Chapter 18

Most Hive-cities have an Undercity. Layer upon layer of subfloors that span down into the depths of the planet. Some Undercities can reach miles down, while others are no deeper than thirteen or fourteen floors. These subterranean artificial ecosystems were initially started for defensive purposes. There was a period not so long ago when weapons of mass destruction were a constant threat and occasionally were used to decimate entire cities. Nuclear bombs were only the tip of the iceberg. Genetically engineered super-viruses were released into some cities. Other cities were scoured from Anogwin with disintegrator bombs or genetically modified monsters.

Because of the robust economy and large population in hive-cities, these massive underground structures were built to protect as many people as possible. In each of these Undercities, facilities were built to allow for food and resource production enough to keep everything running for years, if not decades.

After I gave Nennel her gifts, she immediately put on and activated her illusion pin. For the next four days, she trained with the Lasher Gloves from dawn to dusk. The whole while, she wore the illusion pin, and she never left the house alone or without the PSG on her person and active. I kept a careful eye on my sister while she went about her life. On the surface, Nennel had a drive to improve her combat skills, but I knew her better than I knew anyone else in the house, even Ferris. I might have had all the social skills of a mutated two-legged and blind honey badger, but I knew Nel well enough to know that she was hiding pain and fear. Scavenger bandits had pulled her apart for fun. Both Nel and I doubted she was just picked up off the streets for no reason. Someone had set them on her, and we wanted to know who and why.

I spent my days, when I had the time, helping Nel or Kharmor with their combat training. But I spent more time studying the Undercity and what to expect. The Undercity was an entire ecosystem of its own, with its own kinds of people, cultures, and threats. The sprawling Undercity was a maze comprised of thousands upon thousands of rusting and crumbling spaces, both titanic and tight. Beneath Grimvale were miles of interconnected layers. Each floor was laced with hundreds of tunnels and shafts that linked rooms and floors.

If the fact that the Undercity was a maze wasn’t bad enough, it was brimming with dangers. Entire populations of monsters had evolved to live in the environment. Gangs so horrible that they were forced to flee the surface, made territories they guarded with illegal automated weapons and even more illegal spell traps. Cannibal gangs roamed the floors to feed on each other and anyone stupid or desperate enough to enter.

But the worst threat had to be the Bellicose Species, which had made homes beneath the surface. Many people considered the Bellicose Species to be the true opposite of the Sophic Species. Where the term sophic meant wise, bellicose meant aggressive. The Sophic Species were Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and the other species that made up stable and civil society. The Bellicose Species were made up of violent and bloodthirsty creatures like Gnolls, Kassivar, Scorpior, Arachnytes, and others. They were just as capable of complex thought as any among the Sophic Species, but they killed, ate, or enslaved anyone they could overpower.

I made sure to get the location of the informant from Gig and spent days plotting. I mapped out the shortest route, researched the local hazards along the path, and prepared the gear I would need. For my route, I had to choose between the shortest or safest. The shortest route would take me through a known territory of cannibals. The safest route would take me almost a week to get where I needed to go, and the term “safe” was relative to the other options. I studied each route, and after two days, I decided on my path. It would take two days to travel, but it would take me through two hostile territories and at least one environmental hazard.

When Nennel caught wind of my plans, she was determined to join me.

“I’m joining you on this quest, and you can’t stop me.” Nennel proclaimed. She stood in the center of the living room after learning of my plan from Ferris. I had mentioned to him what I was researching without thinking. I had been looking through maps on my therra. The comment was off-handed and without thought while I had been studying. Ferris had stepped into the living room with a package in his hands while I was reading. I had mentioned that I was studying the Undercity in search of someone to help Nel. He told Nennel only minutes later, and she made her declaration immediately after hearing what I was doing.

“What?!” I said in shock as I minimized my research windows on my therra. “No! Nel, it’s too dangerous. You were in shambles barely two weeks ago. I can’t let you throw yourself into danger when you barely know your own new body.”

“Shut your mouth Ives’. Those trog bastards picked me apart like crows on a corpse, and I intend to pay them back.”

I looked Nennel in the eyes. “Nel, even with the gear I gave you, you're not ready to deal with the threats under the city.”

“And you are?” She accused.

