• Mature • No Good Choices

[Kasoria]

He'd been patient. All night he'd minded his duties and focused on his tasks. Not shirked his responsibilities at all. That wouldn't be fitting, for a warrior of the Knights Saccharine.

Plaven truly believed that. But then, he was young, and had much to learn that he would never live to.

He stood straight with his spear in hand. Eyes scanning the street, and the people who walked along it. When he walked from one side of the barred entrance to the other, he marked the shadows within. Just in case someone - or something - had sneaked into them and was preparing a fiendish ambush. He was sure that those kind of ambushes were standard in his line of work now. The fiendish sort. As opposed to those ambushes that came with signage and torches.

Once again, he was young, and believed too much of what he was told. He would be no great loss.

Which didn't give the man watching from the alley the nod to scratch him like a roach in his path. Though what he'd heard of the Knights over the last eight trials and nights hadn't endeared them to him. They were slavers and bandits, once you stripped away all the bullshit "free company" nonsense. They'd been kidnapping and selling people around Yaralon for arcs. They'd moved into powders and herbs, robbery both directly and the slower, more profitable route of extortion. They'd come to Sutton and simply taken over, because they knew no-one would care enough to save these people, so long as the stones and gems and metals kept moving.

The fact it hadn't, told Kasoria that the Knights either couldn't solve the problem that had shut down the mine, or had fallen apart so much they no longer even cared.

Not your problem. The mine. Worry about that. For now, worry about getting in.

The suns had set a break ago. The last vestiges of light were banished. Now all was shadows and darkness and the scant defense that flame could mount against them. Kasoria preferred that... even if his mutations made it so he had to take extra steps to remain unseen. All of his face save for his black eyes was covered in a hood. It was in essence a black sack with eye holes cut in it. Otherwise the green-white pulse through his arteries would signal to anyone watching, even at a distance. The rest of his body was bundled up from toes to fingertips, and the additional sweat was worth the privacy.

Still fucking annoying.

The kid started walking again. He was watchful, but he got bored easy. Always fidgeting, moving, head craning, eager to find something, anything to latch his attention onto. But he didn't move away. Didn't leave his post. That was admirable, he supposed. Then he remembered that work ethic being applied to a pack of cowards and murderers who sold babies after killing the mothers. If those were the kind of men he sought to impress, well...

Kasoria moved closer, shadow by shadow, movements as fine and practiced and familiar as taking a piss or speaking his name. After a few bits he was crouched behind a boulder on one side of the mine entrance. Now he could see the wooden supports, the chains over the boards, the scrawled words he couldn't quite make out. It looked more condemned than just shut down; no plans to open it up again.

The boy sighed and turned away from where he watched, ready to make another stroll-

But he didn't. He couldn't. He frowned as the air turned to soup, then granite. After a moment of confusion he realized it wasn't him, it was something being done to him. The air around him was solid, strangling, shackling, and the blood pounded in his ear as he realized what that meant. The boy strained. He pushed. He snarled and by the time Kasoria took his helmet off his head, he was taking in a breath to scream.

CRACK

He never got that far. The blow was surgical, and Kasoria meant that sincerely. It took that sort of skill to knock a man into the Emea with one blow. Most times you just had to hammer away until cumulative damage convinced the mind it was better off in the dark than painful reality. But to put a man there with just one hit, overload all the marvelous mechanisms the body had to keep itself awake... that took more than just a battering.

He felt the kid slump in his etheral grip, and loosened it slowly, recalling his Abrogative Spark. As the limp body became free again, he hooked his hands under his shoulders and dragged him over behind the boulder. He sat the kid against the stone and pulled off a glove, pressing it to the cold, hard substance. At once his Transmutation was jabbering away, telling him everything from density to history and he had to quell it before giving an order... and it obeyed.

