Digging Into The Past
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Chapter XXXIV: Digging Into The Past

 

The inside of the ruin was surprisingly cozy for what it was. It was dark, but the shafts of light coming in through the thin holes in the roof meant that it wasn’t anything we couldn’t adapt to after a few minutes. It was cool, but so insulated as to not be cold either. It was wet, with the lowest parts of the ruined stone floor having turned into pools of condensation, but the damp was more refreshing than anything else. Then again, that might all have been a matter of perception. After a day and a night of constant running, just about any place where we had the chance to stop and rest would have felt like heaven on earth.

We did a quick accounting of our remaining supplies. We’d lost quite a bit when abandoning the falts outside of the temple, and Rook had also stolen a few things from the stonewose, so what we had with us bore very little relation to what we had started off with. We had medicines, which was good. Rook set to finally treating Sir Margaret’s injury almost as soon as she had the extra time to. Weapons we had in abundance. I’d lost my saber when I was shot, but had taken a small broad-bladed cutlass sort of weapon to replace it. Food and water were more of an issue. We had enough water for a day and a half, after which we’d be forced to rely on the gathered water, which Sarnai was pretty sure would kill us if we tried. Or at least it would kill her and Margaret, being the ones in the group capable of dying. 

So that gave us a ticking clock. We needed to find a way out of the ruin, and one that wouldn’t send us right into the arms of the stonewose, before running out of water. Our first priority, however, was to rest. There was a major antechamber right at our entrance to the ruin, a place where the high arches of the original construction still stood. As soon as we were done checking our supplies, we spread out our furs and blankets across that open floor and proceeded to lounge around for the next few hours. It was the best nap I’d ever taken.

I was the first to wake up, not counting Rook, who didn’t sleep. Neither of us wanted to wake up Sarnai or Sir Margaret; they’d both been through enough. But we also decided that we should probably at least begin the search for a way out. So we left them to their rest, and headed deeper into the ruins.

I’ve been calling them “ruins” so far, but as Sarnai repeatedly pointed out, the term wasn’t entirely accurate. We were technically trespassing on Durkahn sacred ground. This old temple dated to a period long before the current Durkahn civilization, a time which had since been lost to history, so ancient that some claimed that the people who originally built it were no more similar to the current inhabitants of the plateau than those current inhabitants were to humans. So, obviously, the current Durkahns used it for their religious rituals as well. 

The signs of that reuse and modification were all over the place. A lot of the rubble had obviously been moved to create clear pathways and chambers, and there were recent offerings sitting in many of the small nooks and alcoves along the way. A few of the larger chambers had even been decorated with rugs and oil lamps, disused and dirty but clearly centuries younger than the stones around them. 

For the most part we explored in silence. The temple-ruins were enormous and complex, and the quietest whistling of wind could have been the clue that led us to find the way out. Eventually, though, my curiosity got the better of me.

“Why did you come back for us?” I asked. We were in a smaller passageway, one cramped enough that Rook had to bend over to not hit her head on the ceiling. Being tiny proved an advantage.

Rook hitched for a half-step, then continued as though nothing had happened. “I already told you, this group of stonewose had been pursuing me before they found you. I was already in the area, trust me.”

“Alright, sure. But you didn’t have to rescue us,” I said. “Or, if it would have offended your morality to let us get eaten, you didn’t have to stay with us the entire time. Hell, it might have made it easier for all of us if we’d split up into multiple groups. This is more than just practicality.”

I may or may not have been going over the various possibilities in my head for nigh-on twenty minutes at that point. My logic was nearly unassailable, which was something I was disproportionately proud of. Rook, for her part, said nothing. We continued along that same passage until it widened out into a long gallery, with half a dozen more pathways branching off from it. There Rook stopped.

“I had a while to think about things, while I was out on my own. Hell, didn’t have much to do but think. And I realized that what you said to me before I left was right.”

I hadn’t expected that. “I… I yelled at you. Because you wouldn’t unveil all of your traumas to me. How was that right?”

