60. On Persistence (I) (Patreon)

Shadows

Success is the intersection of talent and persistence.
-Old Arkavian saying

Success has brothers and cousins aplenty, but failure is an orphan.
-Tactonius, from Pontifications

Nima tossed an armful of reeking 'darks' into the laundry water, her black hair plastered to her neck and cheeks, sweat blotting through her own clothes.

"I don't understand why you hate me so much," she grunted before turning the crank to drop the laundry into the churning wheel.

I added alchemical soap to the mix and invigorated the industrial-strength water heater. I could invigorate the thing six times before I was out of outer thaum, up two from when I first started on laundry detail. "I didn't pick you because I hate you, Nima. I picked you because I wasn't going to make my friends do laundry detail and so it was you or Ramses. Sorry. And I dunno… maybe we aren't so chummy because you and your friends basically terrorized me when I got here? What did I ever do to make youhate me?"

"I dunno," she shrugged. "You think you're better than everyone."

"I don't."

Nima glowered at me but didn't say anything for a minute. "Well, then because of what you did to Tizzie…"

"That was like two years later. You realize she was trying to get me, Mailyn, and Aldo into trouble absolutely no reason, right? She's convinced I'm some kind of master criminal… it's like she's obsessed with me or something. And I'm not being self-absorbed. She really is."

Nima dropped another load of laundry into the churner and set herself on the little bench near the laundry machines with an audible huff. "We're best friends, you know. Or we were. I don't know anymore… I don't know if she has any friends. It's like… um…" she blotted at her eyes with her sweaty shirt. "It's like you broke her. I mean… you don't understand. You don't understand how fragile she is. How hard she's had it. When she was little, her…"

I turned away so Nima wouldn't see me roll my eyes and sorted through the next batch of clothes. "Yeah, the rest of us have it so easy. I got rescued off a slave ship, you know."

"Boo hoo," Nima, who was still literally crying, pantomimed crying. "We've all heard the story of why you're the Rose of Floria's little pet. Well maybe Tizzie isn't strong like you and me. Did you ever think of that?"

Honestly, I never had. This was in part because she was such a thoroughly unpleasant person, and also because she was as tall as Nima (who had half a head on me) and broader to boot. And, yes, strong. I could attest to that from the several times I'd been paired with her in round robin drills in our Basic Combat class. She hit like a charging destrier. It had honestly never occurred to me that she was, perhaps, a fragile child putting on a tough visage while suffering through some intense internal turmoil.

"Okay, so maybe she's got it bad - I never once went out of my way to hurt her, and if she takes a swing at me, I guarantee I'll swing back every single time." This was a metaphor, obviously. If Tizzie started taking haymakers at me, my blade was coming out. Like I said, she hit like a charging destrier. "I'm not a pushover, Nima."

"Yeah, I kind of noticed," Nima said with a roll of her eyes. She plodded over to the water controls to purge the hot, soapy water and replace it with fresh, cool water. "Look… can we not do this?"

"You brought it up."

"I know!" she snapped. "Now let it go already!"

"Fine," I said coolly. I unloaded a bundle of washed clothes and tossed them into the ringer. I wiped the palms of my hands, both because they were wet and for the metaphor. "I'm letting it go. I don't hate you. We're not enemies. And the next time you see Tizzie, tell her I don't hate her, either."

Nima nodded. "Okay, I will," she said. "I don't hate you. But we're still not friends."

"Yeah. Believe me, I get that."

