by R. A. Nargi
“I think I found something that could lead to a lower level. I’ll need to do a little digging, though. More than a little, actually.”
“You need to get out of there.” Chiraine couldn’t keep the panic out of her voice.
“How? There’s no way I can climb out.”
“I’ve got some thermal petards,” Narcissa said. “Mini Bs. We could blow a hole in one of the walls.”
“Negative,” I said. “That would take down the rest of the roof for sure—and bury me in the process. There’s a staircase here that might lead to a tunnel exit. I just need to take some time to clear it.”
“What should we do?” Narcissa asked.
“Send the hourly to Ana-Zhi. Then check the surrounding buildings again. Look on the outside too. There’s got to be a connection.”
10
It took me nearly an hour to clear enough debris out of the stairwell to be able to squeeze through. I kept Chiraine and Narcissa up to speed on my progress and they reported that they had not found any tunnel entrances within fifty meters of the Antrum.
That wasn’t good.
“Keep looking. I’m about to see where this staircase leads.”
The beams of my helmet lamp cut through the darkness as I crawled through the tight passage I’d created in the junk that filled the stairwell. Once I got clear, I found myself in a stone staircase that went down about five meters before connecting with a narrow tunnel that stretched off to the north. Just as I had suspected.
I brushed the dust from my suit and double-checked my bio support module. I didn’t want to run out of air somewhere deep down below an ancient temple. Yueld’s atmosphere was nominally breathable, although the O2 levels were on the low side. I didn’t want to take any chances, though.
Readying the radiant blaster I had borrowed from Chiraine, I slowly made my way forward. The tunnel was made of tightly fitted stone blocks. It was fairly narrow: not more than two meters wide, but the ceiling was tall enough to accommodate the height of a Yueldian. It felt like it was sloping down, but very gradually.
“I’m in a tunnel,” I said over the comm. “Looks like it is heading due north. Concentrate your search there.”
A burst of static sounded in my ear, obscuring a garbled response.
“Come again,” I said.
Again, the response was garbled so much I couldn’t make it out. Hopefully, Chiraine and Narcissa were hearing me better than I was hearing them.
The tunnel continued for fifteen more meters before turning ninety degrees to the east. As I walked, I studied the walls, floor, and ceiling, but I didn’t see any sort of signage or directional markings. I also didn’t see any footprints—other than my own. That was a bit surprising.
The last expedition to come through here was nearly thirty years ago. I would have thought there might be some sign of them. But maybe not. Maybe this place generated a lot of dust. Especially if the roof caved in.
The tunnel turned again, back to the south, and I realized that telling Chiraine and Narcissa to search to the north might not have been the smartest thing to say. Like the streets above, this tunnel was a jumbled maze.
A maze.
I remembered something my father had told me when I was a kid. We were visiting the Dwarhoon caverns on Mimbala. In one of the caverns, there was a labyrinth with walls carved from dense fungus. These walls were less than a meter tall—probably because the ancient Mimbalans were not very tall—so there was no danger of getting lost. But still, the place freaked me out.
When I asked my dad why there was a labyrinth built inside a cavern, he told me something about the labyrinth being constructed as a protective measure, almost like a jail cell or a trap for some malevolent creature. I couldn’t remember the details of our conversation, but I remembered being really scared. What were the Mimbalans trying to keep locked up with that maze?
And it got me thinking about the maze-like alleys above and this twisting tunnel. What if the mazes here in the Coliseum had a similar function? What if they were some kind of symbolic protection?
But from what?
The tunnel turned again—to the east—and opened into a chamber, roughly ten meters by fifteen. The chamber was empty except for some broken pieces of pottery, but there was a wide passage in the north wall with another staircase heading down.
I was heading deeper and deeper underground, but I felt like I didn’t have a choice. I needed to figure out where this tunnel led.
The staircase continued downward for a dozen meters or so and then the passage leveled out. It was tough to determine where I was in relation to the Antrum. What I should have done was set a marker on the Aura’s geo app, but I hadn’t been thinking.
After more twists and turns, the tunnel ended in a T. It seemed like I could go either east or west. This was frustrating. Each section of the tunnel looked the same. No marks in the dust. No marks on the walls.
Screw it. I keyed on my judder knife and etched an arrow pointing west. Why the hell not?
I didn’t get more than a dozen meters when the tunnel branched again. This time it forked into three identical-looking passages all heading north.
I investigated all three and discovered that the center passage went straight north, while the others veered gently off to the east and west.
After marking the center passage, I proceeded to jog down it. I was getting really antsy now and just wanted to find a staircase back up to the surface. This northern passage splintered off into two more and then two more after that.
I spent the next hour or so wandering through the maze of tunnels and even some small empty rooms, before I had to admit defeat. I was just going to have to retrace my steps and figure out a way to climb out of the Antrum. Chiraine and Narcissa must be freaking out by now.
Moving quickly, I headed back the way I came. After ten meters, the northern tunnel terminated in an east/west passage.
My heart froze. There was no mark on the wall.
