26. Arianna
From the brief and tumultuous explanations of Florence’s last time in the Underground, Ari understood why it was called “The Ravens’ Folly.” The Guild wasn’t known for their building skill or logical city planning—however good they were at cartography and public transportation. The Underground was mazelike at best, hellishly backwards at worst—from all the different “builders” adding on at their own discretion. If that wasn’t enough, the deepest parts were said to be occupied by some of the most wretched creatures found anywhere on Loom. And, unlike the Harvesters who occupied the mines of Ter.1, the Ravens who ventured into the Underground were not outfitted regularly with weaponry from the Revos to keep such monsters at bay.
It wasn’t until Arianna was grasping onto the side of a strange mine cart-like transportation machine, with two Ravens laughing gleefully at every pitch-black corner they took at break-neck speed, that she grasped the concept of the Underground also being described as the “Ravens’ Playground.”
“Is this it?” Helen called back to Will. “This is the best she has?”
“Rusty!” Will replied with a shout, pulling another lever on the contraption housed in a back compartment of the vessel. Arianna focused on it—trying to figure out how it worked—rather than the mind-numbing feeling of being hurled through the unknown while trusting the most annoying girl she’d ever met at the wheel and the clinically insane at the engine. “Flor, you have any grease?”
“When have I ever carried grease on me?” Florence couldn’t plaster herself any tighter against the side of the cart if she tried.
Ari hated seeing her distressed. But there was something about the girl’s fear she found the slightest bit endearing. Despite Flor’s Raven tattoo, she was a wrench in a toolbox of screwdrivers here. Ari had only ever known her pupil as a Revo in training. But now she saw clearly why Florence had felt the need to flee the Ravens. There would be no way the girl could pass the mandatory Dragon tests imposed on Guild initiates to cull out those who lacked talent and manage the population they’d sent into a spiral when they’d removed Loom’s breeding policies.
“You had to pick this cart. Didn’t like the other rider,” Will huffed.
“We’d need two riders and only one of these,” Helen answered. “Stop complaining and just manage my speed!”
It wasn’t long before Cvareh was emptying the contents of his mostly empty stomach over the railing. Ari laughed with the rest of them at his expense and he alternated the rest of the day between fuming and panting softly, muttering prayers under his breath to Nova’s endless pantheon. At least, Ari assumed it to be the rest of the day.
Hours were lost to the darkness of the Underground. She’d originally tried to keep up with her timepiece, but quickly abandoned the idea. They pushed every hour they were awake at her behest, moving as fast and as far as they could beneath Ter.4 before exhaustion took over.
Cvareh and she alternated watches. They needed less sleep. Having magic in the blood that constantly healed their bodies and kept them in shape increased their ease of survival tenfold. It also made the fading conditions of the Fenthri in their party all the more obvious. Living creatures weren’t meant to make these halls home for extended periods of time. The strange sleeping schedule and hours upon hours of darkness took a toll on the body as much as the mind. Laughter faded from the group first, talking second, and soon the only sound that filled the air was the screeching of brakes and the clacking of metal wheels on veca after veca of track.
They were four days into their journey and somewhere around Holx, according to Helen, when the last of their rations ran out. The empty bag stared back at Arianna, more vacant than every tunnel she had faced during the hours of their travel. They weren’t going to make it to Ter.4.3 without additional supplies.
“What are you going to do?” Cvareh watched her thoughtfully as she retreated away from the last of the diminished supply bags. The other two mostly empty sacks were in the cart with the sleeping trio.
“I don’t know yet.” Her mind had yet to work out the best solution. It was strange to admit it, however.
She never confessed to Florence when she needed time to work through a plan, or operated with less than one hundred percent certainty. The girl was someone Arianna wanted to look after, care for—someone whose well being Arianna wanted to ensure into eternity. And, while Arianna could see the woman she had become in the past two years, part of her still clung to the idea of protecting the shaking, scared little crow who had run lost through the streets of Ter.4.2.
“They’re not going to last long.”
“No, they won’t, not at this pace anyway.”
“Is there something down here you could hunt?” He was making an effort, she’d grant him that much. But the effort was ill placed; he just didn’t know enough about Loom.
“Not down here.” Rather than taking the easy insult, Ari explained: “The softest things are glovis grubs. But they feed off rocks, so they’re filled with corrosive acids. The people who do eat them… don’t last long.”
But those people didn’t die. The chemicals in the glovis ate away at their bodies and corroded their minds until what was once Fenthri became something between man and monster. The Wretched were worse than forsaken Chimera. At least the forsaken had a timer on their lives. If the Fenthri body managed to adapt to consuming the glovis’ flesh, they could survive indefinitely, haunting the tunnels.
“Up then?” he reasoned.
“I seem to have no other choice.” She adjusted the strapping on her harness. As much as she didn’t mind wearing it, she was ready for a reprieve that would let her take it off.
“When are we going?”
She laughed with a shake of her head. “There is no we on this trip. Alone I can navigate whatever streets or plains wait above us effortlessly. If I’m looking out for everyone, it’ll slow me down.”
“I can look out for myself, and you know I’ll help look after them,” he insisted defensively.
“I know,” she confessed. A similar sensation to the one she’d felt a few days ago washed over her, and Arianna assessed the Dragon in the darkness. Without light, he looked the same as any Fenthri would—save for the black slits of his eyes and his physical size. Perhaps that was why she was beginning to feel easier around the man. But that didn’t quite make sense, as Arianna didn’t find relief, but rather a small disappointment, in not being able to see the colors she knew him to be. “And I will trust you to do it.”
“What?”
