The Final Sunrise

Jargun-Ba

410,590: DTLS C5 (During The Long Sleep, Cycle 5)

The twin moons of Jargun-Ba passed each other, sister Drater falling over the horizon as her brother Grater rose alongside their Sire, the sun Rayon Prime. Kai’el stood on the cliff’s edge, watching the sky go through shades of cobalt and into indigo as the light crested over the ocean. He smiled as the first rays touched his face, staring into the sky as they settled into the deep mauve of early morning. The same color as his wife’s eyes had been, the eyes she had given to his daughter. 

“Good morning, my sweetest Jo’piel,” he said, invoking his wife’s name, “You’d be proud of the little one. That boy Ot’amas tried to push her around yesterday, and she gave him a bloody nose for his trouble. That girl’s got the same fight you did, by the Children above.”

A tear trickled down his cheek, even as his smile broadened. Kai’el wiped the tears away and choked on emotion, “She does you proud, my love. Every single day.”

He stood silent for several moments, eyes closed, remembering the feeling of Jo’piel’s hand in his as they had stood on this spot together on her last day. Taking a deep breath, he turned away from the cliff and went to wake his daughter.

Few were stirring this early in the day. Down the mountain, along the coast of the Deiran Sea, the fisherman would be just pushing their boats out to check their nets. Shortly, the farmers would let their animals out to graze and go to tend their fields. He’d been raised on a farm down in that same valley. But he’d had no skill for handling the jorax, and no patience for it either.

Renal was one of the smaller villages peppering the coast. Farming and fishing had been the primary professions for generations. When large salt deposits were discovered in the mountain above the village, it started to grow. Kai’el spent most of his early years working in the new mine, loving the camaraderie and sense of accomplishment as they gathered salt to sell to villages all over. His new machine should make things easier for the miners and bring greater prosperity to the village.

Walking into their simple home, Kai’el leaned over his daughter’s cot and kissed her gingerly on the forehead, “Time to rise, little one. There’s work to be done.”

His daughter groaned, rolling over and brushing her scarlet hair from her face, “Papa, the Children have barely finished their dance,” she complained.

Kai’el smiled at his daughter and brushed his calloused finger gently over her face, “But finish the dance they have, El’ia. Now, do you want to come to the mine with me, or would you rather spend the day with Widow Wyn’sha scrubbing clothes?”

At that, the girl rolled from her bed and stood straight, “No, papa! She smells like natchen berries and roak!”

“Aye, she does. But she’s a sweet old woman and you’ll spend all day with her if you don’t get your feet moving,” he said, smiling. “Now, on with it. Days a wasting.”

El’ia scrunched her face at him, kissed him on the nose, and bounded away to get dressed. Kai’el watched her go, wondering how she’d gotten so big in such a short time. It seemed only a few months ago he was holding her in his arms and giving her baths in the trough.

He made a simple breakfast of gathered fruits, toasted bread, and dried jorax meat. He had been getting a bit of a paunch lately, so he gave his daughter most of what they had remaining. She'd need the extra food for the trip up the mountain.

El’ia came out wearing a leather jerkin and breeches that matched his own. They ate quickly and began the hour-long hike to the peak. Along the way, El’ia pointed out several herbs growing on the side of the road, excitedly sharing facts she had learned about them. She was fascinated by the flora and fauna around their village. She had confided in Kai’el that she wanted to travel to Jorsis and see if she could apprentice with one of the herbalists there. He had been evasive at first, but he’d been doing odd jobs for his neighbors ever since, saving up so she could live her dream.

The thought of her leaving caused a pang of emptiness in his heart, but she was smart and had passion. He would not stand in the way of that. Even if her leaving would break his heart. Kai’el looked up to Grater, checking the time using the position of the moon for reference. It seemed they were behind schedule. Grater wasn’t usually that large in the sky til midday. There was nothing to be done for it, though.

When they arrived at the peak, miners were already making their way down the carved slopes leading into the quarry at the top of the mountain. There stood his machine, a towering construction of wooden timbers and patience. If he could get it to work properly.

