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Act IV: Rock Bottom

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The group fell as if being pushed down rapidly on some contraption. Maat presumed this was what one of his father’s mythical “elevators,” apparently commonplace on the otherworldly isle of Texas, was like.

Some unknown amount of time passed. When the water sphere dissipated, the group found themselves in a pitch-black abyss, up to their knees in water a bit too hot to be comfortable. The only sound came from distant, roaring waterfalls.

“Where the hell are we?” Lloyd asked, spitting up water.

“Does anyone have a torch?”

“This must be the abyss that Richard fellow was talking about,” Sara said.

At least someone was maintaining a cool head.

Darkness reigned. Unlike anything Maat had seen before – even at least one moon was typically shining in the night sky at one point or another. And the deeper caves of Secondhome were lit by luminescent mushrooms. A broad-shouldered figure bumped into Maat in the dark. Maat recognized it as his father implicitly.

“Ma’at! There’s dry torch wick and flint on my belt. Grab it, will you? No… no, to your left.”

After poking around with trial-and-error Maat gathered the torch supplies. Together they struck the flint until flame caught on the wick. Light radiated out about six feet, revealing the remaining members of the Quarterchief’s war party, Maat, and the twins. Knee-deep water continued into the black, well beyond the limited torchlight.

“Sounds like where Richard must’ve wound up back then. After our first little duel,” Michael said. “If the world truly is flat, I suppose the rivers and oceans have to refill themselves somehow. But that means there’s got to be a way for groundwater to bubble up to the surface. Be on the lookout.”

Michael went first, carrying the torch. While this shore was shallow, the glow of torchlight illuminated sudden drops into deeper water. Shadows prowled in the deep – almost like there was something down there. Best not to fall in.

They found a wall not far behind where they’d landed. No signs of any waterfall or channel up into the headwaters. There was a current that picked up steadily near the deeper water. Sara postulated that there was an underwater channel that gradually moved towards the surface.

“We head north,” Michael said.

“Which way is that?” Maat asked.

“Direction we were facing. If the headwaters are directly above us, then the canyon should be in that direction. Makes sense there’s a wall there. Getting back to the plains is our primary concern.”

Couldn’t go back to the headwaters. Everything south of here was enemy territory. Of course, venturing north required passing underneath the fumaroles. It was a hellscape of volcanic gasses on the surface – what would it look like under here?

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Water remained shallow near the cavern walls. Of course, the cavern went on forever. A maze of shallow embankments and the odd above-water rock outcropping wound through the center of the abyss. The crew walked in a single file line, each footstep shadowing the person in front of them.

Maat was the second in line.

“So, dad, about Aminia. What, uh, is he?”

“As I said, some sort of river god. Don’t ask about the particulars. Texas doesn’t have many of those.”

“About the whole river-birth thing. How did you two…”

“Too hard to explain,” the Quarterchief said curtly. “Just, maybe don’t go mentioning this back at the camp. Maybe when you’re older…”

“I’m of age,” Maat protested. “The full moon is overhead.”

“True.” Michael exhaled. “In our world age of majority is eighteen. You’re well past that. Waiting ‘till twenty is a local thing.”

“What… what is this ‘Texas’ like?”

“Climatically? About like the central plains. More humid. Flatter, no mountains for miles. Certainly, no fumaroles. A lot of oil dregs. Petroleum – that’s sunoil in isle parlance – and agriculture are the major industries – farming and, well, sunoil extraction, basically.”

Maat nodded, pretending to understand.

The terrain grew rocky with water cascading down stepstone falls. The crew could walk high and dry, but the water that remained was scalding to the touch. Acrid smoke emerged from vents in the ground.

They were beneath the fumaroles.

With more dry land than not, the make and layout of this underground chasm became apparent. Two walls wrapped around, in fact revealed to be two mighty pillars. Whirling maelstroms in the deeper waters must funnel a current into these pillars, which then moves rapidly up to the surface.

