NOVEL FROG Cavern Exile: Deep Island
Chill water subsumes me. Its fingers grasp wetly at my skin through my armor and drag me down. I do not resist. A cold grave is fitting punishment for all the suffering I have caused. No: it is a reprieve.
I feel my fingers grasping at the clasps of my iron breastplate. I will them to stop, but they keep moving, like steel-garbed worms, pressing buttons and clicking aside little levers, digging in and snapping pins where they come against resistance. Weight falls away from me, and I feel the water’s grasp slip. I begin to rise.
I thrash and kick to try and move myself downward. In the process my ankles clash themselves together, undo the clasps of my greaves and boots. Then I’m spinning upward in a current, the abyssal blackness at the bottom of the trench growing distant. Desperately I want to rest there, lay my head down in the blackness, but the weight of the water is growing less every second.
A spire of stone approaches. I force myself to swim toward it, and attempt to dash my body against it. Yet I misjudged its shape in the twisting water; it’s no spire but the gentle slope of a mid-river islet. I impact it, feel the rough stone scrape my skin. The rest of my armor, bar my gauntlets, comes away on the stones then I’m out and breathing the dark damp air.
Heartseeker is still in my hand. Its glow, that dark glow I was so proud of and which separated me from the rest of the runeknights, is faded almost to nothing. I lay it down. My right gauntlet is dead too, heavy. I take it off and lay it beside Heartseeker.
Staring down at them, I wonder why I’ve saved myself. What my purpose is. I wanted to find my brother so badly that I was willing to sacrifice everyone, and now the key to him is gone too, sinking to the bottom of the abyss with my breastplate.
How many did I end up killing for it? Half my guild, that makes about thirty, plus another dozen burned beyond recognition, and then Hayhek and Yezakh.
What makes my brother worth more than all them?
I stand and walk up the slope of the islet, which rises from the river, a strange wedge, unerringly even, with low walls at the sides. A pattern of circles is engraved into it halfway up, memories of long-dead history. I trample over them up to the top of the ramp and lean over.
A line of moonlight down the center of the river, the only light that makes it down past the in-leaning chasm walls, is shifting and rippling on the water. I look along it and see white foam being flung up from vicious spikes but one hundred feet away.
To jump now would be final release. The damp breeze chills my sodden clothes and the skin beneath. The stone feels rough under my feet: here is the last ground I will ever stand on. I turn and look for one last time upon my steel creations.
“Goodbye,” I whisper.
A dark swell throws onto the stone a figure in battered steel. He lies spread-eagled behind Heartseeker and my gauntlet; the lapping of the river is shifting his left arm and left leg up and down in a steady rhythm, but that is his only movement.
“Hayhek!” I shout, and sprint, slip and slide down the inscribed stone. I throw myself down beside him and pull him onto his front. His armor is dented and torn junk. I begin to rip his breastplate away—no easy task. No matter how desperately I force my hands to hurry at the latches and clasps, I cannot pull the steel away quickly.
Finally I manage to get it off. I watch his chest. No movement.
I push down on his chest with both hands, trying to drive life back into him. He lets out a gurgle and a little water laps out. He chokes, and more splashes out. There’s another period of silence as I desperately continue the compressions—I saw this done once before, outside a flooded mine. He coughs and splutters, more water comes out and he spasms onto his side, begins to convulse. More water gushes from his nose and mouth, then he’s hacking and gagging, vomiting up the rest.
“You’re alive!” I say. “You’re alive!”
He curls into fetal position. I watch his side rise and fall rapidly, then I lie back, exhausted. My thoughts of suicide are gone. If I can keep him alive, I can atone in some small way for what I’ve done. Even then, I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive myself, but at the moment it's all I can do, and to abandon him here would be the same as killing yet another for my selfishness.
Our situation is dire. We have plenty of water but no heat, no shelter, no food. And barely any equipment to allow us to seek out those needs safely, and defend ourselves from the terrible beasts that lurk here.
