Within the crater, cracks struck outwards in jagged lines. From the gaps, red earth oozed painfully, wet and slimy despite the lack of recent rainfall. It covered whatever flat stone remained intact with a fleshy film, oily enough to tear the fast and foolish off their feet and onto their backs. The only handholds available to arrest a fall were the thousands of speartrees spread evenly throughout, spaced so that if two tall men spread their arms near one another, they would touch both flesh and the pale wood of the speartree.
These factors conspired to slow the gold and cloaked forces to a crawl. From outside the crater, troop movements were reasonably obvious, but for those fighting inside the terrain remained a maze of claustrophobic forestry, poor footing, and potential enemies waiting at every corner. Both sides moved like mice in a grand kitchen, fearful of the cat’s bite.
The gold-plated Albrights had the most advantageous position – they’d withdrawn to the central mound to encircle it in layers of spearmen and archers. Further enhancing their defences were the increased density of speartrees around the mound; at many places, their opponents would have to advance one at a time, with every one killed adding another obstacle that needed climbing before an attacker even reached the Albright troops. At a glance, it was obvious that the Albrights regulars were well-trained. Each swing, stab or step synchronised with the soldier beside them – any one of them could’ve killed two or three of the Baylarian militia we’d fought – and well-equipped. Beneath the grime and gold paint, all wielded iron at the minimum. Even discounting the Blooded that were undoubtedly amongst them, they weren’t a force I’d want to face on equal footing.
The other side was far less impressive. Their armour was mismatched, but generally lesser, pitting their fur cloaks – smeared with mud and leaves – and leather or bronze pauldrons against iron edges. Their weapons were similarly bronze or stone, with the exception of some that bore what seemed to be speartree daggers or needles. I couldn’t quite make out how they gripped the weapons. Though some had clearly looted better gear from dead Albright soldiers, the cloaked warriors should’ve been torn apart by the gold like wet paper.
Yet even so, they were slowly winning. Roughly sixty gold soldiers remained, facing almost one hundred cloaked warriors. Some of that was due to the fact those wielding wrought speartree – and I wondered how they’d maintained such weapons, given the difficulty of working with the material – were on average taller and more muscular than their counterparts. I’d have suspected Oxblood, were it not for their lesser strength and greater endurance – any of Enn’s ilk would have conserved their strength or fallen with torn ligaments. They were also far more skilled than the common soldiers, and every time they encountered an obvious Blooded – Ox, Fox, or Lizard – they would withdraw. But most of it was due to their movements, which were conducted with an awareness of the battlefield that the Albrights could not possess. I might’ve suspected divinity, were it not for four hooded figures atop one of the stony mountains, watching the entire battle and frequently beating drumbeats pregnant with regular pauses and deliberate patterns. With their scouts already dead, the Albright forces could offer no counter without killing those in the crater.
But Kit could. And when she did, the cloaked warriors would lose their greatest asset, leaving the two sides in a bloody slugfest over controlling the central mound. No one present had much love for House Albright – not after the Declaration had effectively given Baylar the go-ahead to invade Heltia for unsubstantiated wrongs – but chaos offered the best opportunity to extract those trapped in the mound. Once we gave a signal, or once we emerged from the mound, she would strike. Given the importance of her task, I’d reluctantly acceded to Kit’s request for my sword. Her own had been lost grappling with the Fox, and the onyx godsbone held an edge far more ferocious than the steel blade I’d looted from the dead Albright scouts.
Maddie, Willow, and Daisy would wait near Kit. Gast’s pebble would direct us to them once we found whoever remained within the mound.
By process of elimination, Tully and I were left to try and infiltrate, wearing the gold steel stolen from the scouts. Hers was too large, and mine was too small – my skull barely fit in the accompanying helmet – but the Spiderblood was insistent she knew enough military protocol to pass in the chaos, provided we conceal both our faces with mud and blood.
Every soldier in the Albright’s group would know one another; in an army of less than two hundred, that was certain. We were betting on chaos, but were it not for the high stakes those weren’t odds I would take, even at my lowest. Tully knew that. Her aged, ink-stained fingers fumbled the straps of her stolen armour, yet managed to buckle them all the same.
I lay on my belly, staring out at the people in the pit. By every single law I understood, neither party should’ve been at this place. House Albright had no business in the middle of the Heartlands, and no human on the continent should’ve been bold enough to attack them. But I doubted anyone present – even the people fighting and dying – truly understood, either.
Or maybe it was the way distance distorted their size that made me believe that. They looked like ants; roaring, fighting, dying ants, trapped in a maze of someone else’s creation. And we’d be among them, soon enough. Such beauty; it felt-
“Vin.”
I turned to find Tully looking at me. Her greying hair had been rubbed with earth, to better resemble the raven-haired corpse she’d taken her gear from. “Sorry. I didn’t hear what you said.”
Beneath the mountain we sat upon, then beneath the earth it sat upon, lay the crater. Through the blood and dirt she’d rubbed into her meticulously scarred face, the Spiderblood’s beady eyes pierced through. They flickered to the maze of speartrees, then back to me. “Are you ready?”
I rose to my feet, body straining against the constricting gold armour I wore. My gaze fell upon the monster-bone halberd I would wield, seemingly dormant between two stones. “What are the chances we can get in and out without killing anyone?” I asked.
“Low.”
I looked at the people amidst the speartrees, then at the central mound. I rubbed my forehead. “Alright,” I said, and picked up my halberd. “Let’s go.”
