Chapter 13 #2
If I kept moving upward, there was hope. If I stood here and shivered, I would certainly die. That was all there was to it.
I took another step, my fingers questing blindly on the wall, moving with a new motivation: I didn’t want my bones to sit here, lost and forgotten, my tools rusting around my corpse.
That kept me moving for several hours, at least; I simply walked, not allowing myself to consider any other option, and it had the added benefit of warming my cold-leached limbs.
The wall’s ridged, strangely organic texture gave way to smooth carvings, friezes shaped by unknown hands. I tried not to think about what they might depict, glad, for once, that I could see nothing.
Until my fingers trailed over what was clearly a nose, and two eyes.
I froze, swallowing down burning sickness in my throat, standing so still I could hear my own joints creaking as my body swayed. Bright lights blossomed in front of my eyes.
Don’t you dare faint here!
My heartbeat was a drum in my ears, drowning out even the sound of my breathing. The face didn’t move; the eyes didn’t blink against my fingertips, the nose exhaled no breath.
Whatever it was, it was dead…petrified. It felt different from the stone of the wall. I allowed my fingers to slide over the face, to the neck, where the strange texture blended into the wall itself. Something living that had merged with the stone of the Below, now fossilized.
I pulled my hand away like it’d been burned.
It took me several minutes to recollect my courage and keep moving. Even at my shuffling pace, I paused frequently, listening to the silence and the faint burble of water.
For a long, long time, there was nothing at all.
I began to feel like I was back in the liminal tunnel, perhaps treading the same brief expanse over and over, possibly the only living thing remaining in existence.
At one point, I leaned against the wall to rest, and came to from a dead sleep, lying on the floor.
I had no idea how long I’d been there. There was no sense of the passage of time at all.
But sometime much later, something changed. There was a scent in the air, not the dank minerals of the water nor the unpleasant, bitter stink of the oily algae, but something almost sweet, like a cool breeze through flowering almond trees.
I shuffled towards the smell, wondering if I was making an enormous mistake. Anything that smelled so pleasant in a place like this was surely a trap for unwary prey.
But the scent morphed as I followed it, becoming a scent so juicy, so mouthwatering, I could almost feel myself sinking my teeth into a plum, feel the tart skin giving way with a pop beneath my teeth, and my stomach growled around a knot of pain, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten in hours.
I swallowed saliva, imagining licking the juices of the plum off my fingers, the sweet-tangy taste. I was so hungry, and the few provisions I had were soaked through…
The tunnel became a visible smear as I heaved myself upwards, a step at a time, lit with that ghostly blue glow. That was when I stopped again, sinking to the floor to rest and mull over my options.
Worth had told me my senses were my map. Only sight, sound, taste, and scent could be relied upon here. It didn’t matter if the vampires had used red or violet ink for what lay here, as long as I paid attention to what was around me.
Whatever lay ahead that smelled so sweet was almost certainly a lie, but I would need to pass through it.
It was impossible to know if this tunnel had branched, or if this was the only way forward.
I allowed myself to rest briefly, my legs burning after hours of shuffling step by step, and finally marshaled myself to see what emanated the blue glow and mouthwatering lure.
I crept as softly as a cat, pistol at the ready, and found the mouth of the tunnel lit with ghost-light.
It was a room, certainly, pipes and tubes growing from and through the walls and vanishing into the floor. What seemed to be a perfectly spherical crystal hung above me, illuminating the room with unsteady flashes of fulmen, along with five other doorways.
There was nothing else. As Mathis would’ve said, fucking shit. As far as I could tell, none were marked, and they could lead anywhere.
I leaned inside the doorway, wiped cold sweat off my forehead, and wondered what the hell kind of creatures the Fae were to have lived like this.
What kind of species stole bits and pieces from other races and buried them like bubbles of lost time underground?
Who made a warren of tunnels connected by an empty room, and thought it good planning?
And yet their machina were the height of sophistication, unreplicable, Artifice so far beyond us it might as well be magic.
The Fae were utterly nonsensical, chaos incarnate, and I thought maybe that was why they’d died out.
They could make a device to deliver an ultra-fine mist across enough area to infect an entire village, they could steal parts of the world above and seamlessly mesh them into these warrens, and yet their dwellings were a hodge-podge of utter madness and twisted inefficiency.
They made no fucking sense, and I was good and gods-damned tired of them by now.
