by A. R. Knight
T’Oli and Vee, by virtue of one being, effectively, a liquid and the other a four-armed physical freak, beat Viera and I down the cliff. I take my time, testing every rock before putting my weight on it, ignoring the constant ache in my hands until they finally go numb. It’s not pleasant, but I’m making my way.
Until a cascade of red flashes splits the fog from above and an earth-rattling explosion pours over the cliff edge. Gouts of yellow-white flame followed by black smoke and flying chunks of debris follow, cascading over Viera and I.
Somewhere in there - I can’t feel when - my fingers lose their hold on the rocks and I fall back, staring up and screaming as more red beams lance towards where our shuttle sits. I’m sure, certain, I’m going to bash against the bottom in a second and in that moment of certain death, I call out to the only thing that comes to mind.
Ignos.
And, despite everything I’ve seen, despite all the contradictions, my god comes through for me.
Vee catches me in his four arms, his legs squat down and his half-tail pressed to the ground so that I collapse into the Oratus’ massive chest. Which isn’t to say that the fall doesn’t hurt - whatever air had been in my lungs takes the impact as a chance to flee, and my back blossoms into a new kind of pain as it crunches against Vee’s bones.
The Oratus, too, gasps, Vee’s chest vents blowing their own air against my face. The Oratus stumbles back, then half drops, half rolls me onto the ground. It’s cold, hard, and wonderful.
I’m not dead.
The thought repeats itself a thousand times before I get around to thanking Ignos, before my heartbeat slows enough to check if Viera’s made it down safe - she has - and to actually pick myself up.
“Thanks.” It’s the first thing I say, and Vee takes it with a slight nod. “Really. Thank you.”
“There’s no need for it,” Vee finally replies. “The risk to myself was slight, the benefits to our expedition of your survival great.”
“That’s the Oratus-talk I’m used to,” Viera says, before she steps up and wraps me in a hug. “Next time, Kaishi, I’ll teach you how to climb like a Lunare.”
I separate, stare her dead in the eyes; “I’m never climbing again.”
“I suggest we get moving,” T’Oli says, the Ooblot oozing its way over towards the glow. “Those blasts probably came from a Sevora ship, and they might decide to cleanse this entire mountain rather than risk our escape.”
“They’d blow up a mountain to get to us?” I ask.
“Kaishi, they would cover this planet in ash and fire to destroy you,” T’Oli replies. “You are an existential threat to the Sevora. If they cannot control you, they will annihilate you. It’s how they operate.”
“Well, they’ve failed so far,” Viera says.
“Let’s keep it that way.” I point at the glow. “Lead the way, Viera?”
The Lunare takes the charge, goes in front of T’Oli, and though we have no weapons - aside from Vee’s formidable claws - Viera strides ahead tall and sure. I suppose, after surviving what we’ve lived through, there’s a lot less to fear from a Lunare outpost.
So I catch up to her, and together the four of us leave behind the smoldering ruin of our shuttle.
The Lunare spread all over under the Earth’s crust, spiderwebbing their way through rock to try and find resources, places to build cities or, the ultimate goal, to find a new surface that they could claim for their own.
“Until we found this,” Viera’s saying as we stand outside the tunnel entrance. “I’d heard about the fog, about how this side of the mountains was all covered in it, how everything was dead.”
The cave is twice as tall as Vee, plenty wide for the four of us to walk abreast, though we haven’t gone in because it’s gated shut. Wood planks seal the way, with a pair of torches flickering in braziers on either side.
“Where are they?” I ask, nodding at the torches. “The Lunare who must be here?”
“I don’t know.” Viera walks up to the gate. There’s no visible handle on this side, but she puts her hand on the boards anyway. “They might have sealed it after the explosion. Figured anything causing that kind of destruction was better left on the other side.”
“Is there a way to talk to them?”
“They’re listening now,” Vee hisses. “I can smell them. They’re afraid.”
