002 – Wake

***

“Is that idiot dead?”

“No. He’s still breathing.”

I felt a sharp kick in my ribs. Two women spoke nearby, but their voices sounded strange to me. A dull ache swept across my whole body while more localized pains afflicted my skull and eyes. My muscles turned to jelly.

“That’s the last one of the lot. All our minions are dead.”

“Good. Now we won’t have to waste coin on the dastards.”

“Those mercenaries were carrying our supplies, Malisent. Food and water. That means we either escape this pit soon or die of thirst,” she said angrily. “The monster still guards the exit. Our weapons barely scratched it, and the mercenaries died to cover our escape. We can’t face it a second time.”

“Then we must find another exit. We have no more decoys to sacrifice except this one, and he’s half dead. So we should search the labyrinth for a way to the surface. Unless you have a better idea, Gritha…”

I forced my eyes open. A fiery glow lit the room. Three women carrying burning torches huddled nearby. I didn’t recognize them. The remote power station did not get casual visitors; traveling from the nearest outpost took hours by air. I must have been laying unconscious for a long time.

“What happened? Are you part of a rescue team?” I said. My voice was thin and strained. It took a great deal of effort just to sit up.

“Eh? The novice is alive.”

“Where’s Lonz and the other techs?”

“But now he’s speaking gibberish.”

The woman’s words made my head pound and my brain itch. She was the one speaking gibberish, not me. Yet for some reason I understood the meaning behind her nonsense sounds. The more I thought about it, the harder it became. The words got tangled up together on my tongue.

“Who are you? Who are you? Who are you people?”

“Have you lost your wits, Strythe? Tell me: what’s the last thing you remember?” the woman named Malisent asked me.

“The crystal exploded. There was a flash of light. Then I fell unconscious and… Wait. Who’s Strythe?”

Malisent didn’t answer me but looked quizzically to her two companions.

Three women stood over me. For the first time I took a good look at them and was shocked by what I saw. They all dressed in completely alien garb. Malisent had curly hair pulled back into a tail. She wore a protective suit of hard, articulated plates which made her look a bit like a shiny, black lobster.

The other woman, Gritha, was equally strange. She had a coat of small, interlocking metal rings. Individually they were rigid, but the whole formed a flexible fabric. Iron tubes covered her forearms. Gritha had cropped hair dyed orange.

The third person had yet to speak or be addressed. She looked like an albino, with straight silver hair and bone white skin, but her eyes were icy blue. She wore an elaborate white dress with a high collar and long sleeves. It had been pure white, but now dark stains marked the hem and knees. Her hair was up in a complicated bun stuck through by decorative pins.

Clearly they belonged to a theater or perhaps a dance troupe.

“You can’t even remember your own name, novice? Great hells. I told you not to touch that damned thing. You were dumb as an ox before, and now you’re a dumb ox with amnesia,” Malisent said.

“Take a weapon and get on your feet. We don’t have time for any more of your idiocy.”

Gritha tossed a wooden pole toward me. I used it to steady myself on shaky legs. For some reason, the pole had a broad knife blade affixed to one end. It resembled the bills used to trim tree branches or cut fruit. The tool served as my new walking staff.

Around me lay a scene of chaos. The mana-quake had seriously damaged the collector. The hexagonal monolith now sprouted irregular clumps of crystal at the base. Glassy beads of quartz spread across the walls like a pox. A layer of grime and sand covered the floor. The lights were gone. The gold conduits, which formerly ran along the floor, had disappeared entirely, meaning the collector array was out of commission.

I looked through the layer of filth to find my rune tablet and instruments, but they had vanished.

“Let’s start the search. One of these tunnels might extend to the side of the mountain and lead outside. Then we won’t have to go back through that damned citadel.” Gritha said. “Don’t fall behind, novice, or we’ll leave you down here with the monsters.”

I didn’t particularly want to follow this costumed theater group, but they carried the only light source. I had no lumestones or flares. Checking my utility belt, I realized my clothing had changed. Instead of my former suit, I wore quilted trousers and a quilted jacket, with extra material stitched over the knees and elbows. It was loose and comfortable, but very dirty from rolling around on the ground.

Walking through the spiderweb of the array, we passed by more collectors in the same broken down state. Some of them had shattered completely and left sharp chunks of loose crystal strewn across the floor. Water had leaked down from above and left ankle deep puddles. Such extensive damage required a complete renovation of the power station by a team of engineers. Minor repairs wouldn’t cut it.

A distant animal cry echoed through the tunnels, a sort of raspy screech. Malisent pulled out her weapon and squinted into the dark tunnels.

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“Why do you have that giant knife?” I asked her.

“You mean ‘sword?’ You’ve forgotten what a sword is? Holy hell,” she said in disbelief. “How hard did that thing blast you?”

That piece of gibberish sounded even more strange than the others, because it did not correspond to real word. A sword. Never heard of one. I’d seen machetes before, but nothing this absurdly large.

“How can you even use that ridiculous thing? Don’t you sprain your wrist every time you try to chop vegetables?”

“It’s not meant for cookery, fool. It’s a weapon for man-slaying, and a good one.”

These people were obviously dangerous. And perhaps insane. I needed to get away from them and find the director Lonz and the others. The next airship would take us home. Other people could deal with these knife-wielding circus performers, or whatever they were.

The group moved to the furthest edge of the array, looking for some exit that did not exist. The lower levels did not directly access the outside. These tunnels no longer had helpful maps mounted to the walls or painted numerals to identify the intersection. It was as if a fire had swept through, stripping everything bare and leaving behind soot and debris. The women marched around the periphery of the level.

