Chasmfall: Chapters 16-18 (The Weirkey Chronicles) (Patreon)

Archcrafter has continued to do decently well, but the surprising thing was that Soulhome exploded over the previous week, actually spending a fair amount of time in the top 1000 on Amazon! This is better than it did on its initial launch and much more than I expected for a book that's approaching a year old. Obviously I'm not a top series, but it's nice to see strong signs of new interest.

Anyway, that's all fun, but meanwhile Chasmfall chapters continue! This set gives you a larger glimpse of the Chasm and an idea how the characters' time there will proceed.

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Chapter 16

For a time they had needed to work their way along the chasm extremely cautiously, afraid that a malicious opponent would start attacking them from above, or that collateral damage would spill into the chasm. Such a threat only emerged once: a Ruler went pitching over the side of the canyon, desperately scrabbling at the rocky fragments until she plunged into the river and was gone. They saw others with decreasing frequency as the chasm loomed higher above them.

By the time Theo finally spotted the sort of entrance he had been looking for, they were surrounded by nothing but the lamentations.

"Observe the other side." He carefully propped himself against the wall of the chasm, where they crawled across a razor ledge. "Fiyu, how deep does that hole go?"

"Hole?" Nauda asked, peering to the other side. "Almost covered by the spray?"

"I feel it, but..." Fiyu frowned and lowered her head, her cantae surging. "The air and the river are both troubling my senses. It goes deeper, but I do not know how deep."

"Then we'll just have to investigate the other side." Theo took a deep breath and cast a gravitational field to neutralize their gravity. "Everyone, push to the other side. Senka, you're not going to do something stupid, are you?"

"Sporp."

Since she didn't seem harmed by the river, Theo only cared if she somehow pulled one of them in. He made sure his field was firm despite the interference and then pushed across to the other side. When he hit the opposite wall, the sharp rocks bit deeper than he expected, almost drawing blood. If they hadn't been Archcrafters with feast chambers, they might have torn themselves apart. Fortunately, the other three all landed not far away, around an opening that was nearly invisible from any other angle.

"This is the reason we were traveling so close to the river," Theo said as he helped Fiyu lower herself into the hole. "The river sometimes bores down into the core, and in the wake of it particularly powerful sublime materials form. One similar to this carried me to Stronghold."

Nauda shot him a nervous glance. "If the river carved this out, what are the chances that there's still death water in there, or that more comes in? The river would only need to flood a little to come in after us..."

"That's why we have Fiyu to check the layout. You can sense the tunnels here, right?"

"Mostly." Fiyu looked up from the hole to them and frowned. "The entrance curves away from the river and then the tunnel splits in many directions. I cannot feel significant amounts of liquid, but the atmosphere changes to a thicker gas in the lower sections."

"Then we have to use the animabladders. Just like we practiced." Theo pulled his from his pack, uncomfortably fitted the pipe in his mouth, and strapped it on firmly. The others obeyed quickly and soon all three of them ventured into the tunnel.

Along the way, he confirmed that the masks had good enough airflow. Nauda lit a cantae flame between the forks of her staff, which illuminated the dark blue corridors. Due to it, they could easily see a gray mist when the tunnel curved downward. Though Nauda floated a flame closer to test if the gas was explosive, Theo remembered that it didn't react, only poisoned. He let her do the test just in case, and they entered carefully to be sure that the animabladders filtered out the poison, but these elements of the Chasm hadn't changed.

Within minutes, he was sure that they'd found what they needed. Though the walls appeared as jagged as the chasm in places, these glistened in the light with a coating of sublime moss. That itself wasn't useful, but it grew on cantae and indicated the presence of other valuable materials.

After some time, they found a larger cavern that appeared to be free of gas except for the lowest lying sections. Theo swept it for dangerous elements and then established it as a base. Careful tests revealed they could remove their masks there, though not for long, so they would mostly operate by hand signals. There were crystals all around that he thought were called blueshards - not essential for his soulhome, but the sort of thing that House Blacksilver wanted from the Chasm. They were rather durable, so Nauda began breaking them apart while the others investigated the paths traveling in other directions.

Fiyu was the first one to find something truly valuable, in a path he'd actually walked through. He saw her bend down and turned back to make sure that she hadn't been overwhelmed by the gas, only to realize that she knelt down to reach into a deep crevice. She seemed to pull out a handful of mist, then he realized that the mist flowed in a sphere. Though it didn't advertise its cantae, the mist was remarkably dense, which was likely how she had noticed it.

Between her mask and the animabladder, Fiyu's face was nearly entirely obscured, but he could still tell that she was elated. While she headed back to the central area with her prize, Theo finished exploring his current set of branching paths. He found some deposits of a very powerful sublime stone... definitely useful for soulcrafting bricks for later floors, but not blueprint-defining.

Eventually he returned to join the others in the gas-free area. Nauda had finished breaking apart all the blueshards and was absorbing them into her soulhome for later extraction. Her tower might not be the best use of soulhome volume, but it certainly made for an effective storage space. Not far from her, Fiyu shifted from foot to foot until she at last pulled down her lower mask.

