“A Keeper? Those fanatics? Boy, you insult me more than you know! A Keeper my ass. I’d rather chuck one into here! And obviously they’re dying using the Grinder, but they’re not supposed to use it. I made it for me, not for them, the scavengers. Now, anyway, back to your aurel. It seems we’ll need to take this slow, what with the uneducation and all. You know runes, yes? Seen them drawn? Go on, draw one for me, that should be enough to get the gist.”
“On what?” Draysky asked. “With what?”
“In the air, of course! No kernels needed right now, just give it a quick go. I’ve got wonderful eyes, I’ll see the aurel traces.”
“I don’t see why we’re wasting time with that,” Draysky said.
“You’re wasting time! I’ll survive down here just fine while you shrivel up from thirst!” the man retorted, and Draysky grit his teeth.
“Fine, then!” Draysky shouted back, and he drew the first lighter rune he had ever learned with his hand. The hand that held the ember in it, leaving behind a thick trail of red as it moved. His shock came only after the rune was formed.
The man’s eyes went wide, and something filled his face—fear, Draysky realized. Fear, over a simple lighter’s rune. Obviously this man’s tales were not true if that gave him pause. Then the man’s mouth opened to shout, but before he could speak, the rune in front of Draysky flashed, and the world went dark.
Chapter 41: Draysky
“Backcountry dimwit.”
The voice penetrated Draysky’s consciousness as he forced his eyes open. He shivered, despite the warmth in the room, his teeth chattering. “I swear, I’ve seen some idiocy, but yours takes the prize for first.”
The room came back into focus, though a headache pounded in his skull, throbbing in tune with the Grinder above. The man stood above Draysky, shaking his head as he looked down on him. Draysky rolled over, struggling to his feet, the room spinning as he shook his head. Between the fall through the Grinder and this collapse, his body couldn’t take much more abuse.
“Sleepy too, apparently,” continued the man, retreating to lean against the wall once again. “You were out nearly ten hours! What, do they not let you rest up there? Did you come down here to catch a few winks?”
Draysky groaned, rubbing his head as the man continued.
“Then to try freedrawing a rune like that, with an external aurel! And that aurel in particular, no less!”
“You were the one who told me to draw it!” Draysky accused, rubbing his temple in line with the pounding in his head. Even if his mind was clear, things were moving too quickly, and they were too ridiculous to be real. “What happened to me?”
“That happened,” said the man, and he pointed to a char mark on the wall. “And it’s damn fortunate that was it. An aurel of that grade, connected to my power source, you should have blown a hole in the side of the mountain! We’d both be dead! Well, you would be more dead than I would, but still! What gets me is why my full power source didn’t activate. You must have drawn the rune wrong. Or maybe my engineering didn’t last as well as I'd thought. Something needs oiling, perhaps. It’s always the simple maintenance that breaks.”
“I drew it right, I’ve had tons of practice with it.”
“Right, but you freehanded it. And what’s this? You’ve had tons of practice with the rune but you don’t know your own aurel? What color is normal for you?”
“The same color as the rayflower that I use to draw it. Besides, the rune worked, didn’t it?” Draysky grumbled. As his head stopped spinning, he grew nauseous, more by the second, and a new set of chills racked through him. Soon the contents of his stomach threatened to join the armor on the floor.
“No, no, no. Freehanding is about the most foolish thing you could do! You do that, you’re at the mercy of the rune and its imperfections. I’m assuming you at least use a low power source for your practice? Heaven One kernels? If you don’t, then falling through this Grinder is the least impressive thing you’ve done.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about with kernels,” Draysky answered, pushing his knuckle into his temple. The nausea was getting worse, a mixture of tiredness and something else, a dizziness. Everything hurt, even the outermost layer of his skin, and where hair connected on his scalp. Something that usually only happened when he was sick and came down with a fever.
Then his sister’s words floated back to him, the ones as she had handed him the cup of herbs, to make it through the last few days.
