***
The mess they’d left behind them was a grim reminder of what may lay ahead in the musky, rough maze of caves under Ered Domas, the mountain where upon the Kings of Nomos dwell. Bo was leading the party in nearly complete darkness. She’d lit her eyes up just so that there was enough light for them not to trip badly or fall into a suddenly wide, gaping, deep chasm. They could feel the gentle, soft-spoken wind touch their skin from time to time, but still the caves seemed to go on forever. Only Sisyphus directions kept them going without getting utterly lost.
“What about traps? There could be traps lying around,” Theo whispered with a hiss. Master Sisyphus answered, as if lecturing one of his apprentices: “These old mines had been used for safeguarding thousands of refugees back in the Warm Age. No-one but sages and the odd adventurer ever roamed these tunnels again since then.”
“What if they set traps?” Theo insisted, sounding rather concerned about it.
“I thought elves can detect traps. It’s supposed to be like a sixth-sense,” Sisyphus replied, and elicited Lernea’s laughter.
“Next thing I hear, they can see dead people as well,” she said grinning in the dark.
“Well, can’t you all? I mean, don’t you see dead people? Like the mariners in the ship?” Theo said in all seriousness.
“Those were phantom constructs. They came with the ship, actually,” Master Sisyphus said with a gruff undertone.
“In any case, even if we can detect traps, I wouldn’t know what to look for,” Theo said and shrugged.
“You’re not supposed to look for them, they just spring to mind, if you’ll excuse the pun,” Sisyphus argued.
“I can detect traps, but I need reagents,” Bo sent to Theo and Lernea who instantly asked out loud, “Carrots?”
“No,” Bo sent, like her feelings were hurt. “Never mind,” she sent and continued to hop in advance, her feet barely heard on the bedrock.
“You’re talking to the bunny, aren’t you?” Damon asked from the back.
“Be silent,” Sisyphus told the boy sternly, and both boys intoned with a knowing, failsafe monotone that implied nothing, “Yes master.”
The party continued on, passing through rough-cut service tunnels made by man as well natural crevices that widened abruptly or became barely passable. The whole underground tunnel system was filled with caves, large and small; housing room and storage space indeed, by the looks of it. They hurried by, following a twisting and turning path as directed by Sisyphus who seemed to have recorded the whole map of the caves in memory. He gave simple, short directions at every junction, and Bo hopped along in silence, lighting their path.
The boys weren’t exactly restless but they could be heard whispering idly from time to time. Invariably, Master Sisyphus turned and gave them a look, which somehow penetrated the nearly complete darkness and made the boys fall silent once more. There was even the hint of a shudder when they realised there would be serious reprisals when the proper time came.
“We’re here,” Master Sisyphus said gravely, looking up into the rocky ceiling in the hazy ambient darkness.
“Are you sure, Master?” Lernea asked, having almost no idea or indeed the capacity to recognize the place.
“Of course I’m sure,” Sisyphus said and poked the ceiling with his staff to emphasize. “This is old, nay, ancient rock. It’s where the old cistern was carved out back in the days of Grumgold Theosporos.”
“Then the drainage plug must be nearby,” Lernea said nodding to herself. “Bo, lights,” she said and the next instant the cave filled with a clear, bright light that seemed to come from nowhere in particular. The vision that filled everyone’s eyes made them freeze in place, holding their breaths. Everywhere around the cave’s walls which was large enough to be a king’s court, there were strange, egg-like things clinging on to the rock and dirt like outrageously oversized clams. Even in the stony pillars that held the ceiling, interspersed around the cave, these odd eggs lay, scaly and silvery, fish-like in appearance, yet trembling and pulsating like living things should.
“By Skrala, what are these things?” Lernea asked noone in particular with a hushed voice.
“They look like eggs of some sort,” Theo noted and nodded enthusiastically to himself, as if biology and the sciences were suddenly a particular priority.
“An infestation. A hatchery of some sort. This is not natural, it is the Ygg’s doing. By the Gods, these Ygg are a devilish plague; we must move swiftly. Imagine what would happen if these things hatched,” Sisyphus said with a furrowed brow.
“Something would grow out of them?” Theo asked plainly, unfazed.
