I Chose to Descend
It was finally time.Ever since the cave was discovered in the mountain next to my hometown, I had always wanted to explore it. It was my right after all, I was the one who found it in the woods as a child. But everyone always told me I was too young to try. So I did the obvious thing and waited it out. I waited twelve years, watching the cave become a point of attraction for scientists and explorers, dreaming about being one of them some day. Literally. Barely any nights passed without me descending into those depths in my dreams, camping in the darkness and discovering new tunnels, and sometimes even stumbling upon unknown cave monsters and trying to run away from them, failing, and yelling out in agonizing futility as I got ripped to shreds. That did not deter me, however. On the contrary, every single dream I had inflated my thirst for it. I swear I could actually hear it calling out to me, a Call to Descend begging me to see it in all its glory and mystery.And now, after my twelfth year of waiting, I stood in front of the cave mouth. I had prepared everything I could, my skills polished to their utmost extent through exploring smaller, safer, more well explored caves; and my equipment having been checked and tested tenfold. The cave was one of the more mysterious ones in the world, its true depth yet to be known despite the vast number of explorers having tried. It was almost as if it had been saving its biggest mysteries for me, as if it knew it belonged to me. I could still hear its Call, now louder than ever, emanating from the abyss that was the cave mouth and although I did have my own internal thoughts reminding me of the dangers, I chose to descend. This being my first time exploring a cave of this scale, I was accompanied by a relatively (and disappointingly) large team of three fellow rookie cavers led by two veterans. We walked into the entrance to the first of many shafts we would have to climb down. The leaders had tied a rope to a tree a short distance from the mouth and lowered it into its shaft. One of them went down and the remaining one helped lower us down one by one. It took me five minutes to scale it down. They then followed us and we set forth into a tunnel, which led us to a narrow gap in the wall we were told we had to crawl through on all fours. The crawl was fifteen meters long, but we felt surprisingly safe thanks to our chaperones.When I crawled out the other end of the passage into a six-by-six room and turned back I realized that the light of day that followed us had now completely disappeared, and our torches were the only thing letting us see. Though that was a matter of course. The surface was out of reach now of our hands and our eyes, and if we were to turn our lights off, our eyes would never adjust to the dark. Another reminder that I was right to bring backup lights and a whole lot of glowsticks with me. We turned back and went down a path right underneath the one we had come through, one we would have totally missed if not for our guides. I braced myself for the unknown.For a few hours or so our guides led us through some more shafts and tunnels, both narrow and wide, of the maze, describing the hallmarks we went through, and telling of their own experiences and discoveries in it. I almost felt cheated hearing them speak of how they had violated the sacred wonderland I was supposed to explore. But I knew better than to tell them about it.They also explained how caving is actually not as scary as most would believe, and you’re only really in trouble if you get injured, or lack supplies, equipment or company. That made sense, considering how easy it had seemed, but it too carried with it a feeling of dissatisfaction, a feeling that I had been cheating. We had to descend for five hours before we reached the first supply camp, a large limestone chamber fifteen hundred feet underground and twenty-two meters wide. We rested there, cooked and ate our canned food, and slept. I wondered if I would still have dreams of the cave, since I was now inside it.I was not disappointed.In my dream I was in that same cave, but had no one with me and had to descend it on my own. I crawled through a passage that got narrower the further I got, until the walls felt like the coils of a boa constrictor, crushing the life out of me.I was woken up just then, and we headed for the next camp. The trip was much the same, except there were more narrow passages that we had to crawl through on our torsos.We reached the second camp by descending a sixty foot column, into a much bigger chamber more than three thousand feet underground. Our guides told us this one split into various paths and chambers to scout, and we would be choosing one of those to explore the next day.Around this time we had heard the sound of water flowing that was much louder than what we had been hearing up till now. The leader told us that it was probably some rainwater that ended up flowing into the cave. Seeing the worried looks on our faces, he added that it was nothing to worry about, the water would most likely take one of the one of the passages to flow into and it would have to fill up almost the entire cave before reaching us, so even if something were to happen we would have plenty of time to escape. We did the same as the first camp, we rested, ate and slept, and I was in the middle of yet another cave dream when I was woken up by the thunderous sound of crashing water. Upon asking, the leader regrettably told us that the worst case