Chương 6: Toll

They kept walking. Nobody talked much anymore. Blood stained pickaxes dragged across stone, and every so often a cough echoed down the tunnel and died somewhere in the dark. Somewhere behind them, a woman kept muttering a name under her breath, over and over, until even that faded out. Murren led from the front, never once looking back. The rest followed because there was nowhere else to go. Lere fell into step beside Solstice, voice dropped low.

"This vein's weird. All of it. The Uron. That dweller." A beat.

"You know most dwellers attack anything that moves, right? That one didn't."

"What's weird about it?" Solstice kept his own voice down to match.

"It walked right past miners running past it and went for the Saltbearers instead. The ones carrying salt." Lere's eyes stayed fixed ahead, breath fogging thick.

"Looked normal at first. Then I actually thought about it. It wasn't after us. It was after the salt. Like it was starving for it."

"Yeah," Solstice said.

"If it weren't for you, I'd have died. I was carrying some too." Lere glanced sideways.

"You figured it out fast. You've dealt with something like that before?"

"No."

"Oh." Murren's voice cracked down the tunnel.

"Halt." Everyone stopped. Ten dweller corpses lay ahead, frozen solid, each one gouged through with two matching holes, like something far bigger had taken bites out of them. A layer of frost coated the ground and walls, thick and undisturbed. Wrong. They'd been descending for hours, and the deeper they went, the warmer the air had gotten. There was no reason for frost down here. Something in Solstice's chest went tight and cold, colder than the ice in front of him.

Whatever did this made that dweller from the cavern look like a stray dog. Murren studied the corpses for a long moment before turning to face the group.

"Who here has a Domain of Expansion?" Nobody moved. Then Lere's hand went up beside him, and Solstice felt the weight of that decision land on his own shoulders a second later. He raised his hand too. Slow. Reluctant. Murren's eyes found them both and he crossed the distance in four strides. His fist caught Lere first. Lere hit the ground hard. Solstice was next. His vision swam white, and he coughed, tasting blood before he even registered the pain.

"WE'VE BEEN WALKING FOR HOURS AND NEITHER OF YOU SAID A WORD ABOUT BEING EXPANSION!" Murren's voice cracked off the walls. Lere pushed himself up on one arm.

"We apologize. It didn't seem—" A boot, still wet with dweller blood, caught him mid sentence and sent him back down. Solstice was already standing again, lip split and dripping. Every thought in his head right now involved killing this man slowly. None of them reached his mouth.

"My senses says we can't go further," he said instead, flat and even.

"Whatever's ahead, it's bigger than what we've already seen. I can tell how many and not what." Murren's stare dropped to him, weighing whether a bleeding fifteen-year-old was worth listening to.

"How many."

"Twenty." Solstice blurted it out. The number rippled through the group behind him, low and fast, someone swearing under their breath. Lere climbed to his feet, staring at Solstice with open confusion. And solstice's heart skipped a beat.' Come on..' Murren's eyes shifted to Lere, waiting.

"I sensed it too," Lere said, still looking at Solstice, not Murren. Solstice sighed of relief. Murren said nothing for a moment, then turned to the group.

"We're not going further. We find another way."

"But how—" a miner started, and Murren's fist put him on the ground before he finished.

"DON'T ASK QUESTIONS. We'll find one." While the group stood frozen around him, Solstice took his lamp to the walls, running his free hand along the stone. Near the far corner, the lights found him before he found them, clustered thick around a hairline seam in the rock. He held the lamp close. A passage, barely wide enough for a shoulder, buried under a thick seam of Uron and salt. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.' And how the hell is everyone supposed to fit through that.'

He turned back to the group.

"There's an opening here." Nobody answered. The group stood locked around Murren, waiting for the next order like dogs that had learned better than to move without one.

"Hey." Louder this time.

"There's a gap over here." Still nothing. Solstice crossed the cavern and tapped Lere's shoulder. Lere flinched hard enough to throw both hands up.

"Whoa—hey. Sol, you scared me. Say something next time."

'Sol. Where did that come from.'

"I was talking. Twice."

"Didn't hear a thing." Solstice let the annoyance pass over his face and pushed through it anyway.

