The Survivors Part 1: The Masacre

by Brian McGoldrick

  Back in the big cavern, Danleib looks toward the end of the cavern with the spiral down ramp. “We've been here for over six hours already. This place is big, and we still don't know what's down that other ramp.”

  I glance in the direction of the corridor with the blast door. “Unless we can open that door, I don't think we'll find anything useful on this level. As for going down, I don't have a good feeling about it. From the smell, it has to be at least partially flooded below, but we should check it out anyway.”

  No one disagrees, and we move to the top of the ramp. I test the footing, and the algae on the ramp is as slick as I feared.

  “Cwichelm, can you take care of it?”

  Cwichelm nods. “Not a problem.”

  A pair of crystal lasers float up from their belt sheaths. Hovering over Cwichelm's shoulders, they fire out overlapping wide angle beams of coherent light. In just a second or two, under the touch of that light, the dark green algae turns into dried out brown remains mixed with greyish ash. Stepping forward, Cwichelm tests the footing.

  “It's not perfect, but we won't break our necks. There doesn't seem to be any of that sand on this ramp.”

  Cwichelm's lasers cut out a path a little more than six feet wide, and we follow him down in single file. After three circles, the ramp reaches a flat spot before continuing down.

  We're two hundred fifty feet deeper, give or take a bit, and another corridor leads off into a T intersection. The floor is covered in more algae, but it doesn't reach the intersection. Checking the intersection, we find another corridor with more doors and corridors leading off of it.

  Danleib raises his eyebrows. “Just how big is this place?”

  Cwichelm snorts and looks back toward the spiral ramp.

  I shrug. “No clue. Do we explore this floor or keep going down? I vote for down.”

  Dacbold turns back toward the ramp. “I want to find out what is at the bottom first.”

  No one has any objections, and we continue down the ramp. After three more loops, we reach another corridor leading off the ramp.

  Agun loosens the neck of his grey robes. “Isn't it getting hot in here?”

  We four Dvergar look at one another. The others have slightly sheepish expressions on, and I am hard pressed to maintain my frown.

  Cwichelm displays a faint smirk. “Your frown is slipping.”

  Ignoring Cwichelm, I look at Agun. “We can't really tell. Uh, well, you see, we Dvergar have a significantly higher tolerance for temperature ranges than humans. Before we really notice higher temperatures, you would be suffering from heat stroke.”

  As he nods his head, Agun's eyes don't even widen in the slightest. There isn't a hint of surprise visible on his face. “I thought so. I noticed it years ago. When Dacbold and I were in the jungles of Texalaco'pa, he didn't even break a sweat. Seems like you would slap Captain Social Justice like a bitch, if he walked out of the pages of Marvelous Comics.”

  Dacbold spits on the ground. “Don't compare us to that sexual deviant. It takes a sick bastard to push that crap on children like it's normal.”

  Agun's faint smirk gives me the impression he was just baiting Dacbold. Even though Dacbold never says much, he probably hates what has become of America more than even Ahlred. Over the years, he's deliberately practiced repressing his emotions and maintaining his silence under almost any and all conditions so that there will never be evidence against him recorded by the social cameras.

  “Forget about it. Let's see what is in the bottom of this place.” I follow the path cut by Cwichelm's lasers back to the spiral ramp.

  With Cwichelm in the lead again, we keep going down. Roughly every two hundred fifty feet there is another flat landing and another floor. After five more, the temperature has risen enough that it's perceptible to us Dvergar. Agun is sweating buckets from the heat.

  “Hold up!”

  Cwichelm pauses at my word looking over his shoulder. With his lasers temporarily turned off, I am certain that the change in illumination ahead was not an illusion. The darkness is lit by a light source that seems to be flickering and changing colors every second or two.

  “There is a light source ahead.”

  Danleib's words focus everyone's attention ahead instead of on me. Without any further chatter, tightly gripping our weapons, we advance around the last turn in the ramp. Opening out in front of us is a chamber that has its far ends cloaked in shadows due to the way the flickering light illuminates it.

