38. [Cortland] The Underneath (Patreon)

--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—

Cortland Finiron, Hammer Master of the 12th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, paying attention to troubling signs

Carina Goldstone, Henry Blacksalve, and Vitt Secondson-Salvado, champions of Infinzel, working together for the first time

Issa Firstdot-Tuarez and Walton Tendersword, accompanying the champions down

Arris Stonetender a half dozen other Garrison soldiers, holding the gate

23 Harvesend, 61 AW

The pyramidal city of Infinzel

217 days until the next Granting

The layout of the Underneath rarely changed. Periodically, the Garrison sent down forays whose mission it was to map the network of caverns. Sometimes, they found that a tunnel had collapsed. Other times, they discovered a wall had fallen opening a new area for exploration. There was fuzziness at the edges of their maps; the caverns continued downward for miles and there were limits to how far a single foray could venture and still safely return. No one wanted to camp in the Underneath—they hadn’t even tried it since well before Cortland’s time in the Garrison. The main concern was ensuring that no new pathways began climbing upward toward Infinzel and that the closest corridors remained mapped and manageable. What bubbled through the deep, shadowy bowels of the earth could remain down there undisturbed so long as it didn’t stretch toward the light.

According to King Cizco’s map, they would be descending about four miles. Cortland had been on expeditions where the gods had made them go deeper into the Underneath. This foray was a relatively straight shot through stable and known tunnels, although Cortland did not like how many crossings they’d be putting at their backs. The Ink appeared to be located in a dead end cavern. It wasn’t moving, at least, so that was some relief—they weren’t descending to battle some fresh horror spawned of residual Orvesian curses and underworld terrors.

From the hallway outside the training pit, a single narrow stairwell led down to the Underneath's entrance. No one was allowed down this way except for Garrison soldiers, and even they needed permission from a commander. A semi-circle of waist-high stone walls faced the stairwell. Those blockades were meant to be the last defense should something break free from below. During the Final War, the Garrison had held those hastily erected barricades with spears and crossbows. They had not been tested since.

They descended the stairwell in pairs. Ahead of him, Cortland watched Carina trace her fingers across the glowing runes etched into the walls—wards that would set off alarms if anything climbed the stairs without the Ink of Infinzel. Layer upon layer of caution.

The heat from the training grounds quickly turned to a damp chill. Next to Cortland, Arris Stonetender twitched and shuddered as if she felt the cold more than the others. And yet, up close, Cortland felt a haze of heat rolling off the woman.

“You good, Arris?” Cortland asked quietly.

“Yes,” she said. Dried spit calcified in the corners of her mouth. 

“We were surprised to see you.” Cortland said. The elementalist had shown up without an invitation, which Cortland would've found strange if it was anyone else. But Arris was supposed to be a champion. This could've been her foray to acquire more Ink, if the gods hadn't interfered.

“I have been on the gate team for every foray since you became champion, have I not?” she replied. “Nothing clears a path like fire.”

Cortland couldn't argue. They’d brought plenty of fine fighters with them to hold the way back, but the elementalist could wreak destruction at a level the swordsmen and archers could not. He wished that he had another fire elementalist in the Garrison, although judging by Arris’ appearance he wasn’t surprised that so few took up the art.

At the bottom of the stairs, they squeezed into a narrow chamber with more stone blockades set up at intervals so that they had to snake their way through. On the far wall, a ten foot high slab of warded stone stood as the door to the Underneath. Two guards of the Garrison were waiting for them with a bucket of unlit torches—there was always a team posted on the entrance, a sleepy and dull job usually, but this pair looked alert considering the occasion.

“Last chance to turn back,” Vitt said with a yawn. His hooded gaze sought Carina, but she ignored him.

The logician accepted a torch, as did Cortland, Henry, and a couple of the soldiers in the gate team—the ones amongst them who didn’t need two hands to fight. They lit the first torch with a flint and then passed it around to light the others. It seemed bad form to ask Arris for a spark, given her condition.

At a nod from Cortland, the two guards went to opposite sides of the stone door to crank the mechanisms installed there. Rock dust trickled down as the great slab rose upward. Carina craned her neck to study the mechanism—not so different from the machinery that powered Infinzel’s lifts—no doubt adding it to her mental inventory of Infinzel’s advancements.

