Chapter 29 - Fractured Foundations

Menna stepped into the research hall of Umbryss Academy, her boots tapping against the polished stone floor. The cavernous room was lit by suspended orbs of arclight, casting a steady glow over rows of gleaming workstations cluttered with scrolls, slates, instruments, and half-assembled constructs. A low murmur of conversation drifted from her assigned workspace, where a group of researchers had already gathered, deep in discussion.

A young woman with short platinum blonde hair glanced up as Menna approached. She tapped a stylus against a slate, her tone brisk but not unkind.

"You must be Menna," she said, extending a hand with a firm grip. "Zeris. They told us you’d be joining us today. Welcome to the crucible. Just try not to break anything!"

Menna shook her hand, relieved by the straightforward introduction. "Thanks. I’m looking forward to working with you."

A tall figure in a long coat, who had been hunched over a stack of schematics, straightened up and gave her a once-over. His expression was less welcoming. "Torvin," he said curtly, not bothering to offer a hand. "I hope you’re up to speed. We don’t have time to hand-hold surface foundlings."

Menna raised an eyebrow but kept her tone even. "I’ll try to keep out of your way."

The third scholar, a scruffy youth with his hands deep in the gears of an arclith-powered mechanism, looked up briefly. "Sveyn," he said simply, before returning to his work. His voice was gentle, but his razor focus suggested he didn’t miss much.

Menna nodded, taking in the group. Zeris seemed sharp but fair, Torvin was clearly the skeptic, and Sveyn was the quiet craftsman. It was a mix of personalities she’d have to navigate carefully.

The rest of the day passed amiably enough, despite Torvin’s cattier comments.

“Menna Middleshy, is it true that up there you only use arclith for rare special occasions?” he prodded. “Like, if it were a matter of life or death? That you can’t even recharge a single shard properly up there?”

“We’re… just less profligate with it,” she clarified. “There’s a lot that you can do with just the resources we have on the surface. We do know that shards slowly absorb the charge of any nearby arclith that has more energy left in it, and that they can eventually recharge if you leave them alone long enough...”

“They do?" Sveyn’s face suddenly snapped up. His hands were still buried in his work, but his eyes looked like they were doing calculations in the air. “How long would that take? Hours? Days?”

Menna shook her head, surprised that the other researchers weren’t aware of these basic facts. “You really don’t know?”

“We do,” Zeris replied. “But nobody has the patience to wait around just to eventually conclude that yes… it takes a heck of a long time to charge arclith on the surface. Not when you could get freshly charged shards at the station right away down here, whenever you need them.”

“That’s actually part of the research I did. Trying to see how to speed up the natural charging processes. But yes, it does take a while.” From her pocket she took out a standard-sized shard, roughly as large as her thumb. “This shard for example, after three, maybe four days out in the sun, would regain around half of its charge.”

She had to admit, in her experiments she was never able to leave a shard out long enough to fully charge because someone would eventually need to grab it for a more urgent purpose.

“Interesting,” Sveyn quipped, looking more closely at Menna. “And that’s true for all shards of similar size?”

Menna shook her head excitedly. “That’s the thing! I’ve noticed quite a lot of variability. Some shards hardly recharge at all!”

“Must be tainted ones,” Torvin scoffed. “I'd wager the shards you get up in the dirt are hardly the purest cuts, wouldn't you say?”

“Better make good on that wager then,” Menna retorted. “Based on my carefully recorded observations, among the shards that showed disappointing recharging capabilities on the surface, all could clearly be traced to Deepshy traders. And Torvin, my family name is Thistlebranch, not Middleshy.”

That shut up the skeptic, leaving their workspace in awkward silence until the session’s end.

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The conversation with her fellow researchers spurred Menna to seek out more than what even Umbryss’ extensive archives could provide. She decided to make her way back to the stalactite—the great library of Obsidara. Upon stepping back inside, she had to take a moment to catch her breath and not be overwhelmed all over again.

A voice interrupted her reverie. "First timer?"

She turned to find a thin, angular-faced man with ink-stained fingers watching her. His weary expression suggested a lifetime of entertaining foolish questions.

