A Record of Ash & Ruin: The Grieving Lands

Book 3: Chapter 8: Bread & Water

To be a good man is to live with virtue and integrity on the hardest of roads.

- A Quassian aphorism.

The path ahead curved upwards, becoming also more natural in its formation. Here and there, stalactites and stalagmites grew from the floor and ceiling, occasionally meeting to form pillars. Glowing purple lines threaded through the rock here, making the formations look like living blood vessels. It was a sign, as good as any, that this place was most ancient in its origin.

Zala was ahead of me, scampering this way and that, chirping the occasional comment about our local environs and sniffing the air. After a few moments, she helped to confirm my suspicion that we were close to a source of water. And where there was water, there was food. I was used to privation, but I could no longer ignore the hunger pangs that a few strips of jerky could simply not assuage.

“We are close to fresh water. It will taste more like blood as we get closer to the Bright. They say it is because a sky-god bled here once,” she informed me, her eyes focused downward, subserviently.

“Good. Find it, and we will drink,” I returned simply, glad that we could refill our skins.

Regretfully, not all of the skins had been filled with water.

Some had filled with noxious liquid that burned my throat and set my limbs afire. In short, it gave me wings. I would have kept the energizing liquid, but it caused me to sweat a river and left me even thirstier. Regrettably, over half of the skins were of extremely poor quality, fashioned from fragile animal bladders that ruptured when their former owners discarded them hastily before taking flight. I had to discard them, as they were unusable.

Between us, we had six usable containers, of which three were about half full. Things were not desperate, not yet, but I knew enough to plan a few steps ahead.

Also, without a way to gauge how much longer it would take to reach the surface, this news was a godsend to me. The ‘blood taste’ description might be these primitives’ allusion to the heavy metal content in the water. The thought of drinking water with actual blood in it, was on some level, a little repulsive.

I pointed at her to go ahead. “Go. Scout out ahead. If you do not return I will find and gut you,” I commanded.

Gulping, she nodded her head a few times before and she scampered off.

Ever since the encounter with the fearsome Zlesh Viper, I felt that she saw me as something of a protector. Those who were weak would always take shelter behind the strong, it was the way of the world. She was used to taking orders.

Zala returned to my side, with a worried look on her face. “Water, a small watering place. Clean, I think. But there is one problem…”

“Spit it out,” I barked. I kept my responses short as, despite my magical ability to learn languages quickly, I still only had a very basic grasp of their underground language. With that in mind, I surreptitiously cast an Identify.

“Yes, yes,” she continued, surprisingly unfazed, as if she was expecting this response, “There are other things at the water. No big ones, like the Zlesh. We were lucky with the Zlesh, you were wise for not moving. No doubt you saw that it was sated and slowed. The Zlesh are known to move faster than a thrown spear. I saw some Ghostwalker Crabs. They are, of course, no threat to one as mighty as yourself but…” There was always a but, “They have begun their courtship dances and they will be most territorial.”

I waited for a few moments, to really absorb her words. Every word was being added to my lexicon as my mind digested them. Having learned one language already, the acquisition process had become much easier for me. It turned out that my teachers had been right, up until now, I had just been lazy all along. When your survival depended on it, one picked things up quickly.

Finally, I formulated a response, “The Crabs, they can be eaten?”

“Yes!” she piped, perking up almost immediately. “They are most delicious. We used to…”

She grew silent as I ended my Holy Aura, the darkness returning as the golden light withdrew. The golden song that had been playing faded, and with it my righteous sense of purpose. For some reason, I felt less sure. The reality of the task of returning to the surface somehow felt like it was becoming an impossibility.

I rolled my shoulders, cutting off such nihilistic thoughts as my eyes grew accustomed to the dull gloom. My light extinguished, I noticed now that the area we had entered was brighter than where we had come from, with more of the luminous rocks casting their glow. Here the darkness was, by an order of magnitude, far less stifling.

Looking in Zala’s direction with an appraising eye, I could see that her choice of attire was actually less primitive than I had originally thought. Now, I could see that instead of being a haphazard mix, her ensemble seemed to be a deliberate selection for our current environment. Here in this poor visibility, her garb did a good job of breaking up her outline, its texture and lines rendering her as just part of the background rock.

I realized I had overlooked something rather basic.

“You. How long before we reach this Bright?” I demanded.

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She shifted, seemingly startled. She looked down and to the left before she nervously gave an answer, “The Bright… I would guess four dreams, no eight… eight!” I could almost taste the deception in her words.

Not only was she lying, but I could only discern the vaguest of ideas regarding how long it would take. I was going on the assumption that a ‘dream’ was their equivalent to a day, for there was no sun to mark the time here.

And here in the dark, my light was her sun. She had, at some point, come to accept that the light of my aura, that had once caused her discomfort, was actually a sort of shield that protected her from the creatures of the dark. In a way, it did, as it was healing the minor hurts she had acquired along the way. It was not so long ago that she could not look directly at me without squinting her eyes.

