Stargazer’s Quarry

Halari sighed down at the basket of ashbuds and tams sitting in front of the door to her home. She’d almost tripped over the damn thing while leaving to take her crawler into the garage for some maintenance.

“Oooo those are Abevo’s colors.” Viria whistled in appreciation. “Looks like he really went all out.”

“He sure did,” Halari sighed. “You want ‘em?”

“What?” Viria slapped her on the shoulder. “You know what they for, right?”

“I’m not getting dinner with him,” Halari said, pushing the basket of food into her sister’s hands. “He’s a brute. Barely anything more than a hammer with a brain.”

“And one of the more talented smiths that the quarry has.” Viria scowled at her but picked one the plump tams from the basket and took a bite. “Pada would be overjoyed if you married into that smithing crew.”

Halari grunted and stepped outside. “Find me somebody that actually can keep up outside and then we can talk.”

Viria blew a raspberry and retreated into the house, basket of failed romantic fruits in hand. Halari crunched across the barren gravel path to her trawler, stretching some of her sleepy limbs awake.

She patted the vehicle fondly before sidling into seat and kicking the ignition into gear. Its revved, revved again with a startling choking noise, then finally came to life like an old man rousing from a near-fatal nap.

“Come on now,” she whispered, pumping the brake pedal three times for good luck. “Just get to the garage and I’ll do the rest. We have big things to do today.”

Finesse was the name of the game here. Halari touched, barely tickled the throttle until her ol’ reliable finally inched forward across the dark path.

The garage wasn’t far away, just a couple of winding streets over. It was tucked into the side of a tam farm, the owners of which had enough space next to their chemical storage for mechanical equipment. So long as she kept it clean and brought back some organic scrap every once in a while, it was all hers.

She pulled into the open space and closed the rolling door behind her. With a click on the panel under the steering bar, the front of the trawler hissed open.

“Alright what’s wrong, sis?” Halari circled around and stooped over the guts of her machine. The glow from the Charge cycler was dim, but at forty five percent that was expected.

What she didn’t expect was the light corroding around the cycler’s dispersion frame.

“Of course,” Halari groaned. It was almost the worst possible thing to happen, short of a full core-to-cycler forceful interruption. “Good thing I got up early.”

She grabbed the necessary materials from the shelves nearby, cringing inside at their loss. Months of scrounging, scrapping, and dismantling gone in a moment just because the chassis wanted to be a bitch.

The rolling door ground open ten minutes later, as she tightened a joint up with a welding torch. The flame, a brilliant amethyst in hue, was steady, almost comforting.

Halari didn’t turn around to greet the intruder; the smell of miner’s grease and metal was all too familiar.

“Tel,” she said, flicking the torch off and trading it for a grinder sheet, not even looking at her brother, “aren’t you supposed to be in the mines today?”

“What’s wrong with wanting to spend time with my little sister?” Telero stepped into the garage, she heard his mining gear clinking softly.

Halari rolled her eyes under her welding mask. “How long is the sermon?”

Nothing for a moment, then a subdued: “Not too long.”

“Viri told you she saw me cleaning the Betrayer’s statue a few days ago, didn’t she?” Halari turned to him, lifting the mask so he would hopefully see the annoyance on her face.

She knew he wouldn’t though, Telero was about as emotionally intelligent as a piece of coal.

“She mentioned it,” he said, smiling a little too broadly. “I just want to make sure your soul is safe and sound, Hala. Is that so bad?”

“Get it over with,” she sighed. “You’ve got ‘til I finish up this last frame.”

“So all day, then?” Tel said, winking at her. “Fantastic.”

“Don’t push your luck, sludgeball.” Halari smacked her mask down and flicked the torch back on. “Go on, I know you’ve been reciting it all day.”

“The Book of Jomen states…” Telero began speaking in full priest volume, and Halari immediately wondered how the torch would feel on her ears. “that not only did the Tyranical Betrayer, the Burning Villain, the Perfect Deceiver, fail his mission to unite the world under the Great Dragon, he warped his charter into something… insulting. Vile. So much so that his god draconic ordered the death of his once-favorite. A fallen Champion whom…!”

This looks good enough. Halari scrutinized her weld as her brother carried on behind her. She couldn’t really hear him over the torch, but he sure sounded passionate.

She finished up her metalwork and began packing up her tools. The weld would hold for her trip today, but some gentler handling might be in order.

