The hard floor was cold and unforgiving to his body. He thought of things that once were points of worry and concern and now seemed muted in comparison to what laid ahead. He clenched his arms tight together, longing to have those worries back again, to have his youth back again.
He looked over at Kerriah, who appeared to be sleeping, and he found some inner solace. She made him feel calm, encouraged, and strong. She was everything to him, and he felt that surprisingly, looking at her, there was some good at this moment.
“Get up . . . come on . . . get up.” Bletto’s tone was stern as he jabbed Crix’s side with the blunt end of his spear. “Now is the time to go hunt some scabs. They have stopped their mineral grazing and will be docile for a little while. We must go now!” He stammered around like a spastic toddler.
There was no longer any screeching, only the persistent pelting of the storm outside. Crix and Kerriah pulled themselves up from their bedding and grabbed their spears. The stone floor had left their muscles sore and their joints frozen.
Bletto darted out into the storm and across to the other side of the vast opening. He reached the far side and started climbing up a rock wall to an opening a little ways up. It was hard to accept that such a square, hunkered figure could scale the walls like a spider, yet that was exactly what he did, and they both watched in amazement, wondering if he sprouted extra limbs that they were unable to see. They followed closely behind him, though not as efficiently. He hunched down low as they came into an area that had numerous long, skeletal-like formations webbed throughout the space. The formations were dense and emanated a haunting glow which made one want to turn away in fear. However, the celestial formations held them visually captive; their gazes were entranced as they tried to dissect in their minds what these structures must be.
Bletto squirmed through the formations, bending and contorting himself to fit around each structure.
“What the heck are these? They almost look like bones from something,” Crix asked while struggling to keep up with the nimble Solaran.
“These strange formations together with the mineral base have mixed with a substance that is creating a chemical reaction giving off the radiance you see. To put it plainly, this is what is left when a burrower dies.” Both Crix and Kerriah slowed their stride for just a brief moment on that disconcerting information. Bletto stopped and looked back at them with a sneaky grin.
“The important thing is that the scabs hate the light these things give off,” Bletto said.
Crix and Kerriah continued to follow his lead until they reached the end of the maze of radiated bones. Before them was a substantial area with a funnel-shaped ceiling that extended upward into darkness. Lined on every inch of the walls layered upon one another were scabs, quiet, and motionless. Littering the floor were hollowed shells of deceased scabs, as well as the bones of their victims.
Bletto motioned to be silent with his shorty, stubby index finger over his mouth. He lightly stepped over to the wall of scabs nearest to them, moving so smooth and quiet that anyone would have thought he was a ghost. Lifting his spear, he pointed at the widest part of one of the scabs, which was just below the head, and then he signaled for Crix and Kerriah to do the same. They quietly assumed the same position on their chosen scabs. Bletto gestured with his finger for Crix to raise his tip a little higher on the scab. Crix could hear himself breathe; it was so quiet.
Bletto nodded, satisfied with their position, then plunged the spear into one and then another and another, skewering four upon his spear without hardly making a sound, aside from a slight flinch from each scab as the spear ended their miserable existence. He moved closer to them and lightly whispered, “If you hit them in that exact spot, they won’t make a sound when you stick them. It severs their vocal cords.”
Kerriah aptly speared her four in the same way Bletto did, and then looked over at Crix with a haughty smile while swinging her hips in a taunting gesture with a flirtatious undertone. Crix looked intensely at his scab and wrinkled his brow in anticipation of his attack. He could not let her show him up. He drew back and thrust the spear deep into the scab. The impaled scab let out a shriek so loud that any glass on the hive level would surely be broken as a result. Its alarm awoke the rest of the hive, and the whole room began moving and rumbling.
“You went too deep! Quickly! Get back!” Bletto yelled while galloping as fast as his stout body could back into the area with the glowing bones. Crix pulled his spear back with one dead scab and another flailing about at the bottom. He tried to stick another before taking flight, but Kerriah pulled him by his collar.