She shook her head. “No… I mean, yes. I mean, I’ve visited before, but this is my first time to do any reading,” she stammered.

"I’m Auren," he said, not bothering with pleasantries. "Librarian. What are you looking for?"

Menna decided the librarian would appreciate her cutting straight to the point. "Texts on arclith charging… oh, and energy flows.”

Auren raised an eyebrow. "Research or curiosity?"

"Both."

“Anything else?”

“Oh… maybe anything you have about charging arclith up on the surface?” Auren nodded as he noted her requests. “And anything about animals that can sense arclith?"

The librarian put his pen down and smiled wanly at Menna. “When I said anything, I didn’t expect having to hunt down everything.”

“I’m sorry… just got carried away,” Menna flashed a toothy grin and shrugged apologetically. “Being a poor surface-girl and all…”

He studied her for a moment, then gestured for her to follow. He swiped at the indexing runes at his station then turned to the central column where the levitating tracks rotated volumes down to their level. Auren then led Menna to the narrow counter that curved along the railing of the spiral and tapped another rune, causing several manuscripts to slide smoothly into his waiting hands.

"These records might be enough to get you started," he explained, handing her a few scrolls and a weighty tome bound in moleskin. "But if you want real insight, you’ll need special authorization for the deeper archives."

Menna frowned. "And how do I get that?"

Auren shook his head knowingly, lips pursed. "You don’t. Not yet."

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Later, as she stepped out of the stalactite, she wasn’t entirely surprised to find Vazko waiting outside.

"You again?" she muttered.

"Just making sure you’re not lost," he said, his tone casual but his presence anything but. He’d clearly memorized her schedule.

This time, she didn’t question it, realizing that he was one of the few, if not the only, Deepshy who seemed to make any sort of effort to help her adjust to life in Obsidara.

“I’m trying my best. It would help to get to know more about the districts where I can get lost,” she remarked.

Vazko nodded and led her down a different bridge from the one she usually took to and from the library.

Menna asked the Deepguard to take her to Obsidara’s labor district furthest from the center. Her rationale was that it would help her research to see for herself how the very foundation of Deepshy technology was kept fed and running. Obsidara ran on arclith, which needed charging to be useful, spawning an entire industry unto itself.

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The charging district was a wonder of engineering—a complex of brutalist structures built around deep thermal vents, connected by a network of ramps and conduits. Gears slowly turned in a never-ending cycle, conveying shards and Shy alike.

From an observation deck, Menna watched as workers moved between massive platforms, arranging dim, drained shards into racks that were then carefully submerged into artificial channels of flowing magma. While the arclith still glowed red-hot, they were directed through alternating rows of magnets to firmly bind the energy to the stone.

She knew enough from her studies to grasp the basic process. The energy for the charges came from a finely tuned application of intense geothermal heat and magnetic fields. The process was a delicate balancing act—too much energy, and the arclith could become unstable. Too little, and the charge wouldn’t hold.

It was dangerous work. The workers were shrouded in protective smocks, gloves and masks, that barely protected them from the suffocating steam. Their movements were precise and practiced. One misplaced shard, one misaligned magnet, and there could be a chain reaction that could result in a bad batch—or worse, an uncontrolled surge.

"That looks really dangerous," Menna observed.

Vazko nodded. “With all our knowledge and experience, you’d think we’d have figured out how to make it safer, easier, and less costly by now. But no, it’s only gotten worse.”

Menna frowned, taken aback by Vazko’s uncharacteristic verboseness. "Aren’t the workers being paid well at least?"

"They are. But life in Obsidara isn’t cheap."

Menna caught sight of a worker taking a break, leaning against the railing of a charging platform. His smock was singed at the edges, and his forearms were lined with faded burn scars.

She approached him.

“You work here?”

The worker snorted. “Almost feels like I live here too.”

Menna hesitated. “How often do you charge shards?”

“All the time. There’s never enough,” he said. “City takes more every year. New devices, new industries. But the Deep only has so many vents and veins.” He sighed, rolling his shoulders. “If we ever fall behind…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. If the charging stopped… so would everything else.