I can’t afford to worry about those. First thing we need is food. Although us dwarves are hardy we are not so hardy that we can survive on air.
Fish. Are there fish down in the river? Time to find out.
I take Heartseeker to where the side of the ramp is a few feet above the waterline, some way away from Hayhek. Of course in the darkness I can see nothing but Heartseeker’s weakened blood-seeking sense might be able to help—though I’ll have to put more strength into my stabs than I’m used to. I lean forward against the low wall and angle it down, place its tip in the water.
The tip moves slightly, but I think that’s just from the natural eddies in the water. I wait, relax my strength as much as possible. I feel a slight tug and stab but no resistance meets the blade. I curse and draw back, wait to try again.
My next few strikes have the same luck. The strip of moonlight slowly diminishes, perhaps as one of those mythical clouds comes over the sky, leaving me in total blackness. Heartseeker twitches to the left and I stab, this time meet resistance, but whatever it was I must have just glanced it. At any rate when I lift Heartseeker from the water I can feel no weight on the blade.
Cursing, I stand up and go to check on Hayhek. I pat around the stone for a while until I contact him. He’s slightly warmer, but no dryer in this damp breeze.
“Hang in there,” I whisper to him.
I make my way back to my fishing spot and let Heartseeker dangle in the water for a while longer. A while longer turns into a long while longer. The strip of moonlight returns then turns to warm orange, a horizontal beam of fire gently shifting and shimmering down the river. I can vaguely see cave mouths across past the riverbank, but to get there would be a hard swim.
I could manage it maybe, but not Hayhek, not without strength.
Patience. Fishing is about patience. Yet most fisherdwarves, those few that make a dangerous living by the clear pools of the stalagmite forest, don’t have the clock of death ticking in their ears. Patience is not going to be enough. I will have to try something drastic.
I cut open the tip of my little finger on Heartseeker and let the blood drip into the water. I reflect that this is the exact same thing I tried on my first trip down to the caverns. I’d wished to bring up a salamander—how naive! I was lucky to get the beast I did.
What will come up this time? If anything at all.
It doesn’t take long until I hear something splash down from the riverbank. I watch a hint of rippling movement travel toward me; it gets faster as it gets closer.
I back away and raise Heartseeker for the attack. The beast leaps from the dark water—I see long webbed and clawed fingers, a wide head with needle teeth, and the rest of it is a shapeless dark mass. I give a quick stab to its midriff with Heartseeker, but my instincts are off and though I hit, the blow is far too shallow.
Its front legs get hold of the low wall and it swipes with thin claws, forcing me to dodge back a few steps. The black beast gets its back legs up, or rather its middle legs—the back ones come a a second later. I have no idea what it is, but I can see one thing for sure. It has plenty of meat on it.
No armor either, not even scales; neither is it much bigger than me.
It charges and snaps, and I dodge automatically to the side. Heartseeker aims toward its neck and I strike hard. Blood jets. It slashes again, sluggishly. A second later its bulbous eyes roll and it collapses, bled out.
I smile grimly. I thought the deeper you went the worse the creatures? I start to carve out chunks of flesh, but hear another splash from the riverbank, then another two dozen at once.
Far too many black masses are cutting through the water toward me. I swear under my breath and rush to Hayhek, pull him further up the slope. Then I slash away the dead creature’s back legs just as the first of its fellow rears out the water and puts its front paws on the stone.
With incredible strain I heave the mutilated carcass up over my head and throw it into the water. The black beasts back up to writhe in a feeding-frenzy whirlpool, snapping and biting. I watch in horror as a couple smaller ones are torn apart in the excitement.
I brace with Hayhek behind me, Heartseeker out in front. Yet the black creatures, satiated, drift back to their riverbank.
We won’t be striking out for the left side, then.
I walk to the right side of the ramp and look across.
There’s no bank there, just a wall of solid rock.
Oh, shit.