Ash Haven: Descent Chapter 4

The light and heat were even more oppressive than usual today, beating down intensely on the ruins by the time I made my way down to the worksite. There were a few more tarps up over the rest stations, more glittering crystals of water prana pulsing out cool air in the shade where men and women rested, but salvage operations wouldn’t stop for a nasty day cycle.

“Hey, look who's here!”

“Yeah look at that,” I said dryly as I approached the hole I’d delved down yesterday. Amara lowered her right hands, grinning at me from her seat on a broken stump of wall. “You stalking me?”

“Nah, just didn’t have a need for leave anymore, and you did ask for a combat expert,” she smirked. “Ol’ Alexios really doesn’t want any chances taken with your find.”

She was far from the only one here. There were now two wain drivers waiting, and a dozen unenhanced workers. Already a simple hand cranked rope elevator had been built at the entrance I’d dove down yesterday. No more need for fancy stunts. This was why I liked going first.

“Also I am here,” Dimitris said dryly, the ashlander emerging from the crowd of workers, who scattered out of his path. “Told you I would get stuck with the bug sweeping.”

“We the whole team then?” I wondered, I knew Amara was strong, and Dimitris had his specialty, I’d expected a couple more though.

“Two more, but backline, to stay with the squishies and do the delicate work,” Amara replied. “We’re the front.”

That made sense. Even if I felt a little uneasy, knowing I couldn’t use my more offensive array still. I nodded once, and then blinked as Dimitris withdrew his hand from his pack and thrust a bundled package toward me.

“Gas Mask. The association sprung for them, so no complaints when I let loose, eh?” The man said. I took the package, and he pushed another one on Amara, who took it, looking amused.

“Still as indiscriminate as ever, huh Dimi?” Amara asked, taking hers, chitin talons shearing through the packaging to reveal the wide glossy lenses, dark brown leather and bulky rebreather.

“Thorough, the word you are looking for is thorough,” Dimitris replied dryly. “It is not my fault that so many of my fellows have such soft and sensitive lungs, how they get by when a proper ashstorm kicks up I do not know.”

“Thanks for that. For your information, we do it by hunkering down and covering up, like reasonable people,” I said, unwrapping my own mask.

“Bah, the gardenborn I understand, but you I expect better from,” Dimitris scoffed playfully.

“Yeah, I’ve talked to enough of you ashy boys and girls to know you and yours are the weird ones, Dimi,” Amara laughed. “Good thing you’re on our side eh? Otherwise we’d have to risk burning the nest out and bringing the place down.”

“Or you could just walk in and start squashing,” I shot back.

“D’you have any idea how long that would take?” Amara scoffed.

“Ya, keep the timetable in mind,” Dimitris said. “Now we should walk and talk. Put your masks on.”

“Your stuff have any effect on synthetics?” Vee asked, poking his snout out of my pack.

Dimitris paused in turning toward the new elevator. “Not the one I am using, maybe do not sit in it though, eh?”

“Bundle down in the bottom there bud,” I said.

“Ugh, got it,” Vee grumbled, burrowing back down into my pack.

I slipped the mask down over my head. It was uncomfortably snug and hot, but once I tapped the front of the rebreather, activating the air regulation circuit, it got better. With my own circuit, I could feel the air an inch or two above my skin ripple too, it wasn’t quite a barrier, but it’d keep any particulates and airborne toxins off my skin too, I expected. This was a pretty quality kit. The Association did have some nice resources when they could be prodded into shelling out.

The hastily installed pulley elevator jerked and began to descend into the darkness below, carrying us down into the ruins I’d mapped yesterday.

“So, how extensive is the nest, do you think?” Dimitris asked idly, toying with the handle of the long knife sheathed at his waist as he scanned the dark chamber below.

“I didn’t go far down,” I replied. My voice came out with a muffled, buzzing quality to it through the rebreather. “I used the air presence to get the general shape and extent of the lower passages. Only a couple of stragglers up here though.”

“Newer nest then, or they’d have been all over that hall you found, suckling at the prana in the wires,” Amara said idly.

“That’s my thought,” I agreed. The turret would have kept them out for awhile, but I hadn’t seen any remains in that hall.

