There was light everywhere; former murk and shadow now replaced by golden radiance. The very stone seemed alive and vibrant. As they moved even deeper the layout of the municipal complex, obscured by debris and dust during their first descent, was now revealed. A wide avenue paved with shimmering marble rolled past tall, beautiful town homes and shops to the central Plaza of the Wheel, where connecting broadstreets of quartz cobblestone took travelers to the eight outer cities, five of which were already mostly ready for occupancy as a result of the titans’ hard work. Few creatures could work so diligently as titans, especially ones as strongly motivated as were these, reclaiming their magnificent birthright after millennia of dispersion.
Each of the perimeter cities, which Tartag referred to as ‘Scintillas,’ boasted its own unique fundamental architecture. One was based on blue bricks made from Tudmash Marsh mud; another on ironstone from the southern Masron and northern Espwe Mountains. A third boasted massive greenish blood timbers brought around in coastwise steamers from southern Galanga. Others were based on bleached sea-coral and shimmering starrock. Taken as a whole, Hellehoell represented every facet of titan society and knowledge, every social and cultural stratum—the full spectrum of what it meant to share the titan heritage.
As he toured the restorations, Tol was struck by the apparent incongruity of the huge, brutal titans of legend and these sensitive, industrious souls with the patience to carve intricate zoomorphics into ironstone columns and cornerstones. Perhaps titans who lived in the wild were somehow different, but Tol’s instinct—the one that had saved his life innumerable times on the street—told him that this wasn’t the case: titans had been saddled with their ferocious reputations merely because they looked capable of a great deal of mayhem. Of course Tol harbored no delusions that they could not tear up the landscape quite effectively given sufficient motivation, but overall they seemed peaceable creatures with little natural propensity for violence.
At the very deepest portion of the reconstruction, which now consisted of excavation of an area buried under an ancient collapse and rockslide, Tol and Tartag paused so that the titan could expound on what was known of this, the very oldest chamber, the first expansion of what up until then had merely been a wide shaft. It had been abandoned, the records said, after a sudden collapse of the roof and walls killed a number of workers. The cause of the collapse had never been officially determined, but to this day there persists in titan genetic memory the account of a creature or force awakened in the tunnels and the sacrifice of nine elite titan commandos who died holding it off while the explosives were planted to collapse the tunnel forever…or so they thought.
Tartag was rounding the corner, heading for home with his exposition, when suddenly his rumbling voice was interrupted by a shrill banshee wail and the sound of feet flying across stone. After a few seconds a large group of titans came barreling out of the newly-opened area. Tartag called to one in Titanic and seemed taken aback by the reply.
“It seems,” he said in response to Tol’s unspoken inquiry, “That they’ve inadvertently disturbed a nest of deepdrakes.”
“What the smek is a ‘deepdrake?” Tol asked.
A voice from Tol’s pocket suddenly cut in. “Deepdrakes were thought, at least up until now, to be mythical inhabitants of very far underground locations that serve as the transition zones between normal rock and magma chambers. They are reptiloid, ten to fourteen meters long, and associate in groups of up to twenty-five individuals.”
“Thanks, Petey. Tartag, about how far beneath the surface are we right now?”
The titan did a little figuring in his head, putting his lengthy digits to good use in the process. “I’d say about a kilometer, give or take a few tens of meters.”
Great. Petey, can you corroborate that?”
“It’s a little difficult to be sure of calibration down here, but backtracking along my known good sensor readings and extrapolating where necessary, I would say approximately 1,037 meters.”
“Well done, Tartag. At this point we only have two options, presuming all of the titans are out of there: we can push ahead and investigate these creatures in the name of science, or just re-seal the tunnel here and now and be done with it. If anyone wants my opinion, I’d say we go with the latter.”
Before Tartag could answer, a small square module on his belt began to vibrate and flash red. The titan ripped it off and read the message on the small screen. He turned ashen as he sounded out the peculiar glyphs of the titan language. Finally he dropped his arm weakly, narrowly avoiding dropping the module. “There is a titan trapped in the deepdrake chamber. His emergency telemetry signal has been activated, which means he’s been seriously injured.”
