When she opened her eyes, Pen knew something was wrong. The purple light had died. Drowned in darkness, she shook by her shoulder, and reached there only to find a firm hand holding her.
As he leaned in, a faint glow shone somewhere far away in the black. »They’re here,« Wellan whispered. »We have to go.«
She stood up staring at the lights dancing above them, white beams dissipating the further they traveled into the enormous cave. Liberation. Hairs rose all over her skin. She startled when a light popped up right next to her, but it was nothing but a dim oval, an ore candle whose full force was shackled by layers of cloth. It rose to Wellan’s grim face. He nodded, and started walking.
Pen gathered her blanket, her satchel, and raced after the candle. It led them along the wall where they would remain hidden, away from the pools and their campsite, over hills and valleys in the hard, lichen-infested ground. The enemy was in the old base, but they didn’t seem to have found the world below. With relief, she noticed that their flashlights didn’t reach further than the candles; if they did, there would be little chance of escape.
That didn’t stop Wellan from pushing onward with reckless abandon. As she struggled to climb over rock and moss and stay close to the bouncing oval, Pen suddenly wondered about Rannek. He’d never be able to keep up at this speed. Had he fallen behind? She shook her head. No, Wellan would never let that happen. He wasn’t tired anymore. He’d have taken care of it. She forced her feet to move on, and her eyes to look forward. It did not prevent her from falling multiple times, hurting her knees, wrists, palms, but Ibiko was there to help her up as always. Her heart was beating like an umum when they reached the end of the wall. There, Wellan stopped, and killed the light.
They didn’t dare speak. Almost directly above them, bright cones of white licked at the edges of the hall. They were close. They’d been closer before, in the cavern, she tried to calm herself. It did not help. What did help a bit was Rannek; he found her hand and squeezed it, stepping off the back of private Dhav. The wait went on forever, yet the lights did not vanish, never left the edges even. Echoes she could only guess had started out as voices found their way down to her ears. As long as the rebels stayed near the edge, they’d see the dimmed candle wandering across the darkness. Yet without, what were they looking for?
She suddenly recalled something Wellan had said. They could be searching for these very hidden lands she was hiding in. If that was so, it was only a question of time before they came down and looked. How could they wait, then? How could he stay calm like this?
Less than calmly, Wellan took her hand and put a rope inside. He closed her fingers around the rough hempen fibers and squeezed. Don’t let go. She nodded, and felt stupid for doing so in the dark. Soon, all hands were closed, and Wellan took his place ahead of her to spearhead the line.
And then he tugged, boldly, pulling them into the open fields of rock. The rope jumped in her hand, shaking it off at first, until she wrung it around her wrist. Every other step, the line had to stop on account of one of them slipping or stumbling. It took them a frag before they found a steady pace. As they built up distance to the base up high, Pen felt her concerns leave behind the rebels and focus on what lay ahead.
They didn’t know. Wellan’s plan was better than none, yet it had forced them into uncharted territory. Further and further they moved into the darkness, onto a soft decline. She doubted Ibiko had ventured this far, and even if so, there could be many a danger lurking here he hadn’t spotted the day before. Monsters, holes, spikes of rock…
Suddenly, she was taken back to the port, and the vendor’s market where the old man had shown her his most cherished books, Plants, The Myths and Tales— and Bramu of Ultis. Of course. The parallels were too obvious. How hadn’t she seen it before? She was Bramu of Ultis.
Her line of thought ended abruptly when the rope connecting her and the others became loose. She slowed her step, fumbling her way to Wellan. He took her hand and pulled it further. It touched rock. Another wall loomed before them, an end to the hidden fields. She turned to find the old base safely in the distance, white beams still wandering about. They should be safe for now.
Not safe enough for Wellan. In lack of a forward to move in, he made an unsurprising choice: they went left. Pen obeyed the rope chafing her wrist and ran her other hand along the cold rock. It felt less sharp than the wall before. Smoother. Also, there was no rubble lying at its base, allowing them to move swiftly. These parts were settled, old, much more so than the ones they had left behind. She wondered whether there had been a separation between the old base and these fields before the collapse. She would have to ask Ibiko at a less pressing time.
