Klane’s stomach lifted into his chest as the elevator cart descended, shuddering and jolting at an unsettling pace. The slap of steel cables and squeals as they ran resonated deeply throughout the entire cart, making it clear that the elevator shaft was much deeper and expansive than the small cart implied. Through a slit in the elevator door, Klane could see black, rock walls thundering past him, and cold, wet air chilled his cheeks. Every minute or so the rocky walls gave way to dimly illuminated horizontal shafts yards away, which fell into nothing, littered with mining carts and discarded tools but otherwise abandoned.
“Do I have to press anything, or …?” Klane stared up at a floor indicator and realized the arrow meant to track progress was bobbing uselessly from the end of a spring.
As if in answer, the cart shuddered and began to slow. Brakes squelched and screamed as a spine-churning grating of metal on metal filled the shaft like a choir of banshees.
Then there was silence.
The cart swayed gently in the open air, bumping against something at its front. The doors of the elevator parted to reveal a metal loading pier jutting out over the pitch-black chasm. Somewhere below, trickles of water plinked, lonely in the foreboding depths beyond. I’m in the bowels of the world, Klane realized, way lower than beneath your tree.
Klane stood atop an old wooden crate and snatched a lantern that hung unlit on the inside of the cart and stepped quickly onto the pier, mindful of the fluctuating gap of nothingness between the cart and platform. He checked over his shoulder, surprised to see that the only thing stopping the cart from dropping to an unknown fate was an aged cable looped through the top of the lift and clamped back upon itself.
The metal platform creaked beneath him as he crept down the center of the open pier toward the rail-enclosed station. A mine-cart sat at the end of a rail-line on the right, the tracks vanishing in a gentle slope down some narrow shaft which went farther below. Gorgeous, ruby-red gems, as brilliant and pure as he’d ever, seen glittered over the brim of the cart.
Casting stones? Klane could hardly believe it. He’d heard stories of stones which had the power to grant elemental control to the wielder of any armor or weaponry embedded with them. With enough training and effort, one could exert a mastery over the stone’s element. Red meant fire, if Klane wasn’t mistaken. He would have to snag one for himself before he left. Pride could use some sprucing-up around the hilt.
The metal platform of the station gave way to a soft, red earth. Mining equipment, as in the shafts above, lay strewn about. Pails and metal lunch-boxes tipped up and left open. He even spotted a single boot, along with a headlamp wedged beneath a cleft. Its small, round mirror, meant to reflect candle-light, was shattered.
Strands of bulbous lights, like the ones from the above-ground platform the old man huddled in, lit the corridors in random patches. Only half of them worked, it seemed, at nearly half the strength, too. The unlit strands of lights hid in shadowy spaces within the nooks and crannies of the rocks.
Whoever was here left in a hurry.
Klane fussed with a bit of flint and steel, which he kept in a pouch on his backpack, striking them hastily toward the charred wick encased within the bulbous glass dome held in place by copper arms of the lantern.
A sign near the mouth of the shaft pointed onward to personnel bunkrooms and storage.
“There we are.” Klane tapped the sign gratefully. It clattered to the floor, breaking in half. “Drat.”
The first corridor off the main shaft led to the personnel bunkrooms. Small, empty chambers that housed two bunks and footlockers. All were empty save the last room on the left.
A heavy, wooden door blocked entry into the room. Klane pawed for the small set of lock picks he kept in his beltline before trying to handle. With a bit of a squeal and some weight, the handle turned and Klane shouldered his way in, leaving his picks be. Gossamer cobwebs, glinting in the low light, broke as the door eased open. A pungent, warm smell rushed out to meet him.
Through the rippling aura of amber light emanating from the lantern, Klane could see two aged bunks holding a total of four mattress pads, three of them piled high with rough, sackcloth sheets. The three piles of sheets were worn, with signs of the harsh use that life as a miner undoubtedly entailed, covering up lumpy masses.
More equipment and personal belongings littered the room. A small table bore a few tattered journals. Klane picked one up, wiping its cover clear of dust. A personal journal, perhaps someone’s diary. But then a glimmer caught his eye. He tossed the journal back onto the table.
Something tinkled across the ground as the toe of his boot brushed against it. It flashed red. Another casting stone. The fact that he’d run into another of the precious gems served as a sign. Take it.
“You deserve this, Pride.” Klane swiped the gem off the ground, bouncing it in his hand. It had a perfect weight to it.
Klane slipped the stone safely inside his pack, then in afterthought shoved the journal into the pack as well. Perhaps it would offer some insight as to what had caused the mine to close. Perhaps not.
He brought his attention back to the bunks.
