“Yes, walls covered with little passages are weak, right? We should be able to dig through them quickly.”
“Weak is a relative word, Eddy. Weaker than solid stone, but not so weak we’ll be able to dig to the surface and escape before we’re boiled alive.”
“No. But maybe Borgle could make it to where Rustle came from to where the thieves are.”
“Maybe, but what good would it do?” she asked.
“It would give us a way to get the thieves here, to be destroyed by the molten stone,” Eddy said.
“But why would they come here?” Mab said. “If they are mindless, they cannot be led. And if they have minds, they would not come to their deaths. And besides, that thing is going to escape its bonds and bash through the roof and then what good will the molten stone do at all?”
“If you can get me back to the chamber with the thieves, I can get them here,” Rustle said.
“If you can get them here, we can keep the Great Ancient here,” Eddy said.
“What? What are you talking about? We should be talking about getting out of here. Not keeping things here!”
“We shall be heroes, Mab!” Eddy said.
He threw an arm around her and hauled her off Borgle’s back.
“Borgle, go! Dig in the direction Rustle tells you.”
The fairy darted off. Borgle followed, chiming and whirring happily now that it had orders.
Eddy worked his tail madly. With his own weight, hers, and the weight of the hammer, it was almost more than he could manage, but he grunted and swam upward.
“Where are you going? What are you doing?” Mab cried.
She knew better than to struggle, as the bottom of the chamber was already beginning to fill with molten stone and she certainly didn’t want to end up there. But where they were headed wasn’t much better.
“It is a monster! We are traveling up toward the head. You do not to the head of a monster!”
“You want to kill a monster, you strike its head,” Eddy said.
“We weren’t talking about killing it. We were talking about keeping it here. And I didn’t even agree to that!” she said.
“Fine,” Eddy bobbed aside, barely avoiding a shifting tentacle. “If we wanted to keep something here, how would we do that?”
“We’d die trying!”
“So what would we die trying to do?”
Mab growled. “We’ll be nothing but pests to this thing.”
“Yes. Yes! That is right, Mab! You are so smart! We will be pests. And it will be so busy slapping at the pest it will not get out!”
“That’s not what I said at all!” Mab said, holding tight as he swam even faster.
#
Cul munched happily on some clams he’d found in the pantry while Cora snacked on a few of the sweets.
“I tell you,” Cora said. “I’m starting to see how someone could get past feeling cooped up in a place like this. And that Eddy must be a good miner. Look at the jewelry she’s made with the gems.”
“She’s very talented. I think… Do you feel that?” Cul said.
A low, ominous rumble rolled across the sea floor.
“No…” Cora said.
“Out! Out in the open!” Mira called.
Cul and Cora did as they were told, swimming out of the house and over the city. The rest of the residents had done the same. The sea rolled viciously. The merfolk, free from their homes, bobbed harmlessly. The same could not be said for their homes. The ground rattled like never before. Homes already damaged by the prior quake crumbled. It was devastating, and had the people of the village not still been alert from the last disaster, lives may have been lost. Instead, the people of Barnacle watched as homes that had stood for generations finally succumbed. But there was something different this time. The quake continued. It would not relent.
“Eddy…” Mira said, her arms clutching the equipment she’d borrowed.
Cul and Cora matched her gaze, off to the open sea, toward the rift.
“If he’s still out there, he—” Cul began.
“He needs our help!” Mira said. “Come on everyone! My brother is at the rift! He could be hurt!”
Cora slapped Cul’s shoulder. “Bult is there, too!”
“Are you mad, girl?” called a voice from below. “Our homes are destroyed! And the quake is still rumbling!”
“We must wait until it stops,” called another.
Mira looked to the open sea again.
“I don’t think it is going to stop… It feels different this time.” She thrust the equipment into Cul’s arms. “Come with me. Please!”
