Aether Engineering

Chapter 43

Hydrabridge

The Voidlands North of Maston

Deep below the surface of Hydrabridge, light was hard to come by. One tunnel in the mine shaft the locals had come to refer to as the depths was filled with that light though. Climbing this far down wasn’t possible with an open flame. Instead, the light that revealed the violent scene in the tunnel came from aether contructs.

The lamps were simple constructs. They contained fire mana and when a switch was flipped on them, that fire burned in a very limited fashion, producing a dim glow. Nearly fifty of them must have been brought down into the tunnel. Silas had observed each pair of miners bring down a lamp.

The miners of the depths were many things, but they weren’t wasteful. Silas shifted the young man he had pulled onto his shoulders. The man had been beaten horribly. Silas expected that his ribs had been cracked, and he was covered in more bruises than Silas himself. That was saying a lot coming from someone who had been pinned to the ground and beaten by a stormbird not two nights before.

While there must have been a large number of lanterns in the area, the tunnel was currently only being lit by a handful.

Silas counted the lanterns with half his mind as he paid attention to Myles with the other.

Samuel barely stopped himself short of laughing when Myles suggested negotiations. Silas could see the very moment when that laugh was stifled. It just so happened to coincide with a second look at Myles’ spear.

Had he not noticed the runes that Myles had forged into the weapon, Silas was certain that the foreman would have chosen to ignore the truce Myles offered. He would have trusted in his numbers and overwhelmed the two arcaners.

Instead, Samuel drew up short, holding his arm out as if to keep the miners at bay. “Why should we parley with overseers of that swine!”

The word swine brought an unbidden image of Officer Rolance to Silas’ mind. The officer’s heft made an image of the man as a pig particularly easy to call up. Be that as it may, Silas was not in agreement with the murderer’s insult.

Officer Rolance certainly hadn’t displayed the same level of nobility as other soldiers they had met in Hydrabridge like Lenas or Lira. That was, however, exactly why Silas imagined the baron had assigned him command of the mines.

If Lenas had been given command, Silas had little doubt that he would struggle to make the calls needed. A soldier like him was more sympathetic than Rolance, but commanding in the mines required if anything, a lack of sympathy. After all, at the end of the day, the military wasn’t here to help the people. They were here to ensure that metal continued to flow into the hands of aether engineers. While more lenient policies may have improved the lot of the people of Hydrabridge, those same policies would mean fewer constructs, more dead soldiers, and greater danger everywhere in the province.

Myles looked around at the miners, especially those who surrounded Samuel, the pseudo-arcaners. “We aren’t overseers. We’ve only just arrived yesterday.”

A quiet murmuring swept gently through the miners. Confusion showed on several of the faces, more common on the young men in the crowd. Many of the older members of the crowd were less willing to listen to some stranger, especially one who shared many characteristics with the soldiers who watched them so carefully.

One of the pseudo-arcaners near Samuel whispered in his ear. Samuel simply shook his head, cutting off the man’s attempted communication. “Some of my compatriots believe you are with the new group of overseers, the ones who rolled up to the gates of our town.” Samuel gave a slight laugh. Silas realized he was giving a performance. His words weren’t for negotiation with Myles. They were for galvanizing the group of workers around him. “I should remind everyone that the baron has begged for their aid, taking a knee and asking the leader of these other soldiers for more security. He was shot down! The baron is nervous. He knows he cannot contain our anger, and we know that he will receive no aid!”

That was interesting news. Rufus had led them to believe that he had some sort of disagreement with the baron. Silas may have been concerned had he not doubted Samuel’s ability to gather accurate information. The man did, after all, live in an isolated community at the very bottom of Hydrabridge’s mine.

Three lanterns were on the wall they faced. Three more were mounted directly opposite. Two odd lanterns were held in the crowd. With that information, Silas was ready to start his plan. With the miner’s attention largely taken by Samuel, there would be no better time.

Hauling the young man with him, Silas walked up to Myles. “I’m going to extinguish the lanterns.”

Myles gave a subtle nod.

Silas evoked eight balls of pure mana. In an instant, the tunnel was plunged into complete darkness. With the dark came chaos. More than one miner attempted to scramble for their lantern. Shouts of alarm were mixed with the sounds of miners tripping over each other. The echo that came from the tunnel only added to the panic.

Silas grabbed Myles’ arm, firmly dragging him further down the tunnel. In the earlier fight, they had passed through the bulk of the miners. Now, they had no time to pass back through. Their only option was to push further into the tunnel.

Some of the pseudo-arcaners were able to realize there was still a threat in the room. Silas heard three sets of footsteps pattering against the stone, lunging for them. Myles met the charge. Seconds later, three large men hit the ground.