At the foot of each bunk was a copper nameplate. As Klane leaned in to inspect the first etched plate, the foul stench of the room—a mix of rotting meat and sulfurous powders—grew worse. The name on the top right bunk was scratched out in an erratic manner, but Klane could still make out Gregory beneath the lines.
Klane froze. Gyro was scratched into the sliver of space above the name.
He checked the names of the other beds, all given the same treatment. Benedict was scratched out and replaced with Baz. The bottom left bunk had Aldo, the original name being what was maybe, Allen? The final bunk, this one free of any lumps, had an unmarred name, Gilmer.
Blind panic welled up within Klane as he realized what he’d stumbled upon. He tore one of the lumpy sheets back. He wished he hadn’t come down here.
He should’ve braved the storm, should’ve just left as soon as the old man, Gilmer, had hobbled away from him.
The whirring from that unsettling construct, Aldo, filled his head. The light, humming sound seemed to echo off the walls and fill the depths of the mine, seeping out from every corner. Madness is a resident of this mine, a hellish host emerging to greet the newcomer. Coming to greet … you, Klane realized he had found the old man’s friends.
* * *
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“I’ve got to g-get out of here!” Klane drew Pride as his lantern illuminated a butchered corpse.
A tingling sensation crawled up Klane’s leg. This one was Baz. No, Benedict. One arm was missing. Thoughts of the skin-gloved forearm the old man was tinkering with above came to mind. An eyeless skull stared off into the ceiling.
Klane checked the next bunk. Aldo. This corpse had no head.
You’ve got to run. Klane fell backward over himself as he scrambled for the door.
Coming out onto the hallway, it felt as if the chaos of the storm had followed him into the mine. The lights flickered on and off, like an eerie, miniature lightning storm. Even strands of bulbs he’d distinctly remembered being dead now flared to near-blinding brightness in half-second sporadic intervals.
Klane reached the main shaft, checking the right side, which cut farther down the mine into malevolent blackness. The mine had come to life through its former inhabitants. Voices bounced off the walls, distant and agonized. The sound of machinery and the infernal, repeated plinks of pickaxes striking stone echoed somewhere far below. The lonely howls of the wind answered in kind.
The gnome was ready to lash out at anything that got in his way. He could see the elevator cart still swaying over the expanse beside the metal pier. Across the chasm, previously invisible tunnels had been illuminated with their own lights, hundreds of them lining the vertical shaft both ways, twinkling like a field of stars.
“There you are!”
Klane jumped, and spun back toward the darkness farther down the shaft he’d already learned to hate so much. Except the main shaft was no longer pitch dark. Although he couldn’t make out the ground entirely, rows of lights flickered faintly until they converged a mile down. A tall, familiar, lanky form stood at the center of the corridor, near the mouth of the hallway that led to the bunkrooms.
“G-Gilmer?” Klane held the point of Pride out toward the old man, who stepped slowly forward. How had he gotten down here? There must’ve been another path.
“Yess-ss-ss.” He hissed like a serpent in reply, in a low voice more suited for an executioner than a miner. As the last of the hiss died, the bulbs around flared brilliantly, illuminating the entire corridor.
Klane shied away, squinting toward the old man. Gyro the skull was cradled under his right arm. He had slipped Baz’s missing limb into his belt as casually as one might have tucked a scroll of paper. A carrion club. “You shouldn’t have come down here.”
“Y-you told me to!” Klane shouted.
Something else was coming. A Thump-shhhlick grew louder and louder from the hallway in steady intervals. Thump-shhhlick, thump-shhhlick.
“Aldo says you were causing a ruckus. You took something of his, and weren’t too polite in handling his journal.”
“Aldo is dead!” Klane spat, wondering how in the world the old man could know what had happened in the bunkroom.
Aldo, the freakish construct from above, dragged itself around the corner into the main corridor. Its broken cyclops eye wrenched upward toward the space between Klane and the ceiling. Its arm lurched forward at steady paces, making the thumping scrape that shouldn’t have been allowed. A few frayed cables writhed like sentient spider’s limbs, helping it to move along the ground.
Klane sheathed Pride. I have to escape.
“They’re not dead. They’re here with me. With us.” The old man hunched down and seized Aldo. “Show him to his bunkroom, Aldo.”
In a mad dash, Klane bolted for the lift at the pier. Gilmer’s laugh pursued him, a frightening sound more piercing than the squealing elevator cables. Klane glanced over his shoulder to see the old man hurling the construct his way.
As if of its own accord, the lift shuddered and started to rise. Klane dashed. He was only a few yards off.
Ghostly figures of goblins and gnomes filled the tunnels across the chasm, wheeling carts back and forth. All the while, mine carts careened over ramshackle rail-lines that spanned the open air of the shaft on narrow bridges.
