Water trickled down the curved tunnel walls and into a small stream, which caused every step they made to land in salty water. Forty of them - two for each ship in the fleet - split into teams to cover ground quicker, and Suranihr and Iarvahr were joined by a historian called Janjun, and by a chemist with the name Felana. They walked in silence - Iarvahr led the group in front, axe in one hand and bright lantern in other hand, with Suranihr guarding the back.
Tunnel walls were wavy and lumpy, with a plethora of small holes and claw marks. Everything around them seemed porous, sponge-like, but the tunnel walls were as hard as a stone, and the ground was as stable as a cobblestone pavement. Their steps resonated through tunnels, the sound of splashing water spreading far, and each of them was keeping a sharp eye for shrieks, as they started calling the race of five limbed monsters.
They came to a crossroads and stopped moving. To the right, a tunnel started to drop down, deeper into the body of an island and from the tunnel to the left, a faint light could be seen. With a few swings of his axe, Iarvahr carved a mark into the wall of a tunnel - an arrow to mark the way out of the tunnels. “The light probably means the way outside. We should go deeper.”
After a few minutes, they stopped. Iarvahr put his finger on his lips and they listened.
They could hear a soft chitter coming from the tunnel in front of them. Iarvahr raised his axe and made a slow movement downwards. Get ready.
He banged his axe against the wall. The loud clang was echoing through the tunnels and chittering turned into dangerous humming. Iarvahr felt nothing, but the rest of the company started shivering. He turned his head towards them and all gave him a signal that they were okay.
They moved deeper and after a while, the tunnel started to rise. Shrieks were nowhere to be seen and violent humming has turned into a chitter once again and then, into a deep silence..
After half an hour of walking, Iarvahr had to admit that they were lost. Even though he left marks on the walls, when they tried to turn around and head back to the large chamber, crossroads and tunnels appeared that they did not see before.
“Fifteen more minutes, and then we will head back.” Suranihr muttered. Tunnel after tunnel, crossroads after crossroads, they found… nothing. Five minutes, ten, fifteen, they turned around, and walked for half an hour, an hour, two hours, their path curving, rising and descending…
They stopped at the nearest crossroads to eat some of their rations that consisted mostly out of dried fruit and meat, and while chewing silently, Suranihr tried to find some plan on how to get out of the tunnels. Everything was silent, even the water stopped running down the walls.
“Any ideas on how to get out?” He asked Iarvahr. His voice was muffled, as if the acoustics of deeper tunnels were much different than those closer to the surface.
Iarvahr just shook his head. “We just have to hope to find some of my marks.”
“We certainly found nothing in these tunnels. Nothing living, nor dead.”
The chemist approached him. “Captain… I have to relieve myself.”
“Very well. Iarvahr will go with you.”
“I mean no disrespect, but I would prefer Janjun to come with me.”
Iarvahr raised his eyebrow, but made no comment. Suranihr nodded. “Very well. Do not take too long.”
The chemist and historian saluted them both and walked away. Iarvahr chuckled. “They did not seem to like us.”
“Morro’s crew is as dead inside as he is. The butcher. The executioner. The death itself, the Reaper, wielding hiis Scythe. They…”
Loud screams full of pain filled their ears. They did not wait, and started to run after the chemist and historian. Screaming did not fade out, but the acoustics of the tunnels made it impossible to follow and even after two minutes of mad running, they could not find anybody. Then, the screams faded into a buzz that seemed to vibrate the air around them.
“I hate this place.” Iarvahr spat on the ground.
“How much oil do you have for the lanterns?” Suranihr asked in an irritated voice.
“For one last refill… why do you ask?”
“Because mine fell out of my sack while I was running. Fuck this place.” Out of irritation and frustration, he hit his axe against the wall. A wave of nausea followed by a staccato of vibrating sound hit him like a hammer, and he staggered backwards, falling butt first onto the ground. Iarvahr jumped quickly in front of him and bashed rapidly into the body of a shriek that appeared out of the opening in the wall - a tunnel hole that masked itself as a shadow. His Haraag made armor absorbed the acoustic waves directed at him and besides a soft tingling, he felt nothing. He jumped out of the reach of shriek’s claws and without a second of hesitation, Iarvahr cut off one clawed limb free. The shriek cried out a painful sound and leapt at Iarvahr, pinning him against the wall. Its claws, while sharp, could not pierce the hard sandsteel, but the firm grip of its clawed limbs made Iarvahr unable to move.