scenario had happened. The water was rising way faster than expected and we needed to leave. They made preparations to climb the shaft while we gathered only the most important items so as to not slow us down.I felt heartbroken.I do not want to leave. This is what my whole life has led up to!Such thoughts clouded my mind as I tried to figure out what to take and what to leave behind. We still had thousands of feet to climb so obviously I needed the food. The lights were definitely important too, so was my climbing gear.As I was figuring things out the guide told me the others had started ascending the shaft again so I threw my backpack on, catching a glimpse of concern on his face, and tied the harness around myself.I started to climb but upon reaching the shaft saw how much the water had increased, and was crashing down the same column I would have to climb. We could not climb through that water pressure and I signaled as such to the guide. We regrettably lowered ourselves back down and hurried as we tried to find someplace we could take shelter from the water.We chose one of the passages that sloped upward and crawled its narrow tunnel up until it sloped downward again.We came into a small room, this one more like five-by-five feet. We sat down and caught our breath and tried to analyze the situation.The two of us were the only ones left behind. We hoped that the rest of the team managed to make it to safety, but that did not ease our feeling of being trapped.The guide told me that we did not have to worry. We could try to follow this passage and reach the third camp, maybe it had survived too.Listening to that made me feel relieved, and upon realizing that I wondered, was I relieved that we would get out of the cave, or was I relieved that we could continue to descend? Did I take so much time packing up not out of confusion, but hoping for this exact thing to happen?The more I thought about it, the more it disturbed me. This was the first time I felt fear of my own greed, but it would not be the last.Regardless, I chose to continue my descent. It took us another few hours to get to the next camp, and we reached there after squeezing through a tiny claustrophobic tunnel nine inches wide that stretched out for thirty meters. It was a grueling process – all the more so with just the two of us – but we pushed through. Upon making it to the camp we felt overwhelmingly relieved, and helped ourselves to the supplies available.After some much needed rest and relaxation, the guide pulled out his map and started to review the next plan. He told me that there was actually a passage that led directly upwards, and that is what we would be using to get back to the surface.I was not paying much attention, however. My mind was overcome by the dread again. Dread of the demon I had come to know as my greed. I saw that, right below the passage the guide said would lead us upwards, there was another passage going downwards. As soon as I saw that my mind let go of everything else. Every other sound, feeling, everything in my visual view was pushed out of my observation.All I could think was, “I want to go there.”The guide had to shake me to bring me back to my senses. He was concerned for me and told me to sleep for now, we would start our ascent the next day. The both of us laid down to sleep together on the wet rocks. I was awoken a few hours into my sleep. I lay on my side, seeing the cave we were supposed to take visible in the faint light right in front of me, its entrance slightly illuminated, as if showing us the hope inside its mouth and up its liberating climb. Below that, however, was something different. Below that was a stygian abyss that not only gazed into me as I into it, but also called out to me. The call started out as a seducing whisper, slowly growing into a pleading moan and eventually going even further into a chilling cry that beseeched, commanded, threatened me to enter it. It was deafening. I could not move. I could not do anything. I understood this was just another nightmare though that did not make it any easier. The call seemed more than an audiation of my own greed, it was really there, an infernal Siren of the Depths making itself known to no one but me. It was so much more terrifying than being chased by cave monsters or crushed by sentient rocks. I was paralyzed, and I felt so frightened and helpless.I was woken up by the guide around that part. He seemed concerned for me but I told him I was okay. He told me it was finally time to go and we had to gather our equipment and supplies. I stocked up on food and water, I was free to take my time this time. He told me that there was a column that we had to scale up, and this time he would go first to see if it was safe, and I would have to wait.I waited for a while, trying my best to avoid so much as looking at the passage below. However, I could not ignore the voices calling out to me. It felt agonizing to resist it. It was also infuriating. I thought I could make it end so much sooner if I just confronted the call and screamed at those demons to stop bothering me once and for all. And so I turned around and snapped my gaze to the entrance with determination to assert dominance over the voices.Unlike anything I could have expected though, the voices stopped before I could even say anything. They were now replaced by utter silence, broken only by the dripping cave water and the distant sounds of the guide trying to climb high above.I felt tricked. This was what I wanted, the voices had