I was nine years old the day I died. I had turned nine only a few months before.
That day, my mother had laughed and sung as she told me what a handsome man I was becoming. She only ever had two days off a year: Sanguinala and Remembrance Day. That was her third. The day after would be her fourth.
Mother never looked at me on the fourth day. I had just been in the light of her love, but it was like I had never been her son.
That same day, Kullie hit me. She bruised my shoulder because I got the bigger piece of cake.
She'd never hit me before. It made Mother mad. She was going to send my sister to her room without her smaller piece, but I asked her not to. My sister got to stay; Mother never listened to me before.
Kullie cried the day after my birthday. She hugged me tight. It hurt my shoulder. Maybe she was never mad about the cake.
The Angel in Black came to our door the day I left. He didn't ask me if I was ready. He told me I must be, but I couldn't help but let him know I was afraid. He looked me right in the eyes and told me I would never be afraid again. I would know no-
"Whatcha writing?" the pesky voice to my left asked. The black leather bound book snapped shut and hid away in my pack.
I look at him, see his pale brown eyes searching my flat face. He's looking for any crack in my armor, any flaw to exploit and get me talking. He won't find it here, in the safest cavity we could find today, not even with the glow globe's dim yellow light.
His gaze challenges my scowl and he rolls his eyes, "You're no fun."
"You're supposed to be asleep," I counter. It was my watch, and if he didn't sleep now he'd complain all the way through the next chamber. Even if we hadn't encountered any of the other Pilgrims for a time, we discovered the work of the worst of them two weeks ago.
The idea that cave beasts, and not one of our own, had killed the two kids was an easy one for Lonor to adopt. But, every time I closed my eyes the one with the ratty jacket stared back with his eyeless face.
No Underpredator would kill like that and not strip the corpse of everything it could swallow. All the more reason to not risk his whining.
"I can't sleep," he says simply.
"Why not?"
"Don't wanna forget what my bed felt like."
My old bed was hard to forget, too. It had been stiff, and Kullie was always stealing the blanket. That faint memory causes my back muscles to shift involuntarily, like it was mistaking the hard wall I was propped up against for that unforgiving mattress.
Something sharp prods my back and I shove a hand there to retrieve it. An uneven, jagged stone, blue-gray, like the rest of the cavern, and as large as my palm. Heavy eyes stare at the point before it's stowed in a jacket inner-pocket.
My neighbor grumbles as he tosses and turns. A sigh, one of the many let out in the months since we met, slips out as I throw him the blanket that just covered my lap. The chill in our hidey-hole coaxes a shiver out immediately.
"Thanks Avareal," he mumbles to me and rolls my blanket into a makeshift pillow. Another shiver courses through my bones but, soon enough, he stops fussing. At least he's a silent sleeper.
My need to write about that day fades, and now so does the glow-globe. Darkness creeps in alongside the silence.
Fear of the dark always seemed silly to me. Kullie was frightened by it the most. But, on the nights she ran to our mother's room for comfort she always made sure to brave the shadows long enough to tuck me in tight.
With no blanket, and no one to seek comfort beside, the darkness was harder to confront.
The morning, as much of one as it could be here in the Undercaverns, came quickly, at least. The chronometer (the chronometer, since my companion skillfully dropped his down a fissure the day after we found the pair) buzzes inside my jacket like an angry dancer, the stone interloper its partner. Time to move.
The camp is halfway packed while my companion has yet to wake up. Grumbling, I deliver a swift kick to his back and he wakes up immediately. "Let's move, Lonor," I say as the last of my things are tucked away.
The trail I took us today, as much as a winding series of increasingly smaller tunnels could be called a trail, was one of the back ways. Too many of the others would be taking the worker tunnels. The ones we hunched and crawled through now, with inferior veins of minerals shining dully in the dimmed glow globe light, were carved for Ratlings to scurry through without disturbing their larger Human cousins.
At least, that's how Lonor's dad had explained it, according to Lonor. Regardless of how he knew about them, he was the one to find them. His nose for smaller details gone otherwise unnoticed was one of the reasons I was thankful to meet my lazy, whining fellow. Though that appreciation was short-lived.
Our budding "friendship" sprouted during the second week of the Pilgrimage. The confusion brought on by the throng of Artomitan children was easy to forget, but the growing absence of human contact was harder to rebuke.
Two weeks into the pilgrimage and my reservoir of hope was dry. The thought of home, of Mother and Kullie, had gotten too heavy to bear. Lost and alone in some neglected cave, I found a corner to hide in and give up.
But, along came a glow of soft light casually bouncing into my hideaway, the confused mumbling of its handler reaching me before I could even see if they were human. Though he walked and warbled like a scorned pup, as I would eventually discover, Lonor was indeed human. Being house broken was still up for debate.
What a blessing he was, though, as a procurer of items I wouldn't have imagined could be found in the empty Undercaverns. He came with the glow-globe, and he managed to find the emergency kits that contained our chronometers hidden in some false rock I had ignored. "The perks of having an Underminer dad," he explained.
The perks of having a father, I thought.
It only took a couple of weeks to realize it was all luck. We had made progress with him leading, sure, backtracking was as common as making progress. I took the reins after he managed to take us through the same cavern three times in one day. I didn't think he did it out of malice, just a misplaced intent to impress.
But, with my sense of direction (and the scant knowledge from a parent who actually worked in the mines) we had made what I would call great progress, though the sheen of untouched ore lined the cave's walls everywhere all the same.