“El’ia, go grab Ni’tes and chase the roak away from the bottom. I don’t know what’s in the wood that they love so much, but it drives them wild.”

“It wasn’t so bad the last time they squirted you. The bath potion I made up took the smell right away,” she said with a mischievous smile.

“Aye, it also made my skin as red as your hair. I’d prefer you convince them to leave before we get started.”

“And what if I get roaked?”

“Then you can test out your next concoction on yourself. Now, scoot.”

El’ia scooted away, tapping a young man on the shoulder and bringing him with her to chase off the roak. Kai’el unrolled a piece of parchment on the table, looking over the scribbled notes and comparing them to his machine from a safe distance. As the day grew longer and many adjustments were made to the pulley system, it was time for another test.

“El’ia, signal the miners down below to stand clear. We’re ready to try again.”

Lighting a torch, light blazing from the end, El’ia went to the edge and signaled down to the bottom with a series of complex gestures. She stood still a moment, watching intently for the return signals from the bottom, before she turned to her father, “All clear, papa.”

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Kai’el pulled the lever.

The system of pulleys began to spin, winding long lengths of ropes through them as the pallet of rocks Ka’el had set as a counterweight began to descend. Timbers creaked ominously, groaning beneath the weight of their load, and Ka’el winced as he waited for something to break. 

Ponderously slow, a pallet filled with barrels of salt rose over the lip of the quarry and stopped just at the edge. Kai’el stared in disbelief as more than a thousand pounds of the precious salt hung in the air, swaying only slightly after its ascent.

Cheers and cries of elation rang out from the bottom of the quarry, and El’ia sprinted to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, “You did it, papa!”

A great relief rose in his chest, and he laughed while putting his arms around his daughter, “By the Children, we did it, El’ia.”

With a great whoop, he picked El’ia up and spun her around. Words were not enough to express his joy. This will change the way things are done and make things easier for the men and women of the mine.

“Thank you, Children, for watching over us,” Kai’el said, eyes gazing upward.

It was then he noticed how much bigger Grater had gotten as it hung in the sky. El’ia noticed him looking and turned her gaze up, “Is the moon getting bigger?”

Kai’el shook his head, “They don’t just get bigger, El’ia.” 

He watched curiously as the moon began to take on a distinct red glow along its edges. Grater was getting bigger by the moment, seemingly each time Kai’el dared to blink. Clouds in the sky began to peel away like the skin of a kuja fruit from the moon's edges.

Kai’el looked over the ocean and saw the waves pulling back from the shore before gathering into a wave higher than any building in Renal gathered far back from its natural coast before a crack reverberated through the sky. Kai’el watched as a wall of pressure rose and hit the gathered water. With violent force, the wave pushed toward the village, rushing with the wall of air behind it. The wave rose high in the air, arching like the tail of a speyder, before striking down on the village below. 

Buildings constructed of hardened timber and stone blew apart upon impact, washing away like driftwood. The sounds of screams reached him even to the top of the mountain as he watched his friends and neighbors fall under the wave and disappear under the frothing water and rubble. His ears began to ring, and a sudden lightheadedness struck him so fast he stumbled.

Thoughts racing, he could feel his heartbeat in his ears and a high-pitched ringing as he stumbled back from the edge. No, it wasn’t ringing. It was El’ia screaming. She had fallen on her knees, mouth agape and red-faced as she watched her home vanish before her eyes. Kai’el blinked, looking back over the destruction with the ever-growing moon looming in the sky like death.

“Get down!” Kai’el yelled as he dove atop his daughter and gripped her tightly.

The pressure wave hit the mountain, rending the cliffside apart and sending rocks flying. Kai’el felt them peppering his back and arms, each one like a punch from a brawler, while he covered El’ia. Ni’tes, stunned into paralysis, had his feet shaken from beneath him.

He never saw the rock coming.

A stone not much bigger than a kuju fruit struck him in the head. Blood and brain matter splattered the ground behind the boy. Kai’el could only watch as his body collapsed to the ground, dead in an instant.