“Forget it! Let go!” she shouted. The scabs flooded the room, pouring down from the funnel above and swarming off the walls and ceiling.
They made it to the skeletal wall and squeezed into its glowing protection. The mob of scabs stopped short of the radiating glow and formed a high, black-red barrier that rapidly increased in mass as more scabs arrived.
Bletto looked at the two and strongly exhaled with relief. “No worries now. They won’t follow us in here.”
“We are supposed to get four each for our ration quota. I only have two,” Crix pointed out.
Bletto looked sharply at Crix. “That’ right. Your hunting is not finished yet.” The scabs continued to swarm the area before them, pouring out from the funnel and filling every part of the cavern’s empty space but keeping their distance from the natural illumination. Their hissing and screeching became deafening.
“Follow me back out there again, but keep your back against the webbing.”
“Are you nuts? I’m not going back out there. We’ll get ripped to pieces,” Crix protested, looking over at Kerriah for support.
Bletto became annoyed by his reluctance. “Look, you want to eat today, don’t you?”
Crix rolled his eyes. “From the look of this, we are going to be the meal here.” He was still waiting for Kerriah to chime in joint opposition to Bletto’s plan. The response she gave was not at all what he expected.
“We can do this. They appear to be amply repelled by the radiance given by these formations. Bletto’s right; we can easily pick a few more off here and duck back inside this webbing before they get brazen enough to overcome their instinctive fears.”
Crix dragged his hand down his forehead and nose before stopping on his chin. His eyes were wide with dread over the thought of it. “Just great!”
Bletto and Kerriah daringly stepped back into the scab-flooded area, and Crix reluctantly followed. The scabs swarmed, each one had their blackish-red eyes trained intently on the three, and the focus of these predators gave some pause to the approaching trio. The perimeter was only about an arm’s length, barely enough to get their spears into position. The noise coming from the scabs was so intense that they scattered one’s thoughts, and the thick, acidic smell they emitted forced one’s breath to become short and labored. Crix’s sinuses burned with the vaporous fumes filling the room.
“Pick off what you need quickly from the swarm and duck back into the glow,” Bletto shouted over the commotion. “Don’t hesitate; they don’t like the glow, but they will endure it as they get more frenzied.” He noticed the worried looks in Kerriah and Crix’s expressions. “Don’t worry. Just follow my lead . . . Now!” With that, Bletto started pumping his spear in and out of the swarm of scabs, and they followed his lead, doing the same.
The scabs became louder and scurried in a complete panic, and that panic turned into aggression. Bletto and Kerriah’s spears were now full; they ducked back into the formations as the swarm slowly converged inward. Crix, still short one scab, had run out of space to spear any more.
“Above you!” Bletto shouted to Crix. His back was against a column. He was trapped.
The scabs stirred into a maddened frenzy, taking wild chomps at him as they tried to build the courage to brave the detestable glow. Crix noticed a large stalactite above him that had a cracked base. He thought a solid push could send it plummeting to the sur
face, causing enough chaos to create a temporary clearing in the scabs’ swarm.
“Forget it, Crix! We have plenty now!” Kerriah shouted for him to return to the safety of the illuminated webbing. Crix would not retreat, though. He would not allow them to carry him. He had to get his own quota.
The scampering wall of scabs was close enough to Crix he felt a few scraping bites that ripped through his clothes. He forcibly snapped off a narrow column, which was loose from the floor. Having noticed a large stalactite, which had a noticeable crack in its base, hanging at the inside edge of the scab swarm, Crix had a plan. He thrust the broken off column into the swarm and pushing against the stalactite until his muscles burned and veins bulged from his neck and forehead. The rock formation wiggled and let out an echoing pop that startled the scabs for just a brief moment before it broke loose from the ceiling and crashed to the ground below.
The broken chunk of stone toppled onto its side, sending scabs scurrying and screeching away from the impact. Bletto and Kerriah covered their faces from the spray of rock shrapnel that blasted in every direction. After the impact, Kerriah frantically looked around for Crix and found him poised with his spear atop the fallen stalactite, with the look of determination on his face.
