Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

El looked back down the wide tunnel the way they'd come, mushrooms of all kinds in unusually symmetric lines along both walls. Bulbous, glowing-blue fungi dotted the lines at regular intervals, lighting up the tunnel and giving everybody enough light to see by. At least somebody had the good taste to organize them so nicely. That was, until something had come along and rubbed entire sections clear, like it had been too big to fit through some of the more narrow spaces without scraping up against the walls. Even the stone under those blank spots had dragging scratches along them, while the floor had gouges torn out all over the place.

If somebody is trying to make this look like seawyrms, they've gone to a lot of trouble. Almost too much… which means it probably actually was those monsters, and not just me being paranoid. So, where are they?

So far—almost two miles into the farming tunnels—they hadn't run into anything bigger than a watermelon-sized mushroom. And certainly nothing with claws, teeth, or a generally bad disposition. The only moving things in the tunnels were the exhausted refugees slogging one foot after the other, some of them barely still upright at all.

"Nidina, how's it looking back there?" El asked into the magic of her communicator.

"Still clear," Nidina responded from the distant end of the line of people. "No sign of any pursuit."

"Okay, thanks," El said to Nidina, then turned to Tas. "Let's call a break. Looks like everybody needs it."

Tas nodded, fatigue present even on his face. Then again, the man had been running and fighting for weeks—it'd be beyond a miracle if he wasn't tired.

"Macer, get everybody settled down," Tas instructed his second. "And get Vel and the others to hand out that food and water they scavenged up from the town. I'm sure people are hungry."

"On it," the woman said, her rifle slung across her back on a leather strap. Without another word to Tas or El, she turned and started down the line, letting the civvies know they could finally rest. Hardly anybody had the energy to even respond, simply dropping down where they were to rest against the cavern wall. A few of them numbly reached up to pull a mushroom down and stuff it into their mouths.

"Oh… I should've thought of that," El said, watching as more and more people grabbed the different color mushrooms. We didn't even need to grab food above… "Are they all edible?"

"Mostly," Tas said. "Sorry, yes, technically, they are all edible, though I'm not sure I'd want to. Most of these are flavorless and used in place of grains for a kind of mushroom bread. Little too spongey for my liking. And they need a lot of seasoning."

"Good to know," El said, poking one of the nearest, lopsided mushrooms. Even if they were all in a line—Great!—they were different shapes, and the more El looked at them, the more it irked her. Tearing her eyes away from the mushrooms before she tore them off the wall, she looked down the tunnel ahead of them, her voice dropping so only Tas could hear her. "No pursuit behind, and nothing ahead to account for what happened to the fort. All this quiet is making me nervous."

"The patrols—whether they're real ones or just for show—will be busy with the town," Tas said then took a long slug from a narrow metal canteen. "As for down here, I'm starting to think those patrols aren't for show. This really looks like seawyrms to me."

"I've never seen one, but even I'm agreeing with you," El said. "All of this would be too much work to try and convince somebody if they were also sending a patrol to 'investigate.' They could spin whatever story they wanted without all the work down here. No, this was an actual, legitimate attack. Which begs two very important questions.

"Where did the seawyrms come from? And where are they now?"

"I'm just glad the answer to neither of those questions is 'here'," Tas responded.

Looking back at the civvies, El could only nod. In tunnels like this, how would they ever be able to protect that many people? Then again, if they knew which direction the enemy was coming from, maybe they could cut them off? It could work.

"Okay, I need more information," El said. "And you promised it to me. Let's start with the seawyrms. Can they dig tunnels?"

"They're more swimmers than diggers from the looks of them," Tas said, then held up a hand when El opened her mouth. "And… I may have an idea about the answer to your first question about where they came from. These tunnels, I told you they go almost twenty miles under the islands, right?"

"Yes," El said.

"Well, one guess what else they go under."

El thought for a second, but it was Laze who answered as the other woman joined the two of them ahead of the line of civilians. "Rivers," Laze said, the word on the tip of El's tongue.

"If you don't think they dug down… a natural collapse?" El asked.

Tas nodded. "That's my thought now that we're down here. You wouldn't notice it, but the tunnels aren't usually this… humid. And the smell's all wrong. It's usually earthy and… mushroomy."

"Not sure that's a word," El said flatly, but a deep breath through her nose made her nod. There was a hint of something she didn't expect in a long tunnel. "A collapse means we're bound to run into a place we can't pass without swimming. That's not good."

A shrug of Tas's shoulders. "Maybe, maybe not. There are a number of side tunnels off what we'll call the main passage here. The collapse might've been in there, or, at least the water could be flowing down that way. These caves go pretty deep, after all."

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"If the seawyrms are as big as you say," Laze interjected, "then no breach is going to be small. We're dealing with water one way or another."

"Yeah, but since we don't know how much—and turning around is out of the question—we have no choice but continuing ahead," El said. "I'm going scout some of this out after Tas here answers a few more questions for me."

"Ask away. I'm enjoying this somewhat cushy, mushroom-covered stone-of-a-seat for my weary ass," Tas said.

El made sure her voice stayed low. "Near the entrance to the tunnel, we saw more bodies that didn't look like seawyrms killed them. The ones that made me think maybe this wasn't them at all. What could've done that?"

Tas grimaced. "I don't know," he said simply. "I took a look at the bodies after my people moved them out of the way, and if I didn't know better, I'd think it was a knife or sword. Or three swords side-by-side. I haven't seen or read about anything traveling with the seawyrms, but that's what it has to be, right?"

"Yeah," El said. "Which means an unknown down here in the tunnels with us."

"You sure you want to go scouting, El?" Laze asked.

"More than ever," El said. "Better I run into some unknown before it finds us with all these people we need to protect. Back to Tas explaining things to us, though. Tell me about those Ashes."

