by Daryl Banner
Rone doesn’t care whether there was ever a third occupant of this Lifted tomb. He wants nothing to do with it or this place.
I have a life to return to.
First things first: He must find his way to the surface. He figures that if this strange thing found its way down here somehow, he ought to be able to find his way up.
Taking care not to fall again, Rone makes his way back to the door through which he phased. He puts his face through first, just as he did when he entered, then limb by limb slips through. The dim bluish glow of the cave walls surrounding the Lifted tomb is a very welcome change for his eyes from the blinding light within.
But as he stares into the abyss where the calm river flows off, a sinking feeling of despair fills him. I can’t possibly navigate this place in total darkness. He might be an overly-confident fool at times, but he isn’t a foolish fool. He’s heard the horror stories of creatures that lurk in the depths of the Mechanoid Mines. If this is anything like the mines, there can be bats and snakes and spiders.
And, if he is to believe in childhood tales: ghosts and goblins and cave trolls, too.
An idea strikes him. Bracing himself, he plunges back into the Lifted tomb, the light swallowing him again. Stumbling about the room, he searches the floor and the walls. Nothing but cables and cords and nothing. He takes hold of a bundle of cords and gives them a pull, but nothing comes loose. He readies his dagger, then thinks twice about cutting the cables; if they’ve any self-sustaining electric power in them, he could harm himself—or destroy the very light he’s trying to make use of. Frustrated, he walks in a large circle around the perimeter, feeling the walls and observing the floors.
It’s at the very back of the tomb that he finds the weak spot he was hoping for. A crack runs down the wall and across the floor. In the crack underneath the web of cables on the floor is where he finds chunks and chips of the material the whole structure is made of.
From between the greedy hold of the cables, Rone plucks several shards of the bluish white metal. They shimmer eerily as they stare back at him, pinched between his fingers.
He sets them down for a moment, then balances himself on one leg to perform the task of carefully removing his shirt. The effort is made more difficult by the pain lancing down his right arm, which causes him to grimace and groan, as well as the tightness of the shirt. At last, it comes loose. He experiences a moment of regret before taking his dagger to it and cutting off a strip of it at its bottom, which makes his arm pinch with pain from the effort. This was the shirt Edrick gave him before he fled the pleasure bar where he was being cared for—and drowned in chemical and sex. Thank you, Edrick, he thinks privately to himself as he slips the shirt back on, which comes down only to his navel now, then ties the shards as best as he can to the strip he tore off, creating something of a glowing necklace. He then pockets his dagger and puts the necklace over his neck. The shards land heavily on his chest, shining bright as white-blue flames.
Rone makes his way across the room back to the door. He stops, glances over his shoulder at the pool, then mumbles, “Much thanks to you, Dead Lifted Ladies,” before phasing out of the chamber.
I will not die down here. I will find my way home.
Limping, Rone makes his way from the glowing Lifted tomb and staggers into the darkness on one bad leg and one good leg. Really, isn’t that what I’m always standing on? Rone considers. A good leg for all my sense, and a bad leg for all my folly?
With the light at his neck aiding him, the whole cave is an eerie white-blue wash of faceless stone. As he continues back from where he came, he finds the river is a lot wider than he realized, opening into an underground lake in the distance. He can’t even see the opposite wall of the cave with his light. To his back, the path seems to incline, twisting off into three tunnels that burrow upward.
Upward is where he needs to go.
He picks a tunnel at random, then starts his way. The gentle trickle of water fades at his back the deeper he goes into the tunnel, which grows more and more narrow the farther he goes. From the pinch in his thighs, he knows he’s going uphill. That’s good. Up is where I need to go. Up, up, and then up some more.
But after a while, every other step turns into a labored hop, and soon, he’s already exhausted, bracing himself against a wall.