For all the benedictions and rituals the black-clad Angel had bestowed on the flock, they deemed we were worthy of only two pieces of knowledge: The Pilgrimage would take us to the surface, and the dangers we faced along the way would reveal all he needed to know about us.
A sudden breeze, cool but carrying a puff of must along with it, snaps me back to the present. "Tunnel's getting wider. There must be a mining-hub up ahead," I say.
"Maybe we can find another cache," Lonor hoped as he cradled the dimming glow-globe, "This thing won't last much longer if you keep staying up to scribble."
I roll my eyes, though my back remains facing him. He was right to an extent. Whatever he was lucky to find in that cache months ago would need to be replaced. I meant to give him the small satisfaction of asking what to look for when the air around us suddenly thinned.
Each breath I took required more effort than the last. Every step felt as though someone had tied weights to them, each with increasing heft. I could tell, even with my back turned, that Lonor began feeling the same in this sloped tunnel. We were ascending. Martyred Prota, as the Elders called it, was just within reach.
Cresting the top of the incline revealed a sight that truly took my breath away: stretched out before us was a vast cavern, surely as big as Undercity Alpha, my home. Abandoned mining equipment was strewn about everywhere. Or, at least, that's all I could assume about a place resting within pervading darkness.
"How big do you think this place is?" asked Lonor, giving voice to my thoughts. He made no attempt to hide the astonishment on his bronze face, but neither could I.
"Big enough to get lost in," I said, "For us… And whatever's already here."
"The ghosts of trapped miners looking to escape in the stolen body of some unsuspecting explorer must haunt these halls." He did his best to sound like some forlorn spirit speaking from beyond the veil and ran his fingers up my arm like creepy little spiders.
A swift swat of my hand chases his attempt at humor away, "I was thinking more like Ferro-beasts." Not as scary as ghosts and spirits, but that monster and its fifty centimeters-long fangs were real.
"Oh, right. Those." Lonor paled, suddenly not as enthusiastic about heading onwards. I try to reassure him with a pat on the shoulder, but it feels forced. I hide my embarrassment by peering over the edge.
The cliff is maybe twelve meters from the ground, but barely anything below us was discernible without real light. Lonor was gripping the glow globe tight, but I grab it. With two quick tugs it's freed. On the brightest setting, its battery would die quickly, but it could make the decision between descending here or finding another way down trivial. It just needed to be below us.
It's a deceptively sturdy thing, and so could survive the drop with ease. Lonor wasn't as sure. He grasps my shoulder desperately, jerking me forward and uttering "Wait!"
The globe jettisons from my grasp and streaks into the chamber like a shooting star. I wouldn't be so upset if the unintentional shove didn't take me over the edge too.
Weightlessness is a funny thing. To me, the idea of flying through the air like the birds of Martyred Prota once did was a freeing thought. This was more like plummeting. I sightlessly reach for anything to catch me, and luckily, my trembling fingers find purchase. Cold, sharp rock keeps me from falling down any further, but not before momentum slams me into the cliff-face and knocks the air out of my lungs again.
"Oh, frak!" Lonor called out, unhelpfully. He's staring down from the cliff, mouth hanging open dumbly, a meter or so above.
A scream tries to force its way out of me. All my frustration begs to be unleashed so as to blame his useless wandering from months ago for bringing us, bringing me, to this point. Restraint prevails for just a moment before deciding that screaming my head off at him would make me feel so much better, even if the fear coursing through me would turn it into nothing more than an incoherent screech.
A tickle at the base of my skull causes the scream to catch in my throat. It stretches across the back of my head like unfurling, gnarled fingers opening the window of my mind to let a voice through.
It's meek, despite the way it overtakes all my thoughts, D-do not worry, it stutters, D-drop, and you will be caught.
Lonor was reaching down now, having gotten over his panic. He struggles and nearly falls as he tries to grab my hand, much to his credit, but he is just outside of reach and my fingers feel like they're about to pop out of their joints. He's just about to reach me, I know without even needing to look. But I can't help but gaze into the yawning black below. Something, or someone, moves under the cover of the shadows before my gaze seems to freeze it in place.
I blink tears, of both pain and frustration, out of my eyes. The figure fades, and I look to Lonor, see the futile effort of trying to grow his arms just a few centimeters more on his face. My fingers slip, involuntary or otherwise I'm not sure, but I know I'm looking at my own reflection on Lonor's horrified face.
Gravity, for all its indifference, cradles me. Like a preborn floating in the darkness of a rocky womb, awaiting to emerge into its new life, the glow globe's light beckons me. For a second, reaching the light at the end of the tunnel feels possible. But gravity drops its comforting facade, and then me.
I plummet in a moment that drags out into a lifetime. Back-breaking rock should have been waiting for me to shatter upon it. But something soft and grainy cushions my fall, and that fall turns into a slide. There's but a flash of recognizing it as sand before my descent picks up momentum.
Weathered hands, once soft and unworked only months ago, try to break the ramping fall, but they only unsettle the sediment further. A huge clump shifts all at once, then I tumble. My vision goes from full of shadows, to full of sand, then shadows, then sand, until the tumble is too fast to differentiate the two.
It was while the world tumbled around me where, paradoxically, I was calm. For what felt like an eternity, I basked in how miniscule it all felt: the Pilgrimage, my anger towards Lonor, and my desire for home. For once I felt at peace, albeit a dizzying peace.
But that wasn't to last very long.
