Chương 28

You weren't really intending on climbing into that Aberrant haunt, were you? Their first steps into the den were dusty and dry, filled with hardened dirt and the smooth grooves of the serpent's passage. It didn't last, as the tunnel dipped further, funneling deep enough that the cool air started to get warmer. It's humid. What's providing the heat? Plants clung to the ceilings, a type of ivy Harker recognized as an intrusive vine called a red creeper.

The leaves were a favored hiding spot for their lesser kindred, and here the vines were thick enough that even a giant Aberrant could get the drop on them. One of the reasons the creeping coralsnout was named as it was, not to mention its crimson color. Harker made sure to keep pulsing his Talent. The sensory information it provided was far inferior to sustaining it, but it kept him aware. Just plants. Let's hope it stays that way.

"This is horrendous!" Stillwater spat out a red leaf and clawed his stubby hands at the other vines within reach.

"What use could anyone have for such vile growths?" Red creeper had many purposes, though mainly it was their roots. They were quite delicious if stewed or fried, especially when paired with roasted black gar. Just the thought of it set Harker's stomach to rumbling, but just like Stillwater's continuous complaints, he ignored it. Time enough to eat when we get out. The den was far larger than it had any right to be.

Cut into a network of caves that were remarkably similar to its reservoir, forming a maze of tunnels, all of them connecting at strange angles. As they wound deeper, even the ceiling had holes in it.

"Salt and stone, imagine fighting that beastie in here," Adhira said, staring up at a tunnel nearly completely concealed by red creeper vine. Harker could imagine it well enough, and was happy they'd lured it out.

"It would have hit us from any angle at any time. A nightmare."

"Hm. But it would have been fun." He glanced at her, but she was already moving on. What is with this girl? She seemed more interested in battle than sense. She takes far too many chances and throws herself into danger. His mother had a term for such people. Called them wave-seekers, those that hunted out the largest and most violent of waves before hurling herself at the waters. All for the thrill of it. I should've kept traveling alone.

Even with the Aberrant dead, walking the den would have been concerning without Sovereign Sight. Even pulsing his Talent gave Harker a great sense of relief. Each foot step was known, from the firmness of the earth and vines underfoot, to the scraped-smooth stone of the nearest tunnel sides, Harker received an ongoing impression of his surroundings. It was a bit foul tasting, and the smell left much to be desired, but that was where the limited detail benefitted him most.

It was the best he could do until he could learn to block some of his senses. If that were even possible. Ancestors grant me that mercy. He'd had the Talent for only a few days and already had enough foul memories to last a lifetime. Adhira brushed aside some hanging moss in their path, slicing it free with a casual flick of her huge axe.

"So what is your Talent, exactly?"

"What's yours?" She barked a laugh.

"I suppose that was rude of me. It's just, I can't quite pin down what you're doing when you manifest. It's maddening." Harker raised an eyebrow.

"Am I so mysterious?"

"Mysterious? You're a far cry from that, farmboy. I'm just curious, is all."

"Curiosity is good for you. Almost as good as unanswered questions." Adhira pursed her lips.

"Fine. I suppose a fair trade is in order. My Talents for yours." Harker glanced sideways at her, only to find the girl staring at him, a distinct challenge in her gaze.

"Do we have to do this now? Here?"

"There's no danger anymore. What's the harm in sharing?" Knowledge is power. You know that as well as anyone, I imagine. But there was no easy way to refuse any longer. Harker sighed.

"I suppose you're right." Her grin all but lit up the tunnel.

"Excellent! My Talents are called Torpor and Bulwark. One slows my target, and the other creates earthen walls."

"So esoteric and elemental focuses?"

"Exactly." She eyed him.

"You seem…unimpressed."

"Do I?" Harker shrugged, stepping through a thigh-high swell of creeper leaves.

"Most people are more, I don't know, energetic when they find out I have Dual Talents."

"Sorry to disappoint."

"I doubt it," she muttered.

"What was that?"

"Nothing." Harker frowned, but didn't bother looking at the noble. Was she really upset that I didn't…what? Shout in amazement? Grovel at her feet? His frown only deepened with each thought. The Sea will burn before I ever do that.

"What of you, then?" He didn't answer immediately as they ducked through another curve in the tunnel. Telling the truth about his Talent was pointless if he planned to keep his disguise going, but lying was out of the question. If Stillwater was to be believed, it was the only thing holding his Stature together. The creature waded close by, almost covered by the leafy vines. He watched Harker, his stupid face split by an amused grin.

