004 – Climb

***

The first elevator shaft smelled like a sewer. In fact, raw sewage dripped down the walls. Mushrooms and bracket fungus sprouted from the stuff. An unknown amount of material had accumulated below on level negative seven. I left the area before someone above me had the chance to flush.

Xlobats infested the second elevator. These were smaller than the previous specimens, about the size of raccoons. They wheeled through the air and screeched loudly. I had a sword but did not trust myself to fight them, especially while climbing. They could keep that route for themselves. I moved on.

The third elevator was monster and moisture free. It would have to do. If the power station used freelifts instead of electrical contraptions, I could have simply floated up to the top. But small aetheric arrays could be damaged by the mana fluctuations.

I had a little more confidence in my climbing ability this time, because it did not belong to me. My mind had not expelled everything from its new brain. I could remember the language, for one. Athletics also felt more natural. Climbing was as familiar as walking. The more I thought about something, the harder it became, so relying on instinct worked better.

I took a coil of rope and tied one end around my waist. This was not a safety precaution. The other end attached to my haversack. It weighed too much to climb with. After climbing a level, I would haul it up behind me. I still carried a torch to light the way. A meager stock of eight torches limited my time down here. If this climb took too long, I’d be stuck in the dark.

With better confidence, I began the ascent from level negative five to negative four. I didn’t rush, however. The former anchor points for the elevator’s metal frame served as a ladder. I swept the rust and sand out of these divots with the butt of the torch to improve traction. The grit would sometimes get in my eye, but that was better than slipping. I methodically climbed the vertical shaft and reached the next door in no time.

I stopped to pull up my luggage. The haversack banged into the walls on the way up. I took a celebratory swig of lukewarm water. My first success proved this alternate path was viable. All I had to do was not fall to a gory death.

Thus I ascended the old elevator shaft. The gap between levels measured about twenty meters until the last one. A greater distance stretched between the underground complex and the ground floor of the superstructure. I remember that part of the elevator ride taking longer. At level negative one, I stopped a minute to rest my arms and legs before the toughest part of the climb. Waiting too long was risky, because the golem might have access to this area. I lit a new torch and headed back inside.

The torchlight did not reach far up the shaft. I didn’t know the exact distance left to go, and didn’t want to think about the distance to the bottom. I had to bring more rope to uncoil behind me.

Everything went perfectly. It might not compare to what the three sword maniacs could do, but it impressed me. I was almost to daylight and freedom.

“Wait a second. If ages have passed by, the top of the station will be as crazy as down here. Getting an airship home might be impossible.”

As I wrestled with this thought, the torch slipped from my hand. I watched in horror as it sank into the depths and winked out. Pitch black darkness enveloped the pit. I was completely blind.

Part of me wanted to follow the torch into the abyss and get this torture over with. A smarter person would have left a second torch burning next to the luggage, so as to keep a backup fire going. I had not done so. Now all the flames had gone out. Going down to get a fresh torch would do no good without matches to light it. And clinging to the side of a wall hating life would accomplish nothing either. The only way was up. Into the nothingness.

Climbing in the dark wasn’t much more difficult than before. The divots in the wall were regularly spaced and easy to find by touch. And I no longer needed to handle the inconvenient torch. My worries started to abate when the next problem arrived. The elevator shaft came to an abrupt end.

I felt around the ceiling of the shaft. At first I thought the elevator car blocked the way. But it couldn’t be the car with no metal frame and steel cable to hold it in place. Further inspection revealed the ceiling to be made of wood timbers. The recessed divots held in place wooden beams that stretched across the open space. Those formed supporting joists for flat planks.

Someone had built a house in this elevator.

The wood platform confirmed my suspicion that the superstructure had not gone unchanged over time. This particular piece of home renovation caused me some distress, since it blocked my escape route. Also I was very high up. The planks creaked as I pressed against them. They were old or poorly crafted. A few good kicks could break them, or a hefty blow from an ax. But my only tool was the blade broken off a knife-pole, and I was in no position to do any kicking.

I found the most boards’ flexible spot, in between two crossbeams, and dug in with my knife. Scoring the planks gave them a good breaking point. Then I pushed and punched until they cracked apart. After making a small opening, I looped my rope around the boards and pulled until they broke free. Plank by plank, the hole widened to human proportions.

