Chapter 2 #2
The jagged crack in the rock was still there, mere inches from his left knee. The golden light was still bleeding through, casting a warm, inviting glow against the harsh grey ash.
Riven turned his face entirely to the right.
He slammed the dry, dirty rag down onto the acidic stain. He pressed his weight into his knuckles and scrubbed.
The acid had not fully neutralized. The moment the canvas rag saturated, the caustic fluid soaked through to his skin. It burned. It felt like a cluster of angry wasps stinging the raw flesh of his hand.
Riven welcomed the pain.
Pain was normal. Pain was his ordinary world. The stinging heat in his knuckles was a tangible, physical reality he could understand. It grounded him. It chased away the terrifying, cosmic warmth of the synchronized stone.
He scrubbed harder. The rough texture of the calcified rock tore at the skin of his knuckles.
A thin smear of his own bright red blood mixed with the dark, viscous acid.
He ground his teeth together, his jaw locking tight as he focused every ounce of his mental energy on the simple, repetitive motion of cleaning the floor.
Back and forth. Press hard. Scrub the stain. Be a ghost.
He was grasping at straws, desperately trying to rebuild the walls of his miserable, insignificant life.
If he could just clean this spot, he could go back up the lift.
He could go back to his bunk. He could pretend none of this had ever happened.
He would never come down to the Ashen Reach again.
He would avoid Dravon. He would be smaller. He would be quieter.
But the Crucible was not finished with him.
As he scrubbed, his eyes locked firmly on the dark stain, the golden light from the crack beside him intensified. It flared, growing bright enough to cast his shadow starkly against the distant wall.
Riven squeezed his eyes shut.
He scrubbed blindly. The acid tore at his skin.
Even through his closed eyelids, the golden light pierced his vision. It wasn't just a glow anymore. The light was taking shape.
In the absolute darkness of his closed eyes, sharp, geometric lines began to draw themselves across his retinas. They burned with a searing, golden heat. They formed complex, interlocking patterns—circles bisected by perfect triangles, squares overlapping at precise mathematical angles.
And then, the runes appeared.
They were ancient, jagged symbols that looked like stylized architectural blueprints.
Riven had never learned to read anything beyond the basic common tongue required to read the sweeping schedules.
But as the golden runes floated in his mind's eye, a sudden, terrifying compression of knowledge forced its way into his brain.
Eldric.
He didn't know the word, but he knew what it meant. It was the language of the foundation.
The shapes floating in his vision weren't just letters.
They were commands. They were the raw, underlying code that dictated the physical laws of the labyrinth.
He could feel the weight of them. He could feel that if he simply traced one of those golden shapes into the ash with his bleeding finger, the rock beneath him would rip itself apart and reform according to his will.
"Stop," Riven cried out aloud.
He dropped the rag. He clamped both of his raw, bleeding hands over his closed eyes, pressing the heels of his palms hard against his eye sockets.
He began to hum.
It was a low, tuneless worker's song, a rhythmic dirge the sweeps hummed in the lower dormitories to drown out the sound of the grinding gears in the walls.
He hummed loudly, his voice shaking, trying to create enough auditory noise to drown out the silent, terrifying pressure of the runes burning in his mind.
Mm-hmm-mm-hmm.
He shifted his weight. Keeping his eyes tightly shut, he used his right boot to blindly kick at the loose, grey ash.
He kicked a small pile of dust over the glowing crack in the rock.
Mm-hmm-mm-hmm.
He kicked another pile. And another. He furiously buried the fault line under a thick mound of dead ash. He was putting his head in the sand. He was actively, aggressively rejecting the call of the deep earth.
He sat there for a long time, rocking slightly on his knees, his hands pressed over his eyes, humming his tuneless song.
Slowly, the golden afterimages faded from his retinas. The unbearable pressure in his skull receded, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache. The low, grinding frequency of the dungeon returned to its normal, indifferent rhythm.
Riven stopped humming. He lowered his hands. He opened his eyes.
The cavern was exactly as he had found it. The blue bioluminescent moss cast its erratic, chaotic shadows. The precipice dropped away into the absolute black. The small mound of ash he had kicked over the crack lay undisturbed, completely smothering the terrifying golden light.
He looked down at the Gloom-Hound stain.
It wasn't clean. It was smeared. The acid and his own blood had created an ugly, dark streak across the pale rock. It was a pathetic, half-finished job.
It was good enough.
Dravon wouldn't come down here to check. The noble was too arrogant, too afraid of dirtying his runic armor. Riven just needed to survive the conversation when he returned to the Atrium. He would bow his head. He would accept whatever beating the initiate deemed appropriate for a slow sweep.
A beating was physical. A beating he could survive.
He snatched up his bloody, acid-soaked rag and shoved it deep into his pocket. He grabbed the empty iron bucket by its handle. He picked up the two splintered halves of his broom.
Riven stood up. His shins burned with the blistered lye-water. His knuckles bled. His head pounded with the worst migraine of his life.
He turned his back on the precipice.
He didn't look at the mound of ash covering the golden crack. He didn't look at the perfect, right-angled circuitry of the blue moss. He kept his eyes locked strictly on the rusted iron cage of the service lift waiting in the shadows fifty yards away.
He walked fast. His heavy boots crunched loudly against the ash, breaking the silence of the cavern. Every step was a retreat. Every step was a desperate scramble back to the miserable, familiar safety of his ordinary world.
He reached the lift. He threw the broken broom and the bucket into the cage. The metal clanged violently.
Riven stepped inside. He grabbed the heavy iron grate and slammed it shut with far more force than necessary. The rusted latch clicked into place, locking him inside the tiny, safe box.
He reached up and grabbed the primary ascent lever.
For a fraction of a second, his hand hesitated on the rusted iron.
His fractured, amber-tinted eyes darted back toward the dark expanse of the Ashen Reach.
Out there, in the cold and the dark, the stone had known his heartbeat.
Out there, a power existed that could make him something more than a ghost.
Riven gritted his teeth. He yanked the lever down hard.
The gears shrieked.
The lift jerked upward, pulling him away from the Crucible, away from the golden runes, and away from the terrifying truth of the labyrinth. He stared at the rock wall as the cage ground its way back to the surface, firmly believing he had successfully buried the impossible.