Madregal
Chapter 3: Tombdrive Nostrum
Cerquet caravan moved north from red mottled ruins into saturated caverns. In subterreanean reach they washed, refilled drinking skins and emerged to shrubland that terminated in a colossal canyon, its bottom opaque to eye, beset with osseous generators once powered by long vanished currents. Mist caressed countless galeseared slabs, like giant’s rebar, wasted as cliffs of their protrusion. Some derelicts ran horizontal ambit, projecting from cliff cored mining towns, while others ceased before the opposite side of the excavated gulf, innards exposed, as if abandoned before completion.
Seira led weary congregation from saddled stoneslink. Kilnkeepers sat quartermaster’s cart beside a coffin shaped container filled with salt, inside, the sealed still body of the umbor, its ruined eye crusted black with blood. Procession halted at ravine’s edge. Eyeglassed cerqueter removed a handheld acoustic device and tuned its dials to produce a sound none present could hear. Five huge saclike creatures with inquisitive stalks, frilly plumes and thick dorsal shells of porous substance that looked of barite and sard floated from the fissure. Sweet aroma filled air with a muted thrumming that intensified with the creatures’ proximity. With agile appendages they anchored themselves to the cliffside before the caravan like tentacular snails and trilled as if in expectation. Cerqueters filled troughs in the ground with water and the great bloated dwellers supped of the troughs by quivering tendrils and stilled. Caravan’s modular carts were reconfigured, wheels folded to secure cargo, and dragged on drifting organisms’ pockmarked backs by stoneslinks and thereafter spiked into the massive creatures’ hides. Googled cerqueters secured themselves, slinks and cargo by means of rope and piton and descended into the abyss. Temperature rose as light dimmed beneath industrial canopy. Diffuse cyan glow of metal shelled gastropods illuminated a complex latticework falling to utter darkness. Some of the luminous creatures wriggled their antennae at the aerial procession, in greeting, warning or measurement, those that noticed could not say. Siltwaker and Ashraker rode beside umbor’s saltcoffin, center of the largest sumpter’s stony cratered carapace, which extended over a hundred paces in diameter. Before kilnkeepers a dozen cerqueters hitched to exoskeleston, elders lounged while young tensed and adjusted eyewear as training’s temperance sunk to primal currents. Few spoke and those that did of idle trivia, acquisition, recent and prospective, their mates who awaited them at camp, the strangeness of their lifeless prize. One among them held Ashraker’s bone spear and used it to shear pebbles from the soles of his trek worn boots. He spoke of his daughter and said she chided him for trekking pebbles in their house, for fear of her pet slink’s sensative paws. He expected laughter but his comrades only nodded in grim acknowledgement as if this were an old and weighty tale they had heard many times before. Quartermaster sat the opposite end of the pack animal above its tendril cluster in an excavation of shell that exposed soft growths he manipulated with hands and feet. Seira lounged near grisly dugout and scooped saplike substance from it and rubbed it into skin at arms and chest. She sighed, eased into an impress beside the saltcoffin and flicked addled gaze to sequestered spear, then Ashraker. Her voice caught on currents, melody murdered by wilding howl. “You can have it back if you behave.”
Ashraker offered only a baleful grimace in reply. Her predatory gaze shifted to Stiltwaker. “Enjoying the view?”
“Heights are a horror to me.”
“Much as fortitude.”
He waved a hand. “Virtues are vapors. Come too many one finds a fog.”
“You are funny. But if not appreciation, it is curiosity that uncurbs your attention.”
“Curiousity over what you ply.”
Seira’s mouth crooked mirthless as she ran a finger between the bare valley of her breasts. “You don’t know much of plumepolyps.”
“There are none in my homeland. I first saw one when last I traversed this dreadful place.”
“Dreadful?”
“Suits you quite admirably.”
She forced a smile and jerked her chin to syrupy shellborne extrusions. “Its a narcotic analgesic. Plumepolyps produce it continuously after maturation. It eases the pain of molting, affords a weapon against predators. Its very soothing as an ointment.”
“These things have predators?” Ashraker asked.
“In time, everything does,” the quartermaster replied.
“Even time?” Stiltwaker asked.
“You are being funny again. Yet I wonder. What would be the shape of such a thing?” Seira pondered as she ran a hand over the saltcoffin with an expression of delectation. She noticed the nervousness of her comrades and turned to them with honied expression. “Stop fretting like babes, it makes me sick. Everything is fine.”
