The Hammer Unfalls

4.68 Underdressed for the Occasion

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As soon as the shuttle got underway, the vine started to shrivel once more. It popped open a panel, which released a smell of damp algae into the round chamber. The leaves on the wall turned to paper and fell to the floor with a dry rasp. The tail end of the vine disappeared into the shuttle walls. The unknown color and energy vanished.

Glim screamed with a profound sense of loss, reaching towards the panel, then broke down in tears. Whatever it was had gone, and he could not follow. The absence rent his heart. Glim’s head pounded with a headache that eclipsed any he’d ever had before. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temple to ease the pain, to no effect, and finally lapsed into a half sleep of dull pain.

He woke when hunger gnawed at him. Glim felt a pang of apprehension. How long had the shuttle been falling? It had evened out, but had not slowed much. Glim unbuckled himself and rummaged around in the panels, hoping to find food or water, but found neither. Not even the butt rinser had water in it.

Hours passed and Glim became even more concerned. The first shuttle had fallen for a few hours, and it had taken over a week for the return trip. At this rate, it would take a month or more to get back, and Glim had no food, or supplies.

Why had he done this? Glim tried to remember the vine, and its impossibly vibrant tendrils, but his mind could not conjure the memory. Though he could recall the feeling of wonderment, and bereavement, the vine had overwhelmed him with. Whatever the Elderkin had planted in those growbeds surpassed any plant Glim had ever known.

Sleep took him once more, and hunger woke him again later. Or this new longing for something he never knew he’d lacked. Glim only knew that he felt wrung out and weak.

Glim conjured a handful of ice chips and sucked on them, one by one, letting the cool water ease his parched throat.

The shuttle did not stop, but it did eventually vibrate and start to whine with the squeal of metal scraping against metal. Glim felt a tug and the shuttle started upward. Something had taken hold of it.

The novelty of this new sense of movement gave Glim a sliver of hope. He ignored his hunger and thirst, lay back, and focused on breathing. An hour or two later, the shuttle settled to a stop with a thud.

Glim stood weakly and opened the shuttle door.

Panic momentarily took over at the sight of a hallway he recognized: the tunnel that led to the maggot tanks. But something felt different about this tunnel. It wasn’t the same hallway. He walked along it and came to a wide juncture to find stairs and branching tunnels. Brilliant light filled the hallways. Bitter cold blew past, and Glim realized this place had an opening somewhere nearby.

He turned a corner to see a wide archway in the wall that led to an ice-covered platform. He looked up, and saw that he was not in much of a tower at all. More of a fortress, and a small one at that. Carefully he walked onto the platform and peered over the wall.

Frigid mountains undulated away from the tower he’d walked into. It reminded him of the view from Wohn-Grab, but the light seemed strange here. Brighter, giving some of the mountains a glossy sheen. They also trickled down into smaller and smaller hills, ending at the edge of his sight in a blue plain. The plain shimmered, with a horizon line as flat as a sword’s edge. Glim had never seen anything so flat in his life. Nor could his brain process the shimmers of light against its surface. At long last, he realized what he had to be looking at: The Septentrional Sea.

His guess made more sense when he saw something else that startled him. Some of the mountains smoldered with black smoke; the volcanoes Ryn had mentioned.

So. Glim had come to the northernmost point of the world. A journey that would take a year to complete round trip on foot, horseback, and boat, as some had done in the past, simply out of curiosity. Those who’d come back—and they were very few indeed—had all said the same thing: don’t go. Apparently, these wilds were even less hospitable than The Avaunt Mountains or the southern stretch of the Hiemal Peaks. The half-mad travelers he’d heard stories of had lived out their days without setting foot outside Wohn-Grab again.

Looking out over the expanse of white, gray, and blue, with the imposing pockets of black smoke, Glim felt more alone than he ever had. Nothing moved except distant waves, smoke, and a few flocks of geese in the distance. There wasn’t even sound to speak of. Just whistling air, devoid of voice or variety.

Glim backed away from the wall, shivering with cold, and ran down a hallway. He came to a door and ripped it open.

