34 | Down, Down, Down

Slowing his descent, Eli peers into the dark. It is not terribly far down until the tunnel flattens, branching out in several directions. Giving Klia’s hand a squeeze, he points down the tunnel to the left. Even in the dark, he sees her nod.

They must get Thistle out without attracting the monsters—if such a thing is possible. He wonders if the moment he lays a hand on the boy they will come roaring from their hiding places to drag them deeper underneath the mountain. Perhaps, they are already watching. Eli can't imagine Thistle wouldn't run the moment he isn't in the monsters’ grasp.

Unless they've done something to him.

Eli does not allow rage to seep into his chest, keeping himself clear-minded of his own accord. He will still keep Minddreamer until he can no longer. He was trained in this his whole life. He knows how to keep calm under stress, tamper down the panic, which is so natural to the human soul. He is older now, and weaker. Now, if at no other time, he must put aside his fears and physical frailty and remember how to be the warrior he once was.

Each footstep crunches on more and more vegetation, the unnatural roots of the wild forest above digging between the stones and tight-packed earth. The strange soil scent he has begun to associate with the monsters fills the small space. He hears them close by, rats in a tunnel, hunting them as he hunts his own grandson. He is uncertain of where he is going but believes Klia will lead him correctly. She has done so, so far.

They must know Eli is here. Each minute he does not come across one of the hulking beasts, he grows more concerned.

These are nothing like the tunnels carved by the dwarves, with their cobblestones and runes. These are something else, something other, scratches along the walls from large hands burrowing beneath the roots of the forest, secure in its protection but hiding from the sunlight nonetheless. Water drips, an overwhelming dampness seeping from the soil. Eli’s boots squish in newer mosses he has never seen, strangely purple and sweetly smelling. He would hold his breath if he believed it would help.

Klia touches one of the thick, spongy leaves along the wall before Eli can pull her away. It doesn’t appear to do her any harm.

The air here is thicker, strangely sweet, like stone soaked in sunlight and leaves rotting in water. His lungs burn, and he forces himself not to cough. Heavy breathing fills his ears, not his own. Eli pauses, falling utterly still, keeping Klia against him, listening to the sound over his own unsteady breathing. He steadies himself against the wall, something within the stone almost like a heartbeat beneath his fingers. His own pulse quickens until he can hear it behind his ears, and he tells himself to breathe slowly and quietly.

You are better than panic, old man.

Further down, his hand brushes against whatever it is living beneath the stone floors of the greenhouse.

Water pours between cracks, vines moving in and amongst the overgrown stones, not paying Eli any mind, sometimes brushing against Klia. One attempts to weave into Eli’s pocket, where he remembers he stashed the little piece of silver left from the hilt of his old sword, and he slices it away. Klia is calm beside him, and when he glances down, he finds the same strange and faraway expression in her eyes. As long as she continues to grip his hand, lending him her sight, he doesn’t worry.

His palm brushes further along where the stone feels more like living flesh, breathing with its own heartbeat, and finally yanks away his hand, unable to keep himself calm.

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“Where are you?” he whispers under his breath, searching the dripping greenery for any signs of something that should not be here, a child who hates him who Eli will find nonetheless.

A hand reaches through the vines, familiar now with its odd flesh and sickly flowers, and Eli cuts it down without needing to wait for the Order to give—or withhold—its identity.

The massive shape shifts, an eye of speckled purples and streaked silver opening slowly. Eli goes still, nudging Klia behind him. Whatever this being is, a larger Unknown or something worse, it is protective of its monsters. Its breath is a thousand rotting flowers. Eli manages not to gag. Beneath it is a tangle of vines, and the distinct outline of another tunnel going farther, farther down.

Klia’s breath sucks in, and he knows she sees it as well.

When the injured Unknown drags itself further out of the vines, Eli disposes of it with a few strikes. It is smaller than the others by a fraction and disoriented by his first attack. The monster’s face, larger than Eli by quite a bit, lifts further from the hole it is covering, reaching a hand too large to exist across the vines toward the monster he felled.

Eli snatches Klia’s hand and drags her down, hearing the deep rumble of the creature’s anger down in the bones of his chest.

It is darker than above—Eli cannot believe such a thing to be possible—and the vision Klia affords him struggles to keep up. With a gasp, Klia yanks him forward. He nearly loses his footing on the slick vines running beneath the stones and all the rivers of water tricking down grooves in the floor, but Eli sees what she’s after and releases her hand before swearing and grabbing back on when his vision goes black.

Instead, he lets her drag him down, down, down, both slipping on the steep descent. Eli’s heart pounds at the growls of the monster above, wondering when it will break through and drag them out. Damp moss and spongey vines press down on them at all sides, and Eli wonders vaguely what these plants are doing to them. They cannot be harmless, and he is nearly so concerned about falling asleep again that he slows them down a moment.

Finally, at the bottom, Eli drags Klia to a halt. They are both crouched low. “Grab onto my arm, don’t let go, I must be able to see.”

One hand she reaches toward vines catching her eye, but she grabs tight to his shoulder. Eli doesn’t know if it will work without her hand in his, but his vision does not change. Tugging at the vines, using the tip of his sickle carefully where he can, Eli uncovers first a hand, uncorrupted by the strange magic, and lets out a breath of strained relief.

“Thistle?” he asks, squeezing the clammy skin even as he continues struggling with the vines. “Kid, can you hear me?”

With one hand, Klia tugs at the vines, but she isn’t doing much good. Eli smacks her hand away gently and severs one of the tighter vines with the sharp edge of his blade. What are they doing to the child? Eli is frightened to uncover him, to discover what these monsters may have done or the mutated Order has changed so much in the magic it would consume him in such a way.

“Thistle,” he says more aggressively as the ground above them trembles. He does not know how they will escape this place, but there are other tunnels leading off, and Eli is not opposed to fighting on the way out.

He will cut his way back to the surface if he must.

Finally, he is rewarded with a groan as he takes Thistle under the arms and drags him out. Much to his relief, dim light flickers off his skin where Eli’s hand brushes his bare arms, lending better sight to the little space. Even when Klia releases him in favor of grasping desperately onto Thistle’s shirt, helping to drag him out, Eli doesn’t completely lose his sight.

He cuts away at the remaining vines, ignoring the wet strangeness of the sounds and the writhing of the severed ends.

The tremble of the monster above them.

We cannot tarry here.

Despite the signs of life, the groan and the slight rise and fall of the boy’s chest, Thistle is showing no signs of waking coherently enough to get out of here on his own two legs. Even Klia’s crying and gentle shaking aren’t waking him up.

Eli takes her by the chin. “We have to get out. We should try to find our way out of one of these tunnels so the monster doesn’t break down after us. I’m going to carry him, so you have to be brave and keep up.”

Still sniffling, tears running down her cheeks, Klia nods and gives Thistle another shake. Ignoring the pale look to the boy’s otherwise tan skin and the dampness of his clothes from these strange vines and all the water running through this place, dripping onto them even as Eli thinks, he drags the boy into his arms. There isn’t enough room to stand, so he must drag the kid down as best he can. There aren’t sharp edges at least, not with all the slippery vines.

Eli picks the largest tunnel leading out, with the most water flowing down, and retreats into the dark, his grandson under his arm and his granddaughter clinging to his shirt.