But once this drink wears off, you’ll crash.
It was the fever. Which meant he was about to become stuck, dehydrated, and sick, and soon, very, very weak. But the man plowed on with no regard to his condition, each inflection of speech like a knife in Draysky’s head.
“Of course you know kernels. How else would your runes work if you weren’t powering them? Maybe they call them something else? You know, bits of glittery stones. Bang bang powder. Flashy pebbles. Or–”
The man cocked his head, staring at Draysky, then he laughed. A laughter too drawn out, one that was angry, not happy.
“Hells, hells and fates! Of course. You’re not just a backcountry dimwit, but now, you’re also absolutely useless.”
“Shut up, will you? We need to get out of here soon. I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Sick and depleted!” The man clapped his hand on his forehead and let out a sob. “Oh how the fates tease me! It all makes sense, you don’t have an internal aurel at all! You’ve got an internal kernel! Though why you’re not serving in the military beats me. Misappropriated funds again, to send you all the way to the north to work in a mine. Damn. Just my luck. Utterly useless.”
“I’ve got enough to worry about without you insulting me.” Draysky picked his pickaxe up from the far wall, hefting it over his shoulder. He refused to show the man, but in his state now he could barely hold it. Despite his weakness, he was going to tunnel his way out, mountainside be damned. But he brandished it once at the man, who wore a face of mock horror, his eyebrows arched so high they threatened to leap off his face.
“Oh no, whatever shall I do! Go on, take a swing and see how that solution works out for us. And because you’re uneducated, I’ll explain why I’m so utterly upset while you start chiseling at the wall. I hope you have weeks, because that’s how long it’s going to take. To chisel, that is. To explain, hopefully far less.”
“With the amount of talk you do, I’m surprised it won’t take months.”
The man chuckled, then stood next to Draysky as he took his first swing.
“See, here’s the situation. I’m weakened in my current state. Magic, well, it’s beyond me. Can’t use aurels or kernels, you see, which is why I’m stuck here. Usually, I’d just blast the lid off this place, but that’s not a valid option.”
“Because?”
“Because of some experimentation. When you’re done here, take a read of that book, and all will be open to you. Actually, since we aren’t getting out now, you might as well go ahead and read it anyway. But anyway, I, Balean the Bold, sought to discover that which has been unattainable! Immortality itself, the Eternal Flame! That quest drove me to build the Grinder. Suffice it to say, the plan backfired, which left me in this condition.
“I left items behind—items that you could use, if you were normal. That fire aurel is powered by a collection of incredibly strong kernels which could free us, depending on your aurel, by linking yourself to them. Water aurel? A waterspout would do nicely, or a tsunami that washes us through the Grinder and up the mountainside. Earth? Your tunnel would be complete in hours, not weeks! But your source is a kernel, which means you can’t actually connect to my stash. To do so would be far more dangerous than freedrawing, and would likely end up with you splattered against the plaster here.”
Draysky took another swing, then took a moment to rest. Five swings in, and the wall had barely chipped. Balean was wrong. This wouldn’t take weeks. It would take months.
“So what
if I can’t touch your kernels. If you’re saying I have one of my own, why can’t we use that?”
“Well, you just did!” exclaimed Balean, pointing to the char on the wall. “That’s all you have in you, used up, and that’s not enough to get us out of here. Not nearly enough. We would need a hundred times a hundred more of that! That’s why my aurel stash never fully activated: it was using your internal power source, which, to be frank, is tiny. A knotted, the lowest level.
“So, that leaves us with a problem. We have all the kernel power in the world, and no way to tap into it, because internal and external kernels don’t mix. We have all the aurel material to build an inferno, but nothing to power it as you’re puny. Simply put, we’re stuck.”
Balean shrugged, then settled his back against the wall, pulling out a fresh smoke and chewing on it.
“You don’t sound too concerned about that.”
