by C J Timms
A rough-hewn man with a tangled beard waited for them. His weathered skin framed a smirk with too few teeth. He had hard-earned muscle on his arms but a gut swollen from cheap beer, a man who life had torn from the bedrock and never bothered to refine the ore.
Ore had its uses though.
‘Gaul’ Giltynan nodded and gestured to the four Lighthouse members. ‘Trouble makers.’
Gaul scratched his arse, ‘back in one piece, or just back?’
‘Just back,’ Giltynan said, his lips curling up in a wide grin. Then Giltynan turned back to the shuttle, joining the broken mob of shift workers clocking out. They all gave him space.
Gaul advanced on them, bringing the smell of tobacco, sweat and singed hair. Close up something had burnt Gauls beard recently. Gaul bent down at the hips to look at Yip. ‘You, runt, you go with the exploratory team. You look like you’d be good at squeezing into tight spaces.’ Gaul pointed towards a team of stringy, pale-skinned miners.
Gaul poked Titus in the arm and grabbed his biceps, he snorted at Gale’s smaller frame and cast a slow eye over Swan. Gaul leaned in and sniffed her, chewing tobacco as he went.
‘You three. Hauling crew.’
Gale cursed inwardly. He would be the weak link in the chain, Swan and Titus were both ridiculously strong. Swan low fived Titus,
Gaul snorted. ‘Aint as good as you think, Loco girl. Lots of raw Salt here, wreaks havoc with magic, Locomotyr magic ain't worth piss here. Here we use sweat and muscle.’
Gaul pushed them towards a platform that led deeper into the mine. They descended into the mine, passing layers of battered humanity. A Scaled lay collapsed by an ore pile and a foreman laid into him with a boot. No one moved to help. The platform kept descending.
Gaul shoved them off the platform near the bottom where torches flickered in the near darkness. They stepped out into shallow water, calf-high. Bellows pumped away, worked by teams of workers, draining the low tunnels.
They were lashed to a harness with three others, attached to a massive cube of Salt ore. Titus alongside Gale, Swan on the other side. The block was the height, width and length of Gale.
Gaul spat a lump of black liquid chewing tobacco to the side. ‘You haul fifty blocks up the ramps by the end of the day. If not, you come back tomorrow.’
Gale cracked his neck, and then the supervisor cracked a whip. Wait a whip? What was this ancient Egypt? This was detention for crying out loud. The whip cracked again, a lash of pain ran down Gale’s arm. Frak that hurt.
They hauled on their harness. Titus strained, and Swan heaved. The block ground against the pit floor.
‘Climb fast, water not safe,’ muttered one of the other workers, a Scaled. It was the most Gale had heard from a Scaled in a while, driven by survival. Minnow sized shapes flitted in the knee-high water around them. ‘
With slow, jerking motions, they ground the stone upwards. The terrain was slippery underfoot, even when they slogged above the waterline. The harness bit into Gale’s shoulder and hips, his muscles screamed at him, but he swore he would not be the weak link in the chain. He would not let his team down. Layer by layer they hauled the salt upwards, straining for the glow of the sun.
After what felt like hours, they reached the top and were de-coupled from the harness. Gale rolled out his shoulders. He could taste the heavy tang of salt on the air. His chest breathed deep, but he found no tightness. Swan and Titus both slumped to the floor as the cube was unhooked. He raised an eyebrow at the two of them. He was the charm, and they were the muscle or at least meant to be. The Scaled chained to their block looked similarly wrecked.
Gaul walked over and chewed his tobacco, and he loomed over Gale. A slow frown, like the shifting of a faultline, broke down his forehead. He spat his chewing tobacco to the side and gestured down. ‘Forty-nine bottles of beer on the wall, forty-nine bottles of beer.’
Gale helped the others up. Forty-nine to go. What would Church say? Character building, right?
They descended to the pit again, and if anything, Gale felt energised. His chest had never felt so clear. Power thrummed in his legs, pushing the block up the slope, step after step. Halfway up the hill, Titus slipped, his thongs ripped out from under him.
One of the guards clubbed Titus. ‘Up. You can stop when you’re dead’.
Slowly Titus came to his feet. ‘But…my…performance pluggers.’ He rubbed his feet, then his biceps, the Canuteian tattoos dull. Inch by inch, they ground the second block to the top. Swan and Titus collapsed again.
