Steam billowed from the superheated water flooding into the chamber. Pouring out of the cracks in the rocks, it rushed down and through the broken mass blocking us in, to mix with the cool healing waters in which Berenike and I were resting.
My mind was a blank, every plan and idea evaporating with the thick plumes of vapor, the small cave turning in seconds into a deadly sauna. If I was only better with magic I could have sealed the cracks in the rock, or reversed the water’s flow, or any miraculous solution I could imagine, but my skills were too crude and basic for that.
We were going to die here, drowned in boiling water. The heat was already stifling, and there was no air. We were lost in the dark, under miles of rock and water. I could feel it rising up my legs. Soon it would be pouring into my throat and lungs… the lights failing as the water burned the plant-life away… the vines like tentacles closing around my body, dragging me under….
Berenike’s hand gripped my own and squeezed. I looked up at her, my eyes wide and my face flushed with panic, but she showed no alarm in that moment.
“We’re going to get out of this,” she said simply.
I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat and clearing my head.
Berenike drew a pained hiss of breath as a scalding waft of the new liquid reached her. She pulled back her legs quickly, despite how weak and tired she must be. I helped the injured harpy up, out of the water and onto the crumbled tops of the shorter pillars around the side of the room, laying her on a bed of glowing leaves and moss.
“We can’t stay here, we’ll boil alive!” I exclaimed.
“First just stop the water,” she said simply.
Her voice was shaky as she watched the rising waters, the usually unflappable captain pushed too far to hide her own fear.
But thanks to her words I realized exactly what to do. I couldn’t turn back a stream or plug it up, but I could stop it in place with ease. The incantation was short, a simple command that even I could invoke if I were to rely on my copious mana. My overflowing essence could overwhelm any river.
Plunging my hands into the boiling water, ice spread out all around me, the billowing cascade freezing in place, waves trying briefly to overtop the growing barrier and themselves halting as they too were suspended in time, totally blocking the tunnel.
The harder part was limiting the effect. The pool under me joined the spreading landscape of ice, while the steam and spray in the air around us became sparkling crystals that wafted on the turbulent air. Even the plants were dusted with a layer of frost – as was poor Berenike, who shivered as the temperature plummeted.
The other issue was air. I could make it move, but I had no idea how to add or remove anything from the winds I created – and our limited, sealed-off space would soon be filling up with carbon dioxide and running short of oxygen.
“Are you alright? I’m sorry, I just… I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“I’ll be fine, Saf,” she answered, smiling to see my apologetic expression and looking relieved herself. “I’d rather be cold than the alternative. Harpies are pretty hardy too, even if we’re not as durable as you.”
As she spoke she was looking at me, shaking her head in quiet disbelief as I pulled back my hands from the breaking layer of ice that had encased them. After my encounter with magma I was confident I could take whatever temperatures the water could throw at me, and indeed painful as it had been, there was no harm done.
“What about your leg?” I asked, breaking my own free of the cave’s now glacial floor and stepping over.
“That’ll be fine too, it didn’t get me bad.”
It could certainly have been worse. Her scaled shin had endured the bloom of heat relatively well, but the vulnerable skin of the sole of her foot was unnaturally pink, and looked sore, inflammation already setting in.
Healing her with the smallest, most contained release of water I could manage still meant adding yet more ice to the frozen lake I knelt on, but if we were going to go anywhere in cramped tunnels like these Berenike had to be able to walk.
That also gave me time to think about exactly where we might go, and how.
As I set her leg down again I had no answers.
“Berenike?” I asked quietly, looking over at the taller woman. “What… what are we going to do? If we let the ice melt we’re going to be flooded, but if we don’t we’re stuck here….”
“This could work to our advantage,” she suggested, “with your strength you could tear a hole in any of these walls and get us out. Take the Pharyes by surprise.”
“I can’t, the walls are hollow, and full of boiling water.”
As if to underline my words, there was another rumble from far below us, and then the whole cavern trembled. Trails of frost fell from the seams in the ceiling as water rushed up mere feet away from us, a huge volume pumped through the stone channels, under immense pressure. The water was rich in mana as well as incredibly hot and the mosses and fern-like plants lining the wall glowed with a dazzling intensity, as if feeding on the transmitted energies. I wouldn’t put it past those natural pipes to channel liquids almost as hot as the magma that must have sent them spewing upwards.
