Rogan's Monsters 2: Below, page 4
It was incredible. Far beyond anything I could have imagined from my own time. My stunned imagination came up with a word that almost seemed to fit. Nanotechnology, I thought, but knew that even the most fanciful science fiction writers couldn’t have come up with something like this.
The only real answer was the one Ash had already given. She was right. I owned a Soul Blade. A weapon that was bonded to me, that had its own core, and that could make use of chi.
I had exactly the right blade for any situation.
I looked up at the women around me, all of whom wore expressions that ranged from astonishment to wonder. Nor could I blame them. I was pretty sure I wore a similar expression as well. Now all I needed to do was figure out how best to use this new blade configuration with the Way of the Blade and the Divine Steps.
That it was possible to, I had no doubt. And perhaps my body already understood it. If not, then perhaps the knowledge was buried within the liquid metal of the blades themselves.
I grinned very broadly. “Shall we continue?” I said, trying to sound casual.
8
We continued to walk through the caves, much as before but with one notable difference. I took every opportunity I could find to practice my Steps.
Not as I did in the morning, going through them all as part of a complete, cohesive routine, but separately, practicing as much as I could, integrating everything my body knew about martial arts with my new weapons.
The Steps were familiar. They were a part of who I was. Every turn, leap, twist, and pirouette was as much a part of me as my own hair, as the bones beneath my flesh. Yet the Way of the Sword no longer sufficed. There was an unconscious jarring, a lack of fluidity and grace when I tried to integrate my new weapons into the forms.
I knew without needing to ask that I was still deadly. That my movements were swift and filled with threat. But would this new configuration have worked against the bats in the cavern?
I felt awkward and clumsy, and I didn’t quite know what to do with my hands. To me, the Way of the Sword seemed a poor fit for blades that felt more like claws and arm guards than a traditional sword.
Almost, I thought about changing them back, reverting to my oversized blade even though I knew instinctively that these arm blades were a better option for the tight spaces we were in.
Or, perhaps, I could choose a different configuration again. Perhaps a pair of scimitars, smaller than my original blade, but still adhering to the principles of the sword. Or something else altogether.
I launched myself into step thirty-nine, flinging myself through the air like a corkscrew, an attacking and defensive step both at once. It should have been fluid. If I’d had my huge sword, I would have thrust it ahead of me, or held it in tight, scything through any enemies like a mower.
But with these new blades on my arms, I didn’t know what to do.
I landed awkwardly, disappointed, and maintained my walk, the rest of the party no longer paying me much heed.
Not even Ash. The muscular woman understood better than most of the others what I was doing, even though she used a far different style of attack with her club.
I found myself grumbling under my breath once again, and wondered if I would be better off practicing without any blades at all, as if I was unarmed…
Suddenly, I understood my mistake. With these arm blades, I effectively would be fighting as if I was bladeless. I had been trying to figure out how to use my arm blades as swords, and which was not what they were. They were an extension of my own natural weapons—my fists and elbows. And that was how they ought to be used.
Instead of trying to fight using the Way of the Sword, I should have been focusing on the barehanded techniques, the Path of the Fist.
As soon as I had this revelation, it all became clear. But before I could try it out, we came to a part of the passageway that was a little different from the rest.
It was narrower, but not so narrow that we couldn’t walk side-by-side. And the ceiling was lower.
More worrying, the luminescent plants or whatever they were grew more sparsely. And we could all see it was becoming darker with each passing step.
But that wasn’t the only concern.
Our way was no longer clear. It was wasn’t blocked, not exactly, but our way wasn’t clear. Giant cobwebs spanned the width of the passageway.
9
The webs were substantial, hung on cables as thick as a finger, but it wasn’t like a spider had spun a web to catch anything trying to get through. Instead, these webs hung across corners, or sliced off obscured parts of a wall. They were scattered at random as if someone had sprayed them from a an oversized can, getting a little too enthusiastic about their Halloween decorations.
Without conscious thought, every one of us slowed down. We had to pick our way through, but there was more to it than that.
“What are these?” Camille asked, just loud enough to be heard. “And what left them here?”
“Don’t know,” I whispered back. “But I don’t like them.” What sort of creature could spin a cable as thick as my thumb? And they only grew thicker as we made our way through.
Zera reached out and touched one, and she brought her hand back very quickly.
“It’s sticky,” she exclaimed. Although she had pulled back before getting completely entangled, we all saw the webbing stretch, unwilling to let her go easily.
“Try not to touch it,” Ash advised as she ducked past a particularly thick patch of web.
“I don’t like this,” Gamma muttered. Her eyes had gone wide, and while she kept moving, there was a stiffness about her that suggested true terror. “I don’t like this at all.”
Well, at least we agreed on something.
Surprisingly, even Edda had gone quiet. She stared with eyes like dinner plates, clinging to Gamma from her place on her shoulder. When the princess ducked beneath a thick rope of web, Edda chirped once before hiding her head in her mistress’s hair.
