Demon Core - Chapter 34: A Thing that Drips

~ [Tenebrous] ~

Human | ♂ | Miner LOCATION: A Collapsed Silver Mine LEVEL: 37

Everybody is locked, inside cages with no keys,

Behind the bars of doubt that their uncertainties do weave,

And in these prisons — rigid — only time passes them by,

As their glassy, dead looks, consume the white of their eyes,

For life is but short, so very fleeting and quick,

Like a flame on a candle, it burns down the wick,

A droplet against stone will harm not, first days,

But on days therefore after, it will begin to form ways,

Droplet by droplet it will break through a rock,

And dig down a hole, to which comes the rot,

It will fester and bubble and drop down through the stone,

Until nothing comes through more,

Not blood and not bone,

The Thing that Does Drip, does not so in hunt,

It does so instead, to soften the brunt,

A stalker that bites not, nor claws, tears, nor howls,

A monster that deeply, below the dark prowls,

The death comes from within,

From inside of the man,

Who stands not against,

The droplets that land on his hands,

It fears not the blade,

And it hides not from light,

For it was always within you,

And never in sight,

A Thing that Drips

 

…Darkness…

There are different kinds of darkness, different depths, and different levels.

There is the darkness of the night time, when the sun has left to rest and the heads of the many lie upon their soft pillows. Within the confines of cities and towns, this is perhaps a more limited manifestation, as many able bodies are still around and about, carrying the light of their lives within themselves. There is darkness, but there is company.

Then there is the darkness of the wild, far away from places like homes and things like hearths. It is more absolute, more concealing. The wild darkness is full of endless, skulking threats — monsters and beasts with yellow fangs. It’s like an endless ocean. There is darkness, but there are other things with you in it.

Beyond that, however, is the darkness of the underground.

Even in the wilds, in the forests and plains, there are things like star- and moonlight to accompany oneself, even when said person is walking alone.

However, underground, there is nothing at all. When it is black, it is absolutely so. It is beyond compare, it is an all consuming, all encompassing true blackness that coats a person and obscures them, swallows them, and hides them from the world’s many eyes.

There is darkness, and there is nothing else here with you in it.

No monsters, no men, and no animals. It is total, full, and complete solitude in the coldest, most loveless place that could exist.

Being underground is not where a man wants to be at the best of times. It is limiting and imprisoning. There are a few ways in and a few ways out. In theory, this might sound like a walled city; however, the difference is the number of ways out that there are and the context of the shallow tunnels, tight passages, and hard, loveless walls. Even a man locked inside a city might find joy in the sight of the sky, the wind on his skin, the pleasant architecture, and the voices all around him. Here, man is reliant on his oldest companion, fire.

Lanterns light the underground in the absence of sunlight; lanterns lit with glowing flames, magically wicked candles, and spells contained in glassy orbs are commonly used to show the way.

Tenebrous sits there, the portly man fiddling with his mustache in the darkness that has taken him.

He’s a miner in the silver mine off to the distant north-east. Silver is a very precious metal, not just for its value as a rare material in terms of things like jewelry and plating, but also for its specific properties. Silver, as a metal, is unusually effective as a material for weapons and armor meant to be used against dark forces. Creatures like demons and undead have a particular dislike for silver, making it an extremely popular resource for those in the world who dedicate their lives to fighting such evils.

And, of course, in times like these, it is of incredible value. When the Demon-King rose and the crisis began, every silver mine across the nation was staffed to full capacity. Other mines for less important metals were closed in the name of national security, and those workers were carted off to the many silver mines in the country, to flood them with labor. For weeks, they were working brutal shifts on a few hours of sleep in the name of national security. Silver was flooding out of the depths of the world to be used for swords and shields that would be held against the Demon-King’s forces.

However, a few days ago, something went wrong.

The mine collapsed in on itself, and the main passage was entirely blocked off by tons of rocks, stones, and dirt — far more than any of them could move with the tools they had here. Even the casters that were left on this side had nothing to offer, their ability to use their ability to use magic having waned by the day as they worked and grew hungry.