Long had they passed wildstacked slabs on which glowing gastropods perched. They descended in absolute darkness. Illumination returned by raised azure strips along structure’s exterior. All tensed, for the saltcoffin lay open and Madregal sat upright in it. Seira screamed as the umbor shifted to his feet and wiped crusted blood from his face, revealing the milky orb of his reforming eye. “Wys, scrape it now!” She shouted to the quartermaster. Wys glanced once over his shoulder, eyes widening at coffin’s former contents and slammed on plumepolyp’s nerves. The beast trilled and dipped beneath the nearest overpass as riders screamed and threw themselves low in terror of the closing slab. Some cursed their leader. Madregal alone stood and as looming architecture would have torn him into the sky, he bent his knees and leapt in a great arc and was lost to the passengers’ sight. So close to the overpass did the plumepolyp rise that the saltcoffin was slung back into commandeerer of Ashraker’s spear and in the same motion, tore his piton free. Shrieking, the ghomon tumbled into the abyss like a discarded puppet as his companions reached vainly for his harness and cried his name. “Tors! In Ull’s name!” Spear clattered to Ashraker’s feet as plumepolyp’s fore emerged from beneath the overpass. With glee Ashraker rose from the recess in which he had dropped and seized his stolen artifact. None noticed save Stiltwalker. Wys called from the dugout. “Did we get him?” Seira’s mouth parted in awe as she discerned a dark, fearsome shape dashing from the edge of the overpass. Madregal bounded from the span and rolled across the center of the plumepolyp’s back to his feet. “Stop him,” Seira roared, drawing her culiver from hipbound holster and turning to Wys. “Tilt it.”
“But the others.” Wys stammered.
“Now.”
Wys forced plumepolyp to angle its right side high as cerqueters heeded Dai’s command. Madregal continued toward Seira with inexorable gait. Before the umbor could reach its target two cerqueters leapt, one seizing each arm and slowed him, a third upon his back brough him to a knee. Madregal felt cerqueter’s sturdy arm about his molded collar, hauled up beneath his throat. Black veins bulged from umbor’s temples as he struggled against the trio. Rising, falling, grunting under martial mass. Seira staggered across the tilting surface to stand before Madregal and pressed her culiver flush to his forehead. Madregal stared at her, an expression dreadful in its calm even as black veins pulsed. “Remain still while they bind you or I’ll rearrange the back of your skull.” Madregal relaxed and Seira smiled. “Good boy.” The moment after she spoke a dark haze engulfed the group and threw all clear of Madregal. Former restrainers tumbled screaming across the decline, secured by staked ropes from oblivion, as Madregal punched hard into the angled surface until it fractured and used the depression as a handhold. Seira raised the culiver at Madregal as he covered his head with his left arm. Bolts bit plating at shoulder and torso. Then empty clicking. He lowered his arm and stared at her, then drove his left elbow into the surface between them, splintering it, and advanced toward her. “Cling all you like little spider. Once this goes horizontal, you’re dead!” The cerqueters that had previously restrained Madregal loosed culiver shots from declivity. Each round ricocheting madly around, Madregal’s swinging frame. One shot pulverized his handhold and caused him to falter. The same shooter who had nearly loosed the umbor grinned and reload his armament, yet before he could fire it his rope was cut and he screamed into the void. Madregal looked over his shoulder and discerned a spear buried in the space before the shooter’s piton and moving cautiously toward it, Ashraker. Upon the remaining danglers Stiltwaker rained the contents of the nearest cargo crate. Down came ingots and heavy cladding and the suspended scavengers threw their arms in defense, some swinging shots toward the fresh belligerents. The distraction allowed Madregal to close the distance between himself and the cerquet leader. Clutching her tether, she snarled and struck the umbor’s head with her boot. Thrice her heel descended and upon the third blow split her foe’s lip. Upon attempting a fourth blow he caught her by the ankle, hauled her to his level and bounced her skull off the shell. He continued to slam her face into the shell until he felt her skull collapse then dropped her limp tethered body down beside her subordinates who screamed in horror at the ghastly sight. Madregal tested the strength of the Dai’s tether and, finding it sturdy, climbed the near vertical surface to the dugout as Wys looked on with wild terror.
“Right it.”
“I’m trying. The wind. I can’t.”
Madregal watched his movements a moment and finding them lax, laid the back of his hand upon the cerqueter’s shoulder. Wys flinched, breath erratic. “Obey, or I will take your hands with the reigns.” With feverish haste Wys bridled the beast to compliance, all the while Ashraker and Stiltwaker hacked the cerqueter’s free of their tethers to the dismay of the neighboring polyp riders who had circled back upon Seira’s mount after witnessing the skirmish. When the living ship was level once more Seira’s dangling carcass, Wys under Madregal’s supervision, and another broad shouldered and auburn haired who had been cut free too late to fall, were all of the cerquet that remained. Redhead’s empty culiver was set with a crude blade and this he drove into Stiltwaker’s gut with a cry of wrath upon the sight of his dead master. Ashraker plunged his spear into the cerqueter’s shoulder but found it pulled from his grasp. Casting aside his bleeding foe, the redhead arced the culiver’s stock into Ashraker’s jaw. The big ghomon reeled and was brought low by a second stock strike to his stomach, stronger than the first. He collapsed to hands and knees, sucking air, bleeding from fractured mouth. As the cerqueter raised his weapon to pierce his foe’s skull it was snatched from his grasp. He turned to behold the umbor’s placid visage, drove his fist to its chestplate and hissed in pain. Madregal hurled the ghomon to unconsciousness and threw the confiscated culiver aside. He looked down and observed Siltwalker’s wound. Ashraker’s gaze shifted to the dugout and he placed his hand on Madregal’s shoulder with urgent pressure. Madregal pivoted to behold Wys slice Seira’s corpse free and roll with the limp body off the edge of the polyp onto the back of another just below it. Before them the sheer black wall of the chasm, drawing closer with every breath.