I broke eye contact to look needlessly at the coffee table. “I’m better prepared than you, sis. I’d rather you not take the gamble. Let me take this chance.”

“Take the chance, my mechanical ass.” Nennel announced with heat. “You can’t handle this quest alone. And I plan to learn why I was a target for those scumbags.”

“I can’t allow i-” I started, but Ferris stepped into the room with a look on his face like he was ready to kill.

“Don’t say no, Ive’s. We both will be joining you.”

I was about to reply when I noticed something. Attached to Ferris’s right ear was a new earring with a purple glowing gem in an ornate fitting of silver and bronze dangling from a silver three-link chain. I looked at the glowing shard for a long moment, noticing it swirling with shadows.

“Uh, Ferris… What is that?” I asked, pointing at the gem.

The Elf only answered with, “Just an earring.”

“I, uh, okay.” I stammered.

Nennel jumped on my choice of words. “So, you’ll let us join.” It was more a statement than a question.

“What?! No! This is going to be far too dangerous. I refuse to let you two risk your lives on a gamble that may turn up nothing.”

It was at this point in the conversation that Master Navor stepped into the room with, of all things, a children’s juice box in her hand. She walked past Ferris as she sucked the box dry in a single pull. Nennel, Ferris, and I watched the Master as she stepped into the center of the room, her eyes locked on me. She crushed the juice box in her hand and tossed it over her shoulder without looking. The trash landed in the wastebasket in the corner of the room. When she spoke, her tone brooked no argument. “You’ll let them come with you.”

“What?!” I exclaimed. “Why?”

“Because you’re gonna need backup, kid. You should never enter the Undercity alone if it can at all be helped.”

“But Master, they aren’t ready for that level of threat. Everything I’ve read says that the path that I’m going to take is going to be hazardous, to say the least. If something were to go wrong, I’d rather I’m the only one that doesn’t come back.”

Navor folded her arms over her chest. “I’d rather improve the chances of not losing a single student by making sure you don’t go alone.”

I was about to argue when Nennel stormed up to me, grabbed me by the ear, and yanked it down. “AW aw aw aw! Nel, please let go!” I begged.

“I’m not letting go until you agree to let us join.” Nennel scolded.

“Just give in, Ives’.” Ferris said with an amused smirk. “You know as well as I do that she’ll take your ear off if you don’t give her what she wants.”

“Fine, fine!” I admitted my defeat. The moment Nel let go of my ear, I sat back, massaging it. “But It’s up to the two of you to get your own supplies. My crafting projects have put me on a shoestring budget. So I won’t buy your road rations, ammo, or anything else unless there is no other choice.”

Ferris stepped up beside Master Navor, crossing his own arms as the Master put her hands on her hips.

“You probably should give them your mapped path.” The Master said before turning and leaving the room with a wave and not a single look back.

“What are we going to need?” Ferris asked.

“The trip should take four days to get there and back, but you should pack six days’ worth of rations. You should make sure to pick up gas masks and at least one more grappling hooks with fifty feet of line, for starters. You’ll definitely need acid-resistant leg guard covers that can handle a PH level of -25 or stronger. Be sure to pick up a climbing harness with quick-stop levers installed and the best armor you can get that you can remain quiet and agile in. I’d also recommend at least one of you bring a few breach charges. I don’t care how or where you get them as long as they work. You’ll definitely need at least one firearm of some kind for each of you. Also, you need enough ammo and myst crystals to put down a small army.” While I spoke, I made a few gestures on my therra of flick Nennel and Ferris the map and route details. “I’ll need you guys to have everything prepped and ready in two days.”

“Got it.” Nennel said with a determined expression and a thumbs up.

“You can count on us.” Ferris said, his old wild grin on his face again. “We won’t let you down or hold you back.”

I didn’t know how much I had missed that smile. Ferris had been so cold and distant since Nennel’s attack. Zynna and Kharmor informed me that while I was so engrossed in my projects and research, Ferris had been making near-daily trips to some temple or church. No one knew which faith he had found. While I desperately hoped that he had joined the safer Cassillis faith, a pantheon dedicated to the arts, I knew that was not the case. Was he following a Titan? Some raw and primal aspect of nature? While I couldn’t help but wonder who or what he followed, I never could have predicted the truth.