The two of us clambered down the mounds of stone, hopping between the larger boulders while hoping its red moss wouldn’t tear our footing away. I made several extra stops to assist the older woman on the worse bits – Tully had kept herself in good shape, but though Godsblood slowed aging, the scars across her face seemed to weigh her down twenty years more than they should’ve. The trembling in her hands and knees didn’t help – but that was her lot, with Siik’s essence in her veins.
By the time we’d made it to the bottom of the mountain, both sides had clashed and separated once again, leaving their dead behind. The repositioning of forces meant our previously clear path was now scattered with a handful of cloaked warriors – our angle was no longer good enough to give specifics. Yet the constant pounding of the Albrights on the central mound left no time for hesitation.
The sides of the crater were sharply-angled slopes halfway to sheer cliffs, lousy with loose grains of russet earth and dirt already halfway to mud. Initially, I hastily stomped down with leaps, but soon found the easier and fastest route was sliding on my back; protected by the stolen breastplate. As the ground screeched against my back and the air rushed past my ears, I looked down at the crater and found we were approaching far too slowly. After a moment, my mind processed what was happening – I’d underestimated its scale. It was deep enough that the ground transitioned through several different types: dirt to a thin, flaky crust, to some kind of spongy stone that wept liquid. Then the light of the sun passed above our heads, and in its absence a deep cold settled.
We slid further and faster, until we shot fast enough that I sprouted my ivory talons – hidden from Tully by my body’s angle – and dug them into the earth, arresting my momentum in a cloud of dirt while the talons reverberated painfully through my hand. Tully managed to seize the bottom of my halberd moments before we reached the bottom – the gold almost entirely scraped off our armour – and immediately crashed into a speartree.
Substituting the groan I ached to voice with a mere wince, I clambered to my feet using the speartree as support, and yanked the older woman upright. Surveying our surroundings, I flicked both eyes towards her. “Anything broken?”
“Hm,” she grunted, then took a slow breath in. “No.”
I spun my halberd’s haft in both hands, shifting my grip to allow for easier thrusts. “We run before we fight, okay?”
“Vin…”
“If we can lead the golds to the cloaks, or, or, the other way around, that will help us.” I paused. “Yes?”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I concur.” After a brief sigh, she turned her shaking fingers onto the hilt of her blade. The crater’s temperature fogged her breath. “Lead the way.”
A chill fell upon us as we began moving through the speartrees, bodies half-crouched in a compromise between stealth and speed. Crystals of ice lingered on the ivory trunks; symptoms of the deep, lurking cold of the place. It was the kind of frost that could keep things trapped in its confines until the end of existence itself.
Gazing upwards revealed a bright blue sky, but the pointed tops of the speartrees reached from a place where neither day nor night held weight. Initially, I thought them taller and thicker than any I’d seen before. The frozen rings of clay and crimson earth around their bases hinted at the truth: the only difference between these and the other pale, thin trees unique to the Heartlands was that their bodies beneath the ground had been revealed.
Life – strong, human flames – flitted at the outer edges of my perception, but for once its massive range felt too small. It didn’t encompass even an eighth of the crater. As the cold wriggled its way through our bones, screams, bellows, and indecipherable commands trailed through the dense clusters of trunks and into our ears, as if the trees themselves were whispering to us. Drumbeats rung from a distant mountaintop in an irregular fashion. Silhouettes appeared in the distance, alongside the occasional clash of metal against metal. It struck me as remarkably unfair, that we had to go through a place like this so soon after the Fox’s forest. The tension drilled a hole in my chest and an ache in my head, and Tully’s sword rattled in her grip.
A handful of minutes passed before we encountered our first bodies. Three gold-armoured figures of varying sizes had collapsed, face-down in their own blood. Their deaths had triggered a lethal response: five of the mud-daubed, cloaked warriors lay nearby, chests ripped open by slashes or stabbed through. My eyes were drawn to a cloaked woman sat against a speartree with a snapped spear jutting from her chest. She was tall and muscular – equal to my own size. A mysterious smile sat upon her blue lips.
Without saying anything, Tully and I knelt to investigate the cloaks, rapidly patting pouches and chests in an attempt to find signs of affiliation. Operating according to an impulse I did not understand, I tore open the clothing on their torso. Underneath their gambesons lay tattoos – lines extended outwards in an irregular pattern. I would’ve thought them botched pieces of inkwork, were it not for how all five followed the same design. Three possessed two lines; one had three; and the large woman’s tattoo was writ with five.
I addressed Tully with my gaze still fixed on the woman’s stomach. “Do you know what this is?”
She shook her head, staring at the three-liner. “But it must denote some kind of rank within their forces.”
“Seoras – Andros’ second – had one with eight.”
Her eyes flickered to me. “These cannot be Baylarian. They have nothing to gain, and their assassins would never mark themselves so clearly.”
I nodded. “You’re right. But he still had one.”
“He was a spy, then.”
I stood up straight, knees tensed, as someone began moving in our direction. They quickly changed course. “You’re sure you’ve never heard of these kinds of markings?”
Tully pursed her lips. “The pattern is formless. If a lone operative was detained, it would not have meant anything.”
I shook my head, eyes narrowed despite not focusing on anything. “No, it’s a deliberate shape- “
Her eyes darted towards a distant howl. “Ponder it as we move.”
