Dreambreaker: Chapter 4

"Dreambreaker: Chapter 1" 

"Dreambreaker: Chapter 2" 

"Dreambreaker: Chapter 3" 



“Malasi is amazing, isn't she?” the guard said enthusiastically as they entered the elevator. “Did you see the way all those bites just disappeared? Brilliant! Really pure, wasn't it? Have you ever seen anything like that?”

         “Not really,” Kalar began, but then stopped. A memory bubbled up in his brain and burst at its surface like the hot breath of a sea monster deep in the ocean. Vividly he relived the palpability of the blood, the heady feeling of its iron singing to him as it floated to him from her body, like people ascending to a higher plane, praising the spirits. Intoxicated by power, loving and hating her begging, feelings of how right it felt, how wrong it felt, how close he was feeling to his mentor. The vertigo of the unwelcomed flashes made him light-headed. He sat down suddenly in the descending elevator.

         “Whoa, it's going to be just fine, she's going to survive,” she said, kneeling down next to him. She placed a hand on his shoulder.

         “Don't touch me!” he snapped. The guard retracted her hand, shocked, and he stood up. He took at deep breath and furiously pushed away the memory. “I'm fine,” he said gruffly. “Sorry, I'm...sorry, I'm really tired. I need to call some people. Thank you for all your help, I really mean it.”

         The guard was still seemed off-put  but encouraged him to call people. Kalar ignored the sudden tension and asked his Wimcard to call Ashtas.

         “Ashtas, we found Unanda. She's alive.”

         “Praise the Spirits! Where is she? Can we come see her?” he was electrified with excitement.

         “She's at a healer in...” he paused, realizing he didn't even know where he was.

         “Shalagal,” the guard interjected quietly.

         “Shal-a-gal,” Kalar repeated slowly. “I'll send you a locator, except I'm not with her; I'll be in the mines below the city. The healer she's at is named Malasi; she's up on one of the upper levels.”

         Ashtas looked distracted momentarily. Finally, he looked Kalar in the eyes, “We can be there soon. I'll call you when we arrive. Oh, and Kamosa and Rynaugh returned to Meqiyoha, but they want us to call them when we get there.”

         “That's fine,” they did have a child to care for. “Talk to you then; be well.”

         “Be well.”

         Kalar turned back to the guard, his sense of social grace emboldened by the exchange, “I'm really sorry for snapping like that, it's been a tough day.”

         “It sounds like it has been. It's good your friends are coming then, you can talk to them about what you saw, get some new perspectives.”

         They had arrived at a large platform. Their surroundings bustled with activity. Carts full of metals, minerals, rock, and refuse zoomed to and from forges and mining tunnels following the channels below the platform.

         The guard took Kalar to a large, open stone room close to the elevator. They approached a ferroid who had just finished indicating a region of a large Wimcard map to a team of six ferroids who had just left.

         “This is Kalar, he has a debt to Shalagal of 77,000 clay. He is well experienced in the Metal Way, where can he work?”

         The foreman looked at Kalar's soiled clothes with what could have been suspicion. He turned to the large Wimcard map and drew a square around the end of a tunnel. “We've been expanding our tunnels here, but I don't currently have anyone extracting metal. Just walk along the wall of the tunnel, and if you feel something, let the expansion team know and they can fortify the wall while you extract. I'd say 77,000 clay is about three hours of natura work... or three carts full of metal, which ever comes first.” the ferroid smirked as he said this addendum.

         The manager walked Kalar to line of empty carts with seats and instructed Kalar to sit down. “The cart will take you where you need to go. It takes off pretty fast, so hold on. “



         Kalar began walking back along the wall of the tunnel in which he had come. Carefully, he stepped over the sparse crabs that were collecting bits of rock and minerals. Images of Unanda filled his head and evoked dizzying ranges of emotion. He remembered his mentor, too, and what they had done, dowsing him in guilt. He took a deep breath and let it go. Now was the present, and now was the time to work. Slowly, he became calm and found Metal natura. He guided it, probing the walls for hints of metal. He felt a small pocket of copper ore, and used a form to potentiate it and extract it. The lump fit into his hand. It's small, he thought, but it's a start. He tossed it in the cart behind him with a loud bang.

         “Hey, what are you doing?” called the workers behind him.

         “I'm just extracting some metal...” Kalar began.

         “You have to wait for us! We have to make sure the tunnel is stable,” they explained.

         “Oh, sorry,” he said. Awkwardly scratching the back of his head, he waited for them to come to him.

         “Hey, it's all right. You're new here,” they said, consolingly. “You just go ahead and extract, we'll check the stability. So, what brings you the mines of Shalagal?”

         “Oh, well, see,” Kalar paused as he crafted his version of the strange and horrific events into something that would be suitable for the average stranger. “A friend of mine, well, she's not my friend, well, I consider her my friend, but I only just met her today; she's the student of one of my favorite mentors. We, that is to say, she was severely injured, and... She's a ferroid, so our other friend; not really a friend, just another acquaintance I met today, he uses Gateway natura, and he brought us here so she could get healed.”