The wall went on for ten ells, twenty, but there was no end in touch, much less in sight. Wellan’s determination to keep moving caused doubts to regrow that should have ended with him catching some sleep. It wasn’t that he wasn’t up to the task—if not for for him, they would have long been captured, or worse. Rather, she was afraid for the non-task part of him. He hadn’t smiled once after that first flash of his warped face after the crash. Neither had he cried. Instead, his bloated face remained a mask of sincerity. She’d seen that mask begin to slip over the past few days, and the glimpse she had caught of it earlier gave her no ease.
That did not look like the Wellan she knew.
Pen failed to react to the loose rope this time, and ran into Wellan head-first. He grunted, but still made sure she stayed on her feet. After waiting for the others to gather around, the head of the diminished Guard lowered his voice to a grumble, and spoke. »We’re far enough, they won’t hear us. There’s an opening here.«
»Another cave?« Rannek asked.
»Can’t say. Using the light’s too much of a risk. If it goes deep enough inside, we may be able to try. If it doesn’t, we backtrack. Clear?« Muffled mhm-hms went around the circle, one, two, three, four, five of them. One was missing. “Ibiko, you understand?“
The young miner’s voice was faint, like he wasn’t facing them. “Look.“
Pen turned to see a second spot of white lights in the distance, further back than the open hall. Back where they’d come from. “They found the tunnel,“ she blurted out.
“They are still up there,“ Rannek whispered. “They may not go down.“
A gasp sounded. Ibiko. “The rope. We forgot to take down the rope!“
Wellan’s voice cut through them like the hiss of a snake. “Quiet! Move, and don’t look back.“
He tugged, and they fell in line, switching from one black room into another. Pen quickly noticed a distinct difference—the sound. The echoes were more direct here, less delayed by empty space. This room was smaller. She took a deep breath when the walls of the entrance swallowed the base behind them.
And then it was perfect dark. The terrain was less welcoming than that in the large cave; there lay weird oblong shards, and the ground was uneven, sometimes rising to small hills of a hardened substance that crackled perilously under their feet. They soon decided to move along the wall for safety. She felt thick notches in the stone, edges mismatching the smoothness of their surroundings. By nothing but instinct, she took a cautious look around, and concluded that she would make for a poor blind person.
»We’ve moved pretty far,« Pen whispered to Wellan. »They won’t see if we use your light.«
»Not far enough.«
So they continued to shuffle and scrape through the darkness led by the rope, moving so deep into the smaller cave that the echo changed once more. The room had widened again. Where did all this end, Pen wondered.
With a resounding clank not two ells ahead of her, was the answer. Worried, she rushed to Wellan’s side, but he pushed her off and drew a very sharp breath. »Ran into something… hurt my face. I’m fine.«
»You sure?«
He didn’t answer, so she just imagined he’d nodded, and moved on to study the object that had halted him. It was a curved spire of a cold sanded material, thick like a young tree, rising towards her from the ground. She could hardly enclose half of it with both her hands. When she reached out to the side, she found another, two, three, evenly spaced apart and all shaped the same way. The gaps between would perhaps let her squeeze through, but not a man grown. It reminded her of a cage, which again reminded her of Bramu and his underground adventures.
»Far enough, I reckon,« Wellan grunted, and turned on the dimmed candle. Deprived of light, Pen saw her surroundings crisply as ever. She was relieved to read quite a bit of annoyance on Wellan’s face; the collision must have really stung.
When she turned around, the ghostly white spires made her jump back in shock. She’d been close guessing its likeness—yet she was sure Bramu had never gotten trapped in one of these.
Right in their path laid the largest rib cage Pen had ever seen.
She couldn’t quite remember which chapter of the book it was, but the other man’s name she had held on to after many attempts at pronouncing it. Ukluomth. A man not much older than the titular protagonist, imprisoned for a crime Bramu knew he hadn’t committed. How he knew, what crime it was, or why proving Ukluomth’s innocence required him to traverse twenty leagues of undersea caves escaped her just like the chapter’s name and number. It had been a long time since her last reading.
What she did remember were details. Where Pen had Ore, Bramu had the crystals. They grew high up in some of the caves he found, emitting a greenish light that stayed even after he broke them off to fashion his own ’candles’. They didn’t really exist; she’d asked father. It had barely curbed her disappointment to learn that certain crystals growing in the Moryan mountains did however possess fluorescent properties.