Gaul looked at Gale his brow creasing further, the faultline building pressure, threatening to snap. ‘Bigger block. Forty-eight bottles of beer on the wall…’
At the bottom they found a block nearly double the size waiting for them.
‘Mother frakker.’ Said Swan.
‘Swear…jar.’ Said Titus, then he had a sneaky spew.
Gale grabbed the handles again. He could taste the Salt on the air and felt energy bounding through his body. Stronger down here than up high. What was going on? Was the Salt enhancing him, just from trace fumes? Was his Deep magic finally giving him an edge?
‘Swan, Titus, let me take the weight.’ He whispered.
Swan and Titus relaxed their grips and Gale pushed upwards. The block moved. The other three workers caught on and lessened their push, and it still kept moving.
‘Alright its just a big frakking battle sled.’ Gale said.
He ground the block upwards. He noticed a shift in his strength as he climbed. He was not as strong at the top but still way stronger than expected. His mind free to wander, he wondered how this jagged spike of Salt had emerged here. Where did it come from? Wasn’t it from the Deep? Was there a reality fracture somewhere down below them?
Gale hauled the block to the top of the pit again and rolled out his shoulders, did some squats to work out the kinks. Gaul stared at them, his face going beet red.
Gale winked and said, ‘forty-seven bottles of beer on the wall.’
Gaul walked right up to Gale and sniffed him. ‘Deepborn. If you can’t hold your tongue, you’ll learn to hold your breath.’ Gaul stepped away and held his hands up. ‘Tunnel hunt!’ Gaul roared.
The cavern echoed him back. ‘Hunt…Hunt….Hunt.’ The miners stomped their feet, the cry taken up on every level. Men dropped their ropes and began grabbing spears.
‘Hunt?’ Gale asked. ‘Hunt what?’
Gaul turned back to him and leaned in until the smell of smoke and sweat filled Gale’s nostrils. Gaul’s beady eyes stared into his.
‘Deep-breath Beth.’
Miners dragged him towards a pit on the lower floors, the water swirling below him, active currents from the ocean leaking through. Dark shapes darted amongst the lower tunnels of the mine.
The miners carried jagged harpoons and rusted shields. Most of them were missing body parts. A missing finger here, a hand there, a wooden leg on another.
‘Who is Deep-breath Beth?’ Gale asked. Most of the miners turned away, sharpening harpoons, strapping armour.
One man shoved a knife into his hands. ‘Here, not that it’ll do you much good.’ It was the same man who’d talked back to Giltynan on the way over from Ionhome. He had lank grey hair, a pockmarked face and his right ear was just a nub of scar tissue.
‘Deep-breath Beth, meanest bitch there is in these tunnels. Most fathomless have to be small to get in right? Only tiny cracks to the ocean otherwise we’d be swamped by em. Old Beth though, she grew fat on the others, grew to be the biggest fathomless I’ve seen in my days. At least she keeps the others in check.
Because she’s always hungry.
The old miner touched the spot where his right ear should have been. ‘Most of us here have lost a body part to Beth. I can still hear her coming though. See she ate one of the students that got sent here a few years back. Swallowed em whole, including their pager.’
Gale frowned, they were probably just hazing him.
The old miner put his h
and out. ‘They call me Squall.’
‘Why, Squall?’
Squall grinned lopsidedly. ‘Coz there ain’t no good reason to stare into the face of a squall.’
Gale took his hand and found a small bag clasped in his palm.
‘Here, boy, take this Salt. It’ll make you stronger, put hairs on your chest. All you have to do is consume just a bit. Might even survive this. Then again you might end up like Reg over there.’ Squall nodded to a man with scale that covered half his body. Reg snorted some salt, and his pupils dilated.
‘Salt speeds up burnout, and this is the refined stuff. Not like the raw stuff you’ve been hauling. The raw stuff makes magic chaotic, hard to use, can even suppress it sometimes. The refined product makes you strong.’
Gale shoved the Salt back. ‘I don’t need it. I can hunt.’
‘Don’t be a fool. I’m trying to help you out here.’
Gale shook his head. He felt…invigorated. The raw Salt in the air filled his lungs with strength. He glanced over at the Scaled around him. ‘I can hunt.’