“Stone in the blood,” said one of the guards.

“Come back whole,” said the other.

Moments later, the champions and their escort stood on the other side of the stone slab as it thudded back into place. They stood on a level platform atop a descending ramp, illuminated only by the glowing wards that ran in a ring from floor to ceiling. These wards emitted a vivid light, too harsh to look at directly, different from the soft imitation fire that lit most of Infinzel. A purification ring, Cizco called it. The light repulsed or destroyed the Orvesian shades that lingered in the Underneath.

There were weapon racks along one wall and the gate team went about arming themselves beyond the personal armaments they brought with them. Spears, hooked rods, and heavy crossbows were usually necessary to clear the gargoyles inevitably gathered at the gate below. Besides the weapons, there were also shelves of dry food, jugs of water, ropes and grappling hooks, and some poultices and bandages.   

A rope dangled from the ceiling, connected to a bell that would ring on the other side when they were ready to return. Henry fingered the frayed ends of the rope. “You ever hear the one about the guard on duty alone who heard the bell ring when there was no one gone down?”

“My father used to tell that,” Issa Firstdot-Tuarez replied. “His favorite ghost story.”

“Ah.” Henry cleared his throat and stepped away from the rope. “Maybe that’s where I got it from.”

This would be the first time any of the champions had descended without Ben Tuarez to guide them. Cortland grimaced, remembering how the dead champion would run through a pep talk at this point—stronger for the sake of Infinzel, no man left behind, stay together and stay in the light. Hoary wisdom, to be sure, but comforting in its repetition. As senior champion, Cortland supposed they were all waiting for him to say something similar.

“You all know your fucking jobs,” Cortland said. “So do them, and we all come back.”

“Here, here,” replied Vitt.

“Torches,” Cortland ordered.

Two of the guards complied, lighting sconces that ignited veins set into the walls, fire streaking downward to light their path. In response, they all heard noise from down below, like stones bouncing off each other in a tumbler. Gargoyles, excited like dogs whose masters have just come home, banging against the gate.

“Arris, lead the way,” Cortland said.

With Arris and the rest of the gate team in front, they started down the ramp. It was a steep decline on chalky stone. The ceiling above gradually changed—the manipulated and purposeful graystone of Infinzel giving way to hard-packed dirt held back by support beams and then the pocked limestone of the Underneath. They passed by cutouts where archers could take cover and through another purification ring. More defenses of old.

The gate came into view. A thick latticework of pearlescent tungsten grown special from Infinzel’s mineral garden, the gate spanned the final opening into the Underneath. While it had been clawed, chewed, and rammed over the decades, the gate had never broken—though sections were reinforced every year. Gaps in the gate were big enough only for a polearm to stab through.

Gargoyles prowled on the other side. The creatures were the size of mastiffs, with skin of white stone, glowing arteries of vivid blue ice at their joints, and curving wings that snapped at the air like whips. Their stone hides could be nearly impenetrable when they were still, turning more malleable when the gargoyles moved. Those joints and their shadowy orifices—their eyes and mouths—were the places to strike, gouging into the beasts until the cold core within them could be destroyed. Once, the gargoyles were capable of breathing frostbite inducing gusts of wind, but that attack had become rarer and rarer as it seemed to drain the old magic that animated the creatures. Mostly, they fought with claws, crushing weight, and tearing beaks. To Cortland, that seemed like more than enough. He counted four of them fruitlessly battering the gate.

The Garrison soldiers took up position, ready with their hooks and spears and crossbows. With any luck, the gargoyles would stay close enough that they could kill them before raising the gate. Arris stood nearby, her eyes fluttering closed as heat gathered at her palms.

Carina shouldered in amongst them. “Would it be alright if I tried something?”

“Let them do their work,” Cortland said.

“I believe I can make their work easier,” Carina replied.

She reached into one of the pouches strapped across her chest and produced a palm-sized disc that glowed with some ward-work Cortland didn’t recognize. Arris and the other soldiers in the gate team looked to him, but the matter was settled. Carina wasn’t really asking permission.