Suranihr looked around. His lantern went black after landing on the ground and cracking open and to add to it, his vision was blurry and reddened from the sound attack of a shriek. He heard something move behind him and he swung his naval axe as swiftly as he could in the direction of the movement. He hit another shriek right into its mouth full of needle sharp teeth. The axe got stuck in shriek’s body and as the shriek jumped away from Suranihr, it ripped the axe out from his grip. Not waiting for an invitation, Suranihr pulled out his revolver gun out of his holster and fired six quick shots at the shriek. The creature fell on the ground, thrashing, but apparently dying.
Iarvahr was still unable to overpower the shriek that pinned him to the wall. At least he was safe, encased in his armor, and the shriek’s sound attacks had no effect on him. Suranihr however felt each and every one of them and even though they were not aimed directly at him, the acoustics of the tunnel made the sound as painful as a fist blow. All he could do was to try and endure.
With shaking hands, he reloaded his gun and tried to aim at the shriek. His first shot missed the creature and hit Iarvahr into the shoulder instead, making a dent in his armor, but his second shot hit the now four limbed monster. Iarvahr ripped his hand out of the creature's grip, pulled out his wide dagger and stabbed the creature wherever he could, again and again, until the shriek let go of him and jumped out of his reach.
Four shots tore holes close to the creature’s mouth and one bash of an axe later, the shriek was lying dead at Iarvahr’s feet.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Suranihr spat blood onto the corpse of a dead shriek. “We need to leave this hellhole at once.”
“We shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”
Not twenty paces ahead, they found a half eaten corpse of the chemist Felana. Few of her vials were broken, oozing liquids of vivid colors into the salty water. The historian was lying on the ground next to her, still alive but barely. His chest was rising and falling down slowly, but blood rushed out of him from multiple wounds. The whole area was lit by the light of two lanterns, and it looked almost… unreal.
Iarvahr quickly moved to help him, but Suranihr stopped him. “Wait. Look at the wall above his head.”
Iarvahr noticed a wavy crack in the wall that appeared to be slowly breathing. It opened a few centimeters, and then closed again without making even the slightest noise. It was unnatural and chills ran down his spine from the sight. He and Suranihr looked at each other and nodded.
“I have had enough of this place.” Suranihr growled, and with his revolver aimed at the wall, he walked right to it decisively. Just as it opened a little bit, he shot three bullets right into it. The crack opened wide and a shriek jumped out of it, screaming with pain, thrashing its limbs all around. Iarvahr was already waiting for it, bashing its carapace with an axe, cutting its limbs off of the torso and stabbing with his wide dagger right between the segments of shriek’s body. It was over quickly, and where there was but a crack in the wall, another tunnel waited open.
“We are fucked, Iarvahr, you know that right? Completely, utterly fucked.”
“I guess that now I understand how we’ve got lost.”
“Is the historian actually alive?” Suranihr asked. Iarvahr just shook his head. “He was alive, right until this shriek clawed him open.”
Neither of them had seen death for the first time, not even for the twentieth time. They had to act, and not mourn the fallen.
“So what now? We will never escape this place when tunnels can appear and disappear. Certainly not with shrieks hiding in the dark.”
Iarvahr watched the bodies of their comrades, the broken vials and oozing chemicals… “I have an idea. How good of a shot are you?”
Iarvahr took all remaining, unbroken vials from the chemist’s corpse and stacked them on one pile. He added both lanterns right next to the pile, as well as a single fuse grenade that he found on the historian’s corpse. They walked away as far as they could, and Suranihr aimed.
***
They had no idea what kinds of alchemical marvels the chemist carried with her, and they certainly could not anticipate what happened after Suranihr took his shot. An explosion of such a magnitude took them both by a surprise, and they both went deaf momentarily. There was dust everywhere, the water around the explosion evaporated in an instant and dry, porous material that the island was made off crumbled like a sandstone. Wide cracks spread through the tunnel walls everywhere around them and before they could react, the ground beneath their feet gave away.
They landed in a large, oval room. Iarvahr tasted blood in his mouth and could not stand up, disoriented as he was. Suranihr helped him to his knees.
“I applaud your idea, Iarvahr.”
“Shut up.”
They looked around the room they fell into. They were stunned, shocked from what they saw - nothing in this room reminded them of the tunnels they were in just moments before. Everything around them was made of metal and glass, with scores of pale blue wires sticking out of every metallic box they laid their eyes upon. On a number of glass rectangles, pale blue letters of unknown language danced and changed, twisted, appeared out of nowhere and disappeared into the darkness. Soft humming could be heard and felt everywhere around them, pulsing in the same, repeating pattern that they have heard once before, but neither of them could remember where or when. There were tables around the room with books and paper stacked on them in perfect condition, as if they were written just yesterday, and everything was lit in a soft blue tint. In the middle of the room, there was a large chair, with what appeared to be the remains of a disfigured body. Three long metallic arms were sticking out of it, and half of its bones were bent, twisted and stretched, but none of them were broken. Yet the skull… the skull was unmistakingly human.