My mouth opened, determined to insist for just a bit longer, only for a squad to begin cutting towards us. Instead, I nodded.
For a brief stretch, I attempted to increase our pace towards something approaching a run. The oily stone beneath our feet – broken by cracks hungry to grasp the tips of toes – quickly slid that idea away from us. Kani’s stolen essence didn’t prevent an extended skid that threatened to turn into a fall, and after I barely stabilised myself we proceeded at a more cautious pace.
“Do you think the woman was Blooded?” I found myself whispering.
Tully’s voice rattled out at a strained speed. “There’s no way of knowing, Vin; she bore no obvious markings.”
“They must’ve run into a much larger group – it takes a lot of skill and power to kill even three, when so thoroughly outmatched.”
“Her skill could be mortal.”
“But if they’re not affiliated with a House, then where would they get the resources to cultivate such skill?”
“Assuming a lack of affiliation is dangerous. Baylar, Heltia, and the Albrights would be unlikely sponsors, but that leaves five others.”
I was mildly offended at what she was implying. “I doubt it’s House Esfaria.”
She glanced at me. “Honour seems important to Esfarians, however overt integrity says little about what lays beneath.” Hearing my intake of breath, she waved a hand. “Even if we do discount them, that means four.”
We continued moving. I adjusted my grip on my halberd to ease the aching of my forearms. “But,” I slowly continued, “you’ve discounted almost all of the Houses bordering the region.”
Her scars twisted as another drumbeat reverberated overhead. “Such consideration is only relevant if they wish to make a bid for territory.” The exertion of talking while moving forced her into a fit of gasps.
I narrowed my eyes, briefly, but could conjure no rebuttal.
“Either way, there’s not enough information to create a serviceable theory,” whispered the Spiderblood. “Not in a place like this.”
I acquiesced to her gentle rebuke and ceased speaking.
As we continued to travel inward, the occasional sounds of clashes drew louder. Previously indistinct shouts coalesced into cries of “Steady!” “From the south!” “Medic!” and other such battlefield clamour, all in various accents. Some of House Albright’s forces were made up of the children of other Houses, taken to spend their youngest and strongest years as captains. Their nobility meant a need to remain fully human to retain legitimacy, and that always made them more mortal than their peers. It never saved them. I wondered if any were sent to the crater.
A circle of humanity seeped into my awareness, its outsides dogged by rapid advances and retreats of other warriors. Its perimeter constantly shifted; they no longer had enough soldiers to hold the land they needed to, and reallocated spearmen and archers as needed – often far too late. Finally, our eyes found gold between the trees. Along with cloaks flitting around our position.
“Here they come,” I hastily stated, moments before we were spotted.
One raced for us, weaving in and out of the speartrees, eyes already wide with battle frenzy. His comrades shouted for him to return, but before he’d fully registered their words I’d pelted a stone from my pouch into his nose, sending him staggering backwards in a spurt of blood. I shoved Tully forward, then quickly followed as another eight turned in our direction.
“Make way!” the scarred woman yelled.
The increasingly dense clustering of ivory trunks left few avenues for entry, but through the sparse gaps that remained men and women widened their eyes beneath scratched, gold-daubed helms. Tully’s increasingly laboured breathing didn’t prevent her from summoning another burst of energy. A glance behind revealed most of our pursuers slowing to keep their footing, but one muscular individual sped up, maintaining his balance with an ease that had me suspecting hundreds of hours of practice. My eyes fell to the weapon he wielded, then widened.
A thin spike of bone extended from his wrist.
I turned, Kani’s kinaesthetic awareness keeping my feet beneath me, and pelted several stones at the strange warrior. Allowing the poorly aimed rocks to pelt his armour, he caught the one heading for his face and barrelled onwards. I spun my knife from my belt and flicked it at him, which he easily dodged by veering behind another speartree. But that was all the time we needed.
The gold-plated soldiers’ eyes were on our pursuers; not us. They stepped aside for Tully. She made it into the encirclement, and moments later I followed. Yet when I turned around, the large warrior kept sprinting, despite the three spearmen bracing the butts of their weapons to impale him. Moments later, the man leapt, pushed a leg off a nearby speartree and then stabbed his jutting piece of ivory into it. The material parted almost impossibly easily, leaving him hanging above us. Then he produced something from his pocket, moments before an arrow forced him to leap away again.
I lay on the oily stone, trying to judge whether to sneak away or say something. Then gazes turned on us, and the choice was taken from me.
“That was bloody close,” I remarked, turning to the Albright archer who’d fired. “What was in his hands?”
The woman’s helmet must’ve been lost, leaving her quizzical look entirely exposed to the world. “Some kind of explosive. You… didn’t know?”
“We’re scouts,” I hastily supplied, clambering upright, “we didn’t see much.”
“You’re the scouts?” she hissed, and shoved me in the chest. “People are dead, because- “
I mustered an appropriate amount of offence. “We’re the only ones remaining – and we’ve spent the past few hours running. It’s not easy up there, either.” I hoped my rapid breathing could be passed as anger, rather than fear. “We have an urgent message for…” I paused, thinking. “Whoever our surviving officer is.”
“Captain Findley,” she supplied.
I nodded, then slapped her shoulder. “Thank- ”
“Approach!” someone called, and the archer was turning away again, arrow already nocked.