Plenty of Bramu’s challenges required an inventive approach to using rope, another parallel. Only his was not the hempen fabric whose ring of soreness still graced her wrist, but the leather of the whip he always carried. He had used it to swing from ledge to ledge, climb leagues of vertical ground, and one time even to cut off blood circulation to his arm when it was bitten by a slumbersnake so he could stay awake long enough to administer the antidote. She had liked that part most of all.
Moreover, there were the apes, short-haired, child-sized creatures. She distinctly recalled a scene where a malnourished Bramu found himself surrounded by scores of them, screeching, pounding their chests with unbridled rage. It surprised him as much as the reader to discover that they were hardly violent, and quite capable of communicating via sign language. In fact, thinking back, she realized that a lengthy part of that chapter veered off into Bramu’s signed inquiries about their customs, rites, mathematical abilities, their understanding of mining and the finite nature of organic life, and most of all their knowledge of a way out. The apes proved incapable of answering most of his questions. What did he call them though, she wondered.
Ipes. That was it. He called them that because of the name of the cave system he would ultimately cross. The name of the chapter. The Iphaenian Abyss.
Her steps crunched quietly as she stepped down the hill of bones. There was another chapter in ’Bramu of Ultis’ that featured walking skeletons, three of them, woken from centuries of sleep by a mage. Upon their entry into the chain of caverns, Pen had wondered what was scarier—being chased by the fleshless undead, or seeing entire topologies made of nothing but ribs, spines, skulls, meshing together under the dim purple light of Wellan’s candle.
The question seemed ludicrous now, as they entered cavern number seventeen. Rannek kept assuring her that nowhere among these bones did he spot human ones, yet that calmed her in no sense whatsoever. Of course they weren’t human. Humans didn’t live down here, they couldn’t. And even that which could had been killed by the thousands.
More unnerving still was the size of some of them, sizes that father’s books had repeatedly assured her were a thing of the distant past. The extinction of the jungle beasts had been on its way long before the Gralinn ’pacified’ Tahor, and if any remained, then only in the deepest woods of the Union. There were a few skeletons on display in the museums of the capitol, she knew; but those were said to consist of only partial recreations, assembled from shards, not whole bones.
As they entered the tubular thorax of a snake that, judging from its size, could swallow a buffalo whole, Pen failed to spot any signs that this was less than a complete specimen. She counted the pallid vertebrae crowning the arches above her and got past forty before she lost track. Only when they arrived at the end of the winding tube did she spot a missing part. The head was nowhere to be found. They had crossed most of the long cavern before she came upon it looming in a corner, strangely pinned against the rock, its lower jaw unhinged and split in two.
The more slain giants she saw, the more pressing the question of the slayer became. Yet she could make no sense of it. Foremost, there was an architecture to the caverns. Their walls and floors may have been rugged, but they were clearly not designed by nature alone, connecting to each other through elevated man-sized tunnels whose evenness eerily reminded her of the abandoned parts of mine three. Each room had a minimum of two tunnels going off, some three, four, five even. Wellan had been forced to abandon his leftward strategy in order to move away from the entrance in as straight a line as possible. Every tunnel she passed, Pen found herself wondering. What if people did live down here? The implications were immense, but she felt unable to address them with a clear mind, and instead focused on only one for courage.
If it was true, her escape would be a worthy first chapter of “Penroe of Koeiji“.
She was struck by relief when Wellan called a break at the furthest exit of the twenty-ninth cavern. It proved a good spot, hidden behind an enophant’s carcass whose ribs allowed them to peek through at the hills and exits lining the other walls. They had kept moving for a good hundred-and-fifty frags to shake the Liberation, so a break was warranted. Pen sat with Rannek and Ibiko and private Staen while Wellan scouted the tunnel ahead with privates Dhav and Kysryn. She put her bottle to her lips before even sitting down.