“Good, good, routine then,” Dimitris said, stepping off the elevator as it crunched to a halt against the sand and ash strewn floor. “Kaz, you just keep your eyes sharp, extra warning if there are any big enough to resist my toxins for a time.”

“Won’t let either of you get touched, promise,” Amara chuckled, following us off last. The ropes attached to the elevator jerked, slowly drawing the platform backup to begin bringing more people and equipment down.

“I feel so secure,” I replied wryly. “Now come on, it's down this way, past the fallen doors.”

We headed into the dark, and I lit my lantern up, showing the way as we passed by the shining true steel doors laying in the dust. They would probably be the first thing hauled up. Amara’s footsteps crunched heavily, covering the sound of both Dimitris and myself as we went down. Turning off the path toward the direction I’d avoided last time, we soon found a crumbling stairwell leading into the lower levels of the complex. The lights set in the wall and ceiling were dead here, the stairs were skeletal, metal frame under crumbling stone.

“Ho, I smell that crawler stink,” Dimitris said. He was taking point, Amara was behind me. “Going active once we reach the bottom. Think you can keep the fumes out of the stair?”

“I can manage,” I said, scanning the cone of light cast ahead of us. There, a shimmer, I focused the light on it…

There was a crack and a squeal, I felt the passage of the air beside my head as the hidden crawler burst like a tube of gore, the thrown stone that had turned its center mass into a splash of goo and chitin shards shattering into chips on impact.

Behind me, Amara grinned, tossing another stone back and forth between her lower lands. “Might want to start now Dimi. I can feel ‘em.”

I could feel it too, the mass of skittering bodies in the dark, displacing the air as they moved.

“Ah well, mind the backwash eh, Kaz?” Dimitris shrugged, he extended his hands as he continued to descend the stairs. The scavenged armor plating he wore clacked and clanked, light from the lanterns glinting off the worn pockmarks and grooves in the metal. There was nothing at all covering his hands as sharp, jagged and poisonously purple circuit lines flared to life on the ashlander’s skin.

I couldn’t see his face, but I did see the lines twining up his neck and stubble covered cheeks. They puffed out, almost comically as he drew air into his mouth. When he exhaled the rancid cloud of fog that emerged was far more than could have fit in anyone's lungs.

It stank, even through the gasmask. A sharp acrid scent that burned at the lining of my throat and nose. The fog was dark, almost black, save where sparks of arcing prana lit it too a dull violet, and it rushed down the stairwell like a living thing. Taking hold of the untainted air currents myself, I gestured, my own whorling tattoos lighting up pale green as I kicked up a breeze, preventing any of the backflow from creeping up the stairwell behind us.

We reached the bottom of the stairs, and Dimitris marched ahead with his arms spread wide, sweeping gestures guiding the gusts of toxic fog that he exhaled even now. Some of it cloaked him, wrapping around the man like a second set of armor, making him a dark and bulky shadow under the lantern’s light.

The hall down here was a narrow thing that branched and branched again, with many doors leading to tiny cell-like spaces. And it thronged with life. Fungal bloom and mycelium spread across the floor and ceiling, thin and sparse here near the stairs but growing in coverage the further I peered ahead through the fog. But more importantly, there were crawlers everywhere. Skittering hissing shapes crawling on every surface, over and under each other. The constantly shifting color of their chitin painting an eye watering pattern that I knew from experience could leave you dazed and dazzled.

Thankfully, the tinted lenses of the gasmask were enough to prevent that.

They shrieked where Dimitris’ fog touched them. The fungal bloom blackened and sizzled, withering and melting. The crawlers' chitin cracked and bled ichor, and little bodies rained to the floor, spasming and twitching as the poisonous fog melted them from within and without.

I’d talked with the man, thought I’d understood what his arrays did, but it was different seeing it in person. Dimitris was a dangerous guy.

But I couldn’t focus on him. “Amara, incoming.”

“Already dead,” Amara said idly, just as a sharp crack sounded, a flicked stone bursting apart two crawlers that had emerged writhing from cracks in the wall behind Dimitris’s walking wall of death.