I raised myself in to the wooden structure and lay down on the floor. The first section of the climb had been easy, but the second part completely drained me of energy. A long climb followed by mid-air carpentry left me aching and exhausted. Splinters stuck out of my hands. My arms felt heavy as lead. The luggage was too heavy to pull up.

I closed my eyes. It was possible that everything would be back to normal on waking. All this could be a bad dream that would vanish in the morning light.

***

Sleep brought bad dreams. Terrible visions. Fragments of Strythe floated to the surface. These did not recall exact memories of past events or unearth definite facts. Like in all dreams, identity was murky. People and places, real and imaginary, bled into each other. My mother was there. She might have been mine, or Strythe’s, or an archetype of motherhood, like a player in a mask. Her hair was on fire as she chased me through the streets of the metropolis. A mood of horror and fear colored everything. People had swords too big to lift. The streets were slick with blood instead of rain. Monsters roamed the land. I think they were actual creatures Strythe had seen in person, not just fabrications. He yelled at me in anger, but I couldn’t understand the gibberish coming out of his mouth.

I only slept for an hour or so before the cold woke me. It had not been restful. My arms were still sore when I hauled the supplies up to the wooden platform. I set them down and laid the ropes around the hole in the floor so as to mark the spot. I didn’t want to step into the void after everything it took to get this far.

The place was totally dark, so I explored as a blind person would, using my hands and feet. The wood platform plugged the elevator shaft, but it ended there. I felt the cold stone walls around me. On the other side of the platform, I found a heavy lid connected to hinges. The trapdoor opened a meter away from my hole. All that emergency carpentry had been pointless. My hatred for this stupid thing increased a hundredfold.

Not counting the new hole, the elevator had three exits: a hatch down, a ladder up, and a door out. The wooden door replaced the original sliding doors for the elevator, so it lead out to the ground floor. I was somewhere near the central silo that housed the mana transmitter.

Leaving my luggage behind temporarily, I advanced into the upper station. The door slid aside and gave access to a room filled with wooden barrels. One of the barrels was open, which I found out by sticking my hand in accidentally. The barrels contained pine tar, the same gunk used to make my torches. Now it covered my hand. This room presented a real fire hazard. It was good I didn’t traipse in here with an open flame.

A stack of barrels half blocked the elevator’s sliding door. It had either been forgotten about or purposefully hidden. A layer of dust indicated people rarely came into the old tar room. It was not a busy juncture.

Outside the storage room, I crept into one of the long utility tunnels running through the center of the station. Not much had changed on the ground floor. The main difference was that a great mass of mergestone surrounded me instead of naturally formed granite. No light penetrated these buried corridors.

My hand ran along the wall as I felt my way forward. The corridor bent at odd angles, but did not split into separate paths, so I didn’t risk getting lost. Sometimes my boots banged against small rocks and sent them skittering across the floor. With no stimulation, my eyes produced amorphous blobs that drifted in my vision. Several times they tricked me into thinking something was ahead. If I was in darkness long enough, the fireworks would twist into full blown hallucinations.

A diffuse light appeared faintly at the end of the hallway. I had to blink and shake my head to be sure it was the real thing. But the glow increased as I approached an open archway.

A hundred monsters held a feast on the other side of the portal. Great bonfires lit the chamber with unsteady light and cast long shadows across its floor. The dark silhouettes of monsters passing before the flames gave a good outline of their forms. Unlike the xlobats, these monsters had a roughly human shape. They had long arms, short legs, and hunched postures that gave them an ape-like appearance. Fur covered their bodies. Pairs of horns grew from their skulls, much like those from a goat. Those to the sides of the bonfires were better illuminated, so I could see their hideous faces. Short tusks protruded from their lower jaws. They had sharp teeth which they used to rend meat from the bone. The bloody feast served animal carcasses ripped into chunks.

Encountering mutated bats paled in comparison to seeing humans turned into savage carnivores. Their bodies twisted into ugly forms. The monster men had regressed into a bestial state, their intellects dimmed by time. Judging by their shouts and yelps, they retained a rudimentary power of speech. Often they would spit and growl at their pack mates, sometimes falling into fights over a choice piece of animal flesh.