Quickly, I helped Tully upright before hastily shoving her through the dense cluster of speartrees. They were packed so tightly both of us were forced to shuffle sideways. My increased breadth had me often picking alternative gaps, however our destination was obvious enough to make navigating simple: the loud voice giving orders.
“How’s the progress into the mine?” a hoarse voice barked from somewhere slightly above us.
“We’ve passed the initial barricade- “
“Tell me something new!”
“- but there’s someone waiting past the first squeeze with an axe.”
“They’ve been there for- “ The captain paused. “Gods bloody, blackened bones!” he swore, then coughed as the cuss scraped his obviously raw throat. “Take Nason, Tella, and Other Pete and have them look for a way through the top.”
“They’re wounded- “
“I know they’re wounded; I’m not taking anyone able-bodied off the line. Now go.” He waited a beat. “What, do you want me to wipe your arse too? Go!”
Tully stopped, and I stopped with her. Her greying body shook quietly.
“A…” She swallowed. “He will know all of them by sight.”
I paused. “No bluffing, then.”
“No.”
“We’ll, uh…” My eyes flickered around the narrow passage we were in. “Keep our heads down. Find whatever entrance they’re talking about. If they see us, I’ll stall.”
Tully nodded quickly. “You are right, of course. Cover is plentiful.” She glanced down, her voice dropping to a whisper. “We’ll be fine.” She breathed in. “We will be fine.”
For a moment, I considered telling her to turn around and go – simply leave this entire debacle to me. It was a stupid thought; at a fundamental level, this was her mess. But she didn’t have to clean it up. I’d expected her to let the others rot in their hole. Both she and I had known that was the strategic decision. Her Spiderblood knew it, too; rattling the walls of the veins it travelled through, desperate for an escape.
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“Are you ready?” Tully asked me, and she’d never looked more like a small, old woman.
I saluted. Her breathing steadied, and we continued sliding through the speartrees.
Obstructed as it was by the endless horde of ivory stakes – squeezing our chests as we tried to navigate them – the mound was only perceptible as a sudden incline in the greasy stone beneath our feet. A shadow passed above us, and neither of us raised our heads. It was one of the soldiers, braced against two trunks to take advantage of the slow thinning of the trunks. Their view was barely better than our own, however they moved far quicker than us.
After a moment, a voice – the one that had spoken to their commander – addressed us. “Why are you two leaving the line? Introduce yourselves.”
I took a moment to pre-emptively squash the quaver that threatened to inch into my voice. “We’re the last scouts. We’ve a message.”
“What message?”
“I’d rather tell the commander- “
“There are no spies, here – you can tell myself and him.”
I hadn’t enough humour to appreciate the irony. From above, all my interrogator could see was a quick nod of the helmet. “We’ve a man waiting to kill the drummer.”
“That’s…” The speaker paused. “Good news. I’ll lead you to him.”
Rather than waiting for us, she sprung ahead. Tully and I were forced to spend several long moments squeezing through the gaps.
I opened my mouth to speak, but my companion beat me there. “You should split off and search for the opening they spoke of,” she whispered into my ear, wary of any canny listeners. “I’ll negotiate with them.”
“That’s stupid,” I scoffed. “I have a better chance of getting out of an attack than you.”
“I know more of their protocol- “
“They’re some sort of secret operations unit, Tully – I doubt they’re operating according to protocol.”
“…Fine.” Her tone was inscrutable. “I will whistle three long notes when I’ve found it.”
“How long do you think it’ll- “
“I’ve no idea, Vin.” She quickly diverged from the path the speaker was leading us in, stopping only to say: “Be safe.”
Tully disappeared into the shadows of the crater. Quiet descended upon the area around me, accompanied by a redoubling of the ubiquitous chill that dwelled this far down. After another few dozen steps, I sighted the speaker and the man that must’ve been Findlay – a stocky soldier with a face full of creases, lit only by a pair of fierce eyes – the former whispering into the latter’s ears. They stood above me, atop the mound; its jutting roundness making it seem like a growth-ridden tumour straining against stone flesh.
The incline was far too sheer to climb, but the broken stumps of speartrees were still embedded in its side – some still clinging by a thin strip to their trunks – providing the footholds the pair had used to clamber up. I glanced into the broken stumps, finding a bizarre, sponge-like material dwelling within. It constantly wept red sap. I couldn’t help but feel I’d seen it before. In something disturbing. Cruel. Wrong…
A hoarse bark tore me from my stupor. “Halt! Introduce yourself.”
My bleary mind slowly parsed two things: that three others waited in the trees; the demand for introduction had been repeated, despite the time-intensive situation. I’d blundered.
Why would the leader of a secret Albright operation want an introduction before anything else? The simple answer: they didn’t. They wanted me to prove my identity, likely with some kind of code-word established in response to this very situation. And I had no means of deciphering what that code could be.
Combat within such cramped confines would be necessarily clunky on both sides: I wouldn’t be able to do more than stab with my halberd, but any shots they took at me had only a miniscule chance of hitting. It would be simple to escape, and hardly any more difficult to kill all five of them – even accounting for the fact I was currently standing beneath them. But from what I could tell, the commander was the key to the entire Albright defence – if I slaughtered them, their line would quickly fall apart, breaking the stalemate our escape relied upon. Beyond that, losing five lives’ worth of experience, sensation, emotion, and memory would be such an incredible waste.
So I discarded the scratched helmet upon my head, straightened my spine, my halberd, and my expression, and summoned the phantom of several decades of military leadership.
