The Hammer Unfalls

4.67 Weeds in the Basement

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The crab feast had earned Glim the adulation of the town. Everywhere he went people clapped him on the back or shouted praise as he walked by.

Within a few days, he’d earned glares as sour as the scent of rotting crab guts that now plagued every corner of the town. A putrescence so foul that children and adults alike gagged every time the warm winds shifted. The same warm winds that had brought the attack in the first place.

Glim hauled another load of noxious crab shells to the mountain’s edge and tossed them over.

The wind puffed at him, hardly able to contain her glee.

What an amazing smell! You have outdone yourself.

Glim sighed.

And that is a feat I never imagined possible.

“Go away,” Glim groaned.

And miss all this excitement? Not a chance. Oh powerful Glim, Awakener of Nostrils.

She puffed again, scattering his hair with warm air that mixed the scents of muddy goat and crab bile.

Warm air.

“Did you do all this?” he asked suddenly, recalling the unseasonable temperature and the scent of goat that had presumably drawn the crabs to Wohn-Grab.

You wanted a real test.

“That’s not an answer.”

Winds are fickle.

“Well don’t do me any more favors!” he snapped.

Be careful what you ask for.

The air went still. Glim immediately regretted his words, but there was no wind nearby to apologize to.

--------------- ~~~ *** ~~~ ---------------

That evening, Glim avoided the ire of the townspeople with his usual escape: the newly opened chambers beneath Wohn-Grab. They’d opened the last time he visited a tower and aligned some pipes that had drifted apart over the years. Glim wondered what else might happen if he aligned the pipes beneath Wohn-Grab itself.

The backpack he’d not yet had time to unpack clanked with every step down each stone stair into the bowels of Wohn-Grab. The air seemed stagnant and musty. He wondered who the last person had been, besides himself, to breathe it.

As ever in the bowels of the fortress, dim light wavered from unknown corners, suffusing the space filled with with half-visible structures and stark shadows. Most formed of golden hued brass, with blue corrosion in the seams. Tiny flickers punctuated the dim. Indicator lights from various panels and valves, most of them a mystery.

The temperature had risen since his last visit. The chambers hummed with vibrations he could not hear, but rather feel, from his feet into his bones.

Glim’s eyes adjusted to the low light. He walked over to the misaligned pipe he’d noticed earlier, with the divots inside a dial. A small pipe, barely noticeable among the others. If not for chance he’d never have seen the adjustment dial.

As he often did, Glim wondered how the Elderkin had seen anything down here well enough to work on it. With the oil caked in every corner, Glim dared not risk a torch. He rummaged around in his pack and lay the reclaimed tools out onto the floor. Guessing at the correct size, Glim stood on solid block of brass near the pipe and reached as high as he could. The prongs of the twister barely reached the wall. He moved them back and forth, seeking a fit, but could only get one prong into any of the three adjustment divots.

Glim sighed and hopped back down, grabbing a different twister. This time it clicked into place. Glim grabbed the handle tight and twisted. The prongs slipped out, smashing Glim’s hand against the rock with the force of his own pressure.

“Ow!” he shouted, and rubbed his hand to ease the pain. Stubbornly he tried again, keeping tension on the twister so it would remain in place. With great reluctance, the dial unstuck and turned. Glim pulled down hard, using his own weight to force the dial around. At last, the marks on the dial lined up with the marks on the wall.

With a shuddering breath, Glim dropped back to the floor and wiped his brow.

Above him, the small pipe rattled. Glim hopped back and watched in alarm as a nearby vent hissed open with scalding steam. Then another, until three whistling clouds vented along the ceiling with unbearable shrieks.

Glim clamped his hands over his ears and crouched, trying to figure out what to do. But the steam relented, the pipe stopped rattling, and Glim relaxed. He wondered what the adjustment had accomplished. The answer arrived almost immediately.

Dark boxes along the wall began to glow, like lanterns whose wicks had been burned down to an ember. The orange light expanded and grew stronger, until the boxes shone bright, like windows catching the morning sun.

The chamber looked completely different in this new light. Glim saw connections and pathways that had literally been hidden from him. He followed the small pipe he’d aligned, tracing its path between the glowing boxes. He came upon another dial with misaligned divots, and suddenly it all made sense. Someone had intentionally closed these chambers off and darkened them. Why he did not know, but guessed it had something to do with saving resources. Why light up an unused chamber?

The next stretch of glowboxes came to life with another effort from Glim. He watched them spark to life, and saw something that made his heart beat faster: Another set of nutrient tanks.

Glim rushed over, whooping as he slammed his palm against the massive cylinder. Why these tanks had been placed underground, with no light source as in the glass house, did not immediately make sense to him. But more and more, Glim was starting to trust the Elderkin.

