I swallowed hard and did my best to follow her advice. “What about you?” I asked, facing Wibble to try to stop staring at those teeth. “Can you change shape?”
“Sure,” she said, her body popping into a perfect cube. “But I can’t look like that.” She waggled a flipper in Pplimz’s general direction and stretched back out into her normal ovoid.
“So, what’s your disguise, then?”
She shimmered, then settled herself into the suitcase. “I’m going as carry-on,” she said and Pplimz shut the suitcase, closing her up inside.
“You are most certainly a burden,” the cyborg said under their voice.
“I heard that!” came a muffled voice from inside the case.
“Please, Wibble, be quiet for once in your life,” Pplimz said and hefted the case. “All right. Off we go.”
It was dark and humid and it smelled like sulphur and fish. I held a thick wad of the fabric from the hood of my cloak over my nose and mouth and was silently grateful that this was the disguise they’d brought for me after all. The walls of the narrow corridor dripped with a noxious, sticky goo and I carefully picked my way along the path to avoid getting the stuff on my borrowed cloak while trying not to think about the state of my boots. Pplimz was easy to follow, their illuminated eyes casting an amber glow as we descended through the winding tunnel.
“Where are we going?” I whispered.
“Down to meet with the people who have Kristina,” Pplimz hissed. “And do try to be quiet. Walls have ears.”
I squinted at the slimy corridor. It wouldn’t have surprised me one bit if Pplimz had been being literal. There were niches cut into the walls, but I could only see eerie decorations that appeared to be made of rough-hewn stone. No body parts of any kind. That was a relief.
I was beginning to think that this was going to be fine. I was in the company of professionals, and we were on our way to make a business deal. I was good at business deals. So what if it was a deal with devils in the bowels of a secret underground cavern? It was business. Surely even demons could see the value of a good deal when it came their way.
I couldn’t tell in the gloom how far we’d gone, but it felt like we’d been shuffling along the passageway for quite some time when Pplimz abruptly stopped.
“I can see three, maybe four, individuals upcoming.” The voice from the suitcase was muffled but clearly audible in the small space.
“How can you see anything in there?” I blurted out without thinking. No one could tell what I looked like under this cloak, but my voice would give me away as a human to anything that could hear.
“Echolocation. Obviously,” Wibble answered in a tone that implied she was reevaluating her opinion of my intelligence.
“Are these our contacts?” I asked, more quietly this time.
“I think not,” said Pplimz. “I was given a very specific location and this is not it.”
“Well, whoever they are, they’re definitely coming our way, Pplimz,” Wibble said, with uncharacteristic urgency in her voice. “If you’ve got a plan, I suggest you implement it forthwith.”
“Thank you for your ceaseless confidence, Wibble,” Pplimz said frostily. They opened their mouth and projected a dim green beam which danced along the walls. The light played over the tunnel, illuminating the grottoes with their disturbing statues shoved into holes in the walls, trails of oozing slime slicking down, and something that looked suspiciously like a door.
“Here is our exit,” Pplimz said, and barged straight into the wall, the door soundlessly drawing open as their weight crashed into it. “Follow me.”
They stepped through the open doorway and I followed as ordered. I suppose I expected it would be another tight corridor leading down a different way into the depths of the Crucible. Instead, the floor disappeared, and my stomach flew into my throat as I fell.
After the initial drop, I found myself on my back sliding down a smooth, slick, winding incline. I could tell I was picking up speed, but I couldn’t see a thing in the pitch black. All I could hear was Wibble’s gleeful voice from somewhere not far in front of me.
“Whee!”
“Wibble, really,” Pplimz said, “have some self-respect.”
I was starting to become completely disoriented sliding down the lightless corkscrew when I abruptly crashed into Pplimz. I was momentarily stunned by both the impact and the fact that it appeared that I had somehow avoided contact with every single one of the deadly implements of torture currently covering the cyborg’s body.
