Chapter 17: Secrets Beneath

  "Research Log, 17 Years, 19 Days (Day 5,828)

  "So to close my research logs I’ll say this. I believe I accomplished what I set out to do, and what others have tried before me. I have made a true Animal Intelligence. A true animal diordna. I have given the form and intelligence of diordna kind to an animal, a form and intelligence once reserved by Dytie exclusively for machine.

  “And based on my experience with Mada I believe that Dytie has given him a soul.”

  Mada ’s hands shook and his brain felt numb as he walked deeper into the boulder forest. He didn’t know if he’d killed Iakedrom or not. He almost wanted to go check, though he wasn’t sure if it would be to finish the job or to try and help the na.

  He was disturbed by his own brutality. The last time he was in a fight he’d only accidentally killed someone, but this time he’d initiated the fight. He’d seen Iakedrom creeping through the shadows, tailing him, and he couldn’t allow his enemy to get the drop on him. So he’d bated Iakedrom around a rock that had thick shadows, and he waited.

  When the fight started something scary and previously unknown to Mada awoke in him. A violent creature surfaced, fighting desperately to survive. He didn’t even think about trying to negotiate in the moment. He wasn’t sure he thought at all while they fought. His heart still pounded as he thought about it, almost as though he were still fighting.

  He stopped a moment in his wandering through the boulders and leaned against one of them, breathing to try and calm his racing mind and heart. He reached up to remove his mask and wipe the sweat from his face, only to remember that he wasn’t wearing the mask anymore. He’d left it back with Iakedrom’s body. He stopped with his hands held in front of his face, moonlight glistening off the oil covering his gloves.

  Hands shaking he removed the gloves and tossed them aside, then he wiped his forehead. He was feeling dizzy, so he reached into his food pouch and pulled a carrot out. It was just the first thing he grabbed, though it wasn’t really his favorite. He didn’t actually feel like eating despite feeling hungry, but he ate anyway. There was something comforting in the act, and after a moment the dizziness subsided a little along with the shaking in his hands. He looked at his gloves in the dirt but decided to leave them behind and stood.

  Something huffed loudly nearby.

  Mada froze, listening closely to the night. He heard the breath again, a little closer. It was clearly the breath of a mount, coming from the direction he’d come from. It could be Nagemai, but it was as likely that it was one of Iakedrom’s officers. He looked around for a good place to hide and wait to see which it was. He walked swiftly away from the sound.

  Then he heard another breath, somewhere ahead of him, and instantly knew that Nagemai had not returned for him.

  He turned away from the sound, speeding his steps so he was moving as quickly as he could without being too loud. The sounds of sniffing mounts grew closer, closing him in, and he pushed himself between two large boulders, looking desperately for a good place to hide. When he emerged on the other side of the boulders he saw only blank rock faces, shadows being cast across the area, but none of those shadows seemed sufficient to keep him hidden from a pursuer that could see better in the dark than any diordna.

  He sped up, worrying less about the sound, eyes searching desperately around. The breathing drew closer despite his increased speed.

  Dytie, please.

  A sharp chuff came from just on the other side of a boulder beside him. If he didn’t find a place to hide he would be caught.

  Then he saw it. A boulder with a crack running from the ground up to a little over Mada’s head. It was barely wide enough that he could just squeeze through, and he couldn’t tell how deep it went because of the shadows cast by the moon. As he rushed to the boulder looked around to see if there was a better place to hide. As he reached the crack he saw the head of a pursuer appear from behind a boulder.

  He prayed it would be deep enough, removed his bag and held it in one hand, then squeezed sideways into the crack.

  He pressed himself deeper and deeper into the crack, surprised at how deeply it went into the boulder. His chest rubbed against the rough rock, scraping it a little through his shirt, and his cloak caught on the rock behind him, tightening it uncomfortably against his neck.

  Suddenly he stumbled out of the crack, and for a moment he panicked, thinking he would be exposed to the moonlight and his pursuers. But he found himself in pure darkness, unable to see. He felt around blindly, touching the walls of what he could only describe as a small room at the center of the boulder, its walls smooth instead of rough like the entrance. He couldn’t guess what could have smoothed a rock like that other than water.

  He held his eyes wide as if that would help him see in the darkness. He slung his food pack over his shoulder and felt around, trying to find the crack in the side of the room again. His foot caught on something jutting from the ground and he stumbled, nearly falling to the ground.

  Suddenly the room lit up with dim bioluminescence. The floor was vine, with bioluminescent portions woven into the others. The vines climbed partway up the walls of the dome-shaped room, and now that he saw the space he was even more confused by the smoothness of the walls. With the room now lit he easily spotted the vine that had caught his foot. It was pulled up slightly, revealing what looked like a glowing trigger branch beneath. Mada stooped and pulled on the trigger.

  And the floor vines began to shift, twisting around each other and pulling themselves up against the walls to reveal a tunnel beneath the stone.

  Dytie, is this what you wanted me to find?

