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Chapter 17



A land beneath hell. It was unthinkable. Ashok had never dreamed that such a thing could exist as a place lower than the sea.

Their trek had begun simply enough, as Moyo had led him up the north coast of Fortress. That part of the island seemed to be covered in ancient structures, including the massive stone walls that gave the island its name in Lok. The walls seemed to be the only things that were manned. It put into perspective how difficult it would be for any warriors who managed to march across the ocean in one of the rare years it had turned to solid ice, as they would have to dash their bodies against those imposing walls, the lowest of which was still easily thirty feet tall, all while being picked apart by Fortress rods. Ashok saw many gunners—or weapons guildsmen as they were known here—stationed along the way. Their lookouts paid no mind to Moyo and Ashok, since collectors and monks were a common sight here.

It took several days to reach the entrance, and though Moyo had tried to explain it to him, either he lacked the words, or Ashok lacked the imagination to grasp the true nature of their journey.

The entrance was an unnatural square, wide enough to fit five wagons side by side, cut into a cliff face less than a mile inside the ocean wall. In shape and style it reminded him of the structures carved into the crater of the Creator’s Cove. Every sharp line had been eroded by time, yet somehow the great constructions of the ancients never completely crumbled into dust.

Just inside the opening was a vast room, its original purpose long forgotten. The floor had been broken by an earthquake so long ago that—protected from the wind—a great tree had grown from the crack. It seemed odd that such a generous space, safe from the elements, wasn’t utilized by the locals, but Moyo had said this place was haunted by the ghosts of their ancestors, and best avoided by any who lacked his guild’s wisdom and the blessing of the church of Ramrowan.

Though none would live here, they must have thought it was a fine place to store their dead, as there were piles and piles of human bones stacked along every wall, thousands of them. Mostly bleached white, but many were coated with green moss.

“Collector dead, trader dead, and the occasional guildsman who demanded the honor,” Moyo had explained with reverence. “Centuries’ worth. These are all our ancestors who braved the down below. Even those of us fortunate enough to die elsewhere get returned here out of respect. If you toil in the underworld, you’ve earned the right. There’s a great many more bones scattered along the way of those who didn’t make it back.”

“An ossuary,” Ashok said, thinking of those who died within the Inquisitor’s Dome. Unlike the malicious intimidation of that foul tower, there was an eerie peace to this place. It seemed dignified. “We have one of these in the Capitol.”

“For your honored dead?”

“The opposite.”

That had only been the beginning of their journey. It had gotten stranger from there.

The tunnel continued for a long ways. The downward slope was so gradual and consistent, it was difficult to notice. The part that was being used for a tomb ended abruptly, and it was almost as if the air they were breathing was different and charged with a nervous energy. At the abrupt line where the bones ended, Ashok had somehow known they were now beneath the sea.

The ocean was hell. What could possibly be under hell?

Ashok couldn’t feel fear like a normal man, but even he had hesitated a moment before continuing downward.

With lanterns held high, they had gone down what seemed to be an endless tunnel. It was spacious, far bigger than the drainage shaft the rebellion used to enter the Cove. There was a trench down the center, ten feet wide, but of unknown depth, because it was filled with murky water. Moyo told him that it was of consistent depth, about three feet deep, and despite Ashok’s concern, nobody had ever seen a demon in here.

As the day went on he began to see strange frogs swimming in the trench, and he was cautioned that no matter how hungry he might become, eating them inevitably caused an unbearable agony in the stomach followed by death. Ashok hadn’t been tempted, but that was still good to know.

Moyo was a wealth of knowledge like that. He passed the time explaining how his guild and the Traders Guild left supply caches all along the way, of food, water, and most importantly, lantern oil. Even their weighty packs would only get them a fraction of the distance necessary. These caches were so well disguised that only someone trained in looking for guild sign—coded symbols chiseled into the rock—would be able to find them. Anyone else who tried to cross the down below was doomed to be lost in the dark forever.

There were occasionally doors cut in the tunnel, or mysterious shafts that dropped straight down into unknown regions below, or sections where the walls had crumbled, revealing open spaces on the other side. Each of those areas was marked with guild sign, and Moyo used them to teach Ashok the written language of his kind.

“Through this gap there was treasure,” Moyo said, tracing the lines with his fingertip. He had cautioned Ashok to always use touch, and feel the sign, as your eyes alone were not to be trusted in the flickering lantern light. “But see that slash? That means it’s depleted now.”

“What manner of treasure?”

“From that square, tile. The ancients made fine tile, smooth, nearly indestructible. Perfect for a collector to fill a bag and bring back to the workshop. And this twisty line? Wire. The ancients’ wire doesn’t rust. But it is all gone now. Anything near the entrance was picked clean long ago, by expeditions sent in my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’s day. Every year my guild sends one expedition just a little bit farther, a little bit lower, to see what we can still find.” Moyo moved from that spot to another and placed his hand over a symbol next to a doorway that opened into seeming nothingness. “And this one? That number means a hundred-foot length of rope will get you to the bottom with some to spare, but the air has poison in it, so you will not return. We are not desperate enough to collect down there!”

