Outside Stargazer’s Quarry

Fell winds whistled over the black crags, brushing Halari’s shoulders as she lay prone in a shallow, gravelly divot. Slowly, with a measured practice repeated over almost twenty dark winters, she drew back the bolt mechanism on her rifle. Her eye, through the scope, never left the target.

Her prey, a large bistag with twisting tangles of antlers crowning both heads, continued to gnaw at the low-growing shrubbery. Its right head scanned around the area, but its body was angled away from Halari’s position, so it could not twist around and potentially catch the gleam of her scope.

Halari breathed deep, steadying herself to pull the trigger. She put the thin crosshair directly where the beast’s front thigh met the torso. A headshot would only prompt the other brain to flee, so a bullet to the heart was essential to a successful hunt.

Just donnnn’t move, Halari commanded the beast from afar, tightening her finger on the trigger. Just be still.

A speck of dust, blown far by the winds of the wasteland, landed on her scope’s forward lens, and blocked most of her view.

“Shit!” she hissed, rushing to grab a cleaning rag from her satchel and wipe the speck off. Halari reset her pose, bringing the rifle tight to her shoulder, and levelling her right eye to the optic…. just in time to see the ass end of her quarry disappear over the top of a slope.

“Betrayer’s damnation!” she cursed, dropping her forehead to the cool, bare stone on which she was resting. Hours of tracking and perfect positioning ruined by a speck of godforsaken debris.

Halari rose and brushed herself off, clouds of fine powder billowing off her leathers. She looped her rifle, a beautiful piece with a matte black stock and twisting chrome barrel, over her shoulder.

Gravel crunched under the sole of her boots as she climbed out of her covered ditch into the open gray sky. She breathed in, letting the stress melt away into the stale breeze.

Her wastecrawler, an oblong vehicle with two heavy duty tires and a small space for storage, idled a short distance away. She stowed her rifle on clamps at its rear before hopping onto the cracked leather seat.

She hit the accelerator, finding comfort in the rumbling engine that soothed her irritation. After a moment’s stall to charge, the crawler lurched forward a pace not much faster than a quick jog. They weren’t quick vehicles by any means, more meant for short trips and hauling jobs, but their stocky chasses were near impossible to break on hazardous terrain.

Can’t wait to go home and get interrogated, Halari thought, rattling off the inevitable question and lectures she’d get for being gone so long and coming back empty-handed. Why were you gone so long Halari? Where’s your haul, Halari? Why don’t you just go mine like the rest of the people your age?

She huffed in irritation, blowing a rogue strand of her dark auburn and darker green hair out of her face, then took one hand off the crawler’s steering bar to tighten up the loose tail she wore while hunting.

Halari trawled along for another hour or so, skirting the edge of a gloomy grove full of thin, steel-grey trees. She peered as far as their black leaves allowed before their gloom choked out the light.

I swear there’s something in there. She squinted, trying and failing to catch any signs of life in the twisting dimness. Old Bear, crazy old geezerness aside, always swore that a beast of mud and flesh had chased him out of those deathly woods decades ago.

She rolled on, hesitant to take her eyes off the trees. A small smudge appeared on the horizon a while later after, one that grew taller and taller the closer she drove.

The obelisk stood a head taller than her. Its surface was engraved with lines of names of the people who built her home,.

Halari rolled past it and stopped just a few feet before the edge. Below her now was the sheer cliff that kept her city hard to locate from prying eyes of the outside world.

Stargazer’s Quarry sprawled underneath her. Short, hardy buildings, some homes, some, the smelters and processers mostly, with large chimneys smoking, others with wide backyards for cultivation.

They all formed a webbing ring around two large buildings, connected so that they resembled the shape of a peanut. The half nearer the cliff was two, maybe three stories and domed with a strange rectangular slot on its face, the other a plain rectangle.

Halari squinted down into the town, spying her own family’s home near the inner face of the cliffs, by the entrance of the mine.

She grinned, almost smelling the stew her mother would be making out of the tams their neighbor grew, but felt a pang of irritated regret at the loss of the bistag, which would have been some nice, free protein for the meal.

Would’ve been nice to get more meat beyond our weekly stipend, she thought, getting the trawler moving again, this time the long curving road carved into the half-circle cliff face.

Directly towards the Great Tanks.

The great, ancient wonders upon which Stargazer’s Quarry survived.

Halari couldn’t help but stare at them as she began her descent. Hundreds, maybe thousands of times viewing them never dulled her curiosity.

The vast metallic cylinders had been set halfway into the cliff and stood almost as tall as the terrain itself. It did not take long for her to pass into their shadow with the sun at its setting angle.

She didn’t know how they worked, all she knew was that through a miraculous system of pipes they provided clean, running water to the people.

Only the wondrous magic of the Old Flames keeps us alive, Halari thought bitterly as she rolled on. Left the dregs here but “Hey! Here’s some water so you can suffer for centuries hydrated!” Still, when she passed under the flat bottom of the first of the trio, she stalled the crawler, stood on its seat, and wrapped her knuckles twice on the metal.

