Into the Dark

by M J W Harrington

  From what I could work out the concept of ownership didn’t really exist for whoever made these ruins, they kept the best devices stored centrally and the cheap stuff was distributed from smaller localised centers, like the ones my friends down the bottom were making a mess uncovering. If I moved fast, I could beat them to the centre without them even realising I was there. I heaved myself to my feet, somewhat unsteadily. The break had done my leg a world of good, and provided I didn’t have to move too quickly, I could at least get back down the stairs without too much trouble.

  I made my way back ‘outside’ and then down the wide slope leading from this entrance area towards the city proper. It arced gracefully around, following the cavern wall. Periodically, staircases broke away from the main slope, like tributaries of a huge stone river, connecting to other walkways, buildings or even heading all the way down to the ground level. I stuck with the master slope for the time being, for one the slope seemed to connect to the primary thoroughfare, and I had the feeling if I went down the wrong stairway I’d probably spend hours walking around in circles. Peering over the side as I walked for an hour or so, I could see a warren of streets and alleyways, all cobbled with the otherwise featureless smooth grey stone. I wondered if the people who once lived here ever grew tired of seeing the same material everywhere, before being distracted by the sudden appearance of a pattern in what once seemed random. While there appeared to be no conventional logic behind their arrangement, I could now see clear points where the layout of certain streets was roughly repeated. Three streets in parallel, with one bisecting, then a box with criss crossing streets forming a strange pattern, then two streets in parallel. After that it shifted to another pattern, but if I peered further out, I could see the same three streets in parallel with their connecting street.

  Bizarre city-planning aside, I took the decision to get off the main slope and try to head down to cut down on walking. The great slope around the outside of the city kept going with no end in sight, and although it was an easy walk, I was willing to take a gamble on my newfound understanding of the way this place was built. The next walkway I came across I took it, still staying above street-level to keep a good perspective of where I was, but steadily descending, passing through small connecting chambers at the tops of the buildings as I walked. The walkways were as fascinating as the streets, casting very little shadow despite the green light suffusing the area, graceful yet sturdy, despite the disrepair of the city. There was the occasional broken connection that required me to divert slightly from my chosen route, but overall I made good time. As I walked, I periodically heard a crash or shout that kept me aware of where the rookie crew was working. I tried to stay close enough that I didn’t lose track of them, but not so close that they’d see me. Some delvers can get a bit territorial, especially if they feel they’ve got the advantage of numbers, and I didn’t feel like finding out if the ‘don’t-stab-the-cat-please’ field extended across the city or just covered the entrance.

  After about another hour of walking, listening and relative boredom (as much as it’s possible to get bored in the ruins of a strange glowing city), my path was interrupted by an abrupt change in the pattern, as I hit a wide open square. Presumably some kind of market or gathering place, I spotted the wreckage of one of the larger repository buildings off to one side that confirmed this was a place of significance to the local community. As I looked for a way down, I heard a noise nearby. I cursed quietly and concealed myself behind a half-wrecked wall as a wagon of all things rolled around the corner, pulled by a beleaguered looking donkey. The wagon contained a few sacks that no doubt contained all manner of cheap artifacts. A good haul to be sure, but I doubted they had anything too worthwhile.

  The problem with collecting a large amount of the small stuff is the local market gets a bit saturated, and you have to have an operation capable of exporting elsewhere, which is a risk in itself with the local governments trying to impose tariffs and limitations on everything, plus it delays your payday. Unconcerned or unaware of this, however, a group of about twenty people followed the wagon, chatting and laughing. They clearly and quite correctly thought that finding and clearing out a city of this scale would set them up for a long time, and there was seldom any sort of risk involved once you actually got into the ruins. Or so we all believed at the time. The tunnels down to get this far were narrow and treacherous, and I could only assume they had another, easier way in than myself because there’s no way in the hells a delicious looking donkey like that would ever make it through the way I came, let alone a wagon.

  As I watched, they set up a temporary camp in the square with practiced efficiency, and checking the timekeeper device I kept in my pocket, a simple stone that turned clear during the day on the surface but opaque at night as it now was, I suddenly realised my own fatigue was mounting, and that realisation immediately induced a yawn. The walk down from the surface had been hours of terror, followed by a flight from a deep stalker and then my trek across the city... honestly I'm surprised that I hadn’t noticed it before that point. As if on cue, the green light suffusing the city began to dim, and the group below lit a fire with wood they unloaded from their wagon. They probably had light sticks or similar in their sacks, but there’s nothing quite like the warm orange light of a crackling fire, it makes something primal inside you feel safe. The merrily crackling blaze provided just enough light to barely see by, but not much. After observing for a while longer to ensure they didn’t have plans to immediately scour the surrounding area despite the increasing darkness, I went through my heavy jacket’s many pockets looking for the device I’d secretly pocketed from my last trip into the dark and some more of that tasteless jerky.

