By the time she reached the edge of the room, she was exhausted and dripping sweat. Her globe had dwindled to a tiny point of pale light, no bigger than a child’s marble, in the palm of her trembling hand. The wavering glow fell over a stolid stone wall that stretched off in both directions. With an effort of will, she coaxed more life into the fire and lifted her hand for a look about. There, away on her left, she spied a short flight of steps that led to an archway. Cinder let out a weak sob of joy and relief. A nervous smile flickered across her face and she started toward the door.
She had made it. Somehow, either through luck, skill, or some combination of both, she had found her way back to the same door through which they entered. It was a tiny victory, but a victory nonetheless. She shuffled across the floor, feeling for trigger plates with her toes and mopping sweat from her forehead with her free hand.
Maybe, just maybe, someone else had made it out as well. She imagined herself stepping through the door to find Mercer there waiting for her. Maybe Trix and Drake would be there too. She wasn’t holding out much hope. She had seen them buried, but perhaps her eyes had played tricks on her. It was dark after all, and she was running scared. Maybe they had managed to get clear at the last second.
She bounded up the stone risers, stepped through the doorway, and her heart sank. This wasn’t the same door they had come through at all. It only looked the same. She was facing a long stone passage draped in heavy cobwebs, with doors leading off the hall in both directions.
A despairing moan worked up from her chest. She had gone the wrong way after all. The chamber had more than one exit and they all looked alike, no doubt to confuse the would-be adventurer. There was no way of knowing how far to the next door and no guarantee it would be the right door. Besides, Cinder was too exhausted to try. She put her back against the wall of the passage, sank down, and let her light extinguish. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over her cheeks. She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and wept.
What’s the use, she asked herself? She was going to die. Either by booby trap, starvation, or some hideous monster. But sooner or later she was going to die. She would wake up back in the Real . . . and then what?
Sitting here in the dark, her back to the clammy stone wall of the dungeon, Cinder looked deep within herself and asked the question. And then what? Back to the real world where people wake up to a screaming alarm clock, pour coffee down their throat, and spend the rest of the day at a job they hate just so they can pay the rent? What kind of life is that?
Even if she had the ten million and didn’t have to work, then what? Travel the world? Cinder could see herself drifting from place to place, spending a month here, two months there. Summer in the Cotswalds and winter on the French Rivera, but after a while that life would get boring.
Then she imagined another life, a life in Tanthus. If she had that ten million Byte, she could spend her days roaming the byzantine paths of the ancient city, shopping in the markets, taking dinner in a cozy inn next to a roaring fire. She could wear handcrafted silk gowns one day and riding clothes the next, whichever she felt like. No need to worry about fitting in. In Tanthus, it was hard to stand out. She could ride horses, breathe fresh air, and stroll the green farmlands. And as for friends, well, she’d have plenty. Mercer and Drake and Trix, for starters. People here were just more real, more open. Cinder supposed the denizens of Realms all shared something in common. They had all decided the Real was no way to live and instead they chose to forge a life for themselves in the Realms. That shared identity knitted them together into a community, even when they were at odds with each other.
There was a small scurrying sound from the passageway and Cinder snapped back to the present. She sat up straight and strained to hear. The silence in the tunnel was so complete it was oppressive, and Cinder snapped her fingers once, softly, just to be sure her ears were still working. She stayed very still and after some time heard a barely audible pitter-patter. And was that squeak?
Cinder had already given herself over to death. She wasn’t coming out of Eternal Night alive and she knew that now. A strange sense of calm settled over her. After all, it wasn’t really dying. It was just a Realm death, and like Trix had said, sooner or later everyone died. Might as well get a look at what was coming. Maybe there was even something she could do about it. With that in mind, Cinder stretched out a hand and a fierce white globe appeared in her open palm. The light drove back the darkness and a fat grey rat went scurrying back into the shadows.
“Just a rat,” she whispered. Then her brow wrinkled, and she said, “A rat?”
