Captivity within a colossal block of metal should have been painfully tedious, but even after Ivaldi had left and the minutes stretched into hours, time marked only by the irregular rocking of the vehicle with carried me, there was an undercurrent of tension. The feeling of being trapped, of helplessness and of dread for what might come, was omnipresent.
I had become painfully aware that I lived only by the grace of Ivaldi, and whoever might support him. Should he decide I was more trouble than I was worth, the Pharyes could simply push my block back into the magma and end me there and then.
There was also Echo’s parallel predicament to fear – they were as powerless as I had become, but unlike me, Echo could be harmed with frightening ease.
Finally, there was the anxiety of knowing that all this was only a temporary reprieve before we reached Northastr, wherever that was, and the looming question of what would come then.
Tightness gripped my chest once more, as though the great weight atop me were suffocating.
I took a long, slow breath, proving to myself it wasn’t so.
I followed it up with a slow exhale.
This desperate predicament wouldn’t be overcome through brute force or anger.
Nor was it the time for panic – it never was.
Now was the time for calm, for patience – time to observe and even accept my helplessness, and to remain clearheaded.
If an opportunity came to me, I needed the presence of mind to realize it, and the wits to leverage it.
Although I was alone in the room, attempts to lift the block sandwiching me had proven that I was observed by the enemies next door; a voice had warned me not to move any further when I managed to form a slight crack between the slabs. I wasn’t sure why they were so fearful as to retreat behind bulkheads, but that might prove useful – limited as my repertoire was, given enough time I could probably melt through the metal with magic.
Painful as the attempt would surely be, if I could find the right moment, one where the guards were suitably distracted, I suspected I could be loose before the Pharyes attacked. If they meant to separate me from Echo at Northastr, or to somehow drown or entomb me without even air, then it would be worth risking everything to break free of my bonds.
For now however, patience. Time to bide and entirely too much freedom to think, as minutes stretched into hours in my perception of time, and my body remained frozen in place.
That gave me ample time to consider the long, tumultuous chain of events which had brought me there. Leaping into a war, falling into the Underworld, fighting through monsters and machines and reaching the Sepulchre, then escaping into the waiting clutches of the very foes I’d been beaten by once already.
How had it come to this? Wasn’t I superhuman?
Certainly I had power far beyond any of them. If I’d been at my full strength I would have won easily – or at least escaped. But I’d been fighting them while still wounded and exhausted, drained of all magic and mana….
I had none of those excuses for Grand Chasm however.
It all came back to the same thing in the end, and the clarity made me feel absurd and infuriated and idiotic all over again.
Ael had been right from the first, when she warned me of the power of numbers. Whether it had been the golems, the monsters around the mine, or the Pharyes above it, there was only so much one person could do.
The Pharyes kept beating me because they weren’t trying to do everything alone.
Somehow in finding my own drive to go on, to persevere through the nightmare of escaping the Underworld, I’d concluded that being prepared to risk my life would be enough to save everyone, or at least that it was the most I could possibly do.
And I was too stubborn and stupid to just listen to Aellope when she warned me and tried to protect me.
No… that wasn’t it.
It wasn’t just about saving them.
I had been trying to make amends, and to convince myself that I was worthy of them to begin with; that a person like me could be good enough for them.
What had I ever done to deserve them, after all? I’d never had friends before, not real friends. I’d hidden so much from them too. Perhaps even the true cause of their misfortunes – cursed as I was, it was hard to believe that my arrival and this war were truly unrelated.
Was it all my fault? Was a person… like me… really someone Aellope or Aggy or Chione should be bothering with?
But giving up my life, the part of myself I had come to care for and which I held most precious, surely that would be a fitting sacrifice to balance the scales. If I lost everything for them I would be worthy of their love.
Even now the thought made a perverse sense to me, but I rejected it. Any fool could die for her friends, and what good would it do them? Would my death actually stop the war? I couldn’t see how.
Even if there was some way, if Aellope really did care for me the way I cared for her, then she wouldn’t thank me for throwing my life away to protect her.
I had to be smarter. I was willing to risk death to save them, but without help my resolve was just a deathwish.
Mulling over these thoughts as the time passed and the hours stretched on I grew certain of my conclusions, but kept returning to the same problem; what allies could I find there, in Pharyes captivity?
~~~
“Lord Uldmar forbade any further contact with the prisoner, even for you, Chief,” spoke the lordling presently in charge of the watch.
Ivaldi had forgotten his name, but he recalled that the man was young; inexperienced and eager to please. Little wonder he was on duty while Lords Uldmar and Hlesey and Lady Idavoll slept.
The post he guarded was the cargo hold adjacent to Safkhet’s, where the mysterious ‘Echo’ sat secured atop a small table, placed there as a hostage should its defender attempt escape.
“Certainly he did, I was there when he gave the order,” Ivaldi nodded, craning his neck to look up at the far taller figure of the mass-built Skidbladnir the man piloted.
“But before retiring he, uh, well….”
Ivaldi leant forwards, a nervous, sheepish look on his face. The taller figure leant down towards him, drawn by the conspiratorial look on the aulogemscire’s face.
“You see, he ordered me to see to it that the prisoner was fed before he retired, but I… well I forgot with all the commotion. And of course now he’s sleeping, and so, uh, if I were to wake him up and tell him he’d be….”
“Displeased,” the man said, finishing Ivaldi’s sentence.
“Exactly! Not that it isn’t my own fault, but, well, I wouldn’t want any of you to be blamed as well, for our failure to feed a captive. I mean, it would be a terribly cruel, dishonorable thing to do, to allow a prisoner to starve. Or worse yet expire! After all, she hadn’t had any food or drink in days….”
“Hence… all this?” the guard asked, gesturing towards the wheeled cart Ivaldi was pushing.
“Exactly! We don’t really know what she eats – or how much – so I thought we should be safe and offer her lots of everything we have. So, if you’ll just open the door? Ah, no need for you to follow me inside, we don’t want to agitate her. I can already feel her mana from out here….”
He spoke the final words with an exaggerated trepidation, but the act was close enough to the truth.
“But then… who will be monitoring you? Is there someone listening from the control room?”
“Yes, the first officer and a few other crew are there. But you’ll know if Safkhet tries anything – it would be impossible to miss her mana, even through a sealed door.”
He seemed quiet keen to assent after that, several of the young nobles giving relieved sighs. None of them were eager to venture into the chamber with the dragonslayer. To them Safkhet’s cell was the lair of a monster more sinister than any kajatora.
As the doors parted and Ivaldi felt the wall of thick, dense mana emerge, he wondered once more if they were right to be afraid. Safkhet, sincere as she seemed, had slaughtered obsidian dragons even while wounded almost beyond recognition, blasting out overwhelming energy that made Ivaldi feel like he would drown inside his own Skidbladnir.
