At the end of the tunnel the nine of us had just passed through, we found ourselves in a large, roughly circular space dug out beneath the thick, twisting roots of the red-leaved trees that covers much of the Abyss. Three small corridors connect to smaller rooms along the inner wall, across from a larger corridor with a thick covering of leaves to obscure the entrance to this hideout. Numerous glowing, glass-like orbs hang from the roots above suspended by roughly-bound ropes.
The main room itself is about the same size as the ground floor of the Chief’s library and residence, but there’s barely two metres of clearance from the “roof”, and this space clearly wasn’t made to accommodate people as tall as Rann or Rob, with both of them having to stoop down just to fit. Our party of nine is crowded up on one side of the room, standing across from the two small figures who have just pulled down the hoods of their cloaks.
“The group that hunted that bloodbeast? I followed them back to their settlement.” Crow nods, standing proudly with his arms crossed.
“What the fuck are they doing here, Crow?” The scar-faced boy grunts. “Bringing them here through our fucking tunnels. Now they know where to look for them.”
“They’re from a place called Haven. They have clean water, a farm, enough buildings to make a whole village, metal, meat, clean clothes, everything. This is, um, their Chief.” Crow gestures towards the Chief, who glances across at the two children as she pats the dirt off her cloak and makes sure she’s presentable. “She wants to help us, and she wants to meet the Queen.”
“And you believed them and brought them here?” The scar-faced boy scoffs.
“Ooh!” The long haired girl steps in front of the scar-faced boy, looking across the group Crow has brought with him. “Warriors, even one with a red wolf’s pelt… Archers… A mage, and even her familiar!”
“I’m not a familiar-”
“Hound!! Crow has found an adventurer’s party in the Abyss! We have acquired new party members!” The girl beams, running and grabbing a piece of bark hanging off the wall. “One.. two… Nine! Hound! We require a larger party roster!”
The girl waves the piece of bark in the air, showing five symbols scratched into it - two birds, a rabbit, a dog, and… some kind of rodent. Her cloak has sleeves, evidently cut far too long for her little arms, and the muddied bottom hem of her cloak drags through the dirt behind her.
“There aren’t any adventurers down here, Rabbit. We’re dead, remember.” ‘Hound’ sighs. His tone is noticeably softer towards ‘Rabbit’.
“Hey now, kid. I’m from the New World. We’re called explorers around my old neighbourhood.” Johnny grins. Something about his grin has always unsettled me a little. It’s not an evil or nasty grin, it’s just a little too… disarming. Not in the kind, earnest way like Tiff, but more like a sleazy salesman. I’d almost call it charming, if it wasn’t for his particularly accented voice.
“You’re explorers?!” Rabbit gasps, stars shining in her eyes as she runs up to Johnny.
“A-ah, well, I’m not exactly one myself, but I knew a lot of ‘em! Though, I guess our expedition team ain’t that too different from an explorer’s party…” Johnny backpedals, which does nothing to abate Rabbit’s excitement.
“Explorers have joined the party! Our adventurer’s party has been promoted to an explorer’s party!” Rabbit giggles, running in circles in glee.
“Ahem… To get back on topic, yes.” The Chief turns to address Hound. “I am Mia Lichtrufer, the Chief of Haven, and these are the members of Haven’s expeditionary team. We have come to meet and discuss an alliance with the Wolf Pups and their leader, and Crow has guided us here.”
Hound glances up and down the Chief’s form, looking unconvinced.
“You’ve got nice clothes. Shiny steel weapons. What do you want from us other than servitude?” Hound grunts.
“Haven has many children. We give them homes, beds, clothes, food, an education, and security. We consider it our duty to protect the children of the Abyss, to raise and nurture them as our own.” She continues.
“We’re doing fine on our own. You can fuck back off to whatever hole you crawled out of.” Hound crosses his arms.
“How about some salted meat?” The Chief smiles, taking out a piece of salted bloodbeast meat from one of her pouches and handing it to Hound.
“You think you can buy us out by wagging some meat in our face?” Hound scoffs, snatching the meat out of the Chief’s hand and taking a bite from it. “... Shit. Maybe you can.” His expression softens slightly, taking another bite.
“Good.” She smiles again. “You’ve brought us to your outpost, Crow. It’s time we got moving to your headquarters.”
“You’re not going anywhere yet.” Hound says between bites of the salted meat he’s chewing through in record time. “Not til the other two are back. Outposts are never left unmanned, and you’ll need more than Crow’s word to get into the Capital.”
“The Capital? Is that the name of your settlement in the Dead Hollows?” The Chief raises an eyebrow.
