When he woke, he tried to sit up and struck his face on the rock, which was only a foot above him. It took him several moments before he beat down the panic. He put himself in here and now he would get himself out. But where could he go, once he was out? Back to where the Volni still searched for him?
He was desperately thirsty, but he had no time to worry about that just now. He put his hands back on the stone and sought some comfort from it. By instinct, he pushed his mind out into it. And there it was. A yard or so from where he lay was a void. And it was big - vast even. He ran his mind along the edge of the stone as far as his talent allowed, but did not find the edge.
Instantly, Nikka formed a plan. The stone he removed, he could fill the ledge with.
This had to work.
So he began. Without sustenance or hope, he widened the hole before him. Nikka gasped as the foul air rushed in. Then, without any further delay, he started moving the stone.
For an age, he moved little pieces of rock, melding them, repositioning them, until he had fashioned himself enough room to roll back and forth. Then he accelerated his work rate.
He tore ragged chunks of rock from the tunnel he was creating. These lumps he piled behind himself. His work was not heedless though; the shelf outside had to be filled carefully. If it were packed, too quickly, the shelf might collapse. One time, he froze in horror thinking that he had been discovered, but Chaos’ die had not landed yet.
When his strength failed him and he was forced to rest, he realised that it was not going to work. There was just too far to go. The shelf was too small and there was nowhere else to put the melded stone. He could throw it out, but that would be noticed. Even if he made it through, the Volni would come after him, for they too melded stone.
He knew what he must do, but he feared to do it. But there was nothing else for it, so he tore an indelicate lump of stone from the wall and placed it behind him. Then he repeated the action and, piece by piece, he sealed himself in.
The silent darkness was there to embrace him. This was total darkness, even his limited heat-vision would not help him here. So he worked faster, not bothering to wait until the stone was free of the wall before he pulled it off and hurled it behind himself. There would be air soon he told himself. His fingers slipped on bare rock as he lost his focus.
As his lungs began to burn, Nikka forced himself to stop. If he gave into this temptation now, he was dead. So he held his breath, slowed his heart and he reasserted his authority over himself. Then he put his hands on the stone wall and pushed his mind into it. Then he let the stone guide him, let it show him the faults in its creation, where he might stress and manipulate it; where it would break. Then, with a targeted sliver of power, the last piece of the wall fell away.
Air rushed in. Real air. Air from the outside world. It was impossible, he was too far down, too far from the surface, but there it was.
But something was wrong with the air. It was too sweet – it had the tang of spoiled meat – not directly poisonous, but insidious.
Whatever the risks, Nikka had to be free. So he lifted his captured hammer and crawled through the opening. Then he fell a few feet on top of the rock he had dislodged. Once he recovered his breath, and the ache in his side subsided, he tried to look around, but there was no light here and no sources of heat. He was as blind here as he was in the stone coffin he had just rolled out of.
But there was moisture here. His hand felt the dampness on the stone walls. He could survive here, for a time.
Nikka crawled about in the dark trying to orientate himself. He laughed aloud as he pictured the Volni looking down on him scrabbling about in the dirt. His laugh echoed on and on.
When he found himself back at the start, he surmised he was in a circular pit. He stood up and walked around the structure, making sure he had the measure of it. There was an exit on the wall across from where he had entered. It was just large enough to allow him to crawl in, but his courage would not allow him to do so yet. So he stood before it and stared. There was light in there. It was insubstantial and it wavered, but it was there.
Nikka used the hammer to pull himself up and into the hole. It was bigger than he had first assumed, but he would still have to crawl on his hands and knees. And if it became too narrow, what then? He was well past the point of questioning himself, but it did not stop the other voices in his head whispering of death and confinement.
As he moved on, the light improved and he noticed that the tunnel had a crack in the middle of the floor. It was only the width of his thumb, and at first, he supposed it was a mark on the floor, a natural fissure in the stone, but when he looked at it, it was as dark as the chamber behind him.
Nikka forced himself to stop looking down. It felt like the darkness was pouring out of that crack; pouring out to consume him, pouring out to steal the light from the world.
‘I will not go back,’ he said. ‘I will not go back.’