“This is hopeless. The only way out is through that monster’s domain,” Malisent said. “Let’s go back to face it. Veylien, you can serve as our decoy this time. While you’re getting trounced, Gritha and I can sneak past.”

The woman in white had not spoken until this time. “If I have to die down in this in labyrinth, I would prefer to do so with no regrets,” she said cooly “by finally slicing out your sharp tongue.”

“You’ll find my tongue’s not my sharpest instrument,” Malisent replied. She rested her hand on the hilt of her sword.

The two locked eyes without blinking, Veylien with a sneer on her face and Malisent with an impertinent smirk. Her eyes flashed green. Neither moved, but a tension arose between them like a taut wire about to snap. I felt a strange tingle run up my spine. The crystals studding the wall began to flicker with light.

“Enough, you two! We have to escape this pit and complete our mission. This is no time for feuding,” Gritha said.

“It’s a perfect time for it. We’ve already lost our mercenaries and three of the novices, so what’s one more wretch on the heap?”

As they stared each other down, a piercing screech echoed through the tunnels. The inhuman sound interrupted their face off. Gritha whipped her murder-knife out of its sheath and pointed it down one of the corridors.

“More xlobats. Stop your bickering and prepare to fight.”

The meaning of xlobat was a mystery to me, but I hastened to get out of the way of the three women’s exposed blades. Malisent’s sword was straight and double edged, about an arm’s length and three fingers’ width. It ended in a angular point. Veylien’s was equally as long but thinner and more flexible. Curved metal rods swept around the handle to protect her hand. Gritha carried a sword with a long hilt; its blade curved with a sharp outer edge. Apparently these gigantic knives came in many varieties.

Gritha tossed her burning pine torch right at me, and it bounced off my chest. I took that as a not so subtle request to hold it for her. I raised the torch above my head. More weird animal cries came from down the dark hall.

A bizarre animal emerged from the shadows. It looked like a bat grown to the size of a wolf. Rows of needle teeth protruded from its muzzle and dripped with spittle. A long rat-like tail swished behind it. The beast showed traits of a subterranean species, such as white coloration and vestigial eyes shrunken to slits. Weirdest of all, the wings of the animal had become translucent, better displaying the bones beneath the leathery skin.

Rabies or some other disease must have twisted the animal’s mind, because it acted aggressively. The bat scampered forward, and started snapping its jaws at the group. More animals followed on the tail of the first.

As doubtful as I was about the efficacy of their weapons, my opinion quickly changed when the trio met the onrushing bats. They cut them to pieces. Malisent dismembered two with rapid strokes. Greeth cleaved one in half with an overhand swing. Veylien made one rapid stab that pierced a bat’s skull and left it twitching on the ground. A wave of xlobats flooded the hall, but the three struck them down as fast as they rolled in. Blood, intestines, and bubbling vomit spilled across the stone floor.

In a minute, the attack subsided.

I gagged at the sight and smell of the carnage. A few dying creatures wheezed in agony and feebly beat their wings. The trio hardly reacted to the sight of so much blood, and simply wiped their blades clean. I poked at one of the corpses with my knife-stick in disgust.

“Don’t bother, novice. None of these monsters have cores.”

“Monsters,” I quietly repeated. Another new word.

After seeing what the three did to this pack of wild animals, I wondered what kind of monster they were so afraid of. It must have been bigger than a grizzly bear.

Nothing made sense to me. The arrival of these three intruders. The strange words I understood. The unheard of animals. The ruined state of the station. The name ‘Strythe.’ This cascade of inexplicable events left me completely bewildered. I followed after the others in a daze.

The onslaught seemed to calm the two rivals’ nerves. Without a word, they agreed to postpone their confrontation for another day. The group approached the empty nest of the xlobots. Mounds of filth covered the ground here, along with branches, bones, and knots of fur. Heaps of trash clogged the way forward.

“Wait. There must be an elevator ahead.”

“What are you talking about, novice?”

“I uh… I think there must be a way up. I feel a draft of air.”

We continued on through the mess. The animal waste had broken down to soil long ago, and was not as repulsive as it would have been fresh from the xlobat. I knocked aside clumps of branches and twigs. We came to a niche where bat pups squeaked for their mothers. The monsters had been protecting their breeding grounds, which explained their hostility. The young were the size of squirrels and had almost no hair. The three woman ignored them.

The elevator was wide open, but the car wasn’t there. So the door gave direct access to the elevator shaft. I poked my head inside but could not see the car above either. The metal frames set into the exposed rock had rusted away. Now only discolored blotches stained the walls. We would not take a ride on this elevator.

“Great. A shortcut. Let’s head up,” Gritha said.

“You expect me to climb up that? It’s four stories straight up.”

“We don’t have any rope to help you, novice. And we’re not going to carry you. Either keep up or get left behind,” Malisent said as she elbowed me out of the way.

Xlobats had left the inside of the shaft filthy. Piles of debris choked the bottom. The walls were slick with moisture. Despite that, Gritha went up the inside like a baboon. She used for hand- and footholds the divots in the stone that had formerly secured the metal frames. It might as well have been a ladder to her. Malisent followed. Veylien reluctantly went last. It wasn’t the danger or height that bothered her, but that dirt would further ruin her clothes.

Not only were these women expert sword-users, they were super athletes too. Their heavy weapons and metal clothing did not slow them down. They flew up the shaft as I watched from below. There was no way I could do that.

I was left alone in a deep pit holding a dying torch.