“Ration your water,“ Rannek whispered. “We do not know how soon we will find more.“
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Pen downed another gulp, then screwed the lid on tight. “I will.“ Rannek’s ceaseless advice had put her nerves to a test in the past days. She found it was easiest to ignore him and act like she didn’t, same as with her resentments for the journey as a whole. There’d be time to vent once they got out. If she had to muster a fake smile here and there and listen to the odd old-man-lecture, so be it. “Ibiko, what do you think of these caves?“
He turned to her with unsure eyes, and a twitch of the corner of his mouth. At least the twitch was upward. “The c-caves are quite nice. If it only wa-wasn’t for all those…“
Together, they looked at the abundance of purple-hued bones. “It’s so strange,“ Pen whispered. “How did this come about? How did those animals get down here?“
Ibiko sighed. “I think i-i-it may be past time to stop asking qu-questions.“
“I’m afraid I agree,“ Rannek said. “The bones look old. Whoever brought them hasn’t been here in a long while. Who knows—perhaps their bones lie somewhere around here, too. We should be safe, that’s all that matters.“
“Still,“ Pen went on, “what- or whoever put them here also made these caves, and the tunnels. If we understand what their purpose is—“
“We know their purpose.“ Rannek kicked at an oversized collar bone on the ground. “Cages. For herding stock.“
“… Have you ever read Bramu of Ultis?“
He shook his head. “That’s a children’s book, is it not?“
She’d heard everything she needed to know. Rannek was smart, and well-read, yet there was little fortune in trying to get him to reconsider his categories. A children’s book. It was, indeed, yet did that mean it was meaningless? Or did it just mean that it was simple? She wondered what could be so wrong with that; after all, the most un-simple books she had ever read held not a tenth of the wisdom of Bramu.
They didn’t speak until Wellan returned with Kysryn, and climbed down the entrance to the tunnel. His eyes scanned them grimly. »More of the same ahead, though the rooms get smaller. Could be it ends soon.«
»What other way is there?« Rannek asked.
»None. Be ready in ten, we’ll move as far as we can. Objections?« He was looking at her. Pen waited out his stare. »Good. Pen, you tell Ibiko.«
“Ten frags“, Pen said. Ibiko nodded. Just out of spite, and perhaps a tiny bit of thirst, she took another sip from her bottle before stashing it in her satchel, and drew the collar of her jacket close. It had gotten cold, colder than some Koeiji winters. It figured that Rannek looked all too comfortable in his only-shirt-wearing skin. Northerners could spend half a life in Tahor, and still their bodies would yearn back to the blizzards of Grale.
Snow. What a weird thing it was to her. She had seen machines that could condense water to artificial snow, but to see it rain from the skies, she could barely imagine… Every account she heard made her wish harder to seek it out one day, travel to Rhon, the northern continent. She wouldn’t have to go all the way to Grale. As far as she knew, even Ultis saw the odd white winter.
A white that most witnesses likened to the color of bone. She picked a splinter off the ground and turned it in her hand. Only dim purple. She wouldn’t be able to see its true color until they broke through to the surface. On a whim, she stashed away the splinter careful to not let Rannek see. He’d only find it all kinds of peculiar.
When the voice spoke, it sent a shiver down Pen’s neck. “You should not be here.“
It echoed from every direction at once, causing Wellan, Kysryn, and Staen to whirl around their rifles without aim. Something inhuman lingered in it. A hollowness. Its accent was the Tahori of old, flowing through the words like a purling stream. Pen’s hand found Ibiko’s, squeezing down in fear as each of them searched the purple hills for movement.
“Who goes there?“ Rannek asked hesitantly. He rose to his foot and crutch. A long silence ensued.
“The owner of the house you have entered, uninvited,“ the voice then said, rising, filling with a grim anger. “These rooms have seen enough death. You humans have no right to bring your quarrels here, yet I cannot say I am surprised. You bleed the mountain dry and still want more, more to take, more to mine, more to consume! Can’t you hear its cries? Can’t you hear the mountain’s wrath? Leave, as long as you still can!“
“Who you ever are, we do not fear you,“ Wellan said. “I demand you reveal yourself.“
“You DEMAND???“ Even Wellan betrayed his fear then, glancing around the cave worried that the booming voice would draw the Liberation’s attention. Pen waited for it to continue, but instead, she suddenly heard a ghostly chuckle dance around the cavern. Ibiko’s hand squeezed hers back. “… How very Gralinn of you,“ the voice sighed with pity. “Child, look around you. Can you honestly not see your own doom?“
“We—we do!“ Rannek said, ignoring a shush from Wellan. “We’re lost, and cannot turn back. There’s nothing we want more than to leave these… rooms, and never return. If you know a way out, please, you have to—“
Now the voice boomed again. “You’re well-spoken, but your manners are poor! I have to nothing. You should feel thankful I even bothered to grant you audience. Next time either of you, any of you gojas speaks a word, I will leave you to the path you’re on!“ The voice subsided. “It leads nowhere.“
Wellan opened his mouth only to have it shut again by Rannek’s hand. They exchanged glances. Pen was confused. Gojas, the voice had said. That was no word she’d ever have expected to hear from a ghost—a slur for the pale man, it had only been picked up by father’s generation under the Old Guard’s rule.