I had to admit that resolution was a bit anticlimactic. When I'd picked Nima to do laundry detail with me, I was worried we might come to blows, and almost equally worried that we might emerge fast friends. Obviously, that didn't happen. I obviously had legitimate reasons for not liking the girl, and she'd as much as admitted that she and the rest of the 'Tetrad of Terror' hadn't had great reasons to harass me, but she seemed to have cooled over the years. Conversely, her accusation that I thought I was better than everyone, while not true in the strictest sense, had a kernel of truth to it. I know I can be arrogant, and I often thought myself above my fellow Sneaks, especially ones like Nima and Tizzie, speaking of whom…

Tizzie was a Sneak now, too, in a different bunk and on another crew. She'd received her glyph perhaps a month and a half after me, which meant she was still an initiate in the Society of Night, presumably getting lots of laundry detail when she inevitably came in last during their biweekly gambits. Or perhaps that's just me being arrogant and thinking too little of her. I doubt it. I wondered whether I should attempt to bury the hatchet with the girl, but I didn't encounter her on the regular the way I had to interact with Nima, who shared several classes and Society of Night crew with me.

"We should invite Nima to come with us," I said.

"Are you mad? That girl's a thug," Mailyn said. I'm not sure whether she actually believed it or just expected me to think it. "Aldo, back me up."

Aldo just shrugged. "She hasn't bothered me in months."

"Hmm… I still say no."

I stuck out my tongue at her. "Well too bad. I invited her." Then I waved to Nima, just now making her way down the side of the drainage canal.

"Wonderful," Mailyn grubled.

Our Society of Night crew had just initiated six new Sneaks, and even though we, the next most recent group, were technically full adepts in the Society, we were considered too green to take part in an initiation just yet. Therefore, we were supposed to go on yet another undercity gambit… only Tollen, the Greycloak tasked with babysitting us, hadn't brought anything for us to compete over.

"I don’t really care what you do," he'd said with a shrug. "Bring me back something interesting that you've found, I guess."

"And then what?" I replied.

"And then I'll write in my report that you did a good job."

"You write reports?" Mailyn asked.

"Yeah. We all do. How did you think we managed the Society, just wing it as we go?"

"Pretty much," Aldo said.

"Well… we don't. Meridia likes things on paper. You've each got a file about this thick."

He'd then gestured with his fingers - not very thick, but maybe a stack of five octavos. Enough that it was clear the Society was keeping track of our progress, which I suppose we should have all suspected. In any case, our report for this evening was going to be very brief, because our only goal was to find something interesting for Tollen.

Nima wandered down to the entrance of the canal where the four of us - Mailyn, Aldo, Ramses, and I - were loitering. It hadn't rained more than a sprinkle in the past few days and so the flow coming out of the cloaca was no more than a trickle. As such, it was the easiest and fastest way to access the catacombs - at least that I knew of then. She stopped about three meters away from our group, just far enough to be awkward, scuffing the sole of her shoe against the stone of the canal.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey, Nima," I said with enough false cheer that it made things even more awkward. "We're supposed to find something interesting."

"Yeah, I heard."

I suppose she had been skulking in the background when we were speaking with Tollen. I just nodded and proceeded into the drainage tunnel, Nima joining the others as they filed in behind me.

Unlike the sewers of many cities, even large cities, the main tunnels are quite navigable, assuming you have a high tolerance for unpleasant smells. Ostensibly, this is to allow for sewer maintenance. More realistically, it's because most of the city's sewage system is carved out of the ancient catacombs, aqueducts, and mine shafts that burrow beneath the city, and those tunnels had to once permit human access. I've heard it said there are over fifty kilometers of navigable sewer in the city and several times that in accessible catacombs. Nobody knows how much has yet to be explored, but there's news of another discovery every few years.

The section of the catacombs we made our way to had only been open for three years, discovered when part of the sewer wall collapsed during the infamous St. Albacore's Day Cyclone and its resulting floods. While all of the more obvious spots had probably been picked clean, there might yet be interesting artifacts, or at least fragments thereof, in those tunnels. As we entered the ancient tunnels, accessible via an ad hoc ramp of semi-loose paving stones, I shivered. While the temperature in Floria rarely dips below twenty degrees, even at night, the deeper catacombs of Floria are a constant fifteen degrees. We weren't nearly that deep yet, but the cool, dusty air was a sharp contrast to the sweltering, musty drainage canal.

