Children of The Underground

Chapter 4: A Night on Bald Mountain

Drazhek woke up with beside what felt like a woman's body. It's arms had cradled him to it. He thought at first it was Misha, and that thought mad his heart race with both giddy excitement and a calm exaltation. This is alright. He thought. I ought to get up and , and see if she's okay. But I'm glad I woke up like this.

He then turned towards it, and saw that it was the body of a dead vedmak. The corpse was a woman, and a rather beautiful one, with red flowing hair and a heart shaped face. But the corpse's brown eyes were as glassy and unseeing as muddy water. Her mouth was open in a frozen scream. Drazhek started screaming himself, and tried prying himself away from her. But the woman was already stiff with rigor mortis, and her limbs were as stiff as the branches of some knotty tree. For a brief, horrific moment, Drazhek thought that this was his end. The corpse-woman would tighten against him, her eyes would roll in her head and she'd speak. After all, who or what else could this be? He must have died in that free fall from the teleporter, and now death had taken him. Lady Death, who in her infinite wisdom and cruelty, chose to come to him as The Mistress of The Copper Mountain. Hello, Dragomir Sventoslavichi, she'd say. I will make you a thaumaturge. But first, give me your soul.

Then, he felt arms wrench him free from both the vision and the corpse. Strong, slender arms. They slid something over his face; Drazhek's vision went black for a moment, and then he could see again, through two glass lenses. Someone had put a mask over his face.

He turned to see Misha—Micheslava Sorokina, his partner, his mentor, dare he say, his friend—very much alive and in a mask herself. It was a brown leather mask, protuding forward like a dog's head, with a flattened metal canister, the size and shape of a teacup, stuck to the end of the mask's snout. With a clawing sweep, she pulled it off. It may have been the moonlight, but Misha's eyes seem shiny and wet.

They grabbed each other and pressed each other close. Drazhek's chin was on Misha's shoulder and Misha's on his. they're cheeks touched lightly against one another. She smelt of sweat and dirt and blood, but that was okay. Because Drazhek was sure that's how he smelt too.

They held on like that for a long time, making no sound except for maybe their beating hearts, pounding in rhythm against one another like a pair of clapping hands. Eventually, the beating slowed down to a steady even tempo.

Misha was the first to let go, but as she stood up, she pulled Drazhek with her.

"Are you okay?" She said. She spoke slowly and evenly. "We fell from there." She pointed to the moon, a luminous white disc glowing against the night sky. Drazhek could see a few constellations; The Bogatyr, the star-sketched hero wielding its sword, and Zmei Triglavny, the three-headed serpent that threatened Bogatyr. And many others. Misha's fingers traced downward. "That's where the teleporter is, I think. Then, we fell on an air spring." Misha, picked a piece of rubble off of her shoulder and flicked it at a spot on the ground. With a rush of air, the rubble was fired like a bullet.

"That's what softened our fall," Drazhek uttered with stunned amazement.

"Yeah, and it blew us apart. I landed over there." Misha pointed again to a spot on the corpse pile, five or ten yards away from Drazhek. "That's when I came to. Corpses smell awful, so I put on my mask. Then, I heard you screaming. Somehow Drazhek, you were buried under a lot of the bastards. I had to dig through them one by one before I found you..." Her story trailed off at her rescue of Drazhek and the moments they spent clinging to each other.

"Anyway, I guess that lead ups to now." Drazhek said. There was no point lingering on the subject. Not because of the uncomfortable questions it raised, but because of their new problem. "Where the hell are we?"

They looked around. They landed at the summit of some low hill, at the outskirts of the Bald Mountains. From this vista, Drazhek and Misha could see the taller, craggier peaks of the mountain range proper. The pile of corpses was stacked about two or three feet high, twisted by the impact of their fall. Somehow, they didn't land on the airspring anomaly. Or maybe something else killed them...

"Well," Misha began "At our normal course, we would have needed at least another day of travel before arriving at a place like this. That's the good news." Then her tone became grave. She reached into a pocket on her studded leather gambeson and pulled a paper cartridge out from it. She unholstered her blunderbuss and pushed the cartridge in.

"The bad news," Misha continued, pulling the ramrod out from below the blunderbuss's fluted barrel "is that we're stuck on the Bald Mountains in the middle of the night." She pushed the ramrod down the blunderbuss's barrel, packing the ammo in place, before returning it to the slot below the barrel. "We need to find shelter. Quickly."

Drazhek loaded his blunderbuss too, then began walking with Misha. He stole a quick glance at the corpses behind him. Then kept walking.

There was a thunderclap, and the sky darkened above them. The full moon, a shiny white orb that glowed as hatefully and fiercely as a vulkolak's eye, was obscured by dark clouds. It began to rain. Misha and Drazhek quickened the speed of their descent, and reached a copse of trees. Traveling a little further, they found a ravine, as wide as a carriage and about two maybe three meters in depth. They jumped into the ravine, careful to first hang from the edge before dropping down. Travelling down the ravine, they found an abandoned encampment, a dugout cut into the wall of the ravine. It was roofed with a layer of sodgrass held up by two wooden stilts. Below the roof was the remains of campfire.

Drazhek and Misha sat down next to the campfire. Drazhek took out a box of matches, striking one across the stone along the campfire.

"The fire's a little weak, and kind of sooty, but I think we'll be okay." Said Misha. With a loud sigh, she sat down and leaned against the wall of the dugout. Drazhek followed suit, and sat down beside her.

"It's a tight squeeze," he said. "But at least it's dry," Misha looked at him and cracked a smile. Drazhek stared back at her, his dawning comprehension rising up his face like bubbles in boiling water. "Oh for, gods' sake, Misha!" He cried out. But at the same time, he began laughing. She was laughing too, that same bright, clear laugh as their first meeting in that shithole tavern. His own laughter started out shrill and hysterical. But as it mixed with hers, it be came smooth and calm. They laughed together in perfect harmony, and the thought of it made Drazhek want to laugh even more.

But, eventually, it faded, leaving a dim but still warm contentment in Drazhek, like their campfire, which although still dim, had grown hotter and brighter.

"You know that feeling that you have now? Way deep down in there?" Misha asked, pointing towards Drazhek's chest. "Hold onto it. This life of mine—" she paused, fixing Drazhek with her green eyes. They sparkled like olivine gems in the firelight. "This life of ours is full of pants-shitting terror. But the laughter comes as easily as the terror. And while there will be lots of terror, I promise you that there'll be laughter too."

They stood in silence, sitting beside one another, watching with amazement as the little ember they kindled had grown into a real campfire. Not too large, since that'd burn away the roof. But just bright and warm enough for the cold, tired vedmaks on this day and night of toil. Then Misha began to sing. To Drazhek's amazement, she was singing an old tvastrian love song—"Dark Eyes", or in the mednagoran tongue, "Ochi Chorne"

"Oh you dark black eyes, full-of-passion-eyes,

Oh you burning eyes, how you hypnotise,"

Drazhek joined in and they began singing together.

"How I love you so, but I fear you though,

Since you glanced at me not so long ago,"

For a long time, they sung together by the campfire, voices almost as loud as the thunderstorm raging around them. But in time. both the voices and the fire died. As Drazhek drifted to sleep, one last thought floated in his slumber like a message in a bottle:

He loved Misha Sorokina.

"Ochi Chernye" Or "Dark Eyes" is an actual russian gypsy song, if anyone's interested, the above is is my favorite version. The lyrics are in russian, but the mednagoran language is basically a version of the russian language, with some polish words intermixed. Enjoy!