“…so, sweet, sweet Hala,” Telero finished, “I must ask, why did you clean the statue?”

“Because it was dirty,” Halari said, shutting her tool cabinet and turning to him with a cheeky smile.

Telero sagged. “You didn’t hear a word I said did you?”

“You sounded very devout,” Halari said, patting her brother on the arm. He was taller than her by a little over a head and almost a spitting image of their father, minus a difference in hair color. “The Melokide would be moved by your speech.”

“You could at least try to show some respect.” Telero pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You’ve got enough for both my soul, your soul, and Viri’s.” Halari saddled onto the trawler and revved it up quickly. It sounded better, with an ignition roar that was more like a cough to clear the pipes. “I feel pretty good about my chances.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Where are you going exactly?” he asked.

“Out.” Halari hit the accelerated and rolled past him. “I’ll be back tonight, try to work on a better speech.”

She passed out of the thin woods and into the first blocks of Atlara, the Ruined City. The buildings were relatively short, still looming with long shadows, but not like the leviathan towers further inside the wall.

And they were absolutely nothing to gawk at when the Spire existed. Even miles away, Halari saw it scratching the black clouds.

She stalled the trawler and grabbed her chip-chopper along with her rifle, looping both over her shoulders. This area was clearer than the rest, but the occasional mantile sometimes liked to wander a little far from their nests, especially if they heard an engine.

“One, two,” Halari counted the buildings, stopping in front of the fifth after the third intersection. She proudly looked on her previous efforts, just three months of breaking down doors had gotten her a little more than a tenth of the way from the black, rocky wastes to the wall. “You’re all mine today.”

The building wasn’t special, one-story and solid all around. No windows. She made out some letters on the dark plastic, like a ghost of a word.

“Piarmy?” Halari cocked her head and squinted. What that an ‘H’ or an ‘I’? “Pharmy?” She shrugged, then stepped up to the door and placed her palm against its smooth surface.

Most doors, old as they were, usually had a spot soft enough for the spike end of her chipchopper to pierce and get to work. Whatever material were made of took hours to actually breath through, so finding that spot was essential.

And this door… didn’t have one. It actually felt stronger, more reinforced, like the surface was more of a shell for the normal door underneath.

“What’re you hiding?” Halari mused to the portal. “What’s in there for me?” She tapped the spike of her tool to the metal, weighing her options.

It might take the hours she normally spent getting into a standard door to just dent this one. She could charge the chipchopper and superheat the point, but if there ended up being nothing inside, that would be a whole Charged cell wasted.

“I’ll be back,” she whispered to the Pharmy. Whatever that meant.

The unlabeled, two-story building across the street was much more agreeable and her first strike with the chipchopper took a satisfying chunk out of the door. She got to work, keeping an ear out behind her for mantiles.

They were sneaky fiends, and she’d heard plenty of stories to always keep her hairs on end while in city limits. Old Bear said they’d creep up, horrifically quiet despite their chitinous mass, only to let their bloodlust get the better of them and make them chitter before striking.

“‘Duck and run,’” Halari recited, cracking away at the door as she remembered Bear’s croaky advice. “‘Cocky buggers will just stare at you if they miss. Like they can’t believe it.’”

It took two hours to make a hole large enough for her arm to slip inside and fumble around for the rotating lock. She grinned at the click of success.

The door slid open enough to get her fingers in the gap and she pulled it sideways. The inside was completely dark, but a quick click to her shoulder light brought some definition to the room.

Like most of the buildings on this street, it was mostly empty. The floor was open, but the walls were lined with shelves. Halari flicked her eyes up to the ceiling, looking for bubbly patches plastered to corners. Mantile eggs meant a mother was nearby.

She sighed a little in relief seeing nothing but dust webs and crept forward.

“Empty,” Halari whispered dejectedly, peeking into one of the strange cubical cubbies on the wall. “Empty, empty, emp—” Her light glinted off something on a shelf near her knees. She crouched and grabbed the item, a good-sized glass bottle filled with a clear liquid.

“‘Drake Blood,’” she read off the preserved label. “Worshipping the Great Dragon doesn’t have to be boring.” And in smaller print. “‘Also useful as a medical tonic in extreme cases.’ Now that’s gotta be worth something.” She tucked it into her satchel.