And a fat one at that, thought Cinder. If there were rats down here, they had to be eating. She climbed to her feet, laid her free hand on her saber hilt and, without even thinking about it, poured a little more willpower into her light.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Cinder treaded carefully along the hall, wary of more booby traps, but after several hundred yards nothing happened and she picked up the pace. Doors on either side opened into empty chambers thick with spiderwebs and dust. Alcoves had been cut in the stone walls, but they were dark and empty. In one, she found a broken shaft of wood that might have been a spear. Now it was only a length of wood with a splintered end, but it would make a useful focus. Allison determined to keep it for now. The corridor curved around a corner and then down a short flight of steps. At the bottom, Cinder stumbled on the first corpse.
It lay at the base of the wall, one arm flung out across the path and a rictus grin fixed on the decaying skull. Rats screed and scurried away as her light fell on the dried-up husk. Long white hair formed a cloud around the head and the eyes were empty sockets. It wasn’t a skeleton. Not yet anyway. Rotting green flesh still clung to the corpse and a foul odor assaulted Cinder’s nostrils. She covered her nose. If it had been a man or a woman, or something else, was hard to say. The weapons were gone and the armor was rent in places. Splashes of dried blood covered the walls and formed a sticky pool beneath the body.
Cinder gave the corpse a wide berth and continued along the hall where she found another body, only this one wasn’t human. She smelled it before she saw it. The overpowering stench made her eyes water and vomit crept up her throat. She had to swallow, wipe her eyes, and force herself to keep going. Her light illuminated a hulking form laying on the floor, too big to be a man, with three fingers and three toes. More rats raced away as Cinder came around the bend. Their shrieks dwindled into the blackness ahead.
Whatever this thing was, it had been dead every bit as long as the other fellow Cinder had passed. Its skin had turned to grey parchment clinging to massive arms and legs covered in slash marks. Dark ichor dotted the wall in arterial spray. The open maw was full of blunt, yellow teeth and the hollow eye sockets were tiny slits in a head too small for such a large body.
Cinder kept her hand over her mouth, crouched down, and examined the dead beast. It seemed to be the mating of man and gorilla. She wondered what the ape-man had looked like when it was alive and feared to find out.
Farther along the passage, she discovered another dead brute, then another. She soon passed three more man-ape corpses, all hacked to bits in the middle of the path. A shattered club and a broken dagger lay among the bodies. Beyond that was the body of another explorer. His neck had been savagely ripped open. A bent and rusted sword laid near the mangled corpse.
The tale was clear; a group of adventurers had crossed paths with the brutes in the dark. It had been a fierce contest. Dried blood flecked the walls and covered the floor. Splintered clubs and broken torches littered the corridor. Cinder stepped carefully around the debris and followed the trail of carnage through an archway to a broad stone chamber with a low ceiling.
Here the battle had reached a bloody conclusion. Five dead brutes were piled in the doorframe. One had an arrow sticking from the middle of its forehead. Two more slain adventurers lay in the chamber. One was stretched out on the floor, arms and legs flun
g wide and belly ripped open. The other corpse sat with its back against a carven pillar and a notched sword across his lap. A felled man-ape lay over the adventurer’s lower legs like a dead lover. Large hairy rats scurried over the bodies, gnawing and biting, undeterred by the sudden appearance of Cinder and her light. Maggots filled the empty eye sockets and wriggled out of open mouths.
She wondered who they were and why they had risked the long dark of Eternal Night. Were they treasure hunters? Or travelers who had foolishly decided to go under the mountain instead of over? In the end, it didn’t matter. If Cinder was going to stand any chance of making it out of these caverns alive, she needed to search the bodies. They might have supplies she would need. Their loss was her gain.
Now who does that sound like?
Mercer and Trix would be proud. A few weeks ago, Cinder would have barfed all over the floor at the sight of maggot-covered corpses. Now she was ready to plunder the bodies in search of treasure.