Cries of panic and confusion rose from the mine as the men and women deep underground tried to understand what was happening. Their voices were cut short as the ground roiled under the mountain, tossing Kai’el around and causing him to lose his grip on El’ia.

The sky above him was ablaze as the moon began to burn. Flaming meteors rained down from the sky, and chunks of the falling moon broke off and spun wildly in the sky. Beneath Kai’el, the ground began to split, opening a fissure that moved like a living thing and cracked the mountain in two.

Heart racing, Kai’el spun wildly to find El’ia, finding her groveling on the ground and covering her head. He raced over, sliding across the dirt and picking her up in his arms. She clung to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as she had when she was a little girl. She wept panicked tears into his shirt and almost choked him with the ferocity of her grasp.

Kai’el turned back and forth, looking for an escape, looking for a way out, looking for a way to save his little girl. All around him was nothing but destruction. He watched his machine collapse into the mine, raining salt and timber and months of hard work down like sand through his fingers. The simple work shacks were in shambles, shaken to pieces by the rumbling earth or blown apart by falling stones. The sloping paths of the quarry began to fold into themselves like warm dough and fall into the center, burying anyone unlucky enough to be beneath them. All the while, burning in the sky and hurtling toward them, was Grater: their vengeful god, the falling Child.

“Papa?” El’ia said, drawing his attention back to his little girl. She was on her knees, face covered in ash and rock dust. She had gotten a cut across her forehead from a piece of rock, and blood covered the right side of her face while tears left rivers of brown skin clear from their path. His little girl was scared and confused. What could he tell her? What could he say to make everything better, to make her feel safe?

Looking back at the sky, watching the moon that had hung so faithfully overhead for his whole life falling, he knew there was nothing. There was nothing to make this better.

Nothing to make her feel safe. 

Nothing to make her feel better.

Nothing he could do to stop this from happening.

But maybe he could do something to save her.

Grater was falling, but the closer it got, he could tell it wasn’t falling directly atop them. The way it was moving now, it seemed like it would fall somewhere into the Deiran. If they could get underground, they might be safe, at least for a little while. 

“El’ia,” he said, looking into his daughter’s face. Her eyes were staring into the distance, locked onto the looming mass of Grater. “El’ia,” he shouted this time, still not getting a response. Taking a deep breath, he slapped her sharply across the face.

She gasped, pulling back and slapping him back on instinct. He took the slap, his gut filling with guilt as her face showed the betrayal she felt. Grabbing her shoulders, he said, “I need you to focus. We need to get down into the mine.”

Eyes still bright with anger, she gritted her teeth and shook her head, “But it collapsed. There’s nowhere to go.”

“The opening of the quarry is filled, but the tunnels should still be sound. They’re bolstered by strong timber and have been sound through several earthquakes. We made sure of it. We need to go down the chute.”

The chute was a narrow crevice that sloped sharply down and into the main chamber of the mine. When they had first started digging, they thought it could be used as the main passage, saving much labor. However, the steep walls were found to be unstable, and it was much too narrow to take equipment down or bring salt back up. The idea had been abandoned entirely once it had been found that the gentle slope turned into a steep slide down into a natural cavern. All it had been used for since then was dropping small bags of supplies down in emergencies.

“You told me never to go near the chute,” El’ia said, looking warily at the opening, “You said I could get hurt.”

He nodded, “Aye, that I did. And we still could. But if we don’t go down, Grater is going to come crashing down and we won’t have nothing to shelter us from it. So now I’m telling you we need to go down.”

“What if we get trapped down there?” she asked.

“Being stuck under the ground is a far easier problem to solve than getting killed,” Kai’el said, pulling El’ia to her feet, “Now, time’s a-wasting. You’re going to have to trust your pa on this one.”

His daughter nodded, taking his hand and running alongside him to the narrow crevice. Kai’el went in first, squeezing between the rock and into the chute. The opening in the crevice was so narrow by his head that he couldn’t turn to see if his daughter was following. His chest and back scraped against the jagged rock, protected only by the thin layer of leather of his jerkin. Below his knees, there was plenty of room, and he cursed himself for not thinking of going through by crawling. Still, there was nothing to be done for it now.

