Dream of a Vast Blue Cavern

Chapter 1: Whispers of War: Glace

Glace squeezed through the cramped spur tunnel as quickly as he could, praying that Stasia would not reach the Spiral very far ahead of him. The Scouts reported Chraun had been active recently, increasing raids, patrolling the neutral territory, perhaps even breaking old treaties and mining something up here. Bad enough that he had been distracted by the burial chamber—what a find!—and Stasia would be late for Council; the last thing he needed was to run into a patrol. Even one Flame would be a danger in these tunnels.

When he popped out of the spur into the spacious Spiral, Stasia was waiting in the dark, by the entrance. “Walk,” he said, using his command voice, hoping she wouldn’t argue. “Better to be late than run headlong into a Flame patrol.”

Thankfully, she complied without protest. She probably preferred the delay, though it grated at his nerves. Walking, her strides were half his, and what had taken him a mere half-hour took more than an hour. Perhaps I should carry her, he thought, grinning in the dark, like a sack of fungal fodder.

As the tunnel flattened, widened and straightened, the air changed from the strange gradients of warm and cool to being solidly, deliciously cold. The heat did not make Glace ill as it did an Icer, but he did not like it. He was more comfortable in the cold, and he breathed in deep, sulfur-free breaths, glad to be home. The strange dreams and notions that possessed his little mistress to wander so far away baffled him, and he feared for her every time she ran off.

As soon as he saw blue icelights glowing in the distance, Glace grabbed Stasia's hand and pulled her down the tunnel as if they were children again. She did not resist, and for a moment he was able to forget the tension that had grown between them, and pretend they were children, playing hideme in the fungal caverns. The tunnel widened further, and branched into a labyrinth of different passages. They all led to Iskalon, but Glace picked the most direct. It would take them through the guildless tunnel, but it could not be helped. They had to make the Council.

When the new tunnel widened to a huge cavern, they startled two Guildsmen who were harvesting lacy morchella fungi from densely spaced columns. The ceiling was coated with a thin covering of burial ice, left in these caverns by the Ancestors. At the base of the columns, sour vase fungi grew in large brown funnels. Giant mounds of bolete mushrooms, broad, table-like bellinis, and slender piota caps teetering on thin stalks carpeted the vast cavern floor. In open spaces between the columns, stone vats of sweet, refreshing fineslime in its pre-spore stage awaited processing into sorbets. Vines of bulbous bliss fungi hung from the low ceiling. Not pausing in his stride, Glace reached up and grabbed a handful. Stasia giggled beside him like she had when they were children. He tossed the sweet, juicy harvest to her, and she caught it in midair, munching as she ran. She was beautiful, her pale skin shining blue with millions of tiny dots, her silver hair wild behind her, her yellow-green eyes glinting like gems. The skin on her hand was soft and cool and he could feel her pulse beating against his.

He would die someday protecting her. He had known that since he was twelve, and found her wandering alone in the wild Outer Tunnels. When he brought her back to the Palace, King Krevas had charged Glace with her safety. “If necessary, you will lay down your life to keep her safe,” Krevas ordered. Glace agreed. The little silver-haired cherub, playing with a power she didn't understand yet, would need protection.

But when Glace was twenty, he had been sent away from her for four whole years, relieved of duty by the King to train in the army and gain real battle experience. “You won’t learn how to protect her in the halls of the Palace,” Glace’s father had said, in agreement with the King’s decision. Glace did not regret his training, protecting Iskalon from raids and fighting real Flames and their well-armed Semija Warriors. He had made mistakes in battle and learned from them. Each scar on his face was a reminder of a particular mistake.