The Promise of the Child

Part 5 (updated daily)

At the shaft, Tzolz stopped, the blackness complete around them. They had travelled in darkness from the abandoned servants' quarters down and down until his ears popped. Only the sound of running water had told him they were finally upon it, the great spine of the citadel. He switched his suit lights back on as his feet met soft mounds on the floor, and he looked down to see that they were walking once again on casualties, pieces of all the Vulgar that had fallen from the higher levels during the attack. Most had tumbled straight down the shaft, but some had hit the sides and bounced, ending up lodged like detritus in the corkscrew corridors that made up the shaft's sides. Two levels below them, the drilling team were waiting in silence, their hungry, reflective eyes visible in the suit's weak light. Further below them, the bricks and stones turned to solid rock, cold granite slabs that glittered with running water. At his signal they began their work, dragging heavy drills to the sides of the shaft and pulling chains to start them.

The noise of grinding filtered up along with the drifting cloud of pulverised stone, turning the air around Tzolz's group into a milky soup wherever he shone his suit lights. The team stood, waiting, their faces haggard and obscene in the mist like sunken corpses in a moonlit pool, the portable generators within each soldier's armour issuing their own small whisps of coiling smoke. Running among their feet the Oxel played, one tripping and falling into the chasm before its fellows could stop it. Tzolz watched the body tumble, screaming, until it was lost in the darkness.

The drilling team shut down their machines, the mist swirling in the updraught from the shaft and dissipating. Tzolz's crew bent to look, some grabbing their spring rifles and training them on the hole that had suddenly been revealed in the chasm wall, a weak light pouring from it. Tzolz waited, sighting his own weapon on the caved-in portion of wall below. The edges of the hole crumbled further until a portion of the wall suddenly sloughed away completely, dropping into the shaft in a cloud of dust and stone and unveiling a cross section of tunnels and levels swarming with shrieking Vulgar soldiers. They squealed to each other and fired into the drilling team, Tzolz's men dropping as many as they could before bolts and sparkers started raining into the level on which they were crouched. The Vulgar squad was mostly composed of trained Loyalists, but the motley armour indicated hired help as well, with not a few Zelioceti and even Wulm mercenaries among their number. Tzolz lifted his rifle to cover his head and made his way down the open passage in the side of the shaft, shots chipping the stone around him. They were surely too far away for any great accuracy, but still he made a last dash for the safety of a stalled drill lying canted on its side. Fizzing sparkers whined and bounced from its casing as he dropped behind it, brushing at a smoking dent in his shoulder-plating. Glancing up at his squad, he could see that two were dead, the third taking a bolt through the eye as he watched. The remains of the drilling team had pushed into the hole and were climbing the ladders in what appeared to be sleeping quarters. Tzolz followed their progress along the flimsy-looking wooden bunks and up into the next chamber, some leaning from the level they were on to shoot up into the mass of screaming Prism scampering this way and that along their bunks. He checked his clock, knowing before he did so that there was no more time for fighting. He clawed at the drill, bringing it up to his chest with a wheeze, and held it there like a shield as he made his way to the hole.

A Wulm dropped into his path just as he reached the ladders, shoved from its level by the panicked Vulgar loyalists. It shook itself and stood, squealing as Tzolz threw the drill aside and slammed his rifle into its small head. The long-eared Prism's face crumpled in a froth of blood and it rolled, tumbling into the chasm. He looked up at the drillers clambering above, some taking bolts and falling, then back along the open tunnel he was in. There were bodies piled against the rustic wooden door at the far end, its edge burned away by some sort of incendiary explosion. He kicked it open in a storm of splinters, bringing the rifle up and felling a Vulgar as it ran for the next chamber, then made his way to an apparently undefended lower passage. As he jogged, Tzolz realised he was limping and glanced down to see that the meat of one calf had been mostly torn away by a clawed bullet. He ground his teeth and ran on.