Nennel and Ferris spent the next two days gathering their supplies. While they gathered, I traded between researching what to expect in the Undercity and working on one project or another. Even when I was neck-deep in work, I always made time to train with Kharmor.

The Half-Dwarf was not nearly who I had expected him to be. When we were both Slates, he was just another face in the breaker formation. When we first became a party, he came across as harsh and cold. Kharmor also had a terrible, neutral expression that came across as hostile, bored, and judgmental. When I got to know him, he was honestly an enjoyable companion. He had a morbid sense of dark humor that I rather enjoyed. Kharmor held himself to a brutal standard and worked like a machine on anything that was given to him. Any project I brought to him, he gave maximum effort on without a second thought. Even with his work ethic, he stopped in to check on me and remind me to eat and shower almost as often as Nennel. Kharmor also continued to show an understanding of myst crystals, which I found shockingly impressive. The Half-Dwarf also had much more of a knack for chemistry and alchemy than I did. So I put those skills to use and asked him to make me a few special cocktails for my tools.

When the time came to leave, I made sure to finish the projects I had started for the other trainees. I gave Demierra a modified Personal Sanctum Guard that, at her request, would release an outward burst of whatever two elements she had installed. Zynna had given me a special request not long after seeing Nennel’s Lasher Gloves in effect. I crafted her a pair of gloves with energy claws like Nennel’s whips. Something she made very clear was that the gloves had to be able to fit any hand size. As thanks to Kharmor for his help, I handed him a special project that would really make his brain churn. I called it Project Third Stone.

Nennel, Ferris, and I stood at the front door of the house we had called our temporary home. I was armed to the teeth with everything I could reasonably carry in the many pockets, pouches, and boxes I had on two utility belts, a bandolier, and a thigh satchel, as well as my many-pocketed travel pack.  

Nennel and Ferris both carried packs just like mine, carrying only the necessities but enough to carry us through the hell we were about to go through.

“You two ready?” I asked my friends in a falsely confident tone. The fear I felt was real. I hoped I had masked my dread enough not to cause worry.

“Roger that.” Ferris said with a smile that was only shallowly confident.

“Let’s get the show on the road.” Nennel said.

This was the most dangerous act I had pulled up to that point. Threats out in the world were many. When I was a street orphan, starvation was a serious threat, and I could have been killed by anyone who had more of a grudge against the Darklings than most. At the Academy, student death was a common occurrence, either in training or at the hands of a fellow student. Thallos might not have tried to kill me, but he would have had no issue with removing my limbs and dragging me off to parts unknown when I denied his offer to join his hidden and maniacal group. The closest I had come to actual death was when I was in the entry trial to join the Academy. But a zombie spider the size of an adult Human was still nothing compared to what we were about to do. On the surface, the worst parts of the city were Red Threat Zones. But most of the Undercity was a Red Threat Zone, and there were more than a few Black Threat Zones. If we stumbled into one of those areas, our chances for survival dropped into fractions of decimals. The entire Undercity was a rotting and rusting jungle filled with horrors and nightmares. But we just had to live for six days on the high end, four days if we were lucky.

Master Navor stood in the doorway, dressed in black combat leathers, with a small satchel in one hand. “I’ve ordered you lot an AV cab to take you to your entry point.” She tossed the satchel at me, which I almost dropped, juggling it between my hands until I got a firm grip. “In that bag are a few things you’ll find useful, and not the least of them is an emergency beacon. If one of you gets in shape too bad to move, light that beacon, and I’ll make sure help gets to you in time.” She pointed at me with an accusing finger. “But that is only if someone is going to die and there is no way of saving them yourself. I don’t need you popping the beacon if you get into a fight with a pack of kobolds or if one of you breaks an arm.” Her finger moved to point at the bag. “In the case of a severe wound, I gave you a few healing goods to keep you all in fighting condition. But that doesn’t mean any of you can get careless. I want ALL OF YOU coming back in one piece. That’s an order.”

I gave the Master a two-fingered salute with my right hand in answer. I had finally gotten used to the madwoman, and she wasn’t nearly as terrifying as I first thought. Behind Master Navor were Kharmor and Zynna. The Half-Elf looked at me with annoyance from just inside the door. Kharmor poked his bald head out from behind the Master.