“... You told them too much, Crow.” Hound glares at Crow.
“You don’t know what she’s capable of!! Holding me upside down and shaking me side to side…” Crow shivers.
“And when will these other two return?” The Chief asks.
“Sometime tomorrow. You’ll just have to stay put until then.” Hound shrugs, moving out of sight into one of the side rooms of this dugout.
“Well.” Rann shrugs, sitting down against the dirt wall and leaning back against it. “Nothing else to it.”
“Tomorrow?! I’m not sitting around in a mud hole until tomorrow! We are leaving as soon as possible while there’s still daylight!” The Chief yells, storming into the room Hound entered to give him an earful.
“Could be worse, far as caves go. Dryer than the Cellars at least, thank Falian.” Johnny adds, dropping his pack and sitting down beside Rann.
Crow moves off into a different side room than the one Hound walked into. The rest of the expedition party just sighs to themselves and make themselves comfortable as they can as per Hound’s suggestion, taking the opportunity to catch their breath and take off their heavy packs.
Given the limited space, though, most of us are just huddled up on one side of the room, with Rob in particular having to really bunch himself up just to fit in with everyone else. Arshak and Arshiya sit next to each other, leaning against the wall beside the hideout’s entrance. Despite their almost identical appearances right down to their slender faces, deep brown eyes, tanned skin, and orange hair, their personalities couldn’t be more different. Arshak always looks annoyed and irritated by everything around him, while his sister is always gazing into the distance, lost in some imaginary world. Despite her apparent airheadedness, she isn’t ignorant to her surroundings, or her brother’s consistent foul mood.
The Chief called this a mud hole, but as far as mud holes go, the ground is surprisingly dry and cool. I’d join the rest of the party in relaxing, but Rabbit has been staring up at me in awe for a while now. Well, specifically, she’s been staring at my wings, which have remained outside my cloak since I got here. I can guess what she wants.
“Do you… want to touch them? They’re soft.” And they like the attention.
“May I…?” Rabbit’s eyes sparkle.
My right wing reaches down in front of her, spreading its smooth outermost pinion feathers for her to admire. She reaches out, gently stroking a feather with her small hand.
“Wow… It’s so smooth and soft…” Rabbit smiles, feeling each individual feather along my wing, until her fingernail clinks against something metallic. “Oh! You keep a sword in here!”
“In a way, yes, just be careful with them-”
“Ah!” Rabbit pulls her hand away, looking at her index finger as the small cut she got begins to bleed.
“Gods damn it… They’re very sharp, so you shouldn’t touch them or else you’ll get cut. How bad is the bleeding…?”
My wings start to fret and flitter restlessly, panicking over the fact that they cut someone without permission. Rabbit, rather than looking like she’s in pain or about to cry, is instead only more amazed by my wings.
“They’re sooooo sharp! Only a legendary sword could be so sharp! Only a legendary warrior could wield such a legendary sword, like a Warrior of God! Are you a Warrior of God, miss? You have feathered wings! The Queen says no one in the whole world here has feathered wings!” She beams, running in a circle around me to size up my wings.
“Hah. Well, Marina? You been hiding your godly blessings all this time?” Rann chuckles.
“If I was truly favoured by the gods then I wouldn’t be here, would I?” I hiss back.
Warriors of God. A title I haven’t heard in a while. The favoured of the gods, who act as their voice and arbiters among mortals, is what we’re taught. Very few of them existed in my time, and those that did were more bureaucrats and social leaders than the traditional warriors or heroes you hear about in old stories. Still, they had reputations for being very proud and uptight, and they often bore unique physical traits, such as feathered wings, and you could see them all over churches and temples in artwork.
“Nah. I’ve seen one of ‘em “Warriors of God” before. Marina don’t walk around like she got a spear up her ass.” Johnny says, sitting up as he inserts himself into the conversation.
“What haven’t you seen, Johnny… You once claimed you saw a whole flight of dragons fly right over your city.” Arshak frowns, glaring at Johnny.
“You see all kinds of crazy things on a daily basis when you live in the New World. Even crazier than the things that pass through your ol’ Spice Islands.” Johnny shrugs.
“Ever seen someone with extra limbs that have a mind of their own, Johnny?”
“Not til meetin’ you, Feathers.”
“How do you keep the sword in there? Is it strapped to something?” Rabbit ponders, tilting her head as she tries to make sense of the enigma of my wings.
“There’s eight of them, four on each wing.” I say, as my wings helpfully spread out enough to show all eight blades. “They’re part of my wings, like uh… fingernails, in a way. They can fold out to a longer length, too.”