Just for good luck.

At the bottom of the descending road, she turned hard into the path that would take her home.

She waved to Analise and her husband as she passed their domicile. Their two young children, ever-so-thin like too many of the people these days, played with a ball in their small production yard.

Halari passed other so familiar faces on the approach home. These were her people, she’d grown and watch them grow her whole life.

She took the branch left and within moments rolled right up to the front door. It opened as Halari cut the vehicle’s engine and her sister Viria, golden and slate-blue hair shining dully in the gray sunlight.

“Pada’s in a mood?” Halari asked, approaching with a tight grin.

“A shaft collapsed today,” Viria whispered, “nobody dead, but a huge deposit of ore was blocked off. They won’t be to clear it for weeks.”

“Evasion plan?”

Viria grimaced. “Haul?”

“Empty.” Halari shot a despaired glance to her storage space. “Almost bagged a beautiful bistag though.”

“I’d suggest going right to your space,” Viria said. “Mada’s in the family kitchen, he’s in his study.”

“And Davio’s in your room?” Halari eyed her sister pointedly, bringing a blush to the young girl’s fair cheeks.

“Maybe,” she said, not meeting Halari’s eyes. “I’m trying to sneak him out.”

“Mmm.” Halari shook her head before brushing past Viria her sister with a pat on the shoulder.

“There’s an assembly at the Center in a couple hours,” Viria said, bringing Halari to a pause. “Bear and his little crew are gonna bring up releasing the emergency rations to the Melokide.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Halari turned, interest piqued now. “The ones they swear don’t exist in the bowels of their temple?”

Viria rolled her eyes. “Maybe I shouldn’t’ve told you. Are you gonna cause a scene?”

“Maybe,” Halari said with a wink before turning into house. She breezed into the den, doing her best to tip toe and not catch her mother’s attention. Valeria was a woman of many talents, but her focus on cooking usually stole her spacial awareness.

The family’s den was a circle, like most dens in Stargazer’s Quarry. Three of its wedges were rimmed with slot like rooms. Kitchen left, master bedroom middle, office and storage right.

Halari drifted on the polished composite floor to the left hallway. Nobody quite knew what the buildings were made of, but it was hardy, and did not rust. Most likely a lost magic like the Tanks.

Halari reached the door to her room and slid it open smoothly to slip inside. Closing it behind her, she immediately went to the desk across from her bedslot.

She pulled her notebook and magnipen from the one drawer and flipped it open to the first blank sheet, thoughts racing. An assembly? Today? What could she say? What could she do?

She scribbled some surface thoughts.

Those Melokide priest bastards are hiding something in there, Halari pondered, writing furiously. What about the information that the quarry’s conquering ancestors had found and shared to the public? What about records of the raving mad man shouting about a vault of riches?

The Melokide shut down any information about what’s in there. She wrote another note: ‘Evidence?’ All in the name of their mythical God Draconic.

Halari tapped the pen on the surface of the desk. This was not her first assembly, but the Melokide were keeping a specific eye on her after that little stunt last year.

‘Sneak in?’ she wrote. It had been before. She shuddered, remembering the victim they had brought out, eyes charred over.

“I won’t get caught,” she whispered, theories bouncing around in her head. She shook it to clear herself. Sneak in? Really? What a terrible idea.

Halari stepped away from the desk and sat on her bed, sighing in comfort as she lay back. A quick nap would help figure what she needed to say.

The depths of a crowd in Stargazer’s Quarry always smelled like grease and oil. Or stone. Halari pushed her way to the front of the small army that lined up before the Center. The peanut-shaped edifice, a religious focal point for the Melokide, stood out for its unusual height.

Halari stared up at the dome, waiting like everybody else for the front doors to open. She moved her gaze to the six metal statues that stood in an arc around the front.

The Great Flames. The old gods that had left them.

Abandoners, Halari thought, glaring at the one in front of her. It depicted a tall man standing straight and victorious. He held a long axe out and vertically, planted into the statue’s base like a standard. A helmet with four jagged bolts of lightning striking out towards his back adorned his head, framing his stern, but proud face.

Jomen, the Guiding Visionary. The Old Flame who allegedly took humanity’s best to the stars over a millennia ago.

Leaving people like Halari behind.

She looked to the other five. Bayen, the Star Queen was first in line, then the legendary Kalia next, in between her parents. At Jomen’s left stood Velali with her proud bearing and arrogant face. Standing hand in hand were the Twins Kelerel and Cheramin. Last, or almost last, the meek cast of Olibern, blood magicker and father of the strange beasts that roamed their dark lands.

Halari made a note to herself to go and polish the eigth statue after the assembly. It was the only one where instead of resentment, pity beat in her heart at its visage.

The Center’s double doors swung open and a trio of men, one in violet clothes, the others in black, flowed out in a flurry of colors. Halari wrinkled her nose, smelling their pompous odor over the scent of the mines.

The crowd hushed and Halari saw Old Bear, a man not acutally elderly, but wise in the face and with scars that looked like wrinkles, signal to his people to get ready.