“You lunatics had better make it back. And Iver, I’ve got a book I think you should take a look at when you get back.”

“Yeah, um, sure?” I said in confusion.

Before anything else could be said, the cab landed in front of the house. We piled in, Ferris closing the door behind him, and we all buckled in.

“Oh. It’s you again.” came the driver from up front. I looked up to find the same female Ceangar who had picked up Nennel and me and taken us to the Cydoc shop. She was large for her species, but the slightly pointed ears and large eyes were a dead giveaway. She had long brunette hair that was thick with kinks and curls. Her eyes were a shade of blue that made me think of a pond in spring with the standard Ceangar U-shaped pupils, and freckles littered her button nose and ripe cheeks. “I’m glad to see that your lady friend is put together this time. I hope you don’t plan on yelling at me this time.” Her voice was thick with an Ethran accent, all hard Ys and Es and sharp Ts and long Ss.

I blushed and looked at my feet. “S-sorry.” I apologized. “My s-sister was in bad shape then.”

“Sister?” she asked, looking between us in the rear-view mirror.

“He’s adopted.” Nennel broke into the conversation as she leaned forward.

The driver opened her mouth in a silent ‘Ah’ before pulling the cab into take-off. I double-checked my map on my therra to make sure we were on track. We were in the north-western sector of District 3 on the southern side of the hive-city. We needed to reach the innermost edge of District 2 to our west, right before the wall that blocked off most of the rest of the city from the central district, District 1.

District 1 was where most mega corporations set up their headquarters. That was also where most of the billionaires and trillionaires had their luxury hover-suites. But we weren’t aiming to loot some pompous High Elf’s house. Right next to the barricade wall was an abandoned freight elevator shaft that dropped all the way down to subfloor fifty-four.

While I scoured the map for anything I might’ve missed, Nennel asked, “So, what’s your name, Miss?”

I looked up to see the driver giving Nel a bright smile through the mirror. “Oh, I’m no Miss. You can call me Teefa.”

“Well, it’s lovely to meet you, Teefa.” Nennel chirped.

“Yeah, good meeting the lady that got Ives’ and Nel to the doc’s in one piece.” said Ferris.

After a long moment, Nennel jabbed me in the side with an elbow. “Aw!” I started, but when I glared at Nennel, she gestured to the Teefa with her eyes. “Uh, yeah. Nice meeting you.” I mumbled before turning back to my examination.

“Iver.” Nennel scolded.

“What?!” I shot back with annoyance. I really wanted no distractions so I could make sure everything was going to work as smoothly as possible.

“Is it so hard for you to be polite, Horn-head?”

“What are you talking about? I’m always polite.”

“Says the dude that can’t keep eye contact.” Ferris said with an amused smirk.

I shot him a glare. “I always keep eye contact.”

“Yeah, no.” Nennel said.

“Not even most of the time.” Ferris said as he rested his head in his interlaced fingers against the headrest of his seat.

“What are you talking about?”

Nel gave me an annoyed look. “Iver, you only ever make eye contact with someone for a few seconds before looking somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

“I do not!”

“You do.” Ferris agreed with her.

I’ll say that now, I know that I do this frequently without realizing it. The doctors’ say it has something to do with my mental condition. But when I’m acting undercover these days, I make an active effort not to do so. It’s hard as all the hells, and it makes me uncomfortable. It feels like everyone is looking at my soul and judging it. But I do it regardless. At the time of this story, I had never really noticed that I had this eye contact problem.

The three of us argued on the topic for most of the ride to our destination. Teefa looked back at us occasionally, clearly amused by our sibling bickering. After we all settled down, Nennel apologized to Teefa for our inappropriate behavior and struck up a conversation with her. As it turned out, our driver was the proud mother of two Ceangar/Elven children and was happily married to a Star Elf husband named Rievo Brighteye. I found this marriage rather strange. It was well known that Star Elves and Ceangar had an age-old rivalry. Both peoples were drawn to daring acts and dangerous stunts. The Star Elves and Ceangar regularly argued about whose people were more talented at these stunts. The fact that Teefa had married Rievo and lived peacefully was, to some degree, astounding.