“Don’t be alarmed if you feel a pulling sensation,” Carina told them.

“A pulling sensation where?” Vitt asked.

Carina responded by setting her disc ward-side up on the floor and sliding it through a narrow gap in the gate. The gargoyles fell upon it like she’d tossed them a slab of meat. Carina spoke a word of arcane activation and the disc flared.

Cortland stumbled forward a step. They all did. The wards weaved into their armor were all tugged toward Carina’s device.

“Arcane magnetism,” Carina explained. She frowned, as if disappointed in the results. “I guess I should have made it stronger.”

None of the others said anything. They were all staring at the gargoyles. The creatures had gone lumpen and lopsided, hobbling around and gnashing at the gate in a state of confusion. Pockets of blue energy bulged in their torsos—their cores, dragged unwillingly toward the surface of their bodies. One of the guards jabbed his spear through the gate, bursting one of the vivid cobalt targets like a pimple. The core released a burst of light and frigid air, and then the gargoyle crumbled into lifeless rocks.

As the gate team made quick work of the remaining creatures, Henry put his hand on Carina’s shoulder.

“Well done,” the healer said.

Carina shrugged. “I’d hoped to rip the cores clean out.”

Cortland wondered if this was true, or if she’d gotten exactly the result she planned but wanted to leave some work for the rest of them. An exercise in confidence building.

Vitt flicked one of the pouches on Carina’s chest. “What other toys do you have in there?”

“I have something for all of the creatures we’re most likely to encounter,” Carina replied. She glanced at Cortland. “I’ve been preparing for weeks.”

With the gargoyles killed, the cavern beyond the gate was clear. A crank attached to the wall moved the gate forward on tracks build into the ceiling, metal grinding against the stone in a way that set Cortland’s teeth on edge. They pushed the gate forward just enough that Cortland and the others could slip through at the sides. The champions, Issa, and Walton Tendersword would move on. Arris and the rest would stay behind, hold this chamber, and keep it clear for escape.

“If we’re more than two hours gone, send a search party,” Cortland told Arris.

He wasn’t sure the elementalist heard. Her eyes were locked on Carina.

The first cavern beyond the gate was round, high ceilinged, and empty. One tunnel waited on the far side. Issa took point with her shield and spear, with Walton on her left and Cortland on her right. Vitt positioned himself a half-step behind Cortland, an arrow notched, ready to fire over Cortland's shoulder. Neither man would ever remark upon such a thing, but they moved well together, an easy synchronization that came from surviving a couple Grantings together. Henry and Carina trailed behind.

There were sconces hammered into the walls every twenty yards or so. They lit the torches as they went, illuminating their path back. Nothing in the Underneath appreciated light.

They’d made it down the first tunnel and turned left into another narrow cavern when Cortland waved his torch toward a sconce that wasn’t there. It had been awhile—perhaps his count was off. But then Issa’s foot sent something metallic skittering across the ground.

The torch was gone, the metal bracket ripped from the wall. Continuing down the tunnel, they found that all of the sconces had been torn down.

“You were down here recently,” Cortland said, turning to Walton. “Didn’t anyone notice the gods damned torches were down?”

The brawny boy had a broadsword held out in front of him in such a way that his forearms had to be burning. He shook his head vigorously, hair catching in the sweat on his forehead.

“It wasn’t like this, sir,” he said.

“Gargoyles bumbling around in the dark?” Henry asked.

“One or two, maybe,” Cortland said. “But an entire passage cleared?”

Cortland glanced behind them. The tunnels were quiet so far, but he didn’t like the idea of having so much darkness at their backs.

“We’re almost halfway,” Carina said, as if reading his mind.

Cortland grunted. “Halfway ain’t whole way.”

“So wise,” Vitt said. “Let’s turn back. Send down the maintenance crews to be killed by whatever’s developed thumbs down here. We are too valuable to risk.”

Cortland scowled. The hunter wasn’t wrong necessarily—there were procedures to follow in the Underneath, and one of them was to have a lit way back to Infinzel. But the notion of turning back to send some hard luck Garrison soldiers and masons down to do repairs rubbed Cortland wrong.

“We’ll take the next passage,” Cortland said. “See what we see.”