“We hit something like that and I’d be drowned and you’d be burned before I could even start an incantation.”
I had to speak loudly just to be heard over the noise.
“Okay, no digging our way out,” Berenike said.
She was eying the wall behind her uneasily, as if worried it might attack her.
“I don’t suppose you have any other tactics for a situation like this?” I asked.
“Valkyries don’t see a lot of Underworld combat normally. Perhaps if I had my bow I could help you fight back out the way we came?”
“Ah… I tried to grab it but… I’m really sorry, I lost it back in the Traverse.”
Berenike smiled at my dispirited, guilty look, and reached over, pulling me against her shoulder.
“It’s alright Saf, you saved my life, a bow’s nothing. I still have my sword after all.”
Placing her other hand on her hip, her expression faltered.
“Your pack and your belt got torn off by one of the Varangians,” I explained miserably.
The Valkyrie just chuckled, and her hand moved instead to ruffle the layer of hair that unevenly coated my recently-balded head. It felt strange and unpleasant to have such short hair again after it had grown so long, but I needed the affection just then. I hugged her back, careful to avoid her hurt wing.
“You’ve had a hard time, sorry about that. I guess I was being too stubborn, insisting on carrying you.”
“No, it was my fault for getting stranded like that, you were just rescuing me! Without you I’d have been caught for sure!”
“Guess we’re both failures then, since we’re both caught now,” Berenike replied, giving me a squeeze. “So no more blaming.”
“That’s fair, but… what do we do now?”
Releasing me, Berenike leant back tentatively against the warm stone, still heated by the geothermal activity that was shaking the cave and providing the gurgling, rushing racket that filled the air.
“Right now, I think I’ll rest for a little bit while we think. I’m very tired….”
“Don’t fall asleep! If you do you could freeze!”
“Its fine, this wall is still hot. Let’s just think about what to do once I’m back in the air.”
She spoke the words easily enough, but as I sat with her, squeezing her large, clawed hand, I could feel the anxiety in how tightly her fingers gripped mine back.
I could blast everything around ups to dust perhaps, but that would leave us unprotected against the waters flowing in the walls all around, as well as destroying our only shelter against the enemy.
Going out through the walls was impossible, and the tunnel we came in through was probably caved in all the way along its length. Even if I could burrow through the fallen rock and ice without more water flooding in, and could get Berenike out of here alive and well, she was weak, unable to fly, and there was still an army outside. Their prey were cornered, and they we waiting to make sure we perished. We couldn’t even offer them our surrender.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
If… if I were to actually abandon her, I could still find myself overwhelmed, crushed, downed, buried… but even if I could be sure of escape that was unacceptable. The skin of our palms pressed together tighter, my other hand gripping the scaled back of hers. The thought was pathetic… and Berenike deserved better than a person who would even think that way.
Either we both made it out alive or neither of us would.
Resolved as such I returned to wrestling with the dilemma. Ruling out all the options that would get my friend killed or leave her abandoned at the bottom of the Columnar left me with… nothing. No more clever plans or schemes to abuse my power and durability – when it came to saving anyone else my abilities were of little use. The best I could say for myself was that I was a blunt instrument, when this situation called for finesse.
More honest would be to say I was a cockroach, surviving everything the world and the curse of fate could throw at me, yet with nothing to show for it all.
~~~
Time passed slowly, as was its wont in such painful circumstances. The fabric of reality, spacetime itself, was never above stretching a little to torment a person stuck, wishing for unknown relief as they sunk ever deeper into an abyss of dread. In my aimless circular thoughts, pouring over non-options, I wondered if Myr had some compatriot responsible for that.
Keeping my mind focused was challenging when there was no starting point from which I could work. Every option I considered fell apart immediately, and ended with Berenike killed and myself either rolling the dice for my own life, or captured by the Pharyes.
Periodically I stopped the swirl of confusion and regrets masquerading as planning, to refresh the ice that was preserving us against the flood outside. Even with many feet of ice plugging the gaps in the blocked tunnel, the water was hot enough to melt through rapidly. I found that the odd periodicity of the loudest moments of water gushing through the walls served as a useful reminder.
