SPARX Incarnation: Order of the Undying (SPARX Series I Book 2)

by K. B. Sprague

  They weren’t there before!

  I took a step back. My foot crunched on a piece of broken glass. A stir spread among the hive. The walls and ceiling suddenly came to life. One after another, cloakers let themselves drop. They dropped and twisted into arcing glides and headed straight for me. Too many, too fast. There was no time to ready my bow. I turned and bolted down the tunnel to the sound of a hundred shrill calls behind me. I ran hunched over, and looked back over my shoulder. The cave had erupted into a flurry of flapping wings.

  A swarm of the fastest face-suckers shot past me, then spun around to fly at me head-on. I veered off the known course into an unexplored side tunnel. Some hot pursuers missed the turn, but many others followed. They screeched and flapped behind me. I sped along a downslope – steeper than I was prepared for. I nearly overran it and lost my balance. I stumbled. Another swarm flew past me.

  The cloakers ahead spun about in a coordinated effort. They spread themselves out fully in mid-air and at face height. Smart. Too smart. I ducked and dodged to get around them. I batted them aside as I charged through their ranks. The largest latched on to my arm. Still running, I tied to shake it off. A few crazed moments later, I tore it loose. But I had taken my eyes – and attention – off the uncertain path ahead. A big mistake.

  The drop was as sudden as it was unexpected.

  The ground beneath my feet simply disappeared. Had I known the pit was there, I easily could have cleared it. As my legs crumpled into the far side, waves of pain reverberated through me. The impact knocked me backwards. I fell, crashing to the other side. Then I bounced, tumbled, and slid down the pit-side as I plummeted, stirring up dust and rocks in my wake.

  In a split moment of suspended time, I broke free of this world, unconfined, and in perfect free fall. I “remembered” how I use to fly, and I “remembered” the feeling of open air around me. The whole of me tingled as I floated euphoric and helpless, eyes on the receding hole in the ceiling above. The cool air prickled the back of my neck. It rushed past my ears. I breathed in its freshness. I probably had a dumb smile on my face.

  Then it happened – the inevitable. I hit the ground with a thud, a roll, and a splash. The world went fuzzy and then black.

  *

  When I came to, everything felt wrong – my arms, my back, my head. They all felt terribly wrong. I was wet, partly submerged. A current of shallow water rushed past me.

  I opened my eyes. It was dark… wait… light, muted… flashing.

  Chapter II

  Water dancing

  The high hiss of rushing water filled the hollow belly of the cavern I had fallen into. Droplets ignited in the mist around me like tiny dots of iridescent flame, sparkling with the fractured light of the flickering bog stone. Truly, the cavern possessed an otherworldly quality.

  Lightheaded and dazed, my wits slowly came into focus. The events of the epic chase replayed in my mind – the discovery, the run, the fight, and the fall. I stared at the hollow eye in the broken ceiling that I fell through. How did I not see it? Heading back that way was not an option, not without wings.

  I tried to stand, but rolling to one side was as far as my bruised and beaten body would take me. Numbness vibrated through every limb. Blood soaked through my hair, trickled down my neck and dripped into the water. I watched as the stream caught the droplets and whisked them away.

  Cloakers.

  Panic gripped my chest as I scanned the cavern urgently. I listened for their beating wings.

  Nothing. Maybe they don’t come down here.

  The air smelled like the sea. I licked my lips and tasted the salt. In all ways, the winding stream I lay in appeared to be seawater, or near to it. I propped myself up on one elbow and felt my bruised forehead – sticky. The inflated wound was tender and it stung like mad. I felt my lower back beneath the cold water – bruised and cut.

  The bog stone flickered away, underwater and within arm’s reach. I fished it out and placed it on a jagged rock beside me. In pulsed images, it revealed a chamber wide beyond the measure of the light’s reach. I surveyed the area around the mound of cave fill that had broken my fall, or redirected it, more like. It was rocky everywhere, except where the slope of the mound met the stream… except where I had fallen. Had I tumbled a slightly different way, I very well could have smashed into that rock, I realized. It would have broken me in two. I took a deep breath and thanked luck.

