Chapter 3 Mullayne
Mullayne
Langzu – a cave system west of Ruzhi
The deaths of Tolemne’s family are written of in vague terms – the harshness of the surface world is blamed in many texts.
So scholars attribute their deaths to starvation, sinkholes, heat, fire, floods, plague, or malnutrition.
What is known as fact is that Tolemne burned his family’s bodies and then built them a tomb before embarking on his expedition to ask a boon of the gods, determined that what befell them should not befall anyone else.
Down here, in the dark, Mull had long since lost all sense of time.
He’d forced himself to imagine more than once what life without Imeah would be like but the reality of it made him feel like his mind had turned on its side and wasn’t able to right itself.
It wasn’t just her absence that affected him, but the feeling that a part of him now rested on fragile ground.
She’d been a bulwark, reinforcing his memories and his sense of self.
Even through the painful feeling that someone had cut a chunk out of his chest, a distant part of himself thought, So this is grief.
He’d lost Pont, and Jeeoon too. His rations were low, his determination lower.
Now it was only him, the filter sticking to his sweating face as he climbed and crawled through tunnels lit by blue and green fungi.
Alone.
Every scratch and bruise was a welcome distraction, something he could turn his focus to.
Every step a sensation that was not grief.
It was when he lay down to rest, when he woke – these were the worst times.
He wondered how long it had taken Imeah to die down there, in the thick aether.
He’d asked them all to follow him to Unterra, and one by one, they’d died.
And he’d kept asking them to go on, his mind always on the destination. On a cure for Imeah.
She’d gone ahead without him, into the fathomless deep. Sometimes, a bubble of hope rose within him. Maybe she’d made it. Maybe she’d gone all the way and had been granted her boon. Maybe she was beneath him, making her slow way back to the surface, her body healed of its illness.
Maybe not. He didn’t deserve hope. He deserved every misery the world had to offer him – the crushing weight of the stone above him, the damp, the dark.
In spite of all reason, he still thought he should have gone with her.
It didn’t make any sense. If his filter had failed past the third aerocline, if he’d succumbed to the aether, he would have attacked her.
And there was the message scrawled on a piece of paper in his pocket – the one left by Tolemne.
On his way back to the surface.
Imeah had done her best to transcribe what she’d seen, but she only knew a few words of Old Albanoran, from Mull’s own influence, so the message was choppy, misspelled.
But he’d been able to piece it together.
If this is the end, I wish to be with my family.
Tolemne’s family had been dead when he’d gone to Unterra, so did he wish to go to their tomb, to be with their ashes?
And what did he mean by the end? Restoration?
If there was anything that drove Mull forward, it was the questions. So many questions unanswered, and he was the only one who could bring them into the light. The thought felt off, somehow, too grandiose. He touched the filter at his face. Was it failing here, past the second aerocline?
He had to keep his mind focused, sharp. Think about what he was certain was true and what was false.
He knew that the books that said there were only two aeroclines were incorrect.
There were three. No. Wait. There were at least three.
He didn’t know what lay past the third aerocline. He couldn’t make assumptions.
Tolemne’s carving that had stated the distance to Unterra – he couldn’t be sure it was correct, but he could no longer assume it was incorrect. The estimations he’d made had been based on faulty information.
What use were books if they didn’t tell the truth?
Something rumbled beneath his feet. He lifted his lantern, put a hand to the wall of the tunnel, and felt that same vibration.
Even with the existence of the sinkhole mines, people liked to think the earth was a settled thing.
Jeeoon had taken every opportunity to disabuse his team of that notion.
Cave-ins, collapses, shifting stone – she’d described the way an explorer had once gotten his body stuck upside-down in a narrow tunnel after a minor collapse, and how there had been no way to get him out because they couldn’t get around the stones, and how he’d died from the blood pooling in his head.
She’d said it all with a strange sort of relish as everyone else on the team had turned a little bit green.
The shaking grew stronger. Mull lurched forward, animal instinct forcing him to find safety. As if there could be safety down here. He was going to die alone. Fear stirred in his belly, mingling with relief.
At least it would be over then. The way it should have been over for him so, so much sooner, if he’d had any integrity in him.
The world in front of him rippled, as though he’d suddenly dropped underwater.
For a moment he thought it was the aether, and then he remembered – the failing filter.
He slipped one of the straps of his pack from his shoulder, dug around until he found the extra filter.
He had to clean it first. He’d forgotten to clean it.
The lantern in his hand seemed to jitter.
Disorientation was one of the symptoms of aether poisoning.
Something wasn’t right in his head. He could recognize that, even as he knew he couldn’t do anything about it.
Rocks shook loose and he darted up the tunnel. There was a cavern ahead. What had Jeeoon said about that? Was it better to be in a cavern or a tunnel during a collapse? He couldn’t recall. His heartbeat drummed in his ears, his head swimming, his chest still a constant, unrelenting ache.
And then he dropped both his lantern and the filter, his foot caught a stone, and he fell. His fingers found a groove on the cave floor. The flickering light caught the edges of words in old Albanoran.
Do not trust what is written on paper. I will write the truth on stone.
Had he and his team missed seeing this carving on their way down?
No one had pointed it out. Or was he even now imagining things, paranoia turning the cracks in stone to words.
He traced the words as the world around him shook, pressing the pads of his fingers into rock, examining the feel of the edges. This was real. It had to be real.
The lantern guttered out.