Skill ‘Faultline’ has increased in level. Faultline – level 2
The ringing of the notification was the first sensation to return to me upon awakening, and I had a brief moment of vertigo – it felt as if the very ground beneath me was shifting about. The pain in my chest and left arm rushed back in the next moment, alongside the realisation that it wasn’t in fact vertigo I was feeling.
The huge chunk of stone and earth I was draped across was tipped on its side and beginning to shift about, and I had just enough time to consider the precarious position I was in as it abruptly slipped down the small mountain of rubble we were balanced upon.
I was thrown bodily from the impromptu sled as it impacted the floor of the cavern and sailed through the air for another heartbeat before impacting against more stone. The upside was that this stone was blessedly unmoving. It belonged to the steps I had previously seen, carved into the floor of the cavern and descending down into darkness. I had sensed correctly, and my first use of Faultline had done exactly what I’d wanted it to. Yay! Go me!
The downside, however, was that I was severely injured, sprawled across the stairs of some hidden tunnel, surrounded on all sides by rock and earth, with a massive slab of stone sliding down the stairs towards me.
It must have weighed a few tonnes, as an ungodly screech echoed from where it scraped against the rock beneath it as it barrelled down the steps. I had only a few heartbeats to act, and so with all the athleticism I could muster, I fell against the wall and groaned. Luckily, the moving shelf of stone shot past me, and I lost sight of it as it slid into the darkness. I waited for what felt like hours without hearing any final impact of it coming to a halt, so either the darkness swallowed sound, or the stairs went down a long way.
I could only see a few meters in front of me before the light was swallowed completely, and looking back up the tunnel was difficult with all the dust in the air. There was a sliver of light piercing down from above, where the ceiling had collapsed as a result of my recently acquired skill, but the rest of the tunnel was unlit.
The sides and ceiling looked natural, hinting that perhaps the structure pre-dated the carved stone stairway. I couldn’t tell how far I was from the cavern entrance, but I couldn’t hear any fighting from above, and my head was ringing from the accumulated damage I’d taken so much that I couldn’t bring myself to activate my stone sense to check.
Instead, I stumbled down the carved steps, keeping a hand against the wall for support as I descended. I focused on my breathing, wincing with each step that jostled my mangled chest, and kept count of every step I took. After a few hundred, I was struggling to keep up with the strain of holding my body together, my legs wobbling with weakness.
I allocated a single point into Endurance to bring the total to 30, but as soon as the transformation took place, I knew that wouldn’t save me. I had been told that the effect of attribute enhancement decreased as you increased in level, if only because the ratio of the points you invested into a single attribute vs the points currently allocated would decrease, but to actually experience it was another thing entirely. I had been expecting a rush of vitality and energy to surge through me, renewing my body and steadying my legs.
Instead, I just felt a mild warmth radiate through my limbs and little else of note. My Endurance was already my highest stat by a fair margin, and while it would certainly help my recovery in the long term, it would do little for me now.
I panted as my feet stopped moving and gritted my teeth against the pain that stung with every breath. I spat against the wall, hearing the wet impact and knowing that saliva alone wasn’t enough to prompt it. Maybe you just bit your cheek when you fell? Don’t think about it and keep moving. I tried not to dwell on the thought of what blood in my mouth could mean, and instead allocated the other four points into strength.
A flash of pleasure shot through every nerve in my body, and my legs suddenly felt slightly less weak, the burden they carried ever so slightly lighter. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to coax me into continuing.
A few hundred more steps passed before I felt a change in the air around my face. The tunnel was still pitch black, the only light source now hundreds of meters above and failing to penetrate this deep. Enhanced perception could only do so much without a light source nearby, and so I was relying on the feel of the natural rock against my hand and the carved stone beneath. The other side of the tunnel suddenly felt less close than before though.