The ungallant descent ends with a weighty THUD of metal and a sharp POP of bone. Pain, though it was the center of attention, scorched along my right shoulder and down the arm the worst. Stupidly, I think after the fact, I try to use it to support getting off the ground. The arm buckles immediately, and laying down through the pain became the best thing for me.
I feel the unoiled hinges of my mind being pulled open again, Rest should not come now, friend. G-get the light and stay in it. The shadows will be angry if you leave it.
A cold wash of fear springs me up from my inert position. From where I landed, I could reach the globe in a matter of moments, but Lonor… His directionless calls rang out like he was trying to echolocate me. He was too far and seemingly getting further away.
He'll be fine, the ownerless voice assured, though being able to read my thoughts did nothing to calm me, But not for long if you don't hurry…
The pain was difficult to ignore as I one-armed crawled my way to the minecart, or at what I can only assume is a minecart amidst the darkness, that stopped my tumbling.
Around the corner, the light of the globe diminishes every few heartbeats like a sunset. Though I couldn't see the globe itself past the makeshift metallic halls, it had to be close to the middle of the room.
Lonor had stopped squawking by now. We had passed a few other tunnels on our way, and the view from our perch had revealed several other tunnel mouths (some far larger than the one we traveled) that fed into the mine. Hopefully he was smart enough to double-back and find another way in.
Now, alone, I realize I'm hesitating. Were the things in the shadows what the Angel in Black warned of? Or was the voice the danger? It wouldn't matter. Not with what another peek around the corner reveals.
Just through the slimmest gap made by the haphazard hallways and turns of the mining equipment, something glimmered in the waning light. Two glints of light stood out in the soft lighting. Trapped natural gas, that's all.
But then the damn motes blink.
I halt every last movement I have control over, though my lungs don't get the message. The amber motes glitter in the shadows hungrily, my own gaze unwavering until a shadow slinks off deeper into the darker recesses. My breathing gets harder and quicker before I'm sucking in air like a diver taking a plunge without their oxygen tanks.
The fear growing fat off my hyperventilating almost had me convinced that if I just flattened myself against the cart and shut my eyes tight I'd find myself teleported back to my bed, annoying neighbor and all.
But no matter how tightly I shut my eyes or deny that I was in true danger, none of it would disappear. So, I swallow my fear and find my feet.
With every cautious step I take among the bones of the long abandoned mine, fear tries to convince me it was a mistake. Shadows conspire with my mind to twist every shape and inanimate presence into dark figures of malice, all of them reaching towards me so as to drag the child deeper into numbing despair.
My heart nearly jumps into my throat when I round a corner and run head first into what was a many-limbed monster from my nightmares. Rationality steps between it and my fear, revealing the details of what was actually a servitor, the last wisps of its machine spirit long-since absent.
No sigh of relief escapes. Moving forward could be the only focus. The globe must have been only three or so meters away, but the inordinate amount of lumbering metal left in this mine made the path feel as long as twelve.
The closer I get to it, though, the more the decently powerful light reveals about the metal maze that surrounds me. What I had mistook as mining carts and cargo bins were things much, much grander.
Great beasts of metal, hewn or even ripped apart by some unknown force, lay scattered about. I had seen the same ones in the sparse holo-picts Mom had taken me to: They're tanks, Leman Russ-variants. Whatever that meant. They had never seemed so abused in the picts. In fact, I hadn't seen many blown up on screen at all.
Usually the commander of the vehicle would tell someone on the vox they were out of "ammo" and would then loudly declare their love for the Emperor before charging in and winning the day. Kullie liked that sort of stuff but it all seemed a little silly to-
A clatter of metal like a thunderclap disrupts the memory, and the opportunistic shadows seem to move in on me. My heartbeat seizes hold of my full attention, almost grabbing my face and pointing me at what true fear spawned from.
The amber lights never left me. I lost track of them multiple times between each of my cautious steps. But now there was more, another pair, and they were all fixed upon me.
Every instinct I had was telling me that this was the last chance I had to run. And I've never taken advice quicker.
I run harder and faster than I ever had in my life up to this point. Narrius of the playground was easy to outpace. Though he made painfully obvious how much he hated me for beating him in every race and that he'd beat me up for it (and though I knew he meant every word of it, he never followed through), this is what true terror felt like.
The eyes staring me down move even faster than me, darting to my left and leaping a great distance like four perfectly synced gymnasts. The glow globe was just over the next barrier, and the oncoming corner had to be the last I needed to take. But, the beasts seemed to know this too. And now that they were closing the distance to the globe, their grey feral manes and glinting, titanium fangs glittered brighter than their eyes.
They dropped below the vehicle husks before I had made two meters of progress, making sure to swing wide of the light's perimeter.
I know they'll make the corner before I can. Stopping and turning back around to hide wasn't an option. I couldn't risk a third beast waiting for me to make such a fatal mistake.
My heart sinks, and I know this is going to be it. But my legs keep going.
Light from under one of the husks to my left demands my attention. It grows wider as the distance closes. I skid on the hard rock as I turn toward the light, nearly twisting my ankle but still tripping myself. A snarl accompanying a rush of wind over my head tells me all I needed to know about how close I'd come to death just now.
On my hands and knees like a mutt, I dash forward, heedless of the pain coursing through my shins and my right arm. A great inhalation of breath, so big it almost sounds like the beast was trying to capture me by the vacuum alone, is just a meter behind me. Luck carries me through, though, as the stray beam of light reveals a straight path to its source: a thin space between two vehicle treads, leading right to the globe.
