The Last Coffee Shop

Chapter 25: Burning Ashes, Killing Moons

Mads jolted as Graynard tugged the rope binding her hands. She glared at his broad back, but silently followed him out from behind piles of rusting metal and machinery. The air was hot and dusty, bitter with the stench of brimstone and tar, and the ground was covered in red dirt that seemed mixed with sand.

Mads stopped in surprise. How could all this be underground?

"Come on," snapped Graynard, pulling her ropes and moving toward a worn rock pathway that reappeared and disappeared in the chaos ahead.

Mads ignored him. Somehow, this was nothing like what she had expected Ga'naa to be like. Hundreds of people bustled about in what appeared to be an enormous underground market. The stalls were made from piles of crates and metal, and other unidentifiable debris. Vendors called out their wares in a mishmash of languages, many unfamiliar to Mads. She wondered how anyone could hear anything properly. They seemed to carry mainly dry foodstuffs and minor tech, but Mads saw hanging sides of meat and a few pallid live chickens as well.

Shoppers milled about, dressed in patched robes and simple trousers. Like in Springs Village, the people were a diverse rainbow of skin shades and colors, builds, and hair textures, though they all seemed a bit faded. Perhaps from centuries underground? Unlike in Springs Village, there was not a single nonhuman, or even a robotic. The hundreds of shoppers were undoubtedly humans. Graynard would stand out like a sunflower in a strawberry patch.

Mads finally shuffled forward, as Graynard apparently intended on giving her wrists rope-burn until she moved along. As they walked, she gazed up at the ceiling of the immense cavern, wondering at the rickety metal scaffolding high overhead, and at the many portholes and sewer entrances built into the natural stone. Some of them looked older than the shaft they had entered through. Many of them probably predated The End.

They made their way into the human stream, and Mads immediately noticed a shift in the noise about them. Graynard was given furtive looks, while Mads was mostly ignored, but people left a clear space around the grimy Atelian and his grimier "captive." Still, no one seemed too threatening, and they continued about their business.

Mads kept looking for the barely-human monsters she'd been imagining, but she didn't see anything more scandalous than a half-naked man with crude full-body bone tattoos. That was a bit shocking, but she had seen much stranger things in her shop during tourist season. But he still looked like a person, despite the terribly crooked skull tattooed over his gaunt face.

By the time they made it across the giant space, Mads' wrists were officially sore. Graynard seemed tense, and Mads wondered if it went deeper than his plan, or even the fact that he was an obvious outsider. She couldn't shake the feeling that he was hiding something important from her. Not that this was surprising, but it did unsettle her.

After being kidnapped, she'd immediately identified Luc as the unstable, dangerous one, but she was wondering if she'd had it all wrong. Graynard had seemed almost nice, thoughtful at times, and resistant to violence, but he'd never condemned Luc, and Mads hadn't seen what the Atelian had been doing when they were apart. She'd never sensed anything other than disinterested goodwill towards herself, but now he seemed different. Not hostile. Not sinister. Just different. What if he planned to leave her here?

No, Mads banished the thought. She couldn't afford to doubt him right now.

A few minutes later, Graynard stopped at the cavern wall, where there was a giant metal door fit into the stone. The door was intricately engraved with several tableaus. Mads leaned forward to see them while keeping an ear on Graynard's conversation with the two large men who guarded the door.

"A gift for Andhera." Graynard was saying, in response to a hostile challenge from the men.

Mads kept her eyes on the door. The carvings depicted a beautiful woman with hip length hair, outstretched arms, and a voluptuous body barely concealed by her robes. Mads did not approve of the woman's near-nakedness or her hungry expression, especially once Mads noticed the carvings below. Gory, explicitly carved tableaus of stylized murder and mayhem, and then the woman again, with hordes of people kneeling at her feet, their hands filled with heads, arms, corpses, and worse, offered as gifts.