Chapter 94: The Search

Several hours passed before the Seventy-Second was ready.

The Manager had ordered every available Reaper into the streets. Those capable of manipulating stone reinforced the entrances and filled cracks in the cavern walls. Others carried weapons, repelling powder and the few remaining thunder charges to positions overlooking the settlement. Wandering souls were moved into the largest buildings near the Beacon, where several squads had been assigned to protect them if anything entered the Bastion.

While the preparations continued, Rook searched the settlement.

Mara and Vanessa accompanied him through streets that felt increasingly narrow the farther they moved from the Beacon. The Seventy-Second was smaller than Mara had expected. Its buildings were large, but they had been forced into whatever space the cavern permitted. Homes stood close enough for their upper floors to nearly touch, and several structures had been built directly against the surrounding rock.

The pale light of the Beacon reached everywhere, although the cavern seemed determined to contain it.

Rook stopped beside one of the outer buildings.

Part of its rear wall had fused with the stone behind it, leaving no clear boundary between the structure and the cavern. Several grooves crossed both surfaces. They began near the ground, climbed nearly twice Rook’s height and ended in deep fractures above him.

He ran his fingers through one of them.

Mara raised her lantern. "Claws?"

"Probably."

Rook pressed his thumb against the edge of the groove. The surrounding stone had become strangely smooth, as though countless hands had passed over it.

Vanessa examined the marks from several steps away. "How large?"

"Larger than either of us." Rook followed the grooves upward. "Four claws. It struck while moving sideways, or something dragged it along the wall."

Mara looked toward the nearest houses. "Then something has been inside the Bastion."

Rook did not answer immediately.

He crouched and inspected the lowest section of damage. Dust had gathered within the grooves, but no loose fragments remained beneath them. The stone surrounding the marks had softened with age, its remembered surface slowly attempting to restore itself.

"That isn’t recent," he said.

"How old?"

"Very."

"That was precise."

"The surface is too smooth. Fresh damage would still have sharp edges."

Rook stood and brushed the dust from his fingers.

"I’d say the marks were here before the Seventy-Second arrived."

Mara looked around the compressed settlement. "The Bastion was somewhere else when this happened?"

"That’s what the Manager claims."

"Then everything around us moved with it."

"Buildings, Beacon, claw marks and whatever else the stone remembered."

Vanessa glanced toward Rook. "You were the one insisting there might be Abominations inside."

"I insisted that we check."

"You seemed convinced."

"I’m usually convinced that searching for the thing capable of eating us is worthwhile."

"That sounds like the same thing."

"It isn’t. One is an investigation. The other is Mara speaking before thinking."

Mara frowned. "I asked one reasonable question."

"You suggested the Seventh Rank might be feeding us to something beneath the Bastion."

"And now we’re searching beneath the Bastion." Mara exclaimed.

"Yes. Because it was a reasonable question." Rook said.

Vanessa looked between them. "Was that an apology?"

"No," Rook said.

"It was probably the closest one you’ll get," Mara told her.

They continued through the outer district.

Many of the houses remained unoccupied. Doors had been left open after the Manager ordered everyone closer to the Beacon, allowing Rook to inspect the interiors without waiting for permission. Most contained little beyond old furniture, abandoned containers and the possessions of people who had occupied the Bastion long before it disappeared.

Time had distorted everything differently.

Some rooms appeared almost untouched. Bedding remained spread across stone frames, bowls stood upon tables and coats hung beside doors waiting for owners who had never returned. Other rooms had collapsed inward, their contents fused beneath layers of remembered rock.

Rook entered one house and stopped beneath a dark stain covering part of the ceiling.

Mara remained near the doorway. "Blood?"

"Some of it."

"There’s enough to cover half the room."

"There used to be more."

The stain had spread across the ceiling before running down one wall in several broad streams. Its color had faded until it almost matched the stone, yet the remains still carried something unpleasant. Mara could not smell decay, but standing beneath it made her imagine violence that had happened so long ago the Bastion itself had forgotten the victim.

Rook scraped one fingernail over the wall.

A dark flake broke away and dissolved between his fingers.

"Old," he said. "Older than the marks outside."

"How can you tell?"

"Fresh blood in the Underworld remembers the person it came from. If enough remains, you can sometimes feel anger, fear or pain around it. This barely remembers being blood."

Vanessa studied the ceiling. "Was it an Abomination?"

"Possibly. It could also have been a Reaper with an unnecessarily large weapon."

Mara imagined the amount of force required to spread someone across the ceiling. "Wouldn’t that be easy to distinguish?"

"Not around experienced Reapers."

They found several more rooms carrying similar remnants. One had deep punctures in the floor and a stain shaped like a body against the wall. Another contained black marks around a doorway where something had burned without producing heat. None appeared recent.

Whatever violence had occurred within the Seventy-Second belonged to its former life.

Rook emerged from the final house and opened the reports the search parties had given him. The pages had been torn from several different ledgers and tied together with grave rope. Crude maps covered most of them, each showing a different attempt to chart the tunnels surrounding the Bastion.

Mara leaned closer. "Did they find another exit?"

"They found ways to get lost."

"That wasn’t the question."

"It’s the answer."

Three major tunnels connected to the cavern.

The first was the route through which their group had entered. It eventually reached the stone barrier the anchor-wielding Reaper had nearly destroyed before the Seventh Rank revealed itself. Reapers had reinforced the opening from the Bastion’s side, although everyone understood that a wall capable of stopping ordinary creatures would mean very little to something of the Seventh Rank.

The second tunnel curved upward toward the branch they had avoided earlier. According to the search party, it connected with the passage carrying the false blood trail. Several Reapers had attempted to follow it toward the Hollow Road, only to find the leopard-like Abomination waiting near the exit.

It had not attacked.

The creature merely lay across the passage and watched until they withdrew.

The third tunnel descended beneath the settlement.

Rook unfolded two additional pages devoted entirely to that route. The upper sections had been mapped several times, but the drawings became increasingly uncertain as the tunnel divided. Three passages became seven. Seven became twelve. Several joined one another after long descents, while others ended above chasms too deep for lantern light to reach the bottom.

"How far did they go?" Mara asked.

"Far enough to lose two people for several hours."

"Did they find them?"

"They returned through a different passage and claimed they never turned around."

Vanessa frowned. "That shouldn’t be possible."

"It usually isn’t."

"Could it lead outside?"

"If you consider deeper underground to be outside."

Rook tapped one of the final notes. A search party had found moving air several levels below the Bastion and followed it, hoping the current came from another opening. Instead, they reached a vertical shaft carrying wind upward from somewhere beneath them. The rope they lowered into it never touched the bottom.

Another group discovered a tunnel wide enough to accommodate several wagons. They followed it for nearly an hour before the Seventh Rank appeared ahead of them, blocking the path without making any attempt to close the distance.

"It’s controlling the useful passages," Mara said.

"It’s controlling the ones that might lead away."

"Which means the lower tunnels might still be an escape route."

"They might also be exactly where it wants us to go."

Mara looked at him. "You think it expects us to flee downward?"

"I think it has spent long enough herding people into this cavern to know how frightened people behave."

He folded the reports and tucked them inside his coat.

"Until we know what Vanessa detects, nobody enters those tunnels."

By the time they returned to the center of the settlement, the preparations were nearly complete.

Frederick found them near one of the outer streets. Dust covered his uniform, and a fresh strip of grave rope had been wrapped around one forearm where the older material had torn.

"The Manager is ready," he said.