Chapter 381: Did I Do That? |
We followed the technicians deeper into the shaft, getting peppered with wild questions as we went. None of them quite reached the level of that umbilical cord thing, though. For that, I was infinitely grateful. The Subcapras simply asked whatever came to mind, with zero respect for conversational continuity or whether such a question was invasive or not. At the same time, they never got pushy about it. Varrin was less receptive to discussing his more personal matters and a simple, “I am unwilling to discuss that,” was immediately met by the techs nodding and moving on.
I started to get into the groove with it faster than the rest of my group, with the sole exception, perhaps, of Xim. My experience diving into the souls of my party members and witnessing their unfiltered predilections did a lot to make me more comfortable with the whole thing. Who knew that underworld dwelling fire-mountain-goat-giraffe-centaur-cyborgs had such fierce opinions on nipple symmetry? Well, now I did.
To be clear–so nobody feels self-conscious–the opinions were varied on the matter. Some preferred six perfectly spaced and mirror-like nipple arrangements, whereas others appreciated when the nipples “got wild with it.” Although, when asked the number of nipples we all had, I volunteered that I had two, and they consoled me at length for my disfigurement.
The shaft slowly grew more crowded with strange machinery, filling the air with a synthetic chorus of whistles, whines, groans, and synchronized ticking and clanking. It melded with the slightly more organic sound of the Subcapras’ machine language as they climbed down the wall the entire time, looking like it took zero effort at all. Meanwhile, our party flew, floated, or rode Gracorvus down alongside them. That eventually led to some more questions.
“Do all of you hate walking?” one asked.
I gestured at them. “Where we’re from, we’d call what you’re doing climbing, not walking.”
“Climbing?” Bo said, looking around. “There’s hardly a grade to this walkway. Perfectly level, almost.”
“But you’re completely vertical,” I said.
Bo looked even more confused. “Yeah.”
“If we had to hang, you know?”
“You’re hanging onto the wall.”
“It’s perfectly flat!” said the tech who’d first asked the question. “Flat enough to do a handstand!” The Subcapra folded over to put his upper arms onto the wall, then let go with his leaner forelimbs and stuck his thicker hooved feet straight out at a ninety degree angle. He then meandered down the wall without a care.
“Do you use magic for any of this?” I asked.
“Wife tells me my abs are magic,” he said, turning around to start walking backwards on his hands. His tongue lolled out in what I was starting to recognize as a grin, and I suddenly noticed how ripped the guy was. Looking around, I realized all the technicians had rippling core muscles along their abdomen and backs. Their comparatively lean arms had cloaked their nature as absolute units.
“I’d fly too if I could,” said Bo. “My hooves always need filing after a day like this. Do you mind cold weather?”
“I actually prefer it a little chilly,” I said without missing a beat.
“If the rest of you are fine with it, we’ll take the cold tunnel. It’s faster.”
I was momentarily surprised that the question was related to what we were doing. I’d already been indoctrinated to their ways.
Bo stopped at the mouth of a tunnel that branched off from the main shaft. It sloped at a harsh angle, only slightly less steep than straight down. The Subcapras made appreciative noises as we started heading down that way.
“Flat roads are nice,” one said. “Downhill is better.”
“They’re still flyin’ though,” said another, staring at us with one dilated eye.
“Looks exhausting,” said the first.
That tunnel went on for miles, and when the Subcapras said it was the “cold” tunnel, what they meant was that it would fully bake a frozen pizza in six minutes rather than three. A soft wind blew up from below, and the passage narrowed until we had to ‘walk’ single file.
The wind speed picked up as we went until it was a veritable gale. The Subcapras loudly complained about the chill, despite the fact it would literally incinerate paper. We took several more turns into branching tunnels, each one slightly flatter than the prior.
“Getting pretty steep up ahead,” said Bo. It was the first slope I thought I might be able to walk down without using my shield or wings for assistance.
“So what’s this Dynamo thing about?” I asked.
“Mystic Dynamo,” said Bo. He waved vaguely around us. “The Stairs are built as a hardlink to service it.”
“I was told it would melt you if you went into it.”
“What? No, the Dynamo is solid. Maybe it’d melt you if you somehow dug your way in. I dunno.” He pointed to our left. “The mainline stream would do all sorts of strange things, including melt things, and that’s what we’re walking around. It’s a one-mile diameter conduit driving processed mana from the Dynamo up to the surface.”
“To the forest?” I asked. The massive habitat was the most mana dense area in Arzia.