He set his pack down, scurried up the ladder on the side and ran along the top of the tank. The massive wheel on top would not budge, no matter how much pressure he applied. But one of the smaller vent caps did eventually budge.

Curiosity mounting, Glim unscrewed the cap, picturing what might be inside. Spinach soup? Perhaps something sweet, like the banana sludge?

As soon as the cap came undone, noxious gas belched from the vent. Glim choked and ran back, waving his hands in front of his face to clear the air. The stench kept coming, so he hurriedly screwed the cap back on and fled the area. The stench reminded him of the rotting snowcrabs, only a thousandfold worse.

Of course. He should have expected this. The fish, and whatever creature preyed on them from the depths of the tank, had obviously died, and the stench had nowhere to go. Until now.

So much for another miracle feast, Glim thought wryly. He lay on his back, turning his face to the side against the warm brass of the tank cover, and looked down among the other tanks.

Two things caught his eye. The hairs on the back of Glim’s neck stood on end. He leapt to his feet and ran to the edge of the tank to make sure.

The first thing he’d noticed was a door in the corner that the light had unveiled: another shuttle. There was no mistaking it, with the map on the wall, and the odd trim that he now knew covered the junction of the fortress wall and the shuttle itself. A shuttle that Ryn herself had no knowledge of, and likely not the current gardeners, either. This would be significant news. This shuttle would take them to who-knows where. Somewhere people had not been in centuries, perhaps. It could be anything, from an unspoiled outpost, to towers with new lore to uncover. Or, perhaps more rancid tanks that could offer no help at all. All Glim knew for sure is that this shuttle had been forgotten to time, and he’d just unlocked the means to further their reach.

Except something else knew of the shuttle’s existence, and that’s what had raised Glim’s skin into goosebumps. A vine of some sort had found its way out of a growbed and splayed along the floor. Not some time in the past, but right in front of his eyes, as if summoned by the light. And something about this vine set his mind into a clamor.

Sliding down the ladder and thudding to the floor, Glim approached the vine. He had to get a better look.

Glim grabbed his pack, pulled out a twister, and rounded the tank. The vine came into view. It slithered along the floor like a living thing, sprouting tiny tendrils that propelled it further towards the shuttle.

Glim’s eyes sizzled with pain. Not in his eyes directly, but in the space behind them. Not unlike the sensation the snowcrabs might have experienced when he froze their eyes. He batted at his own vision, hiding the vine from view. But its reflection on the floor shimmered with a light his mind could not process. Some color he’d never seen before. He felt part of his mind awaken, like the ancient dials he’d just turned, searing his mind with its excruciating light.

He gasped and sank to his knees. The vine paused its march towards the shuttle, as if to give Glim time to adjust to its presence.

He tried to look at it again, but could not comprehend what he saw. A feeling washed over him that he did have a frame of reference for: watching his pea plants grow. How many days had he rushed upstairs to check, only to be met with bare soil? The day he’d seen the three seedlings with their purple leaves, Glim had cried with relief and joy at the sight. Nurturing something to life had given him peace and purpose.

Seeing this vine on the ground gave him that feeling, only with an intensity he could hardly stand. The vine and its tendrils writhed with life. More than life. It vibrated with an essentiæ that resonated in his sight, his nose, his gut, and in the very air itself. Essentiæ unlike anything he’d ever beheld. Not like Master Willow’s enspelled vines, or the silver wisps from the totems in the training chamber. Not even the warm tingles that coursed through his own skin when he cast ice. Glim knew, as surely as he’d ever known anything in his life, that this vine had incarnated an essentiæ he’d never known. For the first time, Glim felt desperate to comprehend this arcane mystery that twisted at his feet.

The feelings coursed through him—of nurturing life, and wonderment, and a profound sense of longing, as if he’d been drowning his entire life and only now tasted air for the first time.

Before his eyes, the vine began to wither. Its leaves crumpled and turned brown, leaving a smattering of dry dust on the floor. Anxiety welled inside Glim as the newest tendrils continued to sprout, creeping ever closer to the shuttle door. The browning vine climbed the wall and enveloped the button.

The shuttle door swung inward, along with the vine that clung to it. It paused again, swelling rhythmically, as if drawing breath, or sensing the air.

Glim’s mind shimmered with a vision of incalculable loss. His pea plants withering in the pot, and the tanks inside the glass house turning rancid like the one he’d just opened. He watched his friends and enemies alike fall to the ground and collapse into stagnant puddles of compost, from which pallid weeds sprouted and died.

The door began to close. It hovered, half open, with the crazed light of the unknown color scintillating off the walls of the shuttle.

Glim staggered to his feet and ran towards the shuttle. He leapt inside. The door closed and the round chamber vibrated with movement. Moments after Glim strapped himself in, the shuttle fell down the mountainside with a sickening plunge.