Ashok felt each of those symbols for himself, memorizing the cuts with his fingertips, because if something happened to Moyo, it would be the only way he would be able to get home. Ashok didn’t like counting on anyone other than himself.

Moyo talked a lot, pontificating on all manner of subjects Ashok had no familiarity with, and when he wasn’t talking, he hummed a tune. When asked why he did so, Moyo said it was best to make a constant noise, so that the things in the underworld knew there was man about, and to skulk away. They were blind so wouldn’t see their lights, but noise made it so they could avoid each other. Surprise meetings led to conflict.

When Ashok asked, “Conflict with what?” Moyo had simply shrugged. He didn’t know. He’d never seen any of the things himself, but this was hard-earned collector knowledge, passed down through the generations.

It was more than likely superstition. Ashok suspected the real reason the scavengers taught themselves to make noise was because the unnatural quiet would eat at a man’s sanity. Beyond the echo of footstep and the crackle of flame, there was nothing. Never before had Ashok experienced such stillness. In the times they stopped to sleep, it was so quiet that he could hear his own heartbeat. Slow and steady.

Without sun or moon to guide them, they slept when they were tired, and walked when they woke up. At each hidden cache they replenished their supplies, and Ashok was especially careful to learn those markings, because running out of oil was a terrible prospect. It would be too much like being back in that foul Fortress prison, only without the chains. The Heart of the Mountain could sharpen his vison at night, but this place was so pitch black that even Protector gifts weren’t able to help his eyes much.

Moyo was a strange man, even for a foreigner, and it didn’t help that he didn’t have the Guru’s knowledge of proper language, so Ashok was often confused by what he was trying to convey.

“Soon, will be to the clear. We’ll use no fire for a time.”

“Why?”

“So demons don’t try to break in. Simple. Can they break in?” He shrugged. “They have not yet, but collectors never tempt them! It is said that once a collector taunted a demon through the clear, and it remembered, came on land a year later, went straight to his home, and killed him in his bed! Don’t worry. If it is day, there is just enough light to walk through the clear, but also just enough to see the demons watching us from outside.”

“How?”

Moyo said a word that Ashok didn’t know, then thought it over, scowling. “Like glass.” He rapped his knuckles on his lantern. “Or crystal maybe. If it is night, we will stop and rest till dawn. If it’s day, we’ll tie ropes to each other. Keep your left hand on the wall and your right on my pack. That way if there’s a new hole and I fall in, you will catch me.”

As Moyo had said, there was light, though it was extremely dim, and it was coming from the tunnel ahead. They extinguished their lanterns and walked toward a strangeness that Ashok would never comprehend. The clear—as the collector called it—turned out to be a construction the likes of which Ashok had never before seen, as there was nothing in Lok like this.

The top half of the tunnel had turned to glass. On the other side was water.

Endless water.

Even a man without fear had limits, and Ashok had to stop to compose himself.

There was ocean above and all around. It was a view into the depths of hell. There were fish. Swarms of tiny ones, and strangely shaped leviathans floating in the distance. Yet there were no demons, thankfully.

“Ah, we are in luck. It is a bright sun above the world today, Avatara.”

If this was bright, he did not wish to experience what Moyo would consider dim, for very little sunlight made it to the bottom of hell. No wonder demons had no eyes. They would be nearly useless in their home.

“How far does the water extend above us?” Ashok demanded.

“Beats me. I think this is still shallow. It goes much deeper. There’s other lower tunnels and other clears, only they’re so very deep where there’s never no sunlight at all. Or used to be, before those tunnels broke and flooded and were lost to us. I suppose demons live in them now. There’s tunnels like this under your mainland too. Legend is the ancients dug them beneath the whole entire world.”

Hell had a floor. Ashok had never thought of hell having a floor before, but here they were, walking upon it. The ground outside was made of silt and strange chaotic rocks, and monstrous plants in lurid colors that swayed about in some sick parody of a breeze.

“The clear is one thing we can’t collect. Not that we would, because if there was a hole we’d all die in the flood and never be able to collect down here again. But even if we wanted to, tools can’t so much as scratch it.”

Hesitantly, Ashok touched the glass…only it wasn’t glass at all. There was an energy to it, and even without testing, he knew it would be as hard as diamond, for this was a similar creation to that which the Forgotten had placed around Thera to protect her in the graveyard of demons. This invisible substance was the only thing holding back the entire weight of hell.

“Are you alright, Avatara? You’re breathing kind of funny.”

“We are in the home of evil itself.”

“Oh no,” Moyo laughed. “That’s still ahead a ways!”

Thankfully, the clear didn’t extend very far—it felt like a mile at most—before they were safely back beneath rock. Even though the sea was still above them, Ashok felt better when it was out of view.

They had seen no demons in the water. He was glad of that. The Law had taught him that the land belonged to man and hell belonged to demons, but who owned this strange world in between? Who would be the trespasser here? Judges enjoyed debating such questions of legal minutiae. If Ashok had come across a demon, the two of them would have solved the issue in a much more direct manner.


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