“You go with her,” Cora said. “I’ll go to the others. Sound the alert when you’re closer, so they can find it. The drift does not leave one of their own behind if they are in peril. We’ll meet you there as soon as we can get there.”
#
“What am I doing, what am I doing, what am I doing?” Rustle squealed to himself as he squeezed through tiny tunnels.
Borgle was behind him, easily shattering the weakened stone, following in the direction he led. He was blazing a new trail now, using his growing knowledge of navigation via the flow of the water to find his way in the shortest possible path to the thieves.
“There’s a machine destroying the tunnel behind me. I’m heading to a chamber filled with ancient horrors. And if I reach it, I’m supposed to lead them back to another ancient horror!” He squeezed through a fresh fissure. “So why am I excited?”
Stone shattered behind him. Ahead, he could hear the clack and claw of the creatures he’d fled just minutes before.
“Eddy’s broken me. Broken my mind with his adventure business.” He grinned, almost mad with glee. “But I’ve got to make it home. Because not even the elder has done something like this!”
He squirmed through the final fissure, tumbling into the open chamber that held the thieves.
“Hello!” he bellowed, his musical voice echoing off the walls. “Look over here!”
He flared his glow as bright as he could manage. Gradually, the insect-like forms gathered around him. They kept their distance at first, as if just as confused by his behavior as he was.
“Don’t be scared! I know you’re thieves! Hungry for fresh things to steal. Well you won’t find anything fresher in these dead tunnels than me and my friends!”
Behind him, Borgle shattered through the wall. Its two functional eyes focused on the bizarre creatures before it. A curious whir was the only response.
The thieves moved closer. As confused as they might have been by Rustle, it wasn’t half as enticed they were by Borgle. Perhaps it was the nature of its construction, the dash of divine in its design. Or perhaps it was that they instinctively knew just what Borgle was designed for. Whatever the cause, the thieves near enough to see Borgle by the fairy’s glow, began to scratch and claw at the machine.
Borgle’s many claws slapped and slashed at those that came close, but the press of creatures became ever thicker.
“Borgle, go back to the chamber! Go back the way you came!” Rustle ordered.
The flaw in their plan became immediately apparent. Borgle didn’t understand Rustle. And Borgle did not act without orders. The orders thus far had been to follow. But the press of creatures, testing the durability of the mining mechanism, was entirely blocking the way back. And as more of them arrived, it was only getting worse.
Rustle narrowed his eyes and tried to work out what to do. An idea came to mind. It was only half-formed when he decided it was the only way. He focused his thoughts and gathered to mind the words of the one spell he’d properly learned from Eddy’s book. He’d cast it enough times, felt what happened with each utterance of each syllable, that he was beginning to understand just what it was the individual words meant. What each of the words did. And he knew enough of magic to know that spells were fragile things, things that could misbehave if poorly cast. But the spell as he’d learned it couldn’t do what he needed from it now. So he
made his best guess, inserted his own words, and spoke it aloud with all of the power he could funnel into the phrase.
With the final word, he cast the spell. As before, ribbons of energy cast from him. But this time, rather than blasting in all directions, or merely forward in a single burst, the energy sought out the thieves. It wrapped about them, coiling about their terrible limbs and encapsulating their joints. They became still, creaking and cracking against the ice, but for the moment immobilized by it.
He didn’t waste any time. Moving with desperate speed and little care, he wormed his way through the press of temporarily immobilized creatures until he came to Borgle. The digger was untouched by the magic, as Rustle had intended. It was grinding angrily, slapping against the nearest of the thieves.
“Come on,” Rustle said. “If all you know is follow, follow.”
He darted into the tunnel Borgle had left behind. The digger pivoted and followed, clicking and chiming happily, as though the greater irritation had not been the monstrosities attempting to destroy it, but the lack of fresh instructions. Borgle forced the blocking thieves aside and swam forward.
The pair moved unimpeded through the smooth-walled tunnel Borgle had produced. The tangle of frozen thieves briefly blocked the way for the rest, but already motion was returning.