Tas grimaced even harder than he had the first time. His jaw worked as if he was grinding his teeth at the thought of discussing it, but he finally opened his mouth. "The Ashes are a national secret, but," he went on quickly, "that's not why I'm hesitant to talk about them.

"The best, short way I can describe them is as our sin."

"That doesn't describe them at all," Laze pointed out.

"Really doesn't," El agreed. "Why are they a sin?"

A tap on the handle of the gun on his thigh, and Tas met El's eyes again. "Like this—or the Screamers—they're weapons that feed off our Sparks. But, unlike these," he tapped his gun again, "once somebody is connected, they can't be disconnected. They're an Ash for the rest of their very short life."

"Short? Why?" Laze asked.

"Our Sparks aren't like yours," Tas said. "Even our strongest are barely a candle next to your bonfires, and for most of us, handling guns like my soldiers have is the most we'll ever be able to do. To power anything bigger, we need to link up like a big chain to share our power."

"But the Ashes are different," El said.

"Very. The Ashes start and end with the armor they wear—that they're surgically inserted into. Yes, that's right, their bodies become part of the armor. Separable only in death. Electrum wiring is sewn through their bodies, while other parts of the armor is grafted to skin and bone. It's… not a pleasant experience, from what I understand."

"Volunteers?" Laze asked, but the memory of the golem forge from Guld flashed through El's memory.

They hadn't been volunteers…

Tas confirmed El's fear with a shake of his head. "Some, but not always. The process… breaks most people. Makes them subservient to the army." He shook his head again. "That's not even right. Suicidally subservient is more accurate. They won't question orders, and will happily fight to the death."

"What do they get out of it?" El asked.

"The whole point of the fusion between person and armor is to empower the wearer's Spark. To… stretch it. And it works. Oh, how it works. The Ashes are tremendously more powerful than any of my people. The armor is thick and strong, and the stressed Sparks fuel mechanisms that vastly increase strength, speed, and hitting power. They even have the ability to emit beams of pure heat."

"And all this shortens their lives?"

"Oh yeah. The more power they use, the faster their Sparks consume them from the inside out. And that's not even counting their most dangerous ability. As they get closer to death, with their Spark pulled so tight, it's just one small tug from shredding, many of them choose to tear it the rest of the way on their own. Thaaaaaat results in a very large kaboom.

"It destroys the armor," Tas continued, "but the devastation is usually worth the minor loss for the army. They don't all blow up, though; a lot of them just die when their body turns to ash within the armor from overuse. Those suits get… recycled."

"Horror aside at what's being done to the people in the armor, these Ashes sound powerful," El said. "How many of them do you have? How do they stack up against the seawyrms?"

"You're wondering why we're still struggling with the attacks from the water, aren't you?" Tas asked, and El nodded. "The Ashes are a relatively new—What should I call them?—invention. They were developed near the end of the storm, and we had about a hundred of them when the Thaw came. In the last three months since then, they've massively upped production, with nearly ten times that number of suits ready to be filled."

"Which is the other reason the soldiers are running as well," Laze guessed. "They want to put you in that armor, don't they?"

"They absolutely do," Tas said, leaning forward on his mushroom-seat, forearms resting across his knees and looking suddenly tired. "Stronger Sparks make stronger Ashes, and you saw how we struggled with the scale bears. Against the seawyrms, we don't do any better. The Ashes, though? They have a chance. To the people in charge, it's a straight upgrade of our military might, since, right now, soldiers are the only ones worth putting in the armor.

"But, free will? The lives of our men and women? Minor collateral damage."

"And if we return the Ember, when a normal civilian's Spark gets stronger, you're worried they'll start turning them into Ashes as well," El reasoned out.

"Unless we can drive off the seawyrms once and for all," Tas said. "At least—I can't believe I'm saying this—at least with the Screamers, people can survive that. They do survive that, unpleasant as it is. Getting made into one of the Ashes, though…? There's no coming back."

"Screamers. Ashes. Your names are… scary accurate," Laze whispered.

El crossed her arms and walked a few steps away from the other two, needing a minute with her thoughts. What had originally been just returning the Ember had turned into rescuing and escorting a group of hunted citizens. Now, if what Tas was saying was true, could El see them safe and leave it at that? Call her job done, clap her hands together, and fly off into the sunset with her friends? This is so much bigger than what we came to do.

Even without Laze's eyes on her back—El could practically feel the weight of them—El couldn't just leave things the way they were. Pycrin was responsible for a lot of the bad in the world with their pursuit of the Embers, and while the seawyrms weren't a part of that, they were something the Firestorm could help with.

She just needed to convince the brass of that when she got back.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," El said, making a decision and turning to face the other two. "Once we get you and your people safely on that ship, we're going to…"

Screeeeeeeeeeeeech

The hair on the back of El's neck and arms stood on end at the sound like nails on a chalkboard echoing down the tunnel.

"What was that?" Laze asked, just as another long, drawn-out scraping noise made El shiver a second time.

A third and fourth scrape quickly followed, along with what could only be described as rapid suction-cup sounds, and Tas and Laze stepped over beside El. Without a word, El ignited a blue flame sword at her side, while Laze formed one of red fire. Tas, for his part, drew his guns in both hands.

"I think we're about to find out," El said as shadows in blue light danced on the wall at a bend in the tunnel ahead. Then, all at once, a dozen somethings dashed around the corner and ran straight for El and the others. Two-foot-long claws adorned each of the three fingers on their hands, while piranha-like heads topped small, wiry bodies.

"Guess that explains the cuts we saw," Tas said dryly as more and more of the strange creatures flooded around the corner.

"Don't let them get to the civvies," El said, igniting her wings and launching ahead to intercept the pack.