The water was scalding, and the currents would tear them apart; there’d be no escape through these pillars.

They found some faint translucent moss further up a terraced series of falls. The light paled in comparison to that of the torch.

“Lot of air in here.” Maat breathed in the stifling humidity.

“Too much to come from just this moss,” Sara added.

They set fire to the moss. The fire burned a faint red, providing a modicum of light. It also threw up a great deal of white smoke. The smoke wafted north, as if it was being filtered out of the chasm on a breeze.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Follow it north,” Michael said.

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Burning two more moss clumps triangulated a hole straight up in the ceiling, nowhere near a wall. They’d have to make at least half the climb across the sheer vertical ceiling, and any drop would send them falling several feet onto either hard rocks or boiling whirlpools.

“Well, there’s clearly a way out of here. Proof of concept,” Lloyd mused.

The remaining crew gathered around the last moss-bonfire. They had plenty of water to go around and a highly unappetizing but plentiful ration in the form of the moss. Air was no issue. But unless there was a way up and out, they’d be stuck here indefinitely.

It ought to be night on the surface. The group set up what they could of a camp. While no one from the surface was going to come down here to get them, the group set up a watch anyway.

Maat stayed awake, mulling over the most eventful day of his life. Maybe the existential terror of the situation had yet to dawn on him, but Maat was more concerned about the elaborate revenge-laden backstory the Stranger and his father shared.

No sooner did Maat discover the truth behind his river-luck and the patronage of Aminia, that it was all taken from him. Perhaps what Michael and the god said about not getting a big head about being technically-a-demigod rang true. But maybe it would’ve also been nice to make dumb mistakes and learn as he went along, not to be buoyed through life by river luck, helpful though it was.

“Still time to make those mistakes.”

The phantom voice emanated out of the very atmosphere. Maat looked around, but everyone else was asleep. There was a lone guard on the opposite end of the camp, peering into the darkness beyond the fire’s reach. Quarterchief Michael was asleep not far from the fire.

His father had fought in the thick of it, both in the headwater grove and before. He deserved to rest. Maat left him and went for a quick walk towards the nearest glowing algae pile.

This is how people wind up falling through a micro fissure in the floor and go missing, Maat thought with no small amount of consternation.

A whirling vortex raged in a central pool around six raised moss-covered outcroppings. Miniature creeks of scalding, acidic fumarole-water cut their way through the moss, feeding the pool.

The fumaroles had once been fertile headwaters for great rivers and springs of the central valley. There was no clue or evidence of what poisoned the land. But was there a way to purify it?

“You’ve got the answer around your neck.”

Alright, now he was hearing things. That voice was so familiar though. And utterly devoid of any echoing effects you’d expect in this cavernous environment.

Maat pulled on the necklace chain, fishing out a vial of water from beneath his bird-leather shirt. Aminia had given him this, some time ago. Early birthday present, he called it.

Well, it was still technically his birthday. Born at the peak of the full moon.

The half-human half-headwater river god-blessed young man opened the cap for the holy water vial and squeezed just the tiniest sliver of shrine water out of the egg-shaped vessel. The droplet disappeared into the dark, not even making a splash as it hit the water.

The vortex stopped, throwing the subterranean chasm into dead silence.

Maat was just about to head back to report the strange find. Then, the vortex started up again, flowing counterclockwise…

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The vortex wound its way up in a spiral fashion a good ten feet out of the door before Maat broke out of his stupefied spell and ran back to the makeshift camp.

“Father. Lloyd, Sara. Guys. Hey, everyone!”

The Quarterchief was awake in an instant. He leapt up to his feet, ready to fight.

“Got a geyser forming,” Maat said.

His father’s combat stance did not abate. Lloyd and Sara were up and more curious than anything. The group quickly lit another torch and went to investigate.

The reverse-vortex had by now reached the ceiling. In fact, it funneled itself through a narrow opening in the ceiling. Guess they’d found another air hole. The sheer power of the whirling water quickly ground away at the ceiling with unnatural precision.