When she looked up, Pen was flustered to find a bunch of gojas staring at her. Rannek nodded while Wellan covered his lips with his fingers. Don’t let it get loud. How did one appease a ghost, she wondered. It had spoken of manners. “… Hello,“ she said.
“Hello,“ the voice responded. “Better. Who are you?“
“My name is Umi.“
“Umi. Umi.“ The voice rolled over the syllables. “I taste a lie. Would you like to try that again?“
Damn it. “… Pen.“
“Pen. It is a nice name, I don’t see why you would keep it a secret. There is no use in trying to deceive me.“
“I apologize,“ she said. “Would you mind me asking a question?“
“You may.“
“Who are you?“
“The few who know of me call me the bony king.“ That laugh again. “Figures.“
Out of earshot, she observed Wellan and Rannek whispering to each other. “No other names I could call you?“
“Maybe there are…“ A tone of displeasure returned to the voice, and it swelled up. “I would tell you, but I don’t like repeating myself, and your Gralinn friends seem to not be paying attention!“ The two men’s heads split instantly, and their lips ceased moving. It could see them. “Better. I did once carry a name not unlike yours, but it has lost its use down here. I am sure you understand; bones rarely ask you for a name.“
“You’re all alone in these caves?“
“You have manners, yet you are greedy. I agreed to answer one question, not three. You will silence… or I will leave you.“
Pen clenched her fingers, but she could not risk angering the voice. Rannek looked at her cluelessly. He knew it too. If there was one chance the petty ghost could help, it might be their only way to cross these caves. That voice—she was all but sure to hear the man at the end of it. Even hollow and inhuman as it was, there was a deep confidence there, one that reminded her of the short nursing stint she’d pulled in Rannek’s office a felt eternity ago. Doctor Mireri. How she wished it was him scolding her, not this bony king of nowhere.
With six of them silenced, Pen laid her hand on the seventh’s shoulder, urging him to speak. “Hello,“ Ibiko said.
“Hello,“ the voice returned. “Your name is?“
“Ib-Ibiko.“
“Ibibiko. That doesn’t sound quite right. You don’t strike me as a liar—are you afraid of me?“
Six pairs of eyes shot to Ibiko, the heads that carried them shaking. Still, he said, “Yup.“
“There is no need. Truth is, I am no king, and even if I was, I ask you, what fool king would burden these halls with more death?“
“… I agree. There has been t-t-to much of it recently.“
“How true. There is pain in you, Ibibiko, I can hear it. You grief for the mountain, as well?“
“Yes, but n-not only that. My people have lost many souls in the collapse. They’re under attack as we sp-speak,.“
“You have my condolences.“ It sounded sincere. More than that, the voice paused. Listening to the mountain’s snore, Pen could have sworn she heard it thinking. “The collapse, your people call it.“
“You call it something else?“ Ibiko asked.