Even with the relative distance from our starting location to our destination, the trip took four hours of flight time. The hive-city was bigger than entire regions of other nations and larger than many of the nations from ages past. We had left at six in the morning, and by the time Teefa was landing the AV, we were finishing up a lunch of sandwiches and bottled drinks we had prepared before leaving. I had brought an energy drink as my beverage of choice, while Nel had black tea and Ferris had a simple soda. The other two gave me an aggravating amount of trouble about my choice of drink.

Now, before you start slinging glass my way for having an energy drink with my meal, let me clarify. When I’m not in the field I will happily enjoy a nice cup of tea or coffee, and even a soda on occasion. What I’m referring to as energy drinks are performance-enhancement drinks tailored for Adventurers prepping for combat.  Power Juice, as it is known, is laced with plenty of stimulants, supplements, and boosters.

We disembarked from the Aerial Vehicle after thanking Teefa for her help getting there. We stood in what was once a courtyard for a medical academy. The surrounding buildings were long since abandoned. Many of the surrounding windows were broken and boarded up. Graffiti covered the brick walls, and the doors were chained shut. The courtyard we stood in was once covered in bright bio-engineered foliage. But what remained was little more than the rotting skeletons of trees and bushes, standing in the brown-gray dust that once was grass. The fact that this place, at one time, had any kind of plants said a lot about just how wealthy proprietors had been before the fall of the institute.

Set into the center of the courtyard was a large metal platform. It looked to be about ten feet by fifteen feet with a seven-inch-high lip. Set into the floor near the perimeter of the platform was a flat glass case housing the controls of the freight elevator.

With a simple gesture, I told the other two to follow me as I approached the control panel. About to enjoy what was coming next, I knelt down and wiped the dust from the glass plate that separated me from the simple controls. I flexed the fingers of my gauntleted right hand before rearing it back in a fist and thrusting it through the glass pane. With a few sharp motions, I cleared the rest of the glass cover and swept aside the shards. The act of breaking the glass was satisfying and scratched an itch in my brain.

“Let’s give this a test.” I said as I pressed the button to drop the platform. The button depressed with a stiff click. Seconds later, the platform shuddered before lowering with a screech like a dying beast. I looked at the Nennel and Ferris with an excited expression until I felt a shudder in the ground and heard something heavy snap. The platform was only a foot deep into the shaft when suddenly it dropped, hard and fast. I leaned over the lip of the pit and watched the elevator platform vanish into the shadows with a fading shriek of metal on metal. We waited but never heard a crash.

“I don’t like that.” Ferris said as he leaned over the edge for a better look. “I really don’t like that.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that we tested it before riding.” I lifted my right hand, flexed my fingers, and tested the functionality of my Squid Hook, opening and closing the device and then extending and retracting the anchor spikes. “Better ready up our grappling hooks.”

“Wait, what?” Ferris asked with a high-pitched voice.

Nennel pulled her grappling hook from her bag and prepped the rein-synth cord. She pulled out the cord bundle, unwound it, and started tying it to her hook.

For those of you that aren’t militia junkies that know the gear and lifestyle of military personnel, let me explain rein-synth cord. The name is short for Reinforced-Synthetic Fiber Woven Cord. The material is durable as hell, flexible, reliable, and light. This is the stuff used in parachutes, and it comes in a wide range of thicknesses.

The thickness of the rein-synth cord Nennel and Ferris had picked up was only slightly larger than standard hemp rope to allow for easy grip. Nennel had her hook and cord tied in a matter of seconds, but Ferris just stood in place, looking nervously at the hole.

“What’s the matter, Fer’?” I asked. “We are on a bit of a clock to get where we need to be.”

“It’s nothing.” Ferris’s words came out in a rush as he unshouldered his own pack and started prepping his hook and cord. I watched Ferris for a few seconds and noticed him repeatedly glance over at the hole with a worried look. It was when I saw him triple-knot this cord to his hook that I spoke up.

“Ferris, are you scared of heights?” I asked with an amused smirk.

“What!? No!” Ferris vigorously denied it, waving his hands defensively while still holding his cord and hook. “I have no problem with heights in the least. I’m fine. I’m totally fine.”

Nennel walked past the two of us while testing her knot. “Come on, Fer’. You should’ve told Iver about this a while ago. There’s no point in hiding it now.”

“Hiding what?” I asked.