They pressed on in a tight formation, holding to their circle of light. The sconces had been yanked from the walls of the next tunnel too.

“Something’s ahead,” Issa said, squinting at the next crossing of tunnels.

Cortland shot a questioning look back at Carina. She shook her head to indicate that her [Alert] Ink hadn’t flared. Whatever waited for them wasn’t dangerous.

A pair of glistening black eyes stared at them from the adjoining cavern. Nothing more than a scrounger. The millipedes were natural inhabitants of the Underneath—not magically inflicted ones—burrowing through crevices to feed on mold. Judging by its size, the scrounger watching them was on the younger side, no bigger than a loaf of bread. Cortland had seen the worms grow as big as a man's arm. They had leathery skin the color of coffee grounds, wet and toothless mouths, and scuttled about on hundreds of little legs.

Behind him, Cortland heard the tension in Vitt's bowstring. “Leave it,” Cortland said. “Bastards are harmless.”

“Its appearance does me harm,” Vitt said and loosed an arrow. The scrounger didn't even flinch. The arrow squelched into its eye and the creature's legs folded up beneath it as it flopped over dead.

“Waste of an arrow,” Henry said.

“I'm not wasting it,” Vitt said. He clicked his tongue. “Fetch my arrow, boy.”

Walton glanced back at Vitt and swallowed. “Me?”

“Who else on this expedition would be classified as a boy?” Vitt asked.

Before Walton could step forward, Carina broke formation and crouched over the scrounger. She wrapped her hand around the arrow shaft and was about to tug it loose when something in the light of her torch distracted her. Carina straightened and took a few steps deeper into the tunnel.

“That's the wrong way,” Cortland said.

“You'll want to see this,” she replied.

There were more than twenty scrounger corpses piled there. Cortland had a hard time getting an exact count as the bodies had been skinned, leaving behind only the gelatinous insides of the worms. The passage smelled like vinegar and rot. It took Cortland a moment to register that the legs had been plucked clean from the bodies as well.

“By the gods,” Henry said, putting the back of his hand to his mouth. “What is this?”

“Some kind of sick game?” Cortland asked. He turned to Issa and Walton. “Have Garrison patrols started taking trophies?”

Walton simply shook his head mutely, but Issa gave him a flat look. “If someone in the barracks was collecting scrounger skins, we’d have locked the maniac up.”

“Nothing preys on these things, right?” Cortland asked, surprising himself by directing the question to Vitt.

The hunter bent down and retrieved his own arrow, not taking his eyes off the grisly scene. “Prey suggests food source,” he said. “These worms weren't eaten. They were sheared and plucked.”

“By what?” Cortland asked, the question coming more harshly than he would've liked. When no one ventured an answer, he turned to Carina. “You must’ve peeked into the future during your preparation. What do we face down here?”

She stood with her hand on her chin, as if she might decipher the meaning of dozens of decaying worm bodies. “I did not see this,” she said after a moment, perhaps confused why that would be.

Cortland frowned. First, the wall sconces had been damaged as if to keep them in the dark, and now they came across this scrounger massacre that looked to have been done with a specific purpose in mind. Something was down here with them operating at a level of intelligence higher than the creatures of the Underneath had previously demonstrated.

“Maybe this is what we’ve been brought down here to discover,” Vitt said, striding back to their intended path. “Surely, the gods are steering us toward answers, aren't they? I've heard so often how they always favor Infinzel.”

Carina took in a sharp breath. Cortland knew what that meant before the logician could even speak. Her [Alert] rune had fired a warning through her body.

“Vitt!” he shouted. “Hold!”

The hunter had already stepped into the next intersection. Something at his feet twanged and snapped.

A cluster of projectiles streaked at them from the darkened passage. To Cortland’s right, an automatic circle of [Deflection] erupted from Henry’s forearm. Issa raised her shield, protecting herself and Carina. Walton yelped and ducked. One of the dart-sized objects bounced off Cortland’s armored shoulder. He caught it before it could fall to the floor.

There was no mistaking it: he held a scrounger leg, sharpened to a point.

Vitt moaned and turned to face them.

Two of the legs stuck out of his face.