I looked down. No bootprints in the dust.
How could this be?
Maybe I missed a turn. I walked back south, following my fresh prints. After five minutes of walking, my bootprints were gone. They didn’t fade away, either. They just stopped.
This was impossible.
I doubled back again to the T-junction where I had expected to find a mark on the wall.
There was no T.
The tunnel just turned west. There was no mark on the wall, no bootprints. Nothing.
My head began to feel light. What was going on? I slumped down, seated on the ground with my back against the tunnel wall. Sweat trickled down my spine and my ears began to ring. I gulped air, trying to calm myself.
Once again I tried to reach Chiraine and Narcissa on the comm, but this time there was no static and no garbled audio.
There was just dead air. Utter silence.
I leaned back and closed my eyes.
I’m not sure how long I stayed like that—on the ground, in some bizarre underground maze that seemed to shift and swallow up my bootprints.
But I knew I had to pull myself together. And I had to do it right now.
The only option I had was to move forward. And I had to try to keep moving in the same direction. I set a marker on my Aura as a reference point and set the geo app to record my progress relative to the marker. That might help me stay on course. Should I also risk activating the emergency distress function? The range of the low frequency signal was less than a hundred kilometers, but if a Mayir survey drone was in the vicinity, it would certainly pick the signal up.
Better not to risk that yet. I wanted to see how much progress I could make trying to travel in a straight line. If I could reach edge of this underground complex, I’d have a better chance of mapping it and not wandering around aimlessly until my suit gave out.
I started to walk down the tunnel—south, according to my Aura—until I reached a fork. Southeast or southwest.
I chose southeast and kept going,
not even bothering to mark the passage. My plan was to continue south no matter what. Southeast was my second choice.
This strategy actually worked out pretty well over the next half hour. I felt like I was making progress. Sure, all the tunnels looked the same, but according to my Aura, I had traveled almost half a kilometer southeast of where I had set my marker.
The core of the Coliseum spanned roughly one square kilometer, so it was likely that I was somewhere outside of that. I tried to remember the rough area of the Umbanor butte itself. I want to say that it was maybe two kilometers by two kilometers, but I couldn’t be sure. The only thing I knew was that these tunnels couldn’t go on forever.
I set off again, keeping south, and occasionally southeast. And then I found the pit.
The tunnel ended in a small circular room. It was empty except for a man-sized—or maybe Yueldian-sized—hole in the ground with a wooden ladder sticking out of it.
My Aura registered a significant jump in the temperature in this room. It was a good ten degrees hotter here.
Peeking down into the pit, I saw a rough earthen floor three meters down and another tunnel running south.
I also spotted something else.
Bones.
I had to investigate. This was the first variation in my surroundings for several hours. Plus, who can resist bones?
I climbed down into the pit. The air was even warmer down here. Close to thirty-two degrees. And over ninety percent humidity. I squatted down and poked the bones with my knife. One looked like a forearm bone, and the other looked like part of a spine. Human-like, but maybe fifty percent larger. Could be Yueldian. Both bones were partially smeared with a translucent goo. When I pulled my knife away, viscous strands stretched back to the bones. It reminded me of Fun Gum.
Unlike the passages above—which were constructed from stone blocks—the tunnel down here appeared to have been dug out of the earth. I ran my knife along one wall, and bits of a sandstone-like substance flaked off.
Interesting.
As I followed the tunnel south, I came across more bones, as well as pieces of pottery, crumbled bits of statues, and even some metal objects I couldn’t identify. Everything was coated with the goo.
I also registered a faint humming sound. I actually felt it more than I heard it. The frequency was very low—barely audible—but I could feel the vibration in my bones and also when I touched the surface of the tunnel.
This was either very bad or very good. I wasn’t sure which. But, again, I had no choice but to continue.
The tunnel sloped noticeably downward, but ran completely straight and due south. I must have gone another couple of hundred meters before I sensed what might be a faint glow up ahead. When I killed my helmet lamp, I could tell for sure. There was definitely something glowing ahead.
Hope surged within me. Maybe I had finally discovered a way out of this hellish maze. I redoubled my efforts and sprinted towards the glow.
I almost didn’t see it in time, but caught myself before plunging off the edge of a cliff.
The tunnel abruptly ended and three or four meters below me stretched a large natural cavern. And right there in the center of the cavern was the source of glowing light.
It wasn’t a passage out.
The source of the glow was some kind of object at the top of a dark mound. The mound stood a half-dozen meters tall and took up most of the cavern.
I couldn’t make out what the glowing object was, but I sure as hell was going to find out.
Carefully, I climbed down the cliff, stepping over more goo-encrusted bones and other debris. And as I approached the mound, the beams of my head lamps cut through the thick air and illuminated a grisly sight.
The mound itself was made of encrusted bones. But not just bones. Mummified body parts. Arms, legs, thoraxes, heads. They must be the remains of ancient Yueldians. All preserved and glued together with that translucent gelatinous goo, like some weird organic concrete.
