The urge to hold onto the pipe, the joy at the intensity of the sensation, is almost overpowering for a moment.

That doesn’t last long, though,

...shit. you ok?

The rope burn barely lasts 5 seconds, and the burn is fading quickly.

No!!!!!!!

He swings his feet to hook onto a lower possible foothold and bring his upper body closer to the wall again.

Wow it’s hard not to let all this panic leak through.

okay. it’s gonna be fine, you’re not really getting hurt...can’t get your shirt off this high up, or anything, we might just have to go for it...

His hands are now fine, aren't they.

There's plenty of adrenaline and determination here. He gets his feet under him and his hands above him and now he is heading up in a hurry regardless of what the pipes care to do.

Appreciate this

for me okay?

Well, if he insists.

(Not all of the feeling transfers, but what does is...somewhere between taking a heavy backpack off and finally eating when you’re hungry and cracking your back and really incredible sex, and yet almost nothing like any of them. Except maybe the last one.)

There's plenty of sweating and moving going on here. And tears.

He reaches the top and barely scrambles over the inconveniently pipe-free ledge, and collapses on the pleasingly flat floor.

He comes back to himself shortly.

...okay. done with that. no more fucked-up pipe climbing.

The pain of the burns begins to recede as they heal.

ow.

Still flopped, he turns his (their?) head to see what might be beyond the immediate nice flat safe floor.

More nice safe flat floor!

And then a pit.

And then more floor!

And then a pit.

This pattern continues.

yaaaaaaay.

i guess that’s...better?

He pries himself off the ground and goes to take a closer look.

I hope we get a lunch break sometime. Or, you know, whichever meal it actually is.

food sounds pretty great—

The pit doesn’t look too wide to jump over, but it’s very deep, and there’s no discernable mechanism to break one’s fall — there are eyehooks sticking out of the walls that might have held a net at some point, but those seem to have been removed. There is a ladder on the close side, though.

There’s a hole in the wall near the edge of this one.

Anything visible at the bottom? And of course, let's check out that other hole in addition to the large holes called pits.

The very bottom, upon closer inspection, is blocked off with bars.

The other hole seems to curve off into the wall. It would be about big enough for a baby to crawl into.

Well, time to climb down and take a closer look.

It’s tricky to balance on the bars at the bottom of the pit, but possible.

It’s hard to tell but it appears that below the “floors” of the pits, there’s a tunnel running forward. Shame the bars are too close together to fit a grown human.

Well, that looks pretty impassable so far. Unless you also have shapeshifting you didn't mention, or optional strength to bend iron bars?

i do remember being able to bend my bones once but i’m pretty sure i was hallucinating.

He takes a close look for any secret passages, then climbs up again, examining and poking every feature in the room.

Nothing else is particularly interesting. It's a very bland hallway aside from the pits.

Looks like it's the long jump or nothing.

He sits down against the wall and tries to actually rest for a minute, this time not in the immediate aftermath of gratuitously painful climbing.

do you have people who are gonna be looking for you?