ceased. The entrance to the passage that up till now felt like an impossible maddening void was just another cave entrance, its mouth illuminated by my light. I now felt none of the pressures I felt forcing me to descend.That however was not comforting in the least. The pressure had been replaced with angst. I was free to go up the passage, reunite with the team and come back sometime later to explore the same passage again, and nothing would be different. I now had my free will back. I could choose. And that was the reason behind the angst. The fact that I now had nothing pushing me to descend, it was just my own desire, my demon of greed.I wanted to go down there. Despite it being common sense that me and the guide needed each other to get to the surface, despite the fact that caving alone meant almost certain death, I wanted to leave him behind. I remembered how unsatisfied I felt traveling with my companions. It all came back to me, how much I felt the cave belonged to me, how I felt it my right to explore its still virgin passages. And that brought me to terms with my desire.Thus I stepped down into the lower entrance.I chose to descend. It started off with a rocky path that sloped downwards, and I rushed down it. I could hear the guide calling out to me in the distance and I had to get away from him or he would come to take me back. I hoped he would not follow me, and could manage to somehow reach the surface without me. I had no intention of going with him. I had memorized a bit of the map and knew that this passage split into several down the line, I just had to get there fast.I hurried as much as I could, ducking down under the stalactites and reached the fork in the cave. I chose one, at random, and hurried down it. And just like that, I was out of the guide’s reach.I slowed down and took my time, basically strolling ahead and checking out the path in front of me with my light. There was much less of a chance the guide would catch up to me now, and he was not stupid enough to risk going into the wrong path on his own. At least, I hoped he was not. If he decided to come after me out of a sense of responsibility.., well, I wished him luck but I would not want to go back to him. I still hoped he would find safety, but he did not concern me any more. I was now free to enjoy my time here.I had a fair amount of equipment and supplies. I was able to find my own way through the tunnels and shafts through grit alone. Yes, I was blaspheming by going alone, into unknown territory, but I just did not think about it.I simply chose to descend. A few hours in I felt hungry and took a lunch break. I had a lot of food bars and unwrapped one of them to savor in the light of my glowstick. I took a moment to take in the environment. I was sitting in a slightly sloping tunnel about two meters wide, a tunnel that sounded… wet. The only sound I could hear was the dripping of water echoing through the moist caverns. I felt the humidity too, on my skin and in my nose as I breathed in the musty, earthy smell.There was no turning back for me now. I would be spending the rest of my life in these wet paths. The dripping water was all I would ever hear.At least, that is what I thought, until another sound caught me off guard. I heard the sound of rock sliding over rock. I was confused.What could have made that sound? Was there someone else there?I thought the guide actually managed to catch up to me. But that was impossible. I was following my own path blindly. How could he have caught up to me just like that? The sound continued. I called out to him. And the sound stopped. My glowstick went out around the same time. What I heard next was something akin to shuffling. Not the shuffling of human feet, no, for there was no recognizable rhythm of bipedal motion. But it definitely was the sound of something moving. Maybe more like a large sack of gravel, dragging along the ground. This was the first time I was made to feel external fear.All of a sudden the water was not the only thing I could hear anymore. Besides that noise, I could also hear my own heart thumping in my chest, fueled by an apprehensive rush of adrenaline. I was breathing heavily, shivering in the total darkness. There was something else with me here, something alive, but not human. And that something was aware of my presence. I flashed back to my nightmares. I did not know what to do.The sound stopped. But that was replaced by a feeling. A feeling that I was now being watched. I felt the presence of the thing that was making the sound. It was now right at the end of the tunnel only a few feet away and could very well see me.And then, it… just stayed that way.For a few minutes.For an hour.For several hours, all the while I was paralyzed with restless agitation.And then I heard the sound of it moving again.It was gone.Just like that.I jolted as if snapped out of a trance, panting heavily and started crying. I had just come into contact with something I had no knowledge of. Something I could not even see. For the first time I had faced the fear of the unknown.And it was that fear that brought me back to my senses.What the hell was I doing?I did not want to explore any more. I wanted to go home, and forget this cave even existed. I turned on my light and looked back up to the way I came. And I remembered I was only blindly following along, and had no idea how to get back. Besides, that was the way the… creature had come anyway. I looked the other way, down the way I was heading. I heard the Siren’s call