The Clatterwane
Loading…
Edrik Kain wasn’t happy to see them. Then again, Edrik Kain hadn’t been happy to see anyone in the last twenty years, and that included the mirror, on the rare occasions he made the mistake of looking into it. But he wasn’t angry either. Anger required effort, and Edrik had long ago filed “effort” alongside “optimism” and “pleasantries” under Things Other People Do.
He simply stood at his rain-slicked doorstep, squinting at the miserable collection of people as though he’d been expecting them.
Which, technically, he had.
Not specifically them, mind you—Edrik wasn’t clairvoyant—but he’d known someone would turn up eventually. Ashenmoor had a way of delivering trouble to your door the way a cat delivers half-dead mice: not so much malicious as inevitable. He had just hoped it would arrive after he was dead, or at least after breakfast.
Inside, the shop was behaving exactly as one might expect a shop owned by an elderly artificer in a town like Ashenmoor to behave. The windows shuddered under the drumming rain, the gearwork clock went tick-tack, and something in the rafters was producing a hiss that might have been steam, or gas, or possibly a very irritable snake.
Everything normal, which was exactly the sort of thing that put the locals on edge. Because anyone who’d lived in Ashenmoor long enough knew: if things sounded normal, it usually meant something abnormal was just about to kick the door in. And when things didn’t sound normal, well, then the door had most likely already been kicked in, the furniture was on fire, and the abnormality in question was helping itself to the good cutlery while humming a suspiciously upbeat tune.
For weeks now, the wind had whistled strange lullabies through keyholes, and the cats had behaved like they were reading ominous portents in their food bowls. The wise knew what the superstitious whispered: She was coming back. You didn’t say her name. You didn’t need to. If something can curdle milk at fifty paces, it doesn’t need an introduction.
“Curse your luck for showing up now, I suppose…” Edrik coughed into his sleeve, hunching over a workbench he, at some point, had sat down at. He couldn’t remember when, exactly. Just like he couldn’t remember who had made the clumsy projects cluttering the surface before him. Not himself, he hoped. No, someone else… Someone he ought to remember.
“What was that?” snapped Desmond. The boy’s voice was a taut wire, plucked one too many times.
He hadn’t spoken like that when he arrived—had he? But now, with his companion sprawled out across the Clatterwane’s floor—a young woman, currently doing a very poor impression of someone trying to stay alive—the boy was seemingly done being the quiet one.
The other woman—Al…Alissa, was it? Names were like screws; Edrik could usually remember where they went, just not always what they were called—was posted at the door, staring into the storm as if expecting it to swallow her whole. Her leg bounced like it had more energy than the rest of her body knew how to handle. Guilt? Fear? A surplus of lingering adrenaline? Hard to tell.
Edrik’s eyes weren’t what they used to be, and they’d never been particularly good to begin with. At least not when it came to people.
Then there was the girl. A younger young woman. The one with the contraption. The hovering, whirring, definitely-not-natural contraption circling above her head like a clockwork halo designed by someone who didn’t quite understand what halos were for. A Delver’s skill, no doubt about it.
Edrik hadn’t seen one of those manifest in decades, and this one was different. Another sign of the changing times? Far more curious than the girl’s actions, that was for certain.
She was darting back and forth with towels and scraps of linen. Bandages, the boy called them. Desmund, right? Or Desman? Des-something. There was only so much room left in Edrik’s memory, and most of it was already taken up by obscure gear ratios and the precise instructions for how not to blow yourself up while making pocket-sized storm engines.
That and, well, Ashenmoor’s less pleasing requirements.
He shook his head, refocusing on the girl’s latest haul, scoffing inwardly.
Bandages. As if wrapping someone in soggy rags was going to do anything but make the corpse easier to carry later.
Edrik, who had seen more dying people than he had birthdays (and given his age, that was saying something), decided the prognosis was simple: the girl on the floor, his… apprentice—right, I have an apprentice now… Why did I ever think taking one of those was a good idea?—was not long for this world.
Then again, none of them were.