“Decision made for us, then.” Tol walked over to a row of packs with tools in them. “Would it be all right to borrow some of this stuff?”
“I can authorize that. Why do you need it?”
Tol looked surprised. “I don’t think I’ll be much good in there with only my bare hands.”
“In there?” Tartag repeated, as though he couldn’t quite make sense of the words.
“Yes, in there. Where the trapped titan is. Where did you think I was talking about?”
“But…trained extrication teams and a Special Forces unit from the Civil Guard will be here soon. We can’t just go in there without knowing what we’re up against.”
“A titan’s life is at stake. I’m sworn to protect the people of Tragacanth, and until His Majesty signs that final Writ of Territorial Transfer, Hellehoell is still nominally Tragacanth. I will do my best to rescue him or die in the attempt.”
“I’m afraid I can’t authorize such an expedition.”
Tol whipped out his KotC and Special Investigator credentials.
“You don’t need to. I am already authorized by Royal Writ to carry out operations anywhere in Tragacanth or its possessions. That, as I’ve already pointed out, includes here. Anyone coming with me?”
It took Tartag a few seconds of mental anguish comparing rules and regulations before he agreed, albeit somewhat reluctantly, to accompany Tol. Two other titans from the crew that recently fled, Apoj and Eltiar, agreed to join the party and act as guides.
Tol picked the smallest pack of the lot, which still nearly dragged the floor when resting on his comparatively diminutive shoulders, and filled it with whatever tools looked as though they might come in handy during the mission: a pickaxe, hand axe, auger, shovel, spade, pry bar, and a couple of less readily identifiable but still strangely useful-appearing implements of high-carbon steel with sturdy nut tree wood hafts. These were all scaled for titan use, of course, so Tol felt a little like a child wielding adult tools, but he persevered. A citizen’s life was at stake here.
So it was that a heroic group of three titans led by a goblin cracked and pounded and atomized their way through a dense wall of stones, boulders, and gravel on a desperate rescue mission. At length they broke through to a smallish antechamber and stopped to catch their breath and take their bearings. Tol walked the perimeter, searching for the route forward. He dropped a thin stream of dust in front of a small hole and was gratified to observe it first be drawn into the hole and then repulsed. He wedged a pry bar into the opening and started working on enlarging it.
At length he returned to the rescue party. “I think I got us a way forward worked out.”
“Excellent,” replied Tartag, “Did you find another tunnel?”
“Well, yes, except that I sort of had to make it myself, or at least part of it.”
“You dug a tunnel while you were gone? One that titans could fit through?” Apoj seemed skeptical. “You don’t look strong enough for that.” It wasn’t an insult; just an observation of what seemed the obvious.
“I’m not as strong as you guys, sure, but I have a tendency not to let go of an objective until it is accomplished.”
In truth, while titans have at least three times the brute strength of goblins as a species, goblin tenacity is
legendary. A goblin once fixated on a goal was more difficult to dislodge from it than tearing a razor-toothed swamp floater away from the carcass of a tidewater grazer calf.
The titans were impressed with the entryway the little goblin had managed to create. It was broad enough for a titan with pack to crawl through, which meant ‘wide enough for a small dray to negotiate.’ They lost no time scrambling through, to find themselves in a shallow, flat room of sufficient height for the titans to stand. There was a hole in the floor, through which they could hear and smell flowing water. There seemed to be a little steam curling up from time to time, as well, which suggested that the water was geothermal in origin. Best not to leap in until they could check the temperature. Tol didn’t know what boiled titan smelled like, but he’d experienced poached goblin and it wasn’t pleasant.
Using some rope from his pack and a rock to take soundings, Tol concluded that the water’s surface lay about five meters below the opening and was three or four meters in depth. The rock came back warm, but not too hot to touch. The water was probably not only easily survivable, but in fact quite pleasant.
“Can titans swim?” he asked.
