Chương 3: Feast

The three remaining Saltbearers spread into a wide arc around the bigger dweller. Its bloodshot eye swept the cavern, miners, Saltbearers, miners again, like it was deciding which meal cost less. Every Saltbearer moved at once. Fistfuls of Pale Salt vanished into their mouths. Hands snapped up.

"Rotel! Check on Wencell!" the scarred one hissed. Air screamed into his open palm. Loose salt dust lifted off the cavern floor and began orbiting his fist, faster and faster, until it looked less like wind and more like something alive. Solstice watched the world come apart around that hand. The air split open. Countless tiny lights flooded his vision, threads too small to exist, tangling over everything they touched. Through the Saltbearer's fingers. Through the spinning wind. Through the stone under his boots.

His eyes screamed with it, a pressure building behind his sockets that had no business being there.

'Not now. Please not now.' That was when the walls started moving. Three more shapes tore loose from holes he hadn't clocked as holes until they weren't holes anymore, smaller than the big one, faster for it, scattering into the crowd like the cavern itself had cracked open and started bleeding. The formation broke before it had a chance to hold.

"STAY IN LINE!" Azel's voice cracked over the noise, high and furious. He'd already swallowed his own mouthful of salt, canister still open at his hip, and the dweller in front of him barely got a full step in before his palm caught it across the jaw, wind and force both, a blunt crack that staggered it sideways.

"DON'T YOU DARE BREAK FORMATION!" A miner near the back was already running, dropping his sack of salt mid-stride to move faster.

"YOU RUN FROM THAT SALT," Azel screamed after him, voice tearing raw at the edges, "I'LL KILL YOU MYSELF ONCE THIS IS OVER! I SWEAR IT ON THE CINDER OFFICE!" The miner didn't stop. Nobody stopped. Azel's dweller came at him again, and he met it with both hands this time, driving it back a full step with a burst that cracked stone under its claws. Sweat cut clean lines through the dust on his face. He wasn't fighting like a man protecting people. He was fighting like a man protecting a quota.

'Everyone's losing their minds over rocks.' A shape broke off from the chaos and came straight for Solstice. He caught the motion late, too late, the dweller already mid-lunge, jaw wide, claws leading. He threw himself sideways on instinct alone, no thought behind it, just the animal part of him that had kept him alive longer than the thinking part ever had.

Claws raked past where his ribs had been half a second earlier and caught nothing but coat, a long tear opening down one side, cold air biting straight through to skin. Too close. Too fucking close. He hit the ground hard, rolled, came up with his teeth already gritted, and grabbed for the pickaxe strapped across his back.

The dweller spun on him again, fast, faster than something that size had any right to be, and Solstice swung wide and desperate, putting everything he had into an arc that should have taken its head off. It didn't. The head jerked back a fraction, just enough, and the pickaxe whistled through empty air and threw him half off balance with the force of his own miss.' Shit.' The creature's back leg coiled. It launched.

A shape crashed into it from the side before it ever reached him, a pickaxe swinging low and hard into the dweller's ribs with a wet, cracking thud that sent it flying sideways into the rock wall.

"I SAID MOVE, DAMN IT!" Lere was already stepping in front of him, breathing hard, weapon still raised. Solstice didn't waste the opening. He was moving before he'd finished thinking about it, pickaxe up, and brought it down on the dweller's skull while it was still trying to peel itself off the stone. It shrieked, thrashing, one claw catching nothing but air. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. He swung again. And again.

Each impact jarred straight up through his arms into his shoulders, blood spattering warm across his knuckles, the creature's shrieking thinning out with every hit until it wasn't a shriek anymore, just a wet, ragged noise, and then not even that. It stopped moving. Solstice stood over it, chest heaving, pickaxe still raised like his body hadn't gotten the message yet that it was over.

"You good?" Lere's voice, closer now, breathless.