The Oratus stalks up the gate, next to Viera, and places a claw in front of her head. Then reaches with his left midclaw and taps it a half-meter to his own left. “Here, and here. I could break through this barrier and end them, if we want.”
“No, no, that’s not necessary.” I join them at the gate, then raise my voice. “Lunare, I ask those of you behind this gate for help. We’re lost, and without aid, we’ll die. In exchange, we’ll give you information. We’ll give you hope.”
There’s a shifting noise from behind us, and the three of us - T’Oli doesn’t turn so much as swivel - spin around to see a trio of humans rappel from the rock above. As soon as we turn, there’s a creaking as the wooden gate slides up to show two more Lunare.
All of them are wearing thick fur jackets, and all of them wield the crude gray pistols Viera used to carry, the weapons I thought were the height of deadly warfare until I saw what true danger looked like.
“Hope?” says a burly man in the middle of the climbers. “How can you say that when you’ve brought one of those monsters here with you?”
That’s when I realize all of their weapons are pointing at Vee.
“You know him?” I nod at Vee.
“Seen their kind before,” the man replies. “Though not this one. Where’d you come from? Nothing lives out in the damn fog.”
I think back to the strange humans stuck in those tubes. How there’s plenty of them still wandering that base.
“There’s more out there than you realize,” I say. “And we’ll be happy to tell you about it, but first, could you lower your weapons?”
“Not till I get some proof that thing won’t kill us all.”
Vee bares his teeth. “None of you would be worth the effort.”
The man laughs. “Insults aren’t going to work, creature.”
“I’ll guarantee it. On my life.” I move to stand in front of Vee. “He will not hurt you. And you will not hurt him.”
“They couldn’t even if they tried,” Vee whispers to me.
“And who’re you to make that guarantee? A scared, cold girl?” The man doesn’t know who I am.
I relish the moment.
“I am Kaishi, Empress of the Charre people, and emissary of Ignos to Humanity.” I announce with all the grandeur I can muster.
A snort is not the reaction I’m hoping for. But at least the man waves at the others to put down their weapons. “Empress? Guess it’s worth taking you to Avril, then. She’ll decide if you’re telling the truth, and then she’ll probably kill ya.”
After that delightful opening, the man introduces himself as Diego, declares that he’s the leader of the small band in charge of this outpost, and caps it off, as we sit around their small fire a little beyond the gate, by stating we’ve had the misfortune of arriving at the worst place on Earth.
“I think,” I say after he finishes. “That is where we came from.”
“Don’t know where that is, don’t want to know,” Diego replies. “Because if it’s worse than here... well, I have too many nightmares already.”
Vee and T’Oli take the hint based on the wary eyes of the Lunare and sit off to one side, Vee calmly munching through a packet of goop while spreading some on T’Oli, who absorbs it all. Whatever urgency I’m feeling about getting home hasn’t passed along to the two of them, and while it should irk me, all I really feel is jealousy.
I miss coasting through life without a world weighing on my shoulders.
“We need to get back home.” I turn the topic to what’s important. “I know it’s far, but we don’t know the way, and you do. If you or one of your men could guide
us?”
Diego holds up his left hand, keeps his right near the pistol. “Hold on. I know what you said. Empress, right? We’ll take you to Avril, sure. But we’re scheduled to run our term here for a long time yet. You want to get back earlier, you’ve got to give me a reason.”
I take a breath. About to launch into the old story, when Viera takes over. She stands up - quick enough that Diego’s men reach for their weapons and Vee drops his nutrient pack - and stalks over to stand above Diego, and stares pure heat at the gruff Lunare.
“Your reason is sitting right over there,” Viera says, pointing towards T’Oli and Vee. “Your reason is back out that gate, up that cliff where the wreck that we flew, that we flew, is still burning! You say nothing lives in that fog but here we are - doesn’t that make you think Avril ought to know what’s going on here? Isn’t your job supposed to be to watch for threats? Don’t you think this is one?”
Diego for his part, takes a big swallow, which gives me enough time to ask, “Who’s Avril?”
