“Wargh!”
Ursula and I stumble over guns and salt as relocation brings us back to basecamp. The floor rushes up to meet me when my foot catches on something that doesn’t move, and I stupidly throw out my hands to break my fall. My awareness kicks in at the last second and forces me to twist and fall on my shoulder; still not a comfortable landing, but at least I’ll be able to use my hands.
“Ow, ow, ow.” I hiss while cradling my shoulder. “What the hell was happening back there? It looked like all the elementals were trying to possess that dump truck at the same time.”
Ursula coughs wetly. “That about sums up my understanding of it. There’s gotta be some heavy magic coming from the krarig now that it’s so close to waking up, and the elementals are going haywire.”
“And we’re not anywhere closer to having those coins in hand than we were a few days ago.” I wince as I get up and look around. “No change here, though. I’ll call that a win for now.”
“For n–oh, yeah.” Ursula chuckles and rubs her forearms. “Architect, tell me if you see anything important on that feed, and when you’re sure, bring ‘em out and see if it’s safe for us to relocate back in there. I’m transferring full control of the drones over to you now.”
She pulls open her Class Card and taps on the projection a few times.
“Control received, thank you.” March confirms. “I’ll set up a feed in a second. Find a screen somewhere to watch it.”
Ursula taps one of the old computers and summons another USB from her inventory. She leans down and fiddles with the tower until I hear an audible click, then she gestures for me to come stand next to her. The screen flickers from nothing to a dull, shimmering black as the speakers crackle to life with a dull background buzz.
“So, what’re we looking at here?” Ursula smacks the monitor a few times, and the colours suddenly blink in. “Oh, there we go. About what I expected.”
Salt, salt, magic, and more salt. By the looks of it the drone has a whole few inches of leeway to the left and right from all the salt buildup; the kind of buildup you wouldn’t get unless it was running for a long time.
“Is this the one going up or down?” I ask.
Ursula shrugs. “Architect?”
“This one’s going down. I’m having trouble connecting to the one going up, but it looks like it’s still moving.” March smacks a few keys as she hums thoughtfully. “There must be more interference further up. But that doesn’t make sense.”
We watch the feed as March keeps mumbling and humming to herself. It barely changes at all, but there are subtle differences every now and again; dark patches in the salt, brighter chunks that look like elementals, and even a few small drips of greasy oil like the stuff from the waterfall. But no matter how deep it goes, or for how long we watch, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.
I lean on my elbow and frown. “How deep is this supposed to go?”
“A few miles underwater, then a little further into the seafloor.” Ursula says without looking away from the feed. “There should be a building pressure the deeper we go, but I’m not seeing any of the pressure warnings I built into these things. It’s almost like the inside of the krarig is a completely closed ecosystem, and every other environmental factor just doesn’t apply.”
The feed flickers, then shifts to another view that’s tinged with a very angry red. The camera shakes like it’s in an earthquake in a tunnel that’s got much more clearance than the other one, but with so much grease and oil sticking to the sides that it’s hard to get a bead on exactly how big it is.
“There’s your pressure warnings.” Ursula chuckles humourlessly. “Architect, what’re they reading?”
“Uh. Yes?” March grunts in frustration and types frantically. “They’re not giving me any numbers. Just a big ‘danger’ indicator and a ‘maximum pressure reached’ warning. Didn’t we put these things through extremely rigorous testing?”
“Yes. Yes we did.” Ursula says thoughtfully as she scratches her chin. “I don’t even remember what the maximum rating was, but it’s definitely higher than the seafloor around here should be. And–wait. You said this one was the one going up?”
March hums in confirmation. “Sensors say it’s still going upwards. Maybe it’s all the oily gunk that’s causing it?”
Ursula shrugs.
The drones keep flying for minutes, with the one going down seeing nearly no changes while the one going up just seems to get more and more pressurized. But the weirdest part of it all is that absolutely nothing seems to… well… help. There’s no hints, no explanations; not even a single little scrap of knowledge that might explain any of the weird shit that happened on the lowest floor.