“Keep your eyes open,” I said, even though it was probably unnecessary. “If there’s an army of spiders in this tunnel somewhere, I don’t want them to take us by surprise.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Gamma whirled toward me, her fear evident on her face. “Spiders?” she asked. “You think spiders made these? Have you seen the size of the ropes upon which these webs are hung? How big would these spiders have to be?”
I raised my hands in surrender, not wanting to get into a fight.
“I’m not saying there are spiders. I don’t know. All I’m saying is that we should keep our eyes open.”
Lady Gamma stood rooted to the spot, staring at me as if I had offered some sort of mortal insult. I noted that her breathing had become very shallow, and while her thick make up made it impossible to tell, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn she had gone pale, as well. she seemed scared and uncertain, and I wondered if she had a phobia about spiders.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” I said. “We don’t even know how old they are. For all we know, whatever made them has long since departed. Now come along.” I added, aware of the risks of even appearing to tell the painted princess what to do. “We’ve got to go.”
At the same time, I took a step and felt something crunch beneath my boot. I glanced down to see that I’d crushed part of a skeleton that must have belonged to one of the bats.
If I hadn’t looked at it, perhaps Lady Gamma wouldn’t have noticed. But she did, and glanced down as well, and it was apparent she also saw what I had stepped on.
All at once, she stood taller. “No,” she said firmly.
The rest of us had paused, staring at Gamma and waiting for her to continue.
“No?” I asked.
Her expression became firm. “No. We’re not going any further. Not through there.”
“What do you mean? We have to.”
She shook her head. “No, we don’t. We can go another way.”
Camille rubbed her eyes as if she was tired, then let her hands fall to her sides. “You chose to come this way. You said it wasn’t just a random decision. And now you’ve changed your mind? You want us to go back?”
But Gamma apparently saw Camille as less of an obstacle than me. She turned on the lizard woman and tried to maintain her poise even though Edda had resumed her more characteristic chattering noises and threatening gestures.
“There are many ways through the caverns!” Lady Gamma blazed. “Just because I chose this way doesn’t mean we should keep going when indications suggest another route might be better! I am not going to take another step along this path, not if I can help it! The route back is easy, and we won’t have lost much time. Now, are you coming?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she turned on the spot and began marching away. I didn’t have any choice. The compulsion was upon me, forcing me to turn and follow the irritating woman even though I thought it was a mistake.
I knew I could cut through the webbing with my new blades, and even if I could not, all I needed to do was hone them with chi, and that would be that.
And if there was some danger hidden in the dark, then I was sure we could deal with that when the time came.
But I couldn’t even voice those thoughts. All I could do was mutter under my breath as I followed Lady Gamma away.
Ash was more accepting, simply falling into step on Gamma’s other side without question. Zera might have had doubts about the value of turning back, but she wasn’t really one to argue.
And that left Camille.
The lizard woman’s expression was one of incredulousness mixed with irritation. But she didn’t want to face the webs all by herself. In the end, she didn’t have much of a choice, either.
Shaking her head and muttering under her breath as I was doing, she followed the rest of us.
“Waste of damn time,” she said. “She doesn’t know where she is going. I hate this fucking cave system.”
I heartily agreed.
At the same time, it was clear that Lady Gamma wouldn’t back down. In fact, the further we got from the webbing and the darker part of the passageway, the more tension seemed to leave her in waves.
And yet, we had walked no more than five minutes when it became clear that turning around wouldn’t be so simple.
In fact, it would be impossible.
There wasn’t a way back.
The wide, open, inviting passageway, filled with luminescent plants, came to an end at a solid wall that looked as if it had always been there.
10
“Fuck,” I said.
It was obvious what had happened. Just like with the narrow passageway before, the cave system had changed. I didn’t know how or why that could happen, and nor, apparently, did anyone else. Camille was staring at the wall with an expression of astonishment while Zera looked puzzled. Only Ash seemed to accept the change with her usual nonchalance.
Gamma, however, seemed almost frantic.
“I don’t understand,” the painted princess was saying. She kept looking at the wall as if she expected it to suddenly vanish, presenting us with the passageway we had walked through not many minutes before. “How can this be? I don’t understand.”
Nor did I, although I was starting to have my suspicions. There was something… off… about the cave system. Something not quite natural.
Something malignant.
“Who is doing this?” Gamma asked. “How can it be?”
“Nobody is doing it,” Ash said. “It is the cave itself.”
Even though her answer made perfect sense, it also made no sense at all. All of us turned toward the muscular woman.
“Do you not sense it?” she asked, looking surprised at the attention. “There is a presence. At first, I thought it might be someone following us. Vesh D’Agon, perhaps. I thought maybe he had found a way inside. But that isn’t it. Whenever I checked, there was nobody there.”