Not only had humanity diversified into separate species, so had its language broken into many tongues. The monsters spoke in a manner that Strythe never learned, so it made no sense to me either.

The trolls fashioned crude tools compared to those belonging to the three women. The monsters carried knife-poles and wooden disks. For clothing, loincloths covered their waists and strips of fabric wrapped around their feet; thick coats of fur sufficed for everything else.

The feast took place in the power station’s central silo. The circular chamber rose to the top of the superstructure, like a tall chimney or a deep water well. A tiny circle of daylight could be seen a hundred meters above, but very little light reached to the bottom of the silo.

The giant transmitter had disappeared. On the raised platform that once supported it, bonfires raged around an ugly statue representing a deformed baby. The monsters built the fat baby’s body out of clay, which the surrounding flames baked hard. The statue’s round head was of better quality, made of gold or brass. It rested on the top of the clay statue like a ball in a cup. The baby’s hideous face squeezed its eyes shut and opened its mouth as if in a frozen scream. I did not approve of the monsters’ interior design.

After seeing this, I had no desire to introduce myself to the new inhabitants of Power Station Thirteen. They might invite me to the feast, or they might serve me as a second course. The group did not look friendly. My sword remained bundled up with the rest of the supplies back in the elevator. I didn’t know how to use it and did not want to rely on Strythe’s uncertain proficiency with a blade. I retreated from the door.

Small rooms, which once contained power equipment, clustered around the edge of the silo. The monsters had converted one to a kitchen. Hot embers flickered inside a cob oven. The smoke escaped through a chimney into the silo. Racks held food, cutlery, tools, and metal cauldrons. No one occupied the room during the feast, so I let myself in.

I used a pair of tongs to pull live coals out of the stove and shake off the ashes. They went into a large metal pot. Some slow burning coals would serve as a home fire. The elevator had plenty of wood scraps to feed it. I stuck one of my torches in the oven until it caught fire.

The light of the torch revealed a kitchen filled with horrors. Dried blood caked a wooden cutting board. Cockroaches scurried under the tables. Bones soaked in bubbling pots on top of the stove. This place was not up to health code. I looked around for anything a normal human could eat.

A nearby box contained blood soaked rags. Pulling one up by its corner, I recognized it as a quilted jacket like mine, the uniform of a novice. The box also held cast off pieces of black armor. On the counter lay a sword with a broken blade, now being used as a kitchen knife. A human head lolled up to the surface of a stock pot. The outer skin had peeled away, revealing the grinning skull beneath.

These monsters really were man eaters.

Cooking a meal in this place was out of the question. I grabbed my pot by its handles and hastened out of the gore splattered kitchen. The utility tunnel connected to the central silo, so the other direction lead to the edge of the station. I would go back the way I came, stop to pick up my supplies, and head towards the outside.

Leaving the kitchen, I skulked through an adjacent supply room stacked with firewood. A loud hiss from the corner startled me. Something moved in the shadows. The torchlight fell upon an iron cage in one corner, and a small monster glared out with hateful eyes.

“Gah!” I yelled, almost dropping my pot.

“Human stupid,” it said.

The green skinned monster was the size of a child, just over a meter tall. It had an ugly face, but not as bestial as those at the feast. Apparently this little guy had not been invited to the party. It belonged to a separate species of mutant-monster-men.

“Wow. You can talk. I mean, you can speak a language I understand.”

“Human talk stupid.”

“Well, sort of,” I said. “What are you doing in that cage?”

“Troll catch Nimblesto. Troll keep food.”

“Uh… I understood ‘catch’ and ‘food.’ They’re saving you for dessert, huh?”

“Troll eat human. Troll wait goblin. Troll cage Nimblesto,” he said in a raspy, high pitched voice. His words were simple, but he had a clever look to his eyes. This monster was only half the size of the others, but he possessed a more sinister disposition. “Why human sneak castle? Troll hate human.”

“It’s a long story. Quite the comedy of errors, really. But I don’t want to bore you. I’ve got to be on my way…”

“Human open cage!” he demanded. “Human free goblin.”

“I’m a little busy at the moment. Sorry. My hands are full.” I didn’t trust the little creature. He had pointy teeth.

