The travel carriage was burned, the maid's body tossed on the flames and the four conspirators fled back to their Lord and master with nothing but a bloody rag and lies.