“Yes. Not quickly, but for long distances,” replied Tartag.
“Perfect. We don’t need speed for this, but we don’t know how long we’ll have to swim. I’ll go first.” He crawled to the edge of the opening and tied one end of a long rope around his shoulders in a loose harness. “Lower me down. Once I’ve determined the water is habitable, I’ll slip out and you can jump in after me.” The titans nodded. Tol went over the edge and they paid out the line slowly until they heard a splash followed by Tol’s voice. “This is smekkin’great!” he called up to them, “Like being in a spa or something. I’m slipping out of the rope now.” The line went slack and they retrieved it.
One by one the titans followed Tol into the warm, mineral- laden water. There wasn’t a lot of light, but they could still see where they were going to a certain extent. They swam with the steadily- increasing current for a while before Eltiar’s voice suddenly broke the silence. “Anyone else hear that noise? Sounds like a roaring or rumbling.”
“I hear it, too,” replied Tol, who was still ahead of the pack,“And I think I know what it is. Anybody see a shelf or ledge or anything else we can grab onto?”
They all looked around at the smooth stone walls.“No, not really.”
“Then you better take a deep brea…”
The titans were surprised when Tol suddenly disappeared and even more surprised when they followed him…over the edge of a vertical falls down into total darkness.
The little party plummeted wetly for a quite a long time, it seemed to them. At last Tol touched bottom and pushed himself upwards as powerfully as possible—he had no idea how deep the channel was here. He popped up on the surface, gasping for air, and discovered after a few disorienting moments that he was holding onto a thin shelf, evidently behind the waterfall. He clambered up onto it and called to the others.
“Hey, guys. Over here!”
First Tartag, followed by Eltiar and Apoj, hoisted their waterlogged forms up onto the shelf with Tol. He produced a small electric torch and waved it around trying to build up some comprehensible picture of their surroundings. They appeared to be in a small shelter or anteroom hidden behind the pitch-black waterfall. Shining the torch at the far end of the space proved unhelpful, so Tol struggled to his feet and shuffled cautiously in that direction. Tartag followed closely behind.
“The tracking signal is finally getting stronger. I think we’re heading in the right direction now,” Tartag called after Tol.
“Can you tell how far we need to go?”
“It isn’t that granular a device. It only tells direction and relative signal strength.”
“Better than nothing. This looks like a sentient-built passage of some sort; at any rate it’s the best shot we’ve got. Follow me!”
Tol scrambled down a slight slope with rock fall detritus scattered around on it and headed off into the absolute darkness of the tunnel, the light from his tiny torch bobbing here and there. The titans, despite their much larger stride, struggled to keep up. Tol was now pure detective on the trail; he was totally focused on the quarry and could move with surprising alacrity when so engaged.
The tunnel seemed to have more than its fair share of side passages as they pressed forward, but Tol barely hesitated at each one before continuing. Finally he stopped at one, looked at the ground for a moment, and indicated they were turning off to the left. “Why do you think we should go that way?” Tartag asked.
Tol shone his light down on the floor. “Because whoever got here before us did. I thought we could ask him if he knows the way out.”
Tartag looked carefully at the spot Tol indicated and was astonished to see that there were very subtle indentations in the thin layer of dust. Anyone else would have missed them, even were they looking specifically for that type of manifestation.
“How did you even see that?”
“A lifetime of tracking down guys who thought they were too clever to be caught. It sort of hones your skills.”
“I’ll say it does.”
They followed the narrower passage somewhat more cautiously, as it was liberally strewn with rock debris and the footing was treacherous. Every now and then Tol would point out some ridiculously obscure sign that a person or persons had recently gone before them. Tartag just shook his head in wonder. After at least fortyfive minutes of steady travel Tol halted abruptly and cocked his head to one side. He made a silencing gesture to the titans behind him. “Did everyone bring some sort of weapon?” In response, the titans all drew their yankiri, or long-bladed glaves. The sound of sharpened metal moving against leather scabbard was strangely comforting to Tol as he stood there with his new rapid-fire disruptor, a far more powerful version of his trusty old service weapon (which he still carried in a holster under the other shoulder, as backup).