  Like that massive cavern above, this chamber is on the north side of the spiral tunnel we have been descending. Unlike the cavern above, I can't see any sign of it once being a natural cavern that has been expanded. The ceiling is only about fifty feet above our heads, instead of hundreds, and there are regularly spaced octagonal columns of stone between the floor and ceiling. At a guess, the chamber is roughly as wide as the cavern above. Visible through an open aisle between rows of the columns, an irregular energy field is in what could be the middle of the chamber.

  In places, standing water is visible, but throughout most of the visible chamber, the floor is covered in salt crystal deposits. The air in the chamber is steamy, but there seems to be a faint breeze drawing the steam to the north.

  Each time the field of energy flickers, the color of the energy shifts. A large piece of equipment made of black metal and crystals sits within the energy field, but its semi-regular outline gives no clue as to its purpose or function.

  Cwichelm takes out an ocular device and examines the energy field. “It's a light curtain of some kind. Though, I think it might be more accurate to call it a laser curtain. There is a lot of energy in that field.”

  Danleib taps his foot in a puddle of algae and water on the floor of the chamber. “At least, we can see why this complex isn't flooded with the water leaking in from above.”

  Cwichelm buries the end of his pick in the salt crystal buildup. “Yeah, but how long has seawater been leaking into this place? This is more than two feet of salt crusted on the floor.”

  “I'm not even going to attempt to make a guess. Let's call it a long time.”

  As I step onto the salt, it barely shifts under my weight. I can barely remember anything from my college chemistry classes. I don't know where to begin to estimate how much seawater would have to evaporate to leave this much salt behind. Millions of gallons? Even more?

  Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

  As I move toward the laser curtain, the others follow behind me. Other than a faint hum that grows louder as we get closer to the center of the chamber, the only sound is the soft noise of salt crystals on the surface of the build up.

  From a distance of a few yards, I can feel the intense heat generated by the laser curtain. The device inside of it is clearly still operational, but I don't have any clue what it does.

  Cwichelm takes out a variety of devices from his bag of holding and sets them up on the salt pack at his feet. After a few minutes, he gets a strange look on his face and takes out more equipment.

  “As near as I can tell, it's a Power broadcaster, but it seems to broadcast using an alternate dimension. It's actually similar to what we did with the whisper charms and guild bracelets. Except, this doesn't send any data. It's just transmitting raw Power.”

  My frown is all too real now, and I stare at the device inside the laser curtain with squinted eyes. “Do you think this is what is blocking the whisper charm and guild bracelet transmissions?”

  Cwichelm shrugs slightly. “My guess would be yes, but we've never really understood a lot of the principles behind them. You should know better than I do that it was pure blind luck that Graham and Alva stumbled onto that strange carrier dimension pattern we used for the basis of these things.”

  “If we could shut it down, our whisper charms might work again, but how do we shut it down?” Danleib looks the laser curtain up and down.

  There appear to be crystal projectors buried in the floor and ceiling, but the flickering of the curtain makes i
t seem like the sigils or equipment generating the curtain are damaged.

  Dacbold is staring into the shadows on the east side of the chamber. “There is a tunnel over there. Even if this is broadcasting Power, it's probably not generating it. We should find the generator and shut it down.”

  No one disagrees and Cwichelm puts his equipment away again. With we four Dvergar in a line in front and Agun behind us, we head to the east side of the chamber. The corridor entry is a good thirty feet or so wide and just as high, forming a perfect square. The crumpled remains of a massive, corroded blast door half fill it, but we can still see that the corridor beyond is the beginning of another spiral ramp.

  “Agun!”

  In response to Cwichelm's calling his name, Agun quickly draws the spell pattern for that force blast spell and unleashes it on the corridor mouth. After the first one partially opens a path, he follows it with a second and third, leaving a cleared space wide enough for a Dvergar to pass.

  Despite the dilapidated condition of the blast door, there are no signs of the leaked in seawater passing it. The floor of this tunnel is dry, and the heat rises the further down we go.