I pull open my Class Card to check the time, then sigh and send it away. “It’s been half an hour. Should we call it done?”
A grimace works its way across Ursula’s face. She tightly grips the edge of the monitor with one hand–hard enough that the plastic starts to creak in protest–and blows out a long breath that carries a lot of frustration. Maybe she was expecting more out of this than I was.
“Yeah. Call ‘em off.” She removes her hand and shakes it once, revealing a brand new crack in the plastic. “There’s nothing in those pipes for us anymore. Whatever happened there happened before the krarig started waking up, and that might mean none of the info on that letter matters. In which case we’d be flying blind.”
I roll my eyes and push my arms over my head to stretch my back. “Not like we’ve been using the maps up until right now. Can you get the drones out of the pipes to check on the coins I put down?”
“I’ll bring the one that’s about to implode back, but I’m keeping the one going down in place. Just in case there’s actually something important down there.” March audibly flicks a switch and the salt-filled view freezes for a second before reversing direction. “It’ll be half an hour before it can see what happened to the dumptruck. You two should take a break until then. Or check out the elementals outside that’ve been getting bigger for the past few hours.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Check the… last few…” Ursula trails off and looks over at the window. Which is definitely more salt-coated than before. “Why didn’t you tell us about this before? They could’ve damaged the equipment.”
“We were all busy. And you’re strong enough to fight off an elemental or two.” A crack sounds through the mic, followed by a fizzy hissing. March takes two loud gulps before setting what I assume is a drink down and continuing. “The preservation looks like they’re hitting a few weather snags, but I can’t tell how much it’s slowing them down. If it makes them resort to using way more magic it could mean they get here way sooner.”
Ursula hisses through her teeth and holds up a hand for me to stay put. She sidles up to the wall and traces her hand along it, and when she reaches the windowsill, pulls it away and rubs her fingers together. Lots of tiny salt crystals sprinkle down to the ground.
“Not good.” She mutters to herself, then turns to me. “We’re clearing the area so I can put up a better barrier. Can you tell what’s out there?”
March answers before I can. “One big magical sign and a few more near the bottom of the ramp.”
“Then we go to the roof.” Ursula puts one hand on a holstered gun and nods for me to go stand on the other side of the window. “Not gonna be much space to work with. We’ll need to rely on that awareness of yours so we don’t get turned into extra-salty sashimi.”
I nod in agreement and put my hand on the gun she gave me. “How’re we getting to the roof without exposing this place to the elementals? Because it looks like you’re thinking about going through the window.”
“That’s the plan, yeah.” Ursula confirms and motions once more for me to get in place. Which I reluctantly do. “Once we break this sucker open, make a platform for us to get to the roof. And when we’re both out, make this place airtight again so the elemental has to follow us up. You need to do any preparations?”
“Nope, I’m–”
Salt thorns shear through the metal door before I can finish my sentence. Ursula’s face turns deadly serious as she pushes off the wall and sprints to the door while drawing a gun with her left hand and summoning something that looks like five purple grapes stuck together to her right. She shoves the grapes at the door as the thorns start to ooze molten magic down the inside while even more thorns burst through the thin metal.
Thick foam expands to cover the entire door in the blink of an eye. A low melodic noise erupts from the other side of the door, one that somehow sounds confused, and the thorns all snap off at once. Even as loud thumps send ringing vibrations through the foam.
“Won’t hold it for more than thirty seconds.” Ursula tosses me something that looks like a pen with a metal tip, then curls her fingers around empty air and smacks the underside of her palm against the wall. “Go!”
I breathe in through my nose to focus, curl my fingers around the ‘pen’ just like she did, and raise my hand to the window. The thick layer of salt coating the outside looks like it’s grown even thicker in the last ten seconds. That can’t be anything but a bad sign.