Jump! Klane leaped for the elevator, catching it by the lip of the opening. His fingers sank into the grated floor as the entire thing swung outward under his weight. Bless whomever made these gloves, Klane relished the enhanced traction his gloves offered on the riveted metal flooring, pressing his cheek against the cold metal if the cart.
The elevator swung and twisted as it rose, the cable seeming to weep in agonized tones under the sudden strain of an unexpected gnome and his belongings.
Klane pulled himself up safely into the cart as the severe swaying subsided. He peeked his head out the door toward the old man. He had vanished beneath the lip of the tunnel’s mouth, which continued to flicker ominously.
“You got away.” Klane slumped in the corner. He would have a head start on Gilmer. The old man didn’t seem capable of movement any faster than a hobbling creep. The clatter of cables and squeal of pulleys filled the little cart, almost loud and constant enough to cover up a nearly indiscernible whirring.
Aldo clambered through the cart doors as Klane moved to slide them shut. Somehow the one-armed monstrosity managed to fight its way inside. A few straggling cables that hung out from below the torso writhed and wrapped around parts of the elevator cart like anchors. Klane jammed back against the rear of the cart, bringing Pride to bear.
Cables lashed out at him like whips, bursts of sparks showering about as they slapped the walls of the cart. Klane parried and deflected a few of the strikes, by sheer luck rather than expert swordsmanship. He knew if anything was going to save him it would be a fanatical resistance, fighting as the caged rat he felt like.
Between the lashing of the cables, easier to deflect and avoid than Klane had expected, Aldo’s arm hit like a club. The weighty blow of each unwieldy strike threatened to knock Pride free of Klane’s grip. A horrifying image of Pride’s blade shattering under the onslaught was closer to a distinct possibility than Klane wanted to admit.
Finally, mercifully, the cart lurched to a halt. Its errant swaying ceased as it scraped into the tighter confines of the platform floor.
Attack, Klane! He lunged forward, thrusting Pride toward Aldo’s pin-shaped head. The time for being on the defensive had ended. If he was going to survive he would need to bring the fight to the enemy.
Despite its endless, robotic endurance, Klane still had one advantage over the construct. Maneuverability. He hopped and wove over and under the lashing tentacles and flailing arm. Planting a boot on the back of the skeletal torso, through the back of which crammed wiring was visible, Klane leaped free of the enclosed confines of the lift into the slightly larger alcove behind the shelving of Gilmer’s workroom.
One of Aldo’s lashes caught Klane’s boot, sending him tumbling forward. With a thunderous crash, the gnome brought down the shelving unit, sending random junk scattering across the floor.
Klane rose and spun, stabbing Pride toward Aldo’s eye socket. The sword stuck. Klane wrenched and heaved with all his might. When the resistance gave way, Aldo’s faceplate smashed against the ceiling.
Klane’s eyes widened as they fell upon the nightmarish contents of the pin-head. A human face was crammed within, horrifically mangled and mashed. Pallid, pustule-marked skin hung loosely over barely recognizable human features. Rotting gums held less than a handful of teeth for the upper half of a jaw-less face, and small actuators whirred where the jawbone would’ve connected. Thick cables had been jammed up the nasal cavity toward the brain. The upper left portion of the head was completely gone, leaving just one eye socket, with a ruptured eye within.
Klane stabbed reflexively at the abomination, which seemed disoriented at the sudden loss of its faceplate. Pride’s point sank into the blighted skin. Yellow pus burst out on the blade, releasing a carrion stench.
“This guy’s a monster,” Klane sneered as he yanked Pride free. A flailing cable caught his heel and toppled him onto his back. With a frenzied kick, Klane slammed his heel into the face. It made a sickly, squishing sound that caused his spine to tingle. He kicked more at the arm and body of the construct, beating it back. It just wouldn’t stop.
“Leave me alone, Allen!” Klane threw one more kick into the construct, and it toppled in a spastic roll back into the cart. The rotting face seemed to register a sense of recognition, as if it knew its name.
Klane hopped along one of the fallen chunks of debris near the elevator cart’s opening and wedged Pride between the cable lock. If he couldn’t kill Aldo, he could at least set him back a few hundred feet.
With a zealous tug, the blade bent, but eventually levered the cable clamp apart. Violent shuddering racked the cart as the only thing which kept it aloft gave way.
The cart moaned, as if letting out a dying breath, before plunging into the blackness with a parting shriek. Klane watched it plummet into the now-dark shaft, cold wind whipping up from below, tousling his hair.
He jumped away from the mouth of the lift’s shaft and ran for his escape. He cursed his wanderlust, wanting nothing more than to be back in his village, enjoying a warm mug of ale and a good book before a crackling hearth. The rain splattering the windows, normally a sound he loved, was right now a constant reminder that he remained trapped within this terrible place.