“There’s nothing wrong with enjoying oneself, Pplimz,” Wibble said. “Especially when things are most likely about to become decidedly less enjoyable.”
“Wh- what?” I blinked, trying to see something – anything – in the dim light.
“We have company,” Pplimz said drily as a flame flared into life before us. “Keep still.”
Wibble’s previous suggestion that I prepare myself for terrifying sights was appropriate and accurate, but entirely insufficient. However, my natural reaction to the large group of enormous Dis demons surrounding us, their very bodies seemingly built of the most diverse group of instruments for injuring another being I could imagine, was to freeze. I couldn’t have moved if my life depended upon it, which at the moment it seemed very much like it might.
Many pairs of glowing eyes raked over us, and a noise that made my spine ache rose from the midst of the group. It was like a human scream, a banshee’s wail, and the sound of metal gears that had never seen the taste of oil grinding painfully against each other. Was this some kind of sonic torture device, I wondered, when Pplimz took a step toward the group.
They bowed their head toward the demons while the terrible noise echoed throughout the chamber. Was this how they talked to each other? No wonder beings avoided the underworld if this was how one asked for directions.
The screeching went on for a few moments, with no other sign of aggression from – who were these beings? Our captors? A welcoming party? A debate club meeting we’d literally dropped in on? Regardless, they weren’t currently tearing us limb from limb, so I took a moment to calm down. I’d just about remembered how to control my body when movement from my left caught my attention. I turned to see one of the smaller demons move unnaturally quickly from the edge of the pack to slither right next to me.
They may have been small, but they made up for their lack of size with augmentations that appeared to have been designed specifically to terrify a human. Their jet-black body was an articulated serpentine form, with razor-sharp scales that rippled in the flame’s glow. That might have been tolerable, except for their head which was dominated by a large set of slavering mechanical jaws that gave them a wolf-like appearance. It didn’t help that they were smacking those jaws as if in anticipation of a delicious meal as they wormed their way over to me.
I was aware of the several knives I had secreted in the specially constructed pockets of my boots. I knew, intellectually, that all I had to do was squeeze my hands in just the right way, and thanks to my gauntlets I’d be able to punch an electrically charged wallop that would fell a giant. But none of that planning mattered. Once again, I was frozen in place as the demon shoved their muzzle right up against the hood of my cloak, as if sniffing me. They were so close, I could see the spots of rust on the individual metal hinges on their jaws.
A scream was brewing deep in my lungs and there wasn’t going to be anything I could do to stop it from coming out, when my attacker cocked their head, blinked their many eyes slowly, then abruptly slithered back to the group. As if all the muscles in my body suddenly lost their ability to function, I deflated like an airship with the stopper removed. Physically and emotionally drained, I found myself lying against Pplimz, who had stepped away from the group when the terrible screaming mercifully stopped.
Pplimz turned, dumping me unceremoniously into a heap. I scrambled to make sure the cloak still covered me, but Pplimz said, “There is no need to disguise yourself any more. They
know who you are.” The cyborg extended a refreshingly knife-free appendage down to help me to my feet, and I stood, confused.
“What’s going on?”
Pplimz said nothing, instead opening the suitcase. Their suit jacket floated out, the charcoal hat perched just above the collar, and it hovered in midair for a moment. The arms waved around limply and I’d just about come to the conclusion that it wasn’t possible for anything else to startle me, when the hat and jacket fell to the ground. Of course, it was Wibble.
She turned in a lazy circle, her body pulsing with a yellow light which further illuminated the cavern we were in. There were weapons from all corners of the Crucible hung on the stone walls, what appeared to be skins, carapaces, and skeletons of various beings on display, and cauldrons of that nasty-looking bubbling goo. As I looked closer, I could see large chunks of pure æmber dotted in some of the niches. It seemed like the rumors I’d heard of a valuable cache of æmber down here in Dis might be true.
“It’s delightfully gloomy!” Wibble said, her flippers waggling. “What an interesting aesthetic sense they have down here, don’t you think?”