Glass and salt shatter in strangely uniform hexagons as I slam the ‘pen’ into the window, clattering to the ground all around me where they shatter normally. I blink once and throw a shield out the window, dive through the now-open space, and turn to get a visual on the thing that’s attacking us. One thing’s for sure–it’s an elemental. That inner glow is something I’m getting way too good at identifying. But the rest of it…
A half-formed skull lolls uselessly atop a thick neck that looks like three thin necks wrapped together. Veins stick out and pump molten salt through a facade of flesh all the way down to a very sinuous chest that makes a mockery of muscle structure, which blossoms out into three skeletal arms adorned with thin sheets of fluttering salt that blow in the wind like scraps of torn flesh. Instead of legs the body just stops when it reaches the pelvis, trailing long intestine-like tendrils of crystallized salt that just barely scrape the ground as it turns to ‘look’ at me.
It takes a second for me to recognize that it is–indeed–all still made of salt. The thing trembles and shakes unnaturally as a hand snaps to open-palm point at me; salt bones growing and cracking as they extend into the exact same massive thorns that just pierced through the door. I narrow my eyes and throw up another shield to block them, flick another one behind me into a ramp that I back onto, and slowly climb my way to the roof as my shield ascends with me. The elemental shudders hard enough that one of its arms snaps, falling uselessly to the ground, and is quickly replaced by another that erupts from a random point on its torso.
“Infinitely freakier than the vendigator, that’s for sure.” I mutter to myself as I hop onto the roof and ready a shield to fill in the window. “Get up here, Mercenary. I can’t seal you inside.”
Ursula laughs along to the sound of thorns puncturing metal. “Looks like you’re gonna have to do exactly that. Oh, and don’t look off the back of this thing if you want to keep your lunch down. Kill the bastard breaking down our door and I’ll deal with the things climbing up.”
Well, consider my curiosity piqued. I summon a weaker but long lived projectile into a ghost quarter and snap it towards the edge of the roof, which zips down and slams into the elemental with a satisfying–yet sickening–crunch. My awareness flares midnight black–a spot of absolute darkness overlaid right on top of the elemental’s form. Tendrils of darkness flake off of it and extend down towards the main building we just got out of, radiating a strange intensity that’s both murderous and curious at the same time.
I grit my teeth and shake it off as I back away even more, then glance down to sneak a peek at whatever Ursula warned me about. Thousands of elementals cling to the side of the rig, each a strange tattered mockery like the one at our door, slowly making their way up towards us in a shambling tide of deadly certainty. It’s not enough to make me lose my lunch, but it definitely gets a deep gulp of anticipation and spikes my heart rate something fierce.
Horrible cracking echoes out as the elemental reaches skyward, extending its arm far beyond what should be possible until its fingers snap suddenly onto the edge of the roof. In one swift motion it yanks itself up with me, stumbling and falling over itself even as its head tries to focus on me. I know it doesn’t have to point that thing at me to see me, so why is it even bothering with the facade? Could it be some macabre attempt at intimidation?
Whatever it is, I don’t have the opportunity to wonder. I flick a coin off the edge filled with a shield to fit tightly into the broken window, raise my arm with the knife strapped to it, and push a second shield coin into the indent. Magical plates spring into being as the elemental just watches; shuddering and twitching like a crackhead trying to climb an electric fence. Again, something feels wrong. It should’ve attacked the second it got up here, not… given me time to prepare.
“The hell’s your deal, freak?” I shake my head and spread the fingers on my right hand. A mixture of projectiles and shields appear between them. “You see these? I killed a dragonjet with these suckers. If you’ve got a spark of self-preservation you should stand down.”
The elemental’s neck snaps. But… in the right way. It flips and stands bolt upright on that wrong neck, eyes burning with molten salt, and stares straight at me. For the smallest of seconds, there’s a flicker of intelligence in the magic. Something staring through all the salt and violence that isn’t necessarily less violent, but far more… dangerous. Dangerous and distant. Its face cracks where the mouth should be all the way up to the neck, leaving jagged edges that make a foul mockery of teeth in a smile that sends shivers down my spine.
It opens that mouth. Hisses with undertones of sound spill forth, eventually giving way to words that hauntingly scrape out as easily as kidney stones.
“Why did you run?”