“Nimblesto talk trolls. Trolls find human. Trolls eat human.”

“Resorting to threats already? That’s not a good way to establish to trust.”

“Ai-yaaaah!” the goblin let out a screech. He grabbed the bars of the cage and shook back and forth like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

“Quiet! Shut up!” I hissed. “Fine. I’ll let you out. Just cork it before the monsters show up.”

Nimblesto stopped screaming. He gave a wicked grin, unable to conceal his delight.

The cage had no lock. Trolls lacked the skill to forge mechanisms with small moving parts. A hatch on the top of the cage could swing open on hinges. Heavy bags stacked on top prevented the goblin from forcing his way out. It was too heavy for the little monster to lift. To release him, I’d have to move about a dozen bags of grain. Each weighed about twenty kilograms.

“Human fast open.”

“Hold on.”

Before I could get to work, a pair of monsters came to check on the screaming goblin. Their gruff voices preceded them. I quickly doused my torch and grabbed my pot. Before running, I warned the devious little monster.

“Keep quiet, goblin. I’m your only ticket out of this dump. And don’t forget it.”

I retreated from the storage room to the kitchen. It was the only place to hide. I placed the pot on top of the stove, where it wouldn’t look out of place, and wedged myself between two racks of tools.

The trolls shouted at the goblin in the cage. He spoke to them in their language of growls, either making an excuse for yelling or betraying me to the trolls to win their favor. I sweated in the shadows, trying to breathe softly. Cockroaches scampered across my feet. I had my knife in hand, holding onto the nub of wood that now served as a handle.

One of the trolls entered the kitchen. It poked through the food simmering on the stovetop. The stew of dissolving brains gave off a rancid odor, which the troll sniffed appreciatively. This must have been the chef.

The other troll grunted loudly from the hallway. Then both of them left, returning to the bonfire party in the central chamber. I exhaled slowly.

“Human open cage,” the goblin said. He hadn’t given me over to the trolls. He probably wouldn’t attack me. That was about the best I could expect this place.

“Yeah yeah. Keep quiet, you little pest.”

I moved the bags out of the way one at a time. Halfway through, I stopped for a moment to listen for any approaching trolls. Once the bags were removed, we raised the hatch. The iron hinges creaked loudly. The little monster man hopped out of his jail cell.

“Nimblesto free! Nimblesto smart, fast, best! Human stupid.” The goblin couldn’t contain his joy. He danced around the storage room. From the kitchen, he swiped a sharp knife small enough to fit his tiny hands. He was now armed.

“Okay. You’re free. Have fun out there,” I said warily.

I left Nimblesto to fend for himself. He had already distracted me too much already. Once the trolls saw he escaped from the cage, they might raise an alarm. I had to move before they started searching the building for the escapee.

Back at the tar room, I made sure to keep my torch away from the barrels. Now visible, the barrels leaked out black fluid, which formed sticky pools on the ground. Piles of straw added to the hazard. One stray spark could light up the whole place.

I started ordering my supplies, coiling the ropes and packing the haversack. Outside, I’d probably have to camp in the woods, so outdoor gear was critical. Everything vital went into my haversack. The empty water bottles could hold extra tar for making my own torches later.

I hated being in the woods. There were bugs everywhere. It always rained. Mud covered everything. Pebbles got in your shoes. People who camped for fun were deranged.

“Why human hide room?”

“Gah!” I yelled. The goblin had sneaked up on me.

“Door hide room. Room hide what?” He stuck his head through the door and peered around the elevator shaft.

“It’s hiding me. What are you doing here? You’re free now. Go be free.”

“Nimblesto go castle, sneak trolls, look treasure. Nimblesto find, grab, take.” He pointed at my luggage accusingly. “Human steal.”

“I’m not stealing. I salvaged this stuff. It’s totally different.”

The annoying goblin invited himself in. I was about to leave this place behind, so it didn’t concern me. He could snoop around or steal whatever he wanted. I ignored him and kept packing my bags.

“Where ladder go?”

“No idea. I came up through the hole. Hey! Wait. Don’t climb up there.”

The goblin zipped up the ladder like a monkey. He could steal things from the trolls, sure, as long as he waited until after I escaped. His antics were going to bring trouble my way. I already regretted letting him out of his cage.