Hunter Brown and the Consuming Fire

by Chris Miller

  She wrapped her arms around me in an underwater hug. Then, with powerful kicks she pulled me down to the bottom of the cistern. Twenty feet below the surface, we arrived at the grate she had discovered. Beneath the grate lay a valve where the medallion was resting, its light glimmering ever so slightly through the murky water.

  Igniting my sword underwater, I severed the lock on the grate as planned. But I needed more air before we could recover the medallion.

  Trista brought me up for air and dove back down again, this time bringing the medallion back up.

  “Got it!” she said, holding it overhead.

  “Great, but how do we get out of here? Xaul’s going to find a way down eventually,” I replied.

  “I have an idea,” Trista whispered to me, “but you have to trust me again!”

  “Okay,” I said, hoping it didn’t involve more swimming, but knowing it would.

  “Grab your things and hold on tight!”

  I did as she said, allowing myself to be submerged for the third time. Trista pulled us both down with our weapons to the metal grate again. This time, she took us down into the well the grate had covered and even pulled the grate closed over the top of us. Had she gone mad? She’s imprisoning us in a watery tomb.

  I wanted to scream, but then when I saw what she intended to do it made me wish I hadn’t trusted her after all. Turning the lock valve on the drain, she began to pull it open, letting huge bubbles of air gulp into the cistern.

  Before I could scream a watery “Don’t,” the hatch flew wide open, creating an instant whirlpool, sucking us down into its gaping throat. I grabbed wildly about, but found nothing to grasp, nothing to keep us from being swallowed whole, pulled down by the unstoppable swirling vortex.

  Trista succumbed easily, disappearing into the dark hole first. The downard pull quickly claimed me next, turning into a rushing stream of water, twisting and turning in dramatic fashion through a pathway of pipe. No light was there to warn of the many turns blindly tossing us from side to side, even spinning us upside down at times in the raging current that propelled us ever-downward through its watery exit.

  In one last mighty surge, the ride came to its climactic end, plunging us ten feet into a canal of blackened water that quickly pulled me under. Flailing about in the river, I managed to struggle toward the surface, grasping for anything to keep me afloat before I went under again. As my head dipped beneath the water, a hand caught mine and pulled me back up. With great effort, Trista managed to pull me near the shore, where we both collapsed, gasping for breath and glad to be alive.

  “Don’t ever…do that…again!” I said, panting. “We could have been killed! That drain could have dumped us out into the Void for all you knew! What were you thinking?”

  “What I was thinking,” Trista replied indignantly, “was that we needed to get out of there fast! Besides, when I saw the medallion on the drain valve, I figured it was a kind of sign…you know…from the Author.”

  As we lay on our backs catching our breath, we found ourselves suddenly laughing hilariously at how utterly insane that idea sounded, while at the same time marveling at its truth. The Author certainly had been with us.

  Still, this was no time to rest. Once Xaul discovered what we’d done, he wouldn’t be far behind. Sobered by that realization, we pulled ourselves together and set out toward what we hoped was the sky ship docks. It wasn’t much of a plan but reaching Stoney was our only chance of escape. To our relief, the place we had been dumped was actually much closer to the bottom of the elevator than we’d first guessed, allowing us to reach it in only a matter of minutes.

  As the elevator pulley hoisted us up the crater, we were thrilled to see the darkened silhouette of the Bridesmaid rising up from behind the ridge overhead. Stoney was still here; we weren’t too late.

  “I hope Rob’s still okay,” Trista thought aloud as she looked back down into the shadowed streets of the city.

  “He’s got a good head on his shoulders,” I reasoned. “He should be fine. We’ll go back to pick him up as soon as we catch up with Stoney.”

  A few tense minutes later we reached the landing dock and spotted a large man pacing nervously on the deck of the ship.

  “Stoney!” Trista yelled, waving her arms as we ran to reach the safety of the ship. “It’s us!”

