Into the Dark

by M J W Harrington

  Dark Devices Part one: Into the Dark

  M.J.W. Harrington

  Copyright © 2019 - Matthew Harrington, All Rights Reserved

  For her, because this would still be lost in my Google Drive otherwise.

  Chapter 1

  Can I tell you a secret? I hate the dark. Always have. One wrong step, and that’s that - you’re done. No warning, no opportunity to avert whatever horrible thing is about to happen to you, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you know, put one foot wrong in the pitch black and that’s the end of your story. Gnawing your own leg off down a shadowy ravine, slowly digesting in the belly of some big ugly, or just starving to death because you’ve taken a wrong turn and can’t find the way out. You’re finished.

  This is why it may come as some surprise to learn that I basically just drop down dark holes for a living. It certainly came as a surprise to me, but when you’ve got the choice of becoming a delver and exploring creepy ancient ruins to bring back lost treasures, or getting beaten to death by your esteemed (and rather large) colleagues… it gives you a modicum of perspective.

  So that’s me, Dav the Delver, and that’s why I found myself a few kilometres underground with a small flickering device in my hand that barely gave me enough light to see the nose on my face, the ground in front of my feet, and not much else. I’d take it though, the first few times they sent me down to a ruin like the one we suspected lay a few miles down they didn’t want to waste even a cheap device on ensuring my survival. I’d rather not think about that experience in general; as previously mentioned, I hate the dark. Thus far though my trip had been blessedly uneventful. A few mushrooms, some near-misses with cracks in the floor beneath my feet, but otherwise just a whole lot of walking and a decided lack of anything with large teeth eating me. That made it a pretty good day by my reckoning.

  I was drawn from my ill-timed reverie by a squishing sensation under my left boot. Squishing sensations, while not quite so bad as the dark, are seldom welcomed outside of the context of barmaids. In this case, it meant I’d stepped in something. I bent down to bring my light closer and had my blossoming suspicions bloom into a couple of full blown trouser-shitting realisations. Realisation the first - I’d just stepped into the remains of what I like to affectionately call a squealer. Mostly harmless underground fungivores, this realisation wasn’t the one I was most concerned with, beyond the smell and disgusting effect it had on my boot.

  Realisation the second, however, was a doozy - These were the remains of squealer. Which meant something decidedly less friendly had been through recently. Options here were less than optimal, there aren’t many predators that roam the deep dark and the ones that do aren’t my favourite options to encounter alone in the dark with little more protection than the chipped knife I wore at my hip. Like I say, my compatriots waiting above weren’t exactly that invested in my safety. I didn’t bother dousing my light, anything that lives that deep is almost certainly blind, and if it was already stalking me, being in the pitch black wouldn’t be of any help. All I could really do was cautiously carry on and pray that the squealer wasn’t just an appetiser for whatever horrible beast was out there in the darkness.

  Treading more carefully to avoid any further squishing incidents, I threaded my way through the tunnels, the threat of becoming the main course and the darkness itself pushing down on me like a weight. Here and there I could see traces of what I was looking for. Stones too flat to be natural, and shadows cast by the ridges of ancient carvings. The further I pushed, the more civilised the stone beneath my feet became, from the rough stone of natural tunnels into what could conceivably be cobblestone. I stepped a bit more lively, remembering stories I’d heard about the more dangerous predators avoiding the ruins. Some posited after perhaps one too many drinks that the predators were created by the same people who once inhabited the underground cities as guard dogs and beasts of war. Others pointed to the various beasties roaming the surface and (I think quite rightly) pointed out that there's no reason there wouldn't be monsters underground as well. Regardless, it couldn’t hurt to be careful, and the faint rumbling I could swear I heard in the darkness behind me confirmed that moving a bit more rapidly was definitely in my best interests.

  I dashed forwards, my breath coming more rapidly now, recklessly trusting in my instincts to try and recover from any trips and falls. The rumbling I thought I’d heard grew louder and deeper, reverberating from the walls. I increased the pace again, but the sound continued to grow.