A dive, like a court player, sends me underneath the dead tank and I scramble for the light at the end of the tunnel. Uneven rock and loose gravel tear up my chest and belly, but I've given myself one last chance to keep surviving. I just need to reach that light before the beasts figure out where I'd exit.
The myriad books of science my mother used for work, which she read to me and Kullie before bed instead of true children's books, flash through my mind like a researcher desperate to find their last, most crucial morsel of knowledge: The subterranean hunters of Prota have not known the warmth of the Protan sun for generations upon generations, making them, much like how the light of our beloved God-Emperor is anathema to the accursed Archenemy, a natural enemy to light…
Sniffing and snarling beasts scratch at the metal above me as I draw closer to my salvation. The predators must be desperate if their frustration didn't outweigh the meagre meal they would have to brave the glow globe for.
The last few decimeters stretched out before me. The only thing pushing me forward was the yelping of the Ferro-beasts recoiling in pain as they neared the globe. One last scramble of torn-up hands and shins jettisons me from beneath the wreck like a subterfish slipping through the jaws of a great beast.
My body envelops the globe, blocking the savior's light for a mere moment. The Ferro-beasts close in that momentary relief, but I turn on them, my eyes flaring wildly like their own feral pairs.
"Back!" I scream as I stifle a sob of fear, the beasts mimicking me as they recoil, "I'll die on my feet before I let you tear into me!"
Though they hissed and snarled at my spherical shield, I regard their bristling quills and gnashing teeth as I would a feral cat or any other junk-animal back home: hungry, fearful, desperate… The Ferro-beast trio, each sporting the same quad-stripe of yellow down their starved ribs: a family hoping to get one last meal.
I don't know how long I kept them at bay. Did hours pass, or merely a few miserable moments? Regardless, Lonor ended up being right about the globe. It didn't have much life left.
Each jab to keep the beasts at bay seemed to, irrationally, shrink my safe perimeter. The yellow noose of light closed slowly around me, and the beasts knew their empty stomachs would be relieved soon.
I expected to feel a great rush of dread fill me until I was a succulent morsel ripe for devouring. I'll be with you soon, poppa, I think instead. Dying in these caverns will just mean less of a trek for me to get to you. But that first step along the final path never came.
My hands suddenly steadied, my breathing calmed. When the light goes out, I'll make sure they choke on every last bite.
My last bastion of safety is almost gone now. The beasts were so close I could taste their putrid breath. Their snarling purple maws emitted a low, excited growl mere centimeters away from the dead child I was to become. The globe is poised to break in the iron-teeth of whichever made the first strike.
But, in that final, slow moment of adrenaline-fueled acceptance something comes to me. Another fact from one of Mother's many books: the flesh of a Ferro-beast's mouth was as steel as its signature fangs.
The smallest of the beasts mistakes this fleeting lack of vigilance as my moment of death and pounces.
I strike a heavy blow to its temple. Two cracks, one of bone and the other of hardened plastic, echo throughout the chamber as I break the globe against its face. The halo of protection now gone, hunger motivates the beast forward, and the momentum sends me sprawling. It wasn't going to stop.
Three-toed paws propel it like a bullet and it's on me in seconds, so fast that I couldn't get another hit in before it tore into me.
This was it, then. I revel in one last memory of the family I would no longer know. The hugs of Kullie, the way my Momma made our family's rations seem like a banquet every night, the last thing my father said to me before he was swallowed by the ancient bowels of our homeworld: "You, and your sister, will always be my proudest work."
The beast was upon me now. Every second of its maw closing stretches out into an hour, then two, as its fangs rake two jagged valleys down either side of my face. The last moments of my life were coming to a close, and they were agony.
Was I already dead? It's suddenly so cold and everything seems so distant.
I open my eyes, slowly at first, before the lids shoot open at an even more terrifying sight than my would-be devourers.
Far above, nearly to the high-vaulted ceiling, raged a storm so unnatural it seemed to warp the world into ribbons of rock, iron, and purple lightning. The Ferro-beast, abandoned by the parents that now yelped and cried like the weaker boys of the Pilgrimage, is chained by the storm. Haggard cheeks are pierced by translucent claws that seemed to spawn from the very folds in reality, keeping it from tearing off my face.
The unnatural tendrils pull the beast back, and I sit up to watch the terrified creature struggle against the ether with horrified fascination. It whimpers and seems to cry out for its parents that abandoned it to its soon-to-be grizzly fate. A twinge of laughter escapes my dry throat.
And then, a vertical split cuts the maw into fours. The claws pull back slowly until a neat slit cuts through its snout and lower jaw with perfect symmetry. The red meat, made all the darker by the crackling illumination of the purple lightning, drips brackish blood, but those droplets never hit the floor. They were suspended in that same mystery magic that was pulling the poor thing apart.
It remained alive as its head was bisected, at least up until the neat crack reached its skull. Its desperate struggle ends, as suddenly as the unsettling storm spawned, when it's pulled in two. The two halves hang there for a moment, glistening in horrific illumination, before falling to the ground in a wet slop.
I stare, and stare, and stare, unable to comprehend what just happened. It was like those ghost stories Kullie would tell while we huddled under the blankets at night trying not to fall asleep: A spectre of vengeance or malice or whatever had risen from one of the Tragic Dead of millennia past to protect me. Or maybe haunt me. Out of all things, had Lonor been right about frakking ghosts?
I shudder at the thought of a tragic memory rising to save an already dead man from the dried ink on the great scroll of fate. But it's not my place to question. I pull myself from the dirt, the weight of everything that came before suddenly absent.