Viera dashes me a look that says she’s got this, and answers me only after looking back towards Diego, “I’m guessing she’s taken over? Always seemed like that’d be her final play. She used to run Lunare’s biggest city. Reasonable, so long as your reasons go along with hers.”
“Hey,” Diego finally musters a spine. “She’s kept us alive. Charre and Solare too, when they came running.”
Now I’m on my feet too, though less in anger than from a desire to start heading home right now, this very second.
“Running?” Viera asks the question I’m too frazzled to.
“Why’d you think we didn’t come out when we saw the red lights?” Diego sputters, Viera still standing over him like she’s going to kill him right there. “We know what they mean. They’re everywhere back home. It’s all we can do to hold the caves. The whole reason we’re here is to keep this exit open in case everyone needs to run.”
Nobody needs to ask what they’d be running from.
Later, after the fire’s left to smolder and the wood gate’s shut, with the four of us shoved into a side chamber with a bunch of food crates, I’m leaning against a rock wall waiting for exhaustion to find me. Thus far, it’s failed. Thus far, my eyes have stayed wide open as I race from one idea to the next.
Damantum, gone. That’s what Diego hinted at - my people, both the Charre and the Solare, have fled their homes against an impossible adversary and fled to an enemy who’s done what? Provided refuge? At what cost?
And can I even be mad that my apparent empire is gone?
“You should sleep,” Viera whispers to me over Vee’s hissing snores.
T’Oli doesn’t make a sound, but it’s gone all rock over in a corner. Continuing the healing process, apparently.
Viera, though, is lying down, propped up on one arm and keeping a weary face on me, “Cave crawling takes a lot of energy, and I bet Diego’s not going to go easy on you.”
“He won’t have to,” I reply. It’s not my muscles, my bones that I’m worried about. “You know Avril?”
“She’s been playing on the fringes for a long time.” Viera yawns. “She never had the family connections to get up to the top, but your grand defeat of all the old guard in the desert probably left a vacuum.”
“You think she cast them out?”
“I think my own people did,” Viera stifles a laugh. “The Lunare don’t hold much with the royalty idea. Families get power till they screw up, then they’re torn down and forgotten. Someone else gets a chance.”
“That’s... very democratic.”
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, like everything else.”
Viera’s lounging pose finally convinces me to lay down my own bedroll. It’s nothing more than a pad, scrounged from extras left at this outpost over the years. Turns a sharp rock from a stab wound into a bruise, which, out here, is about all you can ask for. I pile up some of the packets of nutrient goop as a sort-of pillow - I’d prefer cool grass, but the stone here is too much for me.
“You said you liked adventure,” I say, because I’m not quite ready to go to dreamy oblivion. “I used to wish for it. Now, I don’t know.”
“Because of the cost?” Viera says.
It’s almost better conversing this way, when I’m staring at the craggy ceiling in the cool pink light of a patch of glowing moss. No expressions to read, just the tone, the in-and-out of breath between the words.
“Because it never seems to end.”
“It does, Kaishi, but you don’t want it to.”
“I don’t know how old I am anymore, Viera.”
“What?”
“We count our age in seasons, but I don’t know how long we’ve been gone.”
“Not that long, Kaishi. Probably less than a season.”
“So I’m being stupid?”
“You’re being tired. Go to bed, Empress. We’re going to need you thinking tomorrow.”
12 A Pair Above All Else
Level 39 announces itself with a blast of steam as soon as the lift door opens. Murky red lighting lines the floor and walls, serving as guides for Sax and the Flaum as they move between huffing machinery and hissing pipes, with the constant low whine of electric energy coursing through conductors above and below them. The noise serves as more than a reminder of the multitude of actions necessary to keep Astre’s Spire running on Rathfall; they serve as cover for whomever or whatever could be hiding around the next bend in the clogged level.
Which is why Sax has the Flaum lead the way, one midclaw positioned just so against the back of the Flaum’s throat.
“I’m not going to run,” the Flaum protests as they go. “I know you’d catch me.”