Yet even if I could keep us protected there in the cave, to what end was I working?
It was impossible to say just how long we’d been there – it could have been merely an hour, or even a whole day or more, but as the walls trembled and roared I made another trip to the stunning frozen flood that filled the entrance like a sculpture, and this time I noticed the sensation I’d feared would come. My breaths were growing shorter and faster. The air was filling with carbon dioxide, and the oxygen was running thin.
I had no idea if I still respired in the way normal people did… I was still human, that much I refused to cede to anyone… but normal humans would have drowned many times over on my sojourn in the Underworld. What I did know however, was that while I’d yet to be killed by suffocation, I had certainly felt the effects of lack of oxygen beneath Vitrgraf, and I’d even passed out until the underground river had washed me up under the Formorian hive. It might take longer for me to succumb, but my body still demanded air to function, it just tolerated longer gaps without.
More pressing that even my own fears of a slow suffocation were the needs of my companion. Harpies definitely died when the air ran out. I had to wake Berenike, and find some desperate alternative now, before it was too late.
“You look worried.”
Were it not for my inhuman hearing I’d never have heard her speak over the water. Berenike’s voice was lower than usual, quiet, but still deep and gravelly, with a confident bass that gave away no despair.
“We don’t have a lot of time, the air in here won’t last much longer,” I admitted, raising my voice to a shout so she could hear me as I returned to her side. “How are you feeling? Can you fly yet?”
“Haha, not a chance,” the Valkyrie said, her chuckle surreal in the moment.
“Then it sounds like I’m right to be worried,” I yelled over the flow.
“This Columnar thing is amazing,” Berenike replied.
She paused for a few seconds, and I looked over at her, confused. Finally the cacophony of water faded. She looked oddly pleased with herself at that, as if she’d done it herself.
“Did you know it goes all the way up, through the Formorian’s territory, and actually reaches the surface of the mountains?”
Did lack of oxygen make harpies delirious? It certainly seemed like a possibility.
“Don’t look at me like that, kid, I’m still a captain you know. We have to use our eyes and heads, not just muscles.”
Seeing my baffled expression Berenike laughed harder – then winced and held her chest.
“Are you okay?!”
“Hurts is all, I’ll be fine. That laugh’s your fault though. You really didn’t try to memorize the lay of the terrain before we started?”
I frowned at that, feeling a prick to my… already rather worn and leaky ego.
“Of course I did, I had to know my route to and from Northastr! But what does this have to do with getting us out of here?”
“Simple, kid, I made sure to look carefully at those funny charts Ivaldi showed us, not just at Northastr, but everything in the area. And how to reach their Deephold too, should we need to know that….”
“But we’re trying to stop the war, not wipe them out! Ivaldi trusted us!”
Berenike swatted at my head gently with her tail at that.
“Saf, we’re trying to do that, but that doesn’t mean it’ll work. It’s not betrayal to be prepared for the worst.”
Frowning, I gave a reluctant nod. Internally I was more impressed than anything. Even with as complex and delicate a plan as the raid had been, Berenike had still been thinking ahead, looking at the wider strategic picture and doing everything she could to make sure she was prepared for any outcome. All I’d done was run and scream a lot.
“Don’t worry, you did everything anyone could have asked and more,” she said.
“Alright, stop reading my mind and explain why we care that our flooded inferno of a prison is even bigger than I thought,” I answered testily, the tightness of short breath refusing to allow me to laugh despite Berenike’s genuinely amusing smirk.
“Simple.”
She was starting to look excited, despite her injuries.
“I’ve flown over the top of the Columnar before. There’s a huge sinkhole filled with giant clusters of pillars, spewing out hot water. It’s incredible, like a gigantic mouth full of teeth, so people call it the Jaws of Cyclops. There are hot springs all around the valley too.”
“It sounds beautiful,” I replied, unable to keep my frustration from my face, “I’d love to see it someday, but I’m not going to abandon you just so I can escape and go sight-seeing!”
“Hah! Glad to hear it! That’s not the plan though. Have you never seen a geyser, Saf? The pillars they vent through are called the Fangs of the Underworld. They’re massive, ten foot across or more some of them.”
“A… geyser? You mean you think this….”