“I only hope Eddy has been doing some good,” Rustle said.
#
“This isn’t doing any good!” Mab barked.
As Eddy adjusted to the load, he’d managed to cut closer and closer to the Great Ancient without threat of being struck. Its anger only seemed to be growing.
“What do you mean!” Eddy said, sweeping aside as a tentacle swept past. “It is not escaping, and we are not dead. These are the two things we want!”
“But look at the walls! Look at the chains. If this keeps up the chamber will collapse on its own. It might survive that, we definitely won’t, and then it won’t need to escape, because it’ll already be out.”
He darted into a side tunnel about midway up the chamber to catch his breath.
“It is getting very much warm in this place, too,” he admitted.
“Of course it is. That lava’s got to be almost to the tentacles by now, and it’s flowing faster than ever. It’s a wonder we aren’t dead already. I think that thing is warding off the heat somehow, trying to keep itself alive.”
“So that is why it is not fast enough to kill us. This is good! But you are right. Much longer and there will not be a place to hold all of the molten stone. What do we need to do?”
“We need to do some damage. Immobilize some of the parts that are doing the struggling.”
The sound of shearing metal briefly eclipsed the boiling and rumbling. One of the chains had broken. A moment later a tentacle curled up and probed at the entrance to their alcove.
“Bad!” Eddy shouted.
He lashed at the tentacle. Though it moved like the supple limb of a squid, when the blunt tip of the chisel struck the hide, it may as well have been striking stone.
He dropped Mab to the sloped stone floor and grabbed the chisel with both hands to drive it home again. This time, amazingly, it bit into the hide. It was barely anything at all, but it was more than nothing.
“Wait. Hold it there.” She drew Dua’s hammer. “I think maybe your demigod may have had some tricks up her sleeve after all.”
She raised the hammer high and drove it home. The chisel broke the surface and released a plume of horrible green blood into the water. The tentacle yanked from the alcove. Eddy was barely able to hold onto the chisel. The struggling beast roared.
Eddy smiled. The Great Ancient’s blood was still thick on the tip of the tool.
“We are a good team! Come! I will hold, you will hammer.”
“But there’s nothing to stand on out there,” Mab said.
“There is a big monster! Plenty to stand on.”
He grabbed her and swam out into the open.
“Nothing down here. Tentacles move too much. And they’re up and down. Joints. Those are the things to hit.” He swam upward, dodging every attack, until he came to the point where one of the spindly arms jutted from the armored body.
He dropped Mab to the arm, then darted down and positioned the chisel right at the joint.
“Hit it!” Eddy urged.
Mab was visibly smoldering with rage and fear, but she knew better than to waste her breath. At this moment, it was better to swing the hammer, do the damage. As insane as this all was, it might well be the only thing that would give them a chance to survive.
She drove the chisel home. She had time for three sharp blows, enough to drive it hilt deep, before the Great Ancient could maneuver itself to have slack enough to reach where they were attacking. Eddy snatched her and dragged her farther up.
“What next?” Eddy said.
“Next you stop hauling me around and start treating this with the proper—”
The Great Ancient snapped at them. Eddy dropped back. The jaws fell short of the attack, but the rush of water from between them forced him farther back. A snatching claw caught them and squeezed them both tight.
Eddy propped a hand against each of the two claws. His strength was barely enough to budge them, but it was sufficient to let Mab slip free.
“No one tries to kill Mab Mill-Mason…” she growled.
She planted her boots as steadily as she could on the claw that shifted beneath her. She raised the hammer high and brought it down. The divine tool opened a fracture. Under her dwarven strength and expertise, she pummeled the monster’s wrist. Five solid blows did enough to loosen the grip enough for Eddy to reach out with the chisel. A final blow from Mab drove it home and the claw opened. Eddy swam out and grabbed Mab, but the clutch had taken its toll. He could barely keep them aloft.