“I’m not. For me, it’s a mere exercise in patience. Someone else will come to set me free, eventually. Sure, I’m not excited about it. Actually, I’m downright let down. As frustrating as sleeping through a birthday. But for you, well, I’m afraid you haven’t been through enough stages of the Eternal Flame. You still need water to survive.”
“And I’m getting sick.”
“That’s the depletion of your internal kernel. It’s like you’ve run ten miles without a rest, spending all of your energy.”
“No, there’s more. A fever. Won’t be long until I’m bedridden. It’s coming on quick.”
“Well that’s just wonderful.” Balean raised his eyes up to the ceiling and puffed on his smoke, sighing with exasperation. “Now I don’t have to deal with just a corpse, then a skeleton. Now I need to spend decades smelling vomit, too? You really shouldn’t have come down here. It’s been most inconvenient for me.”
“You think I wanted to?!” shouted Draysky, dropping the pickaxe with a clatter and rounding on Balean. “You think I would have come in here if I had any damn choice? I fell in here and was lucky to have survived! This machine has already brought so much pain and death, you think I wanted to even come near it? I’m about ready to carve a hole in you with my pickaxe rather than this wall!”
“Seven hells,” whispered the man, looking down at Draysky’s hands. “I didn’t realize.”
“Well now you do! Bit late of an apology if I–”
“No, you fool! Not you, your pickaxe! Though I must say, this is an unexpected stroke of genius. That rune! Who drew that rune?!”
“I did. It keeps my axe sharp and from breaking.”
“A fire rune on steel! You’re mixing materials there, and it's blended into the engraving, probably from the strong crystal dust content up here as well. Do you even understand what this is? I’m quite surprised it hasn’t killed you already. How long has it been there? How long have you used it?”
He bent down, tracing his finger over the rune appreciatively.
“A few weeks, all day each day. But I assure you, it works. Never had one stay this sharp so long.”
“Of course it keeps it sharp, but only because it’s on something as durable as steel! This rune, it means bind. It holds things together, keeps them strong. Carving this into the steel would give it some of those attributes, not as strong as if it were painted with a metal aurel, but still. But this fire aurel… You’re binding heat energy to this. Every swing, every impact draws energy deep into this pickaxe, and the steel is bound together to contain it! I’m astonished that this hasn’t exploded already.”
Balean paced, looking down at the pickaxe, mumbling with excitement.
“A few weeks, let's say four weeks, seven days a week. Twenty eight days, say three hundred pickaxe swings a day, at bare minimum. Amazing.” He laughed again, but this time pure joy came through as he punched toward the ceiling with triumph.
“I don’t get it, what’s so funny here? Why does any of this matter?” Draysky frowned, tapping on the head of his pickaxe. Even down here, it felt colder than it should be.
“I said we needed energy. Well, here’s your energy! All locked up in this pickaxe! That’s why the surface is cold, because it absorbs and stores the heat within itself. That bomb is our ticket right out of here. Can’t believe it survived the Grinder.”
“Got trapped up between me and the bucket, that’s why. None of the shale even touched it.”
“Ah, well that explains why you still have limbs. Here’s what we do then. How we escape.”
For the next few minutes they prepared, Draysky following the words of Balean and carrying the ember in his pocket, lines still connecting it over to the runes on the dais. Removing his outer coat, he tore it into shreds, working his knife into the seams, making strips that he bound together to form thirty feet of rope. Then he dragged the table over to the circle’s edge and tipped it at an angle, forming a shield between him and the shale above. When all was ready, he stood near the center of the room, pickaxe in hand.
“Now, all you do is throw that up there and hide under the table. As soon as that pickaxe has taken enough damage, it'll detonate, and it’s going to take the roof off with it. Quite a charge you have packed in there—might take a chunk out of the mountainside as well. The runes I have on the dais should deflect anything that comes down toward us, but that’s what the table is for, in case any shale splinters make it through. And when the rooftop is gone, we make a break for it.”
