Chapter 38: Draining The Abyss

The last wet echo of the geyser died in the dark.

Arthur pushed himself off Elias’s iron chestplate. His boots slipped in the freezing mud, but he caught his balance, staring at the exhaust pipe.

The water line had dropped. Maybe three feet.

It wasn’t enough.

Then, the backlash hit.

A sharp, stabbing pain spiked behind his ribs. Arthur gasped, his back arching. The cavern air suddenly felt impossibly thin.

His core was a void. A shallow, stunted cup, completely overturned in a single second.

It didn’t refill. Not right away.

The pathways screamed for mana, violently pulling at the freezing ambient air, but his channels were too narrow. Untrained. The raw energy scraped through his nervous system like crushed glass. Slowly. Agonizingly slowly.

He was completely defenseless. An empty vessel waiting for a rusted pump to draw from a dry well.

He wiped his forehead. His skin was clammy. He needed to buy time for the core to gather a charge.

“The runoff,” Arthur rasped.

The hundreds of gallons of foul water he had just blasted out of the pump were rapidly pooling around their boots, trying to find a way back down the main shaft.

“Dig,” Arthur ordered, pointing a trembling finger toward the collapsed exploratory drift. “Route it down the outer gorge.”

The brute with the smashed nose shifted his weight, chains rattling. “With what, my lord? Our fingernails?”

Elias kicked a rusted, broken-hafted iron pickaxe across the cavern floor. It splashed against the boss’s shins.

The brute glared against the cavern wall. Minutes dragged. The rhythmic thud of the pickaxe echoed over the drip of the leaking boiler.

Finally, the knot under his ribs grew heavy. Full enough.

Crack.

The deafening boom of flash-boiling shook the cavern. The metal shrieked. A second massive torrent of black sludge vomited out the exhaust pipe, splashing heavily into the newly dug trench.

Arthur stumbled back. The migraine hit him like a physical blow.

The void returned, and the slow, scraping refill began again.

Empty. Wait. Fill. His nose started to bleed. Warm drops pattered onto the collar of his wool cloak. His right arm was visibly shaking now, the veins standing out against his pale skin like angry red welts.

One more. Just one more to clear the upper ledge.

He didn’t give the slow trickle of aether enough time to properly settle. He staggered forward, slamming his hand against the blistering iron.

The third cycle broke him.

The boiler wheezed, sputtering out a pathetic half-surge of water before the vacuum shattered entirely.

Arthur’s knees gave out. He hit the freezing mud hard. Acid burned the back of his throat, and he spat a mouthful of pale bile into the dirt. He stayed on his hands and knees, staring at the dark puddle.

He couldn’t pull another spark even if his life depended on it.

The mercenaries’ boss watched the young heir collapse.

“He’s finished,” he said quietly.

Chains rattled as he flexed his wrists.

“Just a matter of time now.”

Shing.

Elias didn’t shout. The servant silently stepped over the runoff puddle. The steel tip of his longsword stopped a fraction of a millimeter from the boss’s right pupil.

The brute froze. Stopped breathing entirely.

Arthur ignored both of them. He reached out blindly, grabbing the base of the iron boiler to drag himself upright.

The metal was searing hot.

The freezing, mineral-rich cave mud caked on Arthur’s palm hissed the second it touched the iron. Arthur flinched, blinking through the migraine. He watched the wet gray clay around his fingers instantly dry, turn pale, and bake into a solid, rock-hard crust over the leaky riveted seam.

He tapped the baked clay with his thumbnail. It didn’t chip.

Mud plus heat. A ceramic seal.

He swallowed hard. He leaned against the cooling metal and looked over his shoulder at the mercenary boss.

“The upper drops,” Arthur said. His voice sounded like torn parchment. “When your men squatted there. You mined coal?”

The boss’s eyes were crossed, staring at the razor edge of Elias’s sword. “Stockpiled it,” he whispered hoarsely.

Arthur turned to Elias. “Take the scrawny one. Go up the shaft and bring a cart of it. Everything you can carry.”

Elias’s jaw tightened. “My Lord. I cannot leave you alone in the dark with these animals.”

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“I need a continuous fire under the boiler.” Arthur tapped the hardened clay on the iron seam. “Or we drown here. Take him and go.”

Elias stared at the pale, bruised face of his thirteen-year-old lord. He saw the blood drying under the boy’s nose, and the terrifying, manic focus in his eyes.

Slowly, Elias lowered the blade. He grabbed the chains of the smallest mercenary and dragged the man toward the spiraling tunnel.

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The mud was freezing. Gritty with shattered limestone.

Arthur scooped a handful with his right hand. His only good hand. The empty pathways under his skin still twitched, misfiring, sending phantom sparks of agony up his forearm. He pressed the wet clay against the riveted seam of the boiler.

The iron was still warm. The mud hissed, baking into his raw skin. He didn’t pull away. Just smoothed it out with his thumb.

Drip. Drip.

The water level was creeping back up. Inch by Inch.

To his left, the third mercenary worked frantically. The man was terrified of the dark, slapping clay onto the lower intake valve with panicked, splashing movements.

But the boss wasn’t working.

Not really.

The brute was packing a single seam, his movements slow. Deliberate. His eyes never left Arthur. They tracked the tremor in the boy’s wrist. The dried blood smeared across his upper lip. The way Arthur leaned his shoulder against the iron tank to stay upright.

A chain link clinked.

The boss took a half-step sideways. The thick iron links connecting his wrists dragged through the puddle.

“He’s not coming back for an hour,” he whispered.

The cavern swallowed the sound. It felt too loud anyway.