A thick band grew out from the boulder, starting as two sections, rising from either side of the slumped sellsword. Like handless arms, they grew around his torso ad then joined, Kasoria frowning as he sent an additional order, tightening them against the boiled leather and mail of his armor. Once that was done, he repeated the trick. Another band, this time lower, below the boy's belly. Now he wouldn't be able to wriggle his way out, up or down. As a final flourish, he ripped a sleeve from the boy's tunic, and gagged him.

He wanted privacy, and knew you could never say for sure how long a knocked out man would stay that way.

Kasoria walked over to the boards and the chains. He pressed his hand to the boards... and he started to Corrode them. It wasn't a flashy nor subtle trick of Transmutation, but he wasn't looking for either now. He wanted in, and he didn't have the time to bugger around all night. After a few bits of watching oak and pine crumple and pale and darken and fall away into rotted tatters, aged centuries under the power of his magic, a hole was eaten large enough for him to duck through. With one last look back at the gently snoring kid, Kasoria ducked inside... and asked one more thing of his Spark.

Brilliance.

At once, his bare palm started to glow like a torch. Showing him the way down into the darkness.

[Kasoria]

And what exactly are we looking for down here, old man?

Kasoria had initially placated that doubting internal voice with a snide "I'll know when I see it". Problem was, that "initially" was become more and more pronounced. Going on half a break underground, by his reckoning, and all he was finding was more darkness to walk through. The air was getting thicker, too. Pockets of it made him sputter; other sections made his head spin.

That could have been why, he told himself at first. Gas and smoke, from deeper in the world? Happened before, back home. Can't mine through it, can't even have a naked flame. But...

That was an occupational hazard, for men who made their living with the risk of cave-ins and sickness ever about them. Gas pockets were just another, to be stoically endured and planned around. They didn't produce the kind of fear that Fraxin had alluded to, the miasma of dread that had seen over a hundred hard men bluntly refuse to go back, no matter the threats or bribes or-

Something moved in the tunnel ahead. Kasoria knew it was ahead, and not behind. Decades of first exploring and then prowling the Underground of Etzos had left him with keen ears for this manmade subterranean world. Sounds bounced and rattles and slithered over rock and stone. Skipped and jumped and hid from their proper source... but listen close enough, and you could narrow it down. But as for what it was...

Kasoria's gaze narrowed a touch and the Brilliance from his palm dimmed slightly. He wanted enough to see by, not so much he'd be a blazing, shining warning to anyone waiting. Though the more he walked, the more he saw no signs of any recent operations. Mining tools were still in place, dust settled on them, rust starting to corrode the metal heads. Carts had been left half-full of metals and stones that could have fetched a fine price, the man pushing them not even trying to save the haul. He knelt down and studied the tracks on the ground.

It looked like a stampede of footprints. Men rushing headlong away from... of course.

The way you're going.

The little man shook his head and kept on, making a note of the next turn he made. Another half break, and he was headed back up to the surface. That kid was probably awake by now and he knew from the last couple of nights he only had another break or so before he was relieved. He'd picked his moment well, infiltrated flawlessly (so long as you didn't mind a living witness, even if it was one who couldn't in any way identify him), and now he was exactly where he needed to be.

So, of course, there was bugger all to be found.

Kasoria muttered something profane and started counting, hand high, eye sharp.

[Kasoria]

None of this makes sense.

Kasoria admonished himself as soon as the words muttered across his mind. His old Sarge's voice growled in there a moment later, reminding him such thinking was folly. Just because they didn't make sense to him, didn't mean there wasn't a sense at work. He just could see it yet. That's what being an investigator as about. Not just breaking heads or shouting "all's well!" upon the tolling of the hour. Gathering evidence, seeking signs, collecting testimony, until you had so much of it your own eyes weren't all you had to rely on. You could see what had been, and maybe what could be, based on the proof you'd found.

But damned if he could work out what that was at the moment.

