Day 7

Emm

Emm heard them long before a light flickered farther ahead of him. It made him wary when Harvey’s voice bounced the walls. Emm knew that the conman had left with Giliad and the innkeeper, the two men Valaré meant to bring back to Cape Town. Emm didn’t recognize the second person and assumed it must be Giliad.

The cave forked into a web of interlinked corridors. Without a doubt, they were directly beneath Soto. It seemed strange to know that this cave existed while Emm boasted himself to be a capable scout. A capable scout would never have missed it in the first place.

The topology of the cave allowed Emm to sneak close enough to check on the men. They’d built a small fire. Harvey was easy to spot, while the man with tattoos had to be Giliad. Wait a minute, these tattoos…

Emm knew them. Butcher’s men had skirmished with the Rain Tribe once and had paid a price for their transgression. What was a Rain Tribesman doing here?

“It was a mistake to let him go,” Harvey said.

“It’s not like I could stop him in the first place.”

Harvey mused the response, while a third man lying in the darkness groaned.

“Didn’t you say that your goddess has sent you? Cannot you ask her to intervene?”

The tribesman shuddered at the mention of a goddess but quickly reasserted a harder stance.

“And why would I do that?”

“Didn’t you see the monsters outside? What if they decide to hunt us down?”

“I don’t like this as much as you, Harvey, but my orders were clear: allow Giliad to do whatever he came here to do and then escort him away from this place. Having him with us is not what he wants.”

Harvey grunted but his face betrayed that he wasn’t finished. Emm had spent many weeks with the conman and learned to never rely on visual cues when it came to Harvey. The conman was a cheater that fooled even Emm’s natural instincts.

“Is your goddess going to intervene if these monsters come? Did you see what has happened to one of them?”

The tribesman shrugged.

“Listen, man,” Harvey continued with a pleading note. “All I want is to get home safely. These caves don’t fill me with optimism.”

The tribesman huffed.

“Then you should’ve stayed home.”

Harvey didn’t argue with that. Emm was about to withdraw to find out where Giliad had gone when Zuma climbed to his feet.

“Did I hear someone say ‘monsters’?”

“I thought you decided to die,” Harvey said.

Zuma’s expression darkened. Emm was aware that Siddy killed someone in the inn and he could see the tension between the men.

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“I just needed a nap,” Zuma said after a moment, breaking the strained silence. “Anyway, I hoped Giliad would be back by now. Is your boss that strong?”

“He’s not my boss,” Harvey snapped. “I worked for him because I had no other choice. The moment a chance presented itself, I escaped.”

Emm left them to their awkward conversation. In his mind, he wondered about the same: how strong was Butcher? He was a bastard Royalblood but so was Giliad. Eventually, Emm found a small cavern with a single source of light coming from its ceiling. The hole was about twenty feet from the ground with no means to reach it. A quick inspection told him that someone had climbed there recently. It could’ve been Giliad, although Emm couldn’t exclude Valaré. The man wandered off some time ago with a promise that he’d find Emm. The scout knew he should stay and wait for Valaré’s return but he badly needed to know where this exit was located inside Soto.

He started climbing.

Valaré Valai

Valaré brushed the slick wall, it left a tingling feeling under his skin. The damning moisture of the jungle wasn’t present in the cave but he noticed an unusual amount of wetness on his fingers. Many things could cause this; an underground river or a lake were the first that came to Valaré’s mind. There were plenty more but mostly related to structural integrity.

He ignored it, moving further. While keeping his eyes closed made no difference to his sight, he did so to keep his focus on a higher level. It was a trick given to him by his sister Dyun. She was an expert of the Way of Caves and her word meant a lot, even to his older siblings. Thinking of her didn’t do much good to Valaré as he lost concentration and the oppressive darkness pressed against his senses. Valaré was too experienced to lose his cool though. He’d passed the Trial of Depths and he understood what to do in the moments like this.

He took a series of deep breaths, focusing on his Aegis Field. Maintaining the weak field around his body allowed Valaré to keep the heat and pesky humidity of the jungle away from him. Inside the cave, he didn’t need to do this anymore so he’d dropped the Aegis Field.

The field was invisible and impossible to sense in such a weak state. It didn’t offer any defensive capabilities. Valaré didn’t need any. As he brought it back, it felt like the world around him changed. The illusion lasted only a moment. When his perception adjusted, Valaré probed with his enhanced senses, slowly working himself into the desired state.

The sixth sense, or as his siblings called it, the caveman’s brain fired up and the darkness around Valaré transformed into a welcome entity. The Way of Caves allowed the Royalbloods from the Third Region to comfortably live inside mountains. Valaré continued his way forward. The stillness of this place had an eerie feel. It lasted until the natural texture under Valaré’s fingers became a cut stone. With substantial effort, he didn’t lose the grip on the sense, but his mind fought to comprehend how was this possible? He was over an hour-long journey into the cave with its many turns and twists. Nothing previously warned him of a potential construction this deep. He slowed the thoughts down and an explanation eventually emerged. It had to be a mine.

At some point, the natural cave system ended and needed to be supplemented with an artificial corridor. It was how they did it in the Third Region. But the longer Valaré considered it, the less appealing it sounded. A mine inside a jungle? This place lay too far away from a stable Imperial industrial facility to make its existence profitable.

He didn’t go further, being torn by the promise to save Giliad and curiosity to find out what was at the end. He turned toward the way he’d come from and caught himself thinking about returning. As if something didn’t want him here. He was heavily leaning toward getting back when he realized that something pushed him to make that decision. Freeing his mind from responsibilities associated with the promise, Valaré rushed forward.

Unknown writings on the wall didn’t help him concentrate. He needed actively maintain the peace of his mind as he pressed ahead. The man-made section consisted of many turns, eventually, Valaré realized that he stepped into a labyrinth. The Ways of Caves had a diminished effect in man-made places and this place had been built to further confuse Valaré’s senses. He couldn’t help but wonder how enticing the danger was. It reminded him of the one time he and his brother Holtún had wandered off into the Eyeless Clan’s territory. Their father almost had failed to negotiate their release from the mad monks.

The labyrinth continued until Valaré accepted that he was lost. It was far from a laughing matter but a smile bloomed on his face. Hopelessness washed him like the absolute silence that seemed to warp the space around Valaré.

The dead-end appeared without a warning. There was nothing that suggested the finality of the corridor. That was why he concluded that it must be an obstacle. Several lines of unknown writing run horizontally. Valaré took a swing but his fist didn’t reach the wall.

Someone was in the corridor with him.