  Clank. Thud. Clank. Clank. Thud. Clank. Thud. Clank. Clank. Clank.

  Hearing the noises from below, I trade glances with the other Dvergar, but none of us offer any opinions. As we descend the sounds grow louder, and after about five hundred feet, a reddish glow is visible in the corridor.

  Before finishing the descent, we kill our light sources. Rounding the final bend, the tunnel opens out on a catwalk. A scene that could pass for a kind of hell spans the cavern below us. The floor of the cavern is a mix of worked stone and black metal grating. Below the grating, orange-red molten lava flows turgidly. Strangely shaped equipment, with irregular outlines, dots the apparently naturally formed cavern and a single massive edifice of metal and crystal stands in the center.

  The noises come from a number of constructs that are duplicates of the one we defeated up above. While the metal grates appear to have no wear from the constructs, the stone has deep paths worn into it, and in places, it has collapsed where it meets the metal grates. In several of those holes, constructs are stuck and flailing about in an attempt to extricate themselves.

  “Dumb as a box of rocks.” Cwichelm's face has a blatant sneer on it.

  “They're non-sentient. What do you expect?” Danleib is carefully surveying the cavern, while absentmindedly scratching his bearded chin.

  “Dollars to donuts that thing in the middle is the Power generator.”

  Danleib's eyes flicker to me for a moment, before going back to the cavern. “Oh, I don't think there is any question about that. The question is how do we shut it down?”

  The Power generator has to be close to two hundred feet square. With lava flowing through crystal tubes that run along its surface and into its black metal body, the thing is giving off a frightful amount of heat. The area surrounding it is so hot that it's visually distorted by the heat shimmer. From the top of the generator, a glowing silver tube rises to the roof of the cavern and penetrates it. There is little doubt that is the source of the Power for the broadcaster above.

  The catwalk we are on encircles the Power generator, but there are no connecting walkways that reach the generator itself. There are still six of the constructs moving freely around the cavern. Any one of them could kill all of us. Turning off this thing off looks to be problematic.

  “I'm up for any good suggestions on how to reach that generator.”

  My deadpan tone draws a querulous look from Cwichelm. It's a sure sign that he doesn't have any good ideas and was expecting me to be the answer man. “You're the leader here. You should be the one coming up with a plan.”

  Danleib doesn't quite turn his head away fast enough to keep me from seeing his faintly amused expression. Despite being friends or maybe because of it, Danleib and Cwichelm go to extreme lengths to one-up one another most times.

  “Danleib, you want to share with the rest of us?”

  Even though he does his best to hide it, he has a natural talent for breaking things. As he turns to look at us again, Danleib's smirk is gone. “There may not be a way for us to shut down the Power generator, but I'm pretty certain that I can sever that pipe coming out the top.”

  “How?”

  Danleib frowns. “I can turn one of my automatons into a bomb.”

  Danleib's automatons are precious to him. The effort he puts into crafting every one, borders on obsessive, and if one gets even slightly scratched, he'll spend hours painstakingly restoring it to its original condition. Him offering to sacrifice one means that he doesn't see any other option.

  Looking down at the floor of the cavern, I feel an involuntary shiver run down my spine. If we try to get past or through those constructs, we'll be lucky to come out of it as ground meat.

  I look at Danleib. “How long?”

  Danleib sighs, before glaring at us. “I don't carry around ready made bombs for destroying my babies. I have all the materials to make a bomb, but it will take a couple hours to create the explosive.”

  “While you do that, I'm going take a better look around this place.”

  Dacbold silently trails behind me, and the others stay with Danleib.

  Following the circular catwalk, we don't find another ramp connecting with it, but there is a tunnel that leads out onto the level of the cavern floor.

  “That tunnel is big enough for the constructs to use.” Dacbold stares silently at the tunnel entry, his expression unreadable.

  “Yeah, let's see what is up above.”

