Chapter 12:

He didn’t really need a hand from Chloe. He had four of his own.

“A little more,” Chloe said, guiding Caleb backward, toward the mouth of the cave. “A little more… Perfect. That’s it.”

Caleb dropped the boulder. It cracked the stone tile floor, filling up the vast majority of the cave entrance nicely. There were a few gaps that a person or boggart could slip through if they held their breath, but it was a surprisingly tight fit.

He brushed sweat from his brow with the back of a spectral hand. “Alright,” he said. “Now what?”

Chloe bent, scooping armfuls of smaller stones from the plaza. “I’ll start filling in the gaps, you work on the secret entrance.”

“Right,” he said, chuckling softly. She’d explained the plan to him already, and he had to admit, it sounded pretty good. But calling it a secret entrance made him feel like he was a kid making forts in the woods. He shook his head, smiling despite himself.

Caleb squeezed through the narrow gap between the boulder and the cave entrance, making his way inside. He walked into the crystal room. Tyler was sound asleep in the corner, low fire burning beside him. Each time Caleb saw him, the boy looked a little paler, a little more fragile.

I’ll do what I can to help him, Caleb thought. But there just isn’t much I can do. I don’t have any medicine. Maybe if he was able to absorb a lot of Aether somehow… That healed me back when I killed Bolvun.

But I don’t know how he could do that. It’s not like there are any bosses waiting around to get rocked in the head again. You’re just gonna have to tough it out. I’m sorry, Tyler.

Caleb sighed and shook his head, then turned his attention back to the plan. Making a secret entrance.

He’d already scouted the mountain’s perimeter around the plaza and near the peak. By his rough estimations, a tunnel from the northwest corner of the crystal room, carved at a slight incline, would emerge somewhere along the plaza’s edge. A narrow, human-sized tunnel would be much easier for Chloe to keep hidden from prying eyes. And easier to roll a rock in front of to block the entrance. That way she could slip out, do whatever it was she wanted to do, and slip back in unnoticed. Caleb could move the massive boulder at the entrance of the cave, but it was much too massive for anything else to even budge.

He slammed his fist into the far wall. Spiderweb cracks erupted across the stone. Again and again, like a boxer battering a heavy bag, he hammered. Each punch slammed into the rock with the crack of thunder, chunks of stone shattering and falling away as if he were breaking through brittle plaster instead of solid mountain. It was like he were a human drill – four fists hammering, tearing, dragging stone free. He made quick progress. In less than ten minutes, he’d cut out a four-foot-deep tunnel wide enough for him to crawl in.

Tyler stirred in the room behind him, opening his glassy eyes to watch Caleb punch the wall like an angsty teenager.

Over and over, hundreds, thousands of times his fists struck the stone. The repetitive act sent him into a sort of trance. His body just moved on his own without thought. He didn’t even have to think. Fist. Stone. Fist. Stone. He couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Like every punch were chiseling a way at himself, carving him into an olympic visage of marble.

And then he saw it again. Felt it. Washing over him, consuming him. The seed of stone, budding within him and the belly of the mountain.

It hadn’t yet taken root, but it was still there. Waiting patiently for him to nurture it.

He kept punching. Kept feeling the motions with his body while he reached out with his mind, trying to grasp the seed so he could plant it within himself and–

He lost it.

The seed vanished like smoke through his fingers and he was once again just a man within a tunnel, hemmed in by rock on five sides.

Damn it. Caleb smacked his palm against the ground. But he couldn’t be that frustrated with himself. Whatever this was, he was getting closer to the Truth. He could feel it. He just needed to keep going.

By the time an hour had passed, his knuckles and spectral fists had carved a narrow passage stretching away from the crystal room. The tunnel curved slightly to the left. He’d tried his best to keep it straight, but it was hard to angle your punches exactly how you want them when you’re in such a confined space.

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Finally, the rock thinned. A few more blows, and daylight burst through the cracks. Caleb pushed the final thin sheets free and watched them topple away and tumble down the cliffs outside, leaving behind a crude exit that overlooked a thin ledge next to a sheer drop.

He crouched on his knees in the mouth of his new tunnel, chest heaving, head scraping the ceiling, hands bleeding despite the unnatural toughness of his skin.

Caleb crawled back through the tunnel and stepped into the cavern to check on Chloe’s progress. As he passed Tyler, the boy was already asleep again, his chest slowly rising and falling.

Piles of stones ranging from the size of a fist to a bowling ball were crammed into the crevices around the massive boulder. She grunted, heaving another into place, then turned to him with a tired, triumphant smile. Sweat soaked her torn clothes, but her eyes sparkled with satisfaction.

“How’s it going? Finished? You were making quite the racket in there.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Got the tunnel about where I wanted it, too. I’ll find or carve a rock big enough to block the entrance but small enough that you can still move it around. Looks like you’re about done, too.”

Chloe looked back at her handiwork with a grin. “About. There’s still more I want to do, but it should do the trick for now. Even if those little gremlins come back and tear away the rocks I’ve built up, they’ll only be able to fit through the opening one at a time. Then, it’ll be easy enough to handle them.”