It felt like ages before Kayden, Tham, and the Mimicker reached the oversized circular hole that was the entrance to the sewers. In extreme fortune, it did have a small ledge at either side of the stinking river that were the contents of Unbadda’s sewer system.
Kayden and Tham each ripped off a piece of their clothing to use as face masks. At this rate, they’d end their adventure dressed with just their shoes. Even so, the smell was almost unbearable.
As they adventured deeper and deeper into the sewer system, they started getting cold. Sure, outside, summer hadn’t yet ended, but as far as Kayden knew, the temperature of caves didn’t change with the weather. Both Kayden and Tham were carrying torches –which, due to humidity, had been ridiculously hard to light up–, but they didn’t heat much. Besides, they were getting hungry, but knew it would leave them with a bitter taste to take off their face masks to eat with this stench. So forward they went. The only one at ease was the Mimicker –Kayden was really starting to think its capacity to feel senses was selective.
It wasn’t long before they came upon a fork in the sewer tunnel, both ways looking exactly the same. Kayden had been here before, he knew it. He didn’t remember the exact circumstances, but the right way should be…
“Uhhh, left,” Kayden said.
Tham turned to look at him. “You don’t sound convinced.”
“Yeah, don’t worry,” Kayden said. “You see, the natural option for everyone is to turn right. After all, it’s called the ‘right way.’ It’s instinct. But the Empire of the Shattered Sky is evil in every way possible. Thinking logically, it would never let someone succeed the right way. So it’s reasonable to think we need to go left.”
“Well, you’re the boss,” Tham shrugged. “I have no idea where to go here, so you lead, and I’ll follow.”
And so the left way they took.
As they reached the source of the water after several twists and turns, Kayden stopped, and spoke.
“Uhhh, Tham?” he said. He let out some nervous laughter. “We’re lost.”
“...”
“But!” Kayden added. “This only means we know which the right way is. We just gotta go back the way we came and we’ll… be…”
He looked backward, only to find them among a roundabout of five different paths, carved into the deep rock.
“...Where,” Tham asked, “...did we come from?”
Kayden breathed in deep. “This way,” he said, and started marching. He had no idea. But Tham followed.
They marched for a long time into the depths –or heights– of the labyrinthine cavern complex, having to refill their torches several times with the ancient vending machines they very occasionally found along the way. The rock sometimes sported big square openings, as if for some kind of gates, but anything that once occupied those oversized spaces and caverns appeared to be long gone.
Hours of silent walking –only broken by Tham’s occasional singing or whistling– seemed to pass before they reached a very particular kind of door. It looked metallic, but the only way Kayden had of classifying it as a door was that it was perfectly smooth and straight, tall and thin in the surface of the rock.
“This must be it!” Kayden said. “The exit to the city of Unbadda. Are you ready, Tham?”
“Yeah!” Tham said, breathing in deep. “Let’s go save everyone.”
“Is Unbadda underground?” the Mimicker asked.
“No, why?” Kayden replied.
“We’ve been going downward this whole time!” it said.
“...Maybe it’s a staircase,” Tham proposed.
“Yeah, let’s just try to figure out how to open it first,” Kayden said. “It doesn’t seem to have any kind of doorknob.”
“I think I’ve read about doors like this,” Tham said. “Doors that don’t look like doors. Maybe… maybe it’s a mimic. A monster acting like a door to lure adventurers into its jaws. Like the Mimicker, but less cool.”
Kayden took several steps back and picked up a stone.
“Let’s put it to the test.”
He tossed it at the door, expecting a massive mouth to show its teeth or something, but the door instead… crashed and shattered.
“It was glass,” Tham said. “That was… anti–”
An alarm started blaring at full blast all throughout the rock complex, a loud wee-ooh-wee-ooh that made Kayden yelp and Tham jump.
“Now what?” Tham exclaimed. “We’re going to be caught!”
“By what?” the Mimicker replied. “There’s no one here!”
A single shining red dot lit up from beyond the broken glass door. It started getting larger as the whirring of machines slowly overpowered the blaring alarm.
“I should be calling 911,” a feminine robotic voice said, “but it’s been so long, I’d rather have some Nine-One-Fun!”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The darkness beyond the doorway lit up to a large hall with circular dinner tables set up since who-knows-when, a multi-colored ball hanging high from who-knows-where, and a diverse array of musical instruments playing themselves who-knows-how.
At the end of the room, to a stage empty save for a microphone stand, strolled in a figure unlike anything Kayden had ever seen before. It was like a person, but fully made of metal, with a square head, a red suit-and-tie, a wide handkerchief around her neck, and a black top hat.
“Our guests have arrived!” she said, spinning around. “Men, get out the fine cutlery! Oh, that’s right, you did that already. Such live wires.”
Kayden frowned. “What is this?” he asked out loud.
“Oh-ho-ho!” the metal woman giggled. “The music? It’s electro-swing, baby! The New Roaring Twenties are here to stay!”
“No, I mean–”
“The CEO asked for entertainment, and he’ll get it!” she continued. “Even if he hasn’t showed up in more than half a millennium. We put on the Ritz! We’ll wait fifteen minutes before we start, just to see if any guests arrive later. Is that okay with you, honey?”
“I don’t think–” Tham started.