“What is happening?” I hissed, my eyes darting from one terrifying demon to the next. I leaned in toward Wibble and lowered my voice. “I think that snakey one wanted to eat me.”
Wibble tipped her entire body in a pose that reminded me of a dog perking its ears up. “Oh, it probably did eat you,” she said, cheerfully. “They feed on emotions, you know. The stronger the better. I suspect you were offering up quite the buffet!”
“Come on,” Pplimz said, packing the jacket and hat back in the suitcase, then waving a sword-arm in the direction of the demon mob. I took a tentative step to draw alongside Pplimz when the demons before me parted. Three individuals came toward us out of the gloom: two large demons bristling with weapons on either side of a much smaller humanoid. Not just any humanoid – it was Kristina.
She slowly lifted her head, her long hair hiding her face. I couldn’t tell if she was injured; the demons on either side of her could easily be the only thing holding her up.
“What have you done?” I shouted without thought, and tried to run toward her, but I was held back by an invisible field. Once again, I was rooted in place.
Kristina brushed the hair from her eyes and stared at me. “I told you not to follow me,” she said.
My mind was racing. Surely these were the demons we were meant to be meeting. “I had to,” I said. “I couldn’t leave you here, not my own sister.” I hoped she’d get the hint.
She laughed then, and I noticed that the demons weren’t holding her after all. She was standing there, free as anyone, with the same look of defiance on her face she’d had the first time I’d met her in that Eastside bar.
“Nice touch, that,” she said. “Telling them we were sisters. As if family would mean anything to you.”
I looked at Wibble and Pplimz, but neither of them seemed at all surprised at what Kristina was saying. Something in the back of my brain was telling me that things had gone sideways, but I was too overwhelmed to make any sense of it.
“I told you not to follow,” Kristina went on. “I honestly hoped you wouldn’t, but I should have known you’d never leave a potential haul of all this æmber just because your thief went missing. You’ve always used people, Margie, and when you assigned me to steal from the underworld, I’d finally had enough. Nowhere is too dangerous for you.” She looked back at the group of demons behind her.
“Well,” she added, “it’s never particularly dangerous for you. You’re always safe in your Eastside office. But you’re perfectly happy to send someone else to do the hard work while you take all the profits. That’s not a very fair trade, now is it?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was starting to realize that I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
I’d been running a crew of thieves out of Eastside for ages, but it was a hardscrabble life. We’d never gotten more than a few æmbits or barts from any of our capers, and it was barely worth the risk. I’d lost more than a few members of my crew to legitimate work over the years. But then I heard a rumor that there was a huge stockpile of raw æmber in the Dis underworld below Hub City. The story went that it was hardly even guarded, since everyone was so afraid of even setting foot in the place. No one escapes the underworld, they said. Well, we’d just see about that.
“A great reward requires a great risk,” I’d told my team. Of course, I wasn’t about to take any of the risk myself, personally. I was the brains of the operation, and if something happened to me then it was more than just this one job that was in peril. No, I’d stay behind and set up the deals. Someone else would have to go and actually steal the æmber.
I assigned Kristina to the job. She’d been with the team for a while and she was the best at sneaking in and out of difficult locations. I’d never known her to be unable to get out of a tight spot. And it happened that she had come to me only a few days before, telling me that she wanted out of the gang.
“Just do this one last job,” I’d told her. I most certainly was not threatening her; the sparks coming off my stunner gauntlets were entirely unrelated to our conversation. “Then you’ll have enough to do whatever you want. It’s a good trade, I promise.”
I would have found some way to keep her on the team, of course. Someone able to get in and out of the Dis underworld would be far too valuable to give up. And I only half-believed she’d pull it off, anyway. They say no one escapes from the underworld and it might have been true. But I was the boss and I told her to go. So, she went.