I regarded the commander cooly. “I have a man prepared to silence the drummer,” I rumbled. “But only on my signal.”
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“A spectator.” Even as my own voice fell with the weight of an avalanche, I remembered its cadence in the tone of another – in the kitchen; the restaurant; after a nightmare – and travelling from my own throat – in battlefields; barked commands; with my children – then bit the inside of my cheek to silence both. “I need entrance to your mine.”
“We cannot allow that,” the older man gravelled immediately. “That’s non-negotiable.”
“The people inside are mine,” I spat, and saw his aide flinch. “You cannot afford to turn away what I’m offering. You cannot afford someone like me angry, and within your lines.”
He looked at me from above, features carefully neutral. “How do I know you’re not one of the Seeds?”
Seeds – I was one, once. Or… I wasn’t?
Who was? Drue? Orvi? Babs? Maja? I was? No?
“You do not know,” I called back.
“Signal your man,” he demanded. “That will prove it.”
My lips quirked. The smile was absent from the rest of my face. “No,” I rumbled. “I will not.”
His eyes darted towards a distant clash of weapons. “Then how am I supposed to compromise my position for a godsdamned stranger!” he bellowed. “Give me something to work with, man!”
“The drummer will die when- “
“That’s a load of Ox- “
“Do not interrupt me,” I rumbled. “I speak. You listen.” At his silence, I continued. “The drummer will die when my people have departed your lines. I will stay, and make the signal.”
“You’ll not leave without proof you’re not a Seed,” he remarked, far calmer than before. I wondered if his ferocity was feigned. “That means you killing one of them.”
I paused to ponder his statement when three long, piercing whistles sounded from nearby. In my perception, I felt Tully’s flame creep into the mound.
I looked at Finlay and shook my head. “I am going into the mine. If you attack me, I will take that as a refusal of my offer.”
Without waiting for a reply, I turned and slipped back into the speartrees. I heard several voices asking for an order, but the response was too quiet to hear. Yet no one pursued. Tully’s whistles would’ve served to guide the Lizardblood I purported myself to be to her location. Even with my Ravenblood making her attempts mostly unnecessary, they sped up the process of finding her fractionally.
The entrance to the so-called mines was a crack in the side of the mound. Its decent width and narrow height made it resemble a mouth, toothlessly grinning back towards the crater. Gingerly, I extended my halberd into its confines. Something grabbed hold of its end, and after a moment of wordless panic I realised it was just Tully.
I stared at the hole and drummed my fingers. With a heavy groan, I lowered myself to the ground, and began crawling inside. Though I’d braced myself for a much longer journey, the tunnel opened after scarcely half a pace into tiny cave, scattered with broken pieces of wood I vaguely recognised as having once formed a table. The floor alternated between stone and moist dirt frequently broken by ivory trunks thrusting through it to pierce through the ceiling, allowing small beams of light inside.
Despite that, the darkness was deep, but my eyes possessed enough divinity to make out Tully sitting against a wall. “Are you whole?” she asked.
“Yeah, but they know we’re not Albrights.” Her expression tightened, and I hurriedly continued. “They wanted a code I didn’t have. I’ve used the leverage we have to stave off the inevitable, but they might still outright attack us when we leave.”
She hummed. “There might be another way out.”
I straightened, then smacked my head on the ceiling. “Don’t bet on it,” I said, rubbing my bruised skull while shooting a dirty look upwards. “Dying in some cave-in isn’t how I plan to go.”
“We need to go deeper anyway.” She gestured to a crack in the floor.
I eyed it. “…I don’t know if I can fit.”
“Take off the armour.”
“I’m not that small, Tully.”
“I’ll go through first,” she stated calmly. A hint of exasperation flickered in her eyes – I didn’t know whether it was real or a trick of the strangling confines. “If it’s too narrow for your frame, I will tell you.”
“But- “
Before I could protest further, she crawled over to the hole and lowered herself inside. Her back released a single large crack, and the old Blooded grunted. Moments after the humour of that penetrated the malaise surrounding me, she disappeared from sight, leaving me alone in a tiny hole barely big enough to breathe.
I looked at the stone and dirt, above and beneath. With the amount of speartrees thrusting through the cave, I wasn’t even sure if my size would allow me to squeeze through to reach the hole. Somewhat awkwardly, I unbuckled my stolen armour and tossed it to the side. After slipping through with my jaw jammed tight enough to make my teeth creak, I managed to make it over to the hole. Emanating faintly from it was the sound of a shrill wail, distorted by the walls of the earth’s intestines.
I glanced away, staring at the shattered remnants of what I suspected was once a table. Mounds of crimson moss concealed whatever wood it was comprised of. Some strands still clung to one another, despite being attached to separate splinters. Its broken edges were shades lighter than the rest, and free of any growths. It must’ve been waiting within the cave for years before being smashed apart.
My eyes flicked back to the hole. The high screams continued, quietly strangled by the tunnels. But Tully’s voice yelled: “Come down! Leave the halberd!” and I had no more excuses. Carefully, I placed my halberd onto the earth, and after a moment of deliberation kicked a few mounds of moss over it. I’d killed both monsters and men with its edge and point, and it could be the last time I ever saw it. I found myself wanting to say something to it – somehow acknowledge its meaning, however inanimate – but could not find the words. But there would be another. There always was.