Out on the Wastes, it had been Camille who had been better attuned at sensing such things. She had known about Vesh before any of us. Before I truly knew he was there. I turned to her for confirmation, and she nodded her head.
“She is right,” the lizard woman said.
“No!” Gamma responded. “How can that be?” It wasn’t a denial as much as an unwillingness to accept something that should have been impossible.
How could the cave system be changing its own structure?
And yet, I knew in my soul that Ash and Camille were correct.
Like them, I could sense something around us. As yet, we didn’t warrant its full attention. That’s why we had been able to travel so freely.
But that didn’t mean whatever it was would let us out without a fight.
I turned back to the wall. “Well, unless anyone happens to have some sort of tunnel boring equipment hidden away, then we have no choice.”
Everyone knew what I meant. Even Gamma, who seemed to be struggling to keep it together. “No,” she managed. “We can’t go back. Not that way.”
But instead of her usual imperious tone, it sounded as though she was pleading.
“We don’t have any other option,” Camille said. This time, she was just stating a fact. She was no longer looking for a fight.
Gamma didn’t want to. That much was clear.
“Unless you want us all to stay here until the cave changes again,” Camille added, “there is only one way to go.”
And with that, she reached for Gamma’s arm, offering her support. The two of them turned back the way we had come, with the rest of us following along.
11
Perhaps it was Camille’s words, but I really did half-expect the cave system to change again before we made it back to the cobwebs.
But it didn’t. They were still there, still wrapping the darkened walls like Halloween decorations, like sticky bits of fluff attached to the rocks and the anchoring cables. During the short walk, Gamma seemed to collect herself, and before we had to duck and move around the sticky mess, she shrugged off Camille’s support and regained much of her imperious bearing.
Progress was slow. The tunnel was narrow, and the webbing was everywhere. More than once, one of our party either stepped in it or brushed against it, and had to spend a moment or two unsticking themselves.
When this happened, some of the cables that extended along the length of the passage seemed to vibrate. And it left me with an ominous feeling. Yet I kept silent, used my arm blades to cut through the webs, and kept going.
At one point, where there were fewer luminescent plants, it grew dark enough that I had to power up my AC lens, and Gamma brought out the stone she had coated in the luminous potion.
Then we continued, some of us cursing as the webbing grew thicker and the tunnels grew even narrower.
At last, we came to a section where the web completely blocked our way. Gamma shivered in pure revulsion. Zera shrank away, and I thought I understood why. She was partially a butterfly girl. And for a butterfly, getting caught in such a web was likely a death sentence. She was programmed to be afraid on a DNA level.
“At least we know that no giant spider has come this way recently,” she said.
Gamma looked confused.
“There would be a tunnel through it,” Zera said.
Gamma understood, and it seemed to give her a confidence boost. “We have to get through,” she said, turning to Ash. “I have a powder that burns. We can turn your club into a torch and then burn our way through it.”
I could cut through the mess of webbing just as easily but figured burning it would be better. So I waited as Lady Gamma dug through her robes, looking for what she wanted.
Somewhere within those robes was a flask that held the supply wagons as well as the cow-beasts that pulled them, shrunk down by the magic at Gamma’s disposal. My first thought was that she would have to enlarge those wagons again to get what she needed. I couldn’t see how she would do it, though, because the tunnel was too narrow. But it seemed that Gamma had selected more than a few of her most valued powders and potions and hidden them about her person.
I had to approve. It made far more sense than to keep everything in the miniaturized wagon. Not only might it not be convenient to enlarge the wagon at need, but I didn’t know how many times she could do it before that particular potion ran out.
“Here,” the painted princess said, withdrawing a small glass bottle. “Bring me your club.”
Ash did as instructed, and within moments, a ball of yellow fire was burning at the tip.
“This will burn for an hour or more,” Gamma said. “But it will not consume your club. I only hope we are through with these webs by the time the fire goes out.”
Ash nodded and immediately moved to the web that barred our way. To my great relief, it didn’t hold up against Gamma’s flames. The web melted and burned, and Ash waved her club around, clearing as much of it away as possible.
Then, with Ash in front leading the way, the rest of us followed, making our way through the tunnel.
As the walls drew closer, the only sounds I could hear were those of Ash’s torch burning, the hesitant steps of Gamma and Zera, the surer ones of Camille, and the sounds of everyone breathing. Other than that, the cave was silent. But the air wasn’t still. From time to time, it felt like we were walking toward a slight breeze. It caught the cobwebs and the flames of Ash’s torch, almost as if the cave itself was trying to breathe.
I could sense something ahead of us. Or perhaps it was simply fear, the result of already too much time spent in the darkness of the cave.
But I wouldn’t give in to that fear. Both for my own sake, and that of the others. If I was right, if there was something ahead of us, then I would face it head on as I’d faced everything else.
