Children of The Underground

Chapter 12: The Creeping Shadow

"I don't know how long it's been, but we've been walking for quite a while. Are you sure we aren't lost?"

This quip came from Micheslava Sorokina, or as she was called by everyone "Magpie" or "Misha". Called by everyone, except Vera Horobra.

"How in gods' name can we be lost if we've been walking down the same tunnel for all this time?" Vera retorted.

They were walking down the same black tunnel as before, in the same eerie, black silence, illuminated only by their lantern, with its hellish orange glow and the spectral shadows it cast around the party. But somehow, the lantern felt dimmer. And the heat from the flames felt cooler.

No, that wasn't it. Decided Vera. It's that the dark seems darker, and the cold seems colder.

Vera brushed off this chilling thought like snow off of a doorstep. She blamed the current mood on Misha's cattiness. And the fact that they were wandering through the dark without seeing a single new thing.

Vera knew rather well that Micheslava didn't like her. More importantly, she knew why Micheslava didn't like her. It was for no simpler a reason than this: Vera was a thaumaturge, and Misha was a vedmak. The gap between these two wasn't wide, but it ran deep. Thaumaturges depended upon vedmaks for artifacts and field research. After all, studying the magical properties and application of said properties for magical anomalies was arduous work. Long hours spent in libraries or laboratories, handling hazardous materials. Therefore, the sheer thought of losing the knowledge and training invested into a novice thaumaturge by some freak accident in the zones made Thaumaturgical Institutes loath to send thaumaturges into the zones.

Thus, they turned to the Vedmaks instead, paying those daredevils generous sums in exchange for the materials they brought back. These were acceptable to the thaumaturges: gold could be easily replaced. Knowledge could not.

But how could Vedmaks understand this? Vera wasn't stupid enough to believe that Vedmaks were only after money. There were lots of quick and easy ways to make good money. Many of them much safer than the vedmak trade. But she did suspect, that there was also the desire for adventure, a search romanticized by some in the ballads and tall tales told in taverns and campfires.

Vera saw this mentality as short-sighted and crass. Worse, it was juvenile. Teenagers and young adults were mostly vedmaks. And among those, the runaways and the nobodies were in high supply.

And yet...the vedmaks were necessary. For thaumaturgy, Vera Horobra's first and only love. For the betterment of mankind. For the creation of guns that protected Mednagora and its people. For the creation of the vajra-orichalc engine, that allowed for self-operating automatons to manufacture goods. For wondrous medicines and vaccines.

Vera didn't dare let the vedmaks know what she believed in. Didn't dare reveal, that stuffy, formal, dare she say intellectual "Madam Thaumaturge" was as great of an idealist as the sword-swinging, gun toting Magpie. Nor did she tell them that she also was drawn to the rush of adventure radiating from inside of Koshei's Peak. The thought of the secrets hidden there, the technology, artifacts, and, of course, tomes upon tomes of thaumaturgical literature, made her heart beat just as much as the prospect of gold did for the Vedmaks.

But as Vera led the way, her coterie of hired guns and her two new companions guarding her, she realized something terrible: the lantern was growing dimmer, and the air was growing cooler. It wasn't just her imagination, after all.  Something was palpably wrong with this tunnel.

"Dragomir, Micheslava, are you guarding the rear?" She asked, her voice as tense and shrill as violin strings wound too tight.

"Naturally," replied Drazhek. His voice faltered, and Vera suspected that whatever bad omen was haunting Vera,  Drazhek felt it too. He looks like he's frightened of his own shadow. Vera thought. And that made her shudder even harder.

Eventually, the party entered into a giant chamber. But unlike the crystal maze they encountered earlier, this room did not glow with any light. As a matter of fact, it was filled with an impenetrable cold and darkness, that made all the hair on Vera's body stand on end. Now, everyone in the party felt that cold, unnaturally heavy darkness, wrapping around them like the clammy coils of some giant worm.

"Ni figa sobi," Drazhek uttered softly. "It's death. Death is coming! You all feel it, don't you?" He spoke with a quiet panic that made swords and guns spring out from their holster into their wielder's hands.

The lantern began dimming faster. The temperature plummeted like a diving falcon. They had managed to stack together, back to back, their weapons protruding out from them like the points of a bony star.

"Autotorches! Light some damn autotorches!" Drazhek screamed. In the fading light of the lantern, Drazhek fumbled an autotorch from outside his rucksack and struck it against the ground. It roared to life with the hot, white light and the blistering brightness of the afternoon sun. Sparks sizzled from the autotorch's burning head like sausages, and that's when they finally saw their pursuer.

They were surrounded by black, smoky tendrils, as thick as tree branches, criss-crossed in a latticework high above their heads. Along the latticework hung a large, monstrous quadruped that resembled a bear, a giant crab, and a smattering of jagged obsidian outcroppings all at the same time. But unlike obsidian, the light didn't reflect off the creature's crystalline carapace. Instead, it absorbed the light, leaving some sort of solid shadow, a crawling silhouette of a creature, perceptible only by the absence of light.

The rest of the group lighted their own autotorches, even Boris, who nestled the butt of his thumper against the crook of his arm.

"Keep moving," Vera said quietly. Drazhek's light was already growing dim, and soon all of their torches would go out. "Somehow, that...Thing is the one making the darkness." 

But try as they might,  the large room was so expansive and the darkness so consummate, that they were devoured by the blackness, all while the lights of their burning torches diminished. The torchbearers wandered along the ground like drunken fireflies in a moonless night, desperately searching for an escape from the hateful, creeping shadow . As the creature began to stir, growling sonorously and breaking the rock above them, the torchlight was dimmed to feeble embers. 

By the time the The Creeping Shadow crashed upon the ground, the torches had snuffed completely out.