They were the ape-monsters, mere eight feet or more high, clad in living rock-skin hides. Soils throbbed within their bodies as living roots, giving off a soft glow in the dark. Their eyes were pools of molten slag, burning with fury half-intelligent.
Their roaring shook the earth. Dirt cascaded from the ceiling in sheets.
The shard-light flashed with a brief, incandescent fury, blinding Bullet in a glare of light, casting shadows that writhed across walls like demons.
The beasts ripped stones from tunnel walls with claw-hands the size of ships, hurled boulders that shattered roots, splattered fungi into gummy ruin, shook the chamber to its foundations.
The roof groaned in threatening warning. Cracks stretched out across its surface like webbed fingers. Boulders began falling in a deafening torrent.
The earth altar—that shrine to the First Sowing—shattered in two with a wail-like cry. Its etched symbols split, centuries of symbolism falling apart.
Stitch screamed.
Bullet's head spun around towards the noise. A shattered stone had fallen, holding Stitch and Husk tight to the ground. Mud was smeared across their white faces. Their respiration was in brief, gasping inhalations.
Bullet ran, scar glowing, ribs protesting. Blood seeped from the shoulder, a trail of silvery behind.
He thrust the pipe under the massive stone. Sparks flew where metal struck rock. His palms cracked open, blood slicking the pipe. His muscles burned with exertion, trembling with strain.
He buckled with the last ounce of strength.
The rock shifted—just so, just so far. Stitch and Husk gasped as the burden slid off, struggling free as earth came down around them.
The shard-light jerked wildly. The chamber shook.
"Truce," Bullet snarled to Husk, scar blazing, voice rough with desire.
Husk nodded, his chains broken in the chaos, blood trickling from a cut on his brow. He indicated an empty tunnel off the room. "Take them there," he commanded, his voice rough but determined. "Sap the pillars. Bring the whole passage down on them."
Ridge recognized immediately. She and Bullet began to fling handfuls of decayed soil—dodgy for planting but just what it took to get the beasts interested. The cragbeasts' roars rang out, their slag-eyes blazing like pits of hellfire as they charged in pursuit of the hurled stones, seeking out the odor of earth.
The monsters burst into the tunnel, their massive legs kicking stones that flew through the air. One caught Bullet's arm, its impact like a hammer being swung at him. His muscles swelled where it struck, agony burning white-hot. His scar burned in retribution.
Bullet threaded through the constricted gap, pipe heavy in his grasp, dodging a boulder that exploded on the wall, sending dust choking into his lungs. He targeted a cragbeast's lower extremities —and swung the pipe with fury inspired by hope.
Bursts of sparks flared as a leg-vein broke. Ooze flowed forth thick and gluey like blood, black.
Ridge's blade plunged deep into another animal's leg, striking their vein. Ooze trickled out, and the animal's movements slowed. Her expression was set in a hard mask.
Stitch, although hurt, drove her spade into a vein on the third animal. Ooze clung to her feet, warm and greasy. Her hands trembled but did not falter, burns glinting in the bad light.
Husk gouged his bare hands into the tunnel walls, his bleeding fingers weakening the structure. The air filled with dust. The chamber groaned under pressure, its support beams cracking.
Bullet shoved the pipe into a crevice within the tunnel wall that was deep, sparks flying as metal contacted rock. His muscles complained. His ribs throbbed with each movement. He shoved all his weight into it.
The walls crashed down in a deafening thunder, stone on stone, dust rising in a choking cloud that made everything gray and invisible.
The avalanche swept over the cragbeasts, their slag-eyes fading as tons of rock came crashing down. Their roars were smothered by the wreckage, then cut off completely.
The chamber's pulse subsided. The shard-light steadied to its normal glow. But the air was still heavy with blood and that strange mucus of the cragbeasts, and the dawning of the fact of how close to death they'd all come.
---
The Diggers breathed hard, smeared with blood, their faces furrowed by fatigue and disbelief.
Husk's eyes carried something more in them—not exactly respect, but an ember of begrudging respect. His scars glowed with a faint light as he looked at Bullet. "You saved me," he said impassively. "Saved her too." He nodded toward Stitch. "Maybe I was wrong about you."
