The tremor that shook the city was a distant, dull thunder here in the mining arteries. Morning John Belied and Over Regolith moved with the grim purpose of veteran Pit Bosses, their boots scuffing on rail tracks embedded in the stone. A team of a dozen hardened miners followed, their helmet-lamps cutting swinging cones of yellow light through the perpetual dust.
When the quake hit, it was a sudden, violent vertigo. The tunnel didn't just shake; it writhed. Support beams groaned like living things. A choking cloud of ancient dust vomited from the walls, blocking their lights and burning their throats. The men cursed, bracing against the rock.
"Steady!" Over Regolith's voice was a gravelly anchor in the chaos. "Ride it out! It'll pass!"
And it did. The groaning subsided into an uneasy silence, broken only by the pat-pat-pat of dislodged pebbles and the ragged coughing of the crew. The air was thick with powdered stone, tasting of chalk and age.
Morning John spat a wad of black dust, his eyes narrowed to slits in the flickering lamplight. "Lucky," he muttered, the word barely audible. If that had hit a minute earlier, they'd have been under a fresh collapse.
Over gave a single, grim nod of agreement. "Forward. The city needs to know what's brewing in the deep and we need their aid."
They hadn't gone fifty yards when they all froze again. Not from a tremor, but from a shadow.
It formed at the ragged edge of their coalesced light down the tunnel—a human silhouette, but moving wrong. It didn't walk; it shambled, with a lopsided, bouncing gait. A sound accompanied it, cutting through the settling dust: a high, tittering laugh that echoed off the close walls, devoid of any warmth.
Morning's hand dropped to the weighted pick at his hip. "Who goes there?" he barked, his voice hard. "Identify yourself!"
The shadow didn't stop. It kept coming, the laugh growing louder, punctuated by hiccupping giggles.
Over and Morning shared a glance, their years of shared toil in the dark communicating volumes in that look: This isn't right.
Then she stepped fully into the light.
Ember. Her neon-pink space buns were askew, streaked with grime. Her mismatched eyes were wide, one ice-blue and vacant, the other gold and glinting with fractured light. She looked utterly bewildered, her head tilted at a bird-like angle as she surveyed the armed miners. She came to a stop just before them, rocking on the heels of her boots.
"Want to play a game?" she asked, her voice a singsong chime in the dusty silence.
Over and Morning stared, their brows furrowed in identical confusion. This wasn't a Ruru-Gin. This was a surface-dweller, clearly unhinged.
Ember pushed out her lower lip in an exaggerated, theatrical pout. "You don't even know the rules." She giggled again, the sound skittering up the tunnel walls. "Silly statues."
Morning leaned toward Over, his voice a low rumble. "Over, you think she's the one who…?"
"I do," Over grunted, his own hand tightening on his weapon. He took a step forward, his broad frame imposing. "You. Listen here. You need to—"
"Gotta go!" Ember chirped, cutting him off. She spun on her heel with a dancer's sudden grace. "As fast as fast can be, you can't catch me!" she taunted, her voice rising in a manic nursery-rhyme cadence. Then she was gone, sprinting back down the tunnel with a speed that belied her wiry frame, her laughter trailing behind her like a poisonous ribbon.
"Hell's bells," Morning snarled.
"After her!" Over barked, and the two bosses and their team exploded into motion, their heavy boots pounding the stone in pursuit of the echoing, mad laughter.
At a jagged fork in the tunnel system, Aurélie and Charlie stood bathed in the uncertain glow of a lone, flickering mineral deposit. The paths ahead yawned into identical blackness. The air here was cooler, smelling of damp stone and the faint, metallic tang of distant Grav-Ore.
"Which way?" Charlie whispered, as if the tunnels themselves were eavesdropping. He clutched his notebook like a shield. "The particulate dust is disturbed on both paths! Ahem! We need a more definitive sign!"
Aurélie's lips were pressed into a thin line. She was listening, her whole body still. The memory of Ember's fragile clarity being shattered by the red glow and the violent tremors was a cold knot in her stomach. She was about to choose based on a faint scuffmark when new sounds cut through the silence.
From the left-hand tunnel, the unmistakable, manic giggle echoed, bouncing and multiplying. A heartbeat later, from the tunnel behind them—the one they'd just come from—came the thunder of approaching hooves, sharp and clattering against the stone, accompanied by the determined shouts of young Ruru-Gin voices.
The laughter was a siren call of impending disaster. The hooves were an unknown variable.
Aurélie didn't hesitate. She pointed sharply to the left tunnel, her silver hair a flash in the gloom. "This way! The laughter is our guide."
"But the pursuit from behind—" Charlie started.
"Is secondary! Move, Charlie!"
They plunged into the left-hand darkness, chasing the sound of crumbling sanity, as behind them, the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of ram hooves and the shouts of Tori-Rick's rescue squad grew steadily louder, converging on the same fork in the deep, dark heart of the rumbling mountain.
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