Secrets Within Secrets

  The transition from the cold breezes of the surface to the warm, humid stink of the Coals left Skye struggling to breathe. Slowly he walked, dodging the crusted feces littering the uneven streets. There was an almost visible miasma enveloping the whole district, rotten, decomposing. Ignoring it was impossible. To combat the stench, he wore his mask despite the insult it offered the locals.

  The houses here resembled disorganized heaps of matchboxes, protruding awkwardly and offensively asymmetric. The alleys were narrow and twisting, mazelike, and the low ceiling allowed only a few houses to stack. Mischiefs of rats fought over a corpse nearby, too gory to determine to what or who it belonged to. When he passed by, they leaped to gnaw at his boots, forcing him to run and cast his curse as they squeaked hungrily.

  The Coals resided under the city. No one knew how far it stretched, or how many lived here. The gems decorating its walls had long been stolen, forcing everyone to roam in darkness, or risk carrying gems in the open.

  If Skye didn’t have his bell, he’d have walked blindly without any gems.

  The Coals were home to all kinds of depravity, and only dunces or drunkards displayed any sort of wealth. That’s why he brought basic Deeps-exploration gear only: the outfit, hard hat, some rope, and other essentials tucked in a small backpack.

  Upon seeing his photrine, a group of children half his age chased after him with crude shivs and daggers. Not a minute after he lost them, a gaunt, half-naked, semi-petrified man shrieked gibberish as he flung poo in his general direction. Later, he ran into a group of miners whose dead eyes he knew from the days he’d spent in the Deeps, long ago. They were too drained to stare back at him, too dispirited to demand anything. An old, ragged woman, however, jumped from nowhere all of a sudden, crying desperately, begging for his gems. He couldn’t help her. The moment he’d cast his curse, the gems would doubtless disappear as their meeting got wiped out of history. And so, he dodged her, running away, ringing his bell to end her wailing.

  Finally, he arrived at the Deeps’ entrance. Not the Gateway. But a smaller and more dangerous passage, named aptly: the Back Alley.

  Some of the barons barricaded their tunnels at the Gateway, prohibiting entrance to all prospectors. This made the Back Alley the only entrance to vast sections of the Deeps. Rumors told of other entrances littered around Troqua, but Skye had yet to find one.

  He passed by twelve constables, stationed atop a high perch overlooking the Alley, huddled together like owlets amid a lightning storm. Stopping crime was not their charge here, as the gangs liked to govern themselves, privately and violently. Their mission was to report riots or protests and summon the main force to extinguish them. A dangerous job, but it had to be done. Otherwise, Troqua would fall to anarchy.

  The tunnels in the Alley were not distinct caves like in the Deeps. They intersected or wound back, many leading to dead ends. At the Devil’s Fork, though, they branched and scattered into the heart of the Deeps.

  Due to his past experience, Skye made it fast to the back side of the Rikal’s gemfarm. Miners flooded in and out through the steel gate, overlooked by over a hundred armed guards. Since he’d never explored a gemfarm before, he felt an urge to ring his bell and march in. But he had more pressing matters to resolve than fortune or adventure, and so he followed Dray’s instructions and took the leftmost path.

  He arrived at the Triangular Pit—a shaft in the ground, presumably reaching the Void like the Scar— and carefully circled its edge, going past. Not long after, he encountered a large drawing on a wall depicting the grisly image of a man being devoured by a stonebear. Last time he’d been here, he’d heeded the warning and turned around. But he was tired that day and not half as desperate as now.

  Carefully, he summoned his bell and tiptoed inside the stonebear’s hunting grounds.

  The place was silent, the winds calm. There was almost no reason to be on alarm. Yet Skye walked carefully, looking around, jumping at the hint of any distant sound. As he neared the cave’s center, his heart beat fast. Finally, he saw the bear’s trophies: corpses amassed. Bones forming mountains, like monstrous memorials, declared that here lived a vicious creature, voracious, territorial.

  A stone-grinding rumble. Something shifted near. Skye gasped, realizing he stared at the great beast’s rear. What he’d mistaken for rock was a mixture of fur, claw, and muscle. Slowly, he backed away, barely making a rustle. He rang his bell twice, just for good measure. He really didn’t want to join this stonebear’s treasure. Suddenly, the bear growled, rising awake. It jumped up violently, casting the entire cave aquake. Atrociously large, and his rocky armor made him grander. Skye turned around, coming face-to-face with a mineralmander.

  The huge lizard had a wide, flat face and a mouth stretching from ear to ear, making it look perpetually smiling. Its smooth skin was beige, with a row of razor-sharp light-blue crystals bristled along its spine. Sluggishly, it opened its drool-dripping mouth, revealing ten rows of tiny needle-like teeth.

  Skye let out a whimper. His legs felt like they were stuck in a sandadillo’s trap, and he suddenly had the need to relieve himself.

  Standing on its hind legs, the stonebear unleashed an earthshaking roar, causing Skye to stumble on his butt hard. Rapidly ringing his bell, he crawled away, but the two beasts circled each other, girding him in place, trapping him in their arena. They were in an open area in the cave with no obstacles to take cover behind.

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  The bear must have weighed over two tons, what with its hide being covered in black and brown rocks, and its gigantic mace-like paws. The mineralmander was half its size, yet nimble as a rat. Its long crystal-tipped tail whooshed and slashed at a thin stalagmite, cutting it in half, sending it crashing.

  The two apex predators of the Deeps weren’t hunting Skye. They didn’t even know he existed as he repeatedly rang his bell. But one accidental club of claw or swipe of tail could reduce his body into a bloody pulp.

  Roaring or hissing, the monsters lunged at each other. Skye screamed, jumping away, ringing his bell. They clashed and fell with the mineralmander on top, its swinging whip of a tongue slicing the bear’s rocky crown, spraying the ground red.