Ridge nodded vehemently, knife dripping wet. "You've won yourself twice over tonight. You've saved our ground. Saved our people." She gazed at him directly. "You're of us now. That's something that isn't said lightly."
Stitch and Knot leaned elbows on their blades, self-assurance shining in their eyes despite the destruction surrounding them, despite the bodies, despite everything.
But the truce with the Borers ended when the crisis did. They melted away into the tunnels, Husk included, his broken chains scattered in the dirt like a threat or a promise—Bullet couldn't choose which.
Ridge stood gazing out over the ruin—the chamber ruined, the earth altar broken irrevocable, shard-light dissolving. "We rebuild," she declared, voice tired but unyielding. "We replant tomorrow. Rebuild. That is what we always do."
The pull moaned in Bullet's chest, wounds bleeding, shame heaping like a weight. "I have to rest for a little while," he snarled, scar burning. "Just long enough to catch my breath."
---
The Diggers replanted what they could, devouring bitter fungi in shard-light, their hands stained and bruised. Stitch sat next to Bullet, whose cloak had been mended with strands of roots, discussing the power of the earth.
"Soil remembers," she said, guiding his fingers through the dirt, her belief a gift he did not warrant. "It remembers what's been planted, what's been lost. You'll see what's driving you. Just don't let it kill you before you do."
Vest shared his concerns afterward, voice little more than a whisper. "Borers will regroup. Come back stronger, angrier. But we'll be here. We always are." His calm restored Thread's calm. "Don't let that fierce part of you pull you under like our tunnels suck in the unsuspecting."
The guilt came back again—Shard, Spark, Patch, Ember, Stitch, Vest. A burden with each name, each face a reminder of connections he'd forged and would inevitably leave behind.
Ridge touched his shoulder—softly, not on the wounds—her face weary but sincere. "You battled for us. Bleeding for us. Whether you stay an extra day or leave tomorrow, you've earned your place in our memory."
But Bullet shook his head, scar aching like never before. "There is something deeper in these rocks," he explained. "Calling me. I cannot remain, no matter how much I may wish to."
Vest nodded toward a tunnel, its blackness appearing to call out. "That tunnel leads back upward. Takes you deeper into 837's interior. Whatever you are searching for, perhaps you'll discover it there."
Bullet set out the next day, pipe stained with cragbeast gore, shards tucked into his pocket. The etched shard was a secret—that circle and jagged line toasty against his leg. Spark's shard rested beside it, reminder of promises owing with miles.
The tunnel climbed steadily, earth reverting to stone, air heavy with that iron smell he'd gotten his first time out. Dust stung his eyes as he emerged under the auroras once more.
Province 837's prairie stretched on forever before him, boulders flashing shard-light lying every which way across the earth, their hum vibrating in his bones like a song he never quite learned.
His scar burned with new ferocity. The pull aimed at a shining horizon, driving him with unyielding imperative.
The names echoed in his mind—Shard, Cowboy, Rivet, Ember, Stitch, Vest. His feet pulsed, ribs screamed, shoulder streamed. Each step was agony, but the pull was a fire that could not be extinguished.
Another hum echoed in the distance, a whine that did not belong to the sentinel. Dust boiled on the horizon, assuming something all too known and hideous.
The Dreadwraith.
Its form was reforming, its void-eyes flashing like two depths, its body a heaving mass of darkness and rock, pulling itself back into existence with nauseous intent. Its eyes burned with evil knowledge.
He gripped his pipe, scar aflame, knuckles still bleeding from the fight below. His ribs hurt. The pull was a fire in his chest, more potent somehow than the Dreadwraith's deadly power.
The monster would return. Its menace was ceaseless, unstoppable. But not today. Not yet.
He walked, moving out into the rocky landscape of Province 837, the hum dwindling but never really going away behind him, its threat a shadow he could not shake.
His scar took him forward—a man with no past, with no doubts, driven by an unspoken need he couldn't articulate or refuse.
The hard strike of the world resonated through his bones like a song he would never be able to repress, even if he could repress everything else.
Province 837 stretched out before him, endless and unforgiving, and beyond that, whatever the lure was beckoning him toward waited.
---