“Well, I never said that you couldn’t have been more kind about it,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I’m sorry for not controlling my emotions.”

“Apology accepted,” Rook said quickly. “But that’s besides the point. What you did, what you were willing to reveal… it takes a lot of courage and a lot of trust, trust me. And I think you deserve to have that trust repaid.”

She tapped one wall of the gallery, making sure it was strong enough, then leaned her back against it with her arms folded. “Now, what was it you wanted to know?”

I took the opportunity to sit down, using a chunk of collapsed ceiling that seemed suited for sitting. “I guess I just want to know what you are. You’re stronger than a Mechanodrone, you have bulletproof steel plating under your skin, Margaret was able to repair you after you got your neck snapped by the reikverratr! Everything I know about this world tells me that you shouldn’t exist in it, but here you are. I just… I want to know. I want to know that I can still rely on you.”

Rook nodded, then took off her jacket, followed by all clothes above the waist. Once again I was faced by the open, transparent pane that took up the lower part of her chest, revealing spinning gears and a central green light. “The first part you need to understand is this. The scientists call it the radium forge; there’s only one in the whole world, so far as I know. It was found in an abandoned village that, until three days earlier, had had nearly a thousand women living in it.”

“The radium forge?” I said. “That sounds nuclear. It’s your power source, isn’t it? That’s what makes it all possible.”

Rook nodded. “I don’t know the story of how it ended up with me. To be honest with you, I don’t even understand why they decided to do what they did with it. Something about factors of scale, I hear, meaning that it could far easier control a small machine of extreme power than a great hulking metal thing. But some mad bastard of a biologist came up with an idea for a fusion of flesh and machine. A woman powered by clockwork, stronger than an Archopolid and completely bulletproof. An imitation of the reikverratr.”

“Alright,” I said. “Sure, why not. You have a fun weird thing that you don’t understand, why not make a cool superhero with it. Where do you come in?”

Rook sighed. “You asked me a long time ago why I hide my accent. You already figured out, I think, that I got it growing up in Creandas, didn’t you?” After seeing my nod, she continued, “I hide it because Creandasian regiments… we fought for the Empire, during the Secession War, and we fought well. I fought well. There are a lot of people who still remember that, and choose to bear a grudge.

“I was just some soldier, serving in the Second Creandasian. We got screwed over by our Cassandran commander, sent on a suicide mission… but one that just so happened to send us right into the heart of the Blueroser forces, where they were being commanded by a newly-appointed colonel.”

“Sir Margaret?” I guessed.

Rook nodded, the slightest smile appearing on her lips. “I fought her, sword to sword. Would’ve won, if it weren’t for one of her subordinates having a grenade on hand. So I died. Or I should have died. Apparently I wasn’t quite dead yet. And for some fucking reason, Margaret decided to save me. Maybe she caught on that I was just as much a victim of the Cassandrans as she was.

“Either way, the next thing I remember after that duel is waking up in a Blueroser lab with this thing in my chest. They were ready to set off a powder charge in the base of my skull if I didn’t comply, but it isn’t as if I had anywhere else to go. Besides, Margaret did save my life, even if I’m not fully alive any more.”

“You seem pretty alive to me,” I said hesitantly.

“Oh, sure. Aside from the little things like not having to sleep, or breathe, or eat more than once a week, or not having a pulse.”

“Fair enough,” I said, trying to take it all in. It wasn’t easy. Then again, I’d been able to handle the discovery that I was some kind of immortal superhuman, so why couldn’t there be cyborgs? “And that’s why you’re always at Sir Margaret’s side. Because she saved your life, even though you were her enemy.”

“That would be the case.”

“I can kind of see why you were so reluctant to share this with me, now,” I said. “Um. Thank you… for telling me about this stuff. I’m sorry for pressing so hard.”

“No need for apologies,” Rook repeated. She scanned the gallery. “We should head back.”

“What?” I said. “We still haven’t found an exit. Or anything even resembling an exit, for that matter.”