“Yes! That’s how you do it!” Bletto shouted in excitement over what he had just witnessed.
Crix darted around, spearing two scabs with renewed fury. He flipped back and dashed into the safety of the webbing. The scab swarm slammed against the formations trying to get to him. Their jaws broke through into the light, and their hesitation began to wane.
“They’re too frenzied. I don’t think they’re going to hold back any longer. Run!” Bletto shouted as he squirmed through the radiant maze for the other side. Crix and Kerriah tailed closely. Behind them, rocks snapped, and scabs screamed out as they approached with a manic frenzy. The three could feel an air pressure change, and a gust of warm air pushed against their backs as they ran.
They reached the other side and looked back, observing the scabs’ haste as they threaded themselves through the maze of tightly woven bones. Bletto reached the edge of the maze.
“Into the storm!” He hopped down upon the smooth wet stone, backsliding into the icy storms of the lower level.
Crix and Kerriah followed close, making their way into the center of the storm cavern. They stopped to see if the scabs followed. They did not; instead, they retracted at the sight of the falling bits of ice.
“You see, scabs are fickle, and it’s the key to their weakness. They don’t like the cold and will not come in here, which is how I have stayed alive thus far. This sleet blows around like a natural ice guardian. Now, follow me to the depot, and we can send up our quota and remove the growl from our stomachs.”
The depot was an area past Bletto’s homestead where there was a simple rusted and battered crate just large enough to fit four hefty-sized scabs. A primitive pulley system and a cable attached to the dilapidated crate. Bletto placed his scabs in the crate, and then pulled a nearby lever, which sent it upward into a shadowy hole in the low ceiling. The crate creaked and clattered as it swayed into the wall until it faded into the distance. There was an echoing clank from the crate stopping, and the cable remained motionless for a while until it finally started moving back down.
Several minutes passed. The cage returned with a small metal bowl filled with a brownish mush, several withered leaves, and a canteen of water. Bletto snatched up the canteen and bowl. He tore into it with the same ferocity of a dog over a plate of table scraps. The smell from the bowl was similar to a two-day-old corpse lying in the sun.
Kerriah repelled back in pure disgust. “Awww . . . You can’t be serious. This is what we nearly got ourselves de-fleshed over? A bowl of rotted mush? I’m not sure I want to send my scabs up at this point.”
Bletto stopped for a minute and looked up over his bowl. “It’s really not bad, a taste you learn to appreciate after a while. Besides, going hungry is far worse than this is.” He resumed smashing his face into the bowl.
“I’m hungry, but just not that hungry—yet. Still, I’m going to send mine up if nothing less than to give it to Bletto,” Crix said. Both Crix and Kerriah sent their scabs up, and in return, the same bowls of brown, odorous mush came back. “Here, you can have ours as well.” Crix handed the bowls of mush to Bletto but hung onto the water. Bletto looked up at him puzzled.
He snatched the bowls from Crix. “You won’t last long without eating. You’ll need your strength to hunt again soon.”
Kerriah crossed her arms tightly. “We are not here to hunt. Besides, that’s playing right into what the Marcks want from us. To use us up for their purpose and then cast us aside. We need to know how to get to level five and for you to show us the way.”
“Well, I could show you, maybe if you help me hunt just one more time. I like the idea of getting three times the rations—haven’t ate like this in years.” He buried his face into the extra bowls like a ravenous dog. Kerriah walked over to him and smacked the bowl away from his face, sending its contents splattering against the wall.
Bletto’s demeanor quickly changed. He stood up and clenched his fist, but Crix stepped in between them. “You’re going to have to go through me if you mean to strike her.” His eyes stared down the Solaran with blackness. Bletto scrunched his face and turned away in a loud huff.