"This is very like a mistheart!" She thrust the sphere of mist in Nauda's face, then his. "Though it has a different essence, its nature is almost exactly like what my relative told me to acquire."

"For your Corporeal Floor?" Theo asked. It struck him as a very risky material to integrate as an Archcrafter, but Fiyu could probably manage it if her blueprint offered support.

"Yes, actually for my heart. I will place it inside now, and perhaps in the future my path will be easier."

"I actually found something myself." Nauda tugged her mask down enough to speak and gestured for him to follow. In an upper corner of the largest cavern, there was a crystal stalactite... and not simply another blueshard. Though it was duller than the rest, something pulsed deep within. "I didn't disrupt it in case it's dangerous, but it has more cantae than anything I've found so far."

Theo wasn't sure what it was, so he cautiously placed his palm against the stone. He soon felt something throbbing through the stone, almost like a heartbeat. Though he wasn't familiar with the exact material, he had experience harvesting similar types.

"When you break the outer layer," he explained, "it's going to begin deteriorating. We need to break it very gently, without driving any crystal into the core. Then you reach straight in and absorb it."

"Are you sure that's safe?"

"I can't guarantee the core will be useful to you, but it's just a powerful sublime material. Whatever happens, don't flinch, just absorb it."

He cast a point of anti-mass at the core, trying to push all matter away from it. Though he wasn't powerful enough to push material, much less break apart the stone, he could exert some gravitational movement. When Nauda tapped the stalactite just hard enough to shatter it, the pieces dropped away in all directions, leaving the core unharmed.

Immediately she thrust her other hand in, ignoring the shards to grasp the core. It proved to be a dark mass of flesh, throbbing with green fluid. Many might have been repulsed or failed to absorb it, but Nauda clenched her fist and crushed the core directly into her soulhome.

"Eww." Nauda rubbed her hand on her dress the next moment, as if the spiritual remnants of the sublime material lingered. "That thing feels incredibly heavy, but... what is it?"

"We should take a better look." When he extended a hand in her direction, she took it and drew him directly into her soulhome.

The fleshy core pulsed on the ground, flooding cantae in all directions. Nauda tried to pick it up idly at first, then had to use both arms and brace herself to heft it up. As a spirit Theo couldn't do anything to help her stagger to her storage chamber, but he examined the object and its cantae closely.

"This is an amazing material," he had to admit. "It appears organic, but it grew in a crystal and can probably connect with inorganic materials in a soulhome. Could be part of a Corporeal Floor, a specialized room, or even a heart chamber."

"Maybe, but not for me." Nauda heaved it into her storage room, then straightened and wiped sweat from her forehead. "That thing feels... off. My whole blueprint has been natural materials, whether they're alive or just remnants. I don't think that thing was ever part of a living creature."

"You don't think it's compatible?"

"Not right now, but I suppose I might come up with something brilliant by the time I reach Authority. I definitely couldn't survive incorporating it now."

He'd expected to find plenty of valuable sublime materials they couldn't easily use, so that was no surprise. If they helped House Blacksilver come out of the Chasm in a strong position, they've have leverage to trade for more useful items. Eventually they'd need sublime materials that couldn't be bought with money alone, and unique materials were often the only currency that would suffice.

When Theo returned to his physical body, he intended to check with Fiyu and coordinate further searches. It didn't go that way because of what he immediately heard.

"Yummies, yummies." Senka didn't sound like her usual lively self, perhaps because her mouth was full of some sort of mushroom. He stared at her as he realized that she was eating what felt like a very potent sublime material.

She stared at him. He stared back. Theo took a step in her direction and she immediately sprinted into the corridor with her arms flailing over her head.

Tugging his animabladder mask back on, Theo pursued her into one of the dark corridors. She could move remarkably fast, but was slowed by the need to reach down and grab something off the ground. This time he caught up to her and snatched it out of her hand.

Another mushroom, as blue as the rock around it. Mist wafted from the cut part of the stem, extremely similar to the shimmering patterns that disrupted cantae in the Chasm sky. Not a material he knew, but definitely too valuable to let them disappear into Senka's gullet.

Unfortunately, she wormed out of his grip and slipped around his weakened gravitational field, scrambling to scoop up another mushroom. Theo groaned into his mask and pursued her into the tunnel.

She led him on a madcap chase, and though he usually managed to grab the mushrooms from her, it was always a close thing. His efforts to stop her seemed essentially futile, and it only ended when they reached a dead end and apparently all the mushrooms were gone. Senka sat on a rock, her cheeks stuffed with mushrooms. When Theo glowered at her, she swallowed, then curled up and went to sleep.

As much as she annoyed him, he grabbed her by the back of her dress and carried her as he explored the rest of the corridors they'd passed. Frustratingly, though he found more valuable sublime stones and crystals, not a single one would serve as a room centerpiece. Some durable materials that might help with an ascension, a smaller number that generated cantae, and none that were suited to his gravitational blueprint.