“Maybe.” He made a hand gesture. Throne’s throat-speaker rapidly translated it to, “I have no clue what a forest is, but I’ve heard the term before.”
Etja descended to float closer. “Where’s it coming from?”
“The mana?” asked Bo, glancing up at her. “The Mystic Dynamo, like I said.”
“No, you said the processed mana comes from the Dynamo. Where’s the unprocessed mana coming from?”
I frowned and nodded. That was a good catch on her part.
“The other side,” Bo answered. “Whole lotta the raw stuff down that way, causing trouble. Dynamo’s fixing it, but it’s slow.”
“The mana storms,” I said, putting a few things together. “The lingering catastrophe from two generations of Delvers back. It’s making that side of the planet uninhabitable. You’re saying the System is trying to clean it up?”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Yeah. Half the reason we’re here.”
“What’s the other half?” asked Etja.
“Plenty. Keep quarantine on the recycling center, fixup the font of power, keep the mana flowing down the mainline.” He let out a quick, irritated bleat. “Check in on the iron works.”
“Is that why you’re so far up?”
“No. We were sent to figure out the mana blockages. Iron works was on the way, so we did our checks early. Was fine when we came up. Not so fine when we tried to go back down.”
“What’s with the mana blockages?”
“Funnel leading up is broke,” he replied. “Something cataclysmic must’ve happened above.” He paused in his gait and turned to me. “Know what? Maybe you do.”
“Maybe I know… what?” I asked, confused by the phrasing.
“What happened to the funnel. It’s closer to the surface. We got close enough to get our measures and decide it needed a look from the lower downs. More is better than less, though, so maybe you know what.”
I grimaced, picking up what he was putting down. Then again, I was beginning to think down was forward and up was back, so maybe I was putting down what he was picking up? Coordinated Thinker was helping me keep all the directions straight, but it didn’t do a thing for turns of phrase.
“We didn’t exactly see what,” I said, “but speaking candidly, I dropped an elder dragon on top of the twin avatars of Yearning and Release while the entire Megadungeon Labyrinth went kablooey.”
The rest of the Subcapras stopped and turned. There was a moment of stunned silence until one finally asked, “Kaboom?”
“Kablow,” I said solemnly.
“Avatars are loose?” asked Bo.
“What’s this about a dragon?” asked another of the techs. “Thought they’d been judged obsolete.”
“Guess a few still bucking around,” said another. “Must be old.”
“Aged like legends. When were they retired? They’d be potent as piss-liquor.”
“Quiet,” Bo snapped. “Old biotech’s a curiosity. It’s kids next to an avatar.”
“Uh, are you saying the System designed the dragons?” I asked.
Bo released a stuttered thrum. Throne’s translator whispered, “laughter at your expense.”
“System’s designed all the living stuff. You, us, them.” He tilted his head towards Varrin, Xim, and Etja.
Etja raised her right two hands to get Bo’s attention. “Not to be a contrarian, but the System didn’t design me. Orexis did!”
Bo blinked up at her. “That's the old name for Yearning, yeah?”
“Yep!” Etja said cheerily. Bo blinked some more, but before he could voice the obvious concern that statement had landed in his heart, our mage kept going. “Also, Xim is from the third layer, so if she was ‘designed’, it was by Sam’lia. Oh, and Arlo’s from another dimension altogether! The System doesn’t exist there, so he’s definitely not a System-engineered person.”
Bo bleated softly. “And you?” he asked, looking at Varrin.
“I am Hiwardian,” the big guy answered. He didn’t elaborate, and Bo didn’t press him to.
“When you say ‘all the living stuff’…” I trailed off.
Xim took a shot at answering my half question. “The dragons basically said as much. The System keeps re-seeding the planet after each apocalypse. Given how fiddly Delve Cores are with their mana monsters it doesn’t surprise me that the System has its wires in everyone else’s blood.”
Bo blew out his lips, sending what I was pretty sure was molten metal scattering down the tunnel. “Doesn’t matter one way or both,” he said. “You’ve got the hardware, the wetware; all of you’ve been integrated.” He pointed at me. “Extra-dimensional entity, yeah? Did you get offered a bio-exchange evolution?”
I swallowed, my throat dry from the heat. I was pretty sure I knew what he meant by that. My cells were being exchanged for something else. Something that the System had described as “more than human.”
“Body of Theseus?” I said, hesitantly.