He chuckled to himself when he realised he was speaking aloud.
So he pushed himself on. When he grew thirsty, he licked moisture from the walls of his prison, but this was not the worst thing he had ever done. When it came time to rest, he lay on his side and endured the pain as best he could, for he would not have his back to the endless darkness.
Nikka did not bother counting how many times he rested or slept before he came to the end of the tunnel, for it was not important. When he emerged, he was cramped and disorientated. He found himself in a large cave with two tracks; one leading up and one leading down.
At one point, the light in the cavern he had fallen into was so bright he thought himself on the slopes of the Rathou, but as his eyes adjusted, he realised it was only torchlight. But torchlight meant Cerni, and they would not welcome him. He was as likely to be killed by his own kind as by the Volni. The Cerni fought with each other as often as the fought with the Volni. When his eyes would let him, he moved around this large space.
Apart from the illumination, it looked like a stop-off point, similar to ones he had stayed in often with the Volni when being moved from workplace to workplace. He hid in the darkness for a time as he tried to think of what to do next. As he waited, the cavern grew lighter. It was only little and his heart sank as it faded.
Then it came to him. It was natural light. Even way down here it had reached him.
All he needed now was a plan.
As long as managed to reach the surface, he would make himself a new life. He promised himself that he would never return to Sordir. It was one of many promises that he would not keep. The only promises he ever kept were those sworn in a mist of hatred; those of vengeance.
So he hid and moved, then he hid and moved again, and again and again. Each time he moved he got a little closer to the surface. Each time he moved, there was more light – real, natural light. It took him days and days (a concept he had to reacquaint himself with) to become accustomed to the extra light, but the nights were harder to deal with. The light brought hope and fear with it. The night brought despair.
Nikka tried to force his body to obey the rhythms of the light. He tried to rest when it was dark and move in the light, when his courage and strength would permit it.
Luck was with him on the first few dozen moves. He found enough food and water hidden away for patrols to keep him going. Those patrols that he had encountered had been too busy to find him or to care. But on the day he discovered a store of weapons and provisions his luck ran out.
Nikka had stayed too long, unsure of what to take and what would suit his purpose the best. Perhaps he had been too cautious this time. The light here was intense during the day. At first, he thought he was at the surface. The shock of it forced him to stop and gather his wits.
He had watched the troop of Volni guards that patrolled this area. They went on the same path each day, followed the same steps, each day. But not this day.
There were four in the group. Three young Volni, who laughed and joked (as far as Nikka could tell) and
one older Volni. He kept himself apart from the others. Nikka had paid close attention to the loner as he spied on them. And it was him that returned. His breathing gave him away to Nikka.
Nikka had been routing through the food, trying to take only what would not perish in a day or two, and what was light enough to carry, when the guard arrived.
The Cerni managed to flick up his hammer just in time to catch the Volni’s black stick. The old Volni stepped back. All he needed to do was shout out, and Nikka was finished.
He was so close to the surface now.
Instead of shouting, the Volni smiled at Nikka. He looked so much like Lidla. Like an inverse image burned on his retinas, only recently reintroduced to natural light.
The hammer slipped in Nikka’s hand, but he grabbed it before it fell. The Volni saw the movement and attacked. The stick caught Nikka a glancing blow, enough to knock him back into the racks of provisions.
He brought his hammer back up above his head as Lidla’s ghost jabbed his weapon at him.
‘Stop,’ he pleaded. ‘Do not make me do this.’
But the stick came at him again and again, stinging his fingers and numbing his muscles. He did not want to hurt this Volni.
The white-skinned creature barked at Nikka, trying to goad him into attacking. Nikka had no idea what the brackish words meant, but the sound of them triggered something in his brain.
Before he could stop himself, he brought the hammer around in a powerful swing.
Nikka’s side exploded in agony as the stick made contact with his still mending ribs, but it did not stop the hammer’s blow.
Nikka was thrown back into the provisions. When he managed to uncurl himself from underneath the pile that had landed on top of him, he crawled over to the fallen Volni.
Let him be dead, he thought. He could not bear the idea of murdering the old Volni.