Had it been a gradual change I doubt I would have noticed, but the certainty I had that I was on one side of a tunnel vanished and was instead replaced with the creeping dread that I could be in a massive room, enemies from my left crawling ever closer with each moment. I stopped, fighting off the panic manually, knowing my mind was too strained to activate two skills at once, and also knowing I needed my stone sense right now. Faultline activated with a grunt, and while I couldn’t drop into my soul-space in my current state, I felt the drain deep within me. I had only moments left with the skill before my core ran dry completely.
I pulsed the stone-sense, rapidly building a mental picture of my surroundings. I was still hugging the wall of the tunnel, with steps continuing down beneath me, curling gradually to the left. However, the left-hand side of the tunnel cut away abruptly to empty space. As my skill-guided magic ran through the rock all around, the image in my mind enlarged, filling out. The stairway rang along and down the edge of a massive cylindrical chamber, at least a hundred meters wide judging by the gentle curving of the walls, although I couldn’t sense far enough to view the other wide.
The chamber descended further than I could sense as well, and the same was true when I extended the sense upwards. So, either a strange cylindrical hole in the deep rock, or a tunnel of massive proportions leading up to the surface. The stairs I was descending down had appeared out of a tunnel in the wall seemingly at random, but for all I knew this giant chamber was honeycombed with tunnels leading gods knew where.
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I spent a few precious moments bottling up the fear that the unknown held, cramming it all into a little box and forcibly shoving it to the back of my mind. Once done, I set off again, keeping a hand glued to the wall as I descended onwards.
The panic was close however, hovering at the back of my mind and ever eager to take the reins. I nearly tripped, and in steadying myself lost my grip on the wall to my right. The intensity of the anxiety that gripped my soul in that moment was shocking, and I scrabbled to find the wall so obsessively that I ended up grazing my knuckles against it in my haste.
Time seemed to lose all meaning in that enormous chamber. With no point of reference to measure my progress against, and no light by which to see it even if it did exist, I plodded ceaselessly for what felt like an age.
I couldn’t quite remove the thought that something alien and gigantic stood silently within the chamber to my left, tentacled hands reaching out to grasp me. A strange desire to simply end the nightmare intruded, a small voice telling me to just fling myself off the ledge.
It was strangely alluring too. I was certain I wasn’t being influenced by an eldritch horror beyond comprehension. Although how certain can you ever really be of that? No, this desire felt organic and entirely my own. It didn’t come from any deluded sense that something blissful was awaiting me, or in order to commune with a greater entity.
This feeling was so alluring precisely because it offered a way out of the horrifying reality I currently lived. I could go on, but without knowing how long this would continue on for, I was committing to an ageless eternity in terror. The counterpoint was a quick death.
Just leap.
That’s all; no dramatics, no uncertainty, and no more fear. Just a quick and hopefully painless death.
Certainty. It called to me in a familiar voice.
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I was suddenly reminded of a conversation with my Ma. She had dropped a glass on the floor and screamed. 8-year-old me had run in, scared in the way only a child whose parent was hurt could be. She wasn’t hurt though, at least not in any way that I could understand at that age.
I saw the shell of the glass on the floor and looked with wide eyes at Ma just leaning against the sink, a look of pure defeat on her face. It hit me then how old she looked. The last few years had taken their toll but again, 8-year-old me couldn’t understand. All I knew was that Ma had screamed, but she wasn’t hurt.
I’d asked if she was okay, and she’d just nodded and said something that sounded more like a cough than words. I’d knelt down and started picking up the pieces, and she’d let me. Normally she tried to keep me away from stuff like this, worried I’d get nicked by the broken edges of cans or glass bottles - the kitchen was filled with points of fear for a parent, after all.
But this time she let me, and moved not an inch while I went about clearing up the big pieces, getting the dustpan and brush and hunting along the aged vinyl floor for stray bits. I made it into a game, jumping from spot to spot like a frog, pouncing on my prizes and tidying away the mess.