“True. But if we keep going from a room with this many doors, we’ll be off for hours, trust me,” Rook said. “And I’m fairly sure that Sarnai and Margaret have had more than enough of a rest by now. Don’t want to leave them wondering.”

I had almost completely forgotten about the other two in the intervening time, my focus redirected to the moment-to-moment of exploration and navigation. I quickly agreed with Rook. Turning around, we descended back into the labyrinth, retracing our steps back to the antechamber where we’d made our best approximation of a camp. It wasn’t easy, and there was more than one occasion where we ended up on an unfamiliar route and had to backtrack. Fortunately, Rook had a much better memory than I did, and we did eventually find our way back to the others. They were still asleep when we got there.

Getting to shake Sarnai and Sir Margaret awake was a truly wonderful opportunity, one of the few sources of unadulterated joy to be had in the middle of our shit situation. I will cherish some of my sarcastic remarks for the rest of my long, long life. Once we had all stopped taking the piss and returned to our senses, we hashed out a more rigorous plan for exploring the ruin. That we needed some way to mark our progress was obvious. Sarnai objected strenuously to the idea of leaving marks in the walls, as did Sir Margaret when she realized that that would completely ruin our swords. Sarnai, in turn, suggested leaving a smudge of the powdered food she’d appropriated from the village. I’d read “Hansel and Gretel” enough to know that that was a bad idea. 

It was Rook who eventually solved the problem by pointing out that I was tiny, and really did not need a blanket that was the same size as everyone else’s. She suggested cutting one of our blankets into tiny strips, and leaving the strips pinned under fallen stones as a reminder of where we’d been. I had to admit that she was right. Not that being called out for my size felt particularly good, but the sacrifice of no longer being able to entirely cocoon myself in comfy blanket was, in the end, worth it. 

Each of us having a fistful of cloth scraps, our weapons, and a bit of the remaining water, we set off into the ruins. Doing so alone turned out to be substantially more nerve-racking than doing it with Rook. The ambient sunlight was just barely enough to see by, casting deep shadows and occasionally plunging entire passageways and rooms into pitch darkness. The sounds were worse. I knew that most of the random stony noises I heard were from the other three people blundering around, or else the slow settling of hundreds of tons of rock over centuries, but I could never shake the thought that there was something else in there with me, something watching. The temple-ruins even smelled like death, each step I took kicking up dry mold spores and old dust. 

Despite every nerve in my body telling me that I should turn around immediately, I kept moving. I had to, if I didn’t want to watch everyone starve to death. Besides, even at my most unnerved, I always had a single, cold thought in my head, keeping me safe: it wasn’t as though I could die or anything. So I kept going. Each intersection would be marked by a strip of cloth pinned under a rock, placed with the yellow color facing the way I’d originally come, so I would know how to return to the antechamber when I found an exit. The longer I went, the more awe-inspiring it became; this temple must have been a truly enormous complex in its prime, even taking into account that many of the passageways I went through had probably been created in the collapse.

I don’t know how long I was down there, alone except for the occasional echoing sound of a voice or footstep. It could have been hours, or my anxiety could have made next to no time at all feel as though it had been hours, there’s no way to know. The time, the dark, the exploration, it all blended together. What I do remember, very distinctly, was the shout of surprise I heard from ahead, followed not long after by a call for assistance.

I broke into a run before the last echo had faded. The knowledge that we could call for help had been the only thing that made me even remotely okay with the idea of splitting up, but I hadn’t really expected that we would have any need for it. The fact that someone had felt the need left me terrified. Questions pounded through my head as my feet pounded over the stone floor: the voice sounded a little like Sarnai, but was it her? Whoever it was, what kind of danger were they in? And why didn’t I hear any more sounds after that initial yell, no sounds of struggle or cries of pain?

When I hit the first intersection, I froze. The waste of time from going down the wrong passageway could have been life or death, assuming that I even learned I was going the wrong way. I tried remembering which direction the sound had come from, but the only thing I could remember was that it sounded like it was up ahead. There were no clues, no markings or signs in the light that might have told me which way to go. I called out and was given no response. Then I realized that every second I spent standing there, trying to decide which was the right passageway to go down, was one second that something horrible could be happening to one of my friends. I went left. 