Pushing aside the pile of fallen bags, he gazed upon the dead guard with a mixture of relief and horror. Half of the Volni’s pale, piebald head was caved in by his strike, but it was the part that remained intact that filled him with revulsion.
But there was no time for self-hatred. He needed to move. He was too weak to hide the body, and his ribs would barely let him walk, never mind hide the evidence of what happened here.
So he shoved whatever came to hand into one of the sacks that lay around him and ran as best as he could.
It was a mad, heedless, stumbling dash. He had no time for caution. He had to get out of here.
His breath came in barbed gasps, each one tearing at his lungs.
‘Lidla, damn you.’ He said, but he was not sure why. He felt that he should curse someone.
He heard shouts behind him. Damn it, he needed to move faster, but his body would not allow it.
As he turned a corner, his goal was there. It was so bright it sent spikes of pain lancing into Nikka’s brain. Thousands of points of light on a blanket of blackness and he laughed when he saw it.
He was safe. The Volni could not follow him here. But he did not stop. The wind was blowing in his hair. Not just the tickle of fresh air that had helped preserve his sanity for the past few weeks, but an actual breeze.
The tears began to flow then. Tears for his friend and tears for those abandoned to their fate. But he did not stop moving.
Then the light was snatched from him. Darkness erupted around him once more and the shout from behind him sent him running flat out once more.
The Volni were here and they brought the dark with them. He had encountered this before, when the Volni raided on the edges of Sordir. The Volni could summon globes of darkness in which they would operate. Even torches and fires shed no light when they were under its influences. These globes were impenetrable even by the Sun.
So he ran. His heat sensitive vision could not help him now.
The shouts grew louder, accompanied by thumping footsteps, both his and his pursuers. He could not risk a stumble now or all of this was for nothing.
He collided with a stone wall, but still he did not stop, he just let himself roll off of it. A hand grasped at him, but it missed its mark. He heard the Volni curse at him.
Then his foot caught a rock on the ground and he fell forward. He tucked his head in and rolled. He completed one and a half rolls before he ended up face down in the dirt.
He was spent. His ribs burned with an agony so intense he could barely breathe. He had tried, but this would be where he met his end; at the mouth of the cave that lead out of the mountain.
The shouts came from behind him again, loud and furious, however no blows followed. So he forced himself onto his side and then onto his back.
And there it was. An uncountable number of points of light tortured his tear-stained eyes.
The howls and cries from the tunnel grew fainter. The Volni had been denied their target, and no doubt someone would have to pay the price for that, but it would not be him.
Tears of joy rolled over his cheeks as he gazed upon the stars. But it was not the light that he hungered for. So he lay there on the rough mountain soil and let the air chill him to the core, but he would not move until he saw what he needed to. He breathed in and the aromas of the mountain awakened memories in him, ones he had presumed discarded miles below him. So he lost himself in reverie while he waited.
Then the light of dawn burned his eyes, but he refused to retreat back underground. So, he sat and let the light bathe him whilst he clenched his eyes shut. The entire day he sat there and let the sun caress his flesh. He sat and waited until the sun set. And then, little by little, he got up. His eyes stung, his side ached and his heart lurched when he took his first step away from his gaol. He had nowhere to go and no goals other than to survive, but what more did anyone need?
From the Author:
I am a writer of words, a lover of music and a designer of electronics. The west coast of Scotland is my home.
I have loved fantasy since first reading Lord of the Rings when I was 11 or 12 and have been devouring the genre ever since. I enjoy sojourns in the lands of horror, thriller and even (whisper it) non-fiction. But I'll always find my way back to dragons and magic and fantasy.
I have 2 full length, epic fantasy novels (Tapasya & Prasad) available right now. I am working on the third part which completes the tale.
Find out more at
https://davidgilchristauthor.wordpress.com/
twitter: @dg60i
facebook: www.facebook.com/davidgilchristauthor
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The Redemption of Wist Series:
Book 1: Tapasya www.bit.ly/Tapasya
Book 2: Pyrite www.bit.ly/pyrite_uk
Book 3: Prasad www.bit.ly/prasad_uk
Nikka_The Redemption of Wist Book Page 2