“This is going badly, Mab,” he said, thrusting his tail against the arm as they worked their way farther upward.
“Never mind that. Get us to the head. I’m going to drive that chisel of yours right into its brain,” she snarled.
“I will try!”
He flopped and flailed himself, navigating up along the arm only slightly faster that Mab would have been able to climb on her own.
Mab glanced at him in time to see his sharp-toothed grin widening.
“What are you happy about?”
“If my tail doesn’t get better, at least a little, then we might be in trouble.”
“In more trouble, you mean.”
He grunted, flapping his tail desperately to keep them on the shifting arm.
“If we fall, or this thing knocks us down, I don’t know if I can carry us both for long. We will fall into molten stone.”
Mab gripped him a little tighter.
“And that makes you happy.”
“Very happy!”
The beast released a rumbling roar and shifted its arm. Eddy jabbed the chisel down into the arm, catching in a divot in its hide to keep them from falling.
“The more danger, the closer the adventure is to ending! We are almost there!”
They reached what would for lack of a better term be called the thing’s shoulder. Eddy stowed the chisel and worked his free arm and tail in tandem to scale the side of the beast’s neck and head. He couldn’t move constantly. When the creature moved more vigorously, he had to pause and hold tighter. And vigorous motions were becoming more and more common.
The water was growing warmer. The glow from the rising lava was now enough for both his and Mab’s sensitive eyes to see far more of the walls than they previously could.
“This was already happening,” Eddy said.
“Talk sense or don’t talk!” Mab barked.
“Look! That chain is weak. And that loop on the wall, pulled free. And you can see the breaks are old.” He took advantage of a pause in motion to vault upward to his next grip. “This was breaking free. Just very slow.”
“So it would have eventually gotten loose.”
“And so w
e must be sure to kill it.”
They worked their way up the side of its head, but as they went, the hide became harder and smoother. There was a short distance left to go, but he simply lacked the means to scale it.
“Hold the hammer tight, Mab!” Eddy said.
“Don’t you dare—”
Eddy heaved Mab with all his might, lofting her up over the curve of the beast’s head. She cried out, then landed with a thump. Eddy scrabbled with both hands and his tail. Just as he was sliding up over the slope of the creature’s skull, she was sliding back in the other direction. He thumped into her from below, but the momentum just wasn’t enough. They were both sliding down.
Then it happened. They with no firm grip, the merest twitch of the ancient’s head hurled them into the open shaft to plummet down.
“Hold onto me! Hold onto me!” Mab squealed. “I swear, if you let me die, I’ll kill you!”
Mab let go of the heavy hammer. He quickly caught it before it fell away.
“Are you insane!” she screeched. “You might be able to save us without that weight!”
“We need it! It is divine!”
Eddy’s teeth clenched in agony as he tried to power through the accumulation of injuries, but the pair of them were more than his body could handle. The water was scalding, and growing more so. At this rate, they would be boiled alive before they even reached the lava. His swimming brought him to the wall, where he hoped to grab hold of something, but the surface of the stone was radiating nearly as much heat as the molten rock below. He couldn’t stay near it. They were too far down now. They couldn’t stay here, they couldn’t drop farther. Up was the only way to safety.
He never even considered releasing Mab. That wasn’t what an adventurer would do. It wasn’t what a hero would do. And even if it was, it wasn’t what he would do.
Eddy shut his eyes and grunted through the pain. Mab squealed again, then suddenly lurched upward. In a heartbeat, he found that rather than dragging him down, Mab was dragging him upward. He opened his eyes.
“Borgle!” he crowed. “You have very much good timing!”
The mechanism was holding onto Mab, who was doing an impressive job of being simultaneously relieved, terrified, grateful, and furious. Rustle was somewhat unheroically clinging to Borgle’s nose, the mechanism able to swim far more quickly than he could fly. One of Borgle’s other claws reached around to support Eddy directly.
The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy Page 25