It was the only thing worth finding in the building, minus some slips of silvery paper that appeared in a lot of other places she looted.

Three buildings, two water bottles, and a white glare dipping under the horizon marked the end of her hunt for tradeable loot. Halari stepped out of her last search zone and stretched in the cool evening air.

Her bag was full enough, she could definitely barter up with the right people for some goods, but there wasn’t any big prize to be happy about.

And definitely nothing to restart the tradelines with the people at Scrag Fort.

Halari loaded up the trawler and just as she stepped on to rev her up, noise drifted across the breeze between blocks.

Voices. They were faint, indecipherable, but unmistakable compared to the silence of the city.

She froze for a moment, then immediately flicked off her shoulder light before stealing across the road towards the noise. Nobody was supposed to be out here and absolutely not near the night.

Lights swung and flashed between the gaps of the buildings, just one street over. Halari crouched behind some rubble and held her breath as the group, four by the count of the beams.

And one of those voices…

She peered over the rubble to get as good a look as she could without being spotted. She figured copper hair in a black city stood out, so she found a gap the debris that gave her a vantage.

That’s… the priest? Halari squinted at the Melokide leader, followed by his usual crew of two bodyguards, but there was another one she couldn’t make out. What’s he doing her—

One of the black-robed henchmen shifted, revealing their fourth member.

Telero.

Halari gasped, then slammed her hand over her mouth, praying that it wasn’t too loud. The party paused and looked around, flashing their light over windows and into alleys. She barely managed to duck behind her cover before one light beam swung over the viewing space.

“Are we sure this area is clear, Kelot?” That was Tel’s voice. “I’ve heard of some fiends that roam these ruins.”

“We are safe, initiate,” the head priest, Kelot, said. Halari’s brows raised in surprise. Nobody at home knew the man’s name; it was supposed to be a high honor to become so familiar with the Melokide. “They made it clear that this street would be ready for our arrival.”

Who are they talking about? Halari peeked again when the light moved off her spot. They set full rucksacks down on the street, then stood around them in a semicircle. One of the lesser priests aimed his light up and began waving it in a pattern.

Like a beacon. Halari readied her rifle and chambered a round with the slowest bolting action she could manage. Something about this whole situation put her hairs on end.

All was quiet for far too long. The white glare of the sun dropped under the horizon and the world went dark.

Then, she heard them coming.

At first she thought that mantiles were on the hunt. Gurgling, fluttering wheezes like the beats of insect wings in a puddle whispered out from the darkness down the road where Halari picked out vague shapes approaching. They moved stiffly, like each step was an attempt to break free of deep mud.

There were five of them. Each was tall, and the thick yellow wrappings they wore from head to toe made them look unnaturally large. She couldn’t see their faces as they wore yellow masks under deep hoods, each one with a fat canister attached horizontally at the mouth.

They staggered up to the pile of rucksacks in a cluster and said nothing.

“As agreed,” Kelot said, gesturing to the rucksacks. His voice trembled slightly addressing the outsiders. “Please, take a look.”

Halari had seen the man proud, even pompous, and especially condescending. But never scared.

Who were these people?

The tallest stranger knelt down and opened one of the sacks, then reached in. He pulled out a canister that Halari knew all too well. The sight of it filled her with heat, rage, and a desire to attack.

Ashbuds. The canister was full of ashbuds.

Judging by the size of the bags, Telero and his beloved priests were giving these strangers almost half a harvest’s worth of food.

“One. Month,” the lead yellow man rasped. His voice sounded like his breath, ragged and soggy.

“Last time it was half a year,” Kelot protested. “This is the same amount, I swear.”

“One. Month!” The strangers grew visibly agitated, shifting from foot to foot and twitching their fingers. “Bring more!” Without another word, the leader grabbed a bag and walked away. His party followed suit, taking their bounty and retreating back into the night.

“Can we afford another month?” Telero asked. Halari could tell he was putting on a brave front, but she knew his voice well enough to hear his worry.

“All will be well, initiate,” Kelot said, folding his hands in that manner he did when speaking down to the people. “Trust in the Great Dragon. Now come, let’s return to the Quarry.”

Halari watched them go, barely holding her anger. They really were stealing! They were paying those freaks off at the cost of the people!

That’s it! She needed to get back, start planning. Her words to Viria be damned, religion be damned, she needed to get into the Vault.

She needed to help her people.