“Ferris is scared of deep, dark holes.”

“What?” I asked again, this time in a tone that was a mix of shock and amusement.

“Oh, come on, Nel. Did you have to make it sound so stupid?” Ferris said to Nennel before turning back to me. “And no making fun of me for this, Ives’. No hole jokes. Not a single joke about holes. I don’t care how witty it is or if it’s used in a sexual and funny way.” That last demand was saying a lot about how badly Ferris didn’t like this. He loved dirty jokes. In my recounting, I’ve cut out almost all of his dirty jokes because some people might find them offensive, and they don’t really matter to the story. But Ferris cracked at least two or three crude jokes a day.

“Okay, okay.” I acquiesced, doing my best to hide a smirk and failing. “But where did this fear come from? Is it a phobia?”

“Don’t give me that, Iver.” Ferris scolded. “Phobias are crippling irrational fears. This is not irrational in the slightest. We never heard that platform hit the bottom. So that means if I fall, I’m dropping into a pit of total darkness full of hungry monsters that want to eat my bones.”

“I get the discomfort with this hole in particular, but it sounds like this is a regular issue for you.”

Ferris gave a disgruntled sigh before answering. “When I was seventeen, a group of older Elven kids used magic to dig a pit and hide it. They tricked me into falling in. When I hit the bottom, I broke an ankle, and the kids covered the opening with a big metal sheet. I was left there, in the dark, crying and calling for help for hours before I was found.”

I looked at Ferris for a long moment. He was fidgeting and refused to look at me. The denial of eye contact was a bit ironic after the amount of crap he and Nel gave me about my own eye contact issue.

I walked up to my nervous friend and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I have no room to judge you, Fer’. I have a serious fear of horses, and I don’t even have a reason for it other than they just weird me out.”

Ferris snorted before glancing at me. “Horses. Really?”

I looked away and nervously scratched my neck with my free hand. “Yup. It’s a total phobia. Those hooves. Their long faces. Even just how big they are and how they move. Horses cause me some serious issues.”

“Now that’s just weird.” Ferris said with his own amused smirk. I gave him a sideways look and a grin that was a mix of guilty, embarrassed, and kind.

I turned to face him again and put my other hand on his opposite shoulder before saying, “Take as long as you need to get yourself mentally ready. And remember, I made sure you both picked up climbing harnesses with quick-stop levers installed. I’m going to head down first and make sure the way is clear. I’ll keep an eye on you as you come down and be ready to catch you if you drop. You heard Navor’s order. She wants everyone coming back, and I’m not about to lose you to a hole in the ground.”

After I made sure Ferris was okay with my instructions, I walked up to the pit and launched my Squid Hook at the wall opposite me. The device shot forward and anchored with the sound of spikes punching through the stone. I gave the cable a few tugs to test the hold before jumping down into the darkness. As I dropped, I swung across the space to land against the same wall my hook was anchored to. I braced myself with my feet and slowly started walking my way down the wall until I reached the first opening.

I was wearing my Pacer Shoes, so I used their own anchoring feature to hold me to the wall, and I leaned back to hang upside down as I checked out the first subfloor. While the darkness would have been thick for almost anyone else, I was lucky. Thanks to my Darkling blood, I had an astoundingly good dark vision. I could see about eighty feet in any direction, and the space stretched past that point to some unseen distance. The room was massive, filled with decaying construction equipment left abandoned for some unknown reason. It must’ve been some kind of equipment storage room. The floor of the room was covered in dust and debris that ranged from nuts and bots to scraps of wire, sheets of metal, and chunks of concrete the size of my head. I also noticed combat damage to the floor and ceiling. Burn marks, melted divots, bullet holes, and blast marks all marked the floor, ceiling, and a good portion of the support columns I could see. But the most worrying damage that I noticed were the claw marks. Gashes were found on all concrete surfaces. These gouges were lined up in patterns of five fingers and a thumb. The claw marks also looked to have been carved inches deep into each surface wherever I found them.

I waited and watched for a long five minutes to make sure nothing was lurking in the space. I didn’t hear or see anything that made me think we were in danger. The only thing that moved was a rather fat rat that waddled into my sight.