First thing to do was light a torch and save her energy. Thankfully the explorers had plenty of those. She went to the man—at least she thought it was a man—with his back to the pillar and she scattered the rats with the tip of her sword before turning over his pack.
A small pile of flashing gold Byte jingled across the floor, along with a half dozen dark red stones, three unused torches, spoiled rations, a sharpening stone, stubs of lead wrapped in paper for use as a pencil, and a folded bit of yellowed parchment.
Cinder’s heart leapt. She used flint to light one of the torches, wedged it into a crevice in the cavern wall, and scooped up the gold coin. With trembling fingers, she counted over two thousand Byte and six flashing gems that might have been rubies, or maybe garnets. She didn’t know much about precious stones, but they had to be worth a fair bit.
Next, she unfolded the brittle parchment. The fellow might have been a caster, thought Cinder, and she was hoping the page would teach her to hurl firebolts, shoot lightning, anything that might even the odds if she came face to face with one of the brutes. What she found instead made her heart double tap against the wall of her chest. Her face lit up. The adventurer had been mapping the caves.
She smoothed out the parchment on the cavern floor and poured over the drawing with hungry eyes. The mapmaker had done a decent job of sketching the labyrinth. He even included names. The one making the map was known as Scribe. Seems he and his friends had entered the dungeon from the north and were working their way south. There were eight of them in the beginning. One had been killed by a spider shortly after they entered the dungeon. Three more died in a fight with something called a Bear Holder. Or maybe it was Be Older? It was hard to make out the tiny handwriting in the flickering torchlight. Stairs and intersections were all clearly marked with notations, including where he and his friends had found treasure and where they had met monsters. Several sections of map warned of grimlac, whatever that was. Cinder knew it was a warning because the word was all caps with exclamation points. There were also notations indicating where the group had stopped to rest, fresh drinking water, and numbers at each location.
Cinder settled onto the floor, dug a strip of dried jerky out of her bag, and munched on it while she studied the map. Everything was here, including the chamber of pillars. He had scribbled a warning about traps in the floor. Armed with this, Cinder could make it all the way through Eternal Night.
“I could kiss you,” she said with a laugh and then glanced at the corpse. Maggots boiled from the open mouth and the smile vanish from her face. Her expression soured. She said, “Take a rain check on that kiss. I’ll give the map back if I ever meet you.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Armed with the map, a fresh supply of torches, and renewed courage, Cinder picked her way through the night-shrouded tunnels. She had taken her time studying the map, made notations of her own, and marked out a path which should eventually lead to the northern exit. To avoid confrontation, she was forced to take a circuitous route around sections where there were monsters, adding several long loops onto her journey, and the hardest test was yet to come. There was a vast circular room on the map labelled GRIMLAC MINING OP. It was roughly the halfway point, and all roads eventually converged on that location. In order to get out, Cinder would have to go through, and she had a nasty hunch the hulking half-man half-ape corpses were called grimlacs. There were also several scrawled next to the location, the global stock symbol for ByteCoin. It might refer specifically to coin or simply to wealth in general, but the promise of more money didn’t make Cinder feel any better about her odds of making it through unharmed. The programmers had designed this dungeon to defeat even the toughest players, and Cinder was willing to bet they had guarded the stash with a virtual horde of unpleasant creatures.
At first the going was easy. The map was clearly marked, and the intersections labelled. Mostly she was following the same course taken by the original group, avoiding the places where they ran into trouble. Things got a little tricky when she encountered several stairs branching off in different directions and a series of switchbacks which weren’t in the drawing. She was forced to double back twice and had to stop several times to consult the map. Using the stub of lead wrapped in paper, Cinder made new additions to the map as she plodded along.
