The tunnel seemed endless to them.
The metal ladder steps that were fixed into the hard walls of the earth felt cold under Aksel's slightly sweaty palms. He occasionally rubbed it on the material of his pants while looking down at the utter darkness that was greeting him.
The mud and rock surrounding the 2-meter wide hole felt cooler as one went further down it. The opening above looked a mile away, where only a small circle of light from the dark sky and the moon that had thankfully been peeping through it were visible. The abyss had conjured up scenarios of every scary possibility that Aksel's imaginative brain could think of which only led to him feeling more and more desperate to feel the solid ground below his feet.
'Should I just jump down?' he wondered as he felt tired of the uncertainty of how much more longer did he have to do this monotonous exercise of lifting one booted leg down the other rod.