"There's a gap in the wall. Far corner. It's thin, but it leads somewhere." Lere's expression lit up, and he turned toward the group.

"Guys! Sol found a way out!" Heads turned. Lere jogged over, ran a hand along the seam, and went still.

"No wonder I couldn't sense this. The Uron and salt are so dense here it's drowning out my field. You're seeing it clean through that?" He looked at Solstice, something like awe cutting through the exhaustion.

"Your field sense is stronger than mine." Solstice looked back at him and said nothing.

'You've got it backwards. I just got lucky. My weird eyes did the finding, not whatever you think this is but sure.'' Murren stepped up beside them.

"Make us a space." Lere's face fell.

"I can't. Not without salt." Murren hit him again and Lere went backwards again.

"Don't test me you bastard. Make the space or die trying." He raised a hand toward them both, his other already drifting to the canister at his belt.

'Here we go. Another genius solution from the man who solves every problem with his fists.'

"You do know we can't, right?" Solstice said.

"You're basically hogging all the salt." Murren's raised fist twitched. Solstice didn't flinch.

"If you give us a fair share of your refined salt, Lere and I can open the passage." He tilted his head toward the vein.

"If you don't…" His eyes dropped to the Pale Salt covering the wall.

"I guess I'll start mining." Murren's fist stopped. Solstice tapped the head of his pickaxe against the stone.

"Sure, it'll take a while. But we don't exactly have a choice, do we? We can't use our Domains without salt." He shrugged.

"And I'm sure you won't mind the noise." He gave Murren a thin, almost bored look.

"After all, noise attracts dwellers, right?" Murren stared at him. His jaw tightened. For a moment, Solstice thought he'd actually gotten through to him. Murren slowly lowered his fist.' Good. So the idiot does have a brain after all.' The fist came back up. It slammed into Solstice's jaw. He hit the ground hard.' YOU FUCKER! I TAKE IT BACK. YOU'RE AN ICE BLOODED BASTARD!' Something cold hit his face a second later, fine and dry as snow. He opened his eyes to pale salt dusted across his shoulders.

"Use it and get to work," Murren said, already walking off. Lere had a handful too, and shoved it into his mouth without hesitating. His face twisted through pain and straight into disgust.

"Ugh…. so salty." He spat, wiped his mouth, and grinned anyway.

"Thanks, Sol. Let's do this."

"Yeah, about that. I can't create spaces."

"Huh?"

"New to this. Remember?" Solstice said, bored and cold.

"I'll support. Good luck." Lere shot him a look that promised payback later and turned to the wall. Particles gathered around his hands, but not the way they had for Murren. These didn't pull inward. They pushed out from every point his fingers touched, the light peeling itself away from the wall like it was making room. Expanding. Creating. Expansion. The seam widened under his hands, inch by inch, until the gap could have fit two men shoulder to shoulder.

Lere dropped to his knees, gasping, coughing hard enough to double over. Murren walked through first. The rest followed without a word, without looking back at the boy still on the ground.' Ungrateful bastard, every last one of them.' Lere wiped his mouth and pushed himself up.

"Let's go." Solstice lingered a moment at the gap, glancing back at the empty cavern one last time, and that's when he heard it, a dry, rattling sound behind him. A man sat alone against the wall, pulling off his own trousers with shaking hands. His face had gone slack and grim. He lay down on the bare stone without them, and he wasn't shivering. Not even a little, despite the cold biting through Solstice's own coat.

"It's hot," the man muttered, curling his knees toward his chest like he was trying to fold himself away. Solstice knew exactly what that was. He walked over anyway. The scene pulled something loose in his chest, an old memory of his mother curled the same way, saying the same thing, in the same useless cold. He remembered being too small to do anything about it then. He wasn't small anymore. He bit down on the thought and knelt. He took the man's coat first. Boots. A red scarf.

In the jacket pocket, a small folding dagger. He held the blade for a moment, looking down at the man's empty stare.

"Rest in peace," Solstice said, and drove it into his throat. The man didn't flinch. Dark blood spread slow across the stone. Solstice stood, wound the red scarf around his own neck, and walked to catch up with the others.

"Rest in peace," he said again, quieter, and didn't look back.