The snakes and worms had been left behind, but the bats were keeping up.
Most of the bats were just that: regular bats. Annoying, perhaps. Startling, certainly, when swooping down out of the darkness. But there were a few at least that had absorbed enough quintessence to have grown larger and more dangerous.
Unlike the rats, however, they were not terribly interested in Thorn’s group; they flew in erratic patterns, fleeing from something unseen.
“Ouch,” Thorn said, flinching downwards and to the left as the crow pecked him on the ear. He turned further left, and a flock of bats passed by above and to the right.
“I wish the crow wouldn’t peck me so hard,” Thorn groused between labored breaths.
“You’ve taught it too well,” Lief replied from his spot on Thorn's back. “That’s at least the third? Fourth? Time you’ve dodged a flock of bats after he pecked you on the head. It’s getting what it wants out of you. Why would it stop?”
Lief had a point.
“We need more of a plan than just running towards the center,” Thorn called over his shoulder. “Where is that humper at? And why is a humper down here in this cavern? And chasing us to boot? They’re herbivores.”
“I agree we need a plan, but first we need shelter. Up ahead there should be a darker spot on the cavern wall, next to the lake. Head for that,” Lief said.
About halfway down the lake, the edge of the water and the cavern wall converged. The path that Thorn was running on continued into a tunnel that had been carved into the rock. The ceiling of the tunnel was low, but the walls were not too narrow. Whoever had operated the farm had likely carved the narrow pathway in order to allow for easy access around the lake.
As Thorn sprinted into the tunnel, he looked behind him. The humper had gained on him considerably and was only about twenty meters behind. He was wondering if they should stop and fight when the humper disappeared in a sudden crush of blood.
He hadn’t seen what was chasing them, and neither had the humper. A fresh burst of adrenaline pushed Thorn’s legs to go even faster.
The narrow walls suddenly opened up, and they were out of the tunnel. Blast doors, steel at least six inches thick, hung on broken hinges. In front of Thorn stretched an open field where imperial plums had once been cultivated.
A giant disk of glass and steel hung dark on the cavern ceiling above them; the grow lamp for this section was inoperable. The fields he ran across had been cultivated, but there was nothing left of the short imperial plum bushes except for rough stumps here and there, along with the occasional branch or twig. The ground itself was trampled and broken, strewn with the corpses of animals and beasts.
Thorn’s legs and lungs were burning with the weight of carrying Lief, but he kept running. They needed to find a place to take cover and hide from whatever was chasing them.
“Was that–” Thorn began.
“Not sure,” Lief said. “But if that was the fincroc that got a taste of me earlier, I’m sure it wants another.”
Thorn noticed the bats that had been chasing them flitting up and to the right. A darker cut against the black wall of the cavern indicated a recessed crack. It did them little good though; Thorn had no way to climb the wall that high.
The fields on his right gave way to poured concrete slabs. Thorn stumbled when he saw what lay there.
Rows and rows of cages, large and small, stretched between the path and the cavern wall. Some of the cage doors were open, some had bars that were broken. A few had chains wrapped around inside the cages, or were strewn across the ground outside of the cages. In the back, in an open spot against the cavern wall, Thorn saw the end of a massive chain with links as tall as he was.
Whatever had been in the cages was gone; every single one was empty.
The path he was running down gradually turned into more of a road, the hard-packed dirt replaced by crushed gravel. Another set of fields replaced the cages.
Thorn wondered if he should go back and try to take shelter in one of those cages, but didn’t like the idea. Even if they successfully locked themselves in one… how would they get out again? They wouldn’t be hidden at all.
Up ahead Thorn saw something potentially useful. The road seemed to split, one path leading left around the shore while the other curved right into another tunnel. In front of the tunnel, a recessed platform was carved high up on the cavern wall. A set of stairs led up to an observation platform.
Thorn sprinted up the stairs, his legs burning and side cramping. He eased up at the top, panting hard, and tried to reassess where they were. From his current perch, he had a good view of the surrounding area.