“Thanks,” I replied, eyes scanning. On edge, I felt for any larger movements, I wasn’t getting surprised today. No matter how much of a headache I got from trying to read the air like this. The lines on my hands brightened, and another pair of squealing bugs were tossed bodily into the toxic mist by burst gusts of wind. I understood the need for the gas masks now. Even With Dimitris guiding his own fog, and my assistance with the breeze, the air down here was turning foggy and dark, acidic even. Without the mask and its array I’d probably be getting a real nasty rash about now.

“I know the Deathwind is impressive, but try not to be dazzled, eh?” Dimitris called back. Shrouded in black fog, his voice reverberated and buzzed. “I need your sense to know where to push!”

“A hundred paces up ahead, the first intersection!” I called back. “That’s the most central point we can get to and still let me block the stairs!”

“Got it! Picking up the pace!” he shouted back over the growing howl of his swirling fog and my own breeze.

I glanced to the side, toward the passages surrounding us. “Amara, big one arriving right.”

“You got yourself handled for a minute?”

The air I’d slowly started to spin up around myself, pushing the dank, tainted air out of my personal space was starting to howl with the speed of its rotation. Creeping Mirage Crawlers barely the length of my forearm were flung away.

“Just worry about the Dire Crawler,” I replied.

And it was a big one, I could feel the vibrations on the floor even before it rounded the corner of the side passage we were passing. The drum of a hundred clattering legs. It skittered on the exposed metal sliding and crashing against the wall as it came around, shaking loose dust and debris Serrated snapping jaws the size of broadswords clashed in front of its dripping maw, sizzling droplets of acidic spit hissing on the ground.

It lunged, and I kept walking. Metal under our feet groaned as Amara interposed herself and stopped it dead. The muscle in her upper arms bulged, one hand catching each blade edged jaw part, muscles flexing under her skin as she grinned, and her two lower arms drew back, positioned to punch.

I grimaced at the flurry of ugly cracks and wet ripping that followed, as jabbing knife hand strikes and punches split apart chitin as thick as armored plate and ripped into the muscle and guts inside. At least she wasn’t laughing her head off while she did it. She was taking this seriously.

“Target space is just ahead!” I called out to Dimitris wrapped in his cocoon of deadly, toxic fog.

“Got it, let's’ get this extermination over with!” He called back, voice distorted and booming.

It’d be good too. This was the boring part.

***

“Yech, I feel like I have been staked out in the waste for a day and a night,” Dimitris grumbled, shaking out his hands. Final wispy trails of deathly black smoke curled around the cracked, withered and blotchy digits.

I eyed his hands with a bit of disgust. “Is that really normal for you? Looks like your skin’s going to fall off.”

“My circuits will repair the damage as long as I have my water tablets. My peoples Deathwind arrays are not half baked garage experiments. Does not mean that it does not hurt like a stone cold bitch, eh?” Dimitris said. “Do not ask me to hold anything for a few hours.”

“Aw, don’t worry bout it Dimi, I can haul for us, if your little hands are tired,” Amara laughed as she returned to us, the crunch of chitin under her feet loud in the now still and silent halls.

The floor was carpeted with dead Mirage Crawlers, mostly ranging from the size of normal insects to the arm sized ones. There were a few of the titans scattered about, fist sized holes punched in their carapace, or with their heads simply twisted off entirely.

Amara wiped a cleaning rag over her own shiny black chitin, scrubbing the ichor off. It was splattered down her front too, orange and yellow drying to crusty brown.

The air was still hazy with the lingering toxic gas Dimitris had produced, and it still sizzled along the air packet generated by my gas mask.

“You would be doing the hauling anyway, ogre-woman,” Dimitris huffed. “Not that there is much to do. It will take a few days for the Deathwind to fully disperse, this floor can be left though, can’t it Kaz?”

“Far as I can tell, there's a floor below, but it collapsed, need real digging gear for it.”

“Right, could haul the debris out, but it’d probably just collapse,” Amara said. “We head back up to start peeling off panels and getting into the guts of the treasure trove?”

“I’ll have to set an air filter at the top of the stairs, but it seems about right,” I said.