“What did you mean when you said that they have a mind of their own…?” Rabbit tilts her head the other way.
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“They… tend to act on their own without me telling them to. They also like to touch things without permission.” I sigh, and as if to prove my point, my right wing reaches out and lightly pokes Rabbit’s nose with its outermost soft feather, making her giggle.
“Ehehe… But miss, if you’re not a Warrior of God, how do you have wings?” Rabbit looks up at me, rubbing along the top edge of my wing.
“I woke up here with them.”
“You didn’t have them before?” Rabbit frowns, surprised at my answer.
“According to some books back in Haven, sometimes people that end up in the Underlands wake up with something new or different on their body. I woke up with, well… nearly everything about me was different.” I sigh, glancing down at my definitely-not-fifteen-years-old body. “I had only just turned fifteen, now I look twenty-something…”
“Eh? You’re fifteen, miss?” Rabbit blinks in disbelief. “That means the Red Wolves are older than you…”
“She’s telling the truth, too. The Chief can tell when someone’s lying or not. Nothing gets past her.” Rann adds, his eyes closed as he lounges back against the wall.
“Ooh! Like Mole!” Rabbit nods in agreement.
“Mole?”
“Our party leader! He can’t see very well, but he’s really smart and really good at understanding people!”
“... Are all the Wolf Pups named after animals?”
“The Queen gives us our names. It means we can write our name as symbols, since almost none of us can read or write. Rabbit is one of our best readers.” Crow says, coming back into the main room of the hideout.
“I can read a little bit! One day, I’ll be able to read all the Adventurers and Explorers story books that I want!” Rabbit nods excitedly.
“Haven has a whole library full of books, Rabbit, and all the kids there our age can read. If the Queen and Haven’s Chief can make an alliance, I could take you there.” Crow smiles, putting his hand on Rabbit’s shoulder.
“A library?! But… what if they don’t make an alliance…?” Rabbit lights up, only to quickly come down as her worry grows.
“Don’t worry. I know how to sneak into Haven.” Crow grins.
“Not after we seal the tunnel you snuck in through, Crow.” Rann opens one eye to glance across at Crow.
“A-aha… ahaha… Well, the Chief is smart, and the Queen is smart, I’m sure they’ll work something out tomorrow.” Crow backpedals.
Tomorrow, huh. Guess there is nothing else to do but to sit down and make myself comfortable. There’s space next to Rann, and the ground’s dry enough.
“Where’re you kids from, anyway? Y’know, before you ended up down here with the rest of us.” Johnny asks, leaning forward.
“The streets.” Crow scoffs, sitting down on the other side of the room and crossing his legs.
“Heian!” Rabbit answers with a smile, sitting daintily next to Crow.
“Heian, huh? We’ve got a couple of other Heian girls back in Haven. They’d be over the moons to meet another person from their homeland.” Johnny muses.
“Oh!…” Rabbit’s bright smile dims, looking a little sullen. “I’d love to meet them.”
Rabbit falls quiet, looking down at her hands in her lap. Crow takes notice, sitting up as he clears his throat.
“Rabbit is from… the future. Like, hundreds of years in the future. They have machines make everything in the future, and things like adventurers and explorers only exist in kid’s story books.” He says, wrapping his arm around Rabbit in a hug.
“Hundreds? Marina, you’re the newest person in Haven, what year was it when you kicked the bucket?” Johnny asks, glancing across at me.
“GC 1541. Although, uh… does Heian follow the GC calendar? It’s on the far side of the world from the Empire…”
“Hmm…” Alice ponders. “I remember that the year had four numbers and that it started with a two.”
“With a two? So like, the year’s 2000 somethin’?” Johnny comments, doing the maths in his head. “That’s five hundred years in the future. I thought Anton was fancy comin’ from the 1700s, heh, he’s got nothin’ on you, kid. Are there really no more adventurers or explorers in your time?”
“My parents said the whole world was explored and discovered, and that there was no need for adventurers or explorers anymore. I think they told me that just so I wouldn’t try to get out of bed, though, because the world is soooo big! There must still be more to explore and discover, and there’s always people who need an adventurer’s help!” Rabbit’s smile grows as she talks more about adventurers and explorers.
“Well. You could call us Haven’s explorer party. We hunt, we gather, we chart the depths of the Abyss. We bring back children we find out in the wild to safety. We’ve got the twins and Einar over there who’re good with bows. Einar, Rob, Johnny and I up front in melee. The Chief’s our magical aid, and we even have a mascot in Marina. Don’t see how we’re any different from an explorer party.” Rann adds, shrugging lightly.
