Chương 4: Buried

Solstice was already running. He knew what it wanted. He'd known since it lifted its head from the wrecked cart and sniffed him out like a dog catching scent. That was the whole problem with stealing. Sooner or later something always smelled it on you. His hand was already inside his coat, closing around the shards before Lere even got him moving. The dweller came straight for him. one swing away from ending things, and closing fast.

He could feel the ground shake under it with every stride, closer each time, and his legs had nothing left to answer with. Running wasn't going to work. Running had never been the plan. He'd known that the second he felt the warmth against his ribs turn into a target painted on his back. Across the cavern, past the rubble and scattered carts, more miners were still running for the tunnel mouth. Solstice saw them and didn't think twice. He threw the shards hard, straight at the open ground near them.

The dweller skidded, claws tearing gouges in the stone, and turned.

"THROW THE SALT!" he screamed. Nobody moved.

"EVERYONE! THROW THE FUCKING SALT AWAY FROM YOU!" A miner stared at him like he'd gone mad.

"What?"

"THE SALT! THROW IT!" The dweller charged, straight at the man still standing there asking questions. Solstice didn't wait for him to catch up. He grabbed another chunk off the overturned cart and hurled it wide, and the creature's head snapped sideways, chasing the sound instead of the man. That got through faster than the shouting had. The miner ripped a handful of salt from his own sack and threw it. Another followed.

Then another, and another, until Pale Salt was flying across the cavern from every direction, and the dweller couldn't keep still long enough to pick a target, lurching from pile to pile with its claws scraping stone each time it turned. Lere caught on before the second cart even hit the ground. He didn't ask what Solstice was doing. He just moved, kicking the nearest cart hard enough to send it tipping, salt spilling out in a wide scatter across the floor. Another cart. Another.

Buying more ground, more noise, more reasons for the thing to keep looking anywhere but at either of them.

"Keep going," Solstice said, not looking at him, already moving to the next one.

"Already on it," Lere said back, and kicked another cart clean off its wheels. It worked too well. The dweller tore through the cavern after every scattered pile, and it didn't care what stood in the way. A miner went down under one wild swing, his sack still clutched in both hands. Another caught the backswing a second later and didn't get back up. Blood sprayed dark across the stone.

One man's arm landed a full body length from the rest of him, fingers still curled around a fistful of salt he'd never gotten the chance to throw. Nobody had time to scream before the next one dropped. Solstice's stomach turned. He didn't look away. That's on them, not me. He told himself that fast, before the thought could sit still long enough to argue with him. Then a barrage of wind slashes tore into the dweller's back. Solstice's head snapped toward it.

Rotel stood a good distance off with both palms still raised, chest heaving, looking pleased with himself for about half a second. The creature roared, a sound that cracked off every wall in the cavern, and staggered forward with fresh cuts opening across its shoulders. Blood, its blood, ran black down its spine. It stopped chasing the salt. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Solstice understood exactly what had just happened half a second before it fully registered on Rotel's face.

"YOU GODDAMN IDIOT!" Solstice screamed across the cavern. It wasn't hungry anymore. It was angry. And the salt didn't matter to something that wanted revenge instead of a meal. All that careful, ugly work, gone, because one idiot with a canister couldn't stand watching from the back.

"The dweller turned on Rotel and charged. Rotel backed up fast, hand diving into his canister for another attack. Nothing came out. He shook it once. Turned it upside down. Nothing. His face went the color of old snow. He'd used everything he had trying to look like a hero, and now there was nothing left in his hand but empty metal.

"Murren!" he shouted, already backing toward the scarred Saltbearer.

"Help—" The word never finished. The dweller's claw went through him in one motion, clean through the chest and out the other side, and Rotel dropped without another sound. Like something had reached in and simply switched him off. Murren, the scarred face saltbearer, didn't hesitate. He crushed a fistful of Pale Salt into his mouth, all of it, chewing through the pain of it with his teeth bared. No rationing left to do. Rotel had made sure of that. Solstice's eyes screamed.

Light gathered around Murren's raised hands, more of it than Solstice had ever seen, threads of it tangling and multiplying until it was almost too much to look at. He pressed the heel of his hand against his eye and kept watching anyway. Whatever this was, it never stayed still long enough for him to understand it, and every time it happened it cost him more than the last. Murren's hands snapped forward. The wind hit the dweller square in the chest and didn't stop.

It carried the creature backward across the whole cavern floor, through debris, through the wreckage of two carts, and slammed it into the tunnel mouth they'd all walked in through hours ago. The ceiling came down on top of it. All at once. Not falling, crashing, stone piling on stone until the entire exit disappeared under a wall of rock. Dust rolled out in a thick choking cloud that stung Solstice's throat before he could turn away from it.

He heard the impact in his chest before the sound reached his ears, a deep grinding thud that didn't stop for what felt like too long. When it cleared, there was no exit left. Just rubble stacked to the ceiling, and somewhere under it, one clawed hand sticking out of the stone. It didn't move. For a second, nobody understood. Then someone did, and started screaming.

"The exit's gone! It's gone!" A miner threw himself at the rubble, tearing at rock with bare hands until his fingers split open, not stopping even when blood ran down his wrists. Another dropped to his knees next to a body and just kept saying the same name over and over, like repeating it enough times might make the man answer back.

"My brother's still out there, he's still—" Azel shoved through the panic, shouting orders that nobody was listening to. His mask had slipped off somewhere during the run. His face looked older than it had that morning, deep lines cut into it that hadn't been there at the start of the shift.

"Stay calm! We find another way, we don't panic, we—" Nobody was calm. The cavern was one long scream, dozens of voices on top of each other until none of it meant anything anymore. Someone was pulling at a body that wasn't going to move again. Someone else had stopped screaming entirely and just sat against the wall, staring at nothing, both hands shaking in his lap. Solstice stood still in the middle of it. His eyes still hurt, dull now, not screaming like before.

Lere kept saying his name, hand on his shoulder, and Solstice let it pass over him without answering. He looked at the rubble. At the ceiling above it, still veined with Pale Salt like nothing had happened. At the crowd, the ones still breathing, packed into a cavern with one door and no door left at all. At his own hands. He still had water. Half a skin, taken off a dying man before the man had finished dying. He still had a little salt left too, not much, but something.

"Maybe if we all consume Pale Salt and use our Domains, we can clear the rubble?" Someone snapped, "Are you stupid? Did you see how much stone just came down? It's a miracle we weren't buried alive." Solstice almost laughed.

'We already are.' Lere dropped down next to him, breathing hard, knuckles scraped raw from the carts. He didn't say anything for a while. Just sat there, close enough that their shoulders touched, watching the same rubble Solstice was watching.

"We're going to be okay," Lere said, and even he didn't sound like he believed it. Solstice didn't answer that either. Everyone around him was asking the same question, over and over, screaming it at the rock like the rock might answer. How do we get out. Solstice didn't ask that. His was a simpler question. The only kind that had ever done him any good. Back against the stone, he started counting what he had left. Water. Salt. Air, and however many people were left to breathe it. How long can I last in here.