That was why Berenike had paused as we were talking, and the reason she’d looked so pleased with herself. She’d noticed what I was missing; the source of the regular flood of water. A huge natural geyser passing through the wall behind us.
“No, absolutely not! I’m not abandoning you down here to boil and drown! Even if I could make it!”
“Well, sounds like you get the general idea at least,” she said, nodding. “But that’s not the plan. I’m not saying we just swim through a boiling geyser, I’m saying we ride one.”
My first thought was to rebuke her for the ridiculous suggestion. It was impossible – you couldn’t just harness and tame the water! But then I saw Berenike’s eyes, lingering on the plug of ice I’d stopped the entrance with.
“You can’t mean-”
“I do. We jump in and you freeze the water around us. With ridiculous amounts of mana like you have it’ll be easy. Rough for me, but you can fix me up at the other end.”
“Berenike, no, no way… the freezing could kill you. Even if we could make it work, it might not even go to the surface for all we know, it could empty into some boiling lake halfway up, or spit us into a waterfall that takes us all the way back down to the magmatable!”
“You’re the ideas girl here, you got a better one? We don’t try something and I’m dead soon anyway.”
In that moment I was reminded of arguing with Ael. I felt the same sense of frustrating, helpless defeat as I realized that she was right.
Why did all my dearest friends have to be… right all the time?
“Fine… we’ll… give suicide by geyser a try,” I said, shaking my head. “But if you really get killed I’m never going to forgive you.”
“I hope I don’t let you down,” the Valkyrie answered, patting my hand in hers.
“We’ll try breaking through after it fires off again. I don’t want it bursting in here while I’m still digging the hole.”
I could feel how her fingers were trembling as I spoke. She was just as afraid as I was; she was just being strong for me. I wanted to do more, say more, to explain how this was all my fault… my curse… but I recalled Echo’s words to me, in similarly dire straits as these.
Whatever Myr’s execration had done to me, he wasn’t all-powerful, and he couldn’t reach us down here. Berenike was here because of my own recklessness, and her kindness and care for me. I wasn’t sure I deserved either, but I should at least believe in her choice, and be grateful.
It had taken a being utterly unlike any other to help me see that, and I missed the sweet, kind, logical person I’d found entombed beneath the Underworld. They had been the first, thus far only person to accept me despite knowing everything, but now I didn’t even know where they were, or if they were okay. I had to make it back to Echo, as well as Ael and the others on the surface.
As we waited I lay next to Berenike against the wall, and put my arm around her side. Her tail wrapped about me in response, and I gave her a gentle squeeze. My heart was racing, but I tried to just focus on the friend by my side, and what I needed to do to make sure she was safe.
“I’m sorry about all of this, Berenike.”
“Don’t be,” she answered, “you didn’t bring the Pharyes crawling up out of the Underworld to attack us.”
The words were obviously meant as comfort, but she moved uncomfortably as she felt my arm tighten around her. Little could she imagine how sore a spot she’d touched on.
I was tempted more than ever to just blurt it all out in that moment, to throw myself on her mercy as I had with Echo, but I knew it would be wrong to shock and burden her with all of that now. We had to be focused. Myself especially, if I was to somehow regulate my mana well enough to encase us in ice without just murdering the poor harpy.
“Once this is all over, and the surface is safe, I’ll tell you everything. You deserve to know, and I should never have hidden it.”
“So you’re saying I have to live until then?” Berenike asked, sounding thoughtful.
“You have to live a lot longer than that!” I retorted, glaring at her, but the Valkyrie just laughed.
“I’ll be looking forward to it, Saf. Just make sure you’re still around to tell me when the time comes.”
All too quickly the geyser fired once more, the rush of water coming and going, granting us a window of time to open up the side and get ready.
Prepared for the moment, I was already punching into the stone pillars as the last gurgles passed us by, and I pulled the fragmenting columns into the cave as I dug into them, to avoid dropping any debris that the geyser might smash into us later.
The separation between us and the water channel proved small, just a few densely packed, solid layers and one final giant pillar as thick as a tree all that kept the flood out, and as I broke through I was engulfed in a cloud of steam, stinging my eyes.
Up against the far wall already, Berenike pushed herself back as far as she could as the burning gases entered, and I found myself worrying about this plan all over again.