When most people think of the catacombs, they think of the cramped, bone-lined ossuaries of the ancient Mouldevican fortress-cities. In reality, in most cities, catacombs are simply plain stone corridors and colonnades in the underground with spots for shrines and tombs. Often, they're repurposed mines and sewers. Such is the case for many of Floria's catacombs, though some of the underground structures left by the unknown ancients are far stranger and grander. But those aren't the sorts of places that Sneaks just stumble upon. Usually.

"There's nothing here," Aldo said, sending a dusty pebble ricocheting down the passageway with a kick.

"There's a pebble," Nima said. "That's something." She strode next to me and occasionally muscling me out of the way when the corridor went narrow - she was too proud to meekly follow after me and I was of the same disposition. We both understood that it was a matter of face, and so things didn't escalate beyond that.

Aldo snorted. "You know what I mean. Usually there are at least bits of pottery or busted sarcophaguses. Sarcophagi?"

"Sarcophagi. It is unusually empty," I agreed. "The hallways further back might be less picked-over." From what I recalled of the Society's notes on this tract of catacombs, it ran for about half a kilometer between twenty and twenty-five meters below street level, and it was bone-dry, warded by ancient magics against invading groundwater. Some of the walls had the strange geometric writing of the ancients, but most were rough-hewn limestone, any wards embedded far deeper in the earth.

"Well," Aldo said, his grin visible in his eyes, "if we aren't finding anything until we're further back, don't you figure we should get there as fast as possible? As in a race…"

"Hey, that's not fair to anybody else," Ramses huffed. "It's dark in here." He was referring to the fact that, in near absolute darkness, those of us with a natural talent for shadow magic possess a distinct advantage - namely Aldo and myself.

"He can try to do his shadow trick," Mailyn said. "Okay, golden boy, let's race. On three. One."

"Two," I said.

"Three!" Aldo blurted and took off, dropping into the Shadelands the instant he was away from our faint glowglobe light. I, however, hesitated.

Her eyes brimming with mirth, Mailyn summoned an instant-long pop of cobalt-blue lightning above her palm. It was bright enough to push Aldo out of the shadow world, yelping as he stumbled forward, barely managing to avoid significant injury against a blocky stone pillar.

As he regained his bearings, he shouted back, "Hey, that's-"

"See ya slowpokes," I laughed. With that, I took off into the dark, waiting until I was around the corner to call upon my thaum and drop into the Shadelands, the tunnels around me brightening to the uniform, washed-out sepia. It's my understanding that the strange illumination within the Shadelands, in spaces that would otherwise be utterly dark in our world of form and color, is due to the diffuse, ever-present mana in that realm. For whatever reason, it appears as light to our eyes, even though it isn't light as we understand it. It's very convenient for navigating around the dark.

I stumbled as a flash shifted the terrain around me - another of Mailyn's little bursts, I'm sure - and with a glance back, I saw that Aldo was ten meters back and quickly catching up.

In the regular world, I was nearly as fast as Aldo and a bit more agile. On the whole, our speeds were about equal when running across the rooftops. From within the Shadelands, though, I'm sorry to say his skill surpassed mine, just as Mailyn's pyromantic abilities or Nima's kinetomantic abilities outshone mine. As much as I was loath to admit it, I was shaping up to be a thoroughly unimpressive jane-of-all-trades in thaumaturgy. Not a great look for a future Shadow. Therefore, I was determined that Aldo wouldn'tbeat me this time, even if it wasn't an official competition. I knew it was only a matter of pushing myself further. Like I've said - nobody has ever accused Vix Altorelli of not being competitive.

