Teller of Fate
Fourth Movement: Custodians of the Incunabulum
Chapter Thirty-Six
* * *
The spiral of purplish light collapsed behind Erahndira and her companion, leaving them in relative darkness. Erahn had time only for a glimpse of a plain wall.
“Hmmm,” the Thief said. “We should probably have thought to bring something to make light with, huh?”
“Mighta helped a bit, ya⸮” Erahn said. Her night vision returned first. “I can be your eyes, Jane. You can tell me where we need to go, ya.” No response. “Jane?”
“What?” she asked.
Erahn was more amused that annoyed as she slow talked, “I can see for you, if you like.”
Even in the almost total darkness, Erahn could see the twitching in Jane’s cheek. It was happening again. The Thief had retreated, and Jane was now in control of her body.
Erahn’s companion Jane wasn’t herself, exactly. Her body was controlled by someone Erahn, for several reasons, called ‘the Thief.’
At first, Jane could only take control of her body when the Thief slept. Lately though, she had been able to act as herself almost at will. The Thief would stop moving and talking for a few seconds and a muscle on one cheek would twitch. When she ‘woke up’, as Erahndira thought of it, Jane would be in charge. The Miu could see it was her through her eyes.
It didn’t seem that the Thief could return to control until Jane was near sleep. This was a reversal of how things had been at the beginning. The Miu wondered what this new circumstance meant.
“Okay,” Jane said. “What do you see?”
“We’re in a hallway, ya. Plain stone. It goes left and right. I can see no openings on the left though it looks like it makes a right turn at the end. On the right, there’s three doors; all closed. One is at the very end o’ the hall. The others are on the left side, ya.”
“Okay, let’s try following the hall to the left, then.”
Erahn turned left, holding Jane’s arm as she did so. Her companion took two shuffling steps and stumbled; she still wasn’t seeing anything.
The hall was profoundly dark. Erahndira had trouble seeing. Anything more than three feet away was barely an outline to even her eyes. Jane must be completely blind.
The only definite details were where walls angled and met floors and doors. It was a charcoal grey world, and she was in it alone. She tried holding Jane’s hand as they walked, but the narrow hall made that awkward.
Grinning in the darkness, she guided Jane’s hand to her tail. Jane chuckled under her breath and held on firmly. As they crept along, she would occasionally tug it, which had about the same effect as tickling Erahn’s clit. “Stop it!”
Jane giggled and subsided.
The hall turned right and continued straight. There were doors on both sides, all closed and locked.
At the end of the hall was a stair going down. After a few moments’ debate, they decided to take it.
The decision came too late.
As Erahn placed a padded paw on the third step. A door behind them opened quickly and noiselessly. Their only warning was a light that blinded after their time in the dark and a yell as Jane was grabbed from behind.
Erahn felt Jane’s hand slide off her tail. She turned, eyes closed against the painful glare, and reached out for her lover.
The Miu’s hand brushed Jane’s middle, giving Erahn a good idea of her location.
Springing from the step, Erahndira leapt over what she thought was Jane and descended on another figure. She landed on someone’s chest and shoulder. The person remained on their feet, though they staggered under her weight.
Gripping with the claws on her toes and hoping to hold on long enough, she swiped downward and had the satisfaction of hearing a scream as her claws bit through flesh.
Her perch lurched sideways.
Erahn leaped off, feeling the attacker fall backward as she did so. She landed awkwardly against a leg.
The Miu made to get up, but before she could bring her claws to bear—
“It’s me!”
Erahn opened her eyes and found that she could bear the light.
Jane was standing, back to the open door.
It was hard to make out details still, yet Erahn was focusing better by the second.
She stood and turned on one foot to find a man—a boy, really—lying on the hall floor, one hand pressed to his right shoulder.
Blood oozed slowly between his fingers.
He was conscious and looking at them. There was sweat on his round, pale face. The whites of his eyes were visible all around his brown pupils.
Erahn, regretting her violence, held up her hands and made to move toward him to try to help.
He tried to yell, “No,” but it was mostly breath.