The others had yet to return, so he waited and examined one of the mushrooms that he hadn't absorbed. Now that he got a better look, he really wasn't sure what to think of them. If the mist they emitted was the same as that found above, eating them would be a terrible idea. They didn't particularly generate cantae, but they did have strong distortion properties, he just wasn't sure what they could be used for.

Just before he became worried, Nauda and Fiyu returned. Nauda tugged off her mask immediately to breathe freely, taking a few breaths before staring at him. "These things might save our lives, but I'm starting to hate them. Can we go get some fresh air?"

"We probably need it before long, but I'd like to clear out this place in case anyone catches up." Theo rose to his feet to face them. "I've cleared the tunnels this way, so I wanted to ask you about the directions you went."

"It's mostly more crystal and stone, but there are a few materials we thought we should handle together." Nauda paused and looked at the remaining mushrooms. "Just what are those? I never noticed them."

"Some sort of sublime fungus. I absorbed quite a few to keep Senka from eating them." He tossed one to each of the others. "I don't suggest eating it, but try to draw it into your soulhome anyway. Maybe you'll find a use for them that I couldn't."

Nauda sniffed it experimentally, then dropped the mushroom in disgust. Fiyu worked harder to absorb it, but after flickering into a haze of soulcrafting for only a moment, she returned shaking her head. "I do not like this sublime material, Theo. It is not appropriate for my soulhome, so I have burned it in my central fire."

"That's fine, there are bound to be some useless materials here. What did you find?"

"Ah, yes." Fiyu's mood visibly brightened, even from just a shadow of her eyes through her mask. "There is a strange liquid I wanted to ask you about, and also a volatile region. I believe that you can help us extract resources from them."

They led him through stripped tunnels until they reached an odd depression in a bend. A pale liquid lay in the bottom, like an ordinary puddle except for the cantae hissing from it. His eyes widened as he realized that it was related to the river above, somehow filtered through all the stone of the Chasm. Extremely potent, but also difficult to handle.

Working solely by gestures, he was able to coordinate with Fiyu to absorb it, since it seemed most appropriate for her. Touching the liquid would be inadvisable, and drinking it downright suicidal, so instead he generated a flame to begin evaporation. Fiyu managed to draw in the steam before it could harm her body, prepared on the other side to gather it into a jug she'd fashioned from sublime clay. Dealing with that liquid was going to be extremely difficult, but he had a few ideas that might prove interesting.

Finally Nauda pulled him down the last tunnel, where he discovered it ended in a glowing red crack. Fiyu gestured to the stone and the crack, and though he wasn't quite sure of her every implication, she clearly sensed that the density within was highly different. Nauda simply eyed it suspiciously, which told him enough. It was a dangerous formation, but fortunately one he knew how to work.

Theo placed his mask over his eyes and stopped up his ears with the silencemoss earplugs, waiting until the other two copied him. He mimed the bright crack exploding, so they retreated to a safer distance. When Theo attempted to pierce it with a bolt of cantae, however, even a gravitational bolt, the stone resisted him.

For all his tricks, he still had an Archcrafter's cantae. He gestured to Nauda, who nodded understanding and advanced just around the corner. She lifted her staff, braced in both hands, and then thrust the binding force directly into the crack.

The explosion sent all of them tumbling down the corridor, cantae rushing from their soulhomes to defend their bodies. Screams as if the voices outside were being tortured flooded through the tunnel, faintly audible even through the earplugs. If they hadn't been fully masked, they could easily have been blinded, and as Theo regained his feet, he realized that they still hadn't entirely escaped.

Nauda stumbled, disoriented and tugging at her mask. He quickly rushed to her side, grabbing both her arm and the mask. When she calmed at his touch, he pushed the mask back on, preventing her from pulling it away on instinct. Since it seemed like she hadn't breathed any of the poison yet, he turned to Fiyu, who huddled against herself. His glimpse of her soulhome revealed a slightly scorched barrier wall and he guessed that her senses might be entirely blinded.

There weren't any easy ways around it, so Theo approached her very gently. He started by touching her sleeve, letting her feel the slight movement. She flinched, head turning wildly in his direction, but then her arm moved closer. Theo touched her wrist gently and just held it for a moment, giving her something to focus on.

Gradually she returned to herself and gave him a slight nod before she pulled back. They'd taken a shock, but no permanent harm done. Nauda put her hands on her hips and stared at him, the "This had better be worth it" sentiment obvious in body language alone.

He raised a finger and then gestured for them to follow. The end of the corridor had been blasted apart, much of it covered in molten sublime materials. They were probably worth something to House Blacksilver, so he had Fiyu collect them while they searched through to the heart.

Near the core of the explosion, a few remnants of that power remained: solidembers, he believed they were called. Primarily useful to assist with ascensions, so he divided what they found between himself and Fiyu. Not invaluable, but if he had been able to find anything else particular to him, he wouldn't have even complained.