“Precisely. More Ygg,” Sisyphus replied with his thoughts firmly on the task at hand and cautiously moved forward. “There’s the plug, that circular plate of metal over there,” he said and pointed with his staff to a manhole cover, jutting out of the ceiling at the end of a wide cast metal pipe a few yards away. “We need to get to the Walled Garden. It is where the so-called monument is being constructed. Does everyone remember the layout? We need to move like shadows. If things get out of hand and we’re forced to fight, make it quick. Whatever lays in the Garden, it must be destroyed. Speed is of the essence. Do you understand, Theo and Bo?” Sisyphus asked eying the elf grimly.
“I think I do. Just get there, right? Bo says she does as well,” Theo replied, squinting his eyes as he focused on some particular egg for no reason.
“My queen?” Sisyphus asked Lernea and she simply nodded with understanding and determination written accross her face.
“Damon, Fidias, stay close,” Sisyphus prompted but did not receive the usual reply his young apprentices were always eager to sputter.
“Boys?” he asked once more and looked behind him only to discover they weren’t where they were supposed to be. A quick look around the cave unveiled their whereabouts; they were poking a couple of the eggs with their daggers, giggling and toying with each other, as if the eggs were just one of many curious toys.
“Blasted furnaces!” Sisyphus shouted, his voiced raised to an echoing din. The boys froze, realizing they’d done something wrong. Their heads drooped, even as one by one, the eggs started sprouting open, in the shape of a certain exotic peeled fruit.
“That’s strange, isn’t it? They seem to be sensitive to sound,” Theo remarked as if they were just there for the science.
“Really, now? Not exactly helpful,” Lernea said and drew her bow, nocking an arrow deftly in the process.
“I was merely pointing out a possibility,” Theo insisted, oblivious to the ever-mounting sense of danger that seemed to be crawling up everyone’s spines.
“You’ll be fetching water until after you’re dead! Move!” Sisyphus said and the boys sprung into a running spree, like a pile of hot coals was shoved down their backsides. At the same moment, the eggs opened up fully, each one revealing a tentacled larva the size of a large rat, arrayed in dark, glistening scales, hundreds of pseudo-pods writhing under their carapace as they emerged and began crawling around the floor and the walls of the cave, menacingly drawn to the party.
“Quickly! Theo, stand under the plug! We’ll climb on top of you and then pull you up!” Sisyphus proposed, waving frantically with one hand.
“Why me?” Theo complained.
“You’re the tallest! It only makes sense!” Lernea said and shot an arrow, piercing a few of the hatchlings in one go, their tentacles writhing in a frenzy before dying out and falling limp soon afterwards. The rest came for them, as if having just woken up and feeling like going for a stroll.
“What about a rope?” Theo suggested even as Bo’s eyed flared up fully and she began hurtling fireballs at the hatchlings with frightening ease, engulfing them in flames a dozen at a time.
“Where would we tie down the damned rope? By Svarna, think for a moment!” Lernea shouted irately as she reloaded her bow.
“I am thinking! Yelling never solved anything now, did it?” he said sounding a littl
e hurt even as Master Sisyphus climbed on his back.
“Stand still now!” he shouted as he turned the manhole a full circle, unscrewing it and tossing it down on the floor next to Theo. Another arrow flew from Lernea, but it was beginning to look like arrows weren’t flying fast enough as the hatchlings approached with an unwelcome, writhing certainty.
“Be careful with that!” Theo said even as Bo hopped around stylishly, seemingly having loads of fun spouting fiery death and turning the Ygg hatchlings into a crispy mass of ugly dead vermin.
“You’re not helping, Theo,” Lernea said through gritted teeth, letting loose another shot at a mass of hatchlings crawling uncannily ontop of the ceiling, making them fall down on the cave’s floor like monstrous droppings.
“Well, I haven’t been used like a ladder before, I wouldn’t know how to help now would I? What’s next, make like a tree?” Theo said sounding annoyed.
“Just stand still!” Sisyphus said pushing himself upwards through the manhole, his feet wobbling on Theo’s shoulders for a moment before he found some handles to hold on to inside the pipe. The next instant, he disappeared inside it fully as he pulled himself up.
“Get them off me!” Fidias shouted as one of the hatchlings had grabbed on to him, writhing its way up on to his shoulders. An arrow flew past his ear piercing the minutely-sized horror, felling it onto the floor.
“Hurry, you idiots!” Sisyphus’s voice was heard urging them; it had a metal ringing to it, slightly muffled yet every bit as commanding as ever.
“You told me to stand still!” Theo complained with a confused shout.