I released the gravity anchors on my shoes, flipped, and landed on the floor, using my Squid Hook cable as a stabilizer. I pulled up my messaging app on my therra and sent the other two a quick message.

 ‘All clear on sub-floor one. Come on down.’

Without another word, Nennel anchored her hook to the wall of the shaft opposite where my hook was still mounted. Her and Ferris’s “hooks” were actually tractor gravity anchors. The devices functioned on the same formulaic concept as my Pacer Shoes’ anchor grip feature. Each device had engraved runes and bindrune formulas on a flat face, which could be mounted to any solid surface once triggered. Around the central disk were extra adjustable mount points that could add extra weight capacity or be used to adhere to a non-flat surface. These gravity anchors could be turned on or off with a single button on the back of the device or remotely with a small wireless device.

Nennel repelled down in her harness with grace and ease, barely even slowing as she dropped to land on the floor across the shaft from me. As she deactivated her gravity anchor, I noticed that she had mounted her remote to her harness with a latch and clip. Clever thought. 

While she reeled in her cord and hook, I detached my own hook and reeled it in. I then launched the hook again and mounted it to the wall of the shaft above and across from me. After she landed, Nennel clicked on a high-powered flashlight mounted to the shoulder of her harness.

With my rudimentary safety cable in place, I messaged Ferris. ‘Your turn, Fer’. I’ve attached my hook to the wall below you. If you fall, just grab onto it.’

“That is a terrible safety net.” Ferris proclaimed as he mounted his gravity anchor to the same spot I had mounted my hook. As he ever so slowly descended, I could hear Ferris grumbling about climbing down a pit to the Hells. I rolled my eyes, and Nennel suppressed a giggle. Things moved smoothly, if at a snail’s pace, until we all heard the crack. Ferris froze eight feet into the pit, and we all looked up. My nervous friend was fourteen feet from the floor Nel, and I stood at, and he wasn’t budging an inch, clinging to the line like he was going to die.

Ferris had mounted his gravity anchor to the exact same spot my Squid Hook had latched onto the stone. Because of that, the stone in that very spot was too damaged to hold Ferris. Three of the four mount points on his gravity anchor were hanging in the air, still gripping rubble.

“Ferris, don’t move!” Nennel shouted up. “We’ll come get you. Just hold on!”

“Ferris!” I shouted. “Drop!”

“What?” Nennel asked in confusion.

“WHAT?!” Ferris shouted in a panic. “Did you just kiss Kassidan on the lips? You’re schizo mad if you think I’m letting go.”

“Just trust me. When I give the signal, detach from your cord and stretch your arms and legs in each direction.” I turned to Nel and pointed to a wall of the shaft perpendicular to my cable and just below our floor. “Mount your hook there and walk back as far as you can while holding your rope taut. Maybe lever it with a pillar. Be ready to hold some serious weight.”

“What are you planning?” Nennel asked.

I flashed her a nervous grin. “Something that’s probably very stupid. Now get moving! I need to make my own prep.”

Nennel gave me a worried look but did as I had instructed while I used my mental command system to shift the function of my Pacer Shoes. When Nel had made it eight feet back, I called up to Ferris. “Ready yourself to drop when I give the signal.”

“Nuhu! No way in the Hells I’m drop-” Before he could finish his refusal, the last contact point of his anchor gave way. Ferris screamed as he dropped. That is, he screamed until he landed the cable of my hook, gut first, and had the wind knocked out of him. He tried to grasp for the cable, but he slipped, bounced off Nennel’s cord, and kept falling. 

I cursed and dove into the shaft head first, right arm at my side, cable to my hook unreeling as I dropped. I triggered the kinetic burst in my shoes to launch myself downward even faster. As the wind rushed past my ears, I regretted my choice and resisted the immense urge to panic. Panicking wouldn’t help Ferris and could get me killed along with him. What I did do, as I shot down, was mentally reciting probably the most useless mantra. Frag this shit! Don’t die! Don’t die! Don’t Die!

I caught up to Ferris in only a few seconds and wrapped the fingers of my left hand into the back of his climbing harness the moment it was within reach. Then I pushed myself past Ferris with a few smaller kinetic bursts before flipping, pointing my feet down to release a single massive burst of force to slow our drop. I reduced our descent speed enough that I could trigger my cables reel to tighten and start pulling up. But even with the reduced speed, the sudden stop was jarring enough that I almost lost my grip on Ferris. I wrapped my legs around him and his pack, just under his shoulders, and held him that way by squeezing my legs together and interlocking my ankles.