He tightened his grip on the cart, forcing his hands to stop trembling as he walked through.
The doors hissed closed behind him, sealing Ivaldi in.
The cargo bay was configured for general haulage, but the stackable crates of various supplies had been swept up against the walls, clearing space for the gargantuan metal cube which filled it almost to the ceiling. If not for the rollers set into the floor they might never have gotten it inside at all.
To look at Safkhet now it was hard to imagine her killing anyone, let alone a kajatora. The air was still thick with essence, yes, but the girl was immobile, just a head sticking out forlornly from near the base of the colossal weight which pinned her.
She heard the door of course, and looked up as he approached. The thin coating of stubble on her bald head made it look like a fuzzy spider egg, until it turned over to reveal her face.
For a captive who had so recently railed against her restraints, it was an oddly placid expression which she turned upon him now.
Although her bones might not be crystal, Safkhet had eyes like diamonds; large, round and soothing. Unmarred by fear or anger, they were instead bright with focus and intelligence, brought to a point by irises that shone opalescent with alien magic, and seemed to pull Ivaldi’s gaze in. Her light skin was smooth, unblemished despite her trials, and her other features subtle, save for her full pink lips, which threw her complexion into contrast.
As he had before, Ivaldi mused that she would have been very pretty, if she had any real nose to speak of. She wasn’t his type certainly, but something in her striking, yet vulnerable face made him want to believe in her, and help her.
“Um… sorry to disturb you,” he muttered, as he brought the cart over. “I just… well I sort of thought you might, um, want something to eat? It sounded like you’d not had anything in a while, and well, if you really are human you need food, don’t you?”
“I’ll be fine. It’s not like I can eat with my hands tied… but I doubt we like the same foods anyway.”
Ivaldi saw the glimmer that passed over her face at his suggestion however. He wondered if she feared he would try to drug her. Certainly Uldmar might well have done, if only the Pharyes had any idea what might work as a drug against humans.
Rather than try to argue, he opened the side of the cart, and took out a few dishes and canisters, as well as a small box which he left on top. Each food vessel was square, a box more than a bowl, with a flat underside lined with leather to keep them from sliding around aboard the moving crawler. Far too large for one Pharyes, they were designed for serving to the crew rather than to be eaten out of directly, but in this case they looked rather small next to the giant surface-dweller.
Getting them had been easy – although he got little regard from Uldmar or his band, Ivaldi was a counselor after all, and on any other trip would likely have been the most senior person aboard – the difficult part would be explaining to Uldmar if he found out.
For the moment however, Ivaldi was more focused on Safkhet.
Some of the dishes were still steaming hot from the galley, others chilled, but most looked relatively alike – chunks or lumps of something prepared in sauce or as stew. The fare aboard crawlers was basic, and Ivaldi had known better than to try to feed the ‘human’ gemstones, the foundation of the Pharyes diet. With a various mushroom and plant-based dishes he hoped that there would be something suitable.
“Just take a look at these, okay? I can, uh, help you with them. But you don’t have to eat anything you don’t want to!”
He wasn’t thinking only of her comfort of course - with a full belly she might also be more willing to open up.
The vapors from one of the dishes reached her nose, and Safkhet took a small sniff through that underdeveloped proboscis.
“Like I said, I’m fi-”
A rumbling sound interrupted her, the powerful, protracted reverberations audible through even solid metal. Ivaldi almost dropped the heavy dish he held as he looked around in dismay for the source of what must be another earthquake.
The crawler was still walking on unperturbed however.
Safkhet blushed, looking irritated.
“I suppose… I could eat something,” she admitted. “Whatever that one is… smells pretty good.”
Another, almost gurgling sound filled the air, and Ivaldi realized that it was coming from his prisoner.
“O-oh, of course,” he murmured, turning a little red himself as he realized he’d been panicking about nothing but the sounds of an empty tummy.
“I’ll, uh, just use a ladle like this, since, well, a normal spoon would be very small for you…. Can you open your mouth?”
It felt odd to feed a grown woman by hand, even one of another species, incased in a giant mass of metal, but as he raised the mushroom soup towards her mouth it was the light in her eyes that was on his mind. Her expression looked almost predatory…. Safkhet wouldn’t take a bite out of him… would she?
In the end she hesitated, but submitted to being spoon-fed, bending her head back as far as she could, eagerly swallowing the soup faster than Ivaldi could transport it to her lips. In mere moments he was pouring out the last drops from the square bowl into the ladle, then reaching for the next one.
“No, I need a drink,” she said urgently. “…please.”
The menacing aura of power and the resolute dignity she had displayed earlier were forgotten as she practically inhaled an entire canister of water in an endless series of gulps, unbroken by any need to breathe. She followed it with a second, repeating the trick. The sight was enough to make Ivaldi feel rather thirsty himself, but he focused on trying not to let the weighty metal vessel fall as he held it up.
With the water depleted he offered her mushroom wine, which she also made great headway on, despite initial hesitancy at the taste.
She interspersed the alcohol with more containers of food, putting away meal after meal. With her size she might even finish everything on the cart.
“I suppose you were, er, pretty hungry then,” Ivaldi suggested, only mildly out of breath, aching and sweaty from his own exertions.
He was snatching a short break in his labor as she chewed a mouthful of fermented aesc seeds.
The expression on her face as she bit into the fibrous, pungent curds was a complex one, but she didn’t stop eating all the same, and all too soon he was raising his increasingly heavy arm with another ladle-full.
“How is the food?” Ivaldi asked
“This one is a bit like tofu,” she said finally, “but weirdly stringy.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s different,” she said, sounding like it wasn’t good at all. “I don’t suppose you have any, uh… flesh?”
Ivaldi stared at her, his hand faltering as he was raising another ladle up.
“You want to… consume… flesh?” he asked weakly.
Safkhet nodded.
“If you have any I mean. Although… that word feels a little wrong. I can’t think of a better way to say it in your language though. The… muscle fibers of animals? Do your people not eat anything like that? I guess maybe not, if you have no word for it….”
Once more Ivaldi became aware of that… carnivorous air about her, and stepped back half a pace as she spoke.
“What’s wrong?” Safkhet asked, bemused. “It’s okay, if you don’t eat that sort of thing – I guess perhaps there are no animals that are good to eat in your lands. But this food is all fine, honestly. Well, I do think some of its poisonous, but it won’t do me any harm. I’ve eaten way… way worse things….”
The haunted look as she spoke made Ivaldi wonder just what nightmares the girl had been through in the past, and jarred him out of the momentary revulsion which had overtaken him.
