Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Lliferock

by Jak Koke

  More obsidimen surrounded him — a whole brotherhood — and he realized that he knew them all.

  He breathed now, hot mist penetrating his lungs, and the pain in his head dissipated, the vision fading with it.

  When will Sangolin call?

  More pain, stronger this time, like an arrow into his spine.

  He grabbed his head as if to push away the agony. He smelled clean rain; he heard thunder. Thick jungle surrounded a red sandstone mesa.

  A tepuis. Ganwetrammus.

  What did that mean? That name rang in his head like the after-tone of a bell. And then he felt the longing to return. The yearning to leave this place. He had to go back to the tepuis.

  To Ganwetrammus. He was needed there.

  His liferock. Ganwetrammus must be his liferock. Yes, that was it.

  He remembered the scene in the temple again, but this time he knew the names of the obsidimen. And he knew his name as well. He was Reid Quo, and they were his brothers.

  Jibn Sra stood next to the Alqarat, its tip glowing deep red.

  Jibn was about to end his Awakening and be Named. The Eldest, Garen Dne, plunged his hands into the molten tip of the Alqarat and pulled out a palm full of the liferock. Tylon Giv helped Garen stretch the red-hot rock into a thick thread.

  The brotherhood chanted, their voices deep and resonant like an avalanche echoing through a canyon. Reid was among them, lending his tenor to the pulse. The moment flashed clearly in his head like the crisp concussion of thunder after lightning.

  He breathed again, sitting in the steam on the edge of the cliff. And with that breath, the memory faded. The vision reverberated inside his skull, losing focus and cohesion as it waned. His lungs burned, but the sharp edge of pain dissipated, replaced by an ache of loneliness. Steam dripped off his This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ scarab@mindspring.com) Liferock 

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  skin, and he pulled his legs up into his chest. He curled into a tight ball, and cried.

  My liferock is calling me. It must be in great pain. It is too bad I can’t leave this place. I can never leave Sangolin.

  The heavy weight of sadness knocked the wind from him.

  He sobbed, curled like that until the wind changed and the mist began to disperse. Sangolin called to him just as he decided to help with making the fire for cooking.

  His pain vanished when he felt the call. He forgot about his liferock. He forgot his brotherhood. Sangolin filled his thoughts. And he went into the black and white tunnel, relishing the cool of the cavern. The drip of water was the only sound he heard as he approached the mass that was Sangolin’s core.

  “Troubled?”

  Out of the darkness came an obsidiman, skin the color of white marble. He was younger than Reid, but his body was bent and misshapen. One of his legs had been broken long ago, and it had healed at a bad angle. His back bent over unnaturally, and his face had been scarred on one side such that his left eye socket stared vacantly into space.

  “Vecrix?”

  “Are you all right, brother?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You seem pained of late.”

  Reid smelled the sweet odor of Sangolin from this close, making sweat prickle on his forehead from the anticipation.

  “I’m just fine,” he said. Then he pressed himself against the lumpy flesh of Sangolin and joined the others.

  This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ scarab@mindspring.com)  Chapter Sixteen 

  There were a few places in the world where elemental air, fire, water and earth came together. Ganwetrammus had directed Pabl to one such place — deep in the heart of the Tylon mountains, at the headwaters of the Tylon river. A place known to obsidimen as Domorpen, which meant “portal to legend.”

  The travel had been easy and uneventful for the six days since they had left Tepuis Garen. The terrain had become steep and the roads less passable as they made their way farther and farther up into the Tylon mountains. The jungle spread out behind them like an ocean of vegetation, verdant and alive. The rocky spires of the mountains ahead were beautiful in their own fashion, shining golden in the sunshine, but the sides were steep and the forest clung mostly to the river bank.

  On the seventh night out, they camped by the river, now merely a brook, running cold and clean over the rocks. Celagri caught a couple of rabbits for dinner while Pabl gathered wood which Chaiel chopped with his axe. The weather was clear and cold, the ground soft with a dry covering of pine 124

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  needles. Jan cleared an area for the fire and stacked the wood as Chaiel flung it his direction.

  When the fire was roaring, Celagri gutted and cooked the rabbits. The smell of burning meat permeated the camp, making Pabl and Chaiel nauseated. Still, the two obsidimen ate the rabbit reluctantly. The food they carried would have to last another week at least.

  “You see, Pabl,” Chaiel said, staring at his meat in disgust.

  “The energy-wasters would just as soon eat animal flesh every day.”

  Celagri gave him a cool stare, but said nothing.

  Jan couldn’t let it go, however. He’d been waging a verbal war with Chaiel ever since they had left Rabneth. “Are you willing to give up your helping then, Chaiel?”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Actually, yes. I hate traveling for many reasons: aching feet, uncomfortable weather, but mainly because the food tastes so bad. When I get the chance for something really tasty, I eat as much of it as possible.” He winked at Celagri.

  She smiled back at him.

  Pabl was amazed. If Chaiel hadn’t been along, Celagri and Jan would be bickering constantly. The switch made Pabl chuckle.

  “What do you find so funny?” Chaiel asked.