  Finding both, I grinned as I twisted the top half of the storage device and spoke the command word I’d established previously when experimenting with it. I should probably have sold the thing or given it to my employer like I was supposed to, but the benefits far outweighed the risks, as illustrated now as a comfortable mattress festooned with pillows appeared in the small room I was hiding in. I pitied the poor sods below and their scratchy blankets and bedrolls; what most people don’t realise is that if you’ve got a comfy place to sleep that you can be sure is always dry, you can live in comfort pretty much anywhere. The value of a good bed is beyond that of most people's homes, to my mind.

  Settling myself in munching my jerky, I set my timekeeper to silently vibrate in my hand an hour or so before ‘sunrise’. While the smart thing would be to put some distance between myself and the group, there’s something deeply unsettling about the silence of the underground, and their quiet murmuring and soft laughter as they settled in for the night was comforting. I let myself drift off to sleep, content that my lofty perch and low profile would keep me concealed, provided I didn’t snore.

  Chapter 3

  I woke to the sound of screams. I rolled out of my nest of pillows and drew my dagger almost on reflex. I felt like I’d gotten a few hours of sleep, but not nearly as much as I needed. Outside, the ever-present green light had faded to the faintest of glimmers, concealing all but the edges of the rooftops. The screaming below continued, so I rushed to my overlook and peered cautiously around the broken edge. In the better light of the campfire, all I could see was a mess of gore. The constituent parts of maybe three people littered the ground, their weapons lying in the blood.

  Dark lumps on the ground nearby signified that many of their friends had probably met a similar end. I quickly recalled my bed into storage and lit my little light, hoping that the dim flickering wouldn’t give me away. That plan was somewhat dashed when it burst into green radiance, flooding the area around me with verdant light, as bright as the artificial day. Below I caught a glimpse of something I can’t quite describe. I know that sounds ridiculous, but when I looked at it I just felt my mind shying away from it, unable to comprehend or process what my eyes were communicating. All I got was a sensation of darkness, of claws, of an insatiable hunger and endless pai
n as my head was filled with an otherworldly screaming, like nails pounding into my temples. I fell to the ground as whatever nightmare was down the bottom retreated away from the light. I could still feel it, at the edge of the light, waiting. Rather than taking the opportunity to run, to crawl away as far as I could and hope it left me alone, something inside me drove to go down and look for survivors. Whatever that something was, it was stupid, but I couldn't bring myself to leave.

  Cautiously I made my way down through a nearby building, occasionally thrusting my light ahead of me to ward away the shadows. The new intensity of my little light was astounding, I assumed that something about the city had recharged it somehow. I was glad of it now though, whatever that thing was, I wanted it as far from me as possible. Just thinking about it made my skin crawl and my thoughts recoil. With each step I took down into the square, my breathing grew shorter, the horror of what I’d just seen coursing through me. In hindsight, I was almost certainly in shock, explaining my somewhat suicidal decision to go down there, but the numbness I felt was not enough to shield me from the impact of seeing the carnage up close. Everywhere I looked, corpses lay, or parts of them. These were not clean kills either, and I was reminded of the wreckage of a kill an alleycat I was once fond of had left me. Whatever this thing was, it played with its kills. Wiping the sudden vomit from my lips, I started to move across the square to their wagon. If they had more light sticks, I wanted as many as I could get my hands on as soon as possible. I tried to avert my gaze from the worst of the dead, but they were literally everywhere, and the only other place I could really look was the darkness lurking where my light faded maybe 10 metres away. I did not want to look at that.

  Just then I heard a faint noise and immediately my heart started racing. I whipped my light around wildly, but saw nothing. Then I heard it again, a hoarse, muffled whining. A survivor. Bending down, I peered beneath the wagon. A young woman huddled there, desperately attempting to muffle her cries. She was around my age, early 20’s, with messy long brown hair. She wore the rough leathers of a guard, similar to many of those lying not far away, a long knife at her hip. Her red-rimmed eyes met mine and suddenly lunged for me, knocking me to the ground and pinning me there. In an eyeblink I found her blade to my throat.

  “What. The fuck. Was that?” she growled in a hoarse, lightly accented voice. I swallowed deeply, immediately regretting it as the knife nicked my skin, drawing a small drop of blood. I took a breath and tried to respond.

  “Hi.” Wrong choice, stupid Dav. Her eyes narrowed and she drew back her knife briefly, but only so that she could crack me in the face with its hilt. My head rebounded off the pavement, making my eyes spin.

  “Wait, please! I have nothing to do with this!” I cried out, as that damned knife came back to rest under my chin, her knee pinning my chest to the ground. “I was delving, just like you, and then that thing came and it killed everyone and-” I was babbling at that point, but in my defence I was having a terrible day. She put a stop to that by giving me a swift punch to the throat, which left me gasping. With a scowl she got off my chest and finally put the dagger away. Stumbling to my feet after her I hunched over coughing as she took in our surroundings. Recovering from my fit, I picked up my light and clutched it like a rope thrown to a drowning man. The woman turned to face me.

  “I’m not asking again. What was that thing and who the hells are you?” her harsh words put a lie to the calm voice she was using in an attempt to calm herself. I recognised it as a coping mechanism, I do the same thing with humour.

