Volume 1, Chapter 34: Directions Are More of a Suggestion (Patreon)

“That isn’t the toad that dwells, because we clearly found it and my quest still hasn’t been completed,” Nicky whispered, ducking back behind the wall where we were waiting. “I don’t like—no offense, Bri—that flames are coming out of her stomach.”

“Um, I’m not offended.” Bri’s eyebrows lifted away from her body like flaring tongues of fire, while her colors began shifting symmetrically from vivid reds to oranges.

“They’re certainly hard at work,” Sophie observed. “I’m quite convinced the smaller pickaxe-frogs are slaves and labor for its benefit. I would expect them to come to toad’s defense if it turns out conflict between us is unavoidable.” She planted her hands on her hips, pressing the folds of her long coat against her body and shifting the belt of flowers around her waist in the process. Realizing her mistake, she sighed and began adjusting the flowers until all of them pointed in the same direction again.

“Want to bet none of these creatures are pacifists?” I asked, gently leaning my staff against the wall.

Bri apparently decided this was a good moment to leave the cage at its top.

“I bet you are right,” Eli replied, fastening one of his ropes.

“Gambling softens the bones.”

Khufu turned toward me, while his ears rotated so they remained pointed toward the frogs striking the rock. He drew in a breath through his nose so noticeably that I unconsciously copied him and immediately realized just how badly all of us smelled.

“I’m surprised they haven’t already come our way,” I replied, disturbed by my olfactory discovery. “They must have terrible noses.”

“The truth of the flesh, my friend, is that despite the divine spark with which humans have been blessed, your sense of smell leaves much to be desired.”

His tail struck the nearest wall, and after noticing his mistake, he wrapped it around his leg.

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

“Does your nose detect the scent of these creatures, Arthur?”

“No,” I answered truthfully, though I sniffed again just to make sure. “Nothing at all.”

“The noses of amphibians are not usually much better than those bestowed upon humans by the divine providence of Ra.”

“Companions,” Sophie said. “I recommend that we focus on what matters most, namely deciding what we do next.”

“The most sensible thing would be to backtrack and check the rest of the corridors,” Nicky replied, tugging her hoodie lower after it had ridden up slightly over her stomach.

“Um, that’s a good idea.” Bri’s body became very still, with only a few flames flickering from her, while a thin trail of black smoke rose from her eyebrows. If I had learned to read her emotions correctly, she was thinking.

“I agree,” I said. “I’d rather know the full layout of these chambers before we make any irreversible decisions. It would also be better if we set some traps in case a fight breaks out, even if it never comes to that.”

My words convinced the others, and after picking up the staff I had only just set aside, we began retracing our steps toward the fork we had passed earlier, following the only route ahead of us. After only a few minutes, we all began to feel that something was wrong. By then, I had started counting the wooden support frames. Twenty-eight. I remembered seven between the fork and the frogs on the way in.

“Shouldn’t we have reached the fork by now? Earlier, from there to those frogs, how long did it take us? Two minutes, maybe?” Nicky asked, stopping beside the wall and studying the crystals cutting through the stone like veins. She tapped one of them with a finger, using the motion to help herself focus.

“We’ve been walking for ten minutes,” Sophie replied, checking her watch. “Arthur, come over here with the map.” She held out a hand and waved me closer.

I gave her a simple drawing, which didn’t show the exact distances in any meaningful way.

“You need to make more of an effort to preserve the scale,” she commented.

“The fact is, we stopped hearing the hammering, and there’s still no fork,” Nicky summarized. “I suggest we turn around again and head back toward the frogs. I have a feeling we won’t reach them either.”

“Why would that be?” Sophie asked.

“I think it’s some kind of magic that either interferes with our perception or changes the layout of the tunnels.”

“Indeed, we have found ourselves in no small predicament. The underworld lies in wait for us at every turn,” the lion declared, folding his arms across his chest. “Allow me, please, to perform a ritual that may help us return to camp.”

He reached into his mane and pulled out a bone he had kept hidden among the thick hair.

It tapered to a sharp point and had been artistically hollowed out so that only the outer structure remained intact. Triangular cutout symbols decorated its entire length, allowing glimpses into the empty interior.

Khufu straightened his index finger, and the large yellowed claw extended from it. With one quick motion, he sliced the skin of the pad covering his palm.

Closing his hand, he allowed blood to drip into the hollow bone until it began leaking through all of the triangular openings. All the while, he purred continuously, shifting the timbre of his voice from high to low and back again several times. Finally, he placed the bone on the rail running beneath us.

He left it there for several moments, then picked it up and laid it across his palm. It moved like the needle of a compass. It twitched once. Then again. And then it began spinning wildly in circles. In response, his ears practically disappeared into his mane.

“I’m guessing that wasn’t supposed to happen?” Eli asked.

“I asked the spirit of the bone to point toward the place where I last shed blood. Yet it appears the spirit itself is being deceived by magic stronger than my own. Forgive me, friends. I have failed your expectations. More—I have failed the teachings of my father.”