The real treasure lay at the core: a single seed lay in a blast crater, turning the rock molten underneath it and releasing dark steam. Theo wasn't sure about its name, but he knew that sublime plants growing in such formations were always immensely powerful.

It certainly wasn't compatible with his soulhome, and too bright for Fiyu's, so Nauda bent to absorb it. The surface clearly burned her hands, but she pushed through the pain, forcing herself to absorb the coal. When it entered he felt her cantae ripple dangerously until she managed to contain the sublime material within her storage chamber. That one would certainly serve her well, when she could survive it.

That accomplished, they'd cleared out the entire pit, even more thoroughly than he had on his first visit to the Chasm. Theo returned to pick up Senka, but met her wandering in their direction, once again returned to her muted state. All four of them retraced their steps to the original tunnel until they emerged from the hole just beside the river. Though the current still rushed past them with lethal force, he was glad to see it, and Nauda seemed even more so.

"Finally." She pulled off her mask as soon as possible and breathed deeply. "I swear the mists were starting to get into my head. We don't need to go into one of those again, do we?"

Theo shook his head. "Even if we found another pit, it would only contain similar materials."

"I believe this is enough by most standards," Fiyu said, watching him quietly. "We have rare sublime materials suitable for our blueprints as well as those valued by House Blacksilver. If we were to retreat now, no one would blame us. However..."

Nauda groaned and ran a hand through her hair. "You're not going to let us go, are you, Theo?"

He began finding another path alongside the river, grinning back at them. "If there's ever been a time for ambition, it's now."

-

Chapter 17

Under ordinary circumstances, Fiyu would not have been pleased to work her way along the side of a chasm over a river that meant certain death. Clearly, the fact that the Fithans avoided the central chasm meant that they felt the same, a reasonable amount of caution for once. However, as she made her way from rock to rock, Fiyu found herself surprisingly secure.

In their exploration of the deepest chasm, Friend Theo had shown himself to be familiar with this environment. Therefore it was not so different from traveling any new environment with an experienced relative, certainly safer than attempting to guide her friends through the Greater Dark without the requisite knowledge. There were risks, but they could be mitigated with preparation, which they had clearly done.

The one thing that did still trouble her was the amount of time remaining in the Chasm. If the event lasted for three days as was commonly said, then they still had plenty of time to harvest materials and retreat. Yet the fact that the exact time was variable, and the ambiguous fate of those abandoned within, left Fiyu considerably less sanguine. If it was up to her, they would have retreated, though she acknowledged that risks were necessary at times. She would have to trust in Friend Theo's knowledge.

He had assisted her many times, yet she had felt something within herself sliding ever since he and Friend Nauda had saved her life. Unlike an elder relative, she did not feel that respect and obedience was the appropriate response. Instead, he was her peer and they could travel forward together, sharing their knowledge and lives. If so...

Distracted by the unfamiliar thoughts, Fiyu failed to fully check the next rock she used as a hand-hold. It broke beneath her fingers, and the momentum sent her tipping over the side of the narrow ledge.

Before she could fall far, Friend Nauda caught her wrist. Since Fiyu had only just begun to slip over the edge, she was quickly able to right herself and obtain a secure position. There had been little danger, since Friend Theo moved ahead and had been prepared with his technique, but Fiyu still felt ashamed to have made the error.

"Sorry for grabbing you," Friend Nauda said. She had indeed released her as soon as she was stable, almost as if guilty, so Fiyu made sure to smile at her.

"It is okay, Nauda. Thank you for helping me."

As they continued crawling above the river, however, Fiyu found her thoughts surprisingly turbulent. Instead of feeling shock at the touch, the wrist where Friend Nauda had touched her glowed with a warmth that crept through the rest of her body. It was not so dissimilar from when she was grateful for her friends, but the fact that it occurred even when touched forced her to acknowledge what she was experiencing.

Her relatives had prepared her for this, of course. After a sufficient number of years of adulthood, she would begin to consider close companions as potential lifemates. Relative Guchiro had been of the opinion that it would be another decade for her, and she had thought that sounded reasonable. In a decade, she would have known herself and been well-established as a soulcrafter. Now, she found a confusing mix of sensations welling up within her...

Pausing momentarily, Fiyu took a deep breath and forced that part of her to recede. It could be explored later, while not under such dangerous conditions. Like many other impulses, it could reemerge when she was safe.

That task completed, Fiyu continued along the path with a clearer mind. Friend Theo and Friend Nauda were indeed valued companions, whatever else they might be. She would do her utmost to support them as they continued exploring the Chasm of Lamentations. So far, it had been as profitable as Friend Theo had suggested, so their findings would open up fascinating new paths for their soulcrafting.

Eventually they reached a much larger ledge that had been carved from the chasm surface, so they sat down to rest. By Fiyu's count, they had been inside the Chasm of Lamentations for nearly a full day, so even supported by cantae, they desperately needed rest. With relatively few words, they set up camp and traded watch times, which only affirmed her belief in her companions.