Her progress slowed the closer she got to the central chamber. The monsters in the tunnels were not polite enough to stay put and several times she encountered enemies in stretches of hall where there was no indication of danger on the map. The sound of movement would force her to turn aside and hide in an empty room while she waited for unseen creatures to pass. Twice she heard the soft tread of stealthy steps and whispers that almost sounded human. Cinder convinced herself it was her own mind playing tricks. At one point, she heard the horrible slouching sound of the giant worm. Thankfully, the beast turned down a wide passage and didn’t come close enough to smell Cinder cowering in a side hall with her short sword gripped in one trembling hand.
Her first serious check came when she followed the map to a section marked “water.” She took a narrow tunnel down a flight of steps to an intersection where several paths crossed. Where the roads met was a large pool filled by a waterfall crashing over a wide stone shelf high overhead. The water must come in through some crevice high in the mountains where the snow never melted. It fell into the pool and then disappeared into an underground river. According to Scribe, the water was safe to drink, but Cinder heard movement before she reached the bottom of the steps. She snuffed out her light and crept down the stairs until she could make out the dim shapes of man-apes at the pool.
They carried faintly glowing crystals in crude lanterns, giving off a pale green incandescence. It was barely enough light by which to see. Cinder decided the lumbering brutes must have keen night vision. The man-apes—Cinder was already mentally referring to them as grimlacs—spoke to each other in uncouth grunts while filling chiseled stone cauldrons with water. Mercer, with all his strength, might be able to lift one of the empty stone cauldrons over his head, but he wouldn’t be able to pick it up off the floor when it was full of water. The grimlacs dunked the stone buckets into the well and then hoisted them onto muscular shoulders with grunts of effort.
For a moment, Cinder feared they had heard her sneaking down the steps. They stopped and turned in her direction, peering into the shadows. She shrank against the wall, holding her breath and trying hard not to be seen. She was just about to turn and flee when one of the beasts cuffed another over the head and barked an order. The others returned to their work.
Cinder waited until they had filled their stone jars and tramped off along another path before casting a small light in her open palm and creeping down to the water’s edge. Keeping alert for any sound of movement, she dunked her waterskin in the icy clear stream, wedged the cork, and retreated back up the steps with a full waterskin sloshing against her hip.
The central chamber was close now. Cinder could hear the distant echoing ding-tap tap-ding of hammers. Sh
e stopped to rest in a small room with a heavy banded door where Scribe and his companions had rested on their way south. After shutting and barring the door as best she could with the broken spear shaft, Cinder stretched out on the ground and closed her eyes. Tired as she was, she didn’t think she could sleep, but exhaustion eventually won out. She dreamed of Tanthus, and a warm bed, and Mercer made an appearance. She thrilled at the feel of his strong hands on her flesh and awoke in the dark feeling guilty.
Trix was in love with him, no matter what she claimed, and she’d be crushed if Cinder stole him away. That gave Cinder a laugh. Trix crushed? More like furious. She’d probably slice and dice Cinder into shark chum if she found out Cinder was crushing on Merc. Besides, Mercer was . . . What, Cinder asked herself? Strong, capable, confident, honest. All good traits. He was also a grown man living inside a video game.
What does that make you?
“I’m here for the money,” Cinder whispered to the dark, but she knew it was a lie even as the words left her lips.
She lit a torch—she was running low, only two more left—and followed the map through Eternal Night to the central chamber. The tap-ding ding-tap of hammers grew louder with every step until they filled the tunnels and echoed in the dark, making it hard to hear the sound of her own breathing. She crept along the passages, avoiding a pack of grimlac workers as they stomped by on some mission, and eventually found herself overlooking a vast mining operation illuminated by the eerie green glow of crystals.
The grimlacs had excavated a deep quarry in the belly of the mountain, and at the center of the dig was a large black pit ringed with carefully worked stones. Pulsing green crystals were set in the grim black pillars encircling the pit, looking like the sacred chasm of some pagan god built by madmen. Cinder could imagine virgin sacrifices and other hideous rituals performed at the edge of the dark hole. She shuddered at the thought.
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