"Fine." He lowered the pickaxe. His hands weren't quite steady. He didn't look at them. Around them, the rest of the cavern hadn't slowed down even a little. The large dweller exploded forward. Its feet shattered stone with each stride, five feet of muscle covering the cavern floor in two strides flat. The scarred Saltbearer stepped back and thrust his palm out.

The gathered wind left his hand like something uncoiling, and the impact folded the dweller sideways mid-charge, sending it crashing through a wall of loose rock. Dust and salt debris rained across the cavern. Miners threw their arms over their faces. The dweller pushed itself back up, jaw hanging open, saliva stringing down over the raw burn already scarring shut across its chest.

"Tch." The scarred Saltbearer spat to one side.

"Hard son of an ice." Another Saltbearer raised both hands, and a wall of something dense and near invisible snapped into being between him and the dweller. The creature slammed into it and stopped dead, muscle straining against a surface it couldn't see, only feel.

"Hurry! How's Wencell?" the scarred one shouted, head snapping toward Rotel. Rotel's face had already gone white.

"He's, he's dead!"

"Fuck." The word never finished leaving his mouth. The wall shattered. The dweller crossed the distance before the wall maker could raise his hands again, and the club came down in one motion, no wind up, no warning. The crack of it filled the cavern. His body hit the ground and skidded, coming to rest at Solstice's feet, leaving a smear of blood and grey matter on the stone.

'Well, we're fucked, fucked.' Solstice stepped back. Beside him, Lere had gone rigid, eyes darting between the exit and the dead man. For one full second, nobody moved. Then the screaming started, and the cavern turned into bodies running for the only way out.

"Damn you, mongrel!" The scarred Saltbearer's mouth twisted, and he crushed another fistful of Pale Salt between his teeth. The air around his hands compressed until the cavern itself seemed to scream with it, a pressure so violent that loose stone cracked off the walls on either side of him. He drove it forward. The blast tore a trench clean through solid rock, a scar twenty feet long gouged straight into the cavern floor, and caught the dweller full in the chest. It stumbled.

For a heartbeat, Solstice let himself believe it was over. Then the creature planted its back leg and stood back up, chest smoking, one arm hanging wrong, and kept coming anyway. Solstice's vision fractured further with every second the Saltbearer stayed active, lights bleeding across the dweller, the rock, the men around him, until the pain buckled his knees straight into the ground. Lere skidded to a stop beside him instead of running past.

"Hey! What's wrong with you! Let's go!" Solstice heard him. He couldn't make his mouth work well enough to answer. The dweller ignored the Saltbearer reeling from his own attack. It ignored Lere. It ignored the screaming line of miners fleeing for the exit, stepping straight over a man who'd tripped and gone down, not even glancing at him as he scrambled out from under its foot. It went for the carts.

One swing, wide and almost careless, caught two fleeing miners across the chest and sent them into the far wall in a spray Solstice didn't let himself look at directly. Then the creature dropped its head and began eating. It ignored them. It chose the salt. It isn't chasing us. It's chasing what we're carrying. Solstice's stomach dropped somewhere past the realization. His hand found the cart nearest him almost on its own, and he shoved it away hard, sending it rattling into the dark.

'Never thought I'd thank a monster for having a diet.' The dweller's head swung toward the sound, found the second cart instead, and buried its face in it, jaw working through raw Pale Salt like it was starving too. Lere's hand closed around his arm and hauled him upright without asking.

"Move, damn it!" They made it two steps. The dweller lifted its head from the wreckage of the cart, throat still working, and went still. Its eye moved. Past Lere. Past the miners scattering for the tunnel mouth. Past the Saltbearer still smoking from his own attack. Straight to Solstice. It sniffed the air once, slow, deliberate, and Solstice felt his blood go cold before his mind caught up to why. The shards he'd stolen. Still tucked against his ribs, warm from his own body heat.

"Ah." He looked down at his coat. Then back at the Dweller.

"Well.."

"We can share?"