Fortunately, shielded as they were, no one disturbed them as they all rested deeply. When Fiyu awoke refreshed, she found that Friend Nauda was still finishing her slumber while Friend Theo sat at the edge of their camp, cantae twisting within him in a way she had come to identify with his new gravitational sense, even if she couldn't determine the details. She washed her face and went to sit beside him.

"I'm trying to push through all the interference to examine the situation on the surface," Friend Theo said. He looked upward, which Fiyu had not often done since the walls of the chasm stretching skyward were always a strong point of reference in her own senses.

Though she still primarily used her personal senses, Fiyu did look upward with her eyes. The sky was a ghostly strip of blue overhead, almost entirely swallowed by the chasm walls rising on either side. Even though the river was becoming broader, the cliffs still dominated her vision. Contortions of reality that felt deeply disturbing to her senses twisted over the center of the river in higher concentrations, no doubt proving dangerous to anyone who wished to fly overhead.

Most strikingly, to any sense, the chasm ahead of them finally left its straight path and turned to the left. Even through all the disturbances, Fiyu could easily feel the density of the earth: the river cut into the western plain, eventually driving it against the spiritual barriers that defined the Chasm. Beyond that, she thought that it straightened out again, partially shifting underground, but the terminal point dissolved in a haze of interference.

"I don't sense any fighting on the western side," Friend Theo said not long after, "but I don't trust cantae senses very far here. How does it feel to you?"

"I will try." Fiyu focused on the lack of pressure above the stone walls, seeking anything that disturbed the air. She could still feel people to the west, few moving quickly, therefore... "I believe that the truce to the west has held. There is no fighting, at least not compared to the battlefield to the east. Fewer people than I expected, perhaps because they have harvested what they can and are retreating."

"How many of them are close to the river? Someone might try to walk north along the peaceful side, then drop into the chasm and fight from there. I can't feel anyone close, but it's such an obvious strategy, someone must be trying it."

"Ah. There is... a somewhat large group further back from us, with a well-equipped camp. I cannot determine their exact activities, but Rulers there could reach the river in under an hour, easily."

"Try to keep a sensoryorgan on them when you can." Friend Theo tilted his head to look behind them and to the east. "It feels like the Strongholds have largely deadlocked one another, but I'm not sure. Do you think anyone has pressed further north than us?"

"I have already been monitoring that," Fiyu said with a slight smile, knowing that he would be pleased. "The Authorities obviously outpaced us by far at first, but when we traveled along the river beneath their fights, we moved ahead. For several hours there was no one near us, but the time we spent harvesting the cavern and resting has allowed many to catch up. The area further north remains largely clear, but likely not for long."

"Then let's look even further north. The interference is getting worse, but I think if we combine our senses, we should be able to determine some more."

Friend Theo did not truly mean what he said, since they were too weak and too unfamiliar with one another to combine their senses of the world. A much lesser version of the technique was possible, however, and they cast cantae to the north together. Brushing their souls was a strange thing, but with Fiyu's body firmly focused on the threats, she felt only determination.

Though a bit clumsy, Friend Theo's sense of gravity was quite powerful. Through his cantae, she could easily feel the sharp lines of the canyon overhead as they widened. She ignored those broad patterns and instead searched within, trying to filter out the chaos of the river to locate the oddities within. It took several minutes, but eventually she felt that she had acquired a clearer representation of the path ahead.

"There should be something ahead," Friend Theo muttered, almost to himself. "A larger space opening to the east, before the final stretch of the river. But I'm struggling to find it..."

Fiyu shook her head. "You could not find it because you are looking for something separate from the river. It feels to me as if a barrier has been eroded, and the river has partially flooded that space."

"But there's a cavern there? I thought it would still exist."

"There is a partially underground region to the east that contains a number of angular structures that I believe must be buildings. Many of these are flooded or otherwise damaged. This leads to a larger shore region alongside the river that could be safely navigated. It does not last until the widest part of the river, but there appears to be an island in the center that may have another structure."

"There it is." Friend Theo smiled thinly and stared to the north. "The first structures you felt are ruins, though they were largely picked over before. The shore is one of the safer spaces near the river, so others may arrive there as well. But it's that building on the island I'm most interested in. When I visited here before, I wasn't able to reach it, so unless someone else looted the building, that might be our next most valuable target."

"And on the journey there?"

"Keep a lookout for flowers tucked into the chasm walls, but we aren't likely to find anything until we reach the shore, and only if we get there first."

Now that they knew the path forward, Friend Theo was obviously determined to hurry again, stopped only by decency in not jolting Friend Nauda awake. As soon as she roused, they would all likely be pushing forward, to explore these ruins and the shoreline. Then the island, and beyond...

Though they had still only navigated part of the Chasm of Lamentations, Fiyu was increasingly certain that the moans surrounding all of them were growing louder. She wondered how loud they would become by the time they reached the ominous density pushing against her senses at the end of the river.