As Erahn stopped her advance, the youth awkwardly climbed to his feet and ran down the hall.
“Fuck!” from Jane.
“What?”
She pointed down the hall, “He wasn’t armed. Who knows what he thought we were, but he wasn’t expecting intruders. If he doesn’t bleed to death before he gets wherever he’s running to, we’re going to be in the shit.” Jane made a gesture at about neck level.
“Let’s go then, ya.”
“Where?”
Erahn shrugged. “Gotta be another way out, ya.”
Jane turned her head. “Let’s see if there’s anything in here.” She led the way into the room the young Magsman had vacated.
It turned out to be another hallway.
This one was short and had three open doors leading off it. Light came from a lamp set into the left wall.
Erahn checked the room on the left, Jane the one on the right.
Erahn’s room was small and lined with shelves. They were weighed down with books. Notebooks, they looked like. She grabbed one. It was filled with handwriting of which she couldn’t understand a word.
“Erahn.”
Jane was standing in the other room, also for storage, with a big grin on her face. In addition to more lamps, the shelves contained a selection of knives, bows, and light armour. “What did you find?”
“Notebooks. I think this was a school, ya.”
“Or at least a classroom. That kid we hurt may have thought we were classmates or a test or something.”
‘And I hurt him,’ Erahndira thought. Aloud, “Hope he wasn’t hurt too bad, ya.”
Jane clasped her arm and squeezed, briefly.
They had a bit more warning this time.
Someone dropped something metallic in the hall outside. By the echo, it must have been a fair distance away.
They shared a look.
Jane grabbed two daggers, Erahn a lamp. The Custodian led them right and down the hall to the last door.
More stairs.
Making as little noise as possible, they descended the stone spiral case. Two…three…four complete revolutions with no doors and no sound of pursuit.
After a few minutes and a half dozen more turns, Jane halted.
They both stopped moving and listened.
Either their pursuers were super-normally quiet, or the women had shaken them. Not even Erahndira could hear anything.
Moving a bit more slowly, the pair continued spiralling down the steps.
* * *
In the end, Jane estimated they went down over two hundred feet. The last curve of the stairs landed them on something that wasn’t stone at all.
Erahn crouched and felt the ground with her hand. “It’s warm and it feels soft, ya.”
In the light of the lamp, it appeared translucent. Veins of blue and red wound their sinuous way through it. Jane could still see them three feet down.
The Miu scratched the surface with a claw, scoring a thin, shallow line through it.
As the pair watched, the wound seemed to heal over, though Jane could still see the mark.
“What is it?” Erahn asked, looking up at Jane.
Running a hand through her hair, she shook her head. “That’s the Spire. It’s what Glyph sits on.”
“You look worried.” Erahndira stood, taking Jane’s hand. “What’s wrong?”
Jane turned to her. From everything she had been taught about the Spire, it should be impervious to damage. Could it have been altered? No, she decided. That was just not possible. “It’s probably nothing. I’m surprised that you could scratch that.” She pointed down.
They both looked at the spot again. It looked unmarked now.
Jane said, “Hand me the lamp?” She raised it and did a slow circle. Only darkness met the light.
The spiral stair they’d come down was hidden in a featureless pillar that rose past the feeble illumination.
Erahn turned to Jane. “Shall we pick a direction or just close our eyes and turn around a bunch a times, ya.”
Jane smirked. “I think we should try the direction the stairs faced when they ended.”
“If the thieves come, won’t they go that way, too?”
“Hopefully, they’ll think we were smarter than that.” It sounded sarcastic to her own ears, but she meant it. Faking out their pursuers was the best option.
“Okay, let’s go, ya.”
Normally, Jane’s soft-soled boots made little sound and Erahn’s padded steps none. Even so there was a flatness to the air; as if not only light, but sound as well were deadened.
Jane anticipated an endless walk. Time was difficult to measure when nothing changed. It didn’t seem they were moving unless she concentrated on the floor; the patterns changed subtly as they progressed.
Another pillar loomed out of the dark. It contained no stairway, as a walk around it showed.
