17. SEVENTEEN
SEVENTEEN
CALVEROUS
Location: Tera’thian Northlands
Something pulled Calver from the void into the haze of metacognition. He had no desire to surface, but whatever had awoken him had struck his subconscious with enormous intensity. It must be important.
He pushed against the colossal force of the Survivor.
First, it pushed back. But its short-lived resistance abated—it knew, one way or another, that Calver always fell back into submission.
Quite suddenly, Calver endured the usual sensations brought on when the Survivor yielded: the throbbing of injuries he couldn’t remember sustaining, hunger, thirst.
He hissed through his teeth as he adjusted, taking in the space where he stood.
Marble pillars lined the walls, carved with the faces of Fates and djinn.
They vaulted the height of five men to support a ceiling inlaid with an apocalyptic mosaic.
At its center dangled a chandelier, made with hundreds of crystals.
Beneath it, a dining table had been carved from a single slab of polished wood, wider than any tree Calver had ever seen.
The Survivor’s memories filled in where Calver was lacking, fanning out into a web of images.
As a martial figurehead, his master inhabited a manor house within the Tera’thian royal compound.
The elaborate dining room was at its center.
He was alone. Cul’Mon had sent him indoors to collect a set of riding gloves from his quarters.
They would be traveling the half-league toward the laboratory at the westernmost end of the compound.
Anticipatory fear set ice into Calver’s veins. The Survivor roiled, and he staggered against its renewed pressure.
No, he begged, you can’t make me go back there.
{It is your destiny.}
Calver clutched the table for support. Victory over the mind can only come with an embrace of the VOID.
As his spike of panic eased, the Survivor’s pressure subsided, though he could still sense it lurking. He wouldn’t be able to hold it off forever. He needed to know what had called to him from the void.
A pinprick of light radiated from a glass orb on the table, so bright it was as though the sun itself had been shrunk down into a bead. Something metal rotated at the globe’s base, emitting a soft whirring sound. Calver couldn’t take his eyes from it.
{A distortion lamp. Cul’Mon smuggled sixty from Nelfindar for his palace.}
That had been the item of interest among the Skywalk-goers in Kaidech.
The distortion locomotive had been built just months before he’d been taken from Kaidech, but he’d never seen a distortion lamp this close before.
Calver picked it up, seeing new callouses on his hands, thickened hair on his muscled arms.
How long have I been under?
{Time is irrelevant.}
But it wasn’t. He was a Tume’amic. Tera’thian slaves did not survive their eighteenth year. They were taken to the mill.
{Search our memory. Can you be sure that is the path laid out for you?}
Calver did. Each moment was at Cul’Mon’s side, doing his bidding: mortifyingly procedural gamete extractions, conquest after conquest, blood all the time. He recoiled at the memories, each more merciless than the last. He would not dwell on them. I didn’t.
{We did.}
Void.
This was his fault. He’d let it take control. Had he resisted, he never would have let it. Anger boiled over. Get out.
{Impossible.}
The lamp’s inner workings began to rotate more quickly, and Calver could have sworn the blood burning in his veins pulled toward it.
As if it was charged by the same electrical threads, but caged by skin instead of glass.
Calver’s chest swelled as the anger dissolved into elation.
This feeling—he didn’t want to let go of it. This lamp… it was made for him.
Following his instincts, he looked across the dining room to the prep room. There was a sink. Calver ran to it and drenched the lamp with the faucet. When it continued to whirr, he plugged the drain and submerged it.
Watching its glow beneath the water made his heart race. I can escape with this.
He’d once failed an escape through the aqueduct.
A segment in the water vein turned vertically down.
The only way through was submersion. The lantern he’d held to guide him through the pitch black would have been extinguished.
But this lamp… He could swim with it all the way out of the compound.
Into the city. He’d never have a better chance.
He could find transportation to the coast and—
{An act of futility.}
The creature fought for control. Calver fought back.
No.
{How will you get to Nelfindar? No one will transport you. You are property. Filth.}
Escape now. Assess later.
The aqueduct delivered water for the manor through channels beneath the maintenance ward. He made for it.
{This will get you barbed.} The Survivor tried to suffocate him. Sweat poured over Calver’s brow. He stifled a groan as his vision blurred.
