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Chapter Eight: Sojourn
Volistad
Traveling the network of tunnels around and beneath my tribe’s village wasn’t actually particularly hard, largely due to the diligent work of my former comrades, the rangers. The frozen skin of Ravanur was always shifting, moving and changing. Cracks would open in a day and close in a week. Burug would carve tunnels in their incessant search for food, and then those tunnels would collapse. Very rarely did my people actually cut our own passages- the ice moved enough that it was barely worth the effort. Instead, we marked the ways we found, exploring the twisting labyrinth daily and keeping a running knowledge of all of the paths through the ice near our home. This meant that getting from the Deepseeker’s hidden sanctum to Joanna’s old campsite wasn’t particularly complicated; once I left the tunnels that the ranger’s had no record of. The hard part was remaining unseen.
I moved carefully through the tunnel network, reading the scrawled shorthand ranger-sign scratched into the ice at regular intervals. The trick was staying in the tunnels that were just old enough to be somewhat riskier to use. No one wanted to use an old passage that might collapse or close on them without warning. Passages more than seven days old tended to be avoided. They were traveled only by whichever unlucky ranger had been assigned to scout out the dangerous trail. I stuck to those riskier routes, trusting my former comrade’s instinctive wariness to work to my advantage. For the most part, it worked. I passed beneath the tribal home of the Erin-Vulur with little trouble, completely avoiding being seen in the process. Once I got close to the fallen campsite, however, it was a completely different story. Warriors and Stormcallers alike, crawled all through the passages near where Joanna’s tower had fallen.
This proved to be a true test of my stealth. I spent an hour hidden in a tiny crack in a tunnel ceiling, observing my tribesmen and their movements, finding the pattern. Of course, they didn’t follow a pattern of movement exactly, no one did, especially warriors looking out for danger. Falling too rigidly into a pattern would leave an opening for someone like me to exploit. But searching for someone or something always caused people, warriors or not, to follow established methods- and I knew my people’s methods. A hidden route would present itself, and when it did...
Now. I slipped from my hiding spot, pleased with how smoothly my new crystalline armor moved. I didn’t feel hindered at all. I stepped carefully, following far behind the shadow of the latest ranger on scouting duty, making sure not to scuff or scrape the ice beneath my feet. He led me in a circle, through a deteriorating burug tunnel and out into a passage that was much smoother, more neatly shaped. This one had been made by a Stormcaller, and a talented one at that. It was one thing to stir up the winds like all of the other wind shamans, but only a skilled few could wield power with such fine control as one would need to bore a specific route through the ice. This had been the way the warriors had used to get to Joanna’s campsite. I shook my head. They had sent a full war party- that was the only reason to dig a direct passage like this. Why would the elders have gone so far to destroy her? She hadn’t posed a threat to us at all, except for the Stormcaller she had apparently killed, but that had been self-defense. Something else seemed wrong about all this. How had they mustered so much force so quickly? Yes, the Erin-Vulur could scramble a quick strike force with little effort- the rangers were always out and about, and it was a simple matter of leaving ranger sign with new orders near the intersections in the patrolled tunnels. But to get all of the warriors, all the Stormcallers- to muster the tribe as a large war party- that took serious coordination. That took planning. It hit me like a slap across the face. They had meant to destroy Joanna from the start. They hadn’t sent me to learn about her, they hadn’t sent me to strike up some kind of accord- they had sent me as a distraction while they got ready. They had used me. Had Nissikul known? Did I really want to know the answer to that question?
The war tunnel wasn’t empty. Workers from the village moved back and forth, dragging scrap metal from the destroyed tower away down into the darkness, where no doubt they were preparing it for transport back to the tower. Steel and iron were never wasted by my people, and the kind of metal used by a god, would doubtless be better than whatever iron we could carve out of the frozen mountain beneath our village. I grimaced. I needed another way out. I had been seen here, and I really didn’t want to have to hurt any of my own people to escape, even if they might not show me the same courtesy. I stepped back into the ranger tunnel and turned, just in time to see the ranger creeping up behind me, ax brandished.