The shaft was lit by flickering yellow and orange now, not the steady pulsing blue-white of his Brilliance. He'd found torches down there, plenty of them, unused and forgotten. Once he'd breathed deep a few times and established he wasn't standing in a damned gas pocket, he struck sparks until he lit one. It had done a better job than his hand, and wasn't slowly bleeding his ether at the same time. But now he'd come to the crux of the whole mess, the whole reason he was down here... and nothing was becoming clearer.

What were you expecting, exactly? A big sign saying "This Is What Really Happened?"

Kasoria was not a miner. He never had been. He was from a city that was famous for its quarries and smithies and gem crafters and, yes, mines... but that had never been his world. The only miners in the Oh'Pee were laborers, pick-swingers, rock-grubbers, who died young and hard with black lungs and broken backs. He explored the catacombs beneath Etzos, but never the mines that had made her wealthy. The passages weren't too different, now he had a proper comparison, but still... the engineering aspects still eluded him.

That said, what he looked at now... didn't make sense.

Yet.

He looked up at the collapsed section of the shaft, and frowned at how... neat, it seemed to be. Strange word to use, but the first that sprang to mind. The whole length of the tunnel was shored up and supported properly, continuing in stolid and effective manner, until it just... stopped. As if one section had been scooped out of the mine by some impetuous and unimpressed hand. There was no gradual outward ripple of destruction and devastation and damage from where the cave in had occurred. Holding his torch higher, Kasoria peered closer and could see no support beams were even cracked around the cave in site. They were just...

Wait...

He summoned his Spark and reached out with his ether, fingers curling into claws as if grabbing... the boulder... which moved inch by inch as he strained, teeth shining wetly in the flickering light... and he did it again, and again, telekinetic power magnifying his own strength, moving the rubble aside until he could see clearly-

Chains. Lengths of chains with shackles attached to them. He knelt down and picked one up, bringing it to his face and sniffing. No telltale scent of dried blood. No discoloring of black from the same, stained and left to rot and stink on the metal. He knew that in some mines, the worst of overseers would chain their workers together, not letting them leave the darkness until their quotas were met. Such practices had been forbidden in Etzos since before he was born: when last he'd heard, the final holdouts had been shackled themselves, and worked until the Council had decided the pain they'd inflicted upon free men had been repaid.

This was not Etzos. Slavery existed here, and thrived. But there were no signs of them. No hints of rebellion or struggle. They'd been connected to the walls, he could tell by the pins ripped from the stone, but now...

Kasoria breathed in deeply and looked around. Tried to see the whole picture. There was more unseen here than seen, and the same went for unknown and known. He stuck the torch into a gap in the stone and flexed his fingers. This would be... taxing. Not to mention dangerous. But he had to know, he had to see, and that meant-

Deeper.

Like a conductor directing some silent symphony, Kasoria's hands wove and wound and moved back and forth for some time. In front of him, the fruits of his strange labors shifted across the floor of the tunnel. Rocks and boulders were lifted or rolled out of the way. Broken support beams were hefted aside. Always those black eyes were looking for debris that seemed to be bearing weight, carrying additional loads, risking further collapse if he moved too much too quickly. He was tempted more than once to simply use his Transmutation to shift it all away or Corrode the whole mess into dust, but that would have been hasty.

One thing you should not be in a collapsed mine shaft.

Finally, sweating and fingers twitching, he lowered his arms. There was a passageway cleared in the rubble. Not very big but, well, neither was he. Already he could smell air that was more fetid, older than that he inhaled now. Air that had been trapped down there behind the rubble for seasons. If there were answers to be found, it was down there. And looking around again, without a hefty chunk of piled up rubble in front of him, he could see the same as before.

Just this one section. Everywhere else... still stable. No damage, no weakness, nothing. Almost like it had been... singled out.

Kasoria scowled down into the darkness. He knew he should leave. He'd been down long enough. The smart play was to go back up, come back in a trial or two, now he knew the direct way down, and go deeper. But if he did, there wouldn't be just one guard waiting for him, but a squad of them. He'd have to get bloody, which meant getting noticed, and loathsome as they were, he didn't feel like carving through the entire Knights Saccharine on this job. Not unless they forced his hand. He was here now, and the answers were there, he just had to-

Keep moving.