Bo’s tongue lolled out of his mouth. “A good one!” His tongue slurped its way back in. “You probably got a designation. Something like ‘Subject D-198’. Might be able to look it up when we get back to Huntingson.” The last word was the name of a town, albeit not a direct translation. The actual name was Hunbabubabubagahontontingson, but Throne was kind enough to shorten it for us once I’d argued her into the ground about it.
“Do you know all this from being a technician?” I asked. “I didn’t get read-in on nearly as much stuff when I got volunteered as one.”
He clacked his teeth. “Delver techs’re different. System techs learn what they need to know and I’ve needed to know lots. I been around a while, too. So long as there’s heat, we burn. Plenty of heat down here.”
Etja raised her hands again. “What’s it mean if the funnel’s broken?”
Bo’s cheeks puffed in and out. The other Subcapras warbled and clunked softly to one another, discussing among themselves that very same question.
“Not a problem right now,” Bo finally said. “An emergency, though. Have to fixit quick. Don’t want too much mana bottled up.”
“There’s nowhere else for it to go?” I asked, thinking of a mana eruption of epic proportions. “Couldn’t you turn off the incoming flow?”
Bo looked ‘up’ and bleated loudly at what, from his orientation, was the ceiling. He shook his head, scattering some fireflies, then spoke. “It’s all ancient snarls at the center. Mystic Dynamo’s been integrated into a tangle of subsystems, and all those been integrated into a knot’s-worth more. Shut down the flow, you shut down a hundred thousand things. SC1 already running bad–not that they’ll let us close enough for diagnostic–so shutting a tenth of the planet down’s not an option.”
“When you say ‘a tenth of the planet’...” I trailed off again.
Bo shook his head, but didn’t respond. Instead, he turned and continued his march down the tunnel, signalling for the others to follow suit. “Avatars, avatars, no good, no good,” he muttered. Then, louder, “Iron works not far ahead. We got more questions, but all can wait til you clear the road.”
I exchanged a wary look with my party members. The stuff we were learning from the native technicians wasn’t painting a happy picture, and it looked like everyone else agreed with me.
We went down and down, on and on, and it became clear that ‘close’ was relative. Still, Bo had decided it was better we move in silence rather than continue our spirited discussion. I suspected he wanted to put aside the serious topics until we’d already done him the favor of clearing out whatever was infesting the iron works, be it United or something else. I concurred, but only because I preferred a quiet approach.
Our lack of clear path and the nature of the environment meant that Shog could only scout so far ahead. He had to stay close to each upcoming junction until the Subcapras indicated which was the correct path to take. They gave no sign that they noticed the c’thon, nor did they seem to perceive Nuralie, who I knew was skulking nearby. Because of this, we weren’t getting much information about what was ahead.
After another thirty minutes and another two intersections, the tunnel we were in had leveled out to what I’d describe as steep, but traversable. Bo gave a silent signal to stop and moved ahead on his own, trotting down the long corridor for several minutes before the slight curve took him out of view. A few minutes later he came charging back up the incline, making rapid hand gestures that sent the other Subcapras turning tail as well.
“Only one, I think!” he said as he rushed by. “Don’t wanna be food!” He gave us a parting gesture that Throne translated to mean “Steady footing!” I think he was wishing us luck, but the subtext had some sarcasm to it. It might have been closer to telling a performer to “break a leg” before they went on stage.
Before I could muse further on the intricacies of gestural adaptations from the vocalized form of a machine language and the eccentricities present when translated by a Delve Core into ordinary Hiwardian, a swarm of Dark Iron Beetles emerged from below.
They crawled up the floor, walls, and ceiling, covering every surface with their metallic-black forms. The beetles weren’t the problem, however. Amid them was a form much larger than the rest; a creature that had only a passing resemblance to the insectoid mana monsters.
It rose up to evaluate us with a bulge of glistening eyes. The inside of its carapace unfolded into long, humanoid limbs. Its abdomen split down the center, exposing an impossibly large mouth filled with hooked teeth.
Then, it and the entire swarm of beetles swam into the ground, the distant tunnel walls momentarily rippling as though they were liquid. In only an instant, we were completely alone.
“You’re always telling us to look up,” said Xim, hefting her scepter and massive shield, “now where should we be looking?”
My spiritual senses took in the tidal wave of souls screaming towards us from within the rock and metal surrounding us.
I summoned Somncres, activated Therianthropy, and teleported Gracorvus back onto my arm. “Safest bet? Everywhere.”