“Greetings, people of the Quarry,” the man in purple said. Halari did not know his name, nobody did. The Melokides only showed sparingly. “We bring divinations and new words from the Flames!”

The first of Bear’s hecklers interrupted them with a shout.

“Give us the foam!” the man demanded. “We know you have more!”

The Melokide faltered. “L-like our last gracious meeting­­—”

“Our crops are dying!” another shouted. “The bio-foam is losing its vitality!”

“P-please, good people…” the priest tried, but it was no use. The hecklers had lit the candle and others not among Bear’s personal crew joined in with their own concerns. Halari smirked at the priest’s blubbers, happy to see that false cockiness crack under stress.

Such a piece of silkgrass, she mocked, folding her arms.

“We lost half of our buds this quarter!” a woman yelled. Halari looked over her shoulder. Was that Dina? She wasn’t usually one to speak up, so the situation must be getting worse.

One of the men in the black clothes moved his left hand under his robes and Halari tensed, knowing that the fun and loud games were at an end. The priest drew a boltshot from the folds of his garment.

The sleek handgun was menacing, but only in visage. They’d never shoot a citizen. Sure, they would maim and warn the people of the Quarry off, but murdering would ensure riot.

The priest cocked the weapon and fired a round into the sky, a flash of purple following the shot.

Halari rolled her eyes as what would have been a unified crowd of concerned citizens cowered like a puppy. There weren’t many firearms in the Quarry and even less with Halari’s ability to shoot.

“People of the Quarry…” the lead said, “like our last assembly, we resent the idea that we are withholding valuable resources from you. We live like you, growing nutrition on dying biofoam. There is nothing in our humble abode which we could give you.”

“And the Vault?” Halari asked. The priest turned his eyes to her, the hint of a glare wrinkling the corners. “You know, the one the man whose eyes you scorched off about before you drug him to a cell.”

“There is nothing of beneficial use in the Vault,” the Melokide said. “We… no longer deny its existence. We wouldn’t dare insult your intelligence.”

“What’s in it, then?” Halari pressed, frustration rising. “Why’s it so secret?”

“We don’t know,” the leader pressed. “We are trained from birth that it is never to be opened. My father taught it to me. I will teach it to my children.”

Halari blinked in surprise. That was the most direct answer she had ever heard.

“What if it is full of necessities?” Bear huffed. “You could have a trove of food and other supplies in there.”

“To open the Vault would be to insult the great saviors,” the Melokide asked. “To insult the Great Dragon himself. We willnever open the Vault.”

Halari snorted loudly enough to catch a real glare from the priest brandishing the boltshot. His manicured trigger finger tapped the trapezoid barrel.

“Since there is clearly no productive conversation to be had today,” the Melokide said with a flourishing wave of his hand, “we will see you next month, delightful citizens of Quarry.” He and his small entourage turned on their heels and disappeared into the Center. The crowd dispersed slowly, disappointed, much like fog fading off in a sunrise.

Halari lingered, eyes trailing to the back of the building. She walked around the whole Center to the back which looked out over the ruins. A single statue was placed here.

Halari stepped up to the metallic cast of the Tyrannical Betrayer, pursing her lips at the grime that had accumulated from yesterday’s black rain.

She removed a cloth from the satchel at her hip and a canteen of purified water. Gently, she began to scrub.

The Betrayer knelt in his depiction, and he had no face, just a masked helm from which six spines sprouted at the top like horns and a horizontal slot for his eyes. He slumped against his weapon, a long polearm like a mace.

Halari cleaned the grime from his masked face, then down to the split. The Betrayer’s statue was cleaved from left shoulder to almost right hip, reinforcing the legend that he had been defeated, killed by his brethren.

She finished polishing after a few moments, then stepped back to admire her work.

Such a sad look. She dabbed at another spot. Would you have left us, too? Despite his title, despite all the whispers and myths that the Melokide hinted at along with Jomen’s writings, it was a question she always wondered. She peered into the helmet, trying to find some answers.

“Halari?” Viria’s voice came from her shoulder, and she jumped.

“Hmm?” Halari made a startled noise. “Where did you come from?”

“I was gonna walk home with you,” Viria said, a strange look on her soft features. “Do you always clean the Betrayer’s statue?”

“Nobody else does,” Halari explained, stowing the rag and water.

“Cause he’s supposed to rot,” Viria declared. “’He who would ruined the world shall never know comfort again. He shall know only the dark of death and the cold of isolation.’”

“Book of Jomens, chapter seven,” Halari said. “You’re really gonna quote that to me?”

“You could use a little religion,” Viria giggled. “Instead of harassing the priests maybe a little worship to the saviors would do some good.”

“Our priests shouldn’t be such wastesludge,” Halari sighed. “That Vault needs to be opened.”

“And you’re gonna do it?” Viria asked, actual fear in her bright silver eyes. “Hala, that would be heresy. You’re not actually try to do that right?”

Halari wilted at her sister’s concern.

“No,” she huffed. “No, I won’t do anything rash.” She eyed the Betrayer’s defeated statue. Maybe.