“Swell!” the metal woman said. “Take a seat and have a bite. The show’s about to begin!”
Insecure of what to do, but definitely craving for some good food, Kayden carefully settled down on a chair in the nearest table, leaning the Mimicker next to it, and Tham followed. There was a metallic half-circle for each chair at every table, which Kayden opened, only to find the dried-up and rotten remains of what way too long ago must’ve been steak. He sighed.
“We don’t have time for this!” Tham told him in a low voice. “We gotta go.”
“You’re leaving already?” the metal woman said from the stage. “Oh, pity. The Skyland Inauguration Ceremony was about to begin!”
Kayden paused. “The what?”
“Hmph! I thought you were leaving. We’ll start right away, then. We can’t wait for the CEO and his friends any longer, and you guys are the next-best thing.”
The lights from the multi-colored ball dimmed as a drumroll started rising.
“Bladies and gentlemen!” she called out. “It’s time for the event you’ve been waiting for the last two decades. We haven’t long. Once awakened, we can only work for a few minutes on our own power before being plugged in. A bunch of baloney, if you ask me! But well, what am I to do? I’ll just hurry up.”
She waited for a few seconds while Kayden and Tham politely clapped from their seats.
“As we all know, the situation is critical. The World Empire has lost control of Africa, South America, and Oceania to the Echo Entities. Lawbending still hasn’t been perfected, and statistics show it won’t be made massively available before the Echo Entities take over everything. We may lose our planet… but we won’t lose hope! That’s because the Skylands, the greatest marvel of engineering of the Modern Age… have been… completed! The results of the draw for the ones who will make them their home will be published on our website on Sunday, September 1st, 2024!”
2024, Kayden repeated in his mind.
Kayden was too confused to clap. Hadn’t Tham said 2724? What… was going on?
“Let’s take a tour through the future while we’re at it, shall we?” she continued.
A three-dimensional ethereal image grew in the middle of the hall through some ancient piece of technology Kayden didn’t recognize. It showed the Skylands. Kayden’s home. The place he had for his whole childhood thought was the entire universe.
World Empire… Echo Entities… Lawbending… Skylands… Modern Age… Kayden’s thoughts were swimming in an ocean of unknowns. He didn’t listen to what the metal woman said next.
“...through Permabenders, powerful artifacts that will store Lawbending for millennia to come and keep the Skylands on the sky!” the woman was saying when Kayden managed to pay attention again. “We’ll save the world. Mankind will survive! So let’s cheer and dance to this, because the death of the planet will not mean the end of–!”
Everything went black.
“They ran out of power!” the Mimicker said.
Kayden was too overwhelmed to reply. Same as Tham, it seemed. What… had just happened?
“Too bad,” the Mimicker added. “They had cool music.”
They exited the room and continued walking through the cavern complex in silence. They had a lot to think about.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t much later that they reached a massive chamber-like opening in a cavern. The rock ceiling was so high up, so dark, it could well have been the night sky –except it had no stars. It was cold in there. Very cold.
In the perfect center, chained by hands and feet to the ground, there was a man. A tiny man. Dressed in a really strange orange jumper, the dark-skinned man couldn’t be taller than half a meter. He was sitting on the ground with crossed legs, his head downcast and hair drooping. The only other thing in the chamber was an apple core next to him. High on a rock wall there was a basket full of apples, but there were way too far for the man to reach.
He slowly looked up as Kayden and Tham entered the chamber. He actually looked pretty well-nourished, but that was the extent of his health. His eyes looked like they’d seen way more than they were willing to remember.
Kayden perked up as he saw him, and ran over to him.
“Hey, um, excuse me?” Kayden asked the man. “Do you know the way out?”
“Food,” the man croaked. “Give me your food and I’ll give you my wisdom.”
“Don’t!” exclaimed the Mimicker from behind Kayden’s back. “We need our food!”
“But you don’t even have a mouth,” Tham noted.
“I eat vicariously through you,” the Mimicker explained. “If you starve to death in these caverns, I’ll starve vicariously.”
“We’ve got no choice,” Kayden said, exhausted. He tossed his backpack at the man. “Eat a little and speak.”
The man nodded slowly, opened it, and took out all of Kayden’s sandwiches, cereal bars, and fruit. He ate the entirety of it in about ten seconds, devouring at a rate no human should be able to reach.
Then he started to grow.
Slowly at first, his body started to enlargen, getting taller and wider. The shackles soon snapped under the newfound mass, and he kept growing, growing, until his body was as big as Kayden, then twice Kayden’s size, then three times, and bigger, and bigger. Kayden and Tham took several steps backward with eyes widened as the man continued up, up, until he could reach the basket full of apples. Not even after devouring them did he stop, continuing up, cracking the ground below him, reaching the cavern ceiling, and breaking through.
The man then started running, demolishing the cavern walls and ceiling in his path, clearing an enormous tunnel in the rock and leaving Kayden and Tham far behind.
They stared in awe at the massive hole in the wall as the now-giant man left them quickly behind. As they did, the entire cavern started to shake, rocks and boulders falling from the collapsing ceiling.
“What now?!” Tham asked, looking all around him in fear.
“Well,” Kayden said, forcing a smile and shrugging. “I guess we catch up.”