He took up his torch and did just that. Telling himself that if he could find anything more beyond, he would turn back... and maybe this time, he'd actually mean it.

[Kasoria]

"Fuckin'... finally..."

The fact he had to take a breath between each word told Kasoria he was approaching his limits down there in the dark. He'd gone through a second torch already; the first had burned down to charcoal. The air was thicker, staler, sheer distance from the surface meaning what precious atmosphere there was the equivalent of the worst Oh'Pee cut powders. Plenty of pointless and potentially fatal filler, very little of the stuff you needed.

But he'd kept going, stubborn bastard that he was. Taking shallow breaths with his eyes down, squinting through the torchlight at the thing he'd been following for what seemed like half the night.

Footprints, and all that entailed...

If they were buried down here, there would have been blood, he'd thought when first he found the telltale indents in the floor of the tunnel. Even dried, it would be here. Hells, there's be fucking bodies, bones, something. But there's nothing... so what does that tell you?

He'd knelt down in the dark and brushed his fingertips against the imprints. He'd walked through the opening he'd made, wiping his face of the sweat forming there. Hotter, as well as thicker. Bad sign. Meant he didn't have as long as he wanted... but the sheer sight of what was not there made him forget about such trifles as breathing. There were no squashed bodies there. No flat corpses with rotting entrails spread all over. There was nothing, save more buried chains and dust and... then he saw them.

They walked out of here, he thought as he raised the torched and followed the marks in the ground. The ones clearly of shoes, boots, not bare feet, not crawling hands, nor with any telling gouges of bodies being dragged, heels or head carving through the dust. No bodies. No blood. The mine collapsed... but the miners left. Which means...

He'd sighed and kept walking. Neck aching and eyes starting to sting as he followed the course of the boot prints through the tunnel that had been sheared away and hidden from Fraxin and the Knights and everyone else. They'd written the miners off as lost, not even tried to move all the wreckage. Probably didn't want to risk another cave in, for that's what they were sure it was. But as he traveled through the tunnel, Kasoria saw no wizened, desiccated corpses left behind by whoever had escaped. No blood congealed black against the grey dust and muddy walls.

Just empty air and a multitude of marching feet, all headed one direction. Nothing had changed for him, and he set his jaw just as he would before a brawl. That way lay the answers, and as long as he kept his breathing shallow...

Then it happened. He didn't need to anymore. A wisp, a hint of cold against his face, and he knew what a breeze felt like again. He walked quicker, heart beating faster but a hand on the hilt of his blade. He wouldn't allow excitement to outweigh common sense. The torchlight ate up the darkness as he advanced, air growing different with every step. The hot fug was starting to seep away, and as he went, he could feel the chill returning. Was that outside air? Would there be moonlight and a cold desert night winking at him from around the corner.

That would have been nice, but as it turned out...

Kasoria rasped out the words, even if it wasn't what he was hoping for. But it was another step in the trail. The tunnel stopped, but the tracks did not. They continued into... something else.

The little man's mouth gaped a touch as he peered into the new passageway. Not a tunnel. Not a mine. Not a shaft. This seemed to have been carved or burrowed through rock and dirt without the aid of mortal tools. There were no support beams, no wooden slats, no chains... but that's where the footprints went. In the same organized clump, as if they'd been marching one or two abreast. But the sheer numbers obscured what they'd been following, or why. All he knew was that they had walked through the dark and the heat and the fading air, and they'd found their exit.

No, he thought as he touched the stone. He closed his eyes and bid his Transmutation Spark to come. This was made... and not long ago.

That's what his eternally curious Spark told him. It spoke of the rocks and stones under his fingers, how they tasted to it, what they were, how old. But not just that. It spoke of the ghost of heat and force and pressure, how they'd been split and moved and forced aside. It could provide no answer, name no man nor beast, but Kasoria was able to interpret its pulsing investigations well enough.