More running through silent, dark tunnels, more images of death passing through my head. Then literal light at the end of the tunnel; I pushed myself faster, nearly tripping over my own feet, and arrived in another huge domed room. My imagination had supplied a horde of stonewose, or a pit of writhing snakes, but nothing that obvious was in sight. It was, to all appearances, a perfectly normal room. At least, as normal as rooms in a ruined but inhabited temple complex could be. The broken-off bases of rows of pillars were still decorated with flecks of ancient paint, and the same rugs and lamps and offering bowls that marked other places of use filled up much of the middle.

“Ah, glad you made it,” said Sarnai. “I need help shifting this thing out of the way.” She was crouched down next to a large chunk of stone, blocking one of the exits out of the room. 

The realization that there was no real danger sent me collapsing to my knees with a profound exhale. The exhaustion hit like an ocean wave, no longer held back by adrenaline, though it retreated just as quickly as I took the moment to slow down my breathing, wondering if I should be relieved or pissed off. 

“Are you okay?” said Sarnai.

“I thought you were in trouble!” I shouted, my voice rising to a shrill screech. “You just shouted and I had no idea what was going on, so for all I know you could have died! I sprinted all the way over here, spending the whole time wondering if it was too late.”

Sarnai let go of the chunk of stone and moved toward me. “My apologies,” she said.

I clenched my fists, bending over almost onto my hands and knees. “It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll be fine. Not sure how much assistance I’ll be at lifting that rock, though. That’s Rook’s specialty, not mine.”

“You won’t need to contribute much. As it is, I can feel it just barely start to shift.”

I nodded, turning my focus back inwards. My heart slowly began to relax as the adrenaline left my system. My muscles unclenched. Even the suggestion of failing my friend had caused a reaction far more extreme than I would have expected, and that was worrying. I stood up again.

“Alright. Let’s see what we can do.”

Moving the stone was several minutes of sweaty, sore, uncomfortable work. With the two of us working together, we could just barely lift it and shift it around, but we lacked the sheer strength that would have been necessary to push it fully around. First, we had to find a place to shift the stone to, one that would allow it to rest stably. Then came the agonizingly slow process of rocking, levering, pivoting, and wedging it up and over from where Sarnai had found it to the new position. When it finally dropped into place, we were both left sitting on the floor, panting and rubbing at our sore muscles.

Then it finally came time to push ahead into the next passageway. I, as the immortal one, went in first, with my hand on the hilt of my saber as I inched down what quickly proved to be a narrow and gently downward-sloping corridor. It was clearly well-used, the floor smoothed and cleaned out by the passage of feet. There was writing on the wall, too, the ink having had long enough to dry but not long enough to fade with age. It was also just barely large enough for a Durkahn; Sarnai’s horns came within about six inches of hitting the walls on either side.

Sarnai suddenly slowed down, looking at one of the phrases, barely visible through the tiny amount of light coming down the corridor from behind us. I kept going for a few more steps, until I heard a soft gasp from behind me.

“Sarnai?” I said.

She ignored me for a moment, squinting at the script as she leaned in closer. Then she spoke. “Emma. We need to leave here. Now.”

I hesitated for a moment, waiting for some clarification. When none came, I said, “Okay,” and immediately started pushing back up the passage. Sarnai remained frozen for several more seconds, as though she couldn’t believe what she’d seen on the wall. Only when I tried to squeeze past her did she seem to notice her surroundings again, moving back up the passage in front of me.

“I saw you were reading something on the wall,” I said, once we were back in the main chamber. “What did you see? Is there something dangerous down there?”

Sarnai’s brow furrowed. “No. Well. Yes. In a manner of speaking, possibly.”

“Okay, then…” I said, kicking at the gravel below my feet. “What did it say, then?”

