by Jeffrey Hall
They entered into an adjacent hallway, one whose walls were littered with various artists’ interpretations of Old Bolliad, one long, sprawling memorial to the promise that was, the promise that Bolliad would be the beacon of Moonsland. A refuge for its people from the many monsters that plagued the pockets of civilization that formed around mines like scabs on a wound. A place that would raise the world from its centuries of surviving into a new era of knowledge and safety by studying the power in the stones beneath their feet and capitalizing on the power to fight back.
A grand dream.
One that now lay in the Abyss along with the safety and stability it once provided.
At the end of the hallway there was a round chamber with only two small glimmer stones to cast just enough light to see. In it, lining the walls, structured and alphabetized, were samples of the one thousand known stones in Moonsland.
At least most of them. Some she knew, due to their rarity, were nothing but replicas meant for show, but even still, it was a remarkable collection. One that tried to emulate the hold of Old Bolliad, or so at least Chendra had told her once upon a time.
And there, in the lesser dark, each of the stones sat nestled in a perfectly carved pocket of stone like they were gems deep in the mines they’d originated from.
“To think, all this stone just sitting here unused, just to be looked at.”
“It’s educational. Do you know how many minds this one room has inspired?”
Dash smiled. “Inspired, or made greedier?”
Chendra frowned and Dash cursed her quick tongue. “You want dadaline from a royal collection? That’s going to cost you.”
“Look at me, Chendra. What do I have that you can possibly want?”
Chendra pointed. “That bag on your hip.”
Dash’s lips pursed. Fury rose in her, and it took all of her being to not destroy the room around her.
“You say you are staying clean yet you come strolling into my life’s work, demanding a piece of it, with that familiar pouch on your hip. What type of trouble are you in?”
Dash kept her mouth closed.
“You know there are other uses for the black lens, don’t you? Manipulate the essence right and you can create a tunnel right through stone.”
“I know what you can use it for!” snarled Dash. You could also use it to strengthen other stones, get the most out of the essence that already existed inside of it, but those were other spells of the stone she never cast, other words she never spoke.
“Then why haven’t you used such a power to carve a way out from your problems?”
“To the Abyss with you, Chendra.”
Chendra laughed, that same uppity chuckle she had always had, the one that made Dash always feel like she was the joke. “You say that like it’s a curse, Dash. Yet that’s exactly where you’re trying to go. That’s exactly why you keep taking that trash. You’re not going to find him. He’s gone. Gone.”
“No he isn’t,” snarled Dash.
“Who has ever fallen into the Abyss and come back? Who?”
Dash shut her mouth.
“Exactly.”
“Because no one’s been looking.”
“You’re not searching the Abyss with the lens. It’s a hallucination. A dirty dream giving you just enough hope to keep you coming back.”
“It’s not a dream! I know what I see in there is real. And I know he is down there.”
“Father is dead, Dash. Dead. You saw him fall yourself. Why can’t you see that?”
Dash flinched at the word dead. Yes she had been watching him on the wall of outer Bothane, hanging from it by a red rope, working his miner’s pick into its side like the countless other spider miners who were commissioned by the Elder to do such brave work. She always did. She was too young for school and too young to be left alone, so he had her watch from the nearest Spoke while he dug and she played with the useless stones he threw up to her as he worked. Yes she had heard him sing his usual song as he hung there, dangling over the Abyss like it was nothing more than walking down the street. The only thing that stopped that was the echoing clink of the wedge as it fell away. The flutter of the rope followed like a waving hand asking for her help. She’d looked over the Spoke she played upon and had reached, foolishly, even though she was many feet away from where he fell, and saw the calm in his face as he fell into the Abyss.
There was no panic. There was no fear. It was as if he had been expecting it all along. If he’d known he was going to meet his death then he would have looked more terrified. He would have been more scared every time he went to the wall and started swinging…
Dash swallowed, trying to rid her mind of the memory. “I watched him fall, but I didn’t see him die.”
Chendra shook her head. “You want a piece of dadaline then you’re going to have to give up those dreams.”
Dash bared her teeth. If Chendra knew what she had done to earn those stones. If she had a shred of decency left in her body...
Chendra must have seen the look in her eyes. “You try to take anything from here and every soldier in a hundred yards will come rushing.”
Furious, Dash threw her hands into the nearby wall of stones, upturning some of them, sending them crashing to the floor. “Sorry to disturb you, sister. You can go back to screwing your king again.”
Dash was storming down the hallway before Chendra responded. “I hope to see you again soon, Dashinora. Hopefully before the Abyss gets you.”
Dash threw up a rude gesture as she rounded the corner to the grand hall. She pulled down two of the tapestries on her way out the door, and she slammed the door shut hard, hoping it would shatter.
She fell against the building’s side, huffing, her hands shaking, and that is when she noticed the laughter.
“Get away,” she whispered into her hands as she held them over her face.
“Make us,” the shadow said.