“I’m going alone. I’ll only be gone an hour, and I’m certain they’ll sleep the entire time and then some … But I’m trusting you to look after them.” The words still made her uneasy because it meant that she really was daring to put her faith in another Dragon. But they came more smoothly than she expected.
“Be careful, Ari. First you trust me, then you may actually like me.” He leaned against the wall with a smug grin.
Her emotions ran wild. Arianna tried to get them back under control but didn’t know where to begin. Correcting him on his use of Flor’s shortened name? The ease by which he assumed her trust? The implication that she might actually enjoy him and his company?
Or perhaps it was the fact that, yet again, he reminded her of a woman who was long dead.
“Don’t push your luck.” It was a weak return, and she knew it. But she wouldn’t be too hard on the man, she insisted to herself; she told him she’d liked his newfound sass and it would be contradictory to squelch it.
His eyes followed her as she woke Helen softly, helping the girl out of the cart without waking Will or Florence. She could feel his attention prickling at her magic until she disappeared around a winding tunnel, Helen leading the way. And yet, she still felt his presence long after. It was a shadow connected to her heels, waiting on her as her footsteps echoed through the caves, no doubt audible to his Dragon ears.
That sensation faded away as a hazy dawn faded into view. Helen blinked blearily at the light, the small amount nearly blinding after spending five days trekking with nothing more than torches and the faint glow of glovis eyes lining the tunnel walls. Fresh air kicked the dust around, making no effort to pierce the depths of the Underground. Nature heeded the lines between above and below; it was the boldness inspired by steam and guns and magic that inspired Fenthri to blur it.
“You’re going to make it back?” Helen yawned. “Do you need me to wait here?”
Arianna made a show of pocketing her grease pen. “I can follow the line.” She tapped the mark she’d drawn while walking.
“You’re sure? If we get separated, there’s no hope of finding each other down there,” the cartographer cautioned.
“So go back and sleep, and don’t move for a while—if you can manage that.”
“Sleep, yes, understood.” Helen’s dramatic salute quickly deteriorated into another wide-mouthed inhale of air. She passed the hardened eye of a glovis from hand to hand. It still emitted a faint glow even after the creature’s death, and Ari watched the speck of light as Helen traveled back into the depths.
The fog embraced her as Ari emerged, breathing fresh air for the first time in what felt like forever. Standing alone for the first time in weeks. She wasn’t accustomed to traveling in a pack.
She looked over the dusty plains of Ter.4, a steam engine rolling across the ocean of tall grasses in the distance. Master Oliver had taken her under his wing when she was still so young. They had traveled the world together, just the two of them. And then the Dragons had come to ruin it all. To confine guilds to their territories and initiates to textbooks rather than true learning.
Still, when she watched the sky lighten over the plains, the quiet dawn on a mostly barren land, it looked as it had then—smelled as it had then. Arianna stepped forward, putting Wraiths and Dragons and boons and misplaced Ravens behind her. For a brief hour, she navigated the world as nothing more than a Fenthri woman.
Three hare and a bag full of edible plants later, she returned to the world below. Escapes were wonderful, but impermanent and shallow. She was made of stronger mettle than those that fled into the warm bosom of nostalgia.
The fingers of her left hand trailed through the grease line, following it down and through the winding passages. Silence flooded her, and it wasn’t until Arianna was nearly to their resting place that she realized the source of her unease.
It was too quiet. She heard no breathing, no discussion, no clanking of the cart over the rails as its occupants shifted in their sleep. Her pace quickened and Arianna sped to meet the last corner, already knowing what would greet her.
Nothing.
Her line ended where it had begun in a spot she knew she could not be confusing for any other. Panic swelled to a crescendo and Ari forced it down with a hand on her dagger, as though she could ward off her emotions with golden blades and lock them away behind spools of wire. She stretched her hearing, but stillness greeted her in all directions.
Wherever they had gone, it was far and fast—enough that even her Dragon ears couldn’t pick up the faintest squeal of wheels on rails. Her breathing quickened as the options unfurled before her, and Arianna picked up a faint scent.
It was one she’d come to know on their travels—the crisp, fresh smell of burning wood. Cvareh. Her eyes drifted over to the wall, led by her nose, and Arianna ran her fingers along the fresh scratches in the rock. He had bled here.
Balling her hand into a fist, Arianna screamed, punching the rock so hard blood exploded and her bones snapped. Her anguish echoed through the caves uselessly, the ears she wanted to hear were too far away. But there were more things to hear her than a Dragon and a few misplaced Ravens in the Underground.
She drew her daggers, her bones already knitting, the pain sharpening her mind. A primal hiss echoed up to her, followed by the clicking of pincers. Ari placed the tip of her dagger in the wall, slowly walking backward.
“That’s it…” The sound of metal on stone grated through the tunnel like an alarm for any in the vicinity. “Follow me.”
Helen’s words were still fresh in her mind: no hope of finding each other once separated. Arianna watched as the darkness melted around the shape of a Wretched, lean ropes of muscle suspended over bones and wrapped in the thinnest of pale gray skin. Useless eyes—white and beady—were placed behind the gaping orifice that was once a Fenthri mouth. Acidic saliva glowed faintly, oozing between pincers that clicked in excitement, tracking her movements.
A second emerged in her field of vision, followed by a third. Arianna slowly pulled her dagger away from the wall. At the least she’d draw them off Flor, or try.
“Right, then.” She flipped her grip on her dagger, clipping in the second. “Who’s first?”
The beasts hissed the moment she started to speak. Their long claws scraped against the stone, charging for her with gurgling madness. Arianna let out an animalistic roar in reply.
Wretched and Chimera lunged for the kill.