         “Oh, that's terrible,” came one voice.

         “What happened to her?” asked another.

         “She was... attacked,” he began. He didn't want to tell these people it had anything to do with the Akina Balaa because he didn't want to worry them. Malasi had seen the injuries and had attended to them in a no-nonsense manner. He knew she wouldn't ask further.  But these three workers were displaying the clear signs of amiable blabbering to pass the time. He wished they would stop talking; he liked working in silence. However, he didn't want to upset them. They had three hours together.

         “By what?”

         “Something around here?”

         “She must have not been seriously injured if you're down here already.”

         “How long are you down here for?”

         “Uh, three hours,” he replied, suddenly doubting the seemliness of his actions.

         “Three hours!?”

         “Well, she's resting. I'll be done before she wakes up.”

         “Oh, that's probably true.”

         “Where are you from originally?”

         “Well, I grew up in Evichu in Ojinzec, but then I decided to go to Meqiyoha to study for a number of years. Now I live in Rebowiin. Rebowiin is beautiful, the bright foliage, and Arborin housing is...”

         “Ojinzec! THAT'S beautiful. I went there one year for the Steam Holiday. 'Wow' is all I have to say.”

         “Really, it's that beautiful, eh?” asked a coworker.

         “Oh, yeah; their artwork is phenomenal, and the bath that I went to...they had one for...everyone! The one for us, the oil smelled SO good. It was infused with all kinds of micronutrients, and whole blossoms of grushowo were floating on top! And Spirits, did they know how to throw a party! Best foreign food I have ever eaten. Some of their buildings have been around since the Fifth Age! That's old!”

         “Wow, that sounds amazing. I've been looking for a place to take my fire for our anniversary. Maybe we could go there.”

         “You are too young to even be calling him your fire. You're only forty-five! We have a saying, maybe you've heard it?”

          “'Shovels before fire.'” They both said in unison.

         “Yeah, I know, I'm right with you, but he's... he's special...he...”

         Kalar was relieved to have faded from their attentions. He didn't mind working while they blathered amongst themselves, as long as he wasn't the center.

         “...Well, you know, you always have us, and your other friends. He may seem special, but if he isn't, you know there are always other silver nuggets for your eyes only,” Kalar wondered briefly at the strange translation.

“          “And you know I got you when times are dry,” At this, the ferroid slid his hand down his coworker's side, from midback to mid section.

         Giggling was the response to this flirtation, but Kalar wasn't paying attention anymore. He had found a seam.

         “And count me in, too...” the third coworker responded and made to join in on this bonding when Kalar spoke up.

         “I found something. Make sure the ground stays stable. It's a big one.” The natura told him it was big; thick as his arm, but deeper than the width of the tunnel by several times.

         Smiling with self-satisfaction, he wove a form that forcefully pulled the copper from the ore and from the tunnel wall. Like a dam with a fist-sized hole, the metal, liquified by natura, came shooting out and landed expertly in the cart. However, in the cart, it was a solid again; chunks pounded the cart like summer rain on a thin metal roof.

         “Whew! That is a good find!”

         “Careful, there's some subsidence...”

         “I feel it. I got it...”

         “Whoa! Stop!” The flow of copper pellets halted, and Kalar looked at them questioningly. The hill of copper in the cart had just begun peeking over the rim of the cart.

         “The carts full. I'm sending it back. Here's the next one.” The first cart jettisoned away, only losing a handful of chunks in the process. Then he understood, and began the flow of copper again.

         The second cart filled about two-thirds of the way full before most of the copper was drained from the vein.

         “Wow! That was a lot!”

         “I know! I haven't seen that much of a resource extracted at one time in, well, ever!”

         “Almost two carts! Amazing! And it was pure!”

         Kalar smiled slightly and moved on.

         Still probing the mine wall wall with wisps of natura, he carefully found his footing around the increasing numbers of flora and fauna of the mine. He stepped over metallic looking insects and crabs doing their own excavating and around squat, compact gourds with long tendrils.

         “I've never seen ferroid species this close before. I learned about it in general school but... Am I in any danger?” he asked suddenly worried.

         “Only if you jostle a reactor.”

         “Oh, I remember when Dslas did that. They swarmed all over him. Little buggers are fast!”

         “Yeah, he survived though. You also have to watch out for the big crabs. They could probably take you in a confrontation and win, and unfortunately they seem to know it. But they aren't allowed in tunnels where we got people working.”

         Kalar swallowed and charted his steps around what he remembered was a reactor. Crabs fed reactors with various minerals and raw materials and in return received pure nutrients. Over-protective crabs weren't the only danger. The plants used radiation to generate biological energy, a sort of high energy photosynthesis: radiosynthesis. There was a nonzero probability that it could leak radioactive material. He had even heard a rumor that they could explode.

         When the bustle of the metallic couriers had thinned, Kalar found another vein.

         “Could you cut a hole right here about as deep as your arm?” Kalar asked indicating a spot of the wall where the ore was closest.

         “Sure,” came the response from his Wimcard. A core of rock emerged from the wall, held by threads of Terra natura.