“There’s something coming, and it’s got more than two legs,” Tol announced quietly. “Be ready to fight.” Everyone stiffened and waited. There was no sound for a few moments, then without warning a swarm of huge reptilian things with very large talons and foul, toxic-smelling breath were upon them.
“Deepdrakes!” Tartag cried, as he swung his yankiri wildly. Tol fired once on the stun setting and the lizard shook it off, so he raised the power level to perforate and shot again.
“Apparently,” he said to no one in particular as he dove behind a rock jutting from the wall, “Perforating a deepdrake just irritates it. A lot.”
“They don’t seem to take well to being sliced open, either,” replied Eltiar, his weapon dripping with grayish-pink deepdrake gore.
“The heads do come off nice and clean,” added Apoj, holding up a particularly fearsome-looking specimen by lacerated neck muscle tissue. Just then another one leapt at Apoj’s own throat and was surprised to find an entire deepdrake head stuffed far down its gaping maw. As it struggled to dislodge the breathing obstacle Tartag brought his glave down with incredible force on the creature’s back, severing the spinal column and very nearly bisecting the entire animal.
“Yecch. It’s gettin’ slippery in here,” observed Tol as he slid his way into position to take a shot at the next deepdrake coming down the corridor at them. He got it right between the eyes with a full-power bolt that drove a meter-long fountain of brain tissue and blood out the back of the huge, misshapen skull. The beast kept coming at them as a result of its considerable momentum; Eltiar sliced off one its front legs for good measure as it slid by.
When the battle was over there were seven demised deepdrakes. Their opponents had suffered a few lacerations and one relatively minor fracture. They were covered in a thick layer of the same gore that enveloped their immediate environs, though. They scraped as much of it from themselves and each other as practical and headed off down the corridor, alert to the very real possibility that the first encounter might only have been with a sco
uting party.
They made their way among skeletons and other, less identifiable clumps of what they could only presume were deepdrake prey. The stench was nearly unbearable, even for Tol, who had a lot experience dealing with stinky places, having lived his life in Sebacea. It was becoming more and more apparent that this corridor was some sort of deepdrake larder, where choice gobbets of flesh were stashed to age for a while before being consumed. The titans looked at one another nervously: the odds were very high that they would encounter more deepdrakes—possibly more than they could handle, even collectively. Only Tol seemed unconcerned. He regarded deepdrakes as, despite their large size, inferior fighters to the vicious sewer wrats of Sebacea, and he’d taken on entire nests of those bleeders by himself before.
The passageway was taking a definite downward slant now; at times quite dramatic. The air temperature was increasing as they ventured deeper and deeper. There were multiple openings in the wall, with black, unfathomable depths behind them, but Tol seemed quite adamant that the trail they were following led straight along the main hallway. The caches of flesh and piles of bone were becoming less frequent, concurrent with a welcome decline in the odor of decay and dried bodily fluids with which they’d been forced to contend for some time.
As the incident debris diminished, the roughly-hewn walls and floor of the passage smoothed and after a while even began seemingly to glisten. They passed through an arch—an obvious artifice—beyond which the surroundings improved dramatically. The walls and ceiling moved outward and were now composed of polished marble, albeit of a different form than they’d seen in Hellehoell itself. The crude steps had morphed into an elegantly- constructed formal staircase, still leading down precipitously. The increasing warmth was ameliorated by a constant flow of cool air, although by what mechanism and even via what ventilation system was impossible to say.
A hundred meters or so further along Tol took a step that almost caused him to lose his balance. The step itself was the culprit, as the pressure from his foot caused an ancient mechanism to activate and the stairs began to descend on their own. They moved hesitantly at first, sticking and releasing noisily as though they had not been used in millennia—but then some form of lubrication apparently kicked in and the jolting died down into a quiet, fluid motion.
Gathering of the Titans: The Tol Chronicles Book 2 Page 11