As far as Arn could determine, he was alone on Scoa. Perhaps the tribal tools he’d found in the ruins were his deceased uncle’s, but he had not found any remains either. This puzzle would have to wait. He had not yet thoroughly explored the ruins themselves, which amounted for a town similar in size to his home. He had found a few points that led deeper underground, as though this city had sunken, or Scoa Isle had landed upon it.
It was time to explore those. Arn had a second spear, shorter in length, strapped to his back, along with a few chunks of meat he’d roasted that morning, for lunch and dinner respectively. He laced up his sandals and stood up. Even if it was more screechers that lurked in these ruins, he’d be ready.
He picked his way through the surface ruins first, though most of it involved rotted wood furnishings. He found a few scraps of decayed textile—he’d never seen their like. These were not made of fur or animal hide, but woven of a mesh material, similar to some of the reed weavings done on Razaad but much, much finer. He tucked these into the empty leather sack that hung from his shoulder.
As he was carefully stepping down a crumbled stairway in front of one sunken house, a predatory screech echoed to his ears. He dropped to a crouch, ready for action. A second cry, a moment later, cued his senses to what was really going on. The ruins distorted the sound—that screecher could be anywhere on Scoa.
“Deeper, I suppose,” he muttered. It was the only thing he hadn’t explored, although he hadn’t scaled all the coastal cliffs for fear of danger of the variety that had torn his face asunder. He spat to the side and pranced down the last few steps of the structure he’d emerged from.
The access to the underground of this rubble was a dark hole in the floor of one house, where bricks had crumbled away. He hadn’t even approached the abyssal entry, for fear the stones would give out beneath his feet. Facing the pit now, he was reminded of that day, so many months ago, when he had cut the vines and watched Loklar slide to his death. He tested the stones ahead of him carefully as he moved closer, prodding them with his spear-butt.
A few began to crumble as he got closer to the hole and he swiftly back-stepped to the stone doorway that admitted entrance to this particular structure. There was also a storey above him, but whatever apparatus granted entrance to that place had long since decayed. Arn continued breaking the stones in the floor, widening the dark hole. He could see a floor below it, whenever the cloud of dust and dirt he was making cleared enough to let beams of light shine through from the door. He shoved a few more blocks away, but this revealed a worn stone column that supported one section of the floor.
I can climb that, Arn thought. He was careful with his footing until he reached the section of his floor above the column. Carefully, he swung his weight down over the edge. Stone grits and dirt ground his calloused arms as he shimmied down the pillar. Soon enough, his feet came to rest on the floor of a deeper and much larger room.
Arn had never seen anything like it. This room could probably house the entire populace of his village—what purpose could it serve? There was no sign of beds, though enormous collapsed wooden tables ran the length of the room. They were in better shape than the furnishings he’d seen in structure above. Similar stone supports lined the perimeter of the space. One corner of the massive room showed salt stains on the walls and mud on the floor. The tide that flooded the swamps of the isle’s lowlands had invaded this place too, but most of the room was untouched.
A pair of big wooden panels were visible at the far end of the room, so Arn walked up the slanted floor to get there. This entire settlement had shifted—outside he had found buildings that leaned on one another.
Arn had to use his spear to break some strange orange clasps off the sides of the wooden gate. Why build wood walls in the openings of stone walls? He picked up the first one, as soon as he had broken it. This isn’t stone! he realized. The orange grey object was as big of his hand, with a central pin and two flaps. It was cold to the touch, colder than the stone walls, and, he realized after striking it with a sharpened rock from his belt, harder than stone. He stowed it in the sack of his finds as well.
After unhinging the wooden panels, he forced the left one inward using his shorter spear. He didn’t want to damage his quality weapon, but had brought the other as a spare. The thing was thicker than the density of his fist, and the enormous wooden slab slammed onto the floor—the entire room seemed to shake. Arn put his knees on the ground and watched as the dislodged wooden section slid down the slanted floor until resting against one of the columns.
When Arn was certain the floor would not collapse, he peered out of the opening he had made. A cavern stretched down and out of sight. Arn fumbled with kindling and lit a torch, casting its flickering orange glow around the room. When he lifted it into the cavern beyond the opening he’d made, he found rippling water reflecting his light, far below. The room was suspected on a massive crevice, a tear in the earth like some of the caves he’d seen on Razaad. He could see a structure, much like a water-well, suspended in the dirt above the pit. This entire place had been blasted by whatever calamity had wrecked its buildings to shambles. Up was no longer up, and down was no longer down, for this poor settlement.