It must have taken minutes, and I remembered the feeling of strong arms embracing me, lifting me from the floor to nestle into her shoulder as Ma picked me up again like she used to. I tried to sit on the edge of the sink to let it take my weight, cus I knew she wasn’t strong enough anymore to hold me up like she used to. Always thought it was because I’d grown, but looking back…might be that she’d gotten weaker too. It was hard to think of my Ma as weak though.
She’d started crying by then, and that just made me cling on tighter, trying desperately to help but having no idea what the problem was. I remember the kisses on my forehead, the half-laughing half-crying way she said my name. The feeling of safety and confusion both.
How could Ma be sad when she was always happiness and comfort to me? Maybe I was misremembering, and 8-year-old me was smarter than I was giving him credit for, but the confusion felt true at least. I’d asked again what was wrong, and she’d just shaken her head, hair tickling my chin as she did.
“I’m just tired.” She’d said, and I’d pouted.
“You can’t be tired. You’re never tired! You’re always doing stuff.”
“…and it gets tiring doing stuff all the time.” She’d replied with a smile.
“Then why not do less stuff then, stupid-Ma?” I’d asked with the wisdom of an 8-year-old and the smugness of a stage magician.
“Rukha…” She sighed as she said the nickname she’d given me, sounding weary beyond her years.
“I don’t do as much stuff as you and I’m never tired!” I exclaimed, fighting back a yawn as I did so. It won me another smile though, more genuine this time, and that was victory enough for me, even back then.
“You’re little, it’s different” She’d said.
“But Ma.” I’d stamped my little feet, outraged that she’d dismiss my wisdom like that. “Let me do it then. I fixed the glass and that took like a second! I’ll do it all. I’ll sweep the kitchen, and cook some food, and put Phula to bed and feed the cats outside and give Nona her little knitty spikes-“
I’d gone on and on then, listing all the things, great and small, that needed doing in our little household, and Ma had hugged me all the while until I’d eventually worn myself out. She’d carried me out of the kitchen and tucked me into the little cot, taking care not to wake my sister across the room as she did so.
She wrapped me up and kissed my forehead, and I sleepily asked her what we would do tomorrow.
I remembered her face then, the way it fell, unveiling an emotion I didn’t understand at the time. I could remember her eyes now though, and I recognised that look as an adult.
Bone-deep exhaustion. And dread.
“We do it all again” she’d said.
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As I gazed longingly out into the darkness to my left, I relived the memory. The call of the void rang in my mind, but as it scrabbled for purchase, the surface of my thoughts was slick with memories. Of all the times I had resisted. Of the example Ma had set for her little Rukha.
Death is easy, living is hard – that was the message of Ma’s final years. She’d held on until her hands were gnarled from the effort, her body twisted and wasting away, battered by time and weathered by bitter experience. But she’d held on for as long as she could.
Long enough for me and Phula to grow up. Long enough for us to leave. The relief I’d seen on her face at the end was palpable. It wasn’t so much acceptance as it was joy – to be done with it all, finally. To let go of the guilt, the expectation and responsibility, and to take one final selfish action – to give up, at long last.
Took me a while to get over my hatred of Da for leaving us like he did. I couldn’t show it of course, he had sacrificed everything for us after all. Death in service, blah blah blah. It rang hollow though. He’d died for sure, but Ma had lived for us. She’d done it day after exhausting day.
He’d made one choice, and she’d made a thousand. I would have hated him less if I hadn’t heard them arguing before he left. Ma begging him to stay, for our sakes. He had his duty apparently, but it wasn’t to his wife, and it wasn’t to his kids.
And much like Altine, with its guardian and its hero, there was a lesson hidden in my past. Who did I want to be like? Ma – pitiable and enduring, or Da – respected and ephemeral. The answer would be nearly unanimous in the village, but little Rukha and Phula would have dissented from that obvious opinion.
I turned away from the cavernous abyss and continued on my journey. I didn’t question why I’d recalled that specific memory, and I didn’t question why it was strange either.
Slithering roots retreated into the darkness, and my memories fled with them.