Chapter 14: The Mine
Shade was waiting, watching. He had no body to really give him a firm grasp of where he was, but he hovered ambiguously nonetheless, staring intently at a lone spot on the ground. As he waited, he became conscious of thousands of other souls around him, patiently lingering nearby with a vaguely expectant air, but they were invisible as always. They were all here for the same reason, he knew, and so they waited together.
Glancing away for a moment, he could see the dense forest that surrounded his point of interest. It was really no different than any other forest: the branches were all bare, the leaves buried beneath a foot of snow; the air was cold and bitter, though how he knew this was beyond him. It was an entirely unspectacular location—for now at least.
The appearance of the spot was irrelevant, however. Something was about to happen—he knew it was, he just knew. As much as he wanted to celebrate, as much as he wanted to enjoy the fact that his son was alive and well and Goth was dead once more, he knew that it was far from over. So, he stared at the small, precise point on the snow-covered ground—certain beyond a doubt that the others were all awaiting the same thing—and he wondered what it would mean for the world. He wondered what it would mean for them all.
The ground seemed to tremble as he stared, and he watched more closely still, wondering if he had imagined it. Again, the ground shook, stronger this time—then another tremor.
It's happening, he thought dreadfully.
Slowly, much more slowly than he had expected, a miniscule hole appeared where there had only previously been earth. A very faint, whistling hiss exhaled through the gap as it birthed a network of smaller cracks, splitting open further.
They had done it, he thought grimly. Zotz's miners had broken through.
As though building on its momentum, the ground quickly collapsed around the opening, dilating the hole to several times its original size—large enough for a bat to fit through.
Sure enough, Shade saw a flared nose poke its way out from beneath the earth, tentatively sniffing at the air. With a cold tingle down his spine, he knew what would come next. It would climb out first, then more would follow it; the hole would get wider and deeper, expanding until it consumed everything in sight; and eventually…
But he was wrong. The bat had a hard time clawing itself up onto land, struggling and fighting desperately against the air rushing past it, but its efforts were fruitless. It dragged itself out a little ways, only to be sucked back into the Underworld as a terrible voice rang out in triumph. Shade knew the owner of that voice all too well.
"Free," Zotz said slowly, drawing as much relish from the word as he could, "at last…"
Shade was truly frightened now. He had hoped in vain that this day would never come—especially not so soon. His son had only just defeated Goth, and now Zotz had broken through into the Upper World. It was only a matter of time before he consumed the entire world of the living—only a matter of time before he destroyed everything Nocturna had wrought.
As Shade began to worry about the fate of his family, something happened that caught him off guard—something he never would have believed had he not witnessed it himself.
The hole exploded.
Not imploded—not collapsing inward on itself and sucking every living creature into the Underworld's depths—no. It exploded: it tripled in size, ejecting a terrible rush of wind; and in the upheaval of rock and debris, thousands—no, millions—millions and millions of dead bats were thrust into the world of the living, mingling with the debris, and the…
The sound! Shade gasped. Thousands upon thousands of shards of sound also burst into the Upper World—small fragments of the world Zotz had spun below, he realized. They burst forward in tandem with the torrent of wings and bodies flying through the opening, but neither the fragments nor the bats seemed to be doing so of their own free will. They were being pushed along by a powerful current of air, which sounded eerily like a terrible moan.
It was a moan, Shade realized.
"No!" Zotz yelled. "What is this? This is not what was supposed to happen!"
His kingdom is collapsing! Shade realized stunningly, it's tearing itself to shreds! The air and sound was breaking lose, the billions and billions of souls Zotz had enslaved were bursting through the opening of the mine and being unwittingly cast into Nocturna's afterlife. Zotz didn't seem to have any power over them anymore, for even as he watched the display before him, Shade noticed that the hole was diminishing. It had already shrunk to hardly his old wingspan in width!
Despite its reduced size, bats continued to stream from the mine, pushed along hard by the terrible current. He saw Vampyrum, and Brightwings, and Foxwings, and Freetails, and hundreds of species of bat he had never even known before. Nocturna was fulfilling her promise!
Finally, as the last of the dead made its way through the tiny pinprick of a hole, Zotz gave a final mournful cry, his kingdom in ruins. He had unknowingly brought about his own defeat, entombing himself alone in his own prison.
The forest grew silent again, and in the ensuing peace, Shade felt confident that Zotz was finally locked in his world for good, never to harm another bat. He even caught himself feeling a little sorry for the misguided god who had let his good intentions transform him into such a monster, and he shook his head pityingly.
Wait, he had a head?
He frowned in confusion and nearly felt his heart stop to discover that he had a mouth too—wait, his heart?
Looking down at himself, he realized that he had more than a head and a face. He could see a torso too—fur, arms, legs, wings, veins—everything. He had a body again!
It was a bizarre feeling now, he had to admit. He had gotten so used to being…well, whatever formless spirit had had been before that he wasn't quite sure he really enjoyed having his runty body back—so small and weak. He couldn't decide what it meant either.
However, he wasn't the only one baffled by this turn in events, it seemed. The other spirits he had felt around him earlier were also looking down at themselves curiously, seeming deeply troubled. Some of them must have been dead for thousands of years, he realized—did they even remember what it was like to have a body?
He wondered excitedly if this meant he was alive again. It seemed unlikely, but he felt it was worth a shot. Tentatively, he flew over, slightly clumsy after so long without a body, and tried to set down on a branch. He felt himself slip as his feet made to grip the bark: his claws went straight through, as though they were nothing but a sound illusion. Still, he wasn't disappointed: he hadn't really expected billions of dead bats to be spontaneously resurrected. He was happy enough to have a form again, and to know that the living were safe from Zotz forevermore.
All throughout the forest now, this inconceivable mass of newly freed bats was churning and rolling listlessly, as though none of them had the slightest clue what to do next. Shade counted himself among them.
Suddenly, as though reading his mind, a soft female voice rang out across the woods.
"You are free now," Nocturna said, as a strange, glowing mist formed against the horizon. "You are ready for the next step in your journey."
The voice was so gentle and so warm that Shade saw countless bats fly off towards the horizon immediately, flapping their new wings excitedly as they moved on to whatever Nocturna had awaiting them. Vampyrum and northern bats and other exotic species alike slowly departed towards the strange mist glowing to the west, heading away from their bleak deaths.
To the east, a similar mist formed against the sky, releasing a small but steady trickle of bats as they followed the others to their new lives. They seemed less confident in their path than the others, as though this was all new to them, and Shade understood that they must be the recently deceased. It relieved him to know that they no longer needed to travel through Zotz's terrible Underworld, and he wondered how long a journey it was for them towards the westerly horizon, forever beckoning.
Slowly but surely, the vast crowd of billions thinned until only the small stream of fresh arrivals remained, passing him by with only a slight glance. Some looked worried, others looked relaxed, some even seemed to think they recognized him, but none ever stopped.
Shade felt compelled to go with them, and he knew he would one day, but he forced himself to stay behind for now. He had some unfinished business to tend to.