“You know what? I suggest the old-fashioned method—maybe we really are screwed and never getting out of here,” I began, then looked at the map Sophie was holding. “Can you put that in my backpack? I don’t think it’s going to be much use.” I changed the subject only briefly, while still keeping everyone’s attention.

The blonde woman did as I asked while I crouched slightly to make it easier for her to pack it away.

“We go back toward the frogs, but this time we mark the route,” I finished, tapping the stringpen until it switched to a focused, narrow spray of paint.

Then I spun it between my fingers, testing whether my joints had stiffened up or whether I had lost any of my dexterity. After tossing it lightly into the air, I caught it so that two of my fingers began pulling at the strings, and accompanied by the melody they produced, I started drawing a line along the wall.

“If necessary, do we just follow the line back here?” Eli asked.

“Exactly,” I replied, moving through shades of red and orange accompanied by pleasant, high-pitched notes.

At the same time, I lightly tapped my thumb against the plate on the front, rhythmically switching from a narrow stream to a wider spray and giving the line I painted an appearance similar to the ones I created with Pyrography.

“Not a bad idea, but the destination is completely suboptimal. Even if the markings work—”

“Fire will guide us into a corridor of no consequence to our bones,” Khufu interrupted Nicky, while looking at my painting. “Do you always paint fire? Does it hold some significance for the power you wield?”

“I noticed that fiery imagery increases my Essence, so I’m combining business with pleasure,” I added, starting back in the direction we had just come from while continuing to mark the wall.

Eli walked back to the nearest support and placed one hand against it. Then he checked the rail, followed it several steps, and crouched again.

“The structure isn't moving.”

“What?” Nicky asked.

“These beams are carrying the same loads they were before. If the tunnel physically stretched by hundreds of feet, something should have changed.”

“So perception?” I asked.

“Or the universe is cheating in a way my Path doesn't understand. Either way, your paint idea suddenly sounds less stupid. Let’s do as you are suggesting.”

After a few minutes, we reached another fork, though it was different from the previous one. A switching lever near the rails allowed the mine cart to be redirected into one of two tunnels where the tracks continued—one descending at a much steeper angle, while the other remained roughly level.

There was also a third tunnel at the junction. Part of its entrance had collapsed under a pile of rocks, but first, it contained no tracks that would allow the cart to pass through, and second, the remaining opening was still wide enough for us to squeeze through despite the cave-in.

No sounds came from any of the three passages.

I stopped my hand in front of the wall and held my thumb still. I had been using it both to change the form of the visible colored dust and to slide it from time to time along the disk on the front of the stringpen. I had noticed that simply making the disk rotate caused the spray to come out, while stopping the rotation immediately stopped the release of color as well.

While the others discussed which route to take, I only half listened, too busy admiring the device. I knew what they were talking about, but had no idea what exactly was being said.

“Khufu,” I interrupted them, apparently at the wrong moment, because his tail struck the ground, his ears shot upright, and his nose wrinkled. “Do you happen to know where the stringpen gets its paint from? I’m worried I’ll run out, and no one ever explained it to me.”

“My friend, the tool you wield is divine technology—knowledge of which is not normally shared with people such as myself,” he replied, maintaining his patience.

The women and Bri began gesturing and speaking among themselves while I effectively pulled him out of their conversation.

“Normally?”

“Because I was Chosen, I was taught knowledge that I am forbidden to share openly under threat of divine wrath. However, given the extraordinary predicament in which we find ourselves, and the fact that the device was entrusted to you, I shall reveal this secret.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Dust, sand, bone, blood, and skin. The stringpen gathers particles of this and that, among other things—some through its movement through the air, some from what you leave behind when you drag your fingers across its strings—and from those it creates the material with which you paint. If you use it beneath the providence of Ra, it will never run dry.”

My eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Fantastic,” I replied, tossing the device into the air and catching it again.

Khufu’s eyes followed it the entire time.

“What were you talking about?”

“We’re trying to decide which, um… way to go.” Bri's face brightened.

“On one hand, we should be looking for the exit that brought us here, which suggests following the tracks,” Nicky explained. “On the other, the tunnel without them is an anomaly, which makes it worth investigating.”

Khufu nodded along, letting me know that their conversation hadn’t progressed very far since I had pulled him out of it.

“Arthur, we’re waiting for your opinion,” Sophie said as she came closer.

“I think we should ignore all the options in front of us for the moment and go back along the line I painted.”

“Why is that?” Sophie asked.

“I, um… I know!” Bri brightened, her fiery hair standing on end. “So we can check, now that we have a landmark, whether we’ll be able to, um… come back here, right?” Sparks flew from her mouth, and she floated a few inches higher than usual, as though she had suddenly become lighter. “Right?”

“Exactly, Brigid,” I replied. “If I could, I’d pat you on the head, my dear.”

“Let’s do exactly that,” Nicky decided, and without another word we followed Khufu’Ri as he carried out her suggestion.

After a few minutes, we reached the fiery end of my line and turned back, returning to the same fork in almost exactly the same amount of time.