For a fleeting second, he wonders if he can even do this. I’ll be walking upwards for years before I reach any surface. Considering how far I fell, I must be—
“No,” Rone barks into the darkness, his voice echoing all around him like a chorus of fifty Rones. “You will not die down here.”
I will not die down here.
He pushes onward, muscling his way up the narrow tunnel. At seven different points, the tunnel becomes so constricted that he has to edge sideways between less-than-comfortable jutting rocks and uneven floors. At one point, he almost considers phasing, but can’t stomach the idea of accidentally falling backwards (or forwards) through the wall and ending up back where he started: freefalling into the unknown.
That certainly cannot happen again.
The tunnel opens up to another cavern, which then splits off into countless more passages through the earth. In each direction Rone faces, the white-blue light reveals another path he can take, each of them the same, not one of them calling to him to choose it.
It’s by blind hope and a swallowing of his fear that Rone makes a choice, then limps on his way. His only rule: the path must lead upward.
Hours later, he’s still picking and choosing paths, always the ones that go up. Of course, sometimes he arrives at a fork where neither go up. Some just go, go, go. Some dip down slightly. Others are blocked by a multitude of slender columns of stone like closed teeth, barring the way, which Rone must carefully phase through to get by. Some open to great caverns that are cleaved by a deep chasm down their wide centers, for which Rone’s Legacy is sadly useless in crossing.
Many times, Rone has to stop, take a seat, and catch his breath. He stares at the wall across from him, always painted in white-blue light, always made of the same stone, always the same, same, same.
He stares at that wall, then fights an untimely urge to cry.
The next instant, he grits his teeth, pushes himself off the stony floor, and hops on his way. I am not dying down here.
Each time he thinks it, he believes it less.
Another tunnel leads upward. Another tunnel forks, forcing him to choose one. It’s an evil game, the cavern offering him choice after choice after choice. A labyrinth of tunnels with no way out. Each choice daring him to keep going. None of the choices aiding or encouraging him.
It isn’t long at all before the hunger becomes something he can hear with his every hop. I’m expending too much energy, he coaches himself. I need to preserve it. I need … I need …
Rone stumbles over a cracked, uneven part of the ground. For a split second, bone-chilling fear courses through him as his body remembers every second of his fall from Cloud Tower.
Then he lands on the ground half a second later, and the fear is gone. He doesn’t get up, lying on the smooth, cool stone. He closes his eyes, exhausted.
He fights another urge to cry.
I’m totally alone. I’m totally fucking alone down here.
“Get up,” he grunts, his lips against the stone.
What’s the point? I’m lost beneath the earth. I’m going to die down here. I’m fucking scared.
“Shut up. Get up and move. The exit is just down the tunnel.”
Rone pushes himself off the ground. With his next step, his leg muscles start to shake. He ignores it and pushes on, despite his head spinning. He wipes away a stupid tear that hangs from his left eye and pushes onward. The exit is just down the tunnel. Just keep going.
He gets to the end of the tunnel, which splits into four more. Rone grits his teeth, chooses a path, and goes.
“Keep going,” he breathes, pushing himself. “The exit’s this way. Just keep on going, you bro
ken fool. Don’t you dare stop.”
There is no time beneath the earth. Every hour is every other hour. Every day is every other day. Under the earth, it is timeless. I am the King of Time. I am Rone, the Planet King of Time!
He makes another choice. His movements are growing slower. His breathing has changed, too. It’s raspy, strenuous, and slow.
“The exit is just around the corner,” he tells himself.
The echoes of the cavern tell it to him as well, again and again.
And again.
And again.
The exit is just around the corner.
It’s another handful of hours before he stops at the mouth of a great cavern, a thousand more tunnels waiting for his choice. Spread across the cavern are tiny pools of water that have been left behind by their mother stream. Bony stalagmites twist up from the floor like teeth. This cavern will eat me if I stay here too long. This is its mouth, and I just crawled up its thousand throats. Stalactites hang over his head, too, like watchful eyes, wondering when he’ll give himself to the cave for good.