Pieces of a heavy weapons placement that had been attached to the swivel lay on the ground below. He could see the cages on their concrete slabs; the destroyed, muddy field; the edge of the lake; the dull, dark grow lamps, and something he’d hadn’t noticed before: a recessed area with different tools and equipment for agriculture. It was next to the tunnel they had run through.
As he watched, another small flock of bats came flying through the tunnel. A few snakes and worms were also crawling through.
“Do you think we are far enough from the edge of the dead zone?” Thorn asked.
“I don’t know, kid,” Lief replied. “Normally I’d lie and regale you with highly exaggerated tales of past exploits, but frankly this is my first time on the inside of a dead zone. Uncharted territory.
“The quintessence void could be right behind us, or it could be quite a ways back. It could have stopped contracting, or it could keep going until it catches all of us, turning from a spherical cylinder with a pocket of quintessence on the inside into a simpler hole.
“If you’re looking for a good place to die, though, you’re gonna need to try a bit harder. This place doesn’t even have a good bar. Or even a cup of caf.”
Lief was tired. He’d been putting up a good front, mostly with sardonic comments and jokes, but even he had his limits. He’d lost a few limbs and even worse. Losing levels in a System wasn’t completely unheard of, although when people experienced it and lived, usually they were switching Systems, not being caught in a dead zone.
Trying to find a place to hunker down wasn’t a bad plan. The greenhouse hadn’t worked out, for obvious reasons, but it was better than sitting out in the open and just asking to be eaten by whatever happened along. Or maybe the preferred strategy was to wait for the dead zone to overtake them, sucking the quintessence out of their bodies and killing them in a few short, painful seconds.
Thorn shook his head. “If you don’t stop talking about caf, I’m running straight back the way we came and dumping you in the dead zone,” he said.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Lief said.
“Fine, I’m dumping you in the lake instead.”
“Even better, I’ve got unfinished business with that fincroc.”
A large shadow flew in from the side of the lake and swooped down towards the field, descending on a large snake. When the dust cleared, Thorn could see an enormous bird gulping the still-wriggling snake down its bulging gullet.
“Is that…”
“An owl?” Lief said. “It might have been, but it’s something more than that now. Seeing this many strange beasts, in one area… something isn’t right about this cavern.”
A sharp peck landed on the back of Thorn’s neck. The awakened owl’s head turned towards them. They needed to find a place to hide.
“In the door, son, it might still be hungry,” Lief said. Thorn turned, trying the door handle and finding it unlocked. He rushed in and closed the door, shutting out the light and plunging them into darkness.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Lief turned on his flashlight. They were in a narrow stone tunnel, gradually sloping down and to the left. At the end of the slope, the tunnel ended at a junction. There was a foul smell, something rancid and rotting, coming from the right tunnel. Thorn picked left.
After walking for forty meters there was a short flight of stairs and the tunnel opened into a larger space filled with broken furniture. It was a rough living area, with several doors, some closed and some open, leading off of the main room.
The place must have been where the people who operated the facility had lived, even though it looked abandoned now.
The place was dark and eerie. Thorn moved quickly, checking each room for threats. Two of the private bedrooms were closed, with locked doors, but were easily kicked open. There were no humans or beasts in any of the rooms.
He found a small kitchen area off a hallway. The refrigerators had failed, and judging from the smell, they had failed quite some time ago. Weeks, at least. There was a small pantry, but it was ransacked, shelves and boxes broken open and consumed. He found a few packs of dehydrated beans, a couple extra flashlights, and some blankets.
There was no caf. Thorn looked through all the shelves and cabinets. Three times. He did find some tea, though.
The hallway led to a pair of heavy metal doors. They were locked. Unlike the doors to the bedrooms, a mere kick or shove was not going to open these doors. Thorn turned around and went back to the common area.
Entering one of the empty bedrooms with two beds, Thorn closed and locked the door, and set Lief down on one of the beds. Thorn took the other, letting out a heavy breath.