Something made this. They went through it. But to where?

Where else, boy? Out.

Kasoria managed a wry half-smile, face filthy, eyes tired. Old Tantos' voice grew ever-louder as the mystery continued. He was sure the ornery bastard would find this right fucking amusing, that only now he becomes a proper detector again, on the far side of the world, serving no law or justice. Well... maybe not so amusing. But he knew what he would have told (former) Cadet Kasoria next.

On yeh go then, boy. Ain't no answers back the way yeh came

The tunnel had been big enough for a dozen miners to march through. He could see their footprints, as clear as when first he saw them. Kasoria strode across the threshold into this new aperture, and kept looking for answers.

[Kasoria]

"Of fucking course."

The tracks split up a a fork in the tunnel. Because of fucking course they did.

Kasoria stopped in the tunnel and shone his torch down the two directions. Unless he'd got completely turned around down there, one was north, the other was south. He frowned and recalled what he could of the maps in the manse of the Burned Emperor. There was Yaralon, by the sea... The Cut and The Spires... the fortress... what was the name? Heaven's something? That was north of Sutton, he was sure of it. That made him sniff. He didn't much like the idea of crawling out of a tunnel surrounded by a pack of the only lawful-minded bastards in all of Yaralon. But south... what was south? Just Yaralon, he assumed. But no, on his travels to Sutton... there'd been a village. One that had far more horses and camels and other, fantastical beasts of burden and transport besides.

Evonshire. Sounded almost like an Etzori name. Probably why he remembered it.

The mass of dents and imprints in the ground split evenly. One group went north, another went south. There were no other passages, no other choices... and as far as he could tell, no-one went back. Whatever they were running from, or whoever took them, returning wasn't an option. Which made it nice and simple for him.

Except it means more fucking walking.

Kasoria grabbed a couple of unlit torches and tucked them into his belt. Then he turned south (he thought) and followed the group that, like him, decided it didn't want to deal with the First Blades of Heaven's... whatever.

++++++++++++

They had to come out somewhere. Keep going, and you'll find the exit.

Unless they never got out. What if they died down here, old man?

Kasoria didn't dignify the thought with an answer. No matter how often it intruded on his trudging. He kept his eyes down, the torches lit, and his breathing steady. Everything else was useless to him, just weight on his frame that slowed him down. He'd stopped counting bits or guessing breaks. He ignored how tired he felt, shoving down the exhaustion and weariness and just kept walking.

Three torches. That was how many he'd gone through. Number Four was in his hand now.

How long does a torch last? Four hours? Five? Half a trial, old man. Maybe more...

He didn't listen. He kept walking. Seeing the tracks in the dirt and dust was all the proof he needed. A few breaks swinging his legs back and forth wouldn't be enough to run him to the ground. The air was getting slowly sweeter, he was sure of it. Dram by dram, the musty, gritting taste of it was being diluted. So he focused on his breathing and kept his mind occupied with... anything that wasn't subject to doubt, or weariness.

He thought about The Band. Raand and Belial and Varl and Miki. He thought about battles and skirmishes, jokes and songs after the blood had dried. He thought about Maxine. Was about to hold her face and words in his mind without feeling his guts twist in something he couldn't bring himself to say was shame. He thought of his son. The boy now a man who hated and blamed him. Righteously so, he was sure.

Mistakes. Triumphs. Worthy enemies. Bitter rivals. Hells, old recipes and favorite ales, anything to occupy his mind until-

Wind touched his face. Actual wind. From the actual air.

This time, he didn't quicken his pace. He'd made that mistake before. Something shifted, something changed, a slight improvement and he pounced on it like the end was in sight. That had been proven wrong more than once that... night? Morning? Trial? See, that was the problem, right there. There was always something else. Another trail, another clue, another answer that was but more questions. So he didn't celebrate, no matter how much he wanted to. He kept walking... and then he saw it.