“I wonder what your names were,” he murmurs into the white-blue light his chest gives the cavern, thinking on the Lifted Ladies in the tomb. “Were you Queens? The Planet Queen, and her sister, the Underworld Queen. Queen of Earth. Queen of Underearth.”
He just speaks to hear his own voice. Otherwise, he hears a lot of nothing, and nothing is terrifying down here.
“The exit is just down … just down the …” His eyes search. He feels the sting of tears again. “It’s … It’s just right down the …”
Rone chokes suddenly, tears spilling from his eyes.
I’m never getting out of here. I’m going to die down here.
I’m going to die down here.
I’m going to die.
It was easier to face death when all he had was weightlessness and the dark.
He pulls the dagger from his pocket where it’d cut a hole. As he lifts it to his eyes, he thinks on Anwick once again. My friend. My bro and my only true brother, who I threw away.
And Rone holds the dagger now.
I hold his life in my hands.
He sets the dagger down tiredly, then reaches for the chips of Lifted metal at his chest. Five enormous shadows crawl over the wall opposite him as his fingers close about the stones and steal away the white-blue light from the world. Darkness again. Death is so much easier to face in the darkness.
Maybe no one has to hold the dagger. Maybe no one has to hold anyone’s life. Just let the dagger go … let it all go …
Ten minutes later, Rone’s eyes readjust to the perfect darkness.
That’s when he notices it.
He turns toward the large cavern, alerted. His eyes scavenge the darkness and the millions of choices of tunnels before him.
One of them glows faintly.
Light?
Is that sunlight?
It’s impossible. He hasn’t climbed high enough. He would have to climb for many more days through these tunnels, starving, his body slowly eating itself alive before he made it to the surface.
It could be the Keep, he reasons. The Keep is deep beneath the ground, isn’t it?
Or it could be some deep underground fortress, a secret place for Sanctum to hide. Maybe Lifted folk escaped down here to wait out the Madness. Yes, yes, yes, it could be any of those things.
Still clutching the stones, Rone wipes his eyes clean of tears with the back of his free hand, then grabs the dagger off the ground and pushes himself up. Holding the dagger still, he quickly begins his trek across the large cavern toward the faint, faint light.
“The exit is just through this tunnel,” he says again, and for the first time actually believing it. “Just keep moving, Rone. Keep going. The exit is right here.”
He trips over his foot twice. One foot shoed, one foot bare, he scurries as fast as he can go, practically jumping every other step, as he charges for the tunnel. His feet slap into small pools of water he doesn’t notice because he’s not watching the ground. He only sprints onward toward the light.
Toward the light.
When he reaches the tunnel at last, he finds it twisting down, strangely, and it is filled with water. Water that glows. Light is on the other side. Light … Through that light, he sees the tunnel bending back up.
He has to swim through it.
“Sisters help me,” he mumbles, and he’s not even a believer.
Rone stabs the dagger into his back pocket again, right through the hole in his pants that it made, and then staggers toward the glow of the water. When his feet touch it—the bare one in particular—he finds the water strangely warm.
Without another thought, he sucks in air and then plunges in. He kicks his way down through the water blindly, hoping to feel his way to the other side.
His head crashes into stone and he grunts, his eyes opening up.
And then his eyes sting at once.
He clamps them shut, and then suddenly realizes he needs air. Rone struggles, kicking blindly in a random direction. He pushes through the water and always reaches upward, praying to break the surface of the water somewhere. His lungs, weak from his journey in the caves, are fighting him for a breath. Bubbles spill out from his lips like stones, and in just a few seconds more, he’s out of air.
He is neither a good swimmer nor a good holder-of-breath.
The next time he opens his mouth, he swallows water.
Salt water.
He kicks against a stone on his bad leg, then finds he has no air with which to scream out his pain. He wrestles without strength and shoves with his hands blindly against whatever they can find.