“Not you, them! Throw me the rope!” Sisyphus yelled, while Bo kept most of the hatchlings at bay, their dead, charred bodies forming an ever-narrower ring around the party.
“We don’t have any rope, master!” Damon replied, looking confused and arguably scared.
“Not you! The elf!”
“Me? I don’t have any rope,” Theo intoned, sounding surprised, even while Lernea was grabbing on to him, propping herself up.
“You just proposed using a rope a minute or so earlier!” Sisyphus yelled at him.
“I was merely suggesting we could have used a rope,” Theo replied with a maddening calmness.
“Skrala lent us strength,” Master Sisyphus said and sighed, even as Lernea climbed along the pipe.
“Hurry, boys!” she said, urging them to climb on Theo’s back as fast as possible. The ring of hatchlings around the party was growing menacingly narrow, only a few feet of clear ground between Theo and the writhing mass of what looked like newborn Ygg.
“What if they’re friendly? Maybe they just want to be pet. And fed,” Theo suggested musingly while the boys both scrambled on top of his shoulders like frightened children would on the bark of a tree.
“They want to be fed alright!” Lernea shouted as she reached for the boys’ hands, hanging upside down. Master Sisyphus was holding on to her legs, using his body as a counterweight, his feet propped against the lip of the manhole pipe. The boys extended their hands and Lernea caught onto them, pulling them up slowly with her arms, grunting from the effort.
“What have you been feeding these kids?” she exclaimed through gritted teeth, while Master Sisyphus replied in earnest “They just keep getting into the pantry at nights!”
“It wasn’t us, master!” Fidias proclaimed as they rose through the pipe and onto the bed of the old cistern, a huge empty walled expanse with barely enough light to see each others face.
“We were only trying to feed our cats, master!” Damon explained as he collapsed on the cistern’s bed, panting.
“Cats? You have been feeding cats from the pantry? Haven’t I told you not to feed the animals? Especially around the laboratory?” Sisyphus intoned sternly.
“I think I can feel them crawling up my legs,” Theo said sounding rather uncomfortable while Bo hopped his way up on top of Theo’s head and into the pipe, easily reaching the cistern proper.
“Hurry, brother!” she sent to him and Theo raised his hands but he couldn’t reach out to Lernea. There was a small gap between them.
“I can’t reach you,” Theo protested. “By Svarna’s seven-starred crown, just jump!” Lernea urged him even as half a dozen hatchlings clung on to his robes.
“Right, jump!” he said enthusiastically and did so, his hands latching on to Lernea’s. With a strained effort she pulled him slightly upwards, before he could put one hand on a handle and feel his way up. Bo took care of the hatchlings with small pulses of fire shooting forth from her eyes, burning them to a crisp one by one without even singing Theo’s hair. The next moment, Theo was lying down on the cistern’s bed, hatchling-free. Right behind him, a couple or so hatchlings crawled their way up, hundreds or so following right behind them.
“The manhole cover! The plug!” Lernea said alarmingly, pointing at the gaping manhole.
“Idiots! Must I think of everything?” Sisyphus said and slapped the boys across their faces.
“Oh, right,” Theo said and without moving a muscle, he closed his eyes and the manhole cover lifted itself from the ground and floated easily upwards, crushing a number of hatchlings as it firmly closed the manhole and screwed itself into its locked place.
Bo took care of the last few crawling terrors that had time to climb through. A collective sigh of relief echoed around the huge empty space.
“By Skrala, you could do that? Lift things into the air?” Lernea asked Theo, sounding positively miffed.
“Well, yes. It’s the power of Rho,” Theo replied and shrugged.
“Why didn’t you lift us all up then?” she said with a quarrelsome voice and slapped him in the arm in a rare fit.
“No-one asked me to, honestly. You just told me to stand there,” Theo replied matter-of-factly.
“Well, by Skrala, take some initiative once in a while,” Sisyphus offered while Lernea simply shook her head.
Theo thought about that for a moment and nodded to the darkness surrounding them.
“Alright. I’ll take care of the bats then,” he said and pointed at the lips of the cistern’s walls, where dozens of blue pinpricks of light flickered on and off, growing in size and numbers with each passing moment.
“Bats?” Master Sisyphus asked, the furrow in his brow carried over uncannily in his voice.
“Those aren’t bats,” Lernea said and a piercing, monstrous shriek reverberated, echoes of doom following in its trail.