  Returning to the chamber with the Power broadcaster, we take a look around. Because of the stone pillars and the erratic lighting from the laser curtain, even Dvergar eyes cannot pierce the shadows around the sides of the chamber. With no other option, we travel along the wall to the north side of the chamber.

  From south to north, there are a total of twenty rows of columns that cross the chamber. I can't tell whether they were left for structural or decorative purposes, but assuming they are for structural integrity, even in the event of an earthquake, this chamber would be unlikely to collapse.

  The layer of packed salt reaches all the way to the north wall, but it is noticeably thinner on this end. In the center of the north wall, there is the partially collapsed remains of another blast door. By standing on Dacbold's shoulders, I can see the room beyond. It's filled with the decaying remains of only partially identifiable equipment. Though, some of it appears to be collapsed gantries mixed with the remains of constructs like the one we fought.

  I jump down from Dacbold's shoulders. “Looks like a maintenance depot for the constructs.”

  We continue our trek around the chamber, finding that the columns are set up in a twenty by twenty matrix, with one hundred total in the room.

  In the west wall, there is another decaying blast door opposite the one in the east wall. Behind it, is another spiral ramp heading down.

  “This should be the tunnel that exits onto the floor of the generator cavern.”

  Dacbold doesn't respond to my comment, as expected.

  With a discernible snap, the channel from Connor's whisper charm breaks. My carefully cultivated frown turns into a silent snarl.

  “What's wrong, Thorrin?”

  “The whisper charm. Something has gone wrong on Connor's end.” Without waiting for a reply, I take off at a steady jog, heading back toward Danleib and the rest.

  Connor is a real world friend. I have known him since the early 2000s when I was a civilian IT contractor with the State Dept. in Iraq. Even though I haven't seen much of him or anyone else since being crippled, we still stayed in touch.

  As we approach at a jog, Danleib does not take his eyes off the chemicals he is mixing. “Stop! If you disturb me and I drop the wrong thing, we'll all go boom!”

  Dacbold and I abruptly halt. We both have a healthy respect for explosives.

  “What's got you so worked up?”

/>   I take a deep breath and calm myself. “The whisper channel with Connor was broken a few minutes ago. We're out of time.”

  “It's going to be another hour, maybe a little less. If you can't wait, you better head back to the hole and try to get in touch with him from there.”

  After watching Danleib mix his explosive for a few moments, I turn and head back up the ramp. Again, Dacbold follows behind me.

  “Agun, go with them!” Cwichelm's voice has a clear ring of command to it.

  Climbing up the circular ramps, I keep my pace to one that Agun's human body can maintain. Being frustrated by the slow speed, I have to keep a tight rein on my temper. Not everyone was lucky enough to be given a Dvergar body, and I have no idea why I was when others were not.

  When we reach the hole bored into the tunnel, I open a channel to Connor with my whisper charm.

  *Connor? What's happening?*

  I can feel that the channel connected to Connor, but a reply is not immediately forthcoming. I can hear the sounds of battle, sounding distant from my position inside the tunnel. My hand is gripping my axe haft so tightly that I can hear the sounds of tortured metal from my gauntlet.

  Barely visible in my peripheral vision, Agun stares at my hand with a more than faintly shocked expression on his face.

  Dacbold wordlessly places a hand on my shoulder.

  Close to minute passes before Connor's response reaches me. *It's bad. Somehow the orcs got on the ridge to the west of the bowl valley. We lost everyone at the west wall, including all the mercenaries that were with us. In the chaos getting to the land spur, we lost probably two-thirds of our numbers. If we hadn't dumped the boulders piled along the ridge in front of the wall on the orcs, we would have been effectively wiped out. Do you have any good news?*

  My heart feels like a steel fist is clamped around it, and until I take a deep breath, I do not answer Connor.

  *This is some kind of ancient underground complex. We think we found the source of the interference for our spells and communication, but it's not going to help us.*

  Even without being able to see Connor, I still feel his disappointment mixed with the beginning of a loss of hope though the whisper channel. *Then, we will be making our final stand here.*