Drake

Stone breakers were seemingly innocuous fist-sized hardened clay balls. Only the long wick dangling down the side betrayed their destructive potential. Since they were technically banned in Bayselle, they were incredibly valuable on the black market. Drake assumed their intended use was blasting holes in mountains for mining, but pirates loved these destructive little balls. The Ingobernables had used them to punch a hole in the side of Bayselle Castle during the raid where they tossed out the royalty and took up residence in the parts of the castle not sliding down the cliffs into Lansilia Ocean. Drake had five of these breakers. Certainly he could wreak some havoc on an unstable mine shaft.

“You know how these work?” he asked Daniella.

After their chat, she had been an easy captive, keeping her disgust over him and her situation to herself while willingly venturing further into the mine shaft. He had found nearly-spent abandoned torches for each of them, and she examined the tunnels closely as they traveled, but offered no objections or suggestions. She was probably hoping to chance upon a dark pit to shove him in. She might get her wish; the tunnels were craggy, and they widened and narrowed without much rhyme or reason.

“Stone breakers are designed to burst under extreme heat,” she replied. “It sends a chemical flying in all directions that melts stone and scatters hundreds of tiny explosive pellets which burst, breaking deep holes in the rock. The chain effect of hundreds of explosions cracks the stone and shatters it.”

“You don’t remember who you are, but you have intimate knowledge of destructive materials?”

A smile flickered under her stony surface. “The knowledge I do have is…eclectic, yes.”

“No complaints here,” Drake replied, flicking his torch to illuminate a pair of what he could have sworn were eyes. It turned out to be a hollow filled with shimmering rocks. “Do the breakers create a decent amount of fire when they explode?”

“Brief, but hot,” she agreed. “Are you asking if they will light each other?”

That was an idea. “I am now.”

She exhaled through her nose. “You do realize how incredibly dangerous using five stone breakers in a chain reaction in an unstable mine shaft might be?”

That was the point.

The tunnel was narrowing, and they would no longer be able to walk side by side up ahead. He waved Daniella in front with his torch. It flickered from the quick movement. A soft sound of disgust escaped her lips, but she continued forward down the narrow tunnel.

“Yes, they’ll light each other,” she said over her shoulder. “Best put them rather close together.”

She stopped, stretching her torch forward. Her body blocked most of the claustrophobic tunnel at this point, so Drake could not see what she was looking at. She ducked and vanished through a narrow space, barely a body length wide. He hurried after her and found himself unprepared for a several length drop. His noisy landing echoed around him. The narrow tunnel had spit him into an underground cave that stretched further than his torchlight.

“Perfect,” he declared. “We can stop here.”

“You’re thinking you can lure them into this cave and destroy their only exit?” asked Daniella.

“Something like that,” he murmured. Blocking their exit was not going to suffice. As proved, the Flifary could just zap out of the cave with their magic.

“And you think they won’t anticipate this plan?”

“It’s a pretty bad plan. Why would they suspect it?”

The potential for insults was too easy, so she conducted a survey of the end of the tunnel instead, testing the stone with her fingers and shining her torch down the passageway they had walked. “You’ll want to plant a breaker at the narrowest point, but the bulk of them earlier in the tunnel if you want a particularly inconvenient cave-in.”

She was only helping him in order to have a solid understanding of his plan in order to escape, but her expertise was helpful all the same.

“In the spirit of full disclosure, the group following you can travel with magic,” he admitted. “So, sadly, I’m going to have to lure them into the tunnel before setting off the breakers.”

“Better and better,” she murmured. “In no way does that sound like a plan likely to end in horrible death. I’m so glad to have met you.”

“I’ll set up the breakers,” he said. “You take these.” He held up a handful of unlit torches he had gathered coming down the tunnel. “Set them up far enough in so—”

“I get the idea,” she interrupted, glaring back at him, maybe imagining his death. Her face was menacing by flickering torchlight. Without another word, she gathered the torches he held out and tucked them in the crook of her arm. She spun and headed further into the cave.

He followed her advice and planted the breakers at intervals, making sure to shove them off to the side with enough gravel to hide their presence. He was satisfied no one would see them unless they were searching. If they worked as well as Daniella claimed, this entire tunnel would be a death trap. He pocketed the last breaker and backed up, evaluating how far away he could be to throw his breaker into the tunnel with any kind of accuracy. It had some weight, and the tunnel was a big target. As long as he could get Rosaliy clear, they could run for the entrance in time.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

A long, high-pitched shriek sliced the muffled quiet of the mineshaft like a knife. Despite an interruption being exactly what he was planning for, Drake still jumped. That was a locater flare. Miners used them to signal location or danger in the sprawling mountains, but they were also popular long range weapons on board pirate ships, so he knew the distinctive screech. This one had been set off outside. He wasted no time agonizing over why the Flifary would announce their presence and sprinted for the tunnel instead, careful not to disturb his masked weapons.

“Someone’s here,” he panted, jumping into the cave and waving Daniella over. She lit the torches at her chosen mock campsite and left her own on the pile. She took a few steps and hesitated, removed the shawl around her shoulders, and draped it across a rock before joining him against the wall.

A grouping of rocks to the right of the hole he had just come through was enough to hide their presence from anyone hopping down into the cave, unless that person chose to turn around. Who would turn around when there was a suspicious fire and evidence of people in the distance?

Drake beat his torch against the ground to extinguish it, and they were plunged into darkness.