The very next instant, his face breaks through the surface, and Rone Tinpassage draws in the biggest, deepest breath of air he has ever taken in his life.
It is literally drinking in life in the form of air. Life, breath, life …
He blinks rapidly, but each time his eyes open, they sting. The water is salty. Why is it so fucking salty? He gags and sputters as he coughs up whatever bit of water he just inhaled. It takes two more hearty heaves before he feels alright with his throat.
But not yet with his eyes. Rone shakes his hands in the air to dry them, then wipes the backs over his eyes, rubbing as best as he can. Next time he opens them, they still burn, but considerably less.
And then he’s blinded by light.
He made it to the other side somehow. He doesn’t even care of the sting anymore, too stupefied by the light to close them again. Far, far in the distance of the tunnel, he hears the noise of rushing wind and water. The smell in the air is briny and thick, like the steam from the back room of a slum bathhouse. It echoes all about him.
Outside.
It must be outside.
But which ward makes noises like these? Am I deep within the Mechanoids? Am I lost in the bowels of some hidden ward only ancient Kings and Queens know of?
With an all new stroke of determination, Rone kicks and sweeps his hands through the water, pushing onward. The tunnel curves, all the inviting noises of wind filling his ears as he goes. He feels as if he may be dreaming, so far away from home he is. He wonders if he might empty into some completely unexplored, unknown portion of Atlas with caves and water and who-knows-what. His heart swells with excitement and fear as he pushes on.
Soon, the water grows shallow enough to wade through. He keeps going through the great hollowed worm of a tunnel made of stone. Rone does not stop. He pushes onward, his eyes unblinking, drinking in every trace of the light greedily. It’s not white-blue, thank the Sisters. This light is real. Water dripping from his sleeves, from his hair, from his nose, he follows the light until the path forks two ways. The left is submerged in water, dipping down, and the light is stronger to the right, so through the right tunnel he goes, hurrying, scrambling, the water splashing at his knees, and then at his shins, and then it’s so shallow that he’s hopping again on his good leg, his bad one practically dragged behind him as it kicks at
the water, sending liquid jewels before his eyes. The light is warm. The light is as warm as a slummer’s fire. I’m almost home.
I am not going to die down here.
The light grows the farther he goes, swelling like a star in the sky, nearly blinding.
Rone has to let go of his necklace to shield his face from the light. It’s painful, no matter how badly he wants to drink it in, to look at the brilliance of what stands before him.
The ground beneath his feet changes. It becomes softer, and it sounds different. It crunches and separates under my shoe. Sand. It’s sand. New noises fill his ears. He hears the squawking and cawing of giant, throaty birds, the ones only the skyborn know of. The free and furious wind beats against his face as he blinks into the light, stumbling as fast as he can onward.
Soon, his steps slow. Then they stop completely as he stares.
It’s not just wind he hears.
Water. The entire world is water. It crashes in distant waves. It fills the horizon before him. There is no Wall. There is no city. There is nothing but sand in front of him, sand and more sand, and then water, lots and lots of water that runs as far into the distance as his eyes can see. A world of water and sand.
And sky. Endless, uninterrupted, beautiful blue sky.
He is staggered by the view. He can’t even move. The tunnel has widened so much that he isn’t even aware of it anymore. It has opened its throat into a great, glorious mouth, presenting the scene of sand and water before him.
Rone finally starts to move again. Salty air pushes over his face and stings his eyes. He keeps moving, the ground so pleasant and soft—and warm, so fucking warm—on his weary, aching feet. The sun glows somewhere behind him, behind the great cliff of stone at his back from where he clambered out of the earth like a bug from the ground. Ahead, the water glistens and shines and flicks light his way.
He comes to a stop when the white sand turns wet and sloshy, like mud, except thicker and grainier. With eyes widening, he drops slowly to his knees and slips his hands into the water. Making a cup with them, he brings some to his lips, desperate, thirsty.