  “Yeah, what is so damn amusing?” from Jan.

  “You. All of you.”

  “I’m not joking about these energy-wasters. Didn’t Gvint get through to you? They don’t understand what’s important to us. And we’re taking them to the Valley of the Elders, the foundation of our race and culture.”

  Pabl said nothing, but Jan started to laugh, and after a minute Celagri joined him.

  “What?”

  Jan calmed himself. “We have no wish to see the Valley of This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ scarab@mindspring.com) Liferock 

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  the Elders,” he said. “Or anything else that might get us killed later.”

  Chaiel’s tone was deadly serious, “If you were to reveal any secrets that would injure our liferock or brotherhood, we would have to kill you.”

  “Don’t you think we know that?” Jan said. “You’ve mentioned it once or twice before.”

  “I only want to make sure that you know it.”

  “We know. Now can I expect that you’ll never mention it again?”

  “I only remind you for your own safety. I don’t want to have to kill you.”

  Celagri gave a snort, “Just try it, boulder-head.”

  Pabl interrupted, “Jan, do you have any of that taro root left?” The conversation had ceased to be amusing.

  The dwarf looked over. “What?” Then a knowing smile spread across his face. “I know what you’re trying to do,” he said.

  “No one is fooled by your obvious attempt to distract us from the conversation,” said Chaiel. “Of course, if the dwarf does have some taro root, I could probably force myself to be civil for a little while.”

  “Too bad I chewed the last of it this afternoon.”

  “You what?”

  “Just joking.” Jan produced a leather pouch from his backpack. “Here,” he said and handed it to Pabl.

  “Thank you, generous sir.” Pabl fumbled with the pouch, trying to get his large fingers into an opening that had been made for dwarfs. But he managed to r
etrieve a pinch of the dried black fibers. He placed the pinch into his mouth and bit down, enjoying the bittersweet taste.

  Pabl handed the pouch to Chaiel and leaned back against a tree trunk, glad he had diffused the tension for the moment.

  The next day they hiked away from the main path. Up This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ scarab@mindspring.com) Liferock 

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  above the tree line where the air grew thin and cold, remind-ing Pabl of home. They camped in the chill shelter provided by two huge rocks that leaned against each other. Pabl was quiet during most of the dinner preparations as he thought about the days ahead.

  What is it like to merge with the Council of Four? Will they change me as they have done to some of the others?

  Ganwetrammus had shown him images of Domorpen, but nothing of his brothers’ experiences at the Valley of the Elders.

  Those experiences were personal and shared only between each brother and the liferock.

  “Are you ready?”

  Pabl looked up into the black eyes of his brother. “I don’t know, Chaiel,” he said. “I don’t know if I could ever be truly ready.”

  Chaiel pulled his heavy brown robe tightly around his shoulders, its hood making him look like a giant-sized monk questor of Astendar. “I know that I’m not,” he said. “The Council of Four scares me. What if they don’t think you’re in line with our heritage? What if they disagree with how you ex-ercise your discipline?”

  Jan looked at them across the fire. “Just a minute, Pabl,” he said. “You are coming back, right?”

  Pabl looked up at the dwarf, bundled tightly in his patched robe. “I assume so,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My body will return after I have merged with the Council of Four,” Pabl said. “But the merging could change me. The Council of Four is the bastion of obsidiman ways, and they will show me how my way has deviated from the culture of our race. I could return a completely different person.”

  “But you will be better for it, right?”

  “Hopefully, but I won’t know until I merge with them.”

  Celagri warmed her hands by the fire. A black leather This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ scarab@mindspring.com) Liferock 

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  skull cap covered her head, tucked into the neck of her matching tunic. She looked up at Pabl. “Why isn’t Chaiel going with you?”

  Chaiel answered her. “I am not ready.”

  Celagri seemed to accept that answer, but Pabl heard fear in Chaiel’s voice. And that fear was contagious. Pabl remembered the images of the Valley of the Elders in Ohin Yeenar’s mind. Four giant swirling columns. Air, water, fire, and earth — each mixed with stone, stretching up into the clouds. Pabl was glad when sleep came and swept away his visions in a wash of black.

  They climbed higher the next day, until they were almost to the base of the sheer cliffs. Above and ahead of them, four huge rock spires stretched precariously up from the cliff edge, the rock a golden, almost yellow color. The first spire was unnatural, built by obsidimen long ago. It looked like the others, but the tiers of boulders which formed its center column stood too perfectly aligned to have happened by chance.

  The spire was a marker for Domorpen.

  Pabl led the others along the steep slope of fallen rock, searching for the entrance to the cave. They didn’t find it that day, and Pabl could tell that Jan and Celagri were beginning to tire of the search.

  The next day, he found it — a crack in the mountain, hidden among a jumble of large rocks. He squeezed through the opening, relishing the steamy warmth inside. Water dripped from the rocks inside the cave. Pabl crawled back out and yelled for the others to join him.

  They shared a meal at the entrance to the cave, a small re-past of old bread and dried fruit. They ate in silence, and Pabl felt his anxiety growing as he tried not to think about the Valley of the Elders. When he had finished his food, Pabl stood. “I am going now,” he said. “Before I lose my courage.”