Menna bid farewell to the worker and turned away, pulling on Vazko’s hand to lead her back out, deciding she’d seen enough.

She had always envied the Deepshy’s advancements, the way arclith powered their every convenience. Now, she wasn’t sure she wanted that kind of life for the surface.

She thought of her father’s caravans, the Sunshy hunting parties, the independence they had. The Middleshy may be parochial, and the Sunshy were scattered, but they weren’t trapped like this, totally dependent on a limited, labor-intensive and volatile energy source. The Deepshy needed their cities, their charging stations, their entire shard-based system just to survive.

Menna’s gaze drifted back to the worker, and a terrible thought took root. Do they even know there’s another way to live? Did the poor Deepshy even realize that life above was less complicated, less dependent on this fragile arrangement?

She remembered Samy’s words about mining towns that didn’t glow like Obsidara.

She thought of the rich and connected Deepshy, the traders, diplomats, and leaders, the ones who had the means to travel between the layers. Did they even notice the disparity? Or worse—they knew, and simply didn’t want the others to?

“Has the Deep always been like this?” she asked weakly.

Vazko’s expression remained unreadable. “Has been for a while now. But you wouldn’t have noticed unless you lived here and traveled to the surface.”

She frowned. “Then why don’t the Sunshy or Middleshy seem to know about how things are?”

“Because it’s expensive to go up,” he flatly explained.

Menna turned to him. “You mean the elevators?”

Vazko nodded. “You must either be rich enough to afford the arclith cost or have connections with those in authority to get subsidized passage. If you can afford the trip, chances are you’re already comfortable enough that you don’t want to rock the boat.”

Menna considered that.

“So, by the time a poor Deepshy earns enough to leave, they’re… not poor anymore?”

“Exactly.”

She grimaced. “That’s… convenient.”

Vazko couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. “Convenient for those in charge, sure.”

“Was it always this bad?” she asked.

Vazko hesitated. “No,” he admitted. “Not when I was young. The divide’s been growing worse every generation.”

She frowned. “Then why doesn’t anyone say anything?”

His expression turned apologetic. He took a deep breath before replying. “Because part of the Deepguard’s job is to keep it quiet.”

Menna blinked. “Wait—you mean you actually stop people from talking about it?”

“Not explicitly,” Vazko said. “But we… discourage certain kinds of people from ascending.”

Menna swallowed. That explained a lot.

She thought of her mother, who had left the Deep years ago, marrying into a more financially stable Middleshy family. Her mother had never spoken about inequality in Obsidara, but Menna now understood that she had left before things got this way.

She stared intently at Vazko. “You’re being really open about all this.”

He shrugged. “I don’t usually talk much, but when I do, I try to make it count.”

Menna nodded. “I’ll have to remember that.”

They walked in silence for a while before Vazko spoke again.

“My brother left for the surface,” he shared, his voice hushed. “He could barely afford it, but he spent everything he had saved on a one-way trip up. It was reckless, and I thought he was a fool.” He paused, exhaling sharply. “But… part of me always wondered if he had the right idea.”

Menna didn’t know what to say. Vazko, who had spent his whole life enforcing the Deep’s rules, had a brother who broke them. For a moment, his carefully constructed stoicism cracked, revealing something far more vulnerable beneath.

Menna wanted to ask more, but she sensed that he had already shared more than he intended.

So instead, she simply said, “I hope you get to see him again.”

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The next day Menna hunched over her workspace at the academy, a collection of documents, arclith fragments and tools spread out before her. The slide rule she had brought from the surface lay beside her calculations, an anomaly among the standardized instruments of the Deepshy scholars.

She was using her own previous analysis of arclith energy flow—the one she had begun before the Big Mix—as a springboard for understanding the principles of charging shards in the Deep. Yet, the more she compared her findings to what was recorded in Umbryss’ archives, the more something felt off.

Her calculations showed a clear discrepancy. The rate of charge retention and depletion of an arclith shard shouldn’t be uniform across all environments. She had determined as much on the surface after painstaking, albeit rough, experimentation with multiple shards and varied conditions.