         Again, a fountain of bright metal burst forth from the wall.

         “That's not copper.”

         “It's silver.”

         “Silver!?”

         “That's a find!”

         The silver filled the remainder of the cart and barely a single layer of the last cart.

         “Wow! That was amazing! I've never seen that much metal extracted in such a short time!”

         “I have to fill three carts or work 3 hours,” Kalar replied matter-of-factly.

         “Looks like it will be the former.”

         “Mind if I take over?” a familiar voice asked. Kalar turned with relief to face the hulking form.

         “Shkerqi,” he said simply.

         “Well if you know each other... It's really simple, just keep the tunnel from collapsing. Send the cart back when it's filled to the fill line. Call carts with this Carts app. Well, we're off. Nice working with you!”

         “Yeah, and good luck with your injured friend.”

         “Yeah, you too, thanks,” Kalar replied, weakly.

         “So how are you, Kalar?” Shkerqi sounded like he wanted to ask more, but had decided against it. Shkerqi's reserve was one of the qualities that Kalar most appreciated.

         “I'm fine, I guess. I just want to get out of here. I want to leave this place. Forget any of this ever happened.”

         “You can, as soon as Unanda feels better. When she wakes up, you can leave and put this all behind you.”

         “Right,” Kalar sighed, defeated. “When she wakes up. It's all my fault she's like that in the first place.”

         “You're absolutely right about that,” Shkerqi replied in explanatory tones. “Without you she'd still be in Nikyry. You saved her. And you brought her here to heal. You saved her life. It's not your fault she was pulled in. It could have happened to any of us. It almost happened to me.”

         You're wrong, Kalar thought. She slipped through my fingers. He knew that Shkerqi would deny this adamantly, telling him again it wasn't his fault. He knew it was. Nothing would change that.

         They continued walking along in silence. The clicks and chirps of the crabs were the only sound.

         “You know, these are the people I came from,” Shkerqi said after a time.

         “Oh yeah?”

         “Yeah, a couple of Ages ago the ferroids, crystalloids, and lithoids came here. A long time ago, they were one race, but a lot like, uh, 'your' race, they did genetic experiments and all that,” he smirked at the awkward distinction he had had to make between Kalar and him. “I don't really know what they originally looked like.”

         “Well, that's ancient history,” Kalar said. “You grew up in Meqiyoha, and attended schools with people of every shape and culture. Now, your best friends are an arborioid and a vacoid. Your wife is a humanoid.”

         “So what are you saying?”

         “I'm saying we're all the people you came from,” Kalar was silent for a moment. He was reminded of his biological parents. He decided that their conversation was impersonal enough to bring up his family. “I mean, my mother was a ferroid. My father was a humanoid. We're all...” suddenly, Kalar choked up. He tried to compose himself and pass off his struggle with the flood of emotion as a pause to search for the right words. “Uhh...” he tried to think, but he couldn't think of anything but the guilt and hurt that came with thinking about them.

         “...the same,” Shkerqi said, finishing his sentence. Kalar listened hard to his tone, scrutinizing it for a hint of suspicion. Shkerqi said nothing more on the subject and didn't ask about his parents.

         Kalar tried to shift his thoughts to something else. He thought about the ferroids and lithoids of long ago and far away. A planet full of them, full of Shkerqis and Unandas. If they had just stayed on their own planet, he thought, she wouldn't be in this mess. But Kalar knew that wishing for that would be like wishing that his ancestors had stayed in the sea.

         “I found another deposit. Make a hole at my eye level and about as deep as I am tall.”

         Shkerqi complied and again pellets of copper flowed into the cart. The use of some much natura wasn't fatiguing because of the talismans he had borrowed from the Library. If his mind wasn't so preoccupied with worry and guilt, he might have been enjoying himself. With the talismans, it was like gliding instead of running; effortless.

         Kalar looked over at the cart and noticed it was almost full. With a few more spurts from the copper fountain, he decided it was full. After the cart rocketed away, two new ones jetted toward him. Shkerqi was completing the shoring up of the mine wall.

         “Well, we're done. Ready to go?” Kalar asked.

         “Yeah, are you?” Shkerqi replied. He must have noticed the way Kalar was just staring at the cart, lost in thought.

         “I ...guess,” Kalar said, thinking through every negative situation was that could unfold in the hour to come. He had run away before, he could do it again. He could make a clean break.

         With a jolting start, the carts that carried them rocketed back through the mines to the central entrance. The mine foreman was waiting for them.

         “When I said 'or three carts' I was joking. That's two weeks quota! If we mine more than that it puts the mine ecosystem in danger.”

         “Oh, sorry. I didn't know,” Kalar mumbled. Looking down, he asked “what should I do?”

          “Well, that area of the mine has other support systems, so I don't think any harm was done. Just know that your debt is well-paid.” The foreman bowed slightly, swiftly turned, and walked away.

         He was confused at first, but then the relief of his slight good fortune lifted his spirits, but only marginally.



"Dreambreaker: Chapter 5" 

"Dreambreaker: Chapter 6" 

"Dreambreaker: Chapter 6"