“Years ago, I might have taken you up on that offer. All I really want to do is make the best of what I have now. That’s all, and it’s the little things that get me through the endless time here.” He turned back. “Fine, you want to get to level five? I will take you there, but I’m not going with you. I will only show you the way.”
“Good. Where is it, and when can we get going?” Crix probed.
Bletto chuckled almost spitefully. “You’re not going to like it, young one, not going to like it at all.”
Crix, now irritated with Bletto’s mocking tone, spoke with a bitter sharpness. “What do you mean by that? It doesn’t matter if we like it or not, our friend is there, and we have to get him out, so us liking it is not relevant. So where is it?”
Bletto snorted and snickered, “Okay . . . in that hive nest we just got back from, up that dark funnel hole that the scabs were pouring down from, there is a small opening. In that opening, a natural passage leads down to level five.” Crix assumed that Bletto was making up the most outrageous story to discourage their quest.
“You must be mistaking us for complete fools if you think that we’re going to believe you ever climbed up there. Where’s the real location?”
Bletto subtly smirked. “Oh yes, I and two others made that journey once. It was a time when I was younger and still full of hope about getting out of this place. The other two had learned to survive down here. In fact, one of them, an Ando . . . ahhhemm.” He made an awful gurgle and cleared his throat in a fake manner as if he almost let something slip. “Anyway, he was the one who taught me how to hunt. That one told me of the spot in the deep cavity and that he had felt prevailing winds coming from the other side. He thought that it must have led to a larger area. So together, we decided to take the risk and enter that place at all costs. It costed us plenty. Both of my companions were killed, one impaled many times by thousands of sharp needles that shot out from around the queen, and the other vanished in level five itself.”
“A queen!” Crix was shocked by the thought.
“That’s right, and you may have better odds against a burrower than her.”
Kerriah shrugged off the risks. “So . . . it leads to level five, right? What’s there?” She was singly focused on the mission. Bletto was not going to dissuade her from rescuing anyone. Crix, inspired by her tenacity, listened more intently to Bletto’s story.
“It did lead there, but it’s not a place you want to be any more than here in the scab hives. In fact, I will take the hives. At least the hives are not infested with Marcks and their sinister works.” Bletto was becoming angry at having t
o remember the abysmal place. He shook his head and paced the floor.
“Is there a way out?” Crix asked.
Bletto became visibly disturbed over the question. “There is, but you’ll never get to it without a small army. There are some strange experiments being conducted on the poor souls who end up there, using the most sinister of Marck technology. No place for the likes of us.”
“We’re going, and it’s not up for debate. So tell us what we need to do to get in there.” Kerriah was not giving an inch for Bletto to disagree.
Reluctantly, Bletto explained how he was able to carry a chunk of the glowing rock to keep the scabs at a safe distance as he entered the secret opening. The biggest difficulty, he described, was in the stealth aspect of scaling the scab-covered walls in order to reach the entrance high above. To alarm even one scab would awaken the entire hive and be certain death to anything in the area. Bletto started rubbing his head and chewing his bottom lip.
Crix sat atop a small, round hump formation on the floor looking peculiarly at Bletto. “What’s your story, Bletto? What did you do to get destined to this miserable place to begin with, and yet appear so content with your fate?”
Bletto looked down and stared at the floor for a few moments then slowly lifted his head, looking upward at the ceiling. Sorrow poured from the roundness of his eyes. He felt the agony and sting of thoughts that he had learned to suppress over the years, thoughts that were too painful to recall. Yet, he felt the need to tell his story. He wanted to tell the story.
“I used to live a normal life with my spouse—well, as normal as life can be on Solara. She was my childhood dream, and I always pursued her and, ultimately, had finally won her affections. We lived together for several years in a small place with simple jobs, just basking in the joy of each other’s company. I am sure you learned in your schools about how regional gangs and warlords ran Solara through fear and intimidation of its local citizens. Well, when I fell upon hard times and was unable to pay my monthly tribute to Gorag, the lord of the Semptor Region, he sent his cronies and took my spouse as his payment.
Age of the Marcks Page 22