  The vines settled into place at either side of the entrance, and he stepped carefully down into the tunnel beneath the vine floor and began walking, following the path lit by bioluminescent vines down into the ground. The incline was steep at first but shallowed to a more comfortable angle once he was about twice his height below the boulder room. The entire thing seemed to be cut from stone and smoothed like the room above. It was very obviously not natural, though he couldn’t fathom how water could have been directed by diordna to cut into the stone so precisely as this. The only explanation he could think of was that no diordna had done it.

  This tunnel had to have been carved by Dytie himself.

  Mada continued downward, following the wide curve of the tunnel in what seemed to be a massive left-turning spiral into the depths of the earth. He walked downward for several long minutes, and he thought he was several stories below the surface when the tunnel straightened out ahead of him and he saw its end ahead. It was too dim for him to see well at a distance, but he could make out a door, though it was strangely smooth like the walls and it seemed to almost be reflecting the bioluminescent light from the vines crawling along the walls of the tunnel. When he got closer he saw why.

  The door was made of metal.

  His stomach turned, his legs and hands began shaking, and his head began to swim again as it had after his fight with Iakedrom. He stumbled into the side of the tunnel and used it to support him, closing his eyes to try and stave off the dizziness.

  Someone had made a door out of corpses. It no longer had clear features that would identify it as such, but Mada had heard about the craftsman and seen the descriptions of how he pounded diordna skin into flat reflective sheets and wrapped objects in it. This door looked to have been made the same way. He nearly turned back right then, but he stopped himself. He didn’t come all this way to stop here. After the sacrifices of so many around him, he needed to see this through. Ekivia wouldn’t have given up here.

  For himself and for her memory, he had to know what Dytie wanted to show him.

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  The swimming in his head calmed and he took a deep breath, pushing himself away from the wall. He approached the door, paused momentarily with his hand outstretched. He really wished he still had his gloves, but he couldn’t risk going back to grab them now. He just had to stop thinking about it, close his mind to what was happening.

  He pressed his hand to the door, leaning into it and stepping through in one motion.

  The door opened into what seemed to be a single roomed cavern larger than any building he’d ever seen. Only instead of stone everything seemed to be made of metal. Unnaturally steady bright lights shone throughout the cavern, making the entire space seem to be in daylight. He was standing on some sort of ledge raised ledge in the tip third of the space that looked like a net of metal with inch wide diamond shaped gaps between the metal netting, but it didn’t sag or flex under his weight. It was completely stiff, and extended like a bridge several yards out over the room. Railings like polished diordna bone ran along either side of the platform, and at its end was a large box covered in metal and a large glass top like sorrow filled eyes. The metal skin on the box had obvious seams, cut in precise lines and stuck together like seams on clothing, though he couldn’t see any stitching. To either side of this box were stairs that led down the hundred feet to the cavern floor.

  On the floor below he saw what looked to be huge tubs of oil and other diordna body fluids, and in other places corpses lay heaped atop one another. They were organized by skin metal color. At one side of each pile were what looked almost like small swarms of metal birds, though they only had long necks and beaks with no other features. These swarms of reflective metal birds picked and tore at the corpses, then laid the pieces on a long metal table that moved like a river, carrying the bits of diordna down toward a fire at the far end.

  Mada’s legs stiffened, then buckled, and he fell to his hands and knees with a loud clang that echoed across the cavern. His stomach heaved and he watched the vomit pass through the metal net and fall slowly to splash on the floor far below. He wanted to stand, to stop touching the metal, but his head swam and his body shook so badly that he was struggling just to stay on his hands and knees.

  His mind didn’t want to believe what he was seeing, but each time he blinked he saw the same thing. A room made from the dead. Creatures made from metal eating diordna corpses. He looked around again and saw massive crab's claws the size of pursuers, shifting the dead to make them easier for the carrion birds to reach. Apparently they couldn’t walk. As the claws shifted the pile they completely crushed the chest of a diordna. Mada wasn’t close enough to hear the snapping crunch of bones breaking, but he heard it in his mind. The corpse didn’t leak oil as it was destroyed, none of them did, but that almost made it worse because it meant they were drained dry into the vats he’d seen earlier.

  Dytie had led him to hell.

  His body heaved again and tried to vomit, but his stomach was empty so nothing came up. He had to get out of here. He started crawling back toward the door. It was only a body length away, but with his limbs shaking he could barely lift them. He spit the taste of bile from his mouth, glancing around involuntarily. Then he gagged again. Closing his eyes didn’t help, the images were burned into his mind beyond his ability to expel them.

  There was something strange about this place though, and his mind latched onto the thought as a means of distraction. Hell was supposed to be filled with the screams of the damned, but the only sounds here were the strange noises of the claws and beaks that tore the corpses apart and a low buzzing sound he couldn’t identify that vibrated through the entire cavern. These damned were just corpses, their souls gone from their bodies, no voices left to scream. But if this wasn’t hell then what was it?

  Dytie why would you bring me here?