“At least now we know we can stabilize the changing corridors using something familiar to us,” the red-haired woman summarized, biting into a piece of some strange spiky fruit. “Can you mark our next route with a different color?” she asked.

“Any color you want, darling.” I drew blue from the stringpen, already knowing which color I intended to use. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Bri’s fiery hair flash green for a moment and puff out a cloud of gray smoke. “Shall we?” I asked.

“Are your brains melting from everything happening here too?” Nicky asked, looking at the newly updated map, where colored lines crossed and connected according to everything we had managed to establish over the last three hours of walking. It started looking like my personal metro lines diagram.

“At least we, um, managed to… what did you call it again?”

“Stabilize the structure. I think that without the lines Arthur painted, we’d be wandering around forever. This place is a little like some kind of quantum maze that can be anything until it’s observed, and the act of painting somehow let the walls know they were being watched. Wild stuff. I never thought I’d actually get to experience anything like this.”

“Quantum?” Eli asked, but was ignored by the woman.

“The initial fiery line leads to the three-way fork, and from there the green one follows the tracks until we reach the chamber where the toad is,” Nicky said, tracing a finger across the map. “Instead of the green route, we can take the yellow line along the second set of tracks and reach that chamber with the waterfall where we can’t see the bottom.”

“No, um… I didn’t like that one. Not only is the bridge carrying the tracks to the other side, well… broken, but there’s all that water around it too.”

“Crossing that gap will be troublesome. I can feel in my bones that we may not succeed.” Khufu’Ri leaned against the wall, idly tossing one pebble and then another in front of himself.

“No,” Eli said with his hands on his hips.

“No?” Khufu asked.

“That bridge will end us. The surviving anchor can take one person. Maybe two. Not you, Khufu. And whatever is supporting the other side is carrying load in a way I don't understand.” He stood. “Making it safe would be very difficult.”

“Next option then. The blue line leads through the tunnel without the cart tracks to the two-way fork we just passed, and from there all the way back here, to the starting station,” Nicky continued, summarizing our discoveries. “Maybe whoever was expanding this place wanted to connect all those junctions, but after the rocks collapsed, they stopped laying tracks.”

“Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybe none of it means anything at all. Right now, we can either try to deal with that damned toad and its little frogs, try to jump across the broken bridge, follow the other path in the double junction, or the fiery line or keep going in the completely opposite direction.”

“We shouldn’t dismiss returning to camp. That is also of a paramount consideration,” Sophie said from where she sat on an overturned mine cart. “Every one of us keeps postponing the quest that will allow us to continue this Event and move on to the next stage in favor of this side objective, which seems to grow into something more serious with every step we take. It may turn out to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors meant to distract us from what actually matters.” She gave voice to the same concern that had been lingering in the back of my mind.

“Maybe you’re right, Soph.” Nicky turned at the sudden commotion we all heard and looked toward one of the pebbles in the corner, which had somehow started vibrating for no apparent reason. Then she turned her attention back to Sophie.

“But we’ve already, um… done so much. And so much time has passed… maybe it’s worth going, well… a little farther? We’ll probably get points for it.”

“That’s the sunk cost fallacy,” Nicky said.

Then, realizing that neither Bri—who shrank slightly at the phrase, her flames trembling at the very sound of the word sunk—nor Sophie, Eli or Khufu understood the terminology, she further explained.

“It means that sometimes we feel compelled to finish something, or keep going, precisely because we’ve already invested so much into it, even when the correct decision would be to abandon the project entirely and start doing something else.”

“I think the same way as Nicky,” I scratched my cheek. “Except I’d at least like to try to make measurable progress on the task until we complete it or physically can’t continue anymore. In theory, we have an entire planetary year to complete the main objective—”

“I asked about that in the city. People looked at me like I was an idiot. Apparently, no one here keeps track of seasonal changes or years.” Eli interrupted me.

“Either way, how long have we been here? It’s hard to even say—a few days? Three?”

“You’re assuming we still have plenty of time?”

“I’m assuming that if we’re going to try, we should do it now. Everyone is in pretty much the same situation as us, and whatever we find here could help us with the main objective.”

“Fifty six hours,” Sophie added, after looking at her watch for some time.

“And what do you want to do about it?” Nicky nodded to her, and turned to me with a question.

“The task concerns a toad. We’ve only found one, even though the task never confirmed that it was the correct one, we might as well treat it as our main lead. Let’s find out whether it’s aggressive or not and go from there. If at any point we decide this is taking too much time, we leave this hellhole of a mine. Bri and I travel to the city, and you can go find your orcs.”

“When I look at the crystalline bones of this earth, I somehow see a faith that even here, Ra and Horus are watching over us. The light races and flows like their sacred flames through those vines. I say we follow that blessing and have a proper meeting with that beast.” Khufu’s tail struck the ground once, when he raised a closed fist to his chest.

“Let us properly prepare first,” Sophie concluded, delicately caressing the petals of one of her flowers.