Pushing myself was only a matter of pulling myself deeper into the Shadelands, of letting the form of the world wash away as I spiraled closer to the ever-hungering realm of the abyss. From the mid-Shades, as the gauzy, fuzzy realm beneath the initial Shadelands is called, concepts like direction and distance are somewhat malleable and it's possible to cover ground more quickly and squeeze into smaller spaces. The disadvantage here is that it's possible to lose control and be swallowed by the abyss… a relative novice should never go past the upper Shadelands, but I'd never received any instruction, so all I did was suppress an uneasy shiver and try to orient myself well enough to keep sprinting through the catacombs.

I was barely aware of the turns, let alone the walls and pillars I slipped past, space sliding behind me as if I was a serpent writhing through a cool, dark sea. But I was aware of Aldo and, maddeningly, he was still catching up with me. I wasn't sure how far away the tunnel's terminus was, but it was certainly far enough that he'd win at the current pace. And yet my muscles screamed from the exertion and I dared not bring myself deeper into the Shadelands. Aldo pulled even with me, his frantic expenditure of thaum making him appear like a blazing holiday lantern in the gauzy darkness. I briefly considered activating my Ring of Fire Sphere, but this deep in the shadows, there was a good chance that doing so would splatter us both upon the catacomb walls. So I watched with mounting frustration as Aldo inevitably overtook me, pulling even… half a stride ahead… a stride ahead.

Something within me rebelled. Some insanely foolish part of my arrogance told me that I'd break through to a new realm of ability if only I pushed myself a bit further. That Aldo's seemingly-greater talent was a bit of happenstance that I could overcome. I corralled my thaum with iron precision, ice flowing through my veins as I dropped yet closer to the abyss. I saw patterns… strange, inexplicable things beyond any normal geometry… a thousand grasping limbs unlike those of any animal, hungering and eager to devour. I saw the end of the last chamber of the catacombs, and I found myself slipping right through it. With a wave of nauseating panic, I yanked myself back into the world an found myself sailing, weightless, through the air for a terrifying second before I met a surprisingly charitable floor in whatever chamber I'd just literally landed myself in. I should have suffered scrapes or worse, but instead my palms dug into sand, kicking up a cloud that made me cough when I inhaled it.

"Huh," I said, rolling to my feet. I fished around my satchel for my glowglobe and lit it… it flickered to life, the light cutting in and out randomly - it had a cheap filament that I needed to repair, but I hadn't had time. I found myself in a large chamber with painted, glyph-carved walls and a floor filled to about six centimeters with dusty sand. I realized with a start that I was in a previously-undiscovered chamber. One with, apparently, no passageway leading to the outside. I'd somehow slipped right through solid stone. "Guys? Guys, can you hear me?" I paced back to the wall I thought I'd slipped through. "Hey! Aldo! Mailyn? Anybody?" I slapped my palms against the stone wall. It might as well have been a kilometer thick.

For a moment, I feared I was trapped. I wondered if I'd run out of air before I died of dehydration. Then I heard muffled voices from beyond. Despite the heavy muffling, I could somehow tell the annoying muh muh mum-muh voice on the other side was Aldo. The meh meh mi-meh was Mailyn - she wasn't very happy with him. Understandably.

"Hey! I'm in here!" I shouted. The muffled voices stopped. Then I heard tapping on the other side tap tap-tap-tap tap, repeated thrice. I pulled out my knife and pounded out the same pattern on my side, thrice again. Only on my last tap, I heard a click. Looking up in my flickering glowglobe light, I noticed that there was a little cylindrical indentation in the wall. In fact, there were two cylindrical indentations. Since I wasn't nearly stupid enough to stick my fingers into two strange holes in the wall of an unexplored ruin, I pulled out my lock picks, selected two relatively long and sturdy picks, and jammed them in the holes. And I was right - they were buttons.

Something clicked, something rumbled, and the wall slowly lifted. Well… it lifted half-way before some hidden mechanism broke and the opening stopped rising around waist-high. I ducked down and peeked through to see the dim-lit faces of my very relieved friends. So I said the obvious thing:

"Hey, Aldo… I win!"