“It, uh, it isn’t that there are no other creatures which live in our territory,” Ivaldi spoke, keeping his tone measured. “But… you see, we Pharyes do not… consume the flesh of other species. The whole idea seems… very cruel… and deeply unhealthy. The idea of actually consuming the flesh of a living animal….”
“Woah, hold on, we kill and cook them first,” Safkhet replied. “And we don’t eat intelligent ones!”
Ivaldi shuddered.
The girl too seemed disquieted by his reaction.
“I had heard that the surface species killed others to consume them, but we… don’t take lives so easily.”
“No, you only kill people in unprovoked invasions.”
“Ah, b-but the war is different, we never wanted to kill anyone-” his voice faded as he saw the glacial stare of his captive.
Safkhet spoke after a short silence.
“It’s true that killing animals for food can be cruel.”
She exhaled slowly, her head sagging down. Her neck probably ached almost as badly as his shoulders, from all the eating she was doing, at such awkward angles.
“It’s something that we grew up with, humans and harpies alike. I never even started to think about it until I had to find food for myself. Killing fish to eat didn’t feel good. I don’t think it’s the same as killing people though.”
Ivaldi mirrored her with a heavy sigh of his own.
“To our leaders, and many of our people, those on the surface are monsters, dangerous and hostile animals which… who prey on one another…. Creatures who can’t be trusted, who would destroy us given any opportunity. We were raised to think that, and to attack dangerous and hostile species without question, just like you were raised to… consume flesh… you understand?”
Safkhet gave a quiet nod.
“H-here, try this one,” Ivaldi said, breaking the pregnant quiet by holding up a cold dish of creamy red thollr sap. “It’s sweet and very nutritious, a popular treat for children.”
“Thank you,” the human said quietly, as she took a mouthful, her jaw working hard. “Ish relleh gooh.”
“Ah, it is very… chewy,” he admitted, regretting giving her so large a mouthful.
If there had been any wine left it would have been the perfect thing to wash the sap down, but Safkhet’s thirst had outweighed even her hunger, and there was nothing left to drink. Instead she worked the resinous food in silence for a while longer.
Despite her initial resistance she had consumed enough food to fill ten Pharyes for a full day, and liquids enough for twenty. Ivaldi had the distinct impression that the girl hadn’t had any real food or drink in a very long time.
Safkhet was still muted by the sticky meal when Ivaldi spoke again.
“I was thinking about what happened back at Vitrgraf,” he said slowly.
It was a dangerous subject, especially now, when no-one was listening in, ready to save him should anything go wrong. It was also necessary however, if he was ever going to get anywhere.
“I’m, well, I’m sorry for the way things worked out, even if we were all just… doing what we thought was right.”
Despite her full mouth, the look Safkhet gave him spoke volumes on what she thought of that idea. He could practically hear her accusing him of starting the war, and of taking her cube hostage.
At least this time there was no sense of simmering anger, no threat that at any moment a surge of mana might erupt to suffocate him where he stood, without the girl ever needing to bother with actually freeing herself.
“But perhaps if I understood things better, maybe I could… I don’t know… convince the council? If they knew the real situation, perhaps we could even persuade the king to seek peace with the surface.”
She regarded him quietly, still chewing. After swallowing, she opened her mouth for another portion.
Ivaldi took that as tacit assent, and quickly fed her the final bite from the tray.
“That does mean that we need to be honest with each other though. Both of us.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
She gave him a slow nod.
“I suppose that means that I’m going first,” he said, throbbing shoulders slumping.
“This war… the invasion of the surface…. The reason you couldn’t understand it is because, well… the surfacers did nothing to provoke us at all….”
Safkhet had stopped chewing, but she said nothing.
“We… the Pharyes… have lived in isolation since The Fall. Our people have always mistrusted the other species. Those we do have contact with are only enemies – the Formorians, or at times the Grafvollud or Nornir – quite impossible to negotiate or bargain with. But that meant we had to become totally self-sufficient.”
The girl had swallowed, but while her mouth was free, she listened without showing sign of interrupting – or asking for more to eat.
He had almost hoped she would say something, and give him an excuse not to reveal something as sensitive as the true motivation for the war, but he’d given her few enough reasons to trust him already.
“That meant that we had to produce all our own resources. Silk was easy enough to farm, and we have a marvelous variety of mushrooms for making leather and oils and, er, other such products… as well as some that are quite good eating, along with other plants and seeds. But… we Pharyes are unusual, at least compared to the other species I know of, because our bodies are partially crystalline. You’ve noticed my teeth and nails I suppose? And, uh, the bones are the same, all formed of the same organic crystals. We believe the various colors and qualities are determined by the mother’s diet, or possibly conditions in the womb, which accounts for the wide variety… although I suppose you’ve not seen anyone other than me, have you? Sorry, uh, the point is that our bodies can, well, metabolize and assimilate gemstones to grow and repair. It’s really a very interesting process, I suspect studying our own biology was what led to the development of aulogemscis and the first aulogemscires – but even now our runic inscriptions can’t come close to the finesse of the body, effortlessly breaking down and absorbing gemstones, whole or powdered….”
He felt the eyes of his very alien audience upon him, and feared she might be bored or frustrated by his enthusiasm for the subject, but he found Safkhet was watching intently, showing no sign of impatience. That was almost more disconcerting than if she’d told him to get to the point. She was giving him the freedom to betray his people at his own pace.
“Our bodies also aren’t good at generating mana in the same way that yours seem to, we have to get ours from our food… the gems… so they’re actually pretty vital to us, as a species I mean. We can’t grow, work our best or reproduce without them…. And… well, we can stretch out our gem supplies with other foodstuffs, but there are only so many rubies, diamonds, emeralds, demantoids, spinels and so on to be found, you know? We certainly do at least. Know I mean. Mining for them is something of a priority after all….”
“This is about Vitrgraf, isn’t it?”
“Our other mines were already running out when Vitrgraf was found. It was a miracle we discovered it at all – no-one had ever attempted to delve so far beneath the magma table before, but a unit of Varangians detected the mana rising up from the gemstone deposits while they were hunting a rogue kajatora which had been coming up to the higher roads and attacking crawlers.”
“So when Vitrgraf failed you had to find a new source of gemstones quickly, or else you’d starve?”
“Something like that,” Ivaldi said, nodding morosely.
“So… I’ve told you why we attacked the surface…. Perhaps you can tell me something in return?”
“What do you want to know?” she asked, the same caution in her voice as had been in his.
“This… this ‘echo’ you found, was it really just something you stumbled on in the ruins? And just what is it exactly?”
Her face darkened, and Ivaldi flinched.
“I told you, Echo isn’t an ‘it’, they’re a, well, a ‘they’. They’re a… uhhh… a non-sentient memory imprint, or something like that. Well, that’s what they were supposed to be originally – a sort of magical record of the memories and knowledge of a dweomer researcher. But that was before the ‘Fall’ happened.”