  Chaiel stood and extended his palms to Pabl. “May Myn-This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ scarab@mindspring.com) Liferock 

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  bruje guide you. And may our ancestors give you wisdom.”

  “Thank you, brother.”

  Jan looked up. “Hurry back, my friend.”

  Celagri simply nodded.

  “Goodbye,” Pabl said. Then before they could respond, he entered the concealed fissure. His lungs burned with each breath as he moved into the tunnel, crawling up and down over boulders. Water dripped from the rocks around him, steam condensing on his skin and soaking his clothes. Pabl pressed on, using a crystal lantern to light the way.

  He spelunked for an hour before he came upon the lava.

  The tunnel widened slightly, its floor leveling off. Petroglyphs carved into the broad stone floor told the story of the First Brotherhood. The far wall was formed from one solid boulder of black glass, bowing out towards the center of the room in a broad arc.

  The lava dripped in tiny rivulets over its glossy black surface. When the molten stone reached the floor, it touched the elemental water which sprang up from a slender stone column in the center of the chamber. The water sputtered into steam and rose up to the ceiling, venting up through the fissures in the rock.

  In fact it was almost windy up close to black boulder, and when Pabl approached, he saw that the glassy surface was pocked and mottled, a catalog of all the obsidimen who had pressed their hands into the stone on their way through Domorpen.

  The lava burned in red rivulets in front of his face as he put his feet into the flow of water. The draft was strong here, elemental air blowing down through channels in the rock from the peaks of the mountains.

  Pabl’s breath quickened, and his skin prickled with heat. I must cast aside my doubts and just move. But what if —He squeezed his eyes closed.

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  Move, he told himself.

  He grit his teeth and placed his hands on the black rock.

  He pressed hard, feeling the stone give under his strength.

  The lava touched his fingers and burned as he added marks to the boulder’s surface.

  He spoke in loud voice, articulating in the language of his race. “Great Liferock, which houses the Spirit-That-Pervades-All, take me to my Elders. I am as yet unnamed.”

  Pabl felt a tug in his mind, then a whoosh behind him as air rushed into the space where his body had been. The room gave way to a deep flow of stone in bright rainbow colors around him; he floated in it, his body swept away by the gush-ing current of liquid rock.

  He did not know how long the river of stone carried him in its flow. But suddenly it was gone, and he lay on his back, staring straight up into a blue-black sky studded with stars he did not know. He was far from the Tylon mountains, far from his friends. Far from home.

  A giant cylinder blacked out the sky on his left, and from it came a grinding noise, like a sandstorm only a thousand times louder. He pressed his hands to his head to dampen the sound.

  Pabl stood then, knowing he had made it to the Valley of the Elders.

  This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ scarab@mindspring.com)  Chapter Seventeen 

  Gvint Od was running out of options. Every time he merged, he discovered that Ganwetrammus suffered more and more. The air elementals had failed to find Reid Quo, and his attempts to deter the mining team had had only a temporary effect.

  With most of brotherhood still healing in the aftermath of the attack on the mining site, Gvint had worked magic with the help of Ganwetrammus and Gavi Arndt. They had created a spell to fill the mining tunnel with earth in an attempt to stop the Nuinouri.

  The d
warfs in the tunnel had withdrawn in shock as earth and rock had magically appeared around them. The tunnel walls closed in, the wound healing itself. But when the spell’s power faded, leaving Gvint and Gavi exhausted, the dwarfs returned to continue their excavation.

  It slowed them down for a day or two, but that was all.

  Soon the hideous Nuinouri continued their relentless diges-tion of the rock. Gvint had few options left; it was time to discuss the Ritual of Protection with Jibn Sra.

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  of the tepuis, in a small house made of crudely cut stone and mortar. Jibn Sra was the next oldest, in line to become Elder after Reid Quo. He had also followed the discipline of illusory magic in the past, and he had gained much power and an art-istry with magic that few in Barsaive could equal.

  Jibn Sra understood magic, and because of that, Gvint held a faint hope that the exiled brother could learn the Ritual of Protection from Ganwetrammus. The Ritual required two Elders, two participants. Perhaps Jibn could substitute for Reid.

  Gvint went to see him on a cold, wet morning, ten days after the failed attack. Gray clouds spewed icy drizzle onto the rock, making the trails through the Dance of Stones slick under Gvint’s booted feet. He huddled into his heavy cloak and walked towards Jibn’s front entrance.

  I must convince him to merge with Ganwetrammus, thought Gvint. He stepped up to the door and knocked.

  Jibn answered wearing a loose tunic of bright blue cotton.

  He stood several inches shorter than Gvint, with a rounded forehead and reddish sandstone eyes. His skin was dark, nearly black in color with a web of fine white lines tracing the peaks and valleys of the many craggy wrinkles in his old skin.

  A tattoo of inlaid emeralds traveled up his forearms and disappeared under his sleeves. The tattooing had been popular among the brotherhood who had spent time with the trolls of the Twilight Peaks before the Scourge.

  “I bring riflev water,” Gvint said. “And a fire basket.”