  “Hey lady,” I spread my hands, “I just work here.” Wrong answer again. She dashed forwards, but this time I was ready, I dodged backwards out of her reach and extended my hands out in front of me. “Woah woah woah! I’m Dav, I’m a delver. Delver Dav. That’s me, ok? I got here yesterday, saw you guys, followed you, next thing I know some awful thing is attacking. I came down to look for survivors and then I got attacked by a madwoman with a knife. Happy?” I took a breath. Like I say, I was having a bad day. Hers, admittedly, was probably worse. She’d already stopped listening to me and was crouched down by the mutilated form of one of the other members of her group, a clean-shaven military type with the remains of a slightly fancier uniform and significantly less body parts than he was probably accustomed to. Also very dead. Sorry, like I say, humour is how I deal with these things.

  “Dammit Bron, what do I do now?” I could just about make out her whispering. I gave her some space to grieve and moved up onto the wagon and started rooting through the bags, keeping a half-eye on the looming darkness. It was all pretty low-grade stuff, firestarters, a device I’d seen once in a shop window that produced different seemingly random noises on command, a couple of plowing rods (farmers loved those), until I found what I was looking for. I lurched upwards grasping my prize with a woop. The woman glared my sudden outburst, tears wiped away and replaced with a businesslike attitude.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, staring at me like I’d just gone mad.

  “Stealing from you,” I couldn’t help but respond. “Big bad doesn’t like my light, right?” I waved my light around at the darkness and she glanced around nervously as the movement danced deep shadows on the nearby walls. “Sorry! Well, these,” I brandished the devices I’d found, “are going to give it a really bad day.”

  With that I threw one of them to her and hopped down from the wagon, a small stone ball carved with deep engravings and an extremely thin band of metal around the center, which she snatched out of the air and activated with a snap as the two halves twisted in opposite directions. There was another unearthly scream from behind her as the orb began to float, radiating viridescence far further than my little light could previously manage. She took a look around the newly illuminated square and turned back to me.

  “Clara,” she stated simply. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it, Clara. One question… where’s the donkey?”

  As if on cue, out of the darkness a huge shape came flying towards us. At first I thought the creature had overcome its aversion to light, but as we scattered aside there was a wet, meaty thud as the still bloody corpse of what had once been a donkey slammed into the side of the wagon, tipping it over with the force of the impact. The devices I’d discarded scattered everywhere, and I could swear that I could hear a sinister chuckle teasing at the edges of my hearing. I desperately tried to tell myself I was imagining it. Wordlessly, Clara and I exchanged a look and made a break for the nearby repository building, lights held aloft, my stick and her orb bobbing through the air behind her. Nifty.

  The doorway was thankfully intact, and we raced inside. I cracked the other one of the light orbs on and set it to float in the doorway to illuminate the steps leading up to the entrance and part of the lobby, and immediately set up a second on the far side of the expansive room, bathing the entire room in light. I took a look around, this repository was probably in the best shape I’d seen in a while. The room itself was large, with smooth curved stone walls and a high ceiling. Intricately carved lines threaded their way between tall pillars, but there was no discernable pattern that I could make out, so I assume they were purely decorative. Across from the doorway stood a large stone counter and behind it a set of what was once probably a set of grand, sweeping staircase, now sadly collapsed into a much less grand heap of rubble. Peering up where the stairs once led, I could see the ceiling above had long since caved in, but thankfully it hadn’t taken out the lower levels when it went, signifying it was probably a gradual collapse. The ceiling was crisscrossed by a stone grid, each square maybe 2 metres across, and each intersection was punctuated by a small shining stone which glimmered with a faint light. I whistled appreciatively, and Clara gave me an incredulous look.

  “You’re admiring the architecture? Really? Now?” she snarled derisively and began checking the various doorways around the outside the room, snatching her light orb out of the air and thrusting it before her into each room, revealing a somewh
at uninspiring variety of narrow corridors and small empty rooms

  “You’ve got to admit it’s pretty,” I shrugged, “The light will either keep it out or we’ll both be dead soon, no sense missing out because of things we can’t control.” I gestured to the ceiling. “Those gems are somehow like devices built to hold the place together, they’re probably the only reason this room hasn’t collapsed yet. Explains the lack of pillars.” Clara didn’t seem impressed and once again I faced the realisation that all the time alone in the dark hadn’t worked wonders for my people skills.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, all my friends are dead, we’re being hunted by some kind of big… dark… THING, and some complete stranger that I’ve just found out has been stalking me for hours,” I began to protest that part, but she overrode me, her voice becoming more and more shrill as she vented, “-FOR HOURS, has just happened to show up and is now telling me that whether or not we die is a minor concern! But it’s fine,” she near-sobbed, “because the ceiling probably won’t collapse on us…” she trailed off, collapsing to the ground against the wall and giving into the hopelessness of our situation. I can’t say I didn’t feel like doing the same, but instead I walked over to where she huddled and slid down the wall to sit by her side. I didn’t say anything, just sat there for a little while. After a short time, she sniffed and wiped her face. “You tell anyone about this, I’ll cut you,” she stated simply, then pushed herself up to her feet. I nodded for lack of anything better to say and rose after her. She began to pace. “So you came in through the south tunnel?”