However, the established records in Umbryss treated it as practically constant, as though there was no meaningful differences in arclith behavior, whatever the conditions and circumstances. The differences between deep and surface charging were barely even mentioned beyond just dismissing their efforts on the surface as inefficient and non-viable.

Menna frowned. She knew for a fact that her surface experiments had shown inconsistencies—however slight—depending on multiple variables such as proximity to other charged arclith shards, ambient temperature, weather conditions, and exposure to open sky. Yet, every research paper she cross-referenced at Umbryss assumed only deep conditions mattered.

Determined to find some historical precedent, Menna returned to the stalactite. She combed through ever more ancient research records, where she finally found what she was looking for: a set of centuries-old research notes documenting Deepshy expeditions to the surface for experimental purposes.

"Certain fluctuations and variances were noted between Deep and surface charging experiments."

“Differing results between environments were not deemed significant enough to pursue further experimentation."

Menna stared at the passages, her fingers tightening on the fragile page. Why didn’t they investigate further? Had the researchers dismissed the variances out of bias—assuming the Deep’s conditions were the only ones that mattered? Or was it something else?

She looked at the date of the expedition and experiments. Four hundred years ago. There had been no recorded follow-ups since then.

As Menna absorbed this revelation, Auren appeared beside her.

"You’re back," he observed dryly. "More research?"

Menna nodded, still turning the implications over in her head, explaining in more detail what she needed.

Auren led her to a different section of the library, one focused on natural studies. Most of what she found was flimsy, irrelevant and outdated.

- Mole lizards were the most researched species. Their sensitivity to buried arclith veins made them valuable for deep-mining expeditions. Salamanders were also known to gravitate toward areas rich in geothermal energy but weren’t as useful for digging as the moles.

- Bowerbirds, pikas, and other surface creatures? Nothing.

Menna frowned. "No available research on surface animals?"

Auren leaned against the table, considering her request. "Deepshy scholars don’t usually go out of their way to study the surface. They focus more on the creatures we use."

Menna bit her lip. That was the gap, then. For generations, nobody had thought to re-evaluate arclith when gathered, used, or charged on the surface—likely because it wasn’t seen as useful to Deep civilization. But Menna knew better.

The first time she’d heard about bowerbirds being drawn to arclith, it had been from the Sunshy scouts during her first trip to Mossgrove as a little girl. What if they knew things the Deepshy had overlooked? What if arclith behaved differently out in the sun than in the deep?

This could be something. Menna’s pulse quickened, her mind racing as she walked back from the library. She was certain that the gaps in knowledge ran far deeper than regular academic bias and laziness could explain. And she wasn’t sure whether that was a deficit meant to be corrected... or a secret kept on purpose.

As she navigated the now familiar streets of Obsidara, she couldn’t help but resent the stark contrasts more and more—the wealthy Deepshy floating along in arclith-embroidered fabrics, while laborers in dim alleyways carefully rationed a single shard for light and heat.

Menna wanted to discuss what she’d uncovered, but when she sought out Kaeloris, he barely acknowledged her.

"Busy," he muttered, scanning a scroll at his desk. "You’re adjusting fine, right? Good, good."

She should have expected that. Of course he was distracted.

Menna’s resolve hardened. She had spent her whole life thinking she was stuck between two worlds—not sophisticated enough for the Deepshy, not interested enough in typical Surface pursuits for the others. But maybe that was why she was the right person to challenge the accepted order.

By the time she reached her quarters, Menna was already planning her next move. The Deepshy assumed they already knew best, so they never re-examined old findings. The Surface Shy thought all Deepshy lived in comfort and ease, so they never questioned their expertise or the sacrifices necessary to maintain their way of life. Both sides had massive blind spots.

She had a fresh perspective. And she was determined to put it to good use.

Menna closed her notebook. She had come to Obsidara expecting to fight for her place—to prove herself in the academy, to stand among their scholars and researchers. But now, she was wondering:

What if they had it all wrong, but none of them could see it?