The Network ( Book One of the Grounders Series )

17

We walk for about two hours in the same tunnel before it opens up again.

The caver in small, but memorable. The walls are coating in crystal, shimmering dimly but polished. Along the ceiling the crystal droops down like icicles.

Some of the crystal-cicles are so large, they touch the floor and make archways.

"This is the perfect place to have Rox's Descent Speech," Joss says. He's right.

Whenever someone dies in the Network, the funeral ceremony is simple. They put a on you necklace with some kind of gemstone or rock, depending on your clan. Daws is ruby, Verro is obsidian. Then they wrap you up in white silk, the same silk Alvus wore when he brought six thousand people below ground. Then they lower you into the Hearth. The white silk it what brings your sole through the ground and into the heavens with Constantine.

Joss reaches into his pocket and pulls out a chip of polished black obsidian.

He holds it out in his hand and starts humming Safe Rising, the Network funeral song.

The obsidian begins to vibrate, steaming and trembling. Joss cries out and drops the rock but before it hits the ground, it explodes.

"I WILL NOT HAVE DARK MATERIALS IN MY KINGDOM OF LIGHT!!" A voice bellows.

I freeze as a man steps out from behind the crystal archways.

The man is obviously wealthy. He wears a thick velvet coat over tough leather armor. He wears nice leather boots. The boots have gold aglets. He wears a golden circlet on his head, which is full of thick brown hair, which is braided down his back. A jewel-studded sword his sheathed around his waist. I can see the tip of a knife in his boot.

I draw my sword hastily, his hands fly into the air.

"I mean you no harm!" He says hurriedly. I search his aqua eyes for anything that tell me he's lying and find nothing. "You guys look exhausted, why don't you come back to my place and you can rest up?"

"Who are you?"

"My name is Aroculan. I have a home that way with plenty of food and rooms for everyone to rest."

"Why do you live in a place like this?" Cicada asks.

"I love here because no one else does. With only one mind to control, and not another to argue with, corruption can't exist."

This guy seems trustworthy enough to go with him for a few hours to rest, but I need more than my okay. I look at Cicada quizzically?

"Alright," she says, "but just for a little bit."

"Fair enough. Follow me," Aroculan says, turn and walking through an archway.

As I followed him, something itched at the back of my mind. Did his name sound familiar?

I follow him, the desire for sleep more powerful than my apprehensiveness.

We weave through the maze of archways, seemingly at random, but eventually we come to a set of double doors. They are crafted from steel, but look elegant nonetheless, adorned with engraving of figures. They seem like angels, cloaked reapers, and cowering skeletons.

Aroculan pulls open the doors and castes them wide, revealing a wide foyer. The walls are circular, hanging with tapestries of dark looking men, pale and dressed in dark robes.

In the center of the room is a blazing hearth, not as big as the on in the Artery, but decent.

My mouth drops open when I realize what the walls and floors are paneled with. Wood.

I run my fingers along the smoothed mahogany colored material. I've never seen wood before except for in the vision Constantine showed me. Wood is a material only found in the Aboveground. How on Earth does he have it? No one who was sent under ground with Constantine during the wars has ever physically been Aboveground. The Network was sealed completely.

My senses are on alert now. This makes no sense.

By the tension that's gathered in the room, The others are suspicious of the wood too.

Aroculan walks through the expansive foyer nonchalantly, crossing to another diet of door, that were also made from wood. Glass windows were get into the doors. Real glass, not the plastic substitute we use in the Network.

Behind us two guards clad in black slam the steel doors closed behind us. I don't hear a click but I know the doors are locked. We are in serious trouble.