Madregal removed a strip of black material from his pack and handed it to Ashraker. “Press this to the wound.” Stiltwaker’s visage had gone pale, his eyes glassy. Ashraker gaped, vision fixed upon impending doom, mind pinned by the weight of his daughter’s vacany. Madregal made for the controls and only then did Ashraker snap from his fugue. “What are you doing?” Madregal slid into the dugout and found fleshy protrusions cinched by pilot’s abandoned tether. He tore bindings and overtook controls in emulation of quartermaster’s practiced motions. He pulled up and the beast tilted its enormous bulk and caught a powerful cross current that curved it from collision. Now racing a jetstream and harried by cerquet, Madregal drove the polyp toward a horizontal sprawl of abraded struts that formed a triangular aperture taller than wide in the architectural jumble that blocked their way. Ashraker looked from the opening to the psuedowings of their craft. “Its too small,” Ashraker cautioned. Madregal continued to the opening as cerqueters devoured distance and his voice sounded as a smile. “It will be.” Ashraker’s head snapped from pursuers to pilot. “What?” At full speed Madregal tore through the aperture as Ashraker clutched Stiltwalker’s slack, bandaged body and bleated. Polyp’s sturdy psuedowings sheered girders at slit’s parallel vertices yet broke through to the other side. As pursuers’ polyps entered the breach the groaning upper portion of the structure collapsed. Amid screams of ghomon and metal, cerqueters vanished from view and trio drifted beyond blockage to a vast expanse shadowed by abraded pale monoliths that disappeared down unto swirling fog. The constructs bore slits along their length greater in height than the polyp. The deeper into the worn spires the trio traveled the thicker erythrite hued lichenous masses surged from every cervice. “What is that stuff?” Ashraker asked as he surveyed the branching rubied material. Madregal consulted genoscroll but found no archive entries matching the red growths’ morphology. “I do not know.” The polyp tilted hard left, nearly colliding with one of the towers as the shadow of a huge squamous form rose from the fog behind them. Madregal looked over his shoulder, his intact eye meeting the familiar countenance of the wasteland sciomaw. He reckoned it by both size and the webwork of scars across its hide where his avalanche had crushed it. The creature’s simple eyes quivered at the sight of the dark clad figure and it rushed forth and seized the polyp in a tangle of erupted cnidocytes.
“A sciomaw! Why here?” Ashraker exclaimed, rising unsteadily to his feet, spear to hand. The next instant he was thrown to a knee as shell fragments filled the air by the force of the predator’s onslaught. The polyp bucked and squirmed, squealing in a hideous oscillating pattern as some malformed klaxon.
“It followed me.” Madregal removed from the dugout, retrieved his helm from near hitched container and secured it over his head. “We must jump.”
Ashraker looked over the roiling abyss then back to his companion. “Have you lost your mind? There’s nowhere to go!”
Madregal flexed his arms and the air shimmered about him. Auburn haired cerqueter stirred and rose with groggy alarm. All stumbled as the sciomaw gained sterner purchase on the polyp and it keening like a war siren. The polyp arced against the nearest of the pale towers and scored the facade with right pseudowing, the collision slowing its descent. As sciomaw’s hungry mass closed upon them all where cast from polyp’s shell. Stiltwaker’s limp body drifted placidly beside Ashraker, who felt some unseen force bearing his weight. The auburn haired cerqueter screamed and wheeled his arms in sheer panic. Down they flowed, like leaves gentle borne by an invisible stream, from the scored portion of the spire to a recess and landed without harm as the sciomaw dragged the polyp into the hazy abyss and heavy stillness smothered the world. Wind keened. Towers groaned. From the depths, twin howls of beasts locked in mortal combat.
“What was that?” Ashraker asked as he glanced from Stiltwaker’s sleeping visage to the swirling vapor they had forded.
“My tynekey.”
“You can fly. Why, we are saved.”
“I can not fly. Nor would it be wise to do so long as the sciomaw remains.”
Slowly, Ashraker’s gaze shifted from his savior to the auburn haired cerqueter. “Why did you save this filth?”
Madregal’s shadow loomed over auburn hair’s trembling form and his machinic voice mastered the wind. “I was promised Carus’ location. I intend to have it.”