Chapter 17 - Dive into Darkness

Not for the first time, I cursed the System and its tendency to make decisions for me. I was skinny before Integration, before five extra points in Body were forced upon me by virtue of just trying to live through my tutorial. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded a little extra bulk. I’d always been a small guy, smaller than my peers at least, and hard living in the Outers didn’t help things. A few extra pounds of muscle might have gained me some respect back home and reduced my dependency on pulleys and lifts in the shop.

Now, I would have killed for my old, wiry build.

I ground my teeth together and twisted at the waist, gaining myself a couple more inches of progress down the hole and toward the surface of the underriver. My feet dangled beneath me, the remains of my boots scraping on the rough, porous surface of the rock, while I was forced to angle my shoulders with one arm above my head and one down at my side so I could fit inside the cramped confines of the little tunnel.

Curse my sexy new wide shoulders.

My cell was only about ten feet above my head now, or at least that was my guess. Detect Limestone only went for about 17 feet, and I could still see the roof of my cell from here.

My scourge-touched neighbors were extremely upset by my absence. Upon waking up today and doing some light stretching, I’d waved goodbye to them and carefully lowered myself down to this point. If I thought the black ones sounded excited when they tried to kill me, it was nothing compared to when they lost sight of me. Even now, half an hour later, they were still going insane. The sound of their desperate, grating voices took on a hollow quality by the time they reached me down here.

I’d done a good bit of widening of this hole over my time stuck in the cell, but that work only extended a few feet down. Consequently, I’d slid down here in an easy, controlled fashion at first, but now things were tight.

Now, progress was slow and painful. I had to move one piece of myself at a time. Hips, arm, ribs, shoulders. That was the order. Nothing else seemed to work. It was hell on my clothes, their rough threads catching on the tiniest of imperfections in the rock, forcing me to sacrifice them to gain distance. They were already ripped and torn in places thanks to my ill conceived spear fight with a wall of claws, but now they were barely clothes at all.

After a while, I came to a part of the tunnel where my ribs no longer fit. I couldn’t see the lip of the hole anymore, and I had to estimate I was about at the halfway mark. Suddenly, my torso just wedged itself tight, the weight of my body dragging me down and the cave walls squeezing my rib cage until I couldn’t breathe properly. That nearly panicked me. I kicked and squirmed, twisted my prosthetic down at my side to try to get some room. It helped but only a little.

I couldn’t go back up. At that point, I just couldn’t conceive of it. Staying would just be a slow death by starvation. Therefore, the only way was forward… or down in this case.

Taking a moment to summon my calm by closing my eyes, I blew every bit of air out of my lungs.

*Scrtch*

The sound of metal on stone. The sound of progress.

The only thing that would save me was progress.

I couldn’t take a full breath anymore. I sucked air into my lungs in rapid, shallow gulps like a fish out of water. There wasn’t enough room for anything else. Spots danced in my vision, and my head felt fuzzy.

*Scrtch*

Twist, scoot, breathe. That was my world now.

*Scrtch*

All that I knew was the descent.

I. Wanted. Out.

Then, my feet met the surface of the water, ice cold, soaking through the ragged leather of my boots and into my socks. The sudden temperature change shocked my brain out of hibernation, and I paid attention to Detect Limestone again.

The underriver was right there. My tunnel ended nearly right at the water’s surface, and I’d be dropping down through a ceiling vent into the current.

I switched over to Detect Iron to try and see if there were any creatures around I needed to worry about, but I found none. I did find a lot of blood and bits of skin I’d left behind on the cave walls during my descent though. That was an uncomfortable sight, made less so by my having lived in a room covered in blood in the recent past.

One last push, and I would be through.

Nodding and rolling my neck, I tried to psych myself up for the eventual cold plunge.

Here we go.

I summoned one of my aluminum diving tanks into existence and held it in my hand, saturating it again with Shape so I could form an aperture in the breathing straw if needed.

Then, I was on the move again.

Twist, scoot, breath. Repeat.

Suddenly, with a final, grating, flesh ripping slide over the rock, I was falling. The water rushed up to envelop me, quickly subsuming the rest of my torso and my head.

The shock of the cold nearly killed me. My body desperately wanted to gasp at the sudden icy chill that invaded my core and stung my bloody wounds, but I knew this was coming. I only got a partial mouthful of water before I was back under control.

One thing Hunty was right about was how swift the current of the underriver was. Instantly, I was swept away, taking a shallow diagonal trip deeper into the water, maybe about nine feet down before I finally hit the cave floor hard enough to hurt my knees.