"It is an esoteric focus," he said.

"Same as your Torpor. So far it's mostly about finding the best way to hit things." Not a lie, but he was cutting the specifics close. Inside his chest, his Stature clenched but ceased only a moment later. As far as Harker could tell, it remained hale and whole.

"The best way…is that how you found the Aberrant's reservoir?" Harker nodded.

"Esoteric indeed." She cleared her throat.

"I didn't hear the name."

"No you didn't." Adhira rolled her eyes.

"Stingy. Still, I've got a measure of you now. You're an interesting sort, Harker Shoalborn." Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. The way she said his name… Harker had never heard it pronounced that way. Without derision. It was unnerving.

"Cleverly done," Stillwater muttered as he passed close. He almost sounded impressed.

"You skimmed the very edge of the truth without an ounce of Stature lost." His grin grew wide once more.

"Will you be able to keep it up when she starts asking the real questions?" Harker wanted nothing more than to snap back at the little cretin, but Adhira was far too close. Instead, he tried to let both of their reactions wash off his back as they explored the tunnels. The powerful always sought reactions from the weak, and Harker had no intention of giving either of them the satisfaction. They walked onward, the tunnel sloping in ever more convoluted passages.

Adhira spoke, often of nothing, but Harker gave little in return and focused entirely on pulsing his Talent. Eventually, even her eagerness faded to silence as they delved deeper and found a great deal of nothing. Fifteen minutes in, Harker stopped moving. Adhira noticed immediately.

"What is it?"

"Bones. A lot of them." A few steps ahead, half hidden in the vines, were splintered off-white chips. Adhira poked her haft into the nearest pile and they clattered loudly.

"Broken and worn down to bits. There must be thousands of skeletons down here. Giant serpents get hungry, I suppose." Harker could sense them with every pulse. No skeleton was complete, as if they had all been placed beneath a great rock and crushed. He pushed forward, shuffling as best he could through the ankle-deep spill of bone.

"Snakes digest bones," he said.

"Really." Harker kept walking, every step echoing through the tunnel.

"These aren't remnants of its meals." Adhira's eyebrows shot up.

"It's a warning system." Harker grinned.

"We must be close." With an eager laugh, Adhira caught up, pressing ahead until she was leading the charge across the bone-strewn den. After a hundred feet, the bones stopped and the ground lifted once again before plunging downward. The slope was steep, but nothing that couldn't be climbed, and down below…

"It's glowing," Adhira said, excitement threading her energetic voice.

"You hear that?" He did. A trickle of water. Together they slipped down the incline and into a wide cavern. The place was at least fifty feet across and twice that high, and was dominated by a large pond. Water poured down the far wall in steady streams, splashing as it fed into the pond and rippling the profusion of wavering plants just below the surface. Once, the shore had been clearly filled with vegetation, but ruts and furrows were all that remained. Something had gnawed them all away.

Harker pulsed his Talent and came back with the scent of the Sea… but it wasn't as strong as he expected, given the coralsnout's mutations.

"The tidepool is losing its connection to the Sea," Adhira observed, kneeling down and running her hand over the mud.

"The Horizon is distant."

"You can sense that?" Adhira nodded, entirely taken up by her investigation.

"There must be something here, though." Harker watched her prowl away, eyes scanning the cavern for anything of note. The function of tidepools were a mystery to most, and Harker was no exception. All he knew was that they were a thin place in the world where the Sea could cross the Horizon, and that led to mutations in plants and animals alike. Stillwater stood well away from the pond.

"Fetid, shallow puddle. Not even worth the time it took to come down here."

"Aha! Found something!" Harker followed her voice toward an outcropping of rock near the cavern's edge.

"Looks like we weren't the first ones here." Tucked around the outcropping, half hidden in a crevasse, was a corpse. They wore salt encrusted chainmail and little else save some scraps of leather and their bones. Well. Most of their bones.

"Snake chomped off his legs, looks like." Adhira leaned closer, pulling free a broken sword, spear, and a shield that had been split in two.

"Poor bastard." Harker pulsed his Talent and paused, eyes wide before reaching out. From the corpse's rotten belt, he snagged a crumbling pouch and a sheathed dagger.

"Oh? What'd you find?" Adhira leaned in, until the heat of her pressed against Harker's cheek. He cleared his throat.