-

Chapter 18

Though Theo never drove them at a truly reckless pace, Nauda couldn't help but feel his impatience simmering. According to the constant monitoring from Fiyu, their path taking them along the river had helped them get ahead during the early chaos, but now they were moving slowly compared to groups above. He was clearly driven to reach the shore first and felt they were falling behind.

Personally, she enjoyed the more casual hunt for sublime materials along the chasm walls. It was almost nostalgic to walk along the edges, enjoying the flowers clinging to the rocks even while searching for those with cantae, peering into tiny crannies. They didn't find anything as powerful as the sublime materials in the pit of poison gas, but without a sense of constant danger, she enjoyed it more. Yes, she probably should have been more worried about the river, but they usually had firm footholds, so she relaxed a little.

The sublime materials she found weren't anything to ignore, either. Perhaps not the legendary materials that people hoped to find in the Chasm of Lamentations, but still valuable. Certain flowers held very dense cantae and could be used to manufacture dyes or paints. Occasionally she found sapphire-like gemstones in the rocks that would make a valuable addition to many chambers.

When the paths along the side of the river finally extended out to a broader shore, she was almost disappointed. It was rocky at first, but as it expanded to several paces of shoreline under the rocky overhang, Nauda started to understand why Theo had wanted to rush there.

Moisture dripped from the stone overhead, thankfully not harmful. Instead it nurtured a more lively environment than any she'd seen so far in the Chasm, plants growing richly between the sharp cliff face and the river. Any sublime material that managed to survive next to those violent waters clearly had potential, and they'd spent the past years regrowing. Since their group had arrived first, they would be able to find some of the most valuable before they were picked over.

"The only dangers here are the river and the sky," Theo said. "If you see either change significantly, we may need to react. But other than that, you can harvest anything that looks valuable. We're particularly looking for a bush that looks like it's made of spun glass. The bush itself isn't a strong sublime material, but the roots are worth quite a bit."

"What do we do if the river or sky change?" Nauda asked.

"Unfortunately, there are too many different outcomes to cover them all. Just pay attention and listen if I panic. If anything happens to me, use all your safety equipment and hope."

Well, that was better than the presumption he might once have demonstrated. Nauda led the three alongside the river, examining the plants carefully for any that might be worthwhile. She didn't notice any flowers equivalent to those on the chasm cliffs, but there were more than a few that would have sold for a decent amount back in Tatian.

After an hour they found a bush that gave off wispy distortions, and drawing too close produced some sort of reaction. As the light dimmed, Theo urged them all to put on their masks. Nauda felt as though some danger passed them, but since none of them were harmed, they were able to continue smoothly. Once she adjusted to the patterns, the struggle was to remain alert.

They'd found a few of the more valuable plants, and Nauda was just beginning to think that it might become a relaxed exercise in flower-gathering, when she felt the cantae surge above her.

By the time she looked up, three Ruler-tier soulcrafters were already rappelling down the side of cliff. No, not solely rappelling... each had their hands sunk into the cliff itself, sliding through the stone to control their descent. Above them, the atmospheric disturbances were going crazy, as if they'd agitated the mist by passing through. Against that blue backdrop, the gray of the Asplundat Movement armor was quite clear.

"Turn back!" Theo called up, before she'd decided how to respond. "Didn't you see the distortions? You can't just throw yourselves down here!"

The implication of his statement made Nauda check her environment apprehensively... was the river frothing up more than it normally did? But before she could fully analyze everything, one of the Asplundat Rulers turned around, revealing himself to be Homez. "Apologies, but we need to harvest the shore too. Stay there and we can negotiate something."

If they waited until the Asplundat soulcrafters reached the ground, they'd be at a disadvantage. Nauda considered whether or not to strike first, and it seemed that Theo didn't need any time. "Throw a boulder at them," he ordered as he drew cantae from his soulhome.

After only a slight pause, Nauda decided to follow his plan. She tore a large stone from the shore with both hands and then heaved it toward the three climbing Rulers. As she would have expected, one of them  released a hand from the cliff, using a stone-covered fist to deflect her projectile. Even thrown with her full strength, it could only briefly halt the group before dropping.

Then Theo's gravitational field caught the stone, sending it plummeting. She saw Theo's hand twist in a familiar movement as the stone hit the water. Whatever he did, the stone hitting the water led to an eruption of the white death.

The column of water forced the Asplundat Rulers to scatter in three different directions and caught one of them in the leg. He cried out in pain and tumbled, barely catching himself by one arm on another rock. Homez pushed off, flipping higher in the chasm, while the female soulcrafter instead leapt straight off the wall. 

Toward their position.

While they were in the air, Nauda had a split second to glance back and consider strategy. Fiyu was prepared, as expected. Senka was diving behind another rock and covering her head, which would get her out of the way - she'd been much less annoying than usual lately, Nauda sometimes forgot she was there. Theo had raised his hands facing one another, as if already trying to generate one of his black holes. 