It was a relief to surrender to boiling anger that drowned out the cold terror. I stared at the doorways, gritting my teeth, wondering just how much black powder it would take to collapse the whole damn place and forget they’d ever existed.
A breeze crept through the chamber, making the crystal orb overhead sway slightly, and that delectable scent filled my nose again. I clutched my stomach, leaning over as a cramp wracked me; I’d burned through so much energy I was starving.
I would gladly eat my sodden food at this point, but I was uncomfortable with doing it here. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt that if I lingered too long, something might come and find out why, and that was the last thing I wanted.
I sniffed again, torturing myself with the luscious scent, and decided.
The sweetness was a lie, that much was for sure.
But Wroth had spoken of fruit, and not to eat it. And if this scent making my mouth water was the fruit, then perhaps it was a known area, and the crew would pass through or I would find a way back to them.
My senses told me the other tunnels led nowhere. No light, no scent, no moving air. But the one directly across from me, where the breeze emanated, had the sensation of open air.
I would go far enough to find what was growing the fruit, scout for human activity, and eat the soaked provisions from my pack, hopefully with a new objective in mind once my stomach was filled.
Creeping again, I moved towards the tunnel mouth, squinting up at the orb.
The fulmen flowed like water, sending rippling veils of light on the walls.
I would’ve kept moving, disliking the liquid quality of the illumination, but I realized the sound I was hearing wasn’t my own rapid heartbeat, but something echoing towards me.
It was impossible to tell which hall it came from; it was a discordant screeching, a cracking noise, a vast rumble all mixed into one awful cacophony.
I froze, the orb swaying, the room seeming to tilt around me.
There was one thing I did know: whatever had made that noise, I didn’t want to meet it.
I slid to the hall across from my tunnel, turning my face into the darkness and feeling cool, sweetly-scented air play over my cheeks and rustle my hair.
It was my best chance, and I took it, one hand splayed out well before my face, my shoulder bumping into the wall with every other step.
But it wasn’t going upward; I walked easily on the flat ground, my nerves at the lack of gained altitude vying with my fear of whatever had made that awful noise, and underlaid by the terror of what kind of trap could smell so tempting.
There was another shrieking echo, like the shattering of glass, and without thinking clearly I broke into a jog, my panting breath thunderous in my ears.
It was coming. It probably smelled me, fear seasoning my flesh for its feast…
For the Light’s sake, Jesamin, stop it!
I had the pistol. It was cocked, and I turned my desperate thoughts into fervent pleas to the Lady to ensure the powder was dry and the flint intact.
One shot, one chance.
The scent grew stronger, luring me along with another fresh breeze that probably blew my scent directly back to whatever was chasing me, and my jog became a run. I would make my last stand in the light, even the awful, ghostly light of Liuridar.
The tunnel began to brighten, and something scuffed the ground behind me. It had caught me. Well, hell with it, then; this was enough light to die by.
I stopped and turned, squinting into the darkness, holding my pistol at the ready with both hands.
It might be inimical, it might be a twisted monstrosity, but my shot would live in its flesh for eternity.
Inhale, exhale. Focus and calm.
Another scuff, and rapid footsteps. My heart was pounding painfully against my ribcage, threatening to explode. I shuddered, straightened my arms, and waited.
Something slid from the darkness, pale as death, and I exhaled and squeezed the trigger.
The sound of the pistol shot was a cannon blast in the hall, bouncing off the stone walls and ringing in my ears. The pale blur fell back.
I shrugged off my pack with one quick motion, ripping it open to grab another paper cartridge of black powder and shot, but the darkness in front of me shifted.
I blindly dropped the pistol and cartridge, drawing my sword and readying the cold iron blade to sink into flesh.
It came at me, stepping forward. Pale…and enormous, filling the hall. A fuzzy corona of bright white around its head…around its jaws, stretched in a wide snarl…
Wroth, I tried to say, but my tongue didn’t want to work. I couldn’t smell the scent I’d come to associate with him; the breeze seemed stronger, as though to reel me in, as though it had been trying to hide his familiar scent this entire time…
Wroth materialized in the faint blue light, clawed hands held up. I couldn’t make out his face without my spectacles, but the blue glow of his eyes, once so icy and cold, was like a beacon of safety.
“Jesamin,” he said hoarsely, and looked down at his chest in surprise. “You shot me.”
With a sob, I flung myself into his arms.