He felt the pressure on his chest begin to ease before going away entirely as he pushed into an opening in the crevice large enough for two men to stand shoulder to shoulder. The ground inclined sharply down, leading into the pitch black below. Kai’el turned, seeing El’ia making her way through the passage on her hands and knees, crawling through the more open part of the passage. He smiled at his daughter and helped her to her feet.

“Good girl,” he complimented, then turned to the drop-off, “Now, I’m going to lay on my back and you’re going to climb on my chest. You just keep your head down and pray to the Children that…” he trailed off as he remembered that one of those very Children was falling on their heads this moment, “Well, just keep your head down.”

The sky rumbled, filling Kai’el with dread. When he looked up, the bright noonday sun had been replaced with an eerie, red-tinged darkness. He sat down and motioned for El’ia to climb into his lap. She buried her face in his chest while wrapping her arms around his neck. Kai’el paused to kiss her on the head and slid into the darkness.

Kai’el had always known the slope had been steep. Several miners, mostly the younger ones, had gone down the slope leading to the mine on dares. They always said the same thing. It was dark, it was fast, and it was terrifying. Experiencing it firsthand, Kai’el found their assessment to be accurate.

The two of them were immediately plunged into the deep darkness. He’d been in the dark beneath the mines before. It was different from being outside at night or when you were alone in your home. Even in that dark, there were small sources of light your eyes could adjust to and figure out how to make your way around. This darkness was like a physical object, blinding you to everything, robbing you of any point of reference to gain your bearings. 

On top of that was the gut-wrenching speed they were sliding. Kai’el felt his stomach lurch and rise in his chest as the sensation flooded his body with warnings. They swung back and forth, climbing up the walls only to lose contact and fall back again. Stone and loose gravel tore at his clothes, tearing holes in the leather jerkin with sharp stabs of pain when they found tender flesh. The ground suddenly dropped away beneath him before slamming the two of them down again. El’ia’s head bounced against his chest, even as he did his best to keep her tight against him, using his body to shield her from the worst of it.

From above came a sound like a volcanic eruption, followed by the sensation of the world coming apart. The ground shook violently, rattling them inside the chute and against the walls. Kai’el could hear the earth breaking apart, stone shearing and wrenching as Grater crashed and split the world apart.

Suddenly, the ground was gone again, and he was falling. Instinctively, he tucked his knees up and bowed his head over his daughter as they tumbled through empty air. The force of gravity and the speed of their fall tore El’ia from his arms. She screamed as she flew away from him, her fingertips barely brushing his as he reached blindly for her. He fell, twisting in the air as the world fell apart. He hit the ground hard on his knee, and something broke in his leg, sending him tumbling across the ground before slamming into something solid. The last thing he remembered before losing consciousness was pain and the sound of his daughter’s screams echoing in the darkness.

El’ia opened her eyes, thinking she had gone blind from the fall. As her senses returned to her, she remembered everything. The hike up the mountain, getting the machine to work, Grater falling, her father losing his grip as they fell. It all came crashing back, the loss, the sadness, and especially the fear.

She crawled in the darkness, feeling the loose gravel and sharp rocks beneath her knees and hands as she tried to find something familiar, something to tell her where she was. She paused when her hands met something soft and warm. Fearing the worst, she felt around until she reached the face, gasping with relief when she felt stubble rather than her father’s thick beard. Guilt followed as she came to terms with the fact that she was still touching a dead person. A person she most likely knew.

El’ia fumbled around the waist, searching for the pouch of supplies that all the miners came down with. When her hands found the leather pouch, she felt tears come to her eyes as hope rose in her chest. Opening it, she pulled out a small crystal and rapped it against the stone floor.

The sunstone began to shine with soft yellow light, illuminating the cavern. El’ia gasped and fell back from the body. She recognized him as one of Ot’amos’ friends, though she couldn’t remember his name. He had always been one of the quieter boys of the group, staying at the back and smiling rarely. No one would ever see that shy smile again.