Though the jury was still out on whether I actually counted her as a person. My stomach rumbled, catching me off guard.

“The crabs, I assume you people hunt them, yes?” I asked my prisoner.

“Yes…but” she began worriedly.

“But nothing. If pathetic creatures like you can kill them, then I can kill them. I will kill them. All of them. Then we will drink from this water. If you are lying or preparing treachery, you know what will come to you,” I interrupted, growling in my most threatening voice and causing her to just fearfully nod.

Why did going down to get some water have to be so difficult? Why did everything in this world have to be difficult?

“Well? What are you waiting for? Show me the way, and be quick about it,” I commanded, and I swore she almost jumped to attention before heading off to heed my command.

Scuttling in front of me, she led the way, surefooted in her stride. I, on the other hand, was a textbook example of clumsiness, almost tripping over every rock that I came across. This drew a worried look from my long-suffering guide, so I decided to be a little more careful in my step. Soon enough, the path, or tunnel, opened up into a cavernous area. Here, the purple glow of the ceiling was perhaps fifty meters high. After the claustrophobic space of the tunnels, coming here was almost a welcome relief.

After an indeterminate amount of time, she gestured for quiet and pointed. Creeping as best as I could, I squinted in that direction, straining my eyes. My ears informed me before my eyes did. What I heard was a roiling crush of heavy bodies colliding, followed by the crash of displaced water. Finally, my eyes beheld a large pond, or small lake, of liquid twilight, filled with creatures, dozens strong, that looked like they had come from the darkest part of the ocean.

In the center of the lake was a pillar formed from centuries of redeposited minerals. Alien chittering and clicking noises accompanied the sight, the sound akin to that of a deranged maracas. I had found new prey.

They, as far as my eyes could tell, fit their name of Ghostwalker Crab almost perfectly. In the half-light, their carapaces were a ghastly pale gray and their many-limbed shadows stretched across the cold stone. They had no eyes, but were instead crowned with four long antennae. The bony sensory organs flicked and waved aggressively, as if tasting the air itself.

The giant crustaceans fought against each other in a grotesque display of dominance and desire, an erratic dance as they circled one another, grasping for purchase or already locked in a deadly embrace. They danced upon the ancient weathered rock of the shore, and in the dark water of the lake. Where a chitinous carapace was pierced, sludge and viscera oozed from the wounds. Would the water be potable after such a violent competition?

The monsters' attention focused solely on their duels. We were able to get a little closer and, hiding behind an outcropping of rocks, we continued to observe them. Holding my breath, I tried to judge the distance between us and the battling Ghostwalkers. My earlier bravado had disappeared like smoke before a stiff breeze, and I scrambled to think of some sort of plan to deal with these monsters.

Going over my options, I remembered the Karilla, that fearsome beast of the Sainba forest. If I could stay hidden, at this range, I could begin to pick them off slowly. I would just have to pray that they did not have a means of detecting the magic I cast on them.

“We remain here, I will deal with them,” I whispered to my local guide.

Zala looked at me, perplexed, as I started to prepare a spell. Identify came first, and I cast it like a net over one of the largest males, giving me a rough overview of their relative power.

Ghostwalker Crab - [Crustacean lvl.16]

Health: 276/332 Stamina: 23/51

Mana: 1/1

Seeing a specimen broken down into numbers was a relief, for, in terms of raw statistics, it was a far cry from the Zlesh, though, still worryingly, a little above my level. More importantly, they had extremely low Mana, which was a sign of low intellect, making them like normal crustaceans. Essentially, they were stupid. Relieved, I prepared to cast my only real direct damage spell. It had been a while, or at least I believed it to be quite a while, for time here under the earth was most fluid, since I had last cast Drain.

Here in the shadowed cavern beneath the earth, a darker shadow formed within and was let loose. Like eager hounds, the lines of power sought their prey, attaching themselves to the nearest source of life energy. I prepared to run, only to put aside such thoughts, as the vibrant song of life filled me with its energy. The voices, my true friends, rejoiced for me. Running was for cowards and weak men.

I could see that the spell had substantially improved. The rate at which the creature sped towards its untimely death hastened, as I was empowered. With this magic, I had become invincible. I wanted to fight, to glory in the thrill of the melee.

At times like this, I was glad to have heavy steel about my head. Its solid weight settled me in some sort of strange way. It also covered what I assumed to be a face consumed by my baser pleasures.

I knew that I was not, in fact, as invulnerable as my feelings sometimes led me to believe. These emotions I recognized now to be the influence of my magic, a subtle thing that could deceive by degrees.

And this was no time for a blaze of savage passion along the knife-edge of combat, to indulge my base desires, no matter how satisfying that would be. It was a time to deal cold calculated death, slow as that might be.

Perhaps if they were human… their screams would be more satisfying to my ears. No, no, these thoughts too were not my own. I would stay here where it was safe, and kill all of them. One by bloody one.

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