  I chanced a look back towards it and immediately regretted my decision, seeing nothing but darkness and losing my balance. My foot struck something in the dark and my light went flying from my hand ahead of me, leaving me on the ground with agony shooting up my right leg. I cursed and tried to scrabble to my feet, but immediately fell once more. I felt more than saw the huge dark shape stalking me in the darkness at the edge of my vision, deep rumbling echoing out from its broad torso, padding towards me on heavy paws the size of my chest. I’d heard of these before, word in the tavern named them Deep Stalkers, but I’d never had the misfortune of meeting one in the flesh. The stories I’d heard pegged them as highly territorial eyeless predators that used that skull-rattling sound to somehow navigate and stalk their prey.

  I clawed my way backwards, keeping my vision locked on the darkness where I thought the Deep Stalker lurked, praying that the beast wouldn’t strike just yet, something primal in me screaming to get to my light despite the fact that it probably couldn’t care less about it. With a sudden intense rumble it leapt, as if to confirm my pessimism.

  Time seemed to slow, all I could see was a huge set of teeth as something not dissimilar to a giant, eyeless cat came thundering out of the darkness towards me. I screamed and cowered away, finally grabbing my little lightsource from the ground I'd crawled to and pulling it close like a child with a security blanket. I waited for the end to come.

  And I waited.

  Huh.

  Chapter 2

  I opened my eyes to see the stalker’s terrible jaws frozen about a hand’s width from my face, its breath hot and absolutely disgusting. I scrambled backwards to my feet, putting as little weight on my injured leg as possible. The stalker still didn’t move, but I waited for a few seconds, ready to at least attempt to dodge should it resume its attack. Suddenly I realised the device in my hand was no longer lit, so I pocketed it, but I could see the corridor I was in clearly. I let out an oath and surveyed my surroundings.

  The room was bathed in a soft green glow, not unlike the streetlights of the city I’d left a few days previously, Qalea, but I couldn’t see any lamp posts that would be generating it. The walls were carved with intricate scenes, depicting short yet decidedly inhuman-looking figures in surprisingly day-to-day scenes, going to market, playing with children, that sort of thing. These carvings extended across the ceiling, except instead of the strange people, it was instead carved with what can only be described as the night sky, or at least, someone’s idea of it. For one thing there were far too many moons, but it was still a beautiful sight.

  My enjoyment of the carvings was somewhat dampened by the reality of the huge deep stalker in front of me, seemingly frozen in its attempt at eating my face. Emboldened by its lack of motion, I moved up closer but made sure to give the massive claws and teeth a wide berth. It stood about three metres long and half again as wide, with four huge paws and a short tail. Its fur gleamed in the green light, but was otherwise pitch black. If you ignored the head it could almost be considered majestic, but without any eyes or ears that I could see, it looked like a grotesque parody of a cat, if a cat were all jaws and not much else. Its chest swelled and fell with breath, but otherwise there was no motion or sound coming from the beast, not even th
e deep rumbling that previously punctuated its every move.

  Not one to let an opportunity slip by, I pulled out my old chipped dagger from my belt and started looking for somewhere worth stabbing. After a moment, I found a major vein and took a deep breath to steady my hand. With a quick motion I went to plunge it deep into the creature, but as my blade was about to impact, I found myself completely unable to move. In a panic I went to thrash around, but my body didn’t move at all. I screamed inside my own mind as I felt my consciousness detach itself from my body.

  I found myself looking down at myself. It’s not an experience I’d recommend to anyone. There was a moment of disorientation as I took in the sight of my own messy brown hair and scraggly beard framing a dirty face. If it wasn’t for my relatively well-kept clothing and heavy boots, I would’ve looked less like an intrepid explorer than a common thief or beggar. Somewhat thankfully though, I didn’t have time to dwell on my personal grooming issues, as suddenly all of my senses were filled by a loud voice speaking an entirely unintelligible language. As a point of interest, I’m not exaggerating when I say all of my senses, have you ever been yelled at by someone through your sense of smell? Again, would not recommend. I rapidly found myself wishing I could just leave, to be anywhere but here, and with a jolt I found myself back in my body. Curious, I went once again to stab the stalker and once again with a nauseating jolt I resumed my out of body experience, with the voice repeating what somehow managed to taste like a warning.