“I can. I will.” She held up the bag, jangling it towards where the voice had come from, but there was only a couple walking along the street, looking at her like she was a terrifying vision upon the steps.
“But we’ll be back. Stone by stone you take to quiet us, but we’ll always be back. Why continue to fight the inevitable? Why not just listen?”
The voice was coming from a new direction, and she turned, letting her hand with the pouch of black lens fall to her hip.
“You need dadaline. You need it or you’ll be dead.”
“That’s not true.”
“The Scarred is a part of this now. He’ll not show mercy. His kind sent an entire world to its doom. What does he care of one person?”
Dash just looked in the direction of the voice, staring blankly, a slave submitted to the truth of its words.
“You need that stone, and you’ll find no better place to get it.”
“You want me to get rid of the black lens.”
“Not at all.”
“Then what do you want from me!” she yelled, unable to contain her frustration. More people walked by, looking at her like she was a freak, but she looked past them like they were bugs just in the way.
“Take the stone. Make her pay for her insults.”
“I... I can’t,” said Dash. Though she consorted with criminals, she wasn’t one.
The shadows laughed. “Sweet child, you have no idea what you can do.”
She went there again. Mostly to shut the shadow up, after she could take its constant murmur no more and it had convinced her what to do next, but also to pass the time while she waited.
She saw great lands in the Abyss. One where the stars looked like daggers arrayed in a black armory. In another, water flowed angrily through grassless fields, a river threatening to come to its edges and pummel the land that held it in check. In yet another, the forest was so thick that it looked like a wall that could be climbed…
Beautiful, wondrous places. Places much better than where she was: in an alley, bottom-down on a filthy rock, a place wher
e passersby often stopped to piss. A place she’d rather not be, but one that gave her a perfect view of the Ode to the Fallen Kingdom.
She watched the people of Bothane doddle in and out of the museum once it opened, going through its doors like they were sacred, some stopping on its steps to point to the ground in remembrance of Bolliad, somewhere far beneath. All it did was stew her anger. All it did was tighten her conviction.
Bolliad didn’t need their prayers. Bolliad was alive and well beneath the Abyss, same as her father, and she would find that too with the help of the black lens.
The Ode was just a mockery. A ploy to fatten the pockets of her sister as she preyed on the people’s sadness and desire to see the great city that once was. A gift given to her by her lover, the Elder himself.
Dash could still remember the first time they had met him. The playful way the Elder had asked to join their Geomagery demonstration as his party strolled through the Wet Times festival. It was a bit Dash and Chendra both practiced in order to gain business. Dash would draw the essence of a sapphire and Chendra, the essence of a rain stone. Chendra would shoot a gout of water from her fingertips and Dash would freeze it in such a way that she would sculpt a frozen monster from it, a piece of art that children, and in turn their parents, would always love.
A perfect way to promote their fledgling Geomagery business. Something they’d both needed then to fill in the gap their father’s disappearance had created.
The Elder, Lord of Bothane, oldest son to King Larken of Bolliad, and his retinue had stopped mid-drawing, and Dash almost blasted Chendra in her face from the shock. Luckily, Chendra, always her cool, organized self, had redirected her spout to catch the freezing essence of the sapphire. The sculpture came out crooked, but at least it kept her sister’s face intact, something, at the time, Dash was glad occurred. Her sister had been her lone companion up until that day. The one she could look to keep her sane. The one she could still cry to when the weight of the world seemed too heavy to hold.
But that was before the Elder, seemingly amused by their act, asked if they could sculpt a replica of him.
Dash immediately said no, Chendra immediately said yes. Dash had glared at her. Didn’t she know her skill was limited? But Chendra ignored her, not missing a chance to impress the most powerful man in all of Bothane.
“We can do this,” she had mouthed to Dash as the king posed between them, hundreds of people stopping to look on with curious glee.
They commenced. Chendra drew her water. Dash drew her ice. She tried so desperately to control it. She tried so hard to draw the essence at the right angle, pushing it strongly, pulling it back, trying to connect it with the fickle contents of the water into something that resembled the great man before them. But when she was done, and the last of the stone’s essence was used up, the sculpture before him looked less like a replica and more like a featureless monster.
The king had looked at it without words and Dash thought that he would have them hung for such a disastrous portrayal of him. But Chendra had said, “It looks just like you.”
And the king had smiled, the expression blossoming into laughter, a sound so contagious that it swept through the onlooking crowd.
And Chendra, always poised and in command, took the opportunity to showcase her own skills, drawing the essence of a nugget of loridite to shatter the sculpture before him and make the shards of ice burst like fireworks in the sky.
“Let’s turn it into something more fitting of someone like you.”
The king’s laughter had turned to wonderment, and the next thing Dash knew, he was taking her sister by her arm, walking with her through the festival, taking Chendra away from her, asking her sister to be his personal Geomage.
A position that would soon grow to mistress. A position that would later dwindle to protector of the Ode of the Fallen Kingdom once the king’s wife got wind of their affair.