He was covered in dust, and his neck was bent at an unnatural angle. His face was twisted, forever frozen in a rictus of pain and fear. Beyond him were several other bodies, and behind them was a wall of collapsed stone blocking the main tunnel into the cavern. The quarry must have collapsed inward when the moon crashed. It was a miracle that the cavern was still standing at all. 

The ground rumbled beneath her, rolling, shifting, and throwing her around. She threw herself to the ground, covering her head as dust and small rocks rained down from the ceiling of the cavern. After a minute, the ground became still again, and El’ia stood.

Looking around the cavern, the only way out was to go further down the tunnel. She couldn’t remember if they had ever found other ways out of the mountain in this direction. The exterior was peppered with cave mouths. Some had been found and used for the fresh air or turned into storage areas for mined salt. But those were mostly found on the other side of the rockslide. 

She’d been over there before, accompanied by her father. Those tunnels had been dug purposefully toward the face of the mountain, chopping away at the salt on that side. The downward-sloping tunnel she was in was exploratory, trying to dig deeper to find veins of other material the mountain might contain. 

Thinking about her father, El’ia began to search the faces of the bodies to see if she could find him. Even with the sunstone, the task proved difficult. Some of the bodies were partially or completely covered by the rubble, while others were obscured by a thick veil of mist coming up from cracks in the stone.

El’ia had never seen anything like the strange vapor coming up from the stones. It was greenish-yellow and had a sickly sweet smell that seemed to cling to the back of her throat when she inhaled. Breathing it in too much made her head swim, but other than that, it appeared to do little else. Maybe it was remnants of dust coming up from the newly traumatized ground or some sort of gas that was trapped in the mine. Either way, it wasn’t causing her problems, other than hindering the search for her father. 

After several minutes of searching the bodies and gathering supplies, El’ia gave up. Her father was nowhere to be found, and the young girl’s stomach twisted with unease. With the light from the crystal, she could see where they had fallen from and approximately where she had first landed. With the shifting of the mountain, he might have fallen into a different cavern, or even a newly formed one with no way in or out.

No, she couldn’t think like that. She would find him, and they would both get out of here. Thinking any other way would only lead to more fear. If her father had taught her anything, it was that fear clouded your head, kept you from making good decisions.

Her father had been in here with her. He had to have been. So that meant he left her here, by herself, and hadn’t taken anything with him. The question was, why? Why did he leave her?

El’ia was determined to find out the answer and to get them both out of there. That started with taking stock and examining her options.

She had several sunstones she had scavenged. They were limited in use, needing to be recharged in direct sunlight, but she had enough of them that it wouldn’t be a problem for several hours. There had been a little bit of food in the form of dried meats, and only one undamaged waterskin. It was fortunate she had found anything at all, but she wished there was a bit more. Other than the crystals and the rations, the only other thing she picked up was one of the picks. She didn’t need it, but it made her feel better knowing she had something that could be used as a weapon.

As far as options, there was only one, and that was going deeper. Even if she worked for the rest of her life, there was no way she’d be able to move enough rubble to get through that way. If she had ropes and climbing gear, she might be able to go back up the chute, but there wasn’t any to be found. 

“Deeper it is,” she said, listening to the echo of her voice in the cavern. The emptiness of the place filled her with dread, even more so when she didn’t hear anyone answer in reply. 

With shaky steps, she held a sunstone in one hand while clutching the heavy pick with the other and began to walk down the tunnel. The cavern was cold and humid. Water dripped down the walls, making the stone slippery in some spots, forcing El’ia to choose her steps carefully. Occasionally, the ground would rumble and almost send her sprawling, making it impossible for her to relax or distract herself. Tension filled her body, plucking her nerves into a near panic and keeping her mind racing on the edge of a blade.