“It’s difficult to translate into Blueroser. Or any other language you could name, really.” Sarnai leaned against the nearest wall, sinking deeper into thought. “That passageway was leading into Durkahni sacred ground.”

“Oh,” I said, suddenly nervous. “I’m guessing there’s rules against trespassing?”

“At the very least to those who aren’t of the faith, yes.”

I paused, making sure that the first though to come to my mind wasn’t a stupid one. “So you could check while I stay behind?”

Sarnai suddenly stiffened, her eyes shooting wide open as her muscles clenched.

“I mean, there’s probably a provision for violating the rules if lives are on the line, right? Or, wait, I shouldn’t have assumed, are you not…”

“My relationship with the faith of my people is complex,” Sarnai said, not even looking at me.

I suppressed a chuckle. “Yeah. I know the feeling. I kind of… stopped being religious after my sister died. And it isn’t as though I was all that pious to begin with. Similar story for you?”

Sarnai sighed, shaking her head. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again, a cycle that repeated several times. “I already told you how our religion places great importance on the concept of ‘place’, haven’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“You can imagine, then, that practicing the faith would be rather difficult as the child of two mercenaries, who had never set foot in Urcos until she was over thirty years of age.”

I grimaced. “I think I can. But, I mean, you’re still… like you’re still part of it, right? I’m pretty sure that means you still count, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I should,” said Sarnai, shaking her head. “But I… I can’t help but feel as though I don’t. Perhaps I should explain exactly what is at the end of that corridor?”

“If you think that’ll help,” I said with a shrug. “Assuming it’s not a secret or anything.”

“The details are,” she said, “But I don’t need to give you the details. What’s down there is called a Wayggranjlit Hall. It’s… a rite of passage for warriors. They say you experience things down there, things that change you. You see the spirits in the Wayggranjlit Hall.” She spoke slowly, as if each word carried weight. I could see on her face that she was relating something that had been told to her a long time ago, something that had sunk into her blood. She talked about the Hall in the same way I talked about Abby.

I struggled to put my reaction into words. “That’s…beautiful. I can see why they wouldn’t want just any random outsider stumbling through there. You don’t think there would be a way out that way, would you?”

“There might be,” said Sarnai. “But if there is, we will never find out.”

“Because outsiders aren’t allowed in?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Sarnai said, frowning. “No taboo or stricture is worth more than our lives. Thus, if our survival made such a trespass necessary, I could lead you through. But if there is no exit that way, then to trespass would be unnecessary, and thus sacrilegious. And as there is no way of knowing whether there is an exit that way without first trespassing… I’m not going to risk what little sanctity I have left on the smallest sliver of hope.”

“Let me guess, you need a… a chanter, or something like that, to officiate?” I said, trying to remember what I knew about the Durkahni religion. 

She shrugged. “Sometimes. But one is always alone once they enter the Wayggranjlit Hall. There are stories, usually about legendary heroes, about warriors who would sneak off into the Hall before they were supposed to, or who would enter one entirely unprompted.”

“I don’t have the authority to declare anyone ‘legendary’, but it certainly seems like you’d qualify as a hero,” I said, half-seriously. “I mean, with everything you’ve done just on this journey. Let alone back at the battle of Zrimash.”

Sarnai grimaced, momentarily baring her teeth. “No. No, I’m not a hero. I’m barely a fighter.”

“What?”

“You weren’t there. You didn’t see what happened at Zrimash.”

I frowned. “What happened?”

“I learned the truth about myself, I suppose. When… when the accursed came, it was chaos. My fellows, they began to lose morale, they began to scatter. I did everything I could to try to pull them together, to mount a counterattack against the Cassandrans.”

“But you failed,” I said, softly. I sympathized; after all, I’d failed too, failed to defeat the reikverratr even at the final moment.

“I didn’t just fail. I was rejected,” Sarnai said, looking up at me with watering eyes. “They saw my feeble, absurd attempts at taking command and they mocked me. They said someone who wasn’t Durkahn had no right to lead them, that it was no wonder I’d ended up in the service of a traitor. The worst part is that I don’t know if they were wrong.”