  “Hello?” I tried to call out despite not having a mouth or lungs, and to my surprise I was answered by the sensation of something rifling through my mind.

  “RECALIBRATING. LANGUAGE PARTIAL.” boomed the same voice in my head, before continuing, “AGGRESSIVE ACTION NOT TOLERATED. DISMISS AGGRESSION IMMEDIATELY OR REMAIN STASIS”. This… was new. I’d been in a few ruins before, but never one that popped my mind out of my skull for a chat.

  “Hello?” I tried again.

  “AGGRESSIVE ACTION NOT TOLERATED. DISMISS AGGRESSION IMMEDIATELY OR REMAIN STASIS” replied the voice, so I tried a different tactic.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m lost, could you possibly tell me where I am?”

  “AGGRESSIVE ACTION NOT TOLERATED. DISMISS AGGRESSION IMMEDIATELY OR REMAIN STASIS” replied the voice. I was beginning to see a pattern emerging, but so long as it stopped a giant eating machine from ripping my insides out, I was all for it, so I decided to play along.

  “Alright friend, alright, I promise not to stab the cat. Can you let me go now please?” I asked, as politely as I could muster. Today was already a write-off without pissing off some ancient mystical entity with a penchant for paralysis and a fondness for repetition.

  With that, I found myself once again in possession of my faculties. I checked myself over just to make sure, put away my knife and backed slowly away from the deep stalker, in case it decided at that moment to find its inner peace and break free. I suspected it still very much wanted to eat me, and wasn’t likely to give up any time soon given the faint outline of ribs I could make out beneath the fur, but better not to take any chances. I somehow managed to feel pity for the beast, despite its clearly still-present desire for lunching on Dav-meat Eventually I stopped backing away and with an extreme effort of will turned my back on the stalker to take a better look around.

  I’d managed to wander into some kind of plaza, with pile of rubble that could once have been a fountain sitting in the middle. Around it were smaller piles of rubble that could conceivably have been benches at one time or another. Further around the outside sat some ruined shops and homes, all made from the same featureless white stone as the rest. Above, illuminated by that eerie green light, the ceiling was nothing like the tunnel I had just emerged from, and it was about what you’d expect from a natural cavern; stalactites hanging as far as I could see, casting deep pockets of shadow. I tried desperately not to think about what could be lurking in those shadows, to little avail.

  Whatever had ousted the inhabitants of this cavern so long ago had obviously done a number on the place and the damage wasn’t limited to the fountain and its benches. Many of the buildings had collapsed in on themselves, and while that normally meant they held something interesting inside that nobody else had picked clean, I wasn’t exactly in shape to start excavating the rubble, as I was keenly reminded when I absentmindedly put some pressure on my bad leg, sending a wave of nausea through me. I swore profusely and hobbled my way over to one of the more intact buildings. Hurt though I was, I didn’t really feel like heading back out into the darkness just yet, especially not empty-handed, and certainly not with a pissed-off Deep Stalker waiting frozen, so there was no real choice but to continue.

  Inside the building sat a simple lobby, the contents long rotted away or removed, if there were any to begin with. A lot of what I’d seen previously suggested that the people that lived in these buildings weren’t huge on possessions to begin with, and the years had not been kind to those they had. That was why delvers like me seldom worked in large crews on the outset, mostly just sending a single person to quickly reconnoitre a ruin before devoting any real resources to it. That’s what my employer’s plan was anyway. If I never came back she’d probably find some other poor sap who owed her too much money to try again. At least I’d leave them a handsome corpse to find when they arrived later. I made my way across the open floor towards a stone spiral staircase and cautiously began to climb.