Ivaldi gaped at her, as the girl explained with mild disinterest that she had come into possession of a record of the knowledge and engineering abilities of a key dweomer researcher from the very height of the old empire.
“Yeah, uh, before you get too excited,” Safkhet said quickly, “Echo had to leave their records behind when we were escaping – their core didn’t have room for all the information as well as their mind and personality, and the data store was either destroyed or entombed under a few miles of magma.”
His face must have been a terrible sight, because even she winced.
“Echo already had memory problems, I think they were left alone for too long – that might have been why they were able to grow beyond their original design though. By the time I found them they were absolutely sentient, sapient even, able to talk and feel and empathize; everything you or I can do.”
“But… why bring this… this sentient device with you, if all of the knowledge was lost? Surely you could have saved some of the records instead! Even fragmentary data could have been invaluable!” Ivaldi said, as if pleading, or willing it not to be true.
“I told you,” she said, as stiffly as a person could while moving only their neck and head, “they’re more important than the lost secrets of the Dweomer. They’re alive. They’re also my friend – they helped me escape, and they were there for me. Besides, I couldn’t just leave them all alone again… buried in magma, alone forever…. I saw how they suffered being alone for all that time in the ruins…. I promised I’d never abandon them.”
Ivaldi’s head was spinning, or so it seemed to him. The ‘human’ had found a trove of lost learning, of secrets and creations that even the greatest aulogemscires could only dream of, yet she had abandoned it in favor of saving a… talking gemstone? A curio with no recollection of the secrets it had once held?
But she hadn’t only chosen Echo over knowledge.
Safkhet was a prisoner, captured by her greatest enemies, for the sake of keeping her promise to that helpless glowing cube.
Ivaldi lent back against the cart, staring up at the awkwardly suspended face of the girl in the cube.
“Safkhet… you… you risked your life to protect Echo, as if it – they – were your own family.”
“I told you, Echo was there for me when I was in danger. Even though I… was only using them to try to get back to the surface... they still risked their life and saved mine. They even forgave me for lying and… accepted me. For who I really am. They’re a true friend, and an amazing person, no matter whether they started life as a gemstone or a human being – or a copy of a dweomer researcher.”
“What if we… had pushed your body back into the magma after you surrendered?”
“You’d do that to a surrendering prisoner?!”
She looked aghast at the suggestion. Ivaldi decided not to let on how close she’d come to meeting that fate.
“No no, I made sure everyone knew we were taking you alive. I mean… Lord Hlesey and Lady Idavoll might have, and so would but Lord Uldmar, but they were panicking – none of us had ever met a… human like you before. Uldmar saw reason once I reminded him that you’d given us your surrender. You see, the King ordered that we take the surfacers alive whenever possible, and we don’t just execute captives whenever it suits us.”
“Lucky that you have his ear,” she said dryly.
“His what?” Ivaldi asked, looking up at her blankly.
“I mean it’s lucky that he listens to you.”
“Oh! W-well, I don’t know about that exactly. He doesn’t like me any more than he liked my suggestion, but whatever else he is, Lord Uldmar is loyal to the king – not to mention honorable to a fault. Reginn says he’s the sort that eats drinks and breathes duty… although I think he needs food and whatnot too.”
“Well,” she went on after a moment of awkward silence at the flopped joke, “even if you hadn’t won him over, something pretty similar would have happened to me without Echo anyway. Besides, I told you I promised them.”
“You went this far, for a new friend and a promise?” he asked, disbelief plain in his voice.
“I take promises seriously, and friends even more so. I don’t… have a lot of them. The ones I do, they did much the same for me. The Harpies took me in, even after I got into a fight with their Empress. She and her friends sheltered and taught me – they believed in me and took risks for me, even protected me. They were better friends than anyone I ever knew before I came to the Bloodsucking Forest.”
Safkhet paused, a long, soft breath passing her lips. As the air filtered out of her she seemed to deflate, face falling from the fond and powerful recollection of those bonds into hollow, consumed misery.
“In the end I let them down. I let her down. The closest friend I ever had. You’ll laugh – I only knew her for maybe a handful of ‘wheels’ too – but it doesn’t take that long to know that a person is good and kind and brilliant, to love their sense of fun and be driven crazy by their teasing and haughty attitude, and… to know that the two of you will be best friends. But I… I wasn’t honest with her, I got angry and selfish and screwed things up…. I guess that I’m determined not to make the same mistake with this friendship.”
They were both quiet after that, Safkhet eying the food cart as if wondered whether there were any more desserts inside it, while the young pharyes tried to process the revelation.
How many Pharyes would say the same, Ivaldi wondered. How many of his people would be so willing to risk everything for what would seem a mere talking gem. Echo was a valuable sample to study certainly, yet to her it was as real a person as he was – and she was willing to suffer captivity or risk death for Echo’s wellbeing.
Ivaldi only noticed that he was laughing when he saw the girl’s confused expression, but he couldn’t help but carry on, mirth welling up at the dark absurdity of it all.
“Uh, Ivaldi? Are you… alright?”
“Yes… I’m fine,” he said, wiping his brow. “I just… I can’t believe it, it’s all so, well, so ridiculous. My people, we call the surfacers monsters, savages who kill anyone or anything different to themselves. For generations we’ve lived in isolation, and even now we’d rather wage a war than risk a peaceful negotiation with them…. And yet here you are, their champion, defeated by your own soft heart, your own kindness and empathy for… for well, I don’t even really know what this Echo is, but they’re a being far more different to you than you are to us, and you’re risking you life to protect them after only knowing them for a matter of wheels!”
“That doesn’t seem very funny to me… I’m… pouring my heart out here!”
“Oh it’s not funny, it’s… well it’s tragic. If only we could have realized sooner! I thought they couldn’t be as bad as we were told, but if the others on the surface are anything like you say, people at all like you are, then this whole war never needed to happen at all….”
“I’m glad you approve,” Safkhet said.
She sounded irritated, but Ivaldi felt none of the menace he once had from the girl. Even the intense sensation of mana she produced felt oddly… benign to him now.
“My turn to ask you a question now.”
“That’s, uh, not how this works-”
“It is now,” Safkhet declared. “So, you told me why you went to war, but you haven’t explained why it had to be against the surface. Why not look in Formorian territory? Or those other species, nords or graphs or whatever they were called.”
“The… the ogre mines were rich, ready to be used but almost untouched. They were a far easier target than trying to prospect in Formorian territory. Besides, Formorians would never stop attacking as long as we were in what they saw as their domain. At least we could win a favorable peace with the surface. I mean, that was what we thought anyway.”