That horrible wailing started up again, and Pplimz stepped toward the demons. A moment later the other cyborgs began to shimmy and shake in an uncontrolled manner. For a brief moment I held out a faint hope that Pplimz had unleashed some kind of cyborg weapon, and we were about to make a break for it, but then I realized the demons were laughing. The screeching went on.
I turned toward Wibble. “Is this – noise – demon communication?” I asked, my eyes wide.
She bobbed back and forth and her voice in my earpiece barely cut through the din. “No. It’s a sonic cloak, so we can’t hear them. Although, come to think of it, it might just be a clever ruse. They may not even use sound to communicate, there’s really no reason to assume that they do. After all, many beings communicate in other ways. Why, I knew a lovely phyll once–”
The screaming abruptly stopped, which shocked Wibble into silence. Kristina continued talking as if nothing remotely unusual had just occurred.
“I made a deal,” she said, a grin spreading across her face. “I would not steal the trove of æmber you sent me to get, in exchange for flushing you out of your safe backroom in Eastside. That you actually came all the way down here is just a bonus for my new friends here.”
“But how?” I asked. “No one can communicate with a Dis demon. Only Archons and other demons.”
“Well, now, it turns out that this is only partially accurate,” Wibble said. “And wouldn’t you know it, but your former associate here became acquainted with a very clever detective who happens to have a particular affinity for languages.”
“Oh, Wibble,” Pplimz said coyly, a flush coloring their screen face. The cyborg couldn’t take a compliment, apparently. Their ego was not my problem, however. I needed to figure out how to get out of this mess.
“Fine, Kristina,” I said, “what do you want? æmber? A stake in the gang? What?”
“You don’t get it, Margie,” she said with a look of almost sadness on her face. “I want out. And I want you out.” With that, the two demons flanking her stalked toward me. I tried to move away, but I was still frozen in place. In no time, the demons were on me, their metallic jaws so close to my face I could feel their hot breath on my skin. One grabbed my arms with the pincers they had instead of hands, and the other waved one of its eight articulated legs in a gesture to the rest of the demons to come closer. I thrashed and screamed, but no one came to help me.
“Wibble!” I shouted, desperate. “You’re not going to let them kill me.”
“Of course not.” Her cheery voice was soft, but I had no trouble hearing her. I craned my head around to see that she was floating just behind me. It was Wibble who had me in her invisible iron grip. “Don’t be ridiculous. No one is murdering anyone. But there’s no point in letting all your delicious emotions go to waste when there are hungry demons to feed, am I right?”
“It is only logical,” Pplimz added. “Waste not, want not.”
The group of demons converged around me, crowding me so close that I was no longer able to make out any of their individual features. It might have been a kindness, if it weren’t for the heat and the smell of them. I held my breath, waiting to see what they would do to me.
They didn’t touch me other than to keep me in place, and I didn’t feel anything physically happen. It was not dissimilar to when the serpentine demon had… tasted me earlier. They came in close, noses and tongues and fangs and beaks extending toward me. I squeezed my eyes closed and waited for what seemed like a lifetime and then it was over. My arms were freed, and I collapsed to the ground, exhausted. When I opened my eyes, Wibble and Pplimz were looking down at me.
“Now what?” I asked, feebly.
“Now, we take you back up to the surface,” Wibble said, gesturing to an open door I hadn’t noticed before. “It’s over.”
I got to my feet shakily, and looked back toward Kristina.
“We could have reaped a lot of æmber together,” I said.
She shook her head. “It’s not worth it. Not your way.” She turned and walked away into the gloom. That was the last I ever saw of her.
“Up we go,” Wibble said, as Pplimz ushered me through the door. It was a small room that, once the door swished shut, I realized was a lift. As we rode up in silence, I thought about what I’d do now. I’d have to forget about Kristina and put this all behind me. Sure, I’d need to lie low for a while, but soon enough I could get a new crew together and look for a score somewhere else on the Crucible. This was only a minor setback. Everything was going to be fi–
Tales From the Crucible Page 23