A sunny atrium greeted him. Round, with a few doors spaced along it. Tall windows let in light. Granite benches and tables dotted the area, with low walls surrounding them. It reminded him of the guard’s quarters at Wohn-Grab.

Glim looked closer and ran to the nearest wall, low, with tight stones. A growbed, as he’d hoped, with pale carrot fronds and beet tops in a tangled mass. He knelt and plucked a thin purple carrot from the ground, chomping it down. He hadn’t chewed enough, and carrot chunks lodged in his throat. Glim wheezed and looked around for water. He found some in a nearby basin. Glim scraped a scum of algae from the top and scooped stale water into his mouth, washing down the carrot.

He chewed on the carrot fronds and walked around the room. With its warmth, food, and water, it seemed almost normal, as though people might open the doors at any moment and greet him. Then again, from what he’d seen from the balcony, this place did not seem easy to get to. At least Wohn-Grab had roads and trails that led to it. This fortress had nothing but cliffs.

And shuttles. Which led Glim to wonder once again: what purpose did this place serve, and why had he come here?

To answer that question, he’d need supplies. Food, something to store water in, and a sword, for starters. And he could not possibly go outside without warmer clothes than the tunic he wore now. The basement at Wohn-Grab had been quite warm. He didn’t even have so much as a scarf, let alone a heavy cloak, with him now.

Time to explore.

Glim opened a door and found himself in a smaller version of the Wohn-Grab armory. At least he’d have a sword at his side! His enthusiasm quickly faded when he walked over to the equipment racks. The swords and spears had rusted and crumbled into a corroded mess. The armor likewise had become piles of pitted brass plates with rotted leather long disintegrated. He found a closet of what might once have been heavy cloaks, but now were nothing more than piles of dust on the stone floor.

It didn’t take long to explore the rest of the outpost. One room had a table and a maggot tank like the one he’d brought Ryn to, long ago dried out. Glim searched the cabinets to find the bandages disintegrated. The only usable items were a few tiny, sharp blades.

A storeroom and another room he assumed to be barracks yielded nothing. Up a flight of stairs, he found a round patio with a full view of the surrounding area. Gray mountains, white snow, smoke, and a patch of sea. The desolation chilled him.

With growing alarm, Glim went back down and realized that he only had the items he’d brought with him and whatever food he could forage from the growbeds. He set the pack on one of the tables and arranged the items.

At least he had packed for an overnight trip, and his laziness at failing to unpack helped him now. He had a rope, a small knife, a spare undertunic, one torch, a firesteel, a brass mug, a woolen blanket, and an array of heavy brass twisters. Plus the pack itself.

Glim untangled the mass of plants in the growbed. As he’d seen initially, only beets and carrots had survived, and they’d taken over. He pulled them from the gray dirt and arranged them on another table. Thirteen scrawny carrots, six beets the side of goat nards, and a mass of fronds and leaves. Glim looked around for another bed, and found one, but it had nothing growing in it at all.

Depending on how much he exerted himself, he guessed he had at most three days of food. The trip here had taken the better part of a day, he guessed. And he had no idea how long the return trip would take. At least the shuttle had gone to the top of a mountain. It might reach Wohn-Grab in roughly the same amount of time it had taken to get here.

Glim set aside two beets and four carrots for the return trip. That left him half of the remaining vegetables as a guide for how long he could explore. If he lucked out and came across game on the way—and was able to find dry wood for a fire—he could last a bit longer.

With time firmly against him, Glim thought about a cloak. He could use the blanket, but it would not stave off the cold for long. He went back to the closet and searched desperately for any salvageable clothes. Finally he rooted around in the dust on the ground and came up with handfuls of woolen fluff.

He made a fist and the fibers sprang back instead of crumbling. He could stuff the wool scraps between his tunic and undertunic, which would at least keep his torso warm. Glim doubted the insulation would help much inside his breeches, but it might offer some warmth.

He stuffed every bit of the fluff he could find into his pack. He withdrew the twisters, which he grudgingly left on the table. He could grab them on the way back. They’d only weigh him down.

Glim shouldered his pack and headed for the one place he had not yet explored: the floor below.