"Looks like a dagger and five stone ampules. Full." The ampules were the size of a finger, carved out of stone in a pattern that reminded him of the Aberrant's reservoir. Inside, they sloshed with a measure of refined Water that was worth its weight in gold. It was painful, but he held the entire lot out to her.

"I didn't find squat," she groused, then blinked at his open hands.

"Why'd you give me these? This is an even split." Harker stilled his expression.

"You did all the work with the coralsnout."

"And was getting exactly nowhere with it. Not until you told me where to hit."

"I—" Harker didn't disagree, he just didn't expect her to bring it up.

"Fine. I'll take the dagger and one of the ampules."

"Sounds fair." Adhira snagged the other four ampules.

"Let's keep looking. There has to be more here than snake stink." They spent some time hunting the shoreline, but little else was found. Aberrant haunts usually teemed with dead explorers who bit off more than they could chew, but if any had ventured this far they'd been devoured whole. Maybe I should check the snake's stomach contents. Might find something useful in there. Or he'd just experience the taste, smell, and feel of the serpent's innards. Harker grimaced. On second thought…

"Human." Stillwater stood where he was before, a few feet shy of the pond's shoreline. Now, however, he pointed straight into its center.

"Look." The pond, which was filled with pale weeds, shifted ever so slightly. The weeds parted, just for a moment, and he caught a glimmer of purple light far below. Harker took several steps toward the water, but stopped at its edge, still trying to get a better glimpse. None was to be had, but his curiosity burned in him.

"Now that looks interesting," Adhira said, coming up beside him.

"We should probably get it, huh?"

"It's at the bottom of a—" Harker glanced over, and Adhira had already started to strip to her undergarments. He spun around immediately, a flush heating his neck and cheeks.

"Warn me, at least!" A throaty laugh echoed around the cavern.

"Prude." Water splashed and then silence. For several long minutes, Harker was tempted to turn around or even use his Talent, but he resisted. Adhira seemed to be an… unconventional sort, but she was still a powerful noble. There was no telling when she would crush him for stepping out of line. He gripped his new dagger, the wire-wrapped hilt biting into his palm. Without warning, the surface of the tidepool erupted. Harker spun back around just in time to see a large boulder slam into the muck.

Six feet across and mostly flat, it had to have weighed hundreds of pounds—and that was without considering the weeds and slime that clung to its sides like jellied limbs. Adhira walked into his view, already wrapped up in her discarded cloak. Her hair was matted down but her eyes were bright.

""I'm no good at harvesting," she said with a soaked grin.

"But I figured your talented hands could figure something out. So I brought the whole thing out."

"So you did." Harker smiled, a thrill of excitement chasing through him. Adhira's smile sharpened. She pulled her wet hair back and stepped closer, her cloak clinging to her wet body.

"What do you think?"

"Incredible." Harker stepped forward and the girl stepped back, surprised.

"What are you—?" She looked up at him, silver eyes surrounded by white. Harker smiled and passed by, eyes fixed on the boulder. He knelt down at its side, only barely hearing the girl sniff sharply. She must have a cold. I'll brew her some tea when we make camp. Harker ran his fingers over its sides, which were covered in a slimy residue and no small amount of salt and silt.

Impurities from the Sea had clearly built up at the bottom of the tidepool, but the majority of its potency had focused entirely on the plant that grew on the boulder's top.

"Common muskgrass?" he muttered to himself.

"No, it's usually green and far less radiant." This was violet and glowed enough to light up their patch of the dim cavern. Muskgrass was known for many things, chiefly for being a nutrient-dense source of food for fish and other creatures. The coralsnout must have been snacking on this for years to grow so large.

"That's quite rare but I was hoping for something more interesting," Adhira said, and for some reason her voice was a touch annoyed again.

"A sunken sword or a tidal gem, at least." Harker turned toward her.

"You know what it is?" She had already put her clothes back on and was busy arranging her armor, but seemed surprised at his interest.

"Of course. Violet muskgrass is given to children along with their mother's milk. It heightens your inner sensitivity."

"For what purpose?"

"For what—? Ah." She nodded to herself.

"I forget you're from the sticks. It's for finding your Locks so you can build tributaries to each one and open them up. Useless to us, of course, but it sells well at just about any market."

"I see." Harker kept his face still, hiding the elation that spiraled through him. Without Locks or other tributaries, this would be invaluable. Carefully, pulsing his Talent the whole time, he harvested as much as he could before bundling it into his supplies. Soon, he promised it, before sheathing his new dagger in his belt. Very soon.