Squall shook his head, ‘Ah, see…about that. You ain't the hunter. You’re the bait.’
Four of the miners grabbed Gale and dragged him towards a giant hook, twice as big as Gale. They brought out rope to bind him to it.
Squall shook his head and turned away. Gale saw something flash under Squall’s shirt as he turned. White coral dog tags. Like the ones on the fracturesmith who’d sent him here. The one who’d known his father.
‘Hey, Squall…Squall.’ Gale yelled.
The miners hauled Gale out to a platform and tied him to the massive hook by his waist. The rest of the miners gathered on platforms over the water, positioned around the hook with harpoons and shields ready.
Gale strained against the ropes. This was frakked, they couldn’t sentence him to death. He was a student at a university, not a condemned criminal. This was detention. He was supposed to pay a fine or lose some marks. Not his life.
They shoved the hook off the platform. The hook plunged towards the water with Gale attached. Gale breathed in.
He hit the icy water, struggling against his bonds. He held his breath, waiting. His head jerked side to side, looking for fathomless. Looking for Deep-breath Beth
The chain jerked, and they brought him back up, to dangle just above the waterline.
‘Again,’ Gaul said.
Gale breathed in deep. They plunged him into the water, and Gale pulled at his bonds. He took the knife Squall had given him and hacked at the ropes. They began to give, inch by inch.
A dark shape flitted past, a small fathomless, no bigger than Gale's arm. Gale brought the knife up and warded off the creature. The hook jerked, he broke back above the waterline. Gale, kept the ropes he’d cut bundled close to him. Squall looked to Gaul.
Gaul nodded. ‘She’ll have his scent.’
Gale’s tattoo on his shoulder started to itch like mad. He tried to scratch it, but his bonds held him back.
Gaul held up a large black box with an antenna. He clicked a button, and a pager went off somewhere in the water. The tinny rattling tune that constantly woke Gale from his sleep. The sound of his nightmares echoed throughout the cavern.
Gale swung on the hook about a metre above the waterline. The miners readied spears, and Gale hacked at the last of his bonds. A fathomless swam into view. It was a mother-frakking big one. The size of a school bus, with white lines tracking over its hide, the beast seemed to have Salt growing into its shell. Beth’s eyes fixed on him, and her jaws opened wide.
Gale cut the last rope and summoned his harpoon. He leapt from the hook and jammed the weapon into Beth’s mouth as she bit down. Blood flowed, and Beth threw her head around in pain. Beth swung her muzzle and Gale tumbled underwater to crash into a metal pylon. His breath knocked out of him he breathed in seawater.
He found it quite pleasant.
Well damn, he could breathe underwater. Deep magic for the win.
Beth shook loose the harpoon with a stream of blood. Then Beth turned back to Gale, now in the water with no way up. Her reptilian eyes narrowed. Overhead the miners launched harpoons. They deflected off Beth’s thick hide.
‘Dredge the depths!’ Squall yelled and plunged into the water. He slashed at the beast with two large daggers. Squall ripped a gash in Beth’s hide, even as Beth opened up the crappy armour on Squall’s chest. The miner was hauled back upwards on a chain by a team of miners.
Deep-breath Beth circled back to him in the water. Gale re-summoned his harpoon and launched himself forwards, Deep Script propelling him. The Script was hungry for the fight. Beth opened her mouth wide, and Gale grabbed it with his outstretched arms. Beth’s hydraulic strength jaw couldn’t close. Her cold eyes narrowed, then she dragged him down into the tunnels.
Deeper into the dark they raced, Gale’s arms burning. Beth wrenching her head from side to side. Gale summoned hydrolenses to his eyes, glimpsing passages and walled off mining shafts.
They broke into a vast underwater cavern. A field of bleached white dead coral was scattered with rising obelisks. The largest central obelisk was nearly a hundred metres tall. Each obelisk had a body crucified atop it. Long dead figures in tattered grey robes like horrific scarecrows, still protecting their crop.
Dead coral had somehow been grown into shape to make the obelisks. The growths had made strange rune-like shapes of coral on the central obelisk. The walls of the cavern had been carved out to make balconies, for spectators?