— That’s when it showed up.

Tenebrous lifts his gaze, despite the uselessness of the gesture.

Down here, down in the deep, dark pit of the world, is a thing.

He doesn’t know what it looks like, he doesn’t know what it wants, what it does, or even where it is. None of them ever saw it. When the lanterns were lit, it never appeared. But then the first lantern burned out, and the first man went missing. There was nowhere for him to have gone in the closed off mine, but he was just… gone. As if the world had swallowed him down into itself.

Then the next lantern died, and another man went missing.

And so on, and so on. All the while, droplets dropped from the ceiling every now and then. They had presumed the caved in section was flooding from the rain on the surface. However, it began to become clear that this was not the case. The droplets aren’t rainwater; they’re drool.

The damned thing is gone now. It was just over his head. But he has no idea where it went or why it hasn’t eaten him yet.

Time is… difficult.

Has it been a day? A week? There is, quite honestly, no way to tell.

Tenebrous has risen to his feet. His hand is held against the warm stone walls of the underground, his hand outstretched as he slides along the wall. Moisture condenses on its surface, making his palms damp.

When the cave in happened, they felt like they had tracked the first days. But by the time ‘day three’ came around, it was already a mess. One man said it had been forty-eight hours only since, another said it was seventy-two, and none of them really knew for sure. Without the sun and the moon, it’s impossible to know. Being underground like this is entirely separate from what life on the world’s surface is.

This is it, Hell. There doesn’t need to be anything more than this. All it takes is a little darkness and a little solitude, and the human mind and heart both very quickly find their way to the edge.

His hand finds a trickle running down the stone. He pauses there, cupping his palms against the wall to let the water flow into them so that he can drink. After a moment more, he takes the old flask off his hip and fills it under the drip with cold runoff.

Behind him, something drips.

“Gritty?” asks Tenebrous, his hands feeling over the walls. A noise comes from the other side. “Gritty, is that you?” His fingers move along the rough surface until they find a gap between the stones. On the other side, he can hear someone moaning or wailing. It’s not really easy to say. However, the voice is familiar, belonging to one of them. The man doesn’t reply. “Gritty, you fuck-head!” barks Tenebrous through the hole. “Say something instead of crying like a damn homesick zombie, boy!” The noise continues.

“T- Teb?” asks a voice from the other side of the rock, replying. “Teb, is that you?”

“I’m here, boy,” replies the man, feeling around the wall. Where in the gods’ name is he? He’s been working down in the mine for so long that he knows its many passages like the veins on the backs of his own hands. But… this feels different? Or is it just the darkness disorienting him? “What tunnel is this?” he asks. “Is this Queen Bee?”

An incoherent muttering comes from the other side of the hole, which he’s not sure has ever existed before. “- GRITTY!” barks the man, the young adult trapped on the other side coming to his senses with a ferrite yelp at the loud noise that echoes down the many passages, the word being swallowed by the darkness.

“S- sorry,” replies the boy. “I think… I think it isn’t,” he replies, sniffling. There is a sound of scuffling rocks and some other noise. “I’m stuck here in this fucking hole, Teb,” he replies. “It’s over for me”

“How the hell did you get in there, boy?” replies Tenebrous, feeling over the walls for a way in. But there’s nothing. There’s little, just a small hole that his hand could fit through at best, in what leads to a perfectly sealed chamber inside of the solid rock. “Don’t talk nonsense!” barks the old man, pulling on the rock, trying to budge it loose.

“N- no, Teb,” replies Gritty. “It’s here,” he says. “It’s in here with me.”

Tenebrous stops listening. He hears the man’s breath and the noises of his hurt body. He hears him scuffling over stones and moving against a wall. He hears his own heart and air.

And then he hears the noise he had been hearing this entire time — droplets.

“I-it’s in here with me, Teb,” says the boy, breaking down. “- I don’t wanna fucking die, man.”

“You’re going to be fine, boy,” says Tenebrous, thinking.