I adjusted the buckle of my looted sword to hang over my shoulder, and lowered myself into the hole, feet braced against its sides. My torso fell into the maw, then my arms, then my neck. Then, finally, the sight of the small cave pierced by speartrees vanished as my head and all it entailed fell inside.
Immediately, every ounce of my flesh rebelled against the confines. My shoulders pressed against both walls, forcing me to bend them around the front of my body to go further downwards. The press of stone and dirt felt like it entered my chest; each breath faltering against an indomitable barrier, trembling with the desire to race faster and faster as I pushed myself further downward. Air hissed between my clenched teeth, and the tunnel trembled in my vision, threatening to churn inward and crush me into a lumpy paste.
The tunnel sloped, then levelled horizontally. It was narrow.
“You’ll be okay, Vin!” a familiar voice called from ahead.
And I yelled back: “If, if being strangled by a damn patch of ground is okay, sure.”
And entirely failed to forget the way my heart drummed in a mad revolt against my chest and the pink dirt pressed against my face in a damp stranglehold and I pushed and heaved with my hands and feet further inside until my torso caught against the tunnel and I told them I could push no further and they said that I could and I told them I couldn’t and they told me I had to and I released air to deflate my chest and shoved myself further down but I couldn’t catch a full breath and it was dark and mud smeared across my face and clumps of earth tore from the tunnel as I clawed at it and no matter how hard I tried to stifle it the image of the tunnel crushing me under its endless weight to tear at my skin and break me apart back into the pink dirt or moss or speartree to be broken apart again and again could not be shaken and I couldn’t breathe and then something closed around my legs and I yelled and I was torn out of the tunnel into a larger space full of wailing.
I staggered upright, smashing my head on the low stone so hard I thought my skull might be dented and instantly fell back to my knees in a fit of mouthed swears. Belatedly, I realised that people were crouching nearby.
My gaze seized upon Ronnie, covered in clumps of dirt and mud, their kneeling form far larger than my own. Azure light gave the oversized hatched in their hand a deathly pallor. “How did you make it through there?” I said in complete bafflement.
The Strain huffed in silent laughter. Around their legs, Yowler stirred, then fell back into torpor. After a brief wave of the hand, they signed ‘Other’ and another gesture I assumed meant path.
“You went another way?” The words tumbled from my mouth. “Can we leave through there?”
“I’m sorry, Vin, but we cannot.” I turned to find Davian crouching beside me. He straightened with a groan. “There was a collapse, of sorts. It wasn’t as stable as the path you chose.”
I grunted, then glanced at Ronnie's oversized arm. With the weight of the axe in its hand, it trembled. "Is your arm better now?"
The Strain gave a smile that seemed closer to a wince.
"I don't believe so," Davian answered for them. "As a matter of fact, I've specifically asked Ronnie to put the weapon away, before the arm's ligaments are damaged further."
A small body seized upon me. My eyes travelled downwards, finding Crumpet latched onto my leg. Tippi stood nearby, hovering awkwardly, and at my strained smile the boy released a breath. Ronnie, seizing the moment, rubbed my head with her oversized paw, then withdrew it so I could fix my bandana. No words were spoken.
I glanced around. The tunnel we were in stretched in two separate directions, and was lit by a dim bloodtech lantern cradled in Rita’s lap. Tully hunched beside her, conferring in muted breaths. Jana’s eyes – one clouded and blind and the other piercingly green – watched me. Further back, Wil sat against a wall with an infant on his lap. Beside him, his adolescent son held a small urn of milk, which the worn man carefully dipped a piece of cloth into and placed it into the baby’s mouth for the infant to suck on. Across from them was the source of the wailing – a red-faced toddler, sobbing and screaming atop Gast’s belly. She lifted her head; saw me; blinked; and gave a small wave. Despite identifying the source of the cries, I felt little relief.
As I watched, Taja emerged from the darkness of the tunnel at a quick crawl and slid next to me. “Vin!” the teenager said, white teeth bright in the darkness of our surroundings. “You’re alright!”
I smiled and tilted my hand from side to side. “Relatively. You are, uh, missing…” I paused, reluctant to finish the sentence.
There were absences. Old Snapper; Atifi: gone, as if they were never present at all. It felt like there was a chunk of ice in my gut. Is air and dust all that would remain of them? An incredible sickness; an incredible waste. I sensed the lifeforce around me, and…
I opened a dry mouth, then closed it. “Okay.” I looked around. “How did you make it here?”
The giant Strain tapped Taja’s shoulder, and he startled. “Right. We were moving through the mountains above, and we… ran into these yellow soldiers. Then they got attacked, and we, uh… went into a cave.”
Ronnie gestured to the older Strain.
“Davian tried to talk them out of chasing us,” Taja began. “It didn’t work.”
“We should try to find another way out,” I suggested.
Davian nodded. “That’s what the young man here was searching for.” He looked at the boy expectantly.
“Uh, it, um… Goes deeper.”
The old hunter sighed. “The other way ends in a pile of rocks, now.”
Ronnie signed a quick apology.
Davian waved a hand. “The supports were rotten anyway.”
I frowned. “Supports? This place was occupied?”
“’Was’ is the correct term. Everything here has spent at least a few years without human touch.”
“Any bodies?” I asked. I’d never spent much time in mines – in any life – but I knew they could kill as quietly as any ghost. Stories told of miners being subject to the whims of whatever deathly hand haunted the depths, often dying without any external wounds. I wasn’t truly sure why. I’d never heard of a Heartland mine going deep enough to uncover such death, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this one was the exception.