  Get up, I urged myself, and tried to stand again. Pain shot up one leg and a wrong twist sent me toppling back. On the next try, I staggered to my feet and steadied my weight against the surrounding rocks. I immediately got to work. First, I took care of my wounds, washing them in the salt water and bandaging what I could with strips of cloth torn from my already-frayed clothing. Next, I fished my waterlogged backpack out of the stream and emptied it onto the shore. I need to lessen the load. I grabbed a handful of deepwood, tossed it into the stream, and watched as the torrent swept it into darkness. I wasn’t sure what to do about the rest, so I just left it for the time being. Last, I readied the bow in case the cloakers found me. I set it against a rock and jabbed three arrows into the ground next to it.

  The remaining inkbottle – the full one – had shattered inside the pack. So much for mapping. Worse still, huddled in the bottom corner, nicked and blotched with ink, I found the crow Paplov had carved for my eleventh birthday. I had made a complete mess of it. In my mind, I could almost hear my grandfather’s voice like it was just yesterday: “A mysterious creature of the forest lies hidden within the grain of each piece of deepwood, just waiting to reveal itself to the world, and all I have to do is to let it out.” I cleaned the carving as best I could and put it back where it belonged.

  Chk-chk-fwip… chk-chk-fwip.

  Damn. Another cloaker.

  Slowly and carefully, I reached for my bow. On the next pulse of light, I watched for it, near the ceiling. There it is. The creature fluttered to a nearby rock. Not far… maybe twenty feet… clear shot… alone. The light went out.

  I pulled an arrow out of the ground, notched it, and drew it some weight. In darkness I aimed, and waited. I can’t let it get away, I told myself, it will only bring more.

  When the light flickered on, the thing screeched and flew off towards the hole. I tracked its flight, canted the bow, and aimed slightly ahead of its course. The light flickered off.

  I let loose the arrow anyway. “Thwunk.”

  Half a moment later, something hit the ground with a thud. On the next flash, I saw that my arrow had found its mark.

  Now what? I wondered, breathing a sigh of relief.

  I stared downstream as far as the light extended, and then upstream.

  I have to get away from that hole, I decided.

  “Which way out?” I said to the salty stream. At first, only echoes responded. A simple gurgle from the stream would have sufficed as an answer. Instead, a far-off “SNAP!” like thunder shook the ground and the rocks overhead, followed by a cascade of splitting and crackling. Debris fell from the sides of the pit, and then one large piece broke off and came crashing down. I dove for cover.

  Collapse, I feared for a tense moment. I gazed up at the tons of rock looming overhead, anticipating the next fall. But the crackling and splitting sounds quickly subsided in the distance, and the dust thrown up around the pit soon cleared. Only the burbling of running water broke the silence. I rose to my feet.

  “Which way?” I said again, to myself.

  Water flows down and deeper, I reasoned, my least favorite direction, so upstream to find the source seems like a good choice.

  I looked to my belongings still scattered on the shore, and reconsidered leaving all the deepwood behind. An odd-shaped piece caught my attention – club-like. It broadened at one end with a heavy burl, and the other end tapered to a natural, curved handle. Fyorn had pointed that one out specifically, I recalled. I picked it up, weighing the burl-wood in my hand. I practiced a swing, then another. The weight of the wood felt r
ight: well-balanced and sturdy enough to deliver a good, solid hit to any face-sucking cloaker that dared to show itself. “Shatters,” I declared, calling it by name. I loosened my belt-rope a notch and hung the club at my side. It hooked in rather naturally.

  A second noteworthy shaft of deepwood stood out as well, but for different reasons. It had been troublesome to carry all along due to its length, sticking out of the pack well above the others. But it was straight as an arrow and the grain was flawless. Using a thin string of leather taken from my pack, I fixed a sharp rock to one end of the shaft and made a decent short spear of it. “Sliver,” I declared, calling it by name. And just like that, I was as ready as ever to fight off cloakers. I opted to keep the remaining deepwood after all. Paplov would be happy.