“I’m not. I’m fucking NOT, TEB!” yells the man. Seconds later, there’s a scuffling sound. Something grabs him, a hand shooting out of the hole in the stone, wrapping its fingers around the straps of his coveralls “I DON’T WANT TO D-!”

“- Get the fuck off me, Grits!” barks Tenebrous, his hand shooting up to grab the boy’s wrist.

But his fingers never grab anything.

The man stumbles back, fumbling around in the darkness. He feels the hole, but his fingers find no arm, no hand, and no boy. “Gritty?” asks Tenebrous. “Gritty, what the fuck was that?” asks the man.

No response comes from the other side of the hole.

“Gritty?” His voice carries away down the many tunnels, echoing as it goes off into the distance. “…Boy?”

The only noise that comes from the other side is the sound of dripping.

He slowly backs away from the hole, feeling his way along the wall to try and figure out where he is.

‘Queen Bee’ is the name of the tunnel section ‘Q-B’. ‘Q’ stands for the horizontal position of the tunnel. ‘B’ stands for the lateral position. They use these names for them as a way to facilitate communication.

That’s where they were when the cave in happened. They didn’t move too far away from the site after that, in the hopes that the people on the other side would break through, but they never did.

He’s not sure why. Maybe they’re all dead too? Maybe the whole mine collapsed from top to bottom, apart from some pockets down here? Or maybe they’ve all been killed by something relating to the Demon-King? Or maybe still, they’ve just been left here, abandoned, because a rescue effort would be too much work?

It’s impossible to say.

Queen Bee is also when things started getting… weird.

— His foot kicks something. It rattles loudly across the stones, tumbling. It sounds like a hollow container, made out of metal. Rectangular.

A lantern?!

Tenebrous curses, fussing under his breath as he slowly drops down, feeling around the area for the lantern.

What he wouldn’t give to be able to see a single goddamn thing. It’s been days since his eyes have worked. There isn’t a single source of light down here in the deep underground without the lighting system, which has entirely failed.

His fingers graze something soft lying on the stones. He stops, confused, and runs over it again with his hand, trying to identify what it is. There’s a lump on the floor. It isn’t stone; it’s softer, to a point, until it becomes hard inside. He presses down on what feels like a body, convincingly so.

However, it doesn’t move. It’s not something lying on the stones, like a corpse would. Rather, it’s some sort of… supple protrusion growing out of the rocks. It’s naturally melded with it.

But what the hell could be growing down here? Nothing lives down here. If they were higher up, he’d suspect some kind of fungus or lichen, maybe. But they’re too deep, and this is far too large.

— His fingers touch cold metal.

Tenebrous grabs the handle of the lantern, pulling it toward himself. “Come on… come on…” mutters the man, fumbling with it. His fingers run over its sharp exterior until he finds the small ratcheting knob on its base. He grabs hold of it, twisting it. A sharp clicking noise fills the air. The old miner prays silently as he fumbles with it, using the only method he knows, furious swearing and threats toward intangible forces.

The little ratcheting wheel clicks as he turns it, but no sparks or light ever form. It’s broken.

“FUCK!” yells the man as loud as he can, his voice carrying down countless tunnels that he can’t even begin to sense. He rises to his feet, screaming, his arm arching outward as the lantern flies off into the distance, crashing noisily against a wall, the metal noisily rattling as it lands somewhere.

What the hell is this supposed to be? Why is this happening to them?!

Tenebrous lets out every word he knows, indifferent to who can hear them. This deep down below the world, he’s closer to hell than the heavens anyway.

He’s actually going to die down here. He’s actually –

— A droplet strikes his face from above.

Tenebrous stops and looks up. “What do you want?!” he screams, not even sure if ‘it’, is there, or if he’s screaming at some damp rock. He reaches around, fumbling for something else to throw. The man finds his flask and, in anger, throws it straight up toward the roof of the shaft, hoping he hits whatever is there right where it hurts most. Wetness splashes against his face, running down