Silas and Myles made good their escape as the first lanterns began to light. Among those who had got their hands on a lantern was Samuel. The dim orange glow of his lantern sparked off his eyes which appeared like embers in the dark tunnel.

The man was smart. He didn’t rush them right away. He gathered his men, calming them. Before long Silas knew, there would be a party of miners chasing them.

Out of spite, Silas evoked one more ball of pure mana around Samuel’s lantern.

Luck played out for Myles and Silas. It seemed this tunnel split off. As soon as they rounded the corner, the minimal glow of the lanterns showed what looked like a shadowy labyrinth. At least five different paths led out of the tunnel.

Two of them were major passages. The other three looked more like crevasses, large enough to fit a person, but small enough to make that person wonder if they might not find themselves at a dead end around the next bend.

Myles made the choice, rushing into the crevasse on the far left. Silas followed.

Before long, they heard the echoes of the miners advance behind them. They must have taken the larger passages because their voices quickly faded into the distance.

Hearing this, Silas set the young man they brought with them down. He was barely aware. While Silas had been carrying him, Silas had felt the man pass out on his shoulders.

The group sat there in the dark for some time. Myles tried to speak, but Silas cut him off with a hasty whisper, waiting for the miners to give up completely.

Tick tick tick. The sound of water rhythmically hitting stone was all that continuously pierced the darkness. Occasionally, Silas would catch the sound of quiet breathing beside him from Myles or the young man who had sat in a stoic, pained silence. It might have been Silas’ imagination, or a trick of stone walls, but Silas could swear the occasion growl or snarl made it to his ears as well.

After an hour, Silas finally decided that it was time to have a discussion. He turned to the young man. “What did you mean about the foreman keeping a beast down here. It sounded like he wanted to use it to attack the soldiers stationed here.”

A pained gasp was all that came out at first. Silas waited Patiently. Eventually with hesitance the boy spoke. “At the end of one of the tunnels here, he keeps a monster sealed up.” The boy gave a shudder. “Its larger than anything I’ve seen down here, and its breaking free of the trap Samuel caught it in.”

All of a sudden, Silas heard a noise from above. A familiar growl. An instant later, a horrible wet tearing sound came from the direction of where the young man had been sitting. A warm splatter hit Silas and he reeled back in disgust and horror.

Silas grabbed the spear from his back and thrust forward, knowing that the young man was already dead, torn apart by whatever monster had leaped down on them.

Impact came to Silas in the form of a shudder through the wooden haft of his spear. The monster gave a pained sound. When Myles lanced it through with the spear he held, the beast gave its death throes.

The incident wasn’t to end there though. Though it was too dark to see your own fingers in front of your face, Silas’ hearing had been honed through the time in the dark. Now, he could hear more growls from above. By his estimation, a pack of Ogren had snuck up on them.

“Run!” Myles shouted and Silas agreed. The pair shot out through the maze of narrow stone walls. Silas ran directly into wall after wall, accumulating bruises and making plenty of racket for the pack to follow.

After only a minute, the pair ran into what seemed like a larger room. Silas turned around. This would be a good a place as any to make a stand. He listened carefully to the noise of claw on stone, judging the right time to thrust his spear.

Once again, Silas felt impact, but he was soon forced to let his spear go as another of the ogren leaped over the beast behind it, letting out a fierce roar. Its claw slapped against Silas’ cheek. If not for his commuted armor, his face would have been torn to shreds.

As it was, Silas fell back in surprise. Even surprised and in the pitch black, Silas’ training came to bear. He swept about him with his leg, knocking down two of the beasts. Behind him, Myles rushed to his aid, skewering one of the fallen creatures.

The battle lasted only a short while after that. While they were unable to see, Myles and Silas’ commuted armor was able to protect them from the wild blows the ogren managed to land. The fight continued to the very last monster. Even after the beasts must have realized they were outmatched, they flung themselves greedily towards them, looking for a killing strike even if it meant their own demise.

At the end of the fight though, the two young arcaners came through physically unscathed. The bottleneck provided to them by the narrow crevasse had meant that only one or two ogren could push through at once.

Silas dropped to his knee shakily as he heard the last of the beasts fall. In the heat of the moment, Silas had lost all sense of direction. He had no way of knowing which way led out of the maze they had seemingly found themselves in.

The dark felt more oppressive than anything Silas had faced before. Here they were, lost in a maze of tunnels deep beneath Hydrabridge, covered in blood from the young man they had been with, someone whose name Silas had never even learned. The situation felt hopeless.