“Well, it’s certainly interesting,” Lloyd said. “Not sure how it helps.”

Maat reached out towards the whirling vortex. At these speeds it ought to shred his hand. There was still a bit of steam where the water remained scalding. And yet…

“I’m going to touch it,” he said.

“Maat, don’t,” Michael said.

“No, I’ve got a good feeling,” Maat said, and plunged the hand holding the water vial into the vortex.

Nothing hurt. In fact, the water flowed gently around his arm up to the shoulder.

“Alright, if this works, I’ll be right back,” Maat said over the protestations of his father.

“Maathiel. Mathew. Don’t do it.”

Maat did it. He plunged into the geyser and was surface bound.

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The early light of midmorning was rapidly approaching. Maat could see it even through the maelstrom rapidly sending him surfacebound, and the light streaming into his eyes caused him to hide his face in his arm.

The geyser was beginning to lose steam. A wide-open chasm or valley was overhead, the lip just out of reach. After all this, Maat was going to miss the edge and fall to his death. Some divine birthright all this turned out to be.

Momentum slowed. Maat reached out for the ledge in vain, missing it by an arm’s length. Only, another outreached hand came out to span the distance, grabbed him by the wrist, and swung him in a great arc over to the safety of the cliff.

His mysterious savior wore familiar looking off-white robes, though they were faded compared to the whiter robes as they appeared in the shrines. Now they were stained brown with dirt and silt.

“Was beginning to think you wouldn’t take the hint,” Aminia said.

“How are you still alive?”

But by the time Maat blinked, the vision was gone.

“There are levels of survival an entity such as my self can come to accept,” a sing-song voice emanated out from the crags and rocks. Water seeks its lowest level. Getting stuck underground would cause… difficulties. Just keep going. You’re doing great.”

Maat opened his mouth to speak, but in the time he thought of anything to say, even this phantom voice was gone.

“Oh! Dad and the others are still down there.”

Now that a way out had been established, fixing that ought to be easy.

After several minutes of pacing and chin-stroking, Ma’at pointed his fingers (and the vial of holy spring water) at the vertical column of water. The geyser grew more uniform, more of a reverse waterfall than a spout.

“Michael will know what this is,” that phantom voice declared, calmly.

Two minutes passed in relative silence. What was Maat supposed to say to the divine being that evidently willed him into existence?

Silence continued until a low scream rumbled up from the water-lift. Quarterchief Michael was thrown onto the fumaroles cliff at high speeds.

“He was able to stick the landing, when he was your age.”

“How?” Michael asked, apparently hearing something too.

“Long story,” Maat said.

Nevertheless, it was less than a minute before Sara, and then Lloyd, followed them up the water elevator.

Within fifteen minutes, the surviving party was back on the surface. Safe, but having lost quite a deal of time and with no clue when or where the Jean’in would be looking for them.

“Alright, the war’s back on. Which way do we go?” Lloyd asked.

“Keep heading north,” Michael said. “Rendezvous with Hector.”

“Dad’s going to freak when he finds out the Stranger is your old clan-mate.” Lloyd dusted himself off.

“I don’t think our parent’s world had clans per se,” Sara said.

Michael tossed his eyes across the fumaroles landscape, shopping around for an answer the second generation would be able to understand.

“High school is… more like a war party.”

Michael and Maat looked to Aminia. The now-homeless river god put a finger up to his lips.

“Downright miraculous that this geyser dropped everyone off at this cliff with just a foot or two to spare,” Sara said.

The water lift was already dissipating, returning to the depths. The gaggle of remaining warriors walked right through a vision of Aminia, none the wiser.

“The blessing of holy water won’t take effect yet,” Aminia's shade said. “But over the span of a few human lifetimes, the central valley may well return to its state as a natural breadbasket for the island, and beyond. If only there was a little push...”

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