  I decided to carry Sliver in one hand to support walking and for quick protection when needed. That would tie up both hands though – one for the stone and one for the short spear. So I undid a leather tie from my backpack and worked it into a crude chord and setting with which to hang the stone around my neck, or even to wear like a headband. I added a flap to block the light on demand.

  Satisfied with my creation, I gathered the archery gear and slung my pack. I scanned the area for my waterskin and found it hooked on a rock. It had taken a beating in the fall and the leather was scuffed, but it was still intact. From that point on, I would have to ration drinking water.

  Water all around but nothing to drink – such a cruel curse.

  *

  The going was not easy – constant climbing over mounds and stepping through piles of sharp rocks. And it was not fast on account of the state I was in. Evidence of roof collapse was everywhere. As time wore on and as I followed the watercourse, my wounds did not hurt so much, that or I became numb to them, overtaken by hunger and fatigue. I had contemplated the felled cloaker as a food source, but worries about the uncooked meat of such a vile creature buried that notion.

  Apart from the stream and the rubble, the landscape was dark and barren with no life at all. There were no cobwebs or sheddings of any kind, and no pawprints or signs whatsoever that life had ever visited the cavern.

  Over time, the ceiling began to change height. Slowly, it rose, and eventually, its bland features disappeared beyond the reach of the light that guided me. For what might have been a day or two, I followed the path of the stream. Half in a trance, I kept my pace, shutting down as many mental and physical facilities as possible while I stumbled on: Minimize navigation. Minimize ups and downs. Minimize exertion. Look only where needed, and minimize thought. It was like conserving energy during a long, deep dive. Every so often, I stopped to salt my wounds and sip from my waterskin.

  Eventually, the debris piles grew enormous, and signs that Men had once been in the area began to show through in the rubble. Among the scattered rocks were bricks, twisted metal, broken glass and other manufactured bits and pieces. I stopped to pick up a few of the small, glassy tablets that littered the floor, here and there. Devices of old Fortune Bay, I surmised, and probably illegal by the Treaty of Nature. There is no treaty down here, I decided, and put them in my pack.

  The ruins differed greatly from those of old Akeda. The shores of Abandon Bay held partial structures you could enter and explore, wells you could lower yourself into, and outlines of buildings that ignited one’s imagination about who once lived there, how they lived, and how they might have faced death. These ruins were just a giant, crumbled mess.

  *

  On what might have been the second or third day in the cavern, after having slept on beds of rocks, rationed my water supply to the very limits of discipline and endurance, and ate nothing, a distant glimmer caught my eye. It was off my path though.

  Nevermind; keep going; stay focused. I walked past, huffed, and then halted.

  No. Stop. Investigate.

  I turned toward the sight, and made my way to it. As I approached, the reflection appeared to waver. Closer still, it began to spread out. Slowly, surely, it spread wide and tall into a shimmering veil of light. Tiny, stretched droplets of water rained down from unseen heights and pattered the surface of a small pool with soft, tingly splashes. Water… fresh water.

  Gently, I placed Sliver down, climbed the small plateau that the pool sat on, and crouched over it. A depression in the rock had trapped the water there. I cupped the precious liquid in my hands. It was cool and clear. I let it run through my fingers, then cupped some more and splashed it over my face. A trickle ran down my cheek to the corner of my mouth – no salt. Slurping up a long draught, smooth and golden, it slid down my throat and bled into my chest. I felt the coolness pool in the bottom of my stomach. I closed my eyes in revelry, then accelerated into a euphoric moment of simple pleasure. Just then, something extraordinary happened. It was something that compounded the good feelings sweeping over me.

  The stone around my neck began to flicker wildly until the light steadied into a single beam. It brightened. I stood up, amazed, and the darkness receded in all directions. I held the light up high. The stone burned so bright I had to shield my eyes from its brilliance. Something more was happening though – something inside of me; something not at all normal. I felt a light within, and as the stone grew brighter, my consciousness seemed to inflate right along with it. The sensation stacked mental rush upon mental rush, high upon high, and drove pure elation to new plateaus. It was dizzying and dazzling all at once. I nearly passed out at the height of it.