  The look Stoney returned, however, was not a happy one. Instead of a friendly smile, he looked almost sorry to see us. His eyebrows were furrowed and full of concern, and he shook his head slightly. Something was wrong.

  “Halt!” a commanding voice ordered from behind the stack of crates Stoney was standing next to. Before I knew what was happening, a half-dozen of Zagzabarz’s guards scurried out to surround us.

  Each of them was armed with curved sabers, which they pointed dangerously close to our chests.

  “Are these the ones?” one of the guards asked.

  “Yup, that’s them,” Stoney answered matter-of-factly. My jaw nearly hit the floor. What was he doing?

  “Okay, that’s it, men. Take these troublemakers into custody!”

  “Is this some kind of joke? Stoney, what’s going on?”

  He didn’t answer. Chains were snapped onto both of our legs, and our arms were bound forcefully behind our bodies.

  “Ouch, my arm…watch it,” I said as the guards carelessly gripped the black wound.

  “Stoney, please, why won’t you help us?” Trista cried.

  He turned his back, pretending not to know us as he continued loading the Bridesmaid with cartons of supplies.

  “How can you do this to us? I thought you were one of us!”

  At this, Stoney paused in his work and glanced up at the guards who eyed him with uncertainty. For a moment, nobody said a word.

  Then, lumbering forward, the one-eyed man I had once considered a friend came up beside us and said, “You got it wrong, kid!”

  He took hold of the Author’s mark medallion and jerked it off of my neck. Then he turned around and marched back to his ship alone.

  “Okay that’s it then,” the guard said, forcing us away once more. “You two, take the prisoners away.”

  “What should we do with their weapons?” one asked, holding up Trista’s bow and my sword.

  “Send them with the prisoners; they’ll be useless anyway. The Shadow have big plans for them on Dolor!”

  As we were marched away, I overheard the commanding guard shout another order to the remainder of his men. “Put a hole in that balloon.”

  “Hey,” Stoney argued, “we had a deal! If I gave you the boy you’d let me leave! You didn’t say nothin’ about tearing up my ship or sending them to Dolor!”

  “Zagzabarz’s orders. The Shadow don’t want to be followed. By the time you repair it, the prisoners will be long gone, a little insurance in case you change your mind. ”

  Chapter 21

  Descent into Dolor

  If ever a mission could be labeled a failure, the one I had just nose- dived into the ground was textbook. I was supposed to carry the Flame to preserve it until it reached the seven. Instead, my poor judgment had led us right into the enemy’s trap.

  My legs ached. Their muscles burned. By cruel design, the cramped quarters of the prison boxes we had been forced into made it impossible to sit, requiring me to stand, hands chained behind my back, for the grueling length of the trip.

  A day passed with no food, no water, no light and no relief. For me, time had been marked by how many times I could rehash my fateful decision to chase after Boojum instead of following the spark’s leading.

  To make matters worse, the air had begun to turn uncomfortably warm and humid, a sign I took to mean that land was nearby. The Shadow guards’ commotion outside confirmed my hunch: our descent into the Shard of Dolor had begun, a destination that set even the guards on edge.

  “Never alone,” I whispered to myself as a calming reminder. It typically helped, but the usual heartening effect did not take this time
. Not that I doubted the words…I think it was that I feared them now. Any comfort that should have come from knowing I was not alone in this wretched situation had long been soured by the implications: a friend suffered this fate with me. Knowing Trista was here only made my suffering worse. From my darkened cell I had no way to see or speak to her, but she was somewhere nearby, and I hated it.

  Our journey came to a jarring halt when the transport ship made ground. The hull echoed ominously from the impact. Guards shouted commands angrily above the din until their voices were drowned out by a dreadful grinding and ratcheting of chains. The arrival of a faint light, now seeping into my pod through its vents, revealed that a door was opening.