Oh yes, I sank, and I sank quickly. Having a good portion of your body replaced by metal did that, but it wasn’t all bad. Detect helped me find the nearest nub of solid stone and plant my feet to get my bearings. I fumbled around with my diving tank, bringing the breathing straw to my lips before Shaping the stem and allowing a spurt of air to enter my mouth.

I may have overpressurized it a bit. Breathing through it felt like someone was blasting my lungs with a cannon, and it triggered my gag reflex. It took a couple more tries, but I eventually fixed the issue with some re-Shaping in the stem.

Transferring my oxygen tank into my metal hand, I summoned the little iron rod I’d saved for this. I cast Volatility, pumping mana into the thing for only a couple seconds before the purple glow had the right intensity. I held up my new lamp and took a look around with my real, actual, human eyes.

The water was clear and swift. Tiny particulates rushed past me, borne on the strong current, down deeper into the planet. The bottom of the river was a carpet of nubby, brown stalagmites long worn down by time and the rushing water, while the walls were smooth and streaked with yellow bands that waved and wove over themselves as if a product of the current as well. Once in a while, a particularly strong blast of water doubled me over and threatened to dislodge me from my safe perch.

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I took another breath from my tank. As much as I hated having an elevated Body before, I was grateful for it now. I didn’t have to breathe as much as I thought I would, my baseline of fitness now far above my original. What’s more, the cold, while shocking and unpleasant, didn’t make me instantaneously hypothermic as I’d feared. There was no reason to wait around for that to happen though.

Glow rod in my metal hand, oxygen tank in my other, I kicked off my perch and made to follow the current.

The thought had occurred to me that I could go upstream to find the area of the river the Goblins used for drinking water, but there were two problems with that. First, the river was strong, and I would spend most of my energy and air trying to fight against the current. Second, my goblins’ cave was overrun by scourge-touched now. There was no guarantee of safety even if I could even find the goblins’ exit and fit through it.

So, downriver I went. After a couple embarrassing attempts at walking along the bottom and one close call where the current bowled me over and nearly made me detonate my grenade/glow rod, I found my groove. I ended up doing a sort of flying, bounding leap like you might do in low-grav. I would kick off the bottom of the river and extend my arms to keep control of my trajectory, then my mass would inevitably bring me back down to the floor. The method used minimal energy and oxygen, and it made pretty good time too.

I could only hope that the river would take me somewhere better than my cell, instead of just further and further and further down until I ran out of air.

—---------------

The river did go down. Far, far down. Gradually at first, but then it wound through tight, branching tubes that swept my body downward fast and popped my ears with the change in pressure. More than once, I had to hold onto the cave walls with Devouring Grasp to arrest my momentum and chart a safe path through.

I’m not sure how long it took. I had no buffs with which to track time. I was certainly starting to feel the strain of constant cold and physical activity, and, though I didn’t feel anything, I knew my body needed food and rest.

I only really noticed a change in the current when the water started getting cloudy, my light unable to reach the cave walls anymore. Indeed, my pace slowed quickly at that point, not due to the visibility, but because the water grew increasingly sluggish until I was practically walking on the bottom instead of riding the current.

As I took in some air from my third breathing tank, I got a taste of the water and nearly gagged. Whatever floated in here with me, it was foul, and it stuck to my tongue like paste. Furthermore, there was a temperature difference here. The water was warmer, not comfortably warm, but certainly not the iciness of before.

Under my feet, solid rock gave way to muddy silt that exploded into obscuring debris clouds with every footfall, and eventually, the ground started to slope upward until I was trudging up a squishy mud heap barely even able to see my hand that held the glow rod.

Then, suddenly, my head crested the surface, practically bursting into the open air. I was so surprised, I fumbled my oxygen tank and dropped it into the water.

Bringing the glow rod up, high over my head, I tried to get a good look at where I was.

I was in an underground lake of some sort, wide and glassy other than the waves I made with my body. The smooth surface of the water reflected the light my glow stick cast until I could see almost the entirety of the cave.

The place was expansive, bigger than a couple aircraft hangars jammed together. The ceiling was a cathedral of enormous polished stalactites made of some kind of glossy rock, their inverted spires towering over their neighbors, jockeying for the title of the grandest.

At the center of the lake, an island of pale moss gathered around a central pillar of rock that seemed to bear the load of everything above. Tumor-like blobs of amber grew from the sides of the pillar and seemed to be in the process of slowly liquifying to coat the rock below.

With tired, wobbling steps, I sloshed through the mud to make my way to the island. The thought of solid ground beneath my feet and a quiet meal practically invaded my mind. Then, after a rest, maybe I could refill my tanks and move on.