They waited until an echoing clatter sounded from the tunnel—shuffling feet kicking up gravel and the voices attached to those careless feet. A blinding orb of light flew through the hole first. Drake and Daniella flattened themselves against the rock as the bright orb illuminated their hiding spot. A person scrambled through and stepped forward. It was Rosaliy.

Drake was jarred by how relieved he was to see her. Hadn’t the spell worn off by now? None of that mattered right now, because she was not alone. When he was just about to risk an attempt to grab her or alert her to his presence, she was followed into the wide cave by a pair of arguing voices.

“I told you it was a bad idea to come in here,” Rosaliy complained to a pair of Flifary men who had followed her out of the hole and stopped uncomfortably close to where Drake and Daniella hid. “She’s already gone.”

“Impossible,” growled one of the men, stepping forward. “Even with the racket you’re making. She’s in here. There’s no other way out.”

“Look, Ocery,” said the other man, pointing to the flickering light in the distance. “Over there.” The brilliant orb slid further into the cave.

Ocery grabbed Rosaliy’s arm and pulled her forward far enough for Drake to nod to Daniella and boost her up to slip silently into the tunnel. She disappeared, probably halfway to Curi by now. He could worry about tracking her down again after Rosaliy was safe.

Drake hesitated. How was he going to get Rosaliy out of Ocery’s clutches? Ocery was huge, and Drake was no match for him. Rosaliy’s eyes drifted his way. They stopped before she turned fully. Had she seen him? He froze, uncertain.

Still being dragged along by Ocery, Rosaliy’s toe caught the edge of a rock and she went down. A cry of pain escaped her lips.

“I thought your precious belt kept you from getting hurt,” Ocery spat out.

“From outside harm,” she wailed. “Not my own clumsiness!”

He tried to haul her to her feet, but she hollered and crumpled to the ground. “Stupid, fragile Terrans,” he muttered, kicking a spray of rocks at her before continuing to see what Dalor had discovered.

“What is all this?” Ocery said, grabbing one of the fading torches.

Using the momentary distraction, Rosaliy pushed off the ground and sprinted for the mouth of the tunnel. Ocery gave a cry and took off in pursuit. Drake was about to be in her way, so he leaped up into the tunnel to give her room to run. He could hear her clamor after him, but he also heard shouts from Ocery close behind.

Drake tossed a glance over his shoulder. Ocery’s torch was at the end of the tunnel. The flickering beacon was gaining on Rosaliy fast. Ocery leaped forward and caught her legs. She went down hard, but scrambled to stand, kicking backwards with her feet. Drake’s heart nearly stopped as Ocery tossed down the torch inches from one of the hidden breakers to wrangle Rosaliy. Ocery pinned her down quickly and dragged her to her feet. Drake skidded his run to a stop, nearly bowling over someone in the dark.

“Stop,” called the voice attached to his obstacle. Even without her memory, Daniella could still stop a room.

Ocery flipped his torch off the ground with his foot. Drake was half tempted to tell him to be more careful where he was waving that open flame. “There she is,” hollered Ocery to the man behind him.

“You’re standing in a tunnel lined with stone breakers,” Daniella called out. “Hand over the Sorceress and back up, or you’ll have a mountain on top of your heads.”

“You won’t blow the tunnel with her still in it,” Ocery mocked, pressing Rosaliy’s face to the wall.

Rosaliy kicked away the rubble burying a stone breaker right at her feet. She slammed her foot down on Ocery’s and elbowed him in the chest, going straight for the torch in his hand.

His torch? Why?

Rosaliy was able to wrench the burning torch from his grasp, and she thrust it at the ground. Drake saw it all in a horrible slowness. He had not moved an inch by the time the flash of fire lit up the tunnel and burned his staring eyes. Then a series of explosions shook the tunnel, and stones began to fall.

“Run,” ordered Daniella, grabbing his shirt with both hands and pushing hard. “Now.”

He was stunned, so maybe that was an excuse for why his feet moved in the direction Daniella shoved him. He broke out into a dark night, hearing the rumbling of a crumbling mountain behind him.

“We have to go back,” Drake stammered.

“Even if she survived, you’ll never reach her,” Daniella argued. “She made her choice.”

“She was wearing the belt,” he argued. “She might have survived.”

“Great,” Daniella answered sharply. “I’m glad she had a better plan than you. She probably had a way out, then.”

There was only one way out, and they had taken it.

There was a piece of paper flapping under a rock by the horses. Daniella snatched it up and read, “Daniella, head to the place you sent me. I’ll meet you there. Rose.”

Daniella was lying; she just wanted to run. Drake wondered why he was not running back into that cave. If Rosaliy could push through enough debris, maybe she could make it to the end of the tunnel, his mind tried to tell him. The other half of his mind told him the entire mountain was collapsing, according to plan, actually. He could still hear reverberating crashes of rock against rock deep in the mountain. It would take weeks to dig through the rubble.

Inescapable trap, remember? his brain screeched at him.

While he was standing there, Daniella dug through his bag. She produced a match. She plucked the unused stone breaker out of his numb hand and lit it.

“What are you doing?” he tried to object, but she had already pitched the sizzling clay ball into the mine.

“Let’s go,” she said, holding out her hand for him to help him onto a horse.

A boom shook the ground under Drake’s feet. Tumbling rocks crushed the warning sign and sealed the last possible exit or entrance to the mine.