I lashed out; my body reacting much faster than my mind could have processed the situation. I twisted, slapping the side of the ax head with an open palm and knocking it from the ranger’s grip. Before he could react, I curled my fingers and hit him in the throat with my knuckles, pulling the blow just enough to avoid crushing his windpipe. He gagged, but could not otherwise make a sound or raise any alarm. Continuing my assault before the unfortunate ranger could regain his balance, I hit my forehead into his, and when he reeled, I hit him across his jaw, right in the sweet spot. The warrior crumpled to the ground, and dropped, crouching over his prone form for a moment and listening hard for any sign that someone else had heard the brief scuffle. No alarm was raised, and there was no sound of running boots. I huffed out a sigh of relief. That had been close. I glared down at the unconscious man. If I had been a second slower, I would have been the one lying face down on the ice, only I would have had a nice ax sticking out of the back of my skull, and wouldn’t that have gotten some attention- I stopped in the midst of my internal grumbling, and then narrowed my eyes into a mischievous grin. I had an idea.
…
When the next ranger to come through on their patrol route, found the crumpled form of her comrade lying in the middle of one of the side-passages, she immediately raised the alarm, causing everyone nearby to come running. I watched from behind a stack of scrap in the war tunnel as several warriors and a Stormcaller came running, passing by my hiding place and continuing on towards the place I had left the luckless ranger. The workers, on the other hand, retreated to the bottom of the tunnel, away from the possible danger. Doubtlessly whichever warriors weren’t immediately responding to the downed ranger would instead be guarding the vulnerable civilians. The sum result of the whole thing was that I had a moment, a clear path to the surface. I broke from cover and sprinted up the slope, my boots gripping the ice with incredible steadiness, maintaining my grip with no trouble at all. I ran as hard as I could, pumping my legs despite the burning in my thighs, and burst through the exit onto the surface of Ravanur.
It was very cold outside; not that I cared. Though my personal warmth was not in the least bit affected by the lethal temperatures, I could still feel them, even if they didn’t bother me. The sky was clear, but night had fallen, and Palamun’s veiled face was slightly smaller in the sky than he would be during the day. I lit out, away from the war tunnel entrance, moving away from the lines of scrap collection, which I knew would be resumed very soon. I moved quickly to the nearest hump of heaved ice and took cover behind it. I waited. I couldn’t hear any pursuers. Good. Now I just had to wait for the scavenging party to leave so that I could approach the site where Joanna’s camp had stood. It was getting on towards the evening, and those workers would be heading home soon, even with my little distraction.
I lay flat on the ice, just behind the crest of the little hillock, and peered out carefully, trying to get a sense of just how badly Joanna�
�s campsite had been destroyed. I knew they had destroyed her tower, that much had been obvious. But the Deepseeker had spoken as if the entire campsite had been erased, and that just didn’t seem likely. He also seemed very sure that Joanna was alive. The two ideas didn’t seem to make sense in my mind. If her camp had been utterly razed, then surely she was dead. If she was alive, then surely her formidable strength and weapons could have helped her to repel my people and win the day. It didn’t quite make sense.
I peered out over the ridge, towards where the tower had stood like a great monolith amidst the storm. At first, I didn’t realize what I was looking at. But then I saw it, the carved groove in the ice marking where Joanna’s divine storm had marked the boundary of her territory. And inside it… there was nothing. I frowned and squinted, willing my eyes to focus. But it remained the way I saw it. There was nothing inside that boundary. No campsite, not even wreckage or ruin- just emptiness, as if a great hammer had come down and driven a massive hole into the ice. As I stared at that emptiness, I thought of Joanna falling into the darkness, unable to do a thing. How could she have survived? If she had fallen into a crack in the ice, there would be no way for me to know how far down she could have fallen. “Well, there is one way,” I corrected myself under my breath.