“There is no word for the wrath I’ve seen. This mountain’s but a shell. I have traveled the length of Tahor and back without ever stepping foot outside. Collapse… You’re not far off, yet that day was neither the end nor the beginning. These halls have stood for a long, long time, and don’t fool yourself thinking their creators have perished. You need not stay here, trust me.“
“We d-don’t want—“
“I am aware. Allow me to think.“ It paused once more. “Who are your people, Ibibiko?“
“I’m from Bitaab. My father is one of the foremen in the mines, I-I work there too.“
“I don’t care much for miners anymore. That being said, your people do a better job of it than most; I expected the mountain to give in years before it did. Tell me, what is your father’s name?“
“Gota Yairo.“
To that, there came no response. Pen exchanged glances with the others, Wellan, Rannek, the privates who had likely not understood a word of it, but neither seemed to have any plan other than wait, and keep their silence. Up on the ledge leading to the tunnel behind them, she spotted private Dhav overlooking the cavern. Suddenly, his eyes shot open, and he whispered, »I see it.«
When she turned, Pen saw it too. And lost her breath. From behind the enophant’s carcass, a figure so absurd it could only stem from Bramu’s nightmares emerged, drawing all four muzzles as it walked toward them with crunching steps. There were more bones than any healthy being should own, a dense web of ribs, multiple humeri running along the arms, a long femur swinging in its hand whose top was spiked with shards, and two skulls, one apish and sitting atop the shoulders, one reptilian and hanging off its other hand. This was no skeleton, she realized. It was a suit of armor.
“Met your father, kid,“ the man inside the suit said. His voice was still muffled by the skull, but much less frightening, and far less poetic. He wasn’t too old. “Sorry for the—“
With a loud crack, the butt of Wellan’s rifle split open the ape skull and sent the skeleton reeling to the side. The weaponized femur flew off to the side crashing onto a bed of bones. Before anyone could react, Wellan kicked the other man’s legs out from under him, pointed his muzzle straight down at his chest, and yelled. “REVEAL YOURSELF!“
Rannek rushed between them only a breath before Pen could do so herself, pushing the muzzle away and speaking softly. »Calm down, Wellan, look at him. He’s hardly a threat.«
»He threatened us all the same. Get off me!« Wellan pushed away Rannek and raised his rifle once more at the strange man, who now stood up slowly, panting, fidgeting with the skull. It had spun a bit from the impact, pointing its cracked face to the side. “Who are you, bone man?“
With both hands, the man took off his shattered mask. What emerged beneath it frightened Pen no less. Gaunt temples crowning patches of beard scattered along his jaw. A head of hair more clumpy than hers even, single strands of white sewn into the matted black. And his eyes, piercing, dark green that had faded into gray, telling of eons spent in solitude and darkness. Besides her shock, Pen felt pity well up inside her for this poor soul. The bony king. It did figure.
“Sir,“ Rannek said. “I apologize for my man’s conduct. Yet I believe you were about to apologize yourself?“
The man looked up, and paused. A shy smirk appeared on his lips. “… Fair enough.“ He straightened his back, making it crack loudly. “Sorry for the act. Sometimes, people come here searching for treasure.“ He picked up his other skull, the reptilian one, and lifted it to his lips careful to not make any sudden movements. “I change their mind as a mercy,“ the bony king’s voice suddenly sounded, scaring Pen more than she allowed herself to show. He seemed to notice nonetheless, and laid the voice and the skull to rest.
Wellan spat on the ground. “Your name.“
“Call me Oiji.“
“’Call you’?“ Wellan asked. “It is not your true name?“
“It was, once. Before I died.“ His expression told of no humor in that statement. “I am a dead man.“
»Not yet you are«, Wellan muttered to himself. But Rannek had already grabbed the stranger’s hand and was shaking it, rattling the bones sewn into Oiji’s ragged clothing.
“We take what we can get in these dark times,“ he said, finally letting go. “We did not choose to disturb your grave, believe me.“
“You’re not alone,“ Oiji said. “There’s others.“ His normal voice was nothing like the bony king’s. It lacked the force, and the depth, and the confidence most of all. Instead, he sounded rather uncertain.
Rannek nodded. “True. It is them we are running from. The Liberation Army has taken the mines, and seems bent on seizing the caves, as well.“
Darkness wrinkled the bridge of Oiji’s nose. “You’re lying.“
“I swear by the bony king, I am telling the truth. Their reasons elude us, but we’ve seen them. They may have already entered these caverns.“
“They have. I heard them.“ Oiji seemed interested when Rannek sighed at that. “Union scum, here… These are dark times, indeed. I hope your father and your people are alright, Ibibiko. He’s a good man.“
“You—you know him, really?“ Ibiko asked.
“Long time ago, when I swung the pickaxe myself. Before my untimely death.“ His chuckle was much friendlier without the skull’s amplification. “He yelled a lot.“
Ibiko smiled. “He does, still.“
Pen noticed that Wellan was still holding Oiji at gun-point, his finger spread dangerously close to the trigger. Seargent Khron’s face flashed before her eyes standing above her, shadows creeping in. No, he was dead. And it was Wellan who’d stopped him at the port back then.