Standing over the halved beast and seeing its insides strewn beneath them should have made my stomach churn and escape through my throat. But nothing comes. Neither vomit nor bile, not even a burp of pity or elation. It's dead, and I'm not.
"Then I'm g-glad I g-g-got here just in time." It was the voice, yet it didn't echo in my mind like before. My eyes finally adjust to the pitch black without the warmth of the globe.
Before me stood a lanky figure, suddenly apparating out of thin air, wreathed in a deep purple shine. It stands there meekly, wringing its hands in apprehension, like they were questioning whether they would have to tear me apart too.
"I d-don't want to harm you," it pointed a thin finger at the corpse between us, "I d-don't make friends easily, so I d-don't want to waste a perfectly g-good hello."
I don't know what to say. Any rational mind would scream and flee in terror at this abnormal force.
"But you won't… I hope…"
"You can hear my thoughts?" I ask hoarsley.
"Just the surface level ones." They step closer, and I take a step back in turn, readying the cracked globe for whatever this "friend" was preparing to do.
"Only to see my new friend properly," they respond.
"If you want me to be friendly then stop invading my damn mind."
The figure stopped, folding its arms to its chest, "S-s-sorry. My momma never g-got to finish teaching me how to close the d-d-door once it was open. But… I'll try for my friend." I couldn't help but stare at them as they seemed to go rigid.
Some distance had been closed by their hesitant step, and now I could make out some actual detail to this mysterious being.
Light purple, nearly translucent skin stuck to their frame tightly, like someone had stretched a sheet too small to fit the bed they demanded it be on. Wild frayed hair rudely framed their gaunt face, with one defiant lock reaching upwards. They were probably the strangest thing I've ever laid eyes on, even compared to the mindless servitors that roamed the entrance to the mines back home.
How did you find me? My mind asks the ether. When no response comes, my mouth asks the physical, "How did you find me?"
They shook their head, "Not find. Followed." Their gaze is locked on the high tunnel I had fallen from, "I could tell you weren't like the other packs roaming my home, and definitely not like the mean one I… s-s-saw, yesterday. And I haven't talked to anyone since…."
"How could you tell?" I ask, but they cock their head in confusion. "That we weren't like the others?"
They nod in understanding before tapping their temple. They had read our minds, I gathered.
I nod back, "Well if you could tell that then you must know that I don't have time to stand around here. I need to go."
"But not s-s-so quickly!" they plead, "My home isn't too far from here. I have medicine for…" They gestured at my, well, everything. Torn up shins, dislocated arm, and a cut face. Their thin arm swung around and pointed just to the left of where I fell. "It's not far, and then I c-could help you after!"
"How?"
"I know the tunnels like no one else!" they stood more rigid, proudly, "If you're racing the other children, I can help you win." Though shadows still masked their face I can see the proud grin shine truthfully.
I consider it. I consider it so long their smile fades into a smirk, then a worried grimace. Lonor was still out there, but…, "It's no race, but if you're telling the truth then…"
"Of c-c-course!" they declare happily, "Lying to friends is never the way. My momma taught me. Just-" They reach for my hand, but I recoil. They frown, "Just… follow me."
Their "home" is a hole in the wall, not unlike the one Lonor and I had slept in the night (or day) before.
"Wait." they say at the entrance before scrambling in. The solitary drip of water further down the tunnel marked the time it took for them to call for me to enter.
Despite the exterior looking like the hovel of the Ferro-beasts that attacked me (and for all I knew it had been home to some animal before its current occupant) the inside is homey, to say the least. A lantern, nothing more than a busted up bucket with a bulb in it, dangles from the low ceiling. Though I'm not too tall I still have to duck under it.
The room it illuminated was "furnished" with all sorts of mismatched bits: "fine" furniture, a once-plush couch, that barely withstood the test of time sat at the far wall of this oblong abode, and a furnace that looked as though it was ripped off the back of a mobile smelter sat next to it burning a smogless heat.
My unsettling savior adjusts some dials on the face with four-fingered hands, their back to me. Their jutted spine and toughened muscles move under the thin cloth of their clothing like a sand-snake herd. Their clothes are closer to a sack, patched together from a myriad of different coarse fabric, giving them the impression of a runaway circus-performer.
They… she… turns and gives me a corpse's smile. Her left eye droops a handful of centimeters farther than her right, but both piercing red eyes glint in a sincere manner. Her thin lips stretch into a wobbly V-shape, deforming her asymmetrical face even more.
"You will enjoy Marqu's home like it's your own," Marqu says gracefully, and offers the buckling couch to me, "I will make g-g-g-good food for my new friend, meanwhile."
"Avareal." I say, "My name is Avareal."
A brighter smile mars Marqu's uneven face, "I will make food for my new friend Avareal," and she scurries away into the next chamber of her hovel.
The meal ended up being simple: a pasty filled with grey matter I couldn't quite place. The only thing the filling's lack of flavor reminded me of was how bland the family rations could have been. But I was grateful for it all the same. Lonor had been carrying the dwindling rations of our two-man party, but none of those tasteless survival bars could compare to real bread.
We ate in silence. I studied the oblong room from my slanted vantage point on the couch, noting the three mouse-hole-like corridors that connected a different room, while Marqu's chewing from the floor before me kept the silence at bay. One of the corridors was half-blocked by various stones of glinting quality. I point to it, "What's in there?"