  The stairs were crumbling and as ancient as everything else in that place, but they were at least relatively stable. It was slow going with my injured leg, but I gritted my teeth and kept climbing to the top floor, about three stories up. I didn’t bother searching the other floors. When I first started out I had a tendency to sweep every inch of the places I came across, but after a couple of delves it became clear that was a bit of a massive waste of time. I was better off finding a vantage point and looking for somewhere important. While I could probably easily find assorted small devices like my little light stick if I looked carefully enough, what my employer responded best to was a single big ticket item of value, like one of those devices that can transport objects short distances, or even weapons capable of melting through steel and leather in an instant. With something like that I’d be assured a big cut to pay off my seemingly insurmountable debt and they could always send a crew back later to sweep the rest once its value as a site had been proven.

  Eventually I made it to the top. Like others of its kind that I’d encountered previously, the building opened out onto a flat open rooftop. Stepping (well, limping) out onto the rooftop I turned to see what I could see, and my jaw damn near fell all the way back down the stairs. From my vantage I could see what could only be described as a city stretching off into the massive cavern. The building I was atop sat on a plateau, with slopes leading down around the outside of the outside of the chamber. The center of the cavern was filled with buildings in various states of collapse, and I was shocked by the scale of the whole thing. The entire city glowed in that same pale green ligh with no discernable source, almost as if it emanated from the buildings themselves.

  As I looked more closely, I saw there were major roads crisscrossing the city like the spokes of a wheel, converging on a large structure in the middle, a tower which loomed over the city, hundreds of metres taller than its neighbours. If I squinted and rearranged the rubble in my mind, it was shaped somewhat like a star, and that spire which was currently blocking the nearby street, probably once adorned the top. Regardless of its ruinous state, if my big seller was anywhere, I would’ve bet almost anything that’d be where I’d find it. At that point, however, I realised that travelling to that building was hours of walking at best, and my leg was already screaming at me after my flight from the stalker and the climb up to my vantage point. With a groan I lowered myself down to sit on the floor and put my back to the wall. It was a dilemma. I could probably sort through the nearby buildings and find a few trinkets worth bringing back, then hobble my way ba
ck to the tunnel to the surface, but that in itself was a daunting task. Similarly the walk to the center of the city, where I was sure I’d find the score of a lifetime, seemed somehwat of an impossibility. Then again, most would say that surviving down in the dark was impossible already, so in for a penny...

  I reached down and pulled back the tattered edge of my trousers to reveal my leg, battered and bruised. Probing tentatively with my hands I examined myself, hissing at the pain it caused. It didn’t seem like anything was broken, probably just a knock and a sprain, so I decided to take a break and just hope that I walked it on my way to the centre. It just wasn’t in me to see something so vast and full of promise then turn around and walk away. Nobody would believe I found a ruin of such scale without some kind of proof, you just didn’t get cities like this. Small outposts and the occasional town, sure, but cities? A story like this without evidence got you laughed out of bars and tossed aside into the gutter. It happened all the time, the minds of delvers minds snapping in the darkness and solitude, coming back with stories too improbable to lend credence to, or more commonly just not coming back. I chuckled to myself at the thought; maybe I’d snapped already and I was actually just sitting in a cave somewhere, marvelling at a particularly fascinating piece of moss and dreaming of the riches it promised. Admittedly sitting laughing to yourself isn’t the best way to prove your sanity to yourself, so I distracted myself from my probably-crumbling mental state by taking a break to drink some of my dwindling supply of water and eat some completely unappetising jerky from one of my many pockets.

  As I sat and ate, the silence of the cavern was broken by an echoing rumble. My first thought was that the deep stalker had found its way free finally and decided to take its revenge, but the sound was coming from the wrong direction and was punctuated by what could only be people shouting. I sat up and peered over the lip of the rooftop courtyard and saw a cloud of dust rising over a building way off to my left, down in the city proper. I could just about make out small figures moving around the nearby street, presumably the source of the shouting. I cursed softly to myself, far more aware of how sound carried in this place than before. Of course someone else would be here first, it was shocking enough that my employer never found out about something of this scale before now, even if the information was sketchy and we were miles from civilisation. No doubt they’d be heading to the same place I was, and it looked like a team of people, but they were making the rookie error, searching a large collapsed building thoroughly, even if it meant spending longer on excavating fallen walls and ceilings. It’s not a bad way to find your everyday devices, your lights and firestarters, but the shiny stuff? That’s reserved for central vaults.