  Skye ran, his head almost bursting from the overuse of his curse. He looked back and saw the mineralmander flung overhead, its limbs flailing uselessly. The glow of its colorful crystals under his photrine’s shine would have been stunning had its huge body not been falling directly toward him.

  At the last second, he leaped away as the lizard slammed down and rolled, shattering the earth where it fell. As the bear roared again, charging like a living rockfall, Skye rushed toward the exit, heart in throat, never looking back.

  He stopped far away, panting like a spent dog. When he sat, something hissed next to his ear and he flinched, automatically casting his curse. The bell clapped like a sledgehammer striking a metallic plate in his skull, and it almost cost him his balance. Clutching his head, he resumed running as the venomous voidsnake slithered behind.

  Two hours later, he collapsed onto a boulder, legs heavy with petrification, joints aching even at rest. He’d never exerted himself this hard in the Deeps before.

  After the voidsnake, he was attacked by a cauldron of bats, fell twice in sandadillo traps, got chased by three furious caveboars, and almost got skewered by a rockmole’s pitfall. He was exhausted, thirsty, and hungry, and worst of it all, lost.

  All the caves here looked the same. Stalagmites and stalactites and boulders and columns. Mold and algae wherever there was moisture. And millions of insects and mushrooms running everywhere. The lines of strata were useless in this swelling darkness. Like mating snakes, the tunnels twisted around each other, guiding him forward or around, he couldn’t tell.

  He kept a journal of his route, sketching diagrams and taking notes to mark his way back. It was a basic Deeps survival skill, one that had saved his life before. But it was a useless guide toward an unexplored destination.

  He entered a chasm, hot as a forge, followed by a wintry cavern where icicles hung from the ceiling like fangs. Wet with sweat, his shirt and pants left him freezing. He proceeded, shivering, and rubbing himself; he might as well have been walking naked.

  Several times, he’d wanted to stop and return. The library seemed impossibly far. And he had no confirmation its books contained the cure for his curse. But ever since that night he got kicked out by the Medhars he’d been dining alone in a hole in the ground with nothing but bugs for company. No life waited for him up there. His salvation was down here or nowhere.

  He stopped at the corpses.

  Four or more, he couldn’t tell; the blackness of the Deep was eating his light. Their bodies were whole, unbroken. Idiots. Sleeping in the Deeps was suicide. You must always move, never let the fantasia seep in.

  Unless they were too contaminated to move. They must’ve given up on finding an exit and decided to go out in the least agonizing way possible. Perhaps they weren’t fools after all.

  Watching their unblinking stony eyes made him wonder what their last thoughts were. And that brought back the memories of his team, forming a lump in his throat.

  He’d been fooled like a babe. Dray had never intended to share the library’s location; he’d only wanted his secret. The man was a warden after all, and all wardens were backstabbing, lying coalsons. He’d sent Skye into the Deeps to die. Skye should’ve known no one would cross all these dangers simply to read. Even if such a place existed, the books would have stonified and crumbled by now, just like these unfortunate prospectors. The same went for the alleged guards.

  Rubbing his eyes, he took a deep breath, then turned around, heading for Troqua.

  He imagined going straight for Dray, beating him senseless while using the curse. He’d not care for the warden’s cries of pain and confusion. Nor for the fact that Dray was Lyonel’s brother. Sending someone to die in the Deeps was bat-guano evil. And when Dray was finally a bloody mess on the ground, he would force the true location of the library from his swollen lips.

  He stopped, scratching his head as he searched around, frowning. The slope he’d descended not two minutes ago, was… gone, the ground flat as a calm lake. Walking, he checked his map under his photrine, but nothing matched anymore. Where there’d been a left turn was now a right, and the tight trench he’d crossed a moment ago was now a wide cavern.

  He’d heard of such a phenomenon before, but it was supposed to be a fantasy, a mirage. A trick of the mind. Cavers who’d stayed long in the Deeps would imagine because the fantasia had addled their brains. But he’d only been here for a few hours which wasn’t enough to warp his thinking.

  He walked slowly, careful this time to record every turn and landmark.

  Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was going down, not up, deeper, not toward the exit. There had to be a way out. Maybe he should take this corner. No wait, he’d passed this place a minute ago. Hadn’t he?

  In the calm of the cave, surrounded by dark drapes, his heart pounded in his ears. His breathing grew rapid as he ran and climbed and descended, feeling all the while he wasn’t progressing anywhere. He sped up, scrambling in random directions, looking over his shoulder, ringing his bell at every bend. He ran out of ideas on where to head next. Ran out of stamina to continue. Ran out of courage. Out of hope. Almost out of light as the darkness became practically a palpable wall that he had to push through.

  He screamed for help, then cast his curse. There was no telling what lurked in these shadows. Things slithered on the ceiling behind him… arms or tentacles, that reached toward him whenever he stopped. So he never stopped. He told himself it was just exhaustion warping his vision but there was no telling what lived in this Void-swallowed space.

  “Who goes there?” a voice called from the darkness ahead.

  No, not from the darkness. But from a spark of light adrift in a vast black ocean.

  He cast his curse, and crawled behind a thick column. Gasping quietly, he peered out toward the distant glow.

  Several wardens in black cloaks sat around a pyre of pyrpphires. A row of stalagmites blockaded the area beside them, turning it into a semi-enclosed room. Inside, bunkbeds lined the stone, and the soft sound of snoring echoed through the chamber. All of that was irrelevant, because further behind was a huge metallic door.

  The library!

  He suppressed his joy, then remembered his curse and hollered in ecstasy before ringing his bell.

  Dray hadn’t lied. Skye felt a pang of guilt for doubting the man. Then again, Dray could have given better directions.