The vapor was getting thicker as well. With each step, it seemed to get thicker, swirling around her feet and clutching coldly at her ankles like spirits of the dead trying to pull her down. The air was filling with its scent as well. At first, there was only the smell of the cavern, but now the air was becoming permeated with that too-sweet smell of the strange mist. There was another odor as well. One that tickled her senses, trying to bring up some long-buried memory.

Death. It was the smell of death. It was the same smell that lingered in her parents' bedroom. The one that hung around her mother all through her illness in a miasma. It was different than the smell around the recently dead men. Around them, it just smelled like blood. Bad, yes. Unnerving, yes. But this had a wrongness to it. When her mother was sick, it was like her own body was warring against itself. Eating itself from the inside out as the disease spread through her, corrupting everything it touched.

There was movement in the shadows.

El’ia paused, thoughts freezing as she stared into the shadows. Was it a flicker from the sunstone? A brief surge of light that tricked her eyes?

No, there it was again. This time, accompanied by a sound. Wet, squishy sounds came from the darkness, in time with a patch of darker shadow just beyond the light of the sunstone. She moved forward, raising the light higher as she walked.

“Papa?” she called into the darkness.

The sounds stopped, dropping so suddenly that all she could hear was the beat of her heart in her ears. From the darkness, a hand broke through the shadow, slapping wetly on the ground inside the circle of light. El’ia could only watch, eyes wide and mouth agape, as the creature pulled itself into view.

Its skin was a mottled patchwork of tanned skin and pinkish-red flesh like that of a healing wound. The fingers, if you could call them that, hung from the hand in tangles of writhing rope, lashing wildly when they made contact with anything. The other arm came into view, an asynchronous sibling to the other arm. This one had no flesh. Just sharp bone jutting with spikes and held together with spun tendrils of tendon and ligament. 

Squelch! The left arm came down, tendrils writhing with each plop, leaving splatters of blood with each wet motion.

Scrape! The right arm moved now. Clawed appendages scratched against the stone, gouging furrows in the rock as it pulled itself into the light.

El’ia swallowed hard, body frozen, only able to watch as the creature moved closer.

Squelch, scrape! Coming faster now.

Squelch, scrape! Its head and body came closer, grayed out from the shadows.

She didn’t want to see it. Her mind couldn’t process what she was seeing. It couldn’t be possible. It was like nothing she’d ever seen, nothing she’d read about in books or learned from Widow Wyn’sha. 

Squelch, scrape. It dragged itself fully into the light. El’ia moved back a step on instinct. Then, she saw its face.

Light cascaded over it, revealing the horror that had been her father’s face. Half the flesh was sloughed away from his skull, showing white bone in patches beneath it. The skin was folded in layers and patches, looking like streams of rendered fat from the butcher. The other half was the one she had grown up with. Every wrinkle and gray hair was familiar to her, except for the singular, malformed eye. Kai’el’s normally brown eye, one that always looked upon her with love and care, had turned bright yellow-green and burned with an intensity and violence that she’d never seen. 

The same color as the vapor.

Her father opened his mouth, jaws cracking as they elongated past normal limits. El’ia stepped back, foot catching on a rock, and fell backward. Fingers, nerveless with terror, dropped the sunstone. It hit the ground and rolled toward Kai’el, casting his distorted features in bright light, highlighting every change, every mutation of what she had known before.

Jaws stretched wide, the creature that had been her father let out a sound filled with savage hunger and hollow longing. The dry, piercing sound reverberated through the cavern, bouncing off the walls and filling El’ia to her very core with mindless fear. She answered him with a scream of terror, tearing from her throat with abandon. Tears flowed from her eyes. Tears of fear and loss as she watched the last bedrock of the world she once knew crawl closer to her, eyes filled with primal intent.  

She lay there, frozen, until the creeping tendrils of its hands grasped at the leather shoe covering her foot. El’ia pulled her foot away, losing the shoe to the sticky tendrils of her father’s hand. Scrambling to her feet, she lifted the pickaxe over her shoulder and shouted, “Papa! Please, Papa!”

He showed no recognition of her voice, no hesitation as he brought the shoe to his mouth and began to gnash at it with broken teeth. Finding no satisfaction, he tossed the shoe away and rose to his feet.