“Oiji, we don’t have much time,“ Rannek said. “Is there a way out of here?“
“There may be. But—“
“Can you take us there?“
For a breath, Pen thought the impatient king would make a return to scold Rannek for interrupting him. But Oiji plainly nodded. Their eyes went to Wellan, and stayed there as he refused to lower his gun.
“I don’t trust you,“ he said.
“Trust me, or trust the mountain.“ Oiji’s voice was steady, as if stating fact. He walked slowly over to the dead enophant and ran his hand along the bone. “But the mountain has no mercy.“
After a long, long while, Wellan’s gun went down as he let out a grunt like wood budging under pressure. His men lowered their arms accordingly. “Where do we go?“ he asked.
Oiji pointed, and promptly started walking across the cavern. Wellan cursed in Gralinn, but then helped Dhav climb down from his vantage point. They mounted backpacks, blankets, and satchels, and let themselves be guided into another entrance, one that broke with the line they’d traveled in before. It proved the beginning of a wild zigzag leading through caverns number thirty, thirty-one, soon forty, all filled with more of the same: bones, small, medium-sized, and chillingly huge. The largest skeleton of all they passed in cavern forty-three; its feet were toppled pillars of five ells circumference, and a tusk laid along their path measuring easily twice that. It disappeared behind Pen dead and unmoving like the rest of the dead beasts.
When her count approached fifty, they entered a tunnel unlike any other. Longer. Broader. Winding past perilous spikes and bumps in the ground. These were natural caves, she suspected. Oiji navigated through them swiftly, with only the lightest rattle of his many bones, forcing Wellan to incur a few scratches and bumps to stay within sight of him. Pen walked as fast as she could, trying to watch the watcher. Yet she couldn’t but study Oiji’s suit herself. It was both rough and intricate, a mesh of somewhat artistic quality. A jinoa using his body as a canvas. Bramu’s three silly old skeletons now seemed all but laughable.
The tunnel opened to another cavern, but this one was different. It was high, far too high for any of the stalagmites around them to be met by their inverse brethren. She walked on grateful for having put the boneyard behind them, watching the walls expand until they were almost out of sight.
Then, the floor ended. It ran into a deep canyon as dark as the open space above them. Only when Wellan removed the cloth tied around his candle did they see the other side, a faint purple edge of rock adjoined by a few ells of solid ground that disappeared into darkness.
“This is the ’but’“, Oiji said. “There was a bridge. Your collapse took it.“
“How are we supposed to get across?“ Rannek asked, voicing her exact thoughts.
Oiji shrugged. “Improvise.“
Pen could follow that line of thought, as it wasn’t far from Bramu’s. Whatever plan the Ultisian would have come up with, she was sure it would have incorporated his whip, and so she started ruminating herself. It wasn’t too far to throw things across. The possibilities to lodge anything in the rock over there, though, were slim to none. Were there walls they could attach the rope to? No, she found after the group investigated just that theory. Perhaps, she thought, Bramu wouldn’t be up to this challenge. Yet if he wasn’t, how could she be? He had survived twenty-seven of these adventures, and she wasn’t so sure she would escape a single one with her sanity or even her life. Looking around, she only found faces as indecisive as hers.
Her gaze lingered on Oiji in his suit. Whatever strange fate his was, it must have made him a Bramu in his own right. He kept his eyes shielded when the candle shone at him directly, squinting. He’d survived down here so long, light must have become a nuisance to him. He clearly had learned to respect his surroundings, to coexist with them, to use them to his advantage.
That was the answer. She tugged Rannek’s sleeve already blabbering her plan, seeing their faces react with uncertainty. But they knew it was the best chance they had even despite the risk. And so they began nodding, one by one, all except Wellan, though he dared not shake his head.
As they reentered the uneven tunnel, Pen felt a surge of confidence go through her. She didn’t have to rely on books alone. She could meet challenges with nothing but her wits and endurance, and prevail. She could take solace in a fact that stood before her clear as day all of a sudden.
Bramu of Ultis didn’t have shit on her.