The crow hopped down from Thorn’s shoulder and onto the bed. It hopped a few times, awkwardly moving its wounded wing towards Thorn as it stared at him.
“What now?” Thorn grumbled. The beast was clearly intelligent, perhaps even as intelligent as a human. Its senses, either hearing or sight or both, were far more advanced than either his or even Lief’s.
Awakening had different effects on beasts; it was not a consistent or even repeatable process, unlike the way that Systems codified and streamlined the patterns in which quintessence could provide power. Thorn had often wondered if humans could awaken, if they did not have a System. He didn’t know, and had never heard of it happening, because everyone he knew either had a System, or was too young to incorporate one.
The crow gazed up at him expectantly and wiggled its broken wing. Thorn sighed and reached out to grab it. The crow hopped to the side and pecked his outstretched fingers.
“Ouch, you damn bird.” The crow wiggled its wing again and gave him a beady eye.
Very slowly and carefully this time, he reached out and examined the crow’s wing. He wasn’t an expert on avian physiology, but he found the break (assisted by a helpful peck on the tip of his finger) and with a quick pull, realigned the broken bone. He fashioned a makeshift splint with a strip off his shirt and a thin piece of plastic he carved off a bookshelf. When he was done, it hopped over to Lief’s bed.
Lief had fallen asleep in the few minutes he’d taken to bind the crow’s wing.
“Are you going to peck out my eyes if I try to rest?” Thorn asked the crow. The crow cawed.
Thorn was physically tired, but he wasn’t sleepy at all. He was tempted to use his Meditate Skill, but he would lose awareness of his surroundings, and he didn’t want to do that, not when Lief was sleeping. The crow was smart; it had been helpful, and it seemed to have uses for its pet humans. Thorn didn’t trust it yet.
With a jolt, he remembered the beast cores in his pocket. If he absorbed those quints… would it be enough to level up again? Quite possibly, but there was only one way to be sure.
He pulled them out and held them in the palm of his hand. He wondered again at the cracks and chips in them, something he had never seen before, and their relatively small size. If he had to make a guess, he’d say that the extreme overexposure to glitter had somehow caused the imperfections in the cores.
After a slight pause, he put one of the stones back in his pocket.
With a deep breath, Thorn directed his System to begin the process of absorbing the energy from the remaining core. His hand began to warm, and the warmth gradually spread up his arm to his shoulder and then down to the spot on his back between his shoulder blades that he associated with his System.
Thorn watched in fascination as the core slowly evaporated in his hand, layers and layers dissolving slowly. The whole process took ten minutes, from start to finish, and in the end, there was nothing left in his palm except a small pinch of brown powder.
The temptation to just level up right then and there was incredibly strong. Maybe for the next level, his System would teach him something more useful to survive, like that imbuement technique that Lief had used on his machete. Or a personal shield that didn’t require near as many quints as his pumpkin.
Speaking of his shield… he didn’t have enough quints to charge it fully, but he probably should give it at least a partial charge. He took the portable shield out, and with a supreme effort of will, asked his System to allocate over half of his quints. He still had enough for his level up, and he couldn’t level up if he was dead, right?
He set the shield up and went back to waiting. He unpacked and repacked the items in his pack, counting about three days’ worth of food for him and Lief.
The crow settled down to sleep, tucking its head underneath its wing.
Thorn had kept watch many times, or waited on a delivery, or stood at an empty bar for hours waiting for customers to come into the diner. He was used to boredom and waiting, but this was difficult. His arms and legs were twitchy, and if he wasn’t dreaming about his next level up, then his mind kept being dragged back to more recent events.
The fight with the rats in the greenhouse, and the feeling of the glitter, making him stronger. He knew it was a lie, that the drug took far more than it gave, but knowing in his head and knowing in his body were two different things.
The cold sensation of the dead zone or quintessence void or whatever Lief called it; the egg white of the hard-boiled egg they were stuck in. The feeling of death creeping between his shoulders and diving in his heart.
Compared to those two things, almost drowning was a walk on the beach.