  Slowly Mada managed to push himself to his feet, using one of the bone railings for support even though the cool touch of it sent a chill through his arm and down his spine.

  “Who are you?” A woman’s voice asked. It echoed through the entire chamber, though it wasn’t a shout.

  Mada froze and looked up sharply, glancing in all directions but seeing no one.

  “How did you find this place?” The voice asked, echoing again. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. “I get the feeling you weren’t invited here.”

  “I was!” Mada shouted in the room, still searching for the source of the voice. “Dytie brought me here!”

  He pulled his sleeves up to expose the marks and held his hands over his head, hoping the speaker would be able to see them and know what he said was true. Though, it was just as likely that they wouldn’t know what the marks were at all.

  The voice laughed, sending a chill through Mada. It wasn’t a malicious laugh, but it echoed ominously through the cavern, bouncing off metal walls and clashing eerily with itself.

  “That you believe Dytie sent you is evidence that you weren’t invited,” The voice said. “And you don’t need to shout. I can hear you just find. How did you even find this place?”

  “These marks,” Mada said at a normal volume, though it felt strange to speak so quietly when he couldn’t see who he was talking to. “Dytie gave them to me and they led me here.”

  “For a human you have a lot of faith in the diordna god,” the voice said. “Why don’t you let me see those tattoos of yours.”

  As the voice said this one of the panth sized claws suddenly swung across the cavern at incredible speed before stopping beside the platform where Mada stood. The tips of the claw faced him like a bird might when looking at a bug in the dirt, but he couldn’t see any eyes on it and thankfully it didn’t peck him. If it had he was certain he’d be crushed as surely as that corpse had been earlier.

  He gagged a little at the thought and tried to refocus his mind on the conversation. He finally thought he knew who he was talking to, and he thought this conversation was why Dytie had sent him here. He was speaking with the undertaker of hell.

  “How exactly did Dytie give you these marks?” The voice asked, humor and disbelief gone from her tone.

  “The whole story would take some time to tell,” Mada said. “But I touched a piece of diordna skin. It came to life and marked me. Then a nawo I was with translated the marks and they led me here.”

  “That seems an unlikely story,” the voice said. “But those marks do indicate this region. And I don’t think Maharba would have given them to you.”

  “Maharba knows about you?” Mada asked. It was the first piece of information the voice had let slip.

  “I guess that confirms my expectation,” the voice said.

  Mada decided to try and press for more answers since the voice seemed willing to give them. “Is this hell?”

  “Not exactly,” The voice said.

  “If not hell then what is this place,” Mada asked.

  “You don’t want to know that,” the voice said. “And even if I told you I don’t think you’d understand it. Besides, it’s Maharba’s secret to tell.”

  Mada sighed and turned away from the claw. “I guess I’m done here then.”

  He thought he might be able to get more answers, but he was feeling dizzy again. He needed to leave. He could come back with Nagemai later and get more answers. Maybe she’d have some insight into…

  He was suddenly lifted off his feet by the claw. It wrapped around him, gripping him tightly, a little painfully, but not enough to crush him like that corpse before.

  “I’m sorry,” hell’s voice said. “I can’t let you go until Maharba gets here.”

  **********

  Maharba arrived at the stone forest a couple hours after he felt the signal from Mahkram. The undertaker couldn’t send more than a vague signal though since they no longer had any antennas above ground. But that he’d received a signal at all told him something had happened. He arrived only to discover that Iakedrom’s team had been unsuccessful in catching the fugitives and Iakedrom himself was unconscious at a hospital in a nearby town. Still, his search parties were doing their job in the area though they hadn’t found Mada yet.

  And Maharba was pretty certain they never would find him.

  The only reason he could think that Mahkram would call him was if someone had entered hell, and since Mada had its coordinates marked onto his body it was a logical conclusion to think that Mada was that someone.

  Maharba squeezed through the crack in the stone and found the tunnel entrance open. He jumped in and ran down the tunnel to the metal door.

  He always felt like he belonged down here more than he did above ground, with his smooth, reflective body and ancient design. But he’d been selected to stay above and Mahkram below. To this day he wondered if he had been the best choice or if she should have been the one up above.

  He threw the door open with more force than he intended, eager to see what Mahkram had to show him on the other side.

  “Well hello Maharba,” Mahkram said, her voice filling the room. “You got here fast.”

  “I was already on my way when I felt your signal,” Maharba said. “I’m guessing you’ve had a visitor?”

  “So you knew about it?” Mahkram said, and one of her large claws swung around to show Maharba the young adult human it held. “I thought we agreed that making more humans was a bad idea.”

  Maharba sighed. “We did. But this one slipped past us.”

  “That’s not like you,” Mahkram said. “And it’s especially not like Selraef. Are there any more of them?”

  “No,” Maharba said, then he focused his attention on the human. “Mada I presume?”

  “I am,” the human said.

  It opened its mouth to say more, but Maharba wasn’t interested.

  Sighing, he drew his cnido and fired a bonelette through Mada’s left eye.