She wished that they could communicate, in the last instant they had before the battle began. Had Theo been bluffing earlier, or had their arrival actually brought on some sort of danger? Was he just bloodthirsty or did he have a reason to start his most dangerous attack from the beginning?

With no time for any of those questions, Nauda's only real choice was to defend her friends.

The first threat was the female Ruler who landed on the shoreline beside them. Nauda charged at her staff-first, beginning with a binding technique. Though the Ruler's armor managed to prevent her from getting a spiritual grip, Nauda easily shifted her physical grip and struck the Ruler across the face with the forks of her staff. It didn't break through the Asplundat armor, but it did send her staggering much closer to the river.

From the opposite cliff, the third Ruler prepared to push off toward them. Fiyu unleashed a storm of light bolts, which he mostly ignored because they deflected off his armor. But he should have been paying more attention, because a swath of the bolts shattered stones above him, sending them raining down toward his grip.

He barely managed to push away in time, a desperate movement that Nauda was easily able to intercept. She swept her staff into his injured leg as he landed, then kicked him in the chest, driving him directly into the female Ruler before she could advance. Both stumbled closer to the river, unable to move freely with such a threat at their backs.

It could almost have ended then, but at that moment Homez flipped overhead. While upside-down he released two bolts of gray cantae. Nauda knocked the nearest aside, more concerned about Fiyu... and then realized her mistake.

Fiyu had dodged back, but the cantae bolts had been a distraction from the beginning. Homez landed beside Theo, both fists thrusting toward him. Theo managed to leap away, but the spherical stones struck his cantae and dissipated it before it could form a black hole.

Before Nauda could assist him, the other two Rulers struck her simultaneously. She began a spinning defensive pattern with her staff, keeping them at bay briefly before one of them managed to grab it in one rocky claw. The other Ruler formed a sledgehammer around their hand and struck. Nauda was barely able to raise an arm and intercept the blow.

It shot pain through her arm, and the two soon began to overpower her. She was strong, but not strong enough to overpower two competent Rulers simultaneously. Worse, with her staff gripped...

A torsion bolt hit the arm grabbing her staff, sending stone fragments shattering in both directions. The momentary delay gave Nauda time to pull it free and strike each of them a blow to the chest. Just enough to crack their armor a little and knock them back, earn herself some space.

Unfortunately, over her shoulder she saw that the battle wasn't going well. When Theo had assisted her, it had cost him, because Homez nearly had him pinned against the cliff, striking repeated blows he could barely dodge. Nauda realized that Homez had seen the power of his black hole technique and would never give him enough space to complete it. Worse, she wasn't confident in her ability to overpower him, even before the other two Rulers were considered.

Fiyu appeared from the side, unleashing a narrowly focused wave of bolts that slammed into Homez. It barely seemed to slow him and he spun on her, too quickly. Nauda realized that he must have left himself open hoping to lure her out, but it was too late to say anything.

Homez whirled, both fists smashing together and unleashing a spherical shockwave. Theo only winced, but Fiyu wavered on her feet, starting to drop. The Asplundat Ruler immediately moved in, stone sphere flying at her...

Fiyu stopped pretending to fall and her hand swept up, surrounded by dark cantae. 

It sliced through Homez's shoulder armor and even drew a little blood. He stepped back, eyes wide within his helm. Though she only caught a glimpse of his eyes... Nauda almost thought that he was smiling. Fiyu's trap had been very well placed, after all.

Unfortunately, it might not matter. Nauda's hesitation had allowed the other two Rulers to move further from the river, which was surging and splashing onto the shore so dangerously that it threatened all of them. In that environment, the three of them would be at even more of a disadvantage.

Before Nauda could decide how to act, Theo leapt between her and Fiyu and cast another of his gravity spells. All three of them began to fall into the air, though not as quickly as usual. Perhaps he saw the odds and intended to flee? As she rose into the air, Nauda realized that the moaning in the chasm around them had increased, as if an entire chorus screamed in the distance... and then she saw the water surging toward them.

The Asplundat Rulers leapt for them, but Nauda threw her binding against them and Theo cast another of his fields, making their jump fall far short. Two of them appeared simply angry, but Homez saw the onrushing flood and began to move.

A wall of pale water deluged the shore, hitting the side of the chasm violently and sending a cascade over the entire gap. Theo's spell only barely lifted them above it, weakening as they rose higher. He managed to move them all to the ground atop the chasm, but as soon as they landed he dropped to his knees, panting for breath.

Had the flood coursing down the river killed all their opponents? Nauda dared to look back, peering into the chasm... and saw a rope wrapped around a nearby rock. Dangling at the end, Homez desperately pulled himself higher, his stone armor burned away in countless places. There was no sign of the others, but he was crawling his way up.

"Cut the rope." Theo still gasped for breath, but he gestured Fiyu toward the tied point. She generated a cantae blade, but hesitated as she reached the edge, watching Homez stare up at them.