Just then, I heard voices at the mouth of the tunnel. I ducked down below the crest of the ridge and waited, listening. The first voice was clearly a ranger, if for no other reason than that he sounded like he was overworked and in a foul mood. The second was probably a Stormcaller, judging by the arrogant tone of her voice and the condescending manner. After a moment, they came close enough that I could hear what they were saying. “...doesn’t make sense is all I’m saying, right? One day he’s one of the best of us, and then he disappears for a month and now he’s dead? I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t add up to me.”
“What’s not to understand?” The Stormcaller scoffed. “He was corrupted by the Dark Ones. It happens from time to time, you know. You’ve heard the stories, like everyone else. The Dark Ones sometimes take the minds of the weak-willed. Warriors don’t tend to resist the pull of those evil powers very well.”
The ranger was silent for a moment, and I imagined he was restraining himself from making a sharp remark to the mageling. The Stormcallers didn’t always respond rationally to confrontation, often with spectacular results. Eventually, he replied, “You may be right, mage, but I saw the man’s initiation, his gauntlet. He didn’t fall, not once, and we hit him as hard as anyone, harder, maybe, since he seemed to come by his skills so easily. Nobody goes through that, not the way he did, not if they’re weak.”
The Stormcaller didn’t reply for some time, perhaps thinking. Eventually, she conceded the point with a noncommittal grunt. “This god may have been more dangerous than some,” she admitted. “After all, no one has seen the Deepseeker since we felled the false god’s tower. And if this metal god could infect the Deepseeker himself, it must have been quite dangerous indeed.”
They stopped no more than a few paces from where I lay. I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing as much as I could. They would pass by and I would remain unseen. It would be fine. I lay there for what felt like an eternity, waiting for them to speak again, to let me know where they were. My mind filled with visions of them coming up over the ridge and spotting me, and the Stormcaller rending me apart with howling wind and razor ice.
The Stormcaller spoke again. “The real tragedy of this whole mess is that we lost Nissikul. Fallen with the false god, determined to get her revenge for the death of her brother,” she paused, her tone regretful, laced with just a little awe. “At least she went out swinging. Bringing down the false god’s whole tower with a single stormhammer- I’ve never seen anything like it.” Nissi? Dead? I shut that thought down quickly. There would be enough time for that when I stopped for the night.
“Few of my friends lost in that fall, too,” grumbled the ranger. “No offense, but things like that are why most of my brothers and sisters don’t really like your kind.”
The mageling snickered, a little girlish sound completely incongruous with the frightening power I knew one like her could wield. “I don’t care what your comrades think. Besides, you like me just fine.” The ranger only grunted in response, and a moment, later, the Stormcaller let out another high-pitched squeal. I rolled my eyes. Of course. They weren’t going to be noticing a damned thing. I had never really understood why some of my comrades thought Stormcaller women were so attractive. They had a tendency to main the men who did them wrong, and to those power-addled minds, the definition of doing them wrong might change daily. Nevertheless, I wasn’t one to ignore an opportunity like this. As the sounds from the other side of the hill began to come more frequently, more insistently, I rolled to my feet, careful to move in silence so as not to disturb the impulsive lovers.
I crept away, carefully, and made my way toward the pit where Joanna’s encampment had once been. I approached the edge warily, looking down into the darkness. The abyss seemed to go on forever. It was even worse than it looked from far away. There was no way someone survived falling into a hole like that, much less if they ended up in a crack in the glacier. But the Deepseeker said Joanna was alive, and I had to proceed as if that was true. My tribe thought I was dead, and I was not. Perhaps she had gotten as lucky as me. Maybe Nissi got lucky too… I clamped down on that thought. Hope was as dangerous to me right now as grief was.
I gritted my teeth and drew my axes. This was going to be a difficult climb. Down was always harder, and this time, I was going all the way down... to where the dead gods dreamed.
