Page 35 of Spectral Seas (Spectral Worlds #2)

S SS’KALLION’S WARRIORS MARCHED the trio out of the sapphire garden. They retraced their way back through the small adjoining corridor along the same path the faceless miners tread, back to the great carved tunnel, where they met another passing queue of twenty blind, blue skinned syns coming from the direction of the silo they had entered from.

The group stopped to let the workers pass, each syn with a hand on the worker to his front. When the end of the queue reached the trio, the tip of a stave jabbed into Abby’s kidney, urging him to follow the miners away from the mine entrance. “All right,” he said. “Don’t get pushy.” The stave cracked into his back again. To Leta, he said, “I’m beginning to not like these guys.”

She fell into queue behind him. “Just say the word,” she said. “And we’re out of here.”

“No,” he said. “I want to see this play out.”

Only two of the reptoid warriors stayed with the three. Apart from them, the twenty syns and their monk leader, the main mining artery appeared empty. They continued deeper down the smooth walled tunnel for the better part of a kilometer, the blind miners setting the slow, steady pace. The containers stacked in tidy tall rows throughout the center of the tunnel added to the eerie sterility, as did the repetition of the evenly spaced side corridors connecting to the parallel running sapphire gardens. Twice they encountered passing queues of faceless blue syns, and twice they caught the silhouette of workers in the side tunnels, but there were no other signs of life.

Eventually, the number of containers dwindled and the air, already heavy with sulphur and moisture, thickened further with the building heat until the syns leading the queue were fading in and out of view and the three found themselves enveloped in a blue tainted mist as soupy as that of the surface.

The soft, rhythmic steps of their party were meditative. So much so that when the quiet shuffle of footfalls was interrupted by a high-pitched whir from far down the tunnel, Abby thought it was an auditory illusion, a ringing in his ears, until he realized that the sound was actually resonating through his sensitive chin-chip. With a twitch of his jaw he focused on the oncoming high-pitched whir. He didn’t need to focus long. The whir became a rumble, then grew to the roar of thunder until at its crescendo, a hot blowing gust thrust upon them and from the blue mist emerged not a beast but a speeding mag train.

The queue halted as the disturbed and pungent mist eddied around them while steps from where they stood, the racing cargo hover noisily skimmed past, a long trailing row of empty container cars destined to be swapped with those back at the mouth of the mine.

Then, as abruptly as it appeared, the train was gone.

The mist again thickened, settled, and the blind miners leading the queue continued their trek forward .

The resemblance to the trains beneath the Meg wasn’t lost on Abby, nor on Soren and Leta.

“The train,” said Soren. “It leads out of the mine.”

“You suppose that’s where they’re taking us?” asked Leta.

“I doubt it,” said Abby. “The hover runs all the way back to the Bubble.”

“Perhaps,” said Soren, “they are marching us to our death.”

“No,” said Abby. “If they wanted us dead, they would’ve killed us where we stood.” A thin shadow darted past the corner of Abby’s eye, triggering an augment to flare on then off in a blink. “Hey,” he said. “Did you—” A flicker of rectangular augments filled the same space as other thin arrows flew past.

“They’re eels,” said Soren. “Chasing the train. Eating what was stirred in the mist.”

“Of course they are,” said Abby. Another alert augment lit directly to his front as a razor toothed bolt flew over the head of the miner hunched forward before him. “Nine planes!” he yelped, then dodged to the side and into the tip of an electro stave. The stave let out a loud crackle as it poked into his long coat. “Hey!” he yelled. “Watch it!”

“Ssstay in line,” the warrior snapped back.

Another augment flared red, and another razor toothed bolt emerged from the mist. Abby winced as he abruptly tilted his head to the side, not wanting to move into the arc of the reptoid’s staff. THWAAP . With a lightning strike, the reptoid snatched the eel midair, then bit its head off while the long-finned snake tail wildly flopped from the other end of his clenched fist.

“Eww,” said Leta.

A flurry of green augments flashed by to their right as the last of the school of flying eels passed .

The reptoid crunched loudly, then craned his head back and swallowed down the rest of the eel whole.

“There goes my appetite,” said Abby.

“You were hungry?” asked Soren.

“No,” said Abby. “Forget it.”

~*~