“Then I’ll just slide right back down the Grinder,” protested Draysky. “And we’ll be caught again at the bottom.”
“Not so! Not so! This system is designed to hold up an incredible amount of rock, and there will be nothing above us. That repulsive force is going to push the rock up the mountain, away from you. Below the shale, the crater is shaped like a funnel. I paved it myself, so I could walk down and do my work. There are steps on the eastern side. Take those, and it will bring you to the top. As long, of course, as that fire aurel in your pocket lasts. Once you get too far, it is going to lose connection to the runes on the dais, and everything will collapse inward.”
“In that case, I’m just leaving the fire aurel down here, then. Why risk it?”
“No!” Balean exclaimed, a trace of panic in his voice, then he cleared his throat. “If you don’t take it, I will. But consider it your reward for setting me free. It’s a valuable treasure, you must understand. Don’t just go losing it once you return to the surface. Besides, the way I built this, leaving the aurel here will keep the crystal column turning and exposed. If the Keepers have you mining here, do you really want them to find that much treasure? After they deserted you to die? It would be like rewarding your murderer with a fortune because they only managed to maim you.”
Draysky grit his teeth. He could live without the treasure, but Balean was right. He wasn’t leaving the crystal column for the Keepers to find.
“Not just that, but without the aurel, the Grinder stops working entirely. You see, that column is the heart of the mountain itself, drawn up by my runes. The shale at the ceiling chips it away into usable pieces, which is what you have been discovering and stealing from me. Originally, it was supposed to collect down here, but I never quite finished the project. And it was problematic. Sometimes the crystal would fall on my head, and that’s just poor design. Hadn’t had time to optimize it yet. So if you hate the Grinder that much, this is your chance to shut it down. Permanently.”
“What if the Keepers just start it back up?” asked Draysky.
“You find me a Keeper that is powerful enough to kickstart this, and I’ll spend the rest of my days back down here.”
“Sounds tempting, then,” Draysky shot back, and cracked his neck. He was shaking again, this time from chills rather than exhaustion, and his mouth was so dry that his tongue dragged against the side. If they were going to escape, they needed to do so soon, while he could still climb and run. “We ready?”
“You, good sir, are the one holding the pickaxe.”
“No longer a backcountry dimw
it?”
“Plenty of the sirs I know are dimwits as well. It’s certainly not mutually exclusive.”
Draysky took a deep breath, gripping the handle until his knuckles turned white, aiming at the roiling shale ceiling above. Then he threw the pickaxe up with all his strength.
The tip caught in the churning shale and was dragged upward into the sea as Draysky fled, diving backward. The shale gnashed and ground as he waited, crouched behind the stone tabletop that felt all too thin, his hands over his ears as his face was buried in his shoulder. For a moment, nothing happened—then there was a clink, making Draysky jump and peer over the edge with Balean.
Scratched and wobbling, the handle split and nearly shredded, the pickaxe stood on its head on the ground once more.
“It needs to go back up there,” said Balean. “Careful, careful. That thing is a live–”
But before he could finish speaking, and before the pickaxe finished vibrating. Draysky rushed at it, grasping the splintered handle and launching it back into the ceiling. This time, he barely made it back under the table.
It was a blast louder than anything that Draysky had ever heard, louder than the most violent shale strike the Grinder could produce, and the stone tabletop cracked as shale rained down upon them. The entire room rumbled, and Draysky was thrown on his side, his head striking the wall and bouncing back to hit the table in twin flashes.
“Up! Up!” Balean shouted above the ringing in Draysky’s ears, poking his cheek with a finger that stung as if he had put his smoke out on the skin. Draysky stumbled to his feet, then rushed the dais, recalling Baleans’s other words, the rope already tied to the base.
“With no stones above us, my runes will push anything rock upward, but they aren’t designed to catch anything less than ten feet up. That stone dais is relatively light. You’ll need to throw that upward ten feet, where it will catch the repulsion meant for shale.”
Heaven Fall Page 35