“I saw none,” Taja supplied eagerly. After a moment, his words slowed. “I only went so far down, though.”
“Do you think whoever was here left the way you came?”
The three paused to think on that. Eventually, Ronnie shrugged, and the two others copied the gesture.
“Ronnie won’t fit through the route I took. And I’d rather avoid those waiting for us.”
Taja leaned forward. “Did you- “
“There’s a battle happening directly above us,” I stated flatly. “We need another way out.”
Tully’s voice, usually calm and level, was greatly amplified by the cramped confines. “Our time is limited. It’s time to move.”
Wil glanced up from his task. “Where?”
“Down.”
Though her statement stirred a need to protest – to insist that we needed to go up; go away – she remained correct. So we staggered to our feet, all but the youngest of us stooped against the tunnel ceiling, and began carefully stepping downwards.
The tunnels were damper, down this deep. All hints of stone had vanished, leaving behind a crimson dirt that seemed to sink with every step. It seemed like a more solid material than its counterpart above; crenulated with fortifying streaks of some unknown substance. Our weight caused slimy fluid to squeeze from the dirt, smearing our boots with slippery liquid. What seemed like thick stalactites frequently struck through the ground we walked and cut through the ceiling above. Stepping around them may have been annoying, were it not for the fact they probably prevented the earth from collapsing onto our heads. As I shuffled past one, the slope nearly threw my boots out from under me. I barely arrested my fall by wrapping an arm around one of the formations. Yet instead of moving onwards, I lingered, brows furrowed. My fingers ran across its contours. It was familiar. Because, I realised, the material wasn’t stone. It was a thick, tough, white material.
A speartree.
“Gast,” I said, slowly feeling the words out. “You had a bone-density checker. Bloodtech. For Whip. Do you still have it?”
The rest of the group spared me a glance as they filtered past. The fat Strain carefully placed her feet at the rear. Her large eyes caught mine, then looked away as she unslung her pack. I held it as she reached her arms inside, eventually producing a small tube covered with a head-aching assortment of runes.
“Check the speartree.”
She looked at me, then at it. After a moment, she pressed it against the trunk.
“It needs Godsblood,” she told me.
I bit the tip of my thumb and offered it to Gast, who wiped the contraption against a bead of blood forming at the cut. Then, she pressed it against the ivory trunk and indented a small button on its side. After a moment, a blue light flickered at its base.
“What does that mean?” I asked her.
She frowned. “The bone’s good.”
I paused.
The light flickered.
“The bone,” I repeated, carefully enunciating each syllable, “is good?”
Gast looked at me. “Yeah.”
I nodded slowly, and gingerly took the contraption from her hand. I rotated it, rolling its faint purple glow beneath my vision. Then, I withdrew a carving from my pouch. It was of the twins – Dash staggering around with Sash wrapped around him – wrought using a piece of wood purported to be from the Foot. I began to mimic Gast’s earlier test, when the blue light flickered on, then off, then on.
Beside me, Gast shook her head. “It won’t work. The tech’s new. It’s only keyed for- ”
Then her eyes fixed upon my own with uncharacteristic focus, wider than they’d been moments before. I handed her the tube, and she cautiously placed it back in her bag.
And we continued down.
The ground was smeared with moss, mushrooms, and other dark-dwelling things. Flickering in my perception were small creatures, but they never entered eyeshot. Ghostly light emanated from Rita’s lantern, dying dimmer with every step. We briefly paused for me to smear blood on its surface, however even with its cold radiance redoubled all it revealed to us was more of the same. Until the sharp gusts of mist that emerged from our mouth slowly faded as the air grew warm and thick with moisture.
Eventually, we reached a cavern.
Unlike the yards of cramped tunnel that we’d crept through, this cave was populated by more than greasy earth and fungi. When Rita raised the light above her head, its contents were revealed to us: between the unending speartrees lay the bedding and furniture of a densely-populated living space. Collapsed tables sat between rickety stools. Faded tapestries were dug into the soft walls by spikes of animal-bones. Mounds of leaves were stacked beneath small blankets, long-since rotten by the humidity of the place. Possessions were haphazardly piled between them, containing small carvings and ragdolls alongside various knapped stone tools.
Tully kneeled beside one such pile, hands slowly sorting through it.
I approached her. “Do you think this is where the cloaked forces came from?”
Still eying the collection, she shook her head. “It’s been abandoned for some time. And look at the tools.”
Among the knives, needles, axes, awls, scythes, and slings, neither pickaxes nor purposeful weaponry could be found. I told her as such.
Tully nodded. “It is a gatherer’s assortment.”
I eyed a nearby piece of stone, large enough to be used as a tabletop and obviously brought from above-ground. Faded scratchings from some flaky stone covered its surface, showing erratically proportioned figures holding hands or fleeing vast amounts of indecipherable shapes.
Rita spoke from behind me. “A kid’s drawing, that.”
“It is.” Tully hummed through wrinkled lips. “They are likely to be from whatever settlements were wrecked in the Aching above. They took shelter down here.”
I looked around, noting the lack of bodies. “And they left.”
“And they left,” the old Blooded agreed. As I helped her upright, her knees popped painfully. “Perhaps through the entrance the others took. Perhaps not. But that’s not the puzzling part.” Her beady eyes travelled from Rita’s to my own. “With the Aching’s regrowth fresh, they must not have lacked food. Why would they leave?”