We hung there, swaying around the shaft in a non-existent breeze. I looked around to find that we were between subfloors, with nothing but concrete, steel supports, and steel elevator rails around us. I counted our position between floors as a minor blessing. Ferris’s scream was definitely heard down the shaft, several floors at least. If we were hanging in one of the floor openings and something came looking for us… Well, let’s just say that I had no desire to see what it felt like to be fishbait. Just as I had that thought, I heard something inhuman shriek a few floors below and the sound of something heavy striking a hard surface at least three floors above us. I looked up and counted the floor openings to figure out that we were between subfloors 13 and 14.

I muttered another curse before trying to trigger my reel to retract. There was a moment of straining gears before I heard a crack in the reel and smoke starting wafting up from the device on the side of Venna. With that development, I started cursing to such a copious and colorful degree that it would have made Thallos grin.

The thought of my uncle did not help matters, so I pushed past that. I looked down and squeezed my knees together around Ferris as I whispered, “Hey, dude, Ferris. You alive?”

My Elf friend let out a groan but nothing more. So I knew he was alive, but he was in no shape to climb up my cable hand over hand. I couldn’t ask Nel to drop her cord either because that would put me up against a shaft wall and in easy reach of anything we passed while ascending. I had Nennel set up her hook where she did and put her in the needed position to have the cord of her hook act like a makeshift pulley joint. Her cord supported a portion of our weight to lessen the strain on the shaft wall where my hook was mounted. I had to assume that the entire shaft was in the same degraded state as at the top. If the walls were in the same state, that meant that they could easily crumble or break under enough pressure. Using my Squid Hook was already a risk, but using it while carrying Ferris only made things worse.

I had directed Nel and acted to set this up so that when I caught Ferris and stopped our descent, I wouldn’t just slam the two of us against a wall and possibly cause injury or worse. But that also meant that I couldn’t use my legs to climb by scaling the wall, not that I could with Ferris wrapped in between them.

So, the rescue was completely up to me. Ferris was in no state to help, and I needed Nennel where she was. I continued to curse with molten venom as I climbed up the mythril cable of my own hook, hand over hand. If I hadn’t been through Thallos’s brutal training, what I was doing would have been impossible. But Thallos made me regularly climb with large amounts of extra weight. It was also lucky that I was carrying Ferris up and not Nennel. For one, Elves were much lighter than most other species of the same size. If I had to carry Nel up this way, that would have meant I was climbing with an extra two-hundred-some-odd pounds, and I wasn’t sure that I had the strength for that, cybernetic body enhancement or not.

Hand over hand, fist over fist, I lifted the two of us past one floor after another with a titanic effort. My arms ached and burned, but pain was nothing new. When I reached that halfway point, things got worse. I had stopped at the lip of each floor and made sure the spaces were devoid of any face-eating horrors. It was as I peeked up into the room on subfloor 7 that I got the sense that things were about to go straight to Pandemonium.

The room was much smaller than the majority of the other rooms I had checked and nowhere near as large as the room on subfloor 1. From what I could see, it was a common space at an intersection of paths lined with personal living quarters. The space reeked of rotting meat and stale blood. What I could see of the area was something out of a horror holo-vid. Steel doors to most of the personal quarters were ripped wide open or torn off completely. Blood smears painted the walls and floor like some mad painter had tried to capture the essence of trauma in images using blood as their medium. Off to my right, in a corner, was a child’s plastic toy trike, turned on its side, missing a rear wheel and splattered with old blood.

My mind was flooded with horrible images of children being slaughtered and eaten, and my body shuddered in response. I tried to push the mental images aside, but they vanished when I noticed something. All that blood, damaged doors, scraps of clothing interspersed across the floor, but no bodies. Not even bones were anywhere to be seen. That meant that something nasty had nested a den in this area.

I redoubled my climbing efforts and tried to pass that floor as fast as possible. Then Ferris coughed. Not even a full second after the cough ended, an ear-piercing shriek echoed down a hall to my left. That shriek was answered by dozens more of the same sound from every direction.