He slid back into the relative safety of the large room. There was another wooden panel near one of the other corners, thankfully not the one that showed tidal damage. Once more, Arn had to pry hard brackets off. He yanked this wooden section free with his fingers—all save his gimped finger—and gently lowered it to the floor.
When he turned to face the way he had opened, he found himself staring at the back of a man’s torso. Someone was standing ten paces down the corridor from him, paying his excavating no heed.
“Hello?” Arn asked.
The dark figure did not move. Arn held his breath, and moved his torch down the hallway ahead of him. The person’s clothes were in tatters, but it took him two steps closer before he realized that he was also seeing the man’s skin, the back of his legs, his elbows, his neck and scalp. They were all tattered too: brown, torn, and curled like an aged scrap of leather. This was a corpse, somehow dead on his feet, rotting as slowly as the cold, salty air allowed.
Arn prodded the dead body with the butt of his spear to get it out of his way. The body broke apart when it hit the wall; one of its rotted feet remained where it had been standing, while its head rolled away. Though Arn was not superstitious, he felt he was in a place of great unquiet. Jorik would have said it was evil, that the people who died here had been claimed by the forces of the Deep, denied the opportunity to move their hearts into a proper afterlife.
But, with ginger steps, Arn moved beyond the remnants of the dead man. He continued down the hallway, his torch’s light gradually illuminating more. There were two more up ahead, but only one was standing. These two corpses appeared to be standing on guard, in front of another wooden panel—they are doors! Arn realized. He assumed the strange clasps he had found were locks now, and the reasoning to use wood was clear. Far more secure than an animal hide covering.
As he approached the standing and fallen down bodies in front of this door, he realized they bore weapons he had never seen before. The one standing fell over as Arn approached, seemingly of its own volition. The body’s tunic made a reverberating clang against the stone tiles. One of its arms snapped with a dusty crack, and Arn slowly lowered his tense guard. He prodded the eerie body with his spear but it did not move again.
The clang had come from more of the material that the rusted clasps were made from. This dead warrior had a tunic made out of the heavy stuff. No wonder it had fallen over—though it should have fallen over long before.
Arn sucked in his breath as he checked the strange weapon he had seen. Though it was a strange straight blade, not a spear, this weapon was made of the same hard material. He lifted the blade from a cold handle after brushing away all the rotted leather. The handle was only large enough for his hand, with four short bars to separate his knuckles from the three feet of the blade. It was dull, but as hard and cold as the rusted locks he’d stripped from the doors. He slid it through the straps that held his extra spear to his back and continued. He had no need of a heavier tunic.
He quickly pried the locks off the next door and entered a small room full of decaying wooden shelves and more bodies.
There he found the most chilling of all the sights yet. A woman’s body sat at a stone table, with a square section of rotted leather on the table in front of her. One arm was extended over the parchment, though the hand had long since turned to a pile of small bones and dirt on the tabletop.
The arm moved. Just a twitch to the left. Arn jumped, lowered his spear, and stared. After a moment, the arm twitched back to the right. The corpse was moving it, as though still trying to perform whatever task it had been given with the leather page in front of it.
Arn watched the moving corpse for a few moments. The woman had no eyes left, and her jaw hung open at a sickening angle. One of her legs had detached, he noticed, beneath the table. The horrifying spectre did not react to Arn’s presence. It just kept trying to move its rotted arm back and forth.
Puffing for breath, Arn finally took a step back. “This cannot be,” he whispered. “This shouldn’t be…” He took another step back. This was worse than the most horrifying things that the dreamworld had shown him. He was facing a waking nightmare. The dead still lived? Was Jorik right—did their hearts need to be placed in the Blood Well to enter the afterlife?
Was Loklar still trying to climb up that sheer rock-face as his hands rotted away? Was Garem still trying to wander the bottom of the Deep?
Arn walked backwards out of that room and nearly tripped over the guardian that had fallen over. Had the guard toppled itself in an attempt to stop Arn’s progress? “Protect me,” he prayed, though Arn had never believed in needing help. He turned and briskly hurried to the big empty room. It was difficult to climb the column, but he was determined. And terrified.
He didn’t sleep in his usual basement that night, but in the highest point of the ruins he could find that had a roof. And he didn’t do much sleeping at all.