“But… how could you know that the ogres had those mines?”
He hesitated at the question.
Safkhet was no aulogemscire, nor even a spyrja, but despite her haphazard approach she was intelligent. An improvised lie was unlikely to fool her for long – and that would undermine any chance for them to build mutual trust.
But while it was one thing to tell Safkhet about the resource issues his people face, it was a whole new level of treason to share military intelligence. Even a sheltered aulogemscire such as he knew that.
It was also dangerous. The very secret he contemplated revealing was proof of that - the traitors within the Harpy Empire probably believed they were doing what was right for their people too. They certainly claimed to. Yet they had assisted in bringing their own domain to the brink of ruin.
Ivaldi couldn’t believe Safkhet would use his secrets to bring ruin to the Pharyes, but nor could he imagine her sitting idle while the surfacers were defeated.
There was so much he still didn’t understand. The war had been the Justicar’s work; a power play to push the kingdom into crisis and usurp the throne, but too much was still unclear. Even the Justicar didn’t command a weapon as horrific as the one Safkhet had described infecting the mine… did he?
Trusting in Safkhet was the only way he could see to learn the truth.
To act on his discoveries he had need of allies too, and there could be no better ally than the bizarre yet earnest young woman before him.
Once more he checked the voice crystal on the wall.
It remained off.
The unobtrusive device atop the cart was also quiet. Uldmar’s cabin door was still closed.
Reginn and Ingeborg would probably never speak to him again if they found out what he was doing, and his father would have died of shame – it was one thing to root out the treachery of the Justicar from within and convince the King and council to sue for peace, but it was an entirely different matter to conspire with the enemy.
As for Uldmar, he might well have Ivaldi clapped in chains right beside Safkhet, just for sneaking in to see her alone.
All the same, he had to do what he believed was right, just as any of them would have in Ivaldi’s place.
His hands balled into fists as he shook off his doubts.
This was why he had returned, in secret, to speak to her once more. To get answers and to try, even against all odds and reason, to find a way to end the war. Before any more people died.
“We had… help,” he said softly.
“Help from who? You said you had no contact with any other species!”
“P-please, keep your voice down,” he said, glancing compulsively over his shoulder at the sealed door.
It showed no signs of moving, but he had already been inside for some time. The guards could grow curious enough to overcome their fears at any moment, and decide to take a look.
Safkhet seemed to realize his concern, and spoke again in a hushed tone.
“Ivaldi. Who was helping your people? Was it one of the gods?”
He couldn’t imagine why Safkhet was so hung up on the Pharyes being involved with gods. He almost smiled at the strange, naive idea. If they existed at all, the gods of the surface certainly never troubled themselves with the events of the depths.
“Not gods,” he said slowly. “Harpies.”
Safkhet stared at him, the color leaving her features, her mouth falling open.
She spoke in a whisper.
“Harpies from… within the Empire?”
“They are a group of nobles, ‘highborn’ they call themselves, as odd as that sounds – everything is upside down on the surface, but-”
“Who?” she demanded.
Essence swelled all around him, pressing against his body.
“I-I don’t know their names, I don’t remember! But the- the one in charge is the Priestess, their religious leader….”
“Thessaly….”
As suddenly as it came, the mana flowed away, like receding waters, and Ivaldi relaxed once more.
His new friend seemed stunned, silent, staring at the floor as if trying to make sense of it all.
“Ael’s own cousin,” she said, after a time.
“I knew she was… cruel… two-faced… but did she really betray her own people? How can you know for sure?”
“I never met her, but, w-well, that’s what’s in the reports read to the King’s council. I’d know because I’m, er, on it. As a technical advisor that is, I’m the kingdom’s Chief Aulogemscire, not a… a military person, or a political expert or anything like that. Uh, sorry, I’m going off topic again….”
He spoke the final sentence in recognition of the growing frustration of his audience.
“Her faction at court believes that if they cooperate with us that they can seize power, and sort of ‘restore’ the Empire, to how it used to be. This is the Harpy court I mean, not the Pharyes court… the Harpies aren’t part of ours…. They’ve been reporting troop movements and plans to our side, even helping coordinate attacks. Reginn thinks they’ll probably betray us once their coup is over, and try to drive us back into the depths, b-but he says it’ll be too late by then.”
Safkhet seemed convinced by that.
“Ventora must be with them too, she’s been fighting with the Stormqueen and it’s obvious she believes in highborn supremacy, just like Thessaly….”
She seemed to be speaking to herself.
“But no-one knows what they’re planning – even Ael has no idea! They’re trying to fight a war in the dark, when the bad guys know everything they’re going to do before they even do it….”
Abruptly a look of loss and anguish passed over the girl’s face, and then a tear welled up in the corner of one of her big, bright eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“I just realized… I… I wrote a letter for Ael before I left, telling her that I was going to Grand Chasm, explaining how I felt and how I thought I had to go fight, but that I was going to come back… and… I mean, it wasn’t a very good letter, and it would probably have just pissed her off even more to read it…. But it was the only goodbye I left her…. I gave it to Ventora….”
Tears were trickling down her cheeks as she spoke the last words, but Ivaldi didn’t get the sense that she was crying for herself.
“Aellope must have been so confused – and Aggy and Chione too! They probably thought I’d abandoned them! And after I’d just had a row with Ael as well….”
Ivaldi was uncomfortable with crying women even when they were normal pharyes, and not horrors from the surface who could kill kajatora barehanded, so seeing Safkhet’s miserable expression made him squirm with unease.
“It’s been so long now, they probably think I’m dead. I wish I could… just see them for a little while, to tell them I’m alright… and I’m sorry….”
Reginn would have known just what to say to console her, but Ivaldi had no idea what that might be.
“Would you like some more thollr sap?” he asked, feeling foolish and awkward, but compelled to do something.
Safkhet nodded slowly.
He got the impression as he opened another container for her that, were her hands free, she would have been wiping her cheeks. He didn’t dare suggest doing it for her; that would only highlight the vulnerability and ignominy of her situation.
Instead he fed her in silence for a little while, suffering the arm and shoulder pain once more.
“Uh… Lady Safkhet?” he asked, tentatively, after she’d finished.
“Just call me Saf, I’m not a noble. Or very lady-like.”
“Saf then. I… might not have too much longer with you, before someone comes looking for me.”
It was the small hours after wheelturn, when most pharyes slept, but as with any Pharyes community, there were always people awake on the crawler. Some were tending to the vehicle, while others simply preferred to do their work in the quieter times of the wheel, or had longer or shorter activity cycles that shifted their waking hours over time. It meant that someone brighter than the guards outside might notice that he wasn’t in his cabin at any moment, and cut short his interview with the strange human.