  Then it all changed, like falling. A gentle fall though, with a wide, slow spin to it. I floated into fond memories: good times and laughter kidding around with my friends, blue skies, lazing on a hot boulder after a refreshing swim, tall pines buzzing with harvest flies, a barbeque in our yard, a table near the hearth at the Flipside with a tall tankard of barkwood ale gripped in one hand. Easy times…

  A sudden, peaceful light flared up inside, warm and comforting and reassuring. I did my best. I outsmarted the bog queen and made a good fight of it. I tried to save Kabor. I tried to get home. I fought off the cloakers. I did everything right. Fyorn would appreciate those sorts of things. He was a fighter and tough as nails. He would never give up.

  Fuzzy at first, my eyes adjusted to the day-brightness and the layout of the cavern revealed itself fully for the first time. The roof was most bizarre and unexpected, for what I saw, by rights, should have been… right-side up, if indeed it belonged anywhere on this earth. Like giant, broken spikes, the vestiges of a once great city dangled from the sloped roof of the cavern – a wedge of land violently cut out, overturned, and set to lean on its side.

  Remnants of buildings, roads, tall towers and the skeletons of long dead trees dangled precariously. I could see how debris on the cavern floor lined up with barren spots on the overturned landscape that had given way. Together, top and bottom could be pieced together to make an entire city, a city of the kind only Men might have endeavored to build, long ago.

  Farther out, the tallest buildings of the Hanging City spanned from ceiling to floor like pillars of ruin, windows smashed and large sections missing.

  Despite the new limits on vision, still, only ruins surrounded me. There were no cave walls, and no end to the stream or debris either. Out of the corner of my eye, I chanced to witness a large section of building material snap and release from the ceiling. It struck the ground with a resounding thunderclap, and sent a bulging cloud of dust billowing up.

  Abruptly, the world shrank to nothingness. The light had flickered out. I waited patiently in the dark, anticipating the usual pause before start-up. But the darkness persisted. A chill sank into me. First through my skin, then it crawled under my flesh. After the normal downtime between flashes had long passed, the chill soaked into my bones.

  That’s it; I am going to die down here. At least I saw it though. At least I saw the Hanging City.

  I shook the stone – it did not help. I knocked it with my knuckles and lightly tapped it on the rock floor to no avail. Immersing it in water proved just as
fruitless. Nothing happened, no matter what I tried. I put the stone back around my neck. Doom had finally arrived. It had been lingering from the start.

  The pool seemed as good a spot to die as any, I supposed. Maybe someone, someday, would discover it and my remains alongside, and name the cavern after me. “Ole Pip’s Drip” perhaps, since they might not know my name or that I was young when I died. It has a nice ring to it.

  I dumped the last few swallows of water from the waterskin and refilled it. More defeated than ever, I removed much of the remaining deepwood from my pack and stacked it neatly beside the pool, forming the word “Nud” so that one day, someone might know the bones there were mine.

  When I finished, a strange tingling sensation began in my left hand, especially the fingertips. I tried to pass it off as a circulation issue at first, perhaps related to the way I was sitting or had stooped over, but after a few minutes of persistence, I began to believe otherwise – something unpleasant was imminent. I lay down and broke into a cold sweat. What goes up, must come down, I thought. The same is true in the world as is true in the mind.

  It started with a single, hopeless thought. I’m never getting out. Then came the crash. Even the Mark of the Hurlorn is useless here. Then came the crash upon the crash. My heart began to race. My chest felt tight. What is happening?

  The worries escalated, and they, in turn, fed on more worries. A wave of anxiety rushed over me and held me fast in its grip. Unable to take it any longer, I rose to my knees. Hands shaking, I ran my tingling fingers through the pool and tried to distract myself from despair. The water felt cool to the touch, but it wasn’t enough. I traced small concentric circles, then larger ones, faster and faster. Here it comes…

  The final crash was the worst. It flooded me with despair. Everyone died because of me. I thrashed at the water violently and sent handfuls of it soaring into the air. A part of me wished that the old gods of my father would just be done with me. If they still had power anywhere, it would be in the deep recesses of the world, lost but not completely forgotten. Like me.