Yet Chendra walked about the museum like she’d earned it, like she had bent her back in order for it to be in her hands. Which she may have, but not in the way she portrayed it. And now she scuttled about, her nose so high in the air that she couldn’t even look down to see the plight of her own flesh and blood.
Then she wouldn’t see when that same sister stole from her precious project either.
And now that night settled in and she saw Chendra closing the doors to the Ode to return to her king-given estate nearby, she would take the dadaline that should have been given to her in the first place.
She crossed the street, looking both ways to ensure that no one had eyes on her. Besides a pair of men arguing in the distance it was empty. She hurried into the alley between the Ode and a blacksmith’s shop. There, she reached into her pouch and removed a piece of eldium. She held the deep grey nugget in her hands, opened her mouth, and tried to remember the words she needed but found she couldn’t.
“Ashara guru mundala por-porithin?”
The essence fizzled within the stone, rendering it useless. She discarded the nugget on the street and quickly pulled out another, thankful a mistake with eldium didn’t yield more disastrous results like some of the other stones.
She tried again, casting her mind back to her studies, trying to suppress the frustration rising in her that she would have to waste valuable time rifling through her spell book to find the right words.
“Ashara ana mundala porithiro.”
She felt the essence pull through her and from her fingertips she created a set of temporary stairs, allowing her to climb to one of the small windows overhead. The window opened without the need for a stone, which she was thankful for, afraid that she would need to use one of the loud fire bones she had forgotten to give to Carry—or perhaps misplaced— and risk drawing attention to herself.
She slipped in over the sill, the window making a small whine as she held it open. It brought her to the second floor, a place she was unfamiliar with, as little of a frequenter to the museum as she was. In the low light, glass cases glimmered, showing the tatters of fabric and chunks of stone collected from the broken side of the world where Bolliad had fallen in a heap to the Abyss thanks to Proth’s sword. The upstairs smelled strongly of freshly cut lumber and paint, indicating the newness of the section. There were doors that were still boarded up. Unused supplies. Much of it was still under construction.
She knew she should have been more scared than she was, but the black lens she had taken earlier had not only given her calmness and quiet of mind, but a conviction that what she was doing was right, despite how much her body screamed with stress and worry.
She crept along the floor, the fall of her feet causing the boards to creak slightly like the whispers of tattling children. She didn’t know what security her sister had put in place, but she doubted it was free of it completely. Chendra was too careful, and with the Elder charging her with keeping the legacy of his father’s kingdom, she probably aimed to do that as well as possible.
Dash kept turning her head, surveying every shadow and room she passed, a hand on a hunk of shadow stone should she need to retreat and slip into the darkness she could create with it. But there was nothing that indicated any sort of protection or traps, at least none she could tell. She realized as she came to the stairwell leading down that her ability to identify such security measures was limited, partially due to never having done anything like this before, mostly due to the black lens clouding her mind and urging her forward no matter the cost.
She looked down the stairwell. Shadows stretched upon the wall like black spires, sharp and crooked, shapes formed from the glimmer stone showing its light from behind some exhibit. She was sure of it because nothing moved.
She slowly picked up her feet and took each step cautiously, scared of the echoing tap that even the least aggressive of her footfalls might cause in the now empty, cavernous place. Her descent revealed another hallway, one lined with shelves of books. At the end of it she could see the Grand Hall, and on the other side, the hallway to the libr
ary of stones.
There was nothing between her and that hallway. There was a clean shot straight to the dadaline. Maybe Chendra was just foolish enough to think that her kingly connection was enough to keep burglars and vandals away from her work.
Dash was about to make her pay for her arrogance.
She hurried down the corridor, a cautious vigor to her step. She barely recognized any of the books by her side, treasure troves of knowledge she once would have drooled over as a child. They were nothing more than decorations, symbols of status put there by her sister to remind her of her place compared to her own.
She arrived at the end and nearly kept going, but skidded to a stop, catching her over-exuberance.
A great shadow roamed the far end of the grand hall. At first glance, she thought it to be only the light through the windows playing with the pillars that outlined the chamber, but as she stared she noticed how the darkness moved, slinking along the floor as if in search of some elusive prey.
A stone hag.
The bipedal beast lurked beside the main doorway, its back hunched and crooked, a form that helped to give it its name. Its blue teeth showed greatly even from the distance Dash observed it from. They were fangs of gallamite, a gem that was poisonous to humans and would put them in a coma of nightmares whereafter the creature would feast on the salty sweat that would gather on its victim’s body, licking it up with its forked tongue until its captive’s flesh wore away like candy.
Chendra would have to subdue it every morning with Geomagery. A devious, hard security, one most likely given to her by her powerful lover. Did the Elder really value the legacy of his father’s city that much?
Dash slipped back into the corridor she had come from, her heart racing. She could hear the thing sniffing, its long snout aggressively pulling in air. It was searching for her.
It was a blessing she had stumbled upon it before it had her. She was sure the thing was seeking her, and it would have only been a matter of time before she turned the corner and found the beast with its teeth bared, ready to bite.