to descent again. I whimpered and tears welled up in my eyes once more. That was the only choice I had. There was no turning back. Hesitant, I once again obeyed those whispers.Once again, I chose to descend. I would not come across that kind of creature again as I traveled the caves for days, following the Siren’s whispers. I slept when I wanted to sleep, ate when I wanted to eat, and went when I wanted to go. But I could not stop descending. When one of my lights ran out, I switched to another one. All I could do was keep moving and eventually the food inevitably ran out. When it did, I thought my time had finally come, I now had no choice but to starve to death.That is, until I came across an underground lake. And in it I found a creature. It was no alien monster, but a simple cave bug and before I could think, I grabbed it and shoved it into my mouth.And thus my demise was prolonged and my diet shifted to the critters and lizards I found in the cave. Eventually my water ran out too and I started drinking from any source of water I found in the cave. I knew it was not safe or pleasant to consume, and neither were the critters. But I was not in control of my body now. It was moving on its own and would rather die painfully of disease and exhaustion than stop or starve. I somehow managed to avoid any major injuries, and the voices compelled me to ignore any minor cuts and scrapes. My body kept delaying my fate with every smallest chance of survival and I could only keep moving as I waited in agony for the release of death.I would keep moving for some more days, maybe weeks, or even months, until I wondered if I was closer to the earth’s core than to the surface. It was definitely getting warmer. After some time, as I squeezed through the nth tunnel, I dropped onto a muddy floor, which caught me off guard, as it had been a while since I had seen anything other than boulder slopes. I stood up and examined the area, which seemed like a warm and slightly misty cavern around ten meters in diameter, its floor muddied by water dripping from the stalactites.I walked around, and tripped forward almost instantly as my foot caught on to something. I tried to see what it was that had tripped me and stumbled back again as I realized it to be a human-sized skeleton.I got up again and approached it nervously, and picked it up to observe it. It was definitely the size of a human, but not human at all. The skull, for one, seemed more like that of a reptile, and the bones, although thicker and stronger than human bones, seemed hollow. It had eight limbs, four of which seemed like arms, two like legs and two that fit the function of both. Each limb ended in four finger-like appendages. The ribcage-esque part was a lot wider and denser and expanded to cover almost the entire torso and brought to mind a turtle shell. The best way to describe it would be a combination of an insect and a tortoise skeleton. This was clearly a creature unlike anything humans knew. I looked around. There were at least four more such fossils mostly buried in the mud. Once again, I was reminded of my cave nightmares.I remembered the creature I had met in the dark back then, the one that for some reason chose to spare me. I had not been able to see it then, but I remember the sounds it made, which looking back could have been akin to what some giant, muscular, vermiform organism would be like. These things were clearly different.I trudged through the mud in a hurry, wanting not to spend a second more in that damned chamber. I just could not wrap my mind around the fact that I had come across not one, but two species that had been living unbeknownst to us so far below the surface. I did not want to think about it but I could not just stop thinking either.How long had these things been around for? Were they simply animals or were they intelligent like us? What would happen if I were to come across one of them? What would they do to me? Were there other such abominations here? Were my dreams more than just dreams?I shivered as I walked around. The thoughts were too excruciating for me. After walking for a while I found the way out, which was a steep and muddy slope downwards. Without a moment’s hesitation I jumped in and slid down it. This time I landed on a rocky surface that was only slightly muddy. In front of me, however, was total darkness. I was confused. I checked my torch. It was on. But shining it in front of me revealed nothing beside a pitch black darkness. I looked around and down, and realized I was on a sort of escarpment, a cliff edge next to the wall. The edge went along the wall and sloped down.Though that was all I could see. I did not know how deep it went, or how vast this giant cavern in front of me was. My torch light dispersed after only a few feet in front of me, it had nothing to reflect off, nothing to illuminate ahead.The cosmic terror enveloped me again.Up till now when I stared into the darkness of the caves I could feel it staring back into me, as if it was enjoying how much it intimated me. This was nothing like that. The abyssal void I faced now felt like it did not so much as notice my presence. It did not care how I felt. It did not care if I was even here. Yet it was right in front of me, seeming to expand its cold, uncaring tendrils of horrifying nothingness into and beyond me. Stretching fathomlessly deep below, cosmically vast around and endlessly unending within. No description would ever be enough to capture it. It was like meeting God and peering right