Marqu stops chewing abruptly, and through pasty-filled teeth says, "M-m-momma's room," she buries her face in the patchy locks that hang on her shoulder, "She hasn't m-moved from her bed in…" She trails off for a moment, "She said if I couldn't wake her to make sure the beasts never found her."
Crawling over to the loose-stone barricade she took one of the shinier rocks from the top, "I was looking for more stones to make her safe when one of the packs of your kind found me."
"You mean the other children?" I ask.
She nods, "They chased me for a while, screaming mean things like 'Mutie' and abomination. They made me leave the rocks I found for M-momma so I could try to get away from them easier, but…" She hugged her knees, her nearly translucent skin somehow becoming paler as she squeezed. "I hurt one of them. Just like…"
"Just like the Ferro-beast."
She nods again before the silence returns. We sat with it for a time, my eyes never leaving the terrifying yet somehow meek girl.
Eventually, I crawl over to her myself and dig into my coat. Out came the rock, the interloper. I study its inky-black surface for a moment before reaching to place it on the unfinished barricade.
"D-d-don't," she says, stopping my hand. She lifts the rock gently from my palm, "I need to finish it myself… But, thank you…"
I place my hand on hers before she can pull away. It's cold, despite the heat that permeated the room, "Thank you for saving my life. Your momma would've been proud."
Her slackened face looks at me in surprise, "She would have liked you…," she says and smiles.
Before the night ended, Marqu fished out a salvaged survival pack and helped me apply medicine to my cuts and scrapes. They stung but no pain twisted my face as we did so. Pain contorted my face, finally, as we set my shoulder back into its socket.
I slept on the couch, though I don't think Marqu slept much at all. It was the most sleep I had gotten in days, and I woke up with a waterfall of drool hanging from my mouth, and my momma's dirt cookies fading from memory.
The morning brought a chipper Marqu who greeted me excitedly, "Today, I will help my friend Avareal."
"You know the tunnels well, then? And how to get to the surface?" I ask.
"Yes," she says quickly, but her hooked nose scrunches in confusion, "The s-s-surface? Why would you want to visit the s-surface?"
I shrug, "It's what I've been tasked to do. By Angels, as my Momma called them."
Her eyes lit up excitedly, "You go to join the Scions! The Sons of the Stars! I knew it!"
Genuine surprise forced its way into my tone, "Scions?"
Marqu nods enthusiastically, "Momma told of a time where people like," she pauses to gesture to herself, "were no better than the beasts. We were hunted and there were so few left… But then!" She scrambled over to the mantlepiece (really nothing more than a tool rack with a piece of gnarled wood on top of the hooks) and retrieved a miniscule thing to place in my hands.
A winged skull: It was metal, gold even, and maintained far better than anything in the hovel. It shimmers in defiance of its meagre existence. "Momma said that has been passed down since the Scions descended to shepherd us. Every family saved got one. It's to remind us of what they sacrifice to keep us safe, to remind us of what we must give back to them to show our thanks."
I rest the pin in my open palm for her to take, but Marqu delicately closes my fingers around it, "Why would I need its protection when I have a son of the stars as my friend?" Her full smile reveals crooked teeth, a few were missing even, but it was the warmest thing about her.
When we finally got underway my new friend took the lead, avoiding the largest of the tunnels. "Too well traveled," as she put it. We talked of our families, my omma and Kullie, her Momma and Poppa; all lost to us but in different ways. It was only during the silence of travel that I thought of Lonor.
We made camp every day and a half instead of every day. Marqu said it would make our bodies rest harder, and the supplies more impactful, if we pushed ourselves harder than Lonor and I had.
She showed me how to collect drinkable fluids from the oozing crack of loose minerals in the walls, and even which fungi could be eaten. I made sure to write everything down in my journal as she excitedly taught me.
Marqu was always the one to start talking. Most days I would just listen, only speaking up to ask a question or two. She hardly stuttered like when we first met. But one day, when our travels began taking us through what she called the 'shells of the overworld,' I asked, "Will you stay with me on the surface?"
Back home, some of the larger buildings, more like corpses, seemed out of place sitting next to the hab blocks that we had built out of the rock walls. Their fronts were flat, and their rectangular windows made them look like faces frozen in shock.
Kullie and I snuck into one that had been marked "Condemned". The dank hallways echoed with long forgotten voices and memories. Frayed banners bearing the crest and colors of Martyred Prota hung limply everywhere, just like the many that did so in the husk we strolled through today.
Marqu clutched one of them thoughtfully, "We Muties have a place d-down here, watching over these dead memories for you Pilgrims and the Scions…" The muted grey and blue fabric is easily torn down and folded by the lanky girl, "I may n-not have a place among the sons of the stars."
"You'll always have a place as my friend," I say, placing a sure hand on her shoulder.
Another warm smile replaces the immediate shock as she says, "I want t-to believe y-y-you." The make-shift scarf gets wrapped around my neck and she tugs it gently to make it secure.
We stood there for an indiscernible amount of time, contemplating our futures that seemed to be just around the corner. That distraction could have been the end of us.
Marqu saw them first. Her eyes widened and her lips trembled as she saw something past my shoulder. She saw better in the dark than me, so by the time her assailant was upon her the one targeting me had already tightened my scarf around my neck before I knew he was there.
They pulled her down by her hair and began dragging her into the darkness, kicking and screaming while I tried to get the one off me by driving my elbow into them as hard as I could. They tightened the noose with every strike and eventually, suddenly, my vision went dark.