“It's wonderful when the association foots the bill for kit, no?” Dimitris said, rising off of the metal shelf that he’d seated himself on while Amara was out, scouting for any surviving crawlers. “Let us meet up with the backline team and get on to the next phase then.”

“Geh, I’ll leave that to you Kaz,” Amara said. I could sense the grimace in her words.

“...Guess you weren’t the only one who didn’t need their leave anymore huh,” I chuckled, beginning to head back toward the stars.

“Ah, heard that ‘round the canteen. Earned another’s ire eh? You are going to run out of ladies like that,” Dimitris said, following after.

“Ugh. I don’t make any secret. I ain’t looking for anything but fun,” Amara grumbled, slouching behind us.”

“Why?” Dimitris asked idly. “Never did understand why you are so insistent.”

“I’m going home one day, and you Ashlanders don’t do well in Garden,” Amara shrugged. “Hate to see some pretty thing catch the lungbloom trying to follow after me.”

“That’s the one where you start to choke to death on growing fungus and if this does not kill you your ribs explode?” Dimitris asked. “Suppose that is an answer.”

“That’s the one.”

Most of the world was ash and dust and desert. Garden was different. Lush jungle,with abundant water, but packed with bacteria, fungus and viruses deadly to non-natives.

“Augmented can handle it though, with the right arrays,” I said idly.

“Maybe, but I don’t think they’d wanna, I ain’t gonna ask anyone to uproot and remake their array loadout,” Amara said with a shrug

“Honestly, that is fair enough, more chances for Dimitris, eh?”

“Dimi, how many months has it been since there’s been anyone else in your tent again?”

“It is my choice! I have been taking a lot of work!”

I tuned them out as I rooted around in my pack for the air filter, pulling the leather wrapped metal box out to squint at the instructions stenciled on the side. As I did, I felt movement in my pack and Vee’s head popped up in the corner.

“Ugh, it stinks…. But I guess everything went okay?” he asked.

“Sure did.”

Guess the Deathwind of the Glass Steppe is pretty impressive after all,” Vee said.

Man, I should probably pick Vee’s brain more often. I think he assumed I just knew the same stuff he did.

“Of course we are! Alone of the eastern tribes, holding our sacred caverns against all comers since the Scouring, never once forced to move!” Dimitris shouted forward.

“Yeah, yeah, just glad it’s not all talk,” Vee said, twisting his head around.

“The stank does half the job I’m sure,” Amara chuckled.

“It is bracing to both spirit and body,” Dimitris scoffed. We were mounting the stairs again. The array inside of the air filter was starting to work, the device humming in my hand as the side opened, horizontal vents giving a glimpse of the internals as it began to pull in air.

“Oh yeah, Kaz, old Belshazzar manage to fix you up right? Alxeios said you had a damaged circuit,” Amara said idly, as we exited the stairwell.

“Yeah, the new etching just needs to set right,” I replied. “Tuned of my wind array too, looking forward to testing it out.”

“Wait the whole week Kaz,” Vee scolded.

“Ech, that one's a bit off, wish he would put skin on,” Dimitris said, shaking his head. “How did you even end up as a Gholam’s ward. It is like pulling teeth to even get most of them to talk outside of business.”

“Well, Gramps is a lot chattier,” I said dryly.

“Aye, and I’ve seen the way it makes the others eye him,” Dimitris shot back.

“Gramps is Gramps,” I shrugged defensively. “It's not like he likes them either.”

“Eh leave it be, Dimi. There’s only the handful of them around anyway. Maybe it's just personal grudges, none of our business,” Amara said.

“Few as they are I suppose most everything could be,” Dimitris shrugged, accepting the end of the conversation.

I frowned though, walking ahead. Gramps called his kin blind, hidebound fools, or ‘collaborators’. What they were collaborating with I had no idea. Probably whatever imaginary enemies he insisted were spying on him sometimes, but that I’d never noticed any sign of. When I’d asked him about it when his head was clear he just said they lacked ambition for innovation and had always held him back.

Well, that wasn’t something to share around. Gramps had always treated me well. I wasn’t gonna air his private grievances.

I let those thoughts pass from my head as I saw lights ahead, and heard the quiet sounds of voices emanating from the entrance chamber ahead.