Rita stepped between myself and Tully. “S’not strange. Who wants to live down- “
The Spiderblood’s firm words cut her subordinate off. “All of them left; so quickly they refused to take most things they owned.”
“You think something spooked them,” I concluded.
She traced a shaking hand over the scars on her face. “Yes.”
The cave transmitted sound clearly. Everyone present had heard our conversation.
“What are we looking for?” asked Davian.
“Same as before,” Wil snapped back. “A way out. Jus’ means it’s better t’find it quick.”
Tully nodded.
The refugee’s makeshift settlement had been built in a crossroads of sorts: excluding the one we’d emerged from, there were five different tunnels coiling away from the cavern. Everyone present was already inspecting them, besides Tully, myself, and Jana. Kit’s… companion was examining the tapestries on the wall, unsurreptitiously yanking the thinner ones down and folding them into her pack. As I glanced around, I noticed Ronnie and Taja squinting down the smallest tunnel – narrow enough that the giant’s shoulders wouldn’t fit without manoeuvring. The teenager immediately began stepping into it, only to be stopped by the giant Strain grabbing the back of his tunic.
Their mismatched hands gestured to me.
“Just wait,” I translated to the boy.
“It will be quicker if I- “
“Wait.”
“It’s within my power- “
“Taja,” I sighed, “going alone is a stupid idea. What’s got you trying to dive straight in?”
Ronnie tapped their ears. Taking the hint, I cocked my head sideways.
From somewhere below us, the faint sound of a river emanated. Yet unlike the rivers I’d grown accustomed to in my time outside the Foot, there was something unnerving about this one. After a few more moments of listening, I understood: its flow was constantly faltering. The sound of rushing water slowed gradually, rapids turning to trickles, fervour slipping closer and closer to complete torpor. Yet the moment I thought it would cease entirely, it shuddered back into an incredible roar, to repeat the process again.
There was something eerily familiar about it; a relationship that danced excruciatingly close to my awareness. But my attempts to grasp it yielded nothing but a faint headache.
“Rita and Davian: with me.” Tully stood beside me. I hadn’t noticed her approach.
“Why don’t we check one of the other tunnels first?” My voice was miraculously absent of quavers.
“There’s little time for that. The water could indicate a way out.”
“Fine,” I spat, then hastily tried to smooth my tone. “Fine. I’m going, then.”
Before our leader could reply, Wil echoed my sentiment. “Myself as well.”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Stay with the others, Rita.”
The short guard saluted. “Absolutely, boss.” A glare was quickly levelled my way; harsh and full of edges. “Anything happens, an’ it’s on your head.”
The sudden hostility was baffling enough that the only retort I could think of was a nod.
By the time the bizarre exchange finished, Wil had already slung himself into the small opening. I quickly followed, wincing slightly as my hand brushed the wall and came away with an oily film. Tully brought up the rear with a small lantern, and I hoped her legs had enough power to kick me away if I became stuck.
Yet my fears were unfounded, for while the tunnel remained cramped enough to demand crawling, beyond the moments where we were forced to squeeze past speartrees it never descended to the crushing closeness of the path I’d taken in. Our hands and knees were quickly covered in strange grease, and my skin tingled alarmingly beneath it. Then something bizarre entered my perception, and I forgot the sensation.
I halted. Tully told me to keep going, and, belatedly, I did so. The irregular rushing grew louder – drumming slower until it roared back to its full, immense speed.
The tunnel grew tall enough to stand, and through a jagged opening in its floor, we found the stream, flowing darkly through an opening in the ground and disappearing into the depths. The material around it was far thicker than any of the earth we’d seen so far, yet somehow remained flexible enough to pulsate whenever the liquid it contained roared to life again. As if its attempts were pushing the river along.
“Water’s gotta flow from somewhere,” remarked Wil. “Could be an out.”
In my divine sense, the river burned endlessly, coursing through the land until my perception faded away, insufficient to the task of following it.
“It…” I swallowed. “It isn’t water.”
The Heartlander squinted at me, then reached down and scooped the liquid into his hand. It smelled heady; thick enough to drown thousands. Tully shuffled past me, and shone her ghastly blue light at it.
Its crimson colour was strong enough to burn my retinas.
“Ichor’s real?” muttered Wil.
A short huff slid from my throat: harsh and humourless. “Ichor is Godsblood.”
He looked at me. He looked at what lay in his cupped hands. And he looked back up the tunnel - where the baby still cried - towards those we'd left behind.
Wil raised it to his lips and took a swallow, moments before I slapped his hands apart, shattering the small pool between them into a hundred drops, irreverently sprayed across the tunnel.
Amongst them was a single bead of blood, cast from the cut in my thumb by the manic speed of my movement.
It fell downwards. Past our hands and past the tunnel. Through the jagged teeth of the crack, and into the vein below, to be snatched away by the river of blood.
For a single, divine moment, everything stopped. The liquid beneath us no longer flowed. The distant cry of Wil’s baby, a tunnel away from us, ceased. Above-ground, the trees stiffened; no longer shaking in the wind. In what remained of Spires, the blood-sacrifices of the hungry ceased growing. Rodents stilled; insects paused; grass sunk closer to dirt.
The Heartlands held its breath.
Then, the earth around us began shaking.
Beneath the all-encompassing cacophony of yawning tunnels and crumbling dirt, I heard Tully mutter two words.
"The Aching."