Joanna
I ran, hard. The tunnels, being random cracks in the ice mixed with the burrowed paths of unknown fauna, were hardly straight or even, so I lost my balance pretty much every fifth step. I would careen into a wall or a low opening into another tunnel, pulverize some ice with the prodigious weight of my armor, and keep running, knowing that every delay like that meant that the burug was gaining ground. It chittered along on its millipede legs, great mandibles grinding aside the ice as if it was loose dirt rather than glacial ice. The thing could move surprisingly fast, and only the fact that I was fleeing through narrow openings in thick segments of ice allowed me to stay ahead of it all. At first, I turned and took pot shots at the monster whenever I felt I could keep the pace and aim. But the gauss pistol’s shots were about as effective against the monster’s thick chitin as slingshot stones against steel, and I decided to stop wasting those precious seconds on such a futile effort. I put my head down and ran, pumping my arms and legs, my heartbeat in my ears. So I was caught entirely off guard when I crashed through a narrow opening into what I thought was another tunnel, and instead of another passage away from the ravening insectoid monster, I stepped into an open crevice and fell, too surprised to even scream.
This time, as I fell, I kept my head. There would be a bottom to this open shaft, and I just needed to control my fall so that I would get there alive. Once I got my bearings, I would find a way out of here. There would be a way. There had to be. I kicked out and pushed away from one wall of the crevice. This sent me tumbling through the air to crash hard into the opposite wall. I turned as I hit the wall and dug hard into the ice with my power-armored fingers, tearing huge splintering rents in the ice. Shards and flakes of ice sprayed up all around my faceplate, but I slammed my other hand into the ice in a fist, grinding my metal knuckles and checking my momentum even further. It was working! I was getting everything back under control. I just needed- CRACK! My rigid grip on the frozen wall slipped, one hand coming free from the ice completely. I looked up, horrified, to see a great slab of ice plummeting towards me, closely followed by the scrambling, milky-eyed hulk of the burug falling straight down to me in its wake. This time, I did scream, but I let go of the wall immediately and pushed away from it as hard as I could, flipping ungracefully across the chasm and striking chunks of ice the size of my fist from the side.
I
fell in a shower of blasted ice and vapor, and when I hit the bottom, all the air was driven from my lungs in a hard grunt that fogged up the inside of my faceplate. I knew what was coming and that there was no time for me to escape, so I rolled into a tight ball and clamped my arms tightly over my head. My whole world became a series of thundering impacts that rattled my teeth in my skull and pounded a merciless tattoo on my chest plate like a hundred steel drums. I squeezed my eyes tightly against the onslaught, knowing that if the burug found me, my armor would mean nothing to those horrible jaws. After a short, tense moment, there was a heavy, solid thump, like a one-ton sack of sand being thrown onto a concrete floor. The burug, I thought, trying in a spurt of subconscious paranoia, to think ‘quietly’. As if the damn thing can hear me. Even so, I lay as still as I could and tried to slow my breathing. I didn’t know what senses that thing had, and I had the feeling that any overconfidence or underestimation of the creature on my part would be swiftly corrected via a hooked mandible puncturing my faceplate.
My own shaky panting was all I could hear. It was too loud, no matter how I tried to suppress it. The burug’s legs clicked over the ice in an erratic rhythm, its rattling progress ever closer, ever louder. I felt panic rising up in my chest, heralded by a wave of bile climbing the back of my throat. No. I couldn’t die this way, not here, not like this. Go away! I willed the monster to leave, knowing that nothing I did now would even really irritate the enormous insect. It was right on top of me now, the chatter of its dozens of legs a staccato threat in my ears. This was it. Joanna. I was done for. Oh, Maker, is that you, Joanna? The monster was about to jam its hideous face down through the ice and pluck me out, crush me in its jaws like a piece of hard candy. It probably wouldn’t even notice the armor. Shit, it is you! I’m not crazy! Am I?
Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3) Page 42