“What the hell have we fallen into…” Suranihr murmured disbelievingly, and Iarvahr gave him no answer. He was walking around the room, slowly observing and examining everything. His mouth moved wordlessly, his movements erratic.
Suranihr walked to the nearest, glaring panel of glass and looked at it, confusion visible in his face. “This map is wrong. Simply wrong. There is no island across the Frozen sea, nor across the ocean. And these islands? I think that…” Suranihr pointed at the islands on the map, touching the glass panel, and the picture shifted. The map disappeared, and islands suddenly filled the whole panel. They were visualized with great detail, as if viewed from a bird’s eye, with green jungles and fuming volcanoes filled with boiling, red lava.
“What is this sorcery? Who made it?”
“I think the answer is obvious.” Iarvahr’s grave-like voice sent chills down Suranihr’s spine. He followed Iarvahr’s gaze and turned his head towards the skeleton.
His gaze shifted again and he looked at other glass panels. There were foreign letters on them and he could not understand a thing. His attention returned to the map and he disbelievingly touched it again - this time, with two fingers. The map spread out again, and large landmasses appeared on the glass panel.
“Are you listening to me, Suranihr?” Iarvahr asked, irritated. His eyes twitched around the room. “Be careful touching unknown things.”
“You did not say a word. And it’s just a map. Wait…” He pointed at an area of the map where their fleet should be, and after the map enlarged… “Fuck me, Iarvahr. This is us. Now. Our fleet. There is my ship, and there is Scythe, Needle, Red Widow, Alterna, Krisos… You know that I don’t believe in witchcraft…”
Iarvahr growled with anger in his voice. “It's not witchcraft. It’s just advanced technology.”
“Advanced techno… Iarvahr! We are looking at our fleet, from above, right fucking now! This is insane…”
“Have you ever been to the wall of Bashen? A big wall of metal, west border of Glaeria? You know the one, with giant cannons sitting on top of it, spitting streams of green and blue fire? Oh, did I mention that there were no people on the wall? Just the cannons, killing whatever moved?” Suranihr looked at him in disbelief. Iarvahr looked him deep in the eyes and slowly nodded. “This is just a technology. There is no such thing as witchcraft. Never was, never will be. That’s why we, in the Lands of the Citadel, are so far ahead of Antigan, Malorea, Ladrurg, and fucking Glaeria! No believing in magic, no gods above us, just our intellect, wits and talent. Hard work, that’s what made us what we are. Look around you, Suranihr! These… glass panels, they are like books! Letters, pictures, whatever, they are just shining bright. You know what this all reminds me of? Along with the remains of this twisted fellow? The monstrosity that is the Bashen wall, all of this stuff around us, along with everything buried beneath the citadel and beneath our world, was built by the same civilization that built the wall. Maybe even shrieks come from there somehow, or maybe the shrieks made all of this!” he screamed the last words. They stood in silence, looking at one another, unsure of what to do next. Iarvahr was shaking, his eyes twitching, his hands madly gripping the emptiness of air.
Suranihr knew Iarvahr for what felt like ages, but as time passed, they drifted apart. Each of them went their own way - Suranihr climbed the ranks in the Citadel’s navy until became captain of the cruiser Luthra, and even though from the beginning, Iarvahr used to accompany him on many voyages, the time came when Iarvahr got sick of the sailor life. Zeears ago, Iarvahr joined an expedition, its destination and purpose unknown to Suranihr and barely half a year ago, Iarvahr returned from the expedition alone, with his mind shattered and broken. When Suranihr met his old friend, Iarvahr stared at him with dead eyes and open mouth, wordless, as if he saw a ghost. It took almost three months for him to recover, but he never mentioned anything regarding the horrors he must have endured, not even how and where he got the prized Haraag armor. But Suranihr felt like the time had come for Iarvahr to speak.
“My friend… What happened to you?” With these words, Suraniht turned to Iarvahr only to find him staring at one of the glass panels with letters on it.
Iarvahr’s eyes widened and his mouth opened and closed rapidly, soundless, breathless. Blood disappeared from his face and his skin turned snow white. He looked directly at the skeleton, as if he had seen the deformed bones for the first time. As if he had overlooked them until now. He spread his armes and turned around, forcibly laughing the emotionless laughter. “I have seen this… before.” A sudden realization hit Suranihr with the force of a battle hammer. Iarvahr was not irritated from being angry. Iarvahr was… frightened.
“Iarvahr.” Suranihr came closer to him, slowly putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Speak. Talk to me. I can’t have you here like this.”
Iarvahr turned to him, and took a deep breath…