into his sheer, true, innate and raw cosmic indifference, like dissolving yourself in the soup of total infinity itself. It was truly and utterly maddening.After shuddering in maddened despair for hours on end, I heard the Siren again, and again I answered it by forcing my rubbery legs to follow the path along the cave wall.Walking down around the darkness I could not help but try to encapsulate its vastness by my reason. It was an underground cavity, clearly, but the sheer size was far beyond anything thought possible. The entire cavern should have collapsed under the pressure of the rocks above it. I wondered if it was the cause of deliberate intervention. Even if it was, though, I could not so much as guess what any comprehensible purpose of it was in the first place. One possibility, that I hoped to God was not true, was that it was as a nest for some other sort of beast of incredible yet terrible proportions. After walking for hours on end until the call to descent itself faded out I found another exit on the side of the same path. I made no second thought choosing that foot wide tunnel over the aggravating spiral that ran uninterrupted down for who knows how long.I half crawled, half slid my way down it and ended up in another chamber, this one having nothing suspicious but had the entrance to a shaft. Thinking it was still better than the void I had come from, I scaled it down and followed the passage it led to.It was on that path that my exhaustion caught up to me. I put my equipment down, turned my light off and curled up to sleep while still holding it.For a while now the cave dreams had stopped haunting me, but they were replaced with something more torturous. Like many times before since I had been lost underground, I remembered the time before I had set foot in these damned places. I remembered the companions I came with and had abandoned for my own insolent greed. I regretted everything up to that point. I cursed myself for wasting my life chasing these rock mazes. This cave did not belong to me, I belonged to it. I should have lived my life like everyone else and not some cave worshiping fool. Even if I had come here I should have stayed with my crew and followed my instructors. I prayed, more sincerely than I ever had in my life, for a chance to go back, to trade every choice I had made that brought me here for a simple chance to be back on the surface.I cried myself to sleep, wishing I would wake up at home. Having spent so long down here, I had gotten used to waking up in total darkness, that is why I slept with a torch in my hand. I would wake up, rub my eyes and turn it on before getting ready to move on again. Which is precisely why I was too confused and still considered myself to be dreaming when I woke up and found I could just barely see the rock wall in front of me. I looked at my torch. It was off. I turned it on, examined the passage and off again. It got dark but my eyes adjusted after a while and I could see again.There was light here!I punched the wall to see if I was not dreaming. After my painful yet overjoyed confirmation I grabbed my things and set forth hoping to find the source of the literal light at the end of the tunnel.I was almost jogging, the hope had brought forth a hidden feeling of excitement I had forgotten long ago. The tunnel went on for some few dozen meters and the air was now starting to get more humid. I could feel my heart thumping in my chest as I took the last turn and faced the exit that had a few rays of light shooting through its mouth. I stepped forth and cried out in awe at the sight in front of me.It was a city. An underground metropolis. Or the ruins of one, at least. I had come out into the bottom of a massive valley of some sort, one that seemed to almost stretch out and up forever, but one that did end, appearing like a crack in the ceiling, one lit up with daylight. It was actually really deep, however, around half a dozen kilometers by my estimate. That is how far below I had wandered. Still, the exit was right there. The walls of the trench had buildings, structures and bridges either carved or built into it. And they seemed to extend along the walls right up to the surface. In the near distance, on the bottom surface, there was a dense network of bridges leading to and from a condensed cluster of tall spires and prism-shaped buildings, with a pyramidal structure in the dead center of the cluster that towered above the others and resembled a Sumerian Ziggurat.I could tell it was abandoned as the structures were all covered in vines and moss, surprising to find any at this depth, and there were no sounds to signal any active population. There were distant sounds of birds and other wildlife, though, which were, again, strange to hear at this depth.I looked around in marvel at a city the likes of which I had never been aware of. Then I remembered the discoveries I had made uptill now and the marvel changed into the same, now familiar, fear of the unknown.Perhaps this city was not a human construction. Knowing that, I started retreating back into despair, now added on to the fact that I did not know where I should go. I had been following a single path and had not come across any possible alternatives. I Definitely did not want to go back to that pit of blackness but it could not have been safe walking around in this place on my own either. Next came the sensation from back when I encountered the creature in the dark. The feeling of being watched. There was definitely something, or