Beth’s claw smashed him down into the coral graveyard. Gale crashed into the dead coral, and it shredded his back and arms. Blood ran off him into the water. Where his blood fell, the dead coral exploded in vibrant blue. A rich cerulean carpet coruscated out from him. The coral strained towards him, hungry. Gale kicked away, breaking the brittle coral.
Deep-breath Beth rushed down from above, aiming to crush him into the coral field. Gale was too slow, the coral constraining him, he couldn’t dodge. He was done.
Ash, in a bikini, kicked Beth in the head.
She’d never looked so good.
Beth was sent tumbling across the cavern to slam into the cavern wall.
Ash’s voice whispered in his head. Gale grinned and ripped himself from the coral. Together they shot forwards.
Ash flowed through the water, wings of current stretched from her back. A funnel formed around her legs, corkscrewing behind her. Together they battered Deep-breath Beth. Back and forth, Gale stronger than he’d ever been.
Ash opened her mouth, and a roar burst through the water, a cone-shaped scream that struck Beth and stunned her. Beth swayed in the water, eyes rolling back in her head.
They both grabbed one of Beth’s legs and hauled the beast downward. They threw Beth onto the spiked obelisk at the centre of the temple. The spire lanced through Beth’s torso, and dark blue blood spilled out over the coral. The coral grew forth once more, erupting from the obelisk and the field below. It wrapped over Beth’s body like a spiky cocoon. Beth recovered enough movement to struggle against the coral.
In her death throes, Beth’s tail whipped out and cracked into Gale’s chest. He was battered away into a wall. The wall cracked, and the water exploded into a mining shaft. Gale shot off into the dark.
Gale tumbled down a passage in a tide of water. He burst into a cavern that was free of water, a pocket of air. He tumbled down to a darkened floor and fell on his face.
‘Ow.’ He gasped out.
In the dark, he summoned his harpoon and pushed himself to stand. His hydrolens still intact he could at least see some detail. No sign of Ash though. His communicator was back at the Lighthouse, frak.
Ash had come to his rescue, and now she had to fight that beast herself. Who was he kidding, he’d seen Ash fight, Beth was the one in trouble.
Gale explored the cavern and found a couple of shafts leading upwards. Slowly he walked up, having no compass to guide him. Eventually, Gale caught sight
of a crate, a blessed human-made crate. He emerged into a room full of boxes and equipment. He cracked one of the boxes open. A white powder filled the box. The substance felt different to Salt though.
‘I trust the latest shipment is on time.’ Came a rasping voice.
Gale ducked down behind the crates. He peeked through a gap and saw Gaul speaking with a tall figure wearing armour. He couldn’t make out anything more in the dim light.
‘What, don’t you trust me?’ Gaul said.
‘Why Gaul, I trust you like you’re my own blood,’ said the figure. ‘It’s the Swan’s I’m keeping an eye on.’
‘The Swan’s will deliver, they want their gold after all.’ Gaul said. ‘It’ll be done and shipped out with the regular Salt tonight.’
‘Good, this stuffs hard to come by. Had to ship it in all the way from Volkstorm.’
Gale’s eyes narrowed, what were they transporting? It looked similar to Salt. He leaned forward to hear more, and a shortnail dropped from his belt.
Clang.
The two snapped their heads in his direction.
‘What was that?’ Gaul said.
The second figure strode in Gale’s direction, boots echoing off the cave floor with every step. Gale slunk back into the shadows, tamping down his Script.
A knight emerged from the darkness, clad in red plate like the shell of a great sea beast. The armour overlapped in clacking segments. The colour of the armour shifted, like blood stirred in the water by the tide. The helmet had a long angular metallic fin stretching backwards. He recognised the figure from the posters scattered around Ionhome, from the sketches in the paper.
The Blughada, the Blood Knight.
This was the person attacking people in Ionhome and leaving them in comas that magic couldn’t heal. This was the nightmare that the police were hunting, the legend of the Deep.
He could pay rent for the year if he caught this bastard.
The figures armour was androgenous, showing none of their features. Gale got a rough feel for the height, but the helmet made it difficult to calculate. He’d need more information to identify them.
Breathing deep in the salt air, he felt more athletic than he ever had. He’d fought Deep-breath Beth, he could defeat this thing, and he’d get to take down Gaul. Frakking traitor. Gale relaxed his eyes and sensed the Vibe.