A quite literal light at the end of the tunnel.

It was distant enough that he wasn't blinded when he finally surfaced. Starting off as a jagged orb in the distance, far but distinct, a slice of sunlight in the eternal darkness. Kasoria noted it, gazed for an indulgent moment or two, then kept his eyes flicking down as he walked towards it. Yes, they'd done the same thing. Of course they had. Fuck knew how many breaks down in the dark, the party that had chosen south would have likely ran towards any suggestion of natural light. Indeed, as the light grew stronger, he could see the tracks were widened, footsteps further apart, as if they'd been sprinting for freedom.

Much as he wanted to do the same, Kasoria still paused, knelt, and looked.

Hmm. Bare feet, on at least a couple. Small, too. Maybe kids. And one... boots. From a grown man. Judging by the depth, either fat... or in armor.

Wonderful. More questions.

Kasoria logged that titbit away and kept moving. Once he was a hundred yards or so away he tossed the torch and walked without it. If there was anyone waiting out there, he'd not give them an easy mark to shoot at. But as he moved closer, he didn't hear anything... suspicious. No voices from men in ambush. No horses tied up. No monstrous beasts growling in the dark. Just birdcalls, as he reached the lip of the strange tunnel...

Kasoria emerged from under the ground, and saw a town spread out before him. Not hugging the mountains like Sutton was, but set on the plain, a league or so away from the craggy hillock the aperture was set into. The suns were high and the rains had stopped. The clouds hung low and menacing but distant, and moving away. The heat was coming back with reinforcements, bolstered by humidity, evaporating water making all on the grasslands shimmer and dance in a haze.

"That ain't Sutton."

The little man sighed, rubbed a hand across his face... and got a good feel for the dust and grime that was covering his hands now. He looked at them and saw them painted nearly black by what he'd been walking through for breaks. Fates knew if he spat now it would look like coal. So, he was a man in need of a bath and a meal as well as answers... but they weren't to be found on that fucking hill.

He started walking. Noting that though the rains had destroyed the tracks out in the open, the last trace of them were pointed towards the village.

Continued here

[Kasoria]

Rewards Requested

Notes/Warnings: Second of a series, Kas continues to investigate the mine collapse

Thread: No Good Choices
City/Area: Yaralon Proper

Skill Knowledge:

Detection: Judging how Breathable the Air is by how Thick or Heavy it Tastes
Discipline: Following the Trail, Knowing it Will Lead Somewhere
Investigation: Noticing and Following Footprints in Printable Ground
Investigation: Scouring a Scene for Small Details
Land Navigation: Moving Through Mine Tunnels
Sovereign: Moving Boulders

!	Message from: Pig Boy
	Done!

[Pig Boy]

Kasoria

Feedback

The initial knock out of the look out kid was well executed, and I’m glad I wasn’t wrong about how Kasoria would consider the Saccharine Knights when he found out how they made their fortunes.

Choking the kid’s blood flow with a technique that has become something of a Kasoria signature, and it was very fun to see that in action here. I was a little curious why he put him to sleep, rather than kill him outright, but I suppose shutting him up and keeping him stuck still while he did his work, out of the way of anyone who could discover him was a wise move.

I like the whole investigative angle that Kasoria takes here, using his sparks and wits in equal measure in order to figure things out about the carved path through the rock.

Finding that they’d dug through the entire rock, to the other side was a revelation, and I wonder where we’re going with this. Are they trading the slaves to that village, or was it an escape? I have no idea, but you toe the line between telling us outright and giving us probably enough information to come close to an answer.

I just am not the greatest at guessing mysteries. But it’s still intriguing here as written.

Good job.

Rewards

• XP: 10

Knowledges

• Detection: x1
• Discipline: x1
• Investigation: x2
• Navigation: x1
• Sovereign: Moving Boulders