things hidden somewhere in those ruins and I did not want to step forth in there. I felt cornered and helpless again. I leaned against the wall of the entrance I had come out of and contemplated taking my own life to just get it over with as I hopelessly looked around what I could see in the city. My eyes drifted back to the ziggurat in the middle and the cluster of buildings and bridges around it. I scanned the paths of the bridges and traced one that seemed to lead up to the surface. I traced it back down to the ground and my eyes followed the path I would have to take to reach it.I still felt eyes on me. The danger still lingered. Slitting my throat still seemed the best way out. But maybe, just maybe, I could make it. Maybe if I held on to the faint glimmer of hope I could go back to the life I so took for granted.I stood up again, keeping low and carefully sneaking around; in a way that I knew was really pointless given how in plain sight I was but had to be tried. I walked crouched down and moving along the right wall. It was something I felt I had to do, but it still did not make me feel any safer.Being so close to the wall and touching it made me realize it was not a valley at all, but an artificially constructed straight wall, strewn with writings and hieroglyphs, none of which I understood or even wanted to.That being said, I did see a lot of drawings and carvings of some particular giant amorphous beast, one I could at my best describe as having the features of a slug, an arachnid, and a reptile.The path was also now littered with geothermal vents, a few of which I had been coming across for a while back when traveling through the caverns. The difference being that these vents apparently had broken the paved(?) ground and seeped through it, enveloping the path and lower parts of the city with a warm mist. It did make sense, considering how far below I was at that point.Before I knew it, I had been walking through the underneath of the heart of the city. Whatever watched me had not harmed me so far. It could even just have been my own exaggerated sense of danger. The buildings I wanted to reach were relatively close to me now. The path I would take to get to the surface was an incline starting from the floor, and lay atop of a building that tapered underneath it to the ground.I wondered how this city functioned, what the point of that unique cluster was, and how many aeons this city dated back. Maybe even before us. There was the tiniest sense of curiosity telling me to explore this city, but it was far overwhelmed by my fear and caution. I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.Although, perhaps, if I managed to make it I could bring home probably the greatest discovery in history.This added sense of possible fame rekindled the embers of hope in my heart. All the anxiety was now gone. The sounds of the wilderness far above me now sounded like a greeting. I was now a lot less afraid and in much more of a hurry to head up that path and back home. Thus I had forgotten about caution and was now sprinting in a straight line, wading through the increasingly hot mist to the way home I could see ahead.I saw the ramp get closer as I ran, my eyes glowing with joy and gratitude, and planned to run right up it. Just as I reached the base though all of that stopped all at once as I heard it.That wretched Siren.The one that had been with me up till now.The one that made me come down here in the first place.It was back.And it had now drowned out all other sounds around me. Waves of confusion, disbelief, discomfort, all washed over me.Why? Why now? The way outside was right in front of me. I had decided I wanted no more of this descent. Besides, where else would I go?I stood fidgeting, and then looked around for the source of that sound, where it was calling me to now. Then I saw it.Another cave, right beside the ramp, on the side of the wedged building. It was enveloped in mist, and now called out to me hauntingly.I shook my head in unbelief.No, I do not want to go there. But the voice, it just will not stop!I turned on my light to see inside its entrance. It turned on, flickered a bit, and went back out. It had no more battery. I had no other torch left. And I had used up all of my glowsticks. If I went in there I would be going in totally blind, and had no idea what I would encounter there, just some more endless caves, or perhaps some other abominable beast, perhaps a whole world totally different to what I had seen up till now, perhaps something else entirely.It was hotter than the vents around me, hot enough to make me sweat buckets while standing outside it. I was dehydrated and I had not eaten in days, as I had not been able to find even any bugs to eat. And despite the sounds of the wildlife above me, there was no such thing for me here either, and the voice sounded like it did not want me to go up even to secure food. The prospect of a way out had given me some hopeful energy, but now I was running on fumes. I felt sick. By all accounts I would not return alive if I chose to go down there.I looked back up to the path leading to the surface. Hope, a way home, it was right there. Yet despair had the audacity to call out to me now when it was right in front of my grasp and tell me to descend to my death. Did it know my soul that well?I looked up.I looked down.I looked up.I looked back down.Two paths stood in front of me.And I made my choice.I Chose to Descend. Credit: agnuts Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.