“I wouldn’t have to catch you,” Sax replies. “You wouldn’t make it a single step.”
“Then how’d you know I was running?”
“I’d smell it.”
Fear has a special spice to it, and the Flaum’s drenched in a coating of his species’ panicky pheromones right now. Without the leaden scent from the venting steam, Sax might choke on it. Flaums are legendary for their overactive glands, one of many reasons why Sax never commences an assault mixed in with the furry species; he could never concentrate under that olfactory attack.
The Flaum, though, is true to his word and navigates Sax through the winding maze until they end up at what Sax would take for an ordinary section of steel wall. The only thing out of the ordinary, really, are the spots of rust on the section they’re looking at. A quick glance wouldn’t give a moment’s thought, but Sax is bred for pattern recognition, to find a weakness and act on it.
“Which one opens the door?” Sax says, gesturing with his left foreclaw to the seven spots arranged in a Z pattern.
“No idea,” the Flaum replies. “If Fraykt wants to talk to you, he’ll open up.”
“That’s not good enough,” Sax says, and he’s about to test his claws on the door when it swings open on hinges.
Actual hinges. The last time Sax had seen those was on some dirt-water planet on a mission he’s otherwise scrubbed from his mind. Now he can’t help wondering how old this Spire really is.
On the other side is a moldy, old yellow Ooblot. Patches of the creature are crusted over, revealing its age as far greater than Sax’s own. It only has a sole eye-stalk, the other a rocky lump on its boulder-sized bulk, and it turns a red-washed iris towards Sax.
“Fraykt’s willin’ to talk,” The Ooblot patters lightly. “Without that one.”
There’s no question as to who ‘that one’ happens to be, and Sax tosses the Flaum aside. The creature doesn’t seem to mind, picking itself up on its claws and scurrying away back towards the lift.
“You’re the guard?”
“I’m Dol, and I’m Fraykt’s partner,” the Ooblot says. “Don’t make that mistake again.”
“Are you threatening me, Ooblot?”
“Yes,” Dol replies, then the Ooblot shuffles itself around and heads back into the
recess.
Sax represses the desire to carve away at the big block of rock’n’pollen-yellow cream. Not only did the Ooblot mock him, but it turned its back. Insult after insult, but there’s more important things here than Sax’s pride, so he swallows it and follows.
Sax thought the munching machines made up the entire utility level, but the Ooblot leads him to a small room with a flat lift tied to a simple rotor. There’s a set of terminals covering the damp wall opposite the lift’s platform, a metal shelf serving as a shield from the dripping water plinking from a maze of pipes above.
At first Sax doesn’t get where the water’s coming from, and the Ooblot must sense his confusion, because it settles its bulk in front of the lift and turns its rotating eye towards the Oratus.
“You play claws and miners, you rake and take, the rest of us have to use the scraps,” Dol says. “Set ourselves up in the ditches and dives your Amigga masters leave us.”
“They’re not our masters.”
Before Evva, before Cobalt, Sax would have answered that question differently. There didn’t used to be shame in the thought - the Oratus are weapons, wielded to their purpose. What does it matter who’s doing the wielding?
“They’re not? Then your species is even dumber than I thought.” Dol slides onto the platform.
That’s one insult too many. Sax takes a long step towards Dol, raises a warning claw, and hears a dozen sharp tines of miners powering up. The weapons’ laser-red eyes peer at Sax from between the pipes, from beneath the terminals, and, Sax notices, from a dark cavity in Dol’s own massive bulk.
“Not going to work,” Dol says. “Fraykt thinks you’re clever, that you might be worth saving.”
That stops Sax. “Saving?”
The Ooblot laughs. Slaps a button on the lift, which starts a trundling ride up. “Better get on, lizard man, or I’ll shoot you.”
With all the miners around him, Sax doesn’t want to call the Ooblot’s bluff. He leaps, catches the edge of the rising platform with his foreclaws, pulls himself up enough for his midclaws to assist and then he’s over, fitting in alongside Dol as the platform continues its slow rise.