“I’m a mascot…?”
“It’s that, or you’re the Chief’s familiar.” Rann grins dryly at me.
“Ahhh…!” Rabbit beams, her eyes sparkling. “A real explorer’s party…!”
“If all goes well with the Chief and your Queen, you could join us on expeditions one day.” Rann smiles.
“I can become an explorer?!” Rabbit actually might start bouncing off the walls if someone doesn’t calm her down.
It was at this moment that two small cloaked figures suddenly came flying out of the tunnel and landed in the middle of the room, their bark mudboards landing near the hideout’s entrance. They pull down their hoods, glancing across at the group of adults that have all tucked themselves into one corner of the hideout.
The one on the right is tall and lanky, with thin features and pale skin, a long face, and a few black chin hairs. Numerous metallic objects adorn his chest, visible through the gap of his cloak, shining in the warm firelight of the torches. His hair is short and scruffy like Crow, yet it has patches of black and ashen white, his fringe coming down to just above his stark red eyes. The other is short and round, almost stocky enough to look like a dwarf. His dark brown hair covers his eyes completely, with reddy-brown patches of dried mud all over his hair and cheeks, yet his nose is quite noticeably immaculately clean. He scans across our expedition party, settling his unreadable gaze upon me.
“Crow.” The short one says. His voice is quite nasal. “Who are these people?”
“The bloodbeast hunters I tracked.” Crow says with a proud smile.
“Uh huh. Why are they here.” The short one asks.
“Hm. You’re back early, Mole.” Hound says, walking back into the main room with the Chief behind him.
“We made good time. Do you know why Crow brought back…” ‘Mole’ turns to face Hound, but he trails off as he looks up at the Chief.
The Chief’s eyes widen, stepping past Hound to kneel down in front of Mole, holding his cheeks in her hands as she brushes his fringe aside.
“Gods… You poor thing, you never underwent the sealing ritual…” She says, looking at the boy with genuine concern.
“Street urchins don’t get sealing rituals.” Mole shrugs lightly, his tone flat.
“Sealing ritual, Chief…?” I ask, standing back up.
“I was born with my silver eye, the mark of a soulseer.” She says, standing back up. “I wasn’t born with the markings around my silver eye. Those are from the sealing ritual; a necessary procedure a soulseer must undergo early on in life. As a soulseer grows, their soul-reading abilities grow more powerful and clear… at the cost of their natural eyesight. Soulseers who do not undergo the ritual before the age of ten go blind, losing their natural eyesight entirely.”
“Eh? You’re a soulsee-er too, Mole…? I thought you were just a bit short-sighted, you never had problems telling us apart…” Crow says.
“I can still see, Crow. Just not in the way other people do. Anyway, you haven’t answered my question, Crow.” Mole glances in Crow’s direction, frowning slightly.
“A-ah, right, um, this is the Chief of Haven, and everyone else is from Haven also. She wants to meet the Queen and make an alliance between the Wolf Pups and the people of Haven.” Crow answers.
Mole scans across our group again, then back up at the Chief.
“If you need further convincing, I have plenty of salted meat to spare.” The Chief smiles.
“You’re sincere, but I’ll take the meat anyway.” Mole says, holding his hand out.
She hands him a piece of salted meat from her pouch, crossing her arms and glancing back at Hound. “Well, the rest of your party is here now. Can we get moving to where your Wolf Queen is now?”
“We can get there by sundown. Crow and Rabbit will come with me. Hound, you and Magpie stay put… Magpie?” Mole looks around the room, trying to find Magpie, presumably the fifth member of Mole’s crew.
“Tch- Ow! Bloody sharp that is…” A voice next to me winces. Wait, next to me?!
‘Magpie’, with his splotchy black and white hair pulls away from me, licking the cut on his finger. When the hell did he get right next to me? Why didn’t you warn me like you usually do, wings- don’t shrug at me! Spatial awareness is one of the things you’re supposed to be good at!
“Did she have something shiny that caught your eye, Magpie?” Mole asks bluntly. I guess he can’t tell that I have wings.
“She was hiding something shiny in her feathered… cloak?” Magpie retorts, only to get distracted as my “cloak” starts to move. “The hell kind of cloak is…”
“She has wings, you idiot. Maybe you would have noticed that if you didn’t try to steal every shiny thing that caught your eye.” Hound growls, before looking back at Mole. “If you’re going to leave, get a bloody move on. Try not to die out there.”
“Mm. We best leave now.” Mole says, pulling aside the thick branches of leaves that obscures the entrance from the outside. “Only way there from here is to move across the surface. Single file. Let’s go.”