When I awoke, choking for air as I did, I found myself on the cold floor of some massive warehouse. It was far brighter than any section of the tunnels I had traveled. The industrial lights above were even lit. Somehow, this relic still had power to illuminate its long-forgotten towers of rusting containers and power-lifters.
A wide rectangular ceiling stretched high above me, a puncture wound it had received ages ago revealing an ongoing shaft that stretched so far I had no idea where it led.
As my grogginess subsides I feel something cold and sharp bite into my wrists; my hands are bound behind my back by some metal wiring. The binding was loose, but not enough to spare my wrists from weeping blood where it dug in.
I tried to roll onto my back only to be pinned down by a heavy boot slamming into my chest. I gasped for air again as I looked at my captor: a boy, a teenager even, with sandy blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. No hint of recognition comes to me. He was far too old to have been among the boys I left the Undercity with.
His smile, menacing and crooked, taunted me as he leaned closer, "Finally. We were starting to get bored of your mutie friend." Hands too heavy and rough for a child grab my scarf and drag me to my feet. Once upright, a swift kick to my back sends me towards a jeering crowd already preoccupied with beating something, or someone, mercilessly.
Six other pilgrims were kicking and punching Marqu about like some stray dog. She was already so bloody and bruised, and chunks of her hair had been ripped from her scalp. She seemed half conscious but her swollen face pleaded for help as she saw me.
The Leader strikes me on the back of my head and I tumble into the middle of the group, catching a few strikes originally intended for Marqu as I fall.
"Lads," the sandy blonde's post-pubescent voice echoed through the chamber, "I'd like you to welcome the boy who led Larius's murderer to us. Why don't we give him a round of applause?"
The crowd jeers and mocks me, showing their appreciation with a few backhand strikes. "How-" I try to speak but a fist connects with my open mouth. I reflexively bite the inside of my cheek. Blood pours from my lips where words should have.
"Oh, don't ruin the moment," mocks the Leader, "We were just paying back this undesirable for taking one of our friends from us. Ya see, it's been so long since she tore poor Larius apart, but we still remember how many pieces he ended up as. We're just making sure she's nice and tender so she breaks apart just as easily. And you, my friend, have a choice ahead of ya."
One of the crowd, just shorter than their sadistic leader, pulls my scarf like a noose once more, choking me as I'm placed upright.
"What we can do for you," the Leader continues, "Depends on what you can do to her." He made sure I got a long look at how Marqu bled, "If you want to make it out of this alive, you'll have to show her how unkind it is to treat someone like a plaything. Hell, we'll even let you join our crew if you make it fun to watch. But, you'll have to decide quickly! She can do some freaky things with that mutie mind of hers. Don't want to end up like poor Larius, do we?"
He made me look him right in his eyes, which was a mistake. Even in this weakened state the answer had been found long before he asked the question: a glob of blood rockets out of my mouth and right into his eye.
He recoils, wipes the thick crimson spit away, and delivers a swift punch to my own eye. Surprisingly, he laughs, "At least we got our answer quick, lads. Make it hurt."
A flurry of kicks and punches descended on the two of us. I try to roll and tuck around the worst of them, but Marqu was in no state to protect herself. I flop around like a breathless fish, inching closer to her before I'm able to shield her with my body. My protection was short-lived, as the toe of a boot caught me in the throat and threw me off.
Something came loose as I careened away, clattering across the floor nearby. It wouldn't matter, as the assault had been too much. It hurts everywhere, blood must have been coming out of everywhere. Would my death at the hands of ravenous cave beasts weeks ago have been any more merciful?
My eye is swollen and shutting fast, but I look for Marqu as my vision begins to fade. Our eyes meet and her voice echoes through my head, Thank you, f-f-for being my only friend…
Great creaking echoes from the rafters above, and all eyes in the room look upwards, halting what would have been a fatal heel strike to Marqu's head. One of the ceiling cranes lumbers to life, slow, but with great force building quickly. Attached to it is a massive crate that could fit all present with plenty of room to spare. It stops as suddenly as it started, then, the crate drops from its grip and hurdles to the ground like a meteor.
One of the idiots stares as the crate falls. Heavy metal flattens him like the bug he is. The rest of the vermin clamor and throw themselves to the ground as their leader fails to maintain their thin discipline. Rushing from behind one of the remaining crate towers, taking advantage of the confusion, a figure as small as us rushes their blindspot.
It, or he, as I quickly make out the identity of our would-be savior, severs the vulnerable Achilles tendons of one before sinking their blade in the spine of another, then wraps something thin around the neck of a third.
Lonor, like a monster from the dark, claims a now desperate hooligan as a barrier between him and the others. Ringing ears from the metal slamming into concrete and the blood filling them make it impossible to hear his challenge towards our enemies. Two of them try to rush Lonor but every time they do he tightens the noose around his captive, somehow unearthing the compassion they held for one of their fellows that never existed for Marqu and I by driving them back.
Something about experiencing my second life-or-death situation within a month flips a switch somewhere inside of me. Like a deep rock diver breaking the surface for air, the fog arresting my consciousness clears and I begin to work at my bindings furiously.
Blood gushes out of my wrists as pure force loosens the metal wires. A good intimidation tactic, I think, but not nearly as secure as rope or any other fabric would have been. Finally free, I make to get up and rush to Lonor, but as my hands slam down something cold and minute jabs into my palm.
Before I could take it into my grasp, however, the leader's answer to all the chaos echoes through the warehouse.
The stubber round pierces Lonor's bodyshield through the neck and bites into my friend's shoulder. He cries out and stumbles, the hooligan chokes on his own blood as he topples onto Lonor, and pins him to the ground.