“Of course they were wrong!” I said. “You’re just as much of a Durkahn as them. It isn’t like any of them knew Dinara was a traitor before you did, so what ground do they have to stand on?”

“I… I have told you. I did not even set foot on this plateau before I had turned thirty. Half of those soldiers have probably already entered the Wayggranjlit, and I’d never even come close to it until today. I’m… something else. Some kind of half-Cassandran, half-Durkahn thing.”

Sarnai slumped against the wall, her head tucked against her chest, arms folded in a parody of defiance. She was pretty clearly trying not to sob. I extended a hand, walking slowly forward until I could gently rest my palm against her upper arm.

“Hey. Sarnai. I don’t even care if you feel up to doing this big rite of passage thing, that’s not my decision to make. But don’t beat yourself up.”

“Why shouldn’t I? Are they not correct?”

“No,” I said. “They’re being shitty exclusionists. I know… ugh, I can’t say that I know exactly what you’re going through. But I do know what it’s like for everyone around you to think that you don’t deserve to be a part of the group.”

“Really? How so?”

I sighed. “There’s something wrong with my brain. There always has been, I was… it was something I was born with. You’ve probably noticed how twitchy I can be, how easy it is for me to lose focus or just forget what’s going on entirely.”

She nodded.

“You can probably imagine that people haven’t been particularly nice to me about it. And I know it isn’t the same thing as what you’re going through; obviously it isn’t. For one thing, there’s nothing actually wrong with you, which is not the case for me.”

“So you admit that this is pointless,” Sarnai groaned.

“Let me finish. I used to be in a university, before I fell in with Lady Halflance and her group. And people would tell me, whenever I had difficulty, that I wasn’t cut out for it. That the flaw in my brain meant that I would never be a proper scientist. That I should have just given up. But I didn’t, because I didn’t give a shit about what they said. And I made it work. I made it fucking work, because I kept going, and I found other people like me, and I didn’t believe any of it.”

Sarnai took my monologue like a spoonful of sand. She shut her eyes, ground her teeth, looked like she was on the brink of outright screaming at me. But she remained totally quiet. I stayed by her side, keeping my hand on her arm, in case it would provide some kind of comfort. A minute or so later, she brushed my hand aside and stood up.

“If I am not a Durkahn, then the spirits within the Wayggranjlit Hall will castigate me, and curse me, and blunt my horns with rage. If I am, then I have absolutely no way of knowing what will happen.”

“That’s the spirit,” I said. “Good luck.”

Sarnai doffed her musket, her axe, all of her weapons and tools, leaving nothing but the clothes on her back. She took a long, slow, calming breath. Then she started moving, her eyes half-shut, one careful and slow step at a time.

“And if you aren’t too busy down there… could you just check to see if there’s a way out. I would really rather not die of dehydration here.”

The only acknowledgement from Sarnai that she had heard me was a quick nod. Not long after, she disappeared down the lightless passage. 

I took a seat on one of the fallen stones and waited. There was no sound coming from the passageway, no hint about what Sarnai was going through down there. This meant that the soft thud was as plain and audible as day. As was the soft scraping sound that came after. There was something else in the room with me.

So my readers may have noticed some issues with my scheduling of late. This is because I am in school again, and school is playing absolute hell on my schedule and ability to focus. I'll continue doing my best to post chapters regularly.
I may have already mentioned this, but we're getting near to the end of Snows of Selene. My plan is to release the last six or seven chapters in November, in a huge burst over the course of a week or so, in the hopes of getting trending or something like that.
Anyway, if you haven't already looked, please consider clicking the link below to join my Patreon, because Patreon is my only source of income right now and I could really use the support. I appreciate every single one of my patrons so so so much, and there's so much good content up on the Patreon that isn't available anywhere else. If you can't afford the contribution, no hard feelings, and I'll see you in two weeks for Chapter XXXV: The Beast.

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