“You’re struggling for nothing,” he rasped, his own voice sounding like gravel had taken up residence in his throat. He hated how old he sounded now. Time didn’t merely sneak up on you; it hired a marching band, waved flags, and still somehow managed to catch you off guard. “The Silting’s been interrupted. The Depths won’t be able to do anything when Their daughter returns. Not that they were ever good for much anyway…”
He stopped as another cough doubled him over, leaving a splash of something red across the clattered worksurface. He stared at it, sighed, and thought nothing more of it.
If the ritual hadn’t been interrupted, he might have had another year. Two, if he really stretched his soul thin and ignored the nagging voices that told him to stop. But you can’t hold off Time forever. Time is stubborn like that.
He looked at his supposed apprentice again, weak and pale on the floor, her breath coming in shallow stutters.
Was he truly so desperate for a legacy that he’d chosen a mere girl to succeed him? A human one at that?
Then again, what other options were there for someone who’d given themselves to Ashenmoor? And…
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Right. Right.
There were bigger hands at work here. There always were. And if She was returning… Well, maybe this girl would have to do.
Edrik planted his cane on the floor and began the slow, creaking climb to his feet. The boy—Des-something—was shouting now, probably arguing about his “grim outlook” or some such thing. People did that when they hadn’t yet learned that Ashenmoor didn’t care about either them or their life’s story.
None of it mattered. Not the apprentice. Not the boy. Not even Edrik himself.
Aye, he thought as he hacked into his sleeve, it’s too late for me. It had been ever since that cursed thing called him here to Ashenmoor. Too late for me, but not for her.
He looked down at the young woman upon the floor.
To choose the one to inherit his legacy, to not leave it to that cursed thing to decide… A final act of defiance. Wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that be…
He paused, letting the thought curdle into words.
“Exactly what You knew would happen, is it?”
The words were hardly more than a breath, the kind of mutter an old man might make when the world wasn’t listening.
But this was Ashenmoor. And Ashenmoor always listened.
The gearwork clock stopped ticking. The rain against the window held itself in place, each droplet suspended mid-drip. For a single, breathless moment, the only sound in existence was the thunder of Edrik’s own failing heart.
A chill ran down his spine, sharp and familiar, like an old acquaintance knocking at the door.
Then, with a lurch, the world started again. The clock ticked. The rain resumed its assault. And a coughing fit—loud, rattling, and full of the sort of noises that usually came from poorly maintained machinery—sent Edrik Kain sprawling to the floor.
Cold sweat pooled down his spine.
“…are you okay?”
The urgent voice belonged to the girl with the hovering Skill Construct—Ma, Na…something like that. He was fairly sure her name had a vowel, though by this point, remembering names felt like a waste of his already scarce time.
She was crouched beside him, wearing the sort of earnest concern that young people were so good at before life taught them the futility of the emotion. Her hands tried to help lift his body, which had, over the years, grown considerably heavier—mostly due to the creeping weight of age, regret, and possibly a few lead plates embedded in his spine.
“I’m fine,” he wheezed, which was a blatant lie, but one said with the conviction of a man who had decided that if Death was going to come for him, it could damn well climb a flight of stairs first. He reached for his fallen cane.
“The girl. My… apprentice.” The word tasted odd. “Take her upstairs. You’re not doing her any good down here.”
***
“Gami…
Gami…
Gami…”
It had been hours now, that whisper. Soft, ethereal, and far too insistent. She might have written it off as a strange quirk of the wind, except for two small details:
- She was underground, where wind was about as common as a wizard picking up the bar tab, and
- That was most definitely her name being called.
For that insight, she blamed the System. Without its habit of offering “helpful” prompts with all the tact and subtlety of an underpaid stage actor, she could have still staggered on in blissful ignorance. But the prompts were there.
The latest, glowing faintly in her vision like a smug neon sign:
Her slumber is no more. Ashenmoor trembles before Her presence…
Gami wiped a smear of blood from her lip.
“Thought we shut down this cult nonsense topside. What kind of broken scenario is this?”