“Papa, no,” she cried with gut-wrenching desperation, “Please…” her words trailed off as he stood to his full height, body twisted in strange geometry and walking on reverse jointed legs.

She couldn’t do it. This was her father, the man who had fed her, bathed her, and cared for her her entire life. He was the man who taught her how to catch the creatures of the Deiran Sea, who caught torchbugs in a jar to make her feel safe in the dark. He was the man who wiped away her tears as they lit the funeral pyre for her mother, his wife, and told her he would always be there for her.

Looking at the creature in front of her, taking in every detail, El’ia looked for something that showed he was still there. Some hint of recognition, or hesitation, would let her know that her father was still in front of her. But, as she looked into the baleful eye of the creature before her, she knew he was already gone. The thing in front of her was nothing but a husk, a pale imitation of the man she loved.

With tears in her eyes, she raised the pickaxe over her head. The creature came closer, reaching its malformed appendages for her as it walked on hobbled legs. She braced her feet like her father taught her, steadying her stance.

“I’m sorry, Papa,” she said, before swinging the pickaxe. 

The swing was strong, hardened from years of cutting firewood and playing miner with her friends. It was also accurate, hitting the creature in the creature with the tip on the side of its head, just behind the burning green eye. The tip of the pickaxe punctured bone with a crunch, piercing through and coming out the other side with a small splatter of blood.

El’ia expected it to rage, to begin to fight back and flop at the violation of its body. But, it did nothing of the sort. Like blowing out a lantern, the life seemed to vanish from its eye, and it fell limp like a discarded doll. The weight of it falling limp dragged the pickaxe from her hand as it fell. She didn’t hold on, letting the weapon slide from her grasp as she fell to her knees and wept.

She stayed there until the light of the sunstone flickered and faded away. In the utter darkness of the cavern, she crawled to the body and found its head. Pulling the pickaxe out, trying not to notice the sticky wetness of the blood, she laid the head in her lap and stroked its hair. 

No, not its hair. In her mind, her father’s head lay in her lap, sleeping soundly after a long day of work. She worked her fingers through his hair, building an image in her mind of his face and voice, putting those solidly in her mind, rather than the image of what he had been in the end.

“Sleep, papa. You earned it. Stand with Mother and watch over me. I promise to make you proud,” she said, imagining them finally reunited after so many years apart.

Sometime later, El’ia moved away from the body and picked up the leather satchel with the rest of her supplies. She felt her way to the wall and moved further down the tunnel, waiting until she was far past the body before lighting another sunstone. The last image of her father should be the one she built in her mind, of the man he was before what had happened. Not the creature she had left growing cold on the tunnel floor.

The rest of her walk down the tunnel was cold and filled with tension. She shivered, in part from the dripping dampness of the tunnel and mostly from the edge of fear that painted every moment. After a subjective eternity, she heard the echo of footsteps that weren’t her own coming from further down the tunnel.

Tucking the sunstone in the satchel, she moved back against the wall and held the pickaxe ready to strike. She listened, ears ringing and body vibrating with tension, as she waited to see what new horror was coming toward her.

Light began to come up the tunnel, and the sound of voices echoed. Eyes wide and wary, she picked up a stone and tossed it down the tunnel. The rock struck the floor and rattled across the ground. The light and voices stopped, waiting until a voice called out, “Hello?”

She recognized the voice, and she choked back tears as she called back, “Ot’amos! Here!”

The sound of people running toward her filled her with relief. After the tension of being alone for so long, her knees grew weak, and she fell to the floor and began to weep. Soon, there were people in front of her, checking her for wounds and asking if she was okay. A pair of rough hands took the pickaxe from her, and a girl whose name she didn’t know helped her to her feet.

“Come on. There’s a safe place down just a little ways,” the girl said, putting El’ia’s arm over her shoulder and helping her walk.

El’ia looked at the faces around her, not one more than a few years older than her, and she smiled. She didn’t know what the world looked like anymore. All she knew was that, for the moment, she was safe.

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