This is my body.
{You’ve done this before.}
His breathing labored. My mind.
{Every time you choose this battle, you lose it.}
You can’t have it.
{I already do. You are weak, Calverous. Weaker than you want to believe.}
Calver hunched, collapsing to his knees in the empty hallway. He held the sides of his head, nearly dropping the lamp.
{He’s coming now.}
Whether it told the truth or not, Calver wouldn’t take his chances. He wouldn’t be subject to Cul’Mon’s whims for another day, wouldn’t kill another slave, and wouldn’t be forced back into that lab for them to do Fates knew what with his genetic material.
The rumble coming from Calver’s throat was so low, it took long moments to recognize he was screaming. Another teeth-clenching reminder that he’d aged. That he’d been controlled for years.
He ran for the maintenance ward before his sounds attracted anyone to him.
{It does not matter. He always knows where you are.}
Calver threw open the door. A grate to the aqueduct channels lay in the floor’s center. He rummaged through the cabinets for the same tools he’d used last time.
The passageway was half a man’s height in diameter, a nightmarish crawl through unknown depths of water. The tunnels might contain six inches of liquid, or enough to submerge him. There was no way to predict how long the floods lasted, either.
He imagined who would be the one to recover his body, face down, cold, and swollen.
He voided the thought. Death would be better than the way he lived. He found a screwdriver and pry bar and began working at the rivet in the grate.
Footsteps sounded from the home’s entryway directly above him.
{He’s returned to collect you.}
Calver’s stomach turned to stone. He worked faster.
With all four rivets tucked into his pocket, he removed the enormous grate.
It was easier than the last time—he was stronger.
He held the lamp in one hand as he dropped into ankle-deep water below, then used the other to shift the grate back into place with a screech he imagined all four Fates could hear.
His fingers fumbled as he pressed each of the rivets back into their spaces.
He moved for long minutes on hands and knees, fearing every splash would carry.
Time warped, similar to when he settled into the void—except he very much felt this.
The air was stale. Every slosh, every breath, every grunt of discomfort reverberated back at twice its volume.
His knees ached. The disciplinary barbs in his back pulled and tore at his muscles.
It was hard to discern whether the tunnel was growing smaller or if his claustrophobia was playing tricks on him.
His hands became numb and his wrists ached. The walls were slick with slime—the water here had not been run through the manor’s filters—and he slipped, splashing face-first into the water repeatedly. With each slip, a fraction of his calm chipped away.
He would need to get through a league or more of tunnel to be sure he was safe.
How long would that take at a crawl? A day?
It was as though a belt had cinched around his diaphragm.
The tunnel might flood. Or—his mind reeled—the distortion orb might somehow break or extinguish, trapping him in the darkness.
He paused to steel himself. If he died here, he was still getting a better end of the deal.
Just keep moving.
An impossible amount of time passed. Then the tunnel curved sharply before dipping directly down. Calver stopped. This was where he had failed the first time.
He held the lamp aloft and gazed into the pool. It went deeper than the tunnel. How deep, he couldn’t tell—the water dissolved into blackness. There was only one way to know where it led. Calver dipped his body into the water, colder than death, his feet flailing for a bottom he couldn’t reach.
He took a breath he hoped wouldn’t be his last, and plunged below the surface.
Holding the lamp as his guide, he opened his eyes. It was difficult to see more than an arm’s length ahead. Calver felt for the walls of the span-wide vein and swam down.
The world around his lamp was like a night without stars. Further. Further still. The vein angled to run parallel to the ground. He swam far enough that, should he turn back, he didn’t think he could make it.
Void.
This would not be his tomb. His kicks and pulls became more frantic until, finally, the stone ceiling of the vein gave way to more water. He pushed upward, suppressing the reflex to choke.
Void.
He’d miscalculated. He should have tested the distance. Fire filled his lungs.
Time stretched. Time cracked.
Time was just enough.
His head broke into clear, sweet air, gasping and coughing. In that short minute, he’d forgotten just how good it tasted to breathe.
He had emerged into a pool in what looked like a dim mausoleum. Torchlight from the walls stretched to the ceiling. A waterfall cascaded from a vein in the ceiling where it met a far wall fifty meters away.