Her gaze drifted down the tunnel, the same stretch of damp stone she could’ve sworn she’d been walking for hours. Sporadic gas lamps hissed in the gloom. Somewhere in the distance, masonry groaned.
“A tomb as good as any.” Her eyes dropped to the merman sprawled at her feet. “Wouldn’t you say?”
It was dead.
Kneeling beside the ugly, glassy-eyed thing, she prodded it again, hoping for… something. A trinket. A key. A slightly less horrible knife. She wasn’t picky. What she found was nothing. Just cold flesh and a vague fishy smell that would probably cling for days.
“You with or against those townsfolk?” she asked the corpse, more out of boredom than expectation. She wiped her blade on the strip of cloth that was doing its best to preserve the creature’s dignity. “With this Her, whoever—”
The whisper came again, fluttering across her mind like moths made of knives. She flinched. The flinch became a groan; the movement having sent a bolt of pain through her ribs, which had taken the brunt of the merman’s farewell hug. Her woollen undershirt had spared her from some of its claws, but she’d bet good coin at least one rib was cracked.
Her left arm wasn’t doing much better—bandaged tightly, it hung at her side like something she’d borrowed from a scarecrow and forgotten to return.
These tunnels—Ashenmoor’s Catacombs, if her best guess was worth anything—were rife with those things.
She wouldn’t be able to keep going much longer like this.
“Weak…
weak…
weak…”
“Yeah, go on.” Gami gritted her teeth, shoved herself upright against the clammy wall, and staggered onward. “Keep taunting me. We’ll see who’s weak when I’m done with you.”
***
The claustrophobic passage of dirt and roots they’d been forced to wriggle through—less a tunnel and more a strongly worded suggestion in the general direction of down—had spat them out into what might generously be called a room.
It was made of stone, which was at least an upgrade from soil, though it was damp enough to suggest the stone itself might eventually sprout mushrooms.
Narrow, gloomy, and furnished with nothing but a few broken crates that had long ago donated their contents to generations of vermin, the only point of interest was a door, seeming to lead further into the gloomy undergrounds.
A door Lionel had chosen to ignore for now.
There were no signs that their pursuers were still after them. No clacking, scuttling, or ill-mannered echoes.
They could allow themselves a brief respite.
Or rather, his unlikely companion had decided they would allow themselves a brief respite.
She had barely crossed the threshold before she gave the room a single, weary circle—like a dog trying to find the perfect spot on a very imperfect rug—collapsed in the least soggy corner, and yanked down her hood in the universal gesture that meant: “I am done with today. Wake me only if the world ends, and even then, make it quick.”
For a moment, it almost seemed like she was sulking. But then the soft, steady sound of snores began to fill the room, rising and falling like waves on some distant shore.
Not ladylike snores. Not the gentle sigh of a sleeping elf-maiden or whatever romantic tripe the ballads liked to push. These were the snores of a creature who had fought things with claws, teeth, and possibly homicidal thoughts, and now wanted the world to shut up so she could dream about something less stressful.
And honestly, Lionel couldn’t blame her. Rest. That was the first truly sensible, Delver-like decision the girl had made since they met. Delvers slept when they could, because tomorrow always had more monsters, more traps, and more exotic ways to meet your end.
Sliding down into his own, slightly damper corner, Lionel pulled a small leather journal from his coat. It was old. Not valuable-old, just habitually obsolete. An archaic thing, in an age where the System automatically recorded your mindless monologues, movements, and occasionally your preferred tea order.
But paper had its advantages. For one, it didn’t occasionally “share” your private notes with mildly interested third parties. And tonight, Lionel’s thoughts were of the sort he very much preferred not to share.
On the floor beside him, he spread out a more weathered memoir, tainted by the damp, the salty air, and all things that was this world.
For a while, the chamber was filled only by the scratch of pen on paper and the soft wheeze of exhausted breathing, occasionally punctuated by the girl murmuring something about deep-sea exploring bulldogs.
Outside, far above the wet stones and sleeping Delvers, the night crept onward toward the dawn.
The last dawn Ashenmoor would ever see.