  Moments later, my container was abruptly yanked to one side, and I felt it being dragged behind the unpleasant grunts of a guard. Metal grated against metal as my prison pod joined the others being hauled off the transport ship. The squealing gave way to a scratching rumble as the container bumped across a more uneven surface. We scraped a few yards over what I guessed to be rock until I was finally dropped carelessly to the ground.

  My box landed on its side, but with all the jostling, I landed face down. That is going to leave a mark, I thought as I felt a bump already rising from the throbbing spot on my forehead where it had struck.

  Now what? I wondered in suspense as I listened to the last few pods being roughly unloaded around me.

  “What’s the hold-up? Don’t just stand there! Start the Descender line,” rasped an authoritative, distant voice. It added with nervous impatience, “Quickly!”

  The whimpering reply came from somewhere close by, “Sir, it’s jammed again, down-line. Sh-sh-shall we signal the Scourge?”

  “Imbecile! Didn’t I command you not to speak of them!” Clearly, the transport crew’s fear of Dolor centered on whoever the “Scourge” were.

  “But…sir, what should we do with the pods? We have to deliver them to the compound.”

  Angry footsteps, accompanied by muttered curses, stomped nearer and nearer until they passed me by. When they stopped, the commanding voice finally spoke again, this time with sinister calm. “We send them down, of course.”

  “Sir?”

  I heard the scraping sound of one pod being shoved across the rocks until it suddenly rushed down and away, carrying the screams of its unfortunate occupant with it.

  “There, delivered.” After a dreadful pause, the leader urged his guards on. “Let the devils below sort out whatever’s left of them….What should they care what parts they get to play with.”

  The guards laughed in appreciation of their leader’s solution and didn’t hesitate to follow his example. In the horrifying commotion that followed, I found myself caught in the tide of fear that was carrying each unfortunate prisoner down to an unseen doom. My heart beat frantically as I twisted and pressed my body hard against the prison pod walls, as if I could somehow dig in and hold back, but there was no stopping this ride. For a brief, terrifying moment, I felt my pod teeter momentarily over an edge. My stomach tightened with anticipation before the final shove sent me racing down a steep and deadly incline.

  Shudda-shudda-shudda-BAM!

  Shudda-CLANG!

  The beating was incessant, both on the pod and on me. Stones clattered off the outside, my body rattled off the inside. The sound was deafening as the metal container drummed down a steep slope. Deeper and deeper, I slid into what seemed like an endless pit.

  Please let it stop! Let it stop! Make it–CRUMP!

  In an instant, everything stopped, at least as far as I was concerned. The pod might well have still been moving, but I had blacked out.

  * * * * * * *

  A chorus of distant bells beckoned me from beyond. The sound swelled louder and louder until at last I forced open my eyes. The first thing I realized was that I was no longer in my pod. I no longer felt the cool touch of the metal walls boxing me in; my body was free to move (except for my hands which were still chained behind my back). My ears rang loudly as I struggled to sit up. Painfully, I learned just how many nicks and bruises my tumble had earned me. There was also the matter of my wounded arm, which already felt and looked to have worsened considerably. In time, the black infection would spread and take over my body; without help I was a dead man.

  Shaking my throbbing head, I tried to focus on my surroundings. I quickly discovered that I had been ejected onto a rocky hillside, which angled sharply up and down from where I sat.

  Just a few yards down the hill, I could make out the battered shape of my former “death ride,” the pod door wrenched open. Outside of this immediate area, a shifting grey haze obscured everything else. Its effect was eerie, hanging like thick, dusty cobwebs all around me, leaving me to only imagine what possible secrets it might be masking. At least where I sat now was relatively safe, for the moment.

  Content to stay put, I took advantage of my freedom to move and maneuvered my chained hands down and around my feet so they could be in front of me. For some reason the guards had decided to leave my Veritas Sword in my possession. I didn’t understand their reasoning, but I was grateful to have my sword at my side.