As I stared at the mound, trying to make sense of how it came to be, I saw other detritus fused in with the bones and desiccated body parts. Broken ceremonial objects, tools, artwork, bowls and vessels—and other man-made objects I couldn’t identify. It all formed a grotesque amalgam.
Out of the corner of my eye, I registered movement.
The mound shifted and roiled in slow motion. I staggered back, not fully believing my eyes.
Holy fuck! This thing was alive!
Then I got a good look at the bright object atop the seething mound. It appeared to be a meter-high stump—like the stump of a tree—but made of a glowing green material that was wet and fleshy and translucent. At the top of the stump were dozens of thick tendrils, reaching out like fingers and slowly moving of their own accord. And then I realized that this was also the source of the low humming sound.
Heart pounding, I increased the magnification on my visor. Now I could make out various polyps and lobes at the base of the tendrils. These quivered and pulsed as the tendrils reached out and grasped at nothing in particular.
What was this thing?
It looked for all the world like an oversized glowing sea anemone, but there was nothing in my memory about a life form on Yueld even vaguely resembling this.
And then the mound heaved and something shot out at me!
It was a glowing tentacle, as thick around as my waist. I slammed back against the rock wall, trying to get away from the thing. But it rose up in front of me, threateningly, like a giant snake.
The end of the tentacle formed into a large round polyp, glistening, and dripping with slime. It bobbed in front of my face and then split open to reveal a single eye.
My blood ran cold and I was paralyzed as I stared into this alien eye with three pupils.
Then the eye moved closer and closer, regarding me with an eerie intelligence, until it was centimeters from my face.
I managed to push through my fear and flicked on my judder knife. Acting purely on instinct, I whipped it around to slice at the tentacle.
But the moment the sonic blade made contact with the tentacle, a jolt ran through my arm as if I had electrocuted myself. The knife went spinning from my grip.
I glanced up, expecting to see a severed tentacle, perhaps spouting alien bodily fluids, but the appendage was intact. And moving ever closer to my head.
Fuck me.
Now there were more tentacles—a dozen or so—snaking out of the mound. They shot forward, almost in unison, and slapped against the stone cliff on either side of me with a wet-sounding thwap.
I was pinned down, but I wouldn’t go without a fight.
My hand found the radiant blaster on my belt and slowly I drew it from its holster. I eased it up so I could get a shot at the tentacle.
But I never got the chance.
Against my will, my fingers relaxed and the RB fell from my grip.
Then it was like all my muscles failed at once and I was unable to stand. I slumped down on my ass, back against the cliff wall.
The eye tentacle followed me down. Getting closer.
And closer.
This was it. This was how I was going to die. Devoured by some alien mound creature far below an ancient temple. My bones would join the thousands of others, cemented together in its grotesque cocoon.
I want to say that I was brave in those last moments—that I spit in the eye of the alien tentacle.
But I wasn’t.
I was shared shitless.
And so when the tentacle brushed my cheek, gently, more tenderly than Lir had ever touched me, I welcomed it.
I welcomed the release into nothingness.
11
In the milliseconds after your body dies, does your brain have one last hurrah?
That’s what I wondered as the dream enveloped me.
I found myself on the blasted black volcanic cliff that was both familiar and so very strange.
This was the dreamscape where I had encountered the scorpion creature. I knew it was a
dream, but it felt incredibly real.
Superheated air tinged with sulfur burned my throat. I stood upon broken stone, cut by rivulets of lava. In the distance, the dark castle loomed, shrouded in tendrils of toxic-looking black mist.
The ground rumbled and jumped, fracturing even further. Geyser sprays of lava escaped from the earth in plumes all across the landscape.
And then that ear-splitting cry and a cascade of boulders heralded the appearance of the gigantic horror that was the scorpion creature. It rose up, blotting out the sun, a clacking, chittering mass of razor-sharp claws, stingers, and bladed armored limbs.
You have returned. The voice was low and menacing. But there was a hint of something else that I couldn’t quite identify.
I didn’t dare turn my back on the creature, but I tried to get away. The problem was that I was trapped on the edge of the rocky ridge. Below me was a hundred-meter drop into a lava lake.
Not good.
This time there is no escape.
I rushed along the edge of the ridge, trying not to lose my balance on the loose rocks.
The creature’s tail smashed down in front of me, cutting off my route, and causing the ground to jump. The impact sent up a cloud of burning dust which seared my lungs, and the force knocked me to my knees. I coughed in pain and tried to scramble away.
Then a gigantic clawed foot slammed me down deeper into the ground. The pressure was unbearable. My vision darkened and I thought how ironic it was that I was dying twice—once in real life and once in a dream.
But another voice sounded in my mind. Lighter. Almost like music.
Use the gift I have given you.
It didn’t make any sense. What gift?
I tried to reach for a weapon at my belt, but the pressure was too great. I felt the air being squeezed from my lungs.
Use your mind, Jannigan Beck.
My mind? How?
I felt my ribs crack and my muscles tear. Pain sliced through me.
Make it stop, I cried silently. Let me d—