"Wait." Nauda almost reached out to stop Fiyu and forced herself to do no more than speak. "Do we really need to kill him? He's weakened and without his allies."

"And our enemy."

"Not necessarily, unless you always kill their soulcrafters without mercy. Do you want to see what an empire like the Asplundat Movement will do if it drops the nice act?"

"They won't know if he dies."

Nauda stared into Theo's eyes, again seeing the darkness there. He was no longer the man who had planned to rob Myufuru blind, but she had lost sight of the ruthlessness that still lurked within him. If a conflict emerged between them, a true conflict, she wondered exactly what he would do.

After looking between them several times, Fiyu released the cantae around her hand. That seemed to settle the matter, despite Theo's obvious displeasure, so Nauda bent down to help pull Homez up the rope. He intentionally kept his soulhome inert, taking no action that could be viewed as aggressive.

"Thank you," he said as she pulled him the rest of the way up. "I w-"

"There's no time." Theo was staring down toward the source of the river grimly. "It's about to end. Put in your earplugs... and you, just reinforce yourself as much as you can."

Despite her thoughts, Nauda complied immediately, stuffing the silencemoss plugs deep into her ears. The screams of the chasm immediately faded... only to increase even through the thick moss. As the flood of water passed, it was followed by a scream more intense than any that had come before it, the sounds themselves scraping the walls of the chasm.

For a moment, Nauda was overwhelmed by a sound of pure sorrow ringing deep inside her skull. Then it receded and she took a long, shuddering breath.

Beside her, Theo appeared unharmed, while Fiyu frowned with her hands over her ears. Homez had built a thick stone helmet around his head, but as she watched, it crumbled away. A line of blood trickled from one ear, and he slowly reached up to touch it. Though it didn't seem as though the scream had disabled him, when he spoke, his voice was much quieter.

"We had no intention of fighting you, actually." He stared down over the edge, where the river slowly subsided to its normal raging. "Two lives lost, for nothing..."

"It's easy to preach peace when you have military superiority." Theo stepped up to the Asplundat soulcrafter, thankfully no longer looking murderous. "And you brought that on yourselves, dropping straight into the chasm. I would have expected your Movement to have figured out that those distortions always lead to backlash."

"It would have worked, if we hadn't stumbled across you." Homez sighed heavily and allowed his armor to slough away. "You saved my life when you would have been justified leaving me. I cannot truly thank you, but I'll retreat instead of pursuing this further."

"And how many other soulcrafters is the Asplundat Movement going to send on the west side?" Nauda asked. "That was the plan, wasn't it? Send Rulers pretending to gather materials passively until they could seize control of the central river area?"

"Yes. That was never against the rules we set. Now the process will be delayed, but there are still others coming, and I am not the commander of this operation. I would suggest you hurry."

"Excuse me." Fiyu had slipped up nearby and spoke with absurd politeness. "Can you explain what your Movement wants? Please do not pretend you are not at war with the Ruling Cities."

Homez sighed and ran a hand over his eyes, the lines in his face weighing down his expression. "The three of you are visitors to this world, so I think you don't understand what it's like to live outside the cities. They're nothing but the strongest of barbarian clans, leeching off the land around them. In the Asplundat Movement, all are equal. No Houses, no principalities, no forgotten ghettos in between cities. I don't believe that we should conquer the continent, as some do, but I do believe that Fithe would be a better world if the Asplundat Movement spread across all of it."

"That has less to do with us than you think." Theo waved him toward the other side of the chasm. "I guess you'd better hurry. You only have about a day to gather materials."

"Oh, it will be more than that. Haven't you seen the darkness?" Homez gestured behind them toward the plain, where an entirely different battle still raged. "Our highest commanders knew that the House of the Lost was going to call on its allies. They've established a technique that enmeshed itself in the boundary, preventing it from dissolving. It also prevents anyone from getting out."

"You knew the event would be extended... and you planned for it. What else do you have in store?"

"Even if I would tell you all our plans, my part in this has ended." Homez leapt backward with surprising speed for such a tired man, though he didn't try to jump all the way across the chasm. "Perhaps later we can meet under less violent circumstances. Please think about what I said and look around you."

He turned away and began finding a path south. Though Theo continued to watch him skeptically, Nauda instead turned her gaze toward the battlefield. The unnatural darkness still extended over much of the plain, and now that she was looking for it, she saw how the distortions of the barrier had turned completely black. Even the shimmering blue waves on the other sides of the Chasm had become much darker than they had been before.

"Theo?" Fiyu spoke up very quietly. "What exactly does that mean?"

"It's a technique that keeps the Chasm of Lamentations open for longer, like I said might happen." He frowned as he finally looked back, examining the same darkness. "But this one is stronger than what I saw before, much stronger. Apparently it keeps anyone from getting out, and even after it fades, there will probably be several days to escape."

"Does that mean...?"

"Yes. We're going to be here for a while."