“I want to trust you, Saf,” he went on, trying to measure his words carefully. “But I think that you, uh… well that you may not have been… entirely honest with me. About certain things that is.”
Saf didn’t seem to be irked by the accusation, and nor was she denying it, so he continued.
“I’m sure you have plenty of reasons not to tell me anything more, but… what I mean is, I want to believe that I can trust you, and I want you to trust me too.”
“You want to know what really happened with the shockwave.”
He nodded, relieved her understanding.
It was her turn to hesitate.
“Was it really a big deal to your people?” she asked.
“I’m sure it was felt throughout our kingdom – and far beyond too. The, uh, event, was powerful enough that it may even have been detected throughout the world, at least by those sensitive to mana.”
She grimaced at that.
“I suppose trust does go both ways, doesn’t it, Ivaldi? You’ve told me a lot of things you didn’t have to, and I don’t get the impression that you were lying about any of it.”
“I’m terrible at lying.”
“Yeah… I’m pretty bad at it too. I did hope I’d fooled you earlier, but obviously not.”
“So…,” he murmured, leaning forwards. “What really happened, Saf?”
“It was after I met Echo. They were in a chamber within the Research Institute in the Dweomer capital-”
“You actually saw one of their cities?!” he asked, gasping in astonishment. “And the capital no less?!”
She gave him a stern look.
“You’re the one in a hurry here, and this will go a lot faster without interruptions. I’m already trying to condense a lot down.”
“S-sorry… just… please tell me more about it – another time I mean!”
“…we’ll see. So anyway, Echo showed me a map of the old Empire….”
At this too, his eyes widened, but catching Safkhet’s look, he closed his open mouth. She continued.
“I saw something bizarre marked on it, a gigantic rounded chamber beneath everything else, which they called the ‘anomaly’. There was something about it, and I had this really… unsettling, kind of sick feeling, especially after seeing the state that the Empire was left in.”
Ivaldi bit his lip, burning with a dozen questions and a thousand follow-ups.
“Maybe I was sensing something from it, because as we travelled closer it got worse. I also found some… bodies…. Some of the last Dweomer to die I think.”
‘So they did die then’, Ivaldi thought to himself in wonder. It was incredible to think that there could still be remains even now, preserved somewhere under their lost cities. Perhaps buried in layers of ruins.
Saf had stopped. The story seemed a difficult one to tell. Ivaldi couldn’t wait though.
“What about the anomaly?!” he asked.
“Pharynx has no words to describe it. I’m not sure any language does. It was like… like the shadows of countless suns, coming together to create a void of dazzling light. You could… see that it wasn’t something limited to our space and time. It was something beyond this reality, beyond spells and technology and magic. Something that was willed into being, by remaking the universe so that it already existed.”
“What… was it?” he asked breathlessly.
“It was the Golden Sepulchre; a monument and a seal, built by the wills of the gods to be the tomb of a fallen goddess.”
Ivaldi stared at her. The doubt was plain on his face.
“You don’t have to believe me, but everything I’m telling you is true. The Goddess Cyclops died there, right on that spot, fighting against… the source of the evil in Vitrgraf mine. The whole chamber was flooded with it, an ocean of black oil that corrupted everything it touched…. When I looked into it, I could feel it… gnawing at my mind and soul….”
The hairs were standing up on the back of Ivaldi’s neck as she spoke, and as he saw the haunted look in her eyes, so like the one he’d seen before, his fears changed.
He wasn’t afraid now that Safkhet might be lying to him; he was terrified that she might be telling the truth.
“Where did it come from?” he whispered.
“It was leaking out through the space itself, all over the chamber. Like reality was broken, fractured and bleeding. That was how the Dweomer were destroyed.”
His jaw hung loosely, as he struggled to parse the explanation.
“They were trying to extract energy by interfering with the layers of reality somehow, using machines they called ‘void reactors’. They were everywhere, this limitless energy source, or so they believed, but what they were really doing was breaking apart the space itself around each reactor to pull energy up from what they were calling ‘subspace’. It seems like the reactors worked best in places where the space was already… thin… or damaged. Their experiments in enhancing those reactors seem to be what led to their destruction.”
“How?”
“I couldn’t find out much, but my guess is that they set off a chain reaction. They were already… stressing the space all over their empire, everywhere there were void reactors, and then they pushed harder, probing the space around the Sepulchre itself. It gave way. I think when that happened, the ichor flooded out, not just into that chamber, but throughout their empire. Most of them seem to have died almost instantly... a few lived for perhaps a few hours. But they were probably all infected…. They may even have been hunted… by their dead, or by things coming through.”
A whole civilization, Ivaldi thought, consumed like Vitrgraf, destroyed to the last being in instants, by their own search for more resources… leaving nothing but a contaminated, charnel network of ruins. And his people had tunneled right into the poison they left behind.
Could the Justicar have known about it? Did he want the black oil as a weapon? Would he use it to devastate the surface, as it had devastated the Underworld?
It made him sick to think about it.
“After I reached the chamber, I made my way inside the Golden Sepulchre itself. There are two… universes within it. Or perhaps they’re like magical pocket dimensions. I think the Dweomer called them superspaces, but it was the gods who made them. It was as if they spoke their will into being, building physical reality out of meaning. One was the tomb of Cyclops, a huge, beautiful tree of golden rings, growing up into a gorgeous sky full of stars. That was where I read her epitaph. The other was… a cage. A shifting, flowing prison like a towering cathedral, suspended at the centre of an entire world build around a single point, all dedicated to one thing. To sealing the deepest breach; a hole through all of reality. As I watched the metal surfaces morph and change I got a glimpse inside, through the halls of an endless palace…. At the end of it all, at the very heart I saw….”
Ivaldi’s breath was frozen in his chest. He dared not to make a sound, lest it might break the fragile spell that had induced this tale from Safkhet.
“A single pinpoint speck of black. Somehow it was vast too, like a gulf in reality that opened up and swallowed me. I couldn’t see, or think, or feel anything but that invading… presence….”
“And then?”
“The walls shifted, and I was back, inside the Sepulchre.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t really understand it. I don’t know if the gods did either, but I do know that they created the Sepulchre to contain it. What I saw wasn’t part of our world or our reality. Whatever it is, it was so dangerous that it killed even deities.”
Ivaldi’s head was spinning, and his stomach churning.
He didn’t want to believe the tale, but it was too absurd to be a lie, and told too sincerely for him to doubt it. It also made a terrible kind of sense, all the more so for the unbelievable being who had related it.
In a mere few wheels Safkhet had discovered more about the Underworld, and Arcadia itself, than the Pharyes people had learned in their entire history.
To say he had questions was absurd. He would have needed a succession just to list them all.
In the end he landed on the most puerile, yet somehow the most fitting of them.