  When at last my ears finally cleared of the ringing bells, I became aware of the faint sound of crying nearby. I held still, trying to discern what direction it came from, and from whom. The more I listened, the more I recognized the cry as human, a girl.

  Trista? I first thought, before calling out into the gloom. “Trista? Are you out there?”

  The crying stopped almost immediately. A muffled reply swirled back through the mist, “H-hunter? HUNTER?”

  “Triss! Thank the Author you’re alive! Where are you?”

  “Over here! I’m over here,” she broke off in tears again, this time tears of relief that she wasn’t alone.

  Her voice seemed to be coming from somewhere above me, to the right. I gingerly stood up and started carefully picking my way across the rock-strewn hill in the general direction.

  “Great! Just stay there. I’ll come to you!”

  Trista sniffed, then laughed, “Kinda not really a choice; I’m locked in a box. Wait…are…are you out?”

  “Yes. Just keep talking. I can’t really see anything through the fog out here. I need to follow your voice.”

  “Okay,” she sniffed again. “I’ll keep talking…I…oh, Hunter, I’m so scared. When I stopped falling, everything was so quiet and I kept thinking I would be abandoned here to…Whoa! What is that?”

  A deep rumble shook the hillside. I felt a rolling tremor pass by, almost as if something had just carved a path directly under my feet, heading up in the direction I had imagined Trista to be. A shiver went up my spine.

  “Keep quiet!” I whispered loudly to Trista.

  “What’s going on out there, Hunter?” I could hear the panic rising in her voice. “I can’t see anything…Hunter?!”

  Suddenly, the hill shook from a powerful eruption above, knocking me to the ground. A desperate scream knifed its way through the gloom as blasted rock tumbled down through the haze only a few yards to my right.

  The scream quickly disappeared behind a throaty, monstrous hiss, “Fwwheeeeeh!”

  Leaping back to my feet, I retrieved my Veritas from my belt, searching wildly for any sign of what had just emerged. The curtain of haze was drawn in too tight around me to spot anything.

  “Trista! Where are you? I can’t see…”

  BOOM!

  A powerful force pounded the earth, ringing loudly against metal. More stones tumbled down. I braced myself as the force struck a second time, and a third.

  “Fhehhhh!” the hidden creature spat angrily.

  For a brief second, I could hear Trista above it all, shouting hysterically, “Hunter! Help me!

  Gripping my sword tightly, I charged up the hill and quickly broke through the grey barrier to discover a hideous creature, gn
awing hungrily at Trista’s pod. Its mouth was lined with two rows of gruesomely sharp teeth.

  Not wasting the opportunity to attack the monster’s long, exposed neck, I rushed forward with my sword overhead. When at last I was within range I slashed down in a frontal attack, but my weapon never met its target. For some reason, the blade barely flickered an inch beyond the handle, crackling weakly before it extinguished. The misfire caught me by surprise and I tumbled to the ground.

  What had just happened? I wondered.

  There was no time to tell. Having heard my approach, the creature shoved Trista’s mangled pod away and swooped its head down in search of a softer meal. Rolling to my left, I scurried up the hill and took position behind a boulder. For the first time, I could see the beast in its entirety. It was all neck and no body, or rather it was all one long, wet, snake-like body rising up from a tunneled hole in the ground. There were no eyes that I could see…just a giant worm-like creature with horrid teeth and a ravenous appetite.

  Unnerved by the sudden silence, Trista whimpered, “Is-is it dead? Did you kill it?”

  I didn’t dare answer, but tried to keep calm…

  By fear a man appoints his master, I silently recited passages from the Code of Life, hoping to ignite my blade. Each time the blade simply choked out. The creature was swaying closer now, still blind, but somehow honing in on my position. My heart beat louder and my attempts became more frantic, until the Veritas no longer produced a blade of any kind.

  Oh man, I’m dead meat! I thought in panic.

  As if drawn by that thought, the monster immediately whipped its head around to face me, saliva spraying as it gave its throaty yell, “Fwwheeeeeh!”