Thorn rubbed his hands over his eyes, and instead of letting his thoughts wander, he lashed them to a single purpose: what he could do to survive.
If the yolk in the center of the egg kept getting smaller, then they were screwed. The quintessence they’d manage to gather would evaporate as it caught up to them and they would fall over and die. Nothing could live with zero quintessence; everything, even the tiniest microbe, needed a little.
But Thorn had survived for a few seconds. So if he had more quints (probably an enormous amount) he could survive for longer.
That was one path to survival. A slim one. But maybe the zone wasn’t shrinking as much as Lief thought it was. Or maybe the inside would shrink, then expand again. Who knew, with the weird, four dimensional geometry going on.
Thorn couldn’t control the dead zone geometry, so he set it aside.
Instead, he thought about the only two things that mattered: how to survive, and how to get more quints. In a way, those two things boiled down to the same things: how to kill beasts and harvest their cores. Thorn was still thinking about that when Lief finally woke a few hours later.
“Thirsty,” Lief said. He tried to push himself up on the bed but couldn’t do it; he seemed a bit out of sorts. Thorn helped sit him up, and handed him a water bottle.
“We dead yet?” Lief asked after taking a swig of water. His skin looked even more pale than before, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“Not yet,” Thorn replied. “Working on it though.”
Thorn found some old shirts in a dresser and rebound Lief’s wounds. They were beginning to scab over, which was good from a survival point of view. Bad from a getting-new-limbs-attached point of view.
Thorn took the last beast core out of his pocket and handed it to Lief. The crow looked at it greedily.
“What are you giving me this for?” Lief asked.
“Your share of the loot,” Thorn said.
“Hmpf,” Lief replied. “I’m not really doing much to warrant a share. I know I’m dead weight, and there’s a difference between you carrying me around, which I appreciate by the way, and taking away something that might make you stronger and keep us all alive.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Thorn warned. “I could whack you over the head and steal your cores while you’re sleeping.”
“Maybe you should. You could level up and get a new Skill.”
“Sure, I could get a new ‘fix dead zones’ Skill, or a ‘open wormhole to closest hospital’ Skill. I guess it’s possible. But knowing my luck? It’s better odds that I get a useless Skill that pairs with what I got already. I can make quints in my sleep; maybe my next one will let me make quints when I poop!”
Lief ignored him and tried to hand the core back, but Thorn wouldn’t take it. “I lost several levels; this isn’t close to enough to regain that. It’s also not going to regrow limbs, so I’m not going to be combat effective.”
“Some of your skills require quints to operate, right?” Thorn said. The crow had hopped closer to Lief’s hand, greedily eying the core. Thorn swatted at the crow and it hopped backwards, landing a disapproving peck on his knuckles.
“All of them, pretty much,” Lief said. “There’s always a cost.”
“It would be great if we could get that drone up and running. And you’ve got at least one skill that helps keep you alive or heals you,” Thorn continued. “And based on the fact that you look a lot worse now than you did earlier, I bet you haven’t been using it. Did you lose that skill?”
Lief frowned, like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Lief’s condition had been deteriorating, enough that it had been obvious to Thorn. He was seriously wounded, certainly, but he’d been in much better shape when he’d found Thorn. It didn’t make sense to Thorn, that if Lief had managed to survive an encounter with an awakened beast that took a bite out of him, then fished Thorn out of the lake, that he would now be so weak.
“No, but–” Lief replied.
“Then shut your pie hole,” Thorn said. “Absorb the core and use the quints to heal yourself. If you got any left over, you can get your drone up and running, and then help charge the pumpkin. In order for us all to survive this, we’re going to need your Skills too.”
Lief looked hard at Thorn before nodding. The core in his hand began to smoke, and after a few minutes, it was dissolved completely. There was no obvious green light, or blue sparks popping from Lief’s wounds, but the tight lines in his face eased and color started returning to his cheeks.
“Now I’m going to level up,” Thorn said, laying down on his bed. “You take watch.”
Lief nodded and took another drink from the water bottle.