“Then… Saf… you really believe that gods exist?”
Of all the possible reactions, the harsh, sharp laugh she gave was the last he could have imagined. The sound was mirthless and bitter, and there was a sneer of disgust on her face.
“Believe? I know, Ivaldi. I know they exist, beyond any doubt – it’s thanks to their meddling I can speak all these languages.”
“Then you… have a… blessing?”
“A curse,” she spat, with such hate and vigor that Ivaldi dared not probe any further.
“But that’s not important now. If your people don’t know him either then he’s nothing to do with the mess we’re in now.”
“The rifts,” he muttered, sweat tingling as it pushed through his pores cold. “We have to do something, to seal them!”
Safkhet smiled. It was a shy, almost embarrassed smile; not at all the rictus grin of a girl who knew her world was doomed, and could bet only on the faint hope of fighting her way to the heart of a dead empire to somehow mend the wounded universe.
“Yeah, um, about that. That’s what I was doing when I set off the shockwave. Sorry about that, I’m sure it freaked out a lot of people, but like you say, I had to do something, so I repaired the cracks to stop the leaking.”
Seeing the frozen, horrified face of her conversation partner, she hastened to explain further.
“It was really all the Sepulchre itself, not me. All I was doing was directing it – the power came from the gods. I don’t know if it’s stored inside, or if the Sepulchre is self sustaining or what, but it’s not like you have to worry about me exploding into earthquakes of energy on a regular basis!”
Those words, spoken so casually, even jovially, left Ivaldi terrified all over again. His hand trembled and sweat ran down his spine as he peered up at her face, totally sincere, even apologetic for the aftershocks of her action.
Safkhet had… commanded the power of the very gods, using their divinity in order to rebuild the damaged foundations of the world… and she didn’t even think her actions were remarkable.
“Ivaldi?” she asked anxiously.
He looked up at her, seeing her anew, this strange and otherworldly being, a walking mass of contradictions and mysteries….
“Do you want some sap to eat?”
He blinked at her, stunned.
“I mean, I can’t feed it to you, but you’ve got your arms free… and… well, I just thought you could do with something sweet and comforting? I’m sure all of this has been a lot to take in. It certainly was for me.”
Ivaldi nodded slowly, and as if on autopilot, his hand brought the ladle up to his lips, and he took a bite of the chewy, sticky treat. It was indeed a comforting taste, although not as good as gem dust.
The sap gave him time to think too, as his jaw worked through a mouthful that was entirely too big for him. The ladle had thrown off his sense of scale – to Saf it was a normal spoon, but it had been designed to serve out an entire meal worth of food in one scoop.
“I know it all sounds very dire, and it certainly was at the time, but I don’t think you need to worry about the anomaly now. I wish I could go back and check, to be certain, but I’m fairly sure the spell I cast should have closed all the rifts, including any around Vitrgraf mine. As long as no-one else starts messing with the fabric of reality I don’t think they’ll reopen any time soon.”
“Yuh….”
He gulped.
“You think? Aren’t you sure? Couldn’t you tell what happened?!”
“Commanding the Sepulchre was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was as though reality itself was fighting against being changed. Every word I spoke was agony – it felt like it was tearing me apart and draining the life from me to speak the incantation. I think the effort might be the closest I’ve ever come to dying. So I couldn’t tell, no, because I was collapsed on the floor afterwards, bleeding and unconscious, with the chamber collapsing on top of me. It was Echo who got me out of there – although I don’t think they really understood what they saw either.”
Ivaldi frowned as she spoke, struggling even to imagine the supernatural effort, or the idea of the world itself somehow… resisting. Nothing he had ever studied had given him cause to think that the matter of Arcadia was alive or aware, despite the tales of the superstitions of the barbarous species. Rocks were rocks, magma was magma, and none of it showed any sign of being endowed with any kind of spirit.
He believed Safkhet all the same, however that raised another question.
“Lady- I mean, Saf…. Why did you go that far? If this Echo hadn’t rescued you, wouldn’t you have been killed?”
Safkhet gave him an odd look, as if the answer should have been obvious.
“Because, Ivaldi, I was the only one there who could fix it.”
“But what good would that do, if it cost you your life? Your friends are safe on the surface, miles from any danger. Why not just… well, leave? Go back to the surface and let the black oil destroy the Pharyes and save the Harpy Empire!”
Safkhet shook her head, it being the only body part presently available for her to gesture with.
“Ivaldi, you can’t think like that. Even if it would hurt your people first, everyone would suffer in the end. And anyway, just because the Pharyes are hurting us, that doesn’t mean we should want to wipe you all out. I mean… I wouldn’t exactly shed any tears if something happened to the people who attached Grand Chasm and almost killed me…. But that doesn’t mean I want to kill them in return.”
Ivaldi found himself laughing, a short, bewildered little chuckle that made the bald girl raise a nearly invisible eyebrow.
“You never even thought about just waiting and coming back after we were too weakened to fight, did you?”
“Er… I guess not no. Even if that might have worked it’s way too cruel, and incredibly dangerous. You aren’t the only people in the Underworld either.”
“But don’t your friends come first?”
“Well, for me they do, yes, but I can’t just condemn people like that. Even if we’re from different species, with different bodies and societies which are at odds, we’re all thinking, feeling people who live in this world together – so we should want each other to live happily, even if only because we should want that for all sentient beings. What good does it do for anyone to suffer?”
Ivaldi studied her, peering up at her eyes, her lips, the minute movements of her musculature, searching for some sign of insincerity or doubt.
“But your people are suffering right now… because of mine.”
“That’s why you have to stop it – stop the invasion, and tell your leaders, your king or whatever, that we don’t have to fight. We’re not monsters; we’re people, just like you. If it’s gemstones you need then just ask for them!”
There was no hint of anything but certainty in her voice or face.
“I want to, and I’ll try to, but… my people may not listen….”
“Why not? You said it yourself, you need gemstones to survive and we have them… apparently. Why can’t we make a trade? A deal where everyone prospers, rather than all this pointless destruction and death!”
“You don’t understand,” he spoke with a groan.
It was obvious really that she wouldn’t – this was a girl who seemed to stumble from one disaster to the next, all the while accumulating friends and allies. She made it sound so simple.
“It’s not that easy to just… trust outsiders, especially surfacers. Since The Fall my people have known nothing but, well, enmity – hate for and from all non-pharyes.”
“Well you managed to look past that, didn’t you? You just have to convince the others too!”
“There’s something else…. I didn’t want to talk about it… I-I mean I’m still not sure of anything, none of it makes sense now, after everything I’ve heard, but Reginn and Ingeborg have to be right about it…. Otherwise we’d never have attempted it at all….”