"All this," the Leader mumbles, "ALL of this over some useless creatures and useless pilgrimage. Worthless dogs! You and your insane 'angels.' When I'm done hunting down the other tunnel-rats," he brandishes the pistol at all present, "I'll think of your deaths as the sweetest of them all, far sweeter than last year's!"
When I think back on this moment, in the spare few times my duties allow me some peace, I can never dredge up how I managed to close the distance between us so quickly. Something arrested my soul, blinding me with purpose and rage and robbing me of the memory of how I ended up atop of the Leader. In one moment, he was aiming the pistol at Marqu, and then I was bloodying his face with my fists, Marqu's winged skull pin clenched between my knuckles.
What I do remember was that it only took two strikes to the nose to make him start wailing like a dying animal, blubbering and screaming for his mother. But that didn't make me stop. All the pent up fear that had been boiling inside me over the months came pouring out, fueling my desire to just keep hitting him.
Eventually, he stopped screeching.
Suddenly, the only sounds around were the wet thuds of my fists.
A weak grip seizes my shoulders and I whip around, bloody fists poised to strike out at whoever it was. But, only Lonor's terrified expression pleading for me to stop met me.
Like a superheated ice block, the rage evaporates, and I look down at my work. The Leader's face was pulped and unrecognizable; its only discernible feature was the skull aquila that jutted out of a shattered eye socket.
The remaining lackeys had already fled when Lonor wordlessly helped me to my feet, he himself clutching a bleeding, probably shattered, collar bone.
"How did you know we were here?" I ask breathlessly.
"When I lost track of you I kept going," he says, "And I found the ruins pretty easily, and the way up to the surface too."
I interrupt, "If I knew it was that easy to stumble on…"
"It's easy to find when two Angels guard the entrance," he says placatingly. I couldn't tell if the trembling in his voice was because he feared them, or what we just experienced. "They were going to take me up to meet the Angel in Black but something inside me just told me to come look for you. So, really, I was just lucky."
I laugh, but the pain in my ribs makes that regrettable. Then my eyes fall on Marqu. A shove, unintentionally rude, pushes Lonor away as panic fills the void rage left behind.
I fall to my knees next to her and pray to the God-Emperor that she's still alive. The faintest breeze of her breath tickles my face as I lean in and I begin to bundle her awkwardly in my arms. Lonor doesn't even ask who she is before he comes to help, "The Angels are at the end of the crumbling road." Without another word, he takes the lead.
Lonor hadn't been lying. Two hulking warriors in steel-tinted armor, royal blue rifles as big as us at rest, guarded the entrance to the surface. As we stumble towards them, the gargantuan tunnel opening that dwarfed even the Emperor's Angels beckons to me menacingly. The only image in my mind was the maw of the Ferro-beast that nearly tore me open.
"Pilgrims," one of them booms from behind their expressionless steel faces, "Your journey is at an end. Leave the body of the Underling where you stand and seek Reclusiarch Avinti and Apothecary Badros in the chamber beyond."
I don't know what a "Reclusiarch" or an "Apothecary" is, but I know Underling, "But she's not dead, she's hurt."
"Leave the Underling body here, Pilgrim," the same Angel insists, nearly growling, "And proceed into the next chamber. You will not be ordered again."
Lonor and I exchange glances, wordlessly deciding that the blood we shed for each other was not to be wasted. We instead stepped forward, still cradling the unresponsive Marqu as the two Angels made to raise their weapons.
"Peace, Brothers," a calming voice calls from the rocky portal behind them, "I know you both have held the failing bodies of another Brother before. This is not dissimilar in the slightest."
From the earthy maw strode the Angel in Black, the same one that shepherded all the Pilgrims from Undercity Alpha, and the same one that told me I would eventually, finally, know no fear.
He was flanked by two guards wielding flat-tipped swords and capped by bone-white skull helmets. Their glowing red eyes stare deeply at the mumbling, unconscious Marqu, as though judging her soul's worth. The Angel in Black had merely glanced at her.
The two Angels who challenged our trio bowed their heads in apology, not to us but to their apparent superior, the Lord-Reclusiarch as they called him.
"Brother-Pythonians, please take the Underling girl and this lad," he gestures to Lonor. "Brother Badros will do what he can."
I open my mouth to protest but the Angel in Black's soul-searching eyes silence me. Lonor and I pass a wordless goodbye to one another, somehow knowing we'd see each other again soon. Had I known it would be the last time I'd set eyes upon Marqu, I would've protested greatly.
The Lord-Reclusiarch kneels before me, seizing my attention, for he still towered over me like any other adult. His pale face is pitted and scarred by countless, long dead foes. One bit in so deep it was a wonder his head hadn't been cleft in two along the crescent shape.
His slate-grey eyes are unblinking as they study my face's own destined-to-be scars, "Your fear remains. How… Well, not unfortunate. Yet, surprising, nonetheless."
I force a swallow under his judging gaze, but shake my head and say, "It's not fear, my lord. I have met fear and found it lacking."
"Oh?" he asks, intrigued, "Then what keeps the Aspirant before me trembling?"
I hadn't noticed that myself. As I clench my fists, my fingernails dig into my palm. And so, I gave my answer: "Purpose."
He smiles, stretching the ridges of his scars like facades of smiles themselves, and rises. Ebon black gauntlets gesture to the tunnel and lead me to where Angels are forged, the ghost of the boy I was left behind to haunt the tunnels.