Everyone else looks to the Chief, who nods and moves towards the hideout’s entrance. With a sigh, everyone gets back up, grabbing their backpacks and moving out from the hideout in single file, with Rabbit and Crow at the rear. My wings slink back under my cloak, resting my spear on my shoulder as I follow directly behind the Chief. Under Mole’s direction, off we go again.
We don’t have to be told to keep quiet here. We’re much closer to Dead Man’s Dream here, and this is not a place that you want to draw attention to yourself in. Fortunately, our path that Mole leads us through long, winding ravines hidden from much of the surroundings, allowing a group as large as ours to move through the Abyss unnoticed. There’s the occasional murmur in the group, and the tension gripping us slowly dissipates as Mole informs us that we’re now moving further away from Dead Man’s Dream and closer to the Dead Hollows.
Given I’m right behind the Chief in the line, I took the opportunity to quietly ask her a few questions that popped into my head after her interaction with Mole.
Soulseers are rare, and they can read people’s intentions and to a lesser extent, their thoughts. I knew that. That’s all I really knew, though, and I hadn’t thought about it much since I first met the Chief. I didn’t know that she wasn’t born with the thin red markings around her silver eye, nor what the sealing ritual was, nor how her ability actually works.
The way she described it is that every face she looks at is framed by a cloud of all different colours, and like clouds, they may take vaguely recognisable shapes. Sometimes someone will only have one predominant colour surrounding them, while others will have a cacophony of dozens of different colours. These colours correlate with emotions, intentions, and desires, although she had to figure out what each colour means by herself through logical deduction.
She sees these colours as a cloud, but more advanced soulseers see clearer colours, shapes, and even patterns and words when they look upon someone’s face. Hiding your face behind a helmet or a mask may hide your “colours” from a novice soulseer, but when you face a soulseer as skilled as the Chief or as advanced as Mole, there’s nothing you can do to mask your feelings. Most young soulseers undergo the ritual between the ages of four and six, when their soul-reading ability has begun to mature but before it starts to seriously impact their eyesight.
The soul-reading ability matures rapidly between the ages of seven and ten, but their eyesight deteriorates just as quickly. Some soulseers will only undergo the ritual when they’re seven or eight and require eyeglasses to see, but by the time they reach the age of nine, both their eyes begin to cloud over to a hazy, pale silver colour, and by their tenth birthday, their natural eyesight is almost completely gone. They are functionally blind, but they are far from helpless and sightless.
Yes, they lose the ability to make out fine details or see the expressions on someone’s face, but their empathic ability to read thoughts and feelings are second to none. It’s why Mole needed no convincing when Crow told him why we were here - Mole looked at each of us, saw our sincerity, and that was all he needed. If we were lying, he would have seen right through us. In the Overlands, blind soulseers were favoured as judges across much of the Old World. Juno, the Goddess of Order herself, is often depicted as blind, and blind soulseers are seen as Juno’s favoured children within the Giornovan Empire. The Chief joked that if her family lived within the Giornovan Empire, her parents would have let her go blind as a child and sent her off to be a judge for the rest of her days.
Before I can get a word out after the Chief’s self-deprecating joke, the group comes to a stop before a tall, twisted tree with grinning, evil faces carved into its bark, leaving trails of dried-out, blood-red sap along its trunk, with thick, dark roots splayed out in all directions, growing over a dark orange rock and gripping it like a tumour. Hundreds more of these trees lay just beyond the one before us. They aren’t that dissimilar from the countless other trees that cover the Abyss, but these ones are bigger. Older. Most other trees have strange-looking shapes that resemble faces on their trunks, staring at you with blank eyes and open, vacant mouths. These…
They watch you. They smirk, they grin with sickening glee. Their body stands unmoving as their dark red leaves drift in the breeze, carrying the distant sound of howling laughter. Their hollow eyes goad you, dare you, to touch their trunks, stare at their faces for just a little too long, to trip on their roots and become part of the bones of the fallen that they feed off of. They’re not alive. No, they have nothing but mockery for the living. The sun is beginning to set in the west, casting long, dark orange shadows across the forest, what little sunlight there is getting caught on every leaf and branch. Yet the forest itself has an unearthly, almost imperceptible glow to it; every tree casting its own shadow, deepening the darkness that dwells in the eyes and mouths of their looming trunks. An imitation of a forest, at best. At worst… I’d rather spend the night in a graveyard than set one foot in these woods.
The names of the Abyss’ landmarks and features certainly never fails to disappoint or leave anything to the imagination.
There’s no better name for a place like this than the Dead Hollows.