“Right about what? Who are Reginn and Ingelborg? Are they the ones who started the war?”
“No! I mean… Reginn did, in a way, but he had to! I mean, uh, it was an order, from the King and the Justicar. They’re the ones in charge….”
“Ivaldi.”
Safkhet’s voice was calm, but stern.
“You have to tell me what’s going on. Maybe we can figure things out together.”
Ivaldi sat down heavily on the deck, resting his arching arms on his knees.
“You’re right… of course you’re right. I just hope Reginn will understand…. If we’re wrong… even if we’re right, it’s treason….”
She looked down at him, waiting for him to continue. With no further excuses, he could only do so.
“I told you about how the harpy priestess has conspired with us, to, uh, orchestrate the invasion of the surface. Well… some of us on the council think that, uh, the harpies may not be the only ones about to have a… coup. Reginn and Ingeborg are councilors like me, and they noticed things were wrong, with Vitrgraf and with the King and the Justicar – the head of the council I mean. The King has been totally isolated, with the Justicar making all the decisions, manipulating him, telling him what to believe, who to trust… and people have been disappearing or getting arrested… and then Vitrgraf was destroyed, and no-one knew why, but the Justicar’s people seem to have been involved, and covered the whole thing up. Now this war… we knew the harpies were intelligent enough to conspire with us, yet we never talked about a peaceful solution at all…. Even if we couldn’t trust them, we must have had alternatives to war….”
Safkhet was nodding slowly from overhead.
“I think that it was Justicar Hreidmar who started this war – and he may have done something to sabotage Vitrgraf mine too, something to make this black oil break through and attack the workers. I mean… how else would he know to send his people before the disaster even happened? They were already there, and they flooded the mine before the contamination could spread. The disaster at Vitrgraf was what really began the war too – it was the perfect excuse for us to invade the surface, out of desperation. I think the Justicar means to push the kingdom to the brink of catastrophe, all so he can become the king himself.”
“Would he really do that? It’s an absurd risk, especially when he’s already so powerful!”
“I could say the same thing about the priestess and her faction,” Ivaldi said bitterly.
“Besides… I just… I can’t explain it all any other way. I know the Justicar is hiding things, trying to cover up his actions – he even sent his nephew Lord Uldmar with me on this expedition! Of course he didn’t see the shockwave coming, and even Uldmar wasn’t willing to just ignore it…. It’s really lucky you know, that he didn’t trust Uldmar enough to tell him everything, otherwise Uldmar would never have let me go to Vitrgraf to find the evidence…. But I’m sure Hreidmar suspects me, and whatever he’s planning, there’s no way he’ll let me end the war. If the truth comes out he’d be destroyed – he has to keep going.”
“Even though his own people are suffering too?” she asked sadly.
Ivaldi nodded. It was impossible to imagine the irascible old Hreidmar being won over by promises of trade and mutual support, or accepting his own downfall for the sake of the people.
“Then expose him. Not everyone in your kingdom can be like that, otherwise he wouldn’t have to hide what he’s doing. Prove that he’s corrupt and show everyone they don’t need some idiot Justicar telling them what to do – they can end the war themselves!”
“I don’t... what if I can’t do it?”
“You have to, for everyone’s sake. But you don’t have to do it alone. Neither of us do.”
“I suppose you’re going to help me win them over?” Ivaldi asked, with a frail smile.
“No, not me. I’ll help you however I can, but can’t go with you to confront the Justicar. I need to get back to the surface and warn them about the coup, and before that I have to escape this stupid metal weight and save the people at Northastr. I need you to help me do all that.”
“And who’ll be helping me?”
“Whoever you can trust. Those two who helped put you onto this conspiracy for a start. And it sounds like you have some influence over people on this vehicle we’re riding too, maybe they can help you?”
He shook his head emphatically.
“If Uldmar finds out I’m meeting you like this he’ll… well… I don’t know what he’ll do exactly, but even if he doesn’t know what I’ve told you, he’ll be furious. He’s obsessed with honor and duty and the kingdom, and, well… if he knew I’d just told our greatest enemy all about our greatest weaknesses he’d probably have me in chains right beside you on the deck, ready to be hauled back to the Deephold and tried for treason.”
Safkhet pondered that for a time.
“Then… what if you told him about what the Justicar is doing? He may not like you, but he does listen to you. A coup is treason too… and it doesn’t sound like Uldmar is in on it. What if you showed him that evidence of yours? He eats drinks and breathes duty, right? Duty to the King and kingdom, not to his uncle-”
A double chime sounded, high and resonant like crystal, echoing about the compartment on repeat. The crawler hummed louder, a jolt passing through the cargo bay as it lurched forward into abrupt acceleration. A heartbeat later there came the familiar hiss and crackle of the bolt-launchers and lightning projectors firing, the sounds muffled through the hull.
“What’s happening?” Saf asked straining to look around.
“It’s alright,” Ivaldi assured her. “That’s just the standard alarm to call the crew to combat stations. It’s probably a stray monster of some sort, but certainly not a kajatora – it’s nothing life-threatening as long as the chimes just repeat like that.”
“Are we still below the magma table?”
The anxiety remained in her voice, reminding Ivaldi that the girl was trapped in place in the wake of a battle with molten kajatora, which had almost ended in immolation in magma.
“We should be, but we’re nearly out. A few more hours I think. Don’t worry, you’re perfectly safe-”
The device on the cart sounded a chime.
Ivaldi stiffened as though paralyzed at the sound, the color draining from his face.
“I take it that’s not a good noise?” Safkhet asked, trying and failing to sound sardonic.
Ivaldi was too busy stuffing stray containers back into the cart to respond.
“Are you in trouble, Ivaldi?”
“Yes! I mean, maybe… it depends on why he’s up – Uldmar I mean! M-maybe he won’t bother to check on me…. I’ll come back, as soon as I can – we have to help each other, Saf!”
“Good luck, Ivaldi, don’t get yourself arrested and squished under a cube like I did.”
~~~
Passing out through the bay doors, Ivaldi maintained his stride, nodding to the nobles in their Skidbladnir as he passed them, giving them a knowing look which he hoped said ‘don’t tell anyone our little secret’ and not ‘oh no, oh no, oh no’.
“Chief, you hear the weapons firing?” asked one of the aristocrats turned guards.
“I hear its formorians, and at this depth too!”
Ivaldi didn’t hear him, and no-one tried to stop him as he almost ran from the room into the cargo elevator.
Disgorged onto to the floor above, he breathed a sigh of relief as he started back along the corridor towards the galley, to return his cart.
If he could just dispose of the cart and get back to his cabin no-one would ever realize what he’d done.
Lord Uldmar rounded the corner ahead of him.
Their eyes met, and in a moment Ivaldi knew he was caught.