For now, though, I just wanted to be still.

The air was thick with the smell of sulfur like rotten eggs or biomass rotting in a pond. Back home, if we didn’t purify our water, it smelled like this. Awful for sure, but at least familiar.

I plopped down on the moss covered mud, my back to the glossy central rock, and I just let the world turn around me for a while. My inner ear seemed to be reluctant to give up the feeling of constant motion I’d acquired in the underriver, and the world seemed to constantly tilt from side to side.

So, where was I now? The underlake?

I sighed with relief. I was alive and breathing. That was something to celebrate. Putting down my glow rod and stowing my air canister, I summoned my final piece of dried meat from Tiba. I promised myself I’d savor this one, once I was out.

Well, I was out, or at least out of my cell. After so long living in a closet-sized tomb of rock, the lake seemed so big, endless even.

I took a bite of the meat, tearing it with my teeth and letting the spice tingle in my mouth.

“Ay loss mu-y’iah.”

I took another bite of my jerky, closing my eyes and letting go of that ball of worry in my stomach, at least for now.

“Me tek oosrah mule,” someone called to me again, her voice a sweet, cold soprano, delicate like a flute of crystal.

I shuddered awake, or maybe I’d always been awake. My eyes felt so heavy, my limbs were made of lead, but my heart hammered in my chest, so hard the muscles in my neck twitched in time with the beat.

“Ooh loktika morishna booleahn,” she said.

My head lolled to the side, so I could turn toward the voice.

It was a woman, or at least she was shaped like one, tall and lithe. Her sparkling, pale skin practically glowed, broken only by the blush of her cheeks and the curtains of raven hair that were the only things covering her nudity. She glided toward me, her steps so light, the soft moss did little more than tremble slightly at her touch.

I was awake now. Probably. My eyes kept trying to close without my permission, and my insides wobbled like I was standing too close to an atmo-rocket on take off.

Smiling, the mystery woman leaned over and offered her hand to me. Now that she was close, her features seemed exaggerated slightly, sharper than I was accustomed to, the eyes too far apart, too large, and her chin too narrow. Little stubby antlers protruded from the backs of her temples too, as if I needed another reminder that I was far from home. Her hair smelled of flowers and spring rain.

My pulse quickened.

I got up on my own power, not daring to touch the woman’s hand, not that I would have been able to. Once I made to stand, she practically lept away, dancing over the moss carpet light as a feather, her hair doing interesting things to frame her body.

She looked back at me and giggled invitingly.

“Hey, stop,” I slurred. Staggering, I reached out, not wanting her to go too far into the water. It could be dangerous in the water. “Don’t go in there. Its-”

The woman danced back again, this time, offering a twirl of flowing limbs and hair and floral scent that warmed me, made me…

I took a step forward, the mud giving way with a *shlorp* as my foot broke through the moss, and I tripped.

That’s what saved my life.

I caught myself with my hands, feeling the mud slide between my fingers and up my wrists, but I was low to the ground now. Looking up to make sure I didn’t lose sight of my new lady friend, I got a good view of the surface of the water.

Calm and glassy before, the water roiled now, seething and sloshing up on the bank of my island. Mist filled the cavern(or had it always?), thick and tinted with particulates, something like perfume or pollen. A shadow of something long and slithering passed beneath the surface of the lake.

I shook my head and slapped myself to get some of my sense back. Adrenaline was coursing through me now, clearing my mind and enhancing my senses to let me pick up on a low vibration, a hum that quivered just beyond my hearing but enticed sympathetic echoes in my head and in my body. I reached back and picked up my glow rod, holding it high.

As I did so, the woman vanished beneath the surface of the water, and, despite myself, I nearly cried out and dove in after her, so strong was the compulsion.

Get it together, Ryan. This is the last place you’d want to find a girl.

I forced the urge to follow the lady to take a back seat to my conscious thoughts. Then I turned in a circle to make sure I was-

My light fell upon something huge and round with a green, waxy skin suspended by thick stalks that rose from the water. Drops of moisture fell from its skin into the pool below, with tiny drip, drip, drips. It reminded me of a bulb, like a flower that had not yet bloomed.

Smoothly, silently, a giant, fanged, pink and yellow tri-petaled maw unfurled itself from the pale green bulb, its yawning expanse wide enough to swallow me twice. It made no sound except for the air it displaced as it rushed toward me, colored flaps quivering with its movement.

“Whaaa!” I screamed in panic, rearing back and chucking my only source of light straight down the creature’s throat.