“This is weird,” Jane said. “Gravity in this place is a malleable thing, but I can’t figure out how or why all this space would be empty. It seems a waste and much effort to prop up that many tons of stone—” she looked up into the black—“unless they were trying to avoid something.”
They both looked down at their feet.
Jane lifted her boots; felt the soles; shrugged. “It’s not doing anything.” Jane stopped, took a step back and crouched, bringing the lamp to bear. “Oh, wow!”
Erahn hunched down. The light showed a noticeable depression in the Spire conforming to the shape of Jane’s boots.
Erahn moved back.
Two clusters of pad imprints where she had stood could be made out. “It’s meltin,’ ya.”
“Bet it’s been melting, or whatever, for a while now.” Jane’s brow descended; she started chewing her lower lip, staring into the dark.
“What, ya thinkin,’ ya?”
Jane looked up. “That stair we came down; did the last step seem shorter than the others to you?”
“A bit, ya”
Jane nodded, “To me, too. Whoever built this place accounted for whatever’s happening.” She pointed to the base of the pillar. “Look.” It continued below the level of the floor.
She stood and looked at Erahn. “The only way out of here may be the way we came in. This space was never intended to be used. It’s likely part of the under-structure that bonds Glyph and the Spire together.”
“Let’s test that theory, ya.” Erahn held out her hand. Jane took it. Together, they carried on into the dark.
* * *
The end of the space came some little time later when they found a wall.
Plain stone, it sat on the Spire. Looking down, they confirmed that the wall too continued below the level of the floor.
“Well, now we know it doesn’t go on forever.” Jane turned right and they started walking along the barrier, looking for an exit.
They found one so quickly, Erahn asked if they should search some more. They talked about it for a bit and decided not to tempt fate.
The square opening was about four feet by four. It continued that down as far as the translucency of the Spire would allow. “Ya know, this place’s not too different from back home, ya.”
Jane nodded. “It’s like a big basement. It runs under most of the city, I bet.”
They crawled in.
Four feet high was a bitch to navigate. It was too short to go crouched without bashing one’s head, so they crawled, got sore knees, and grumbled sotto voce.
Going in front, Jane pushed the lamp ahead of her.
Objectively, the crawl didn’t last long; it only seemed like three days. The tunnel made several turns, most smooth curves, until they’d lost all sense of direction.
As they scrapped along, thinking it would never end, there appeared ahead of them a dark patch, indicating a branching of the tunnel. Hoping something would show which way to go Jane increased their pace.
It turned out to be an exit. The tunnel bent sharply right and ended after three feet. What’s more, there was light beyond. They had made to inhabited parts of the underground.
Sharing a smile, Jane and Erahn left the tunnel.
Up a single step and they were in a stone floored storage room.
By the number of barrels of beer, the space was for a drinking establishment. Squares embedded in the ceiling provided a steady white light.
‘Electric,’ Erahn thought.
Jane extinguished the lamp.
There was a metal door, slightly ajar, leading out; beyond, a low humming sound.
Reaching for the switch, Jane turned the light off. Quietly, she peeked around the door. Empty. After a pause of two seconds, she touched Erahn’s shoulder and the pair moved out.
The hall was brightly lit as well. At both ends stairs led upward. To the right was the muted sound of voices. Staccato rhythms and frequent interruptions; some conflict was in play.
Jane motioned with her head the other way.
As they turned to go quickly down the hall, the duo noticed another open door just before the stairs.
Extremely bright, flickering white light blazed from it. Where that light shone, the wall opposite had all detail bleached from it.
Footfalls behind them lent panic to their motion. They hurried toward the stairs ahead, intending to go past the light-filled room without looking.
Unable to resist a quick glance through the doorway, what Jane saw caused her to stop so fast that Erahn slammed into her. They both went tumbling to the ground, knocking the partially open door wide.
A dark shape, silhouetted by brightness, snatched them both and pulled them over the threshold.
White light and pain pushed all Jane’s thoughts away. The last thing she remembered was the sound of shouts from behind silenced by the loud slam of the closing door.
— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, August 2026
© Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved
