The Maid Is Not Dead

I was going down and going fast. I had been regrettably close to the shores of the Styx before, more often than I'd cared to keep track, but this was the first time when I genuinely thought my number had come. In all the preceding cases, some small probability of survival had persisted—in theory at least—but at this very moment, I could perceive none. It was a full encirclement of the blackest despair.

The channel sent me plummeting into the unmeasured depths of the Vein, whence there would be no escape without wings. I was not equipped like a gull, so my only lot was thereby to dive to my doom, with the hollow of the earth as my final destination. The land's pull swayed all material things the same, though my learnedness could not tell me what it was about lower surfaces that so appealed to us.

But though I'd braced myself for an extended downward trend, the flight ended much sooner than I reckoned it would.

Without warning, I plunged deep into freezing cold water, which halted my helpless dive. My broken bones bent and groaned painfully at the abrupt deceleration, and for a time my head was too full of pain to mind anything else. But gradually, I came to realize what happened.

The genius dwarves! Against my assumption, they never allowed outside water to pour wastefully into nothingness. Of course, how could they, in a realm otherwise devoid of springs and wells? The channel on the upper floor emptied to a grand tank carved directly below its exit on the floor below, not a drop spilled in vain. The collected water and my mistreated figure alongside were sent surging down another rock-hewn canal at a slight downward angle. The stream took me on with a tempestuous rush, and at last expelled me unto a heap of trash in a wide, high-walled basin with an open top.

The sinkhole had no solid floor, only a coarse metallic grating. Any larger pieces of garbage that the water bore with it were caught in the sturdy net whereas the more fluid elements slipped through the gaps unchecked. Workers would then presumably collect and dispose of the trash, but it had been a while since anyone showed up for work, and the filter chamber was near full with miscellaneous clutter that had made it past other checkpoints higher up the line. And now there was a maid added to the stack.

I was not pleased to be grouped with garbage, but, admittedly, telling the difference would have been difficult on the outside.

It was a wonder I still had consciousness. I could barely move at all, my lungs steadily filling with blood, less and less room left for air in there at each short, forced breath. My arms were frightfully leaden, my fingers like they had great weights bound to them. There was no leeway for mistakes in the execution. Focusing all my lingering strength and will on operating the joints of my index finger, I traced the lines of the Sigil.

Elemental gate: Sanatio.

"Heal...! Guhaack…!"

An all-new dimension of agony assailed me as the Power poured into the broken ribs and smashed muscles, with brute force sorting out the bent bone arcs and rebinding the shattered ends. The magic didn't excel at this sort of delicate doctor work, having no higher mind or intelligence to guide it. All the formula could tell was that the state of my body at present did not match the state it was supposed to be in, necessitating a straightforward reorganization of matter. The user's personal comfort played no role in the equation.

I had never needed to restore damage this extensive before, nor could I imagine beforehand the torment I would be in when I would. Unable to hold my voice, I howled like a beast, thankful no one was there to see or hear me then. I had to stop short, though, to cough up blood from my mending lungs and hurled up such a shocking amount of red, I could only wonder if there was any of it left. With that thought, I proceeded to pass out like stone tossed in a lake.

The darkness that took me was not eternal. I eventually woke up to a rat taking a tentative bite at my hand. Its small jaw was not strong enough, nor its teeth sharp enough, to draw blood, but it pinched unpleasantly all the same and caused me to jolt wide awake with a yelp. I swatted the rat away and immediately shuddered at the effort, feeling absolutely abominable.

The slightest motion sent the surroundings revolving in my throbbing, aching eyes, and I shivered and trembled, rigid as a board all over. The magic had failed to fully fix me and the fractured bones had inflamed while I slept, bringing about a high fever. The spell would not recreate the lost blood either. I was dehydrated and hypothermic to boot, napping in such a place in wet clothes. I was never sick normally, but now got to experience everything I'd ever missed at once, in all its loathsome glory.

I cast Sanatio once more. I only had a little Power left after reassembling a quarter of my rib cage and the affected muscles and organs, and the reserves had not recovered much in my coma. The spirit didn't exist in isolation of the body. The strength of one could somewhat make up for the weakness of the other, but having both drained put you more than one foot in the grave.

Making a full recovery on the spot was not possible, but the spell did help lower the fever a little and warmed me up.

Feeling somewhat more solid and less like an empty, tanned hide stretched over a pound of gravel, I let the spell fade. The rest was up to folk cures.

I removed my backpack with effort. As tight as the knapsack had been closed, it was not designed for diving. The interior was half-full of water, my possessions swimming merrily in the stew. I had to remove my supplies, lay them on top of the summit of trash, before I could turn the knapsack upside down and pour out the water. The tinder and firestarter were useless to me today, as were the spare underwear, thoroughly soaked as they were. But fashion was not my concern.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I needed food and drink to replenish my strength. The provisions were packed separately and securely—or so I'd thought. But water found a way. The waybread and crackers had soaked up moisture in their pouch, mixed and mashed into an unappetizing mush. I fished out a strip of sopping wet jerky from its pouch, but the mere smell of the greasy, salty pork nearly made me retch on the spot. I was not going to stick that down my throat, even with pliers.

I tried a bit of the mushy cracker paste. It tasted like nothing, but I could handle no more than a pinch, and keeping even that down was a struggle. My body was too weak to welcome anything tangible. I thought about drinking a restorative potion, but the type I'd bought was meant for treating open wounds and bleeding, while I was technically not injured anymore. Such strong solutions weren't meant to be ingested "just in case", and even medicine could become poison if misused. Meanwhile, a spirit restorative would have been appreciated too, but Master Vivian had cautioned me against having one on an empty stomach. Physically weakened as I was, the risk of cardiac arrest was real.

Some good was medicine that you couldn't use.

Of all the possible pinches to wind up, I'd found the worst one, and none of my preparations were of help.

I made do with water, sipping it half a spoonful at a time. At least there was no chance of that getting any more wet than it was, nor did it kill me quickly. And drinking even so little did make me feel a tad better, like I was a plant showered after a week in desert heat.

Still wholly wretched all around, I surveyed the scene.

I sat like a cherry on a dessert bowl. I couldn't stay camping in this junkyard for long before things worse than rats would find me. Not while my primary weapon was out of commission too. I had no idea where I was or how to get back up to the residential area of Arden, but the direction was not so important right now. Anywhere was good, as long as it wasn't here. The only thing to focus on was to start moving and stay on the move.

"So much for my constitutional…"

The engineers had kindly installed a ladder on the wall of the otherwise smooth-sided container, which I used to drag my abused self onto tidier land. On each rung, I had to pause to catch my breath and wait for the dizzy spell to pass. To think I'd been skipping along rooftops not so long ago. The feat seemed nothing short of superhuman to me in my current state.

Above awaited a very clinical, barren hall with facilities for waste disposal, including a row of large cast-iron ovens, now rusted through, cold, and useless. Once firmly on level floor, I went to lean against the railing guarding the empty back end of the hall, and stared into the empty desolation of the Vein, which I had so narrowly dodged for the second time now. I looked up and down and east, trying to spot anything a little familiar to help pinpoint my placement on the map, or a way up. Not much to look at that way. Only the slide that had brought me here, but it was one way only. Slowly, I turned right to the west and shifted my gaze up, and there my pivoting was arrested.

Perhaps two hundred yards away and above my level stretched a bridge over the void.

A strong bridge of stone, which reached all the way across the canyon from wall to wall, the Vein at that point growing more narrow than elsewhere.

There it was, the Mirth-Mawe market bridge, which old Mr Klaus had told me about earlier in spring, which now seemed like a lifetime ago. The long-lost phantom of suspended architecture, the very thing I and so many others had sought through the ages and paid dearly for the seeking. My thus far futile exploring and centuries of hearsay had already rendered the bridge downright mythical in my mind, a fantasy that I'd more than half dismissed as an unattainable dream. Now it caught me sincerely by surprise with its sudden, tangible reality, practically within arm's reach.

It actually existed. The wild channel ride had delivered me past the district border, all the way to the next burg. Very far from home, but the closest yet to the Imperial House I'd been since the rueful day I had reluctantly left it.

I couldn't care less about my sickness now.

The mad flame of hope was rekindled once more in my bosom, with an almost painful, compulsive burn, along with the adamant will to see my duty done.

I made my troubled way up from the water refinery and followed along the outer edge of the emerging township towards the looming shadow of the bridge that so boldly defied the pull of the planet, which the rest of us could not contest, and day after day emerged victorious.

Then, at long last, I stood facing the regal crossing up close. It had no compare in the land under the sky, if it did under ground. A solemn plaza heralded the bridge head, which lay seated between a pair of grand pillars, lofty and wordlessly challenging. Mr Klaus had called the venue a popular meeting place, but I could see now it was much more than a date spot.

Upon the strong frame of the bridge, on both sides, were assembled houses. Small wooden cabins growing out of the sidelines like mushrooms; old shops and kiosks, where undoubtedly many a thing had been up for purchase once, local goods, souvenirs, and imports from foreign lands. This had been the true link between the north and the south in its time, where cultures came and collided in the battlefield of trade.

But the glory days were in the beholder's imagination now.

Those stores and the stalls in front of them were long looted empty, turned upside down and inside out, stained by age, by arson, and murder. The doors were torn off their hinges, the windows smashed in, everything of no practical use scattered around over the wide bridge face and left to lie. Spiked cavalry obstacles obscured the way, here and there broken through with the strength of trolls.

No corpses were left visible from the past battles. A careful observer might pay note to an occasional piece of armor, a shield, an iron-plated boot, or a weapon, kicked by the wayside, a few still hooked up with the bearers' bleached, brittle bone limbs, which scavengers had missed and cobwebs tactfully sought to mask from view. That was the market bridge of today.

And, as Mr Klaus had forewarned, the way was occupied.