Inspecting the channel my thoughts changed however. This… might work better than I’d dared hope.
The chimney of rock was huge, wider than Berenike was tall, and the sides were sealed tight where five more pillars like the one I’d just broken through met, forming a perfect hexagon, unbroken as far as I could see both up and down. A breathtaking, perfect crystal structure, rendered in stone polished smooth over eons.
With time short, I got to work rather than wasting time marveling at the structure. Berenike probably thought I was having some sort of breakdown as I pulled and kicked apart the rock at my feet, creating a channel leading into the tube.
“Hold tight to the walls, don’t get swept away!”
She definitely thought I’d lost my reason as I started conjuring water, but the geyser would erupt again soon and my plan needed every moment to spare.
The healing flood engulfed us both as I poured all the essence I could into it, filling the cave and gushing out the new opening. I moved with it. I had to dig my fingers and toes into the rock to make sure it didn’t sweep me out as I neared the hole, chanting as I went.
My hand pushed out, knees and arm bracing me against the stone. I submerged myself as the magic activated, and in an instant the water was flash-frozen around me. Ice spread through the tube, sticking to the walls, liquid water atop it filling all the gaps. I moved out with it, pushing through the forming layers as I moved into the corners, creating a perfect stopper for the geyser in seconds. The hardest part was controlling the rate enough that it didn’t engulf Berenike too.
Finally, all I had to do was flatten out the surface on top. I crushed the piled up layers, then formed a small depression in the middle. Something to keep Berenike and I in place. I tore up a large lump of rock from the opening into the cave and crushed into gravel to use as lining. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but at least Berenike’s butt wouldn’t get frostbite quite as easily.
I waved to the stunned harpy, and she looked out at my creation in puzzlement.
“Come on, ride’s waiting! We don’t have to freeze ourselves if we just ride the ice up! It’s just like a bullet… I mean a bolt, firing out of one of those hydraulic launchers the Pharyes use.”
“Is that even possible?” she asked from the opening in the wall, eying the ice with clear distrust.
“More possible than your plan at least. It’s like an old human trick I know. Just… trust me okay? This way you don’t get trapped in a block of ice.”
She was still shaky as she moved; weak after being injured and haphazardly healed, and seeing her treading on the ice barefoot made me wince. I heard her wet skin stick and the snaps as she broke away again. It was lucky that people in this world, especially harpies, were made of sterner stuff, or else she might well have left some skin behind. It clearly still hurt, but it gave me hope that this reckless idea could actually work.
I too was unshod on the ice of course, but the cold barely affected me at all, where as I could see the other woman shivering even as she made it to the cushion of rock.
“I don’t know how you came up with this, but I’m glad you did,” Berenike said, as she hugged her knees, wrapped tight in a cloak of her own bedraggled feathers. “I would never have survived being frozen in this.”
“Yeah it’s… colder than it needs to be. I’m not good at controlling the power still.”
I would never have forgiven myself if I’d killed Berenike with my ice, so I was gladder than ever of this alternative idea.
I sealed up the hole into the smoothbore barrel in which we now awaited our firing, plunging us into total darkness. All that we had left to do was await the next eruption, and hope that I hadn’t just prolonged the inevitable with this scheme.
When it came the sounds were louder than before, coming from right under us, and the entire tunnel trembled as I felt as much as heard the many tons of water pumping up.
In preparation I had my hands pressed to the ice once again, pushed into two holes that I’d burrowed in the surface, letting then get as far into the middle of our ‘bullet’ as possible, and I recited my spell once again, cooling the mass further just before impact.
It was far harder than I’d expected, as this time I was trying to direct my essence too, to spread the cooling magic out through the entire mass, to keep the edges and underside from melting away.
The water was about to hit, and I let an extra wash of mana escape me uncontrolled. Berenike groaned at the cold, but I was desperate to make sure the ice held.
Boiling water slammed into it and an almighty crack shook the chimney.
Another lesser crack came, then another, and in a panic I tried to feel for where it was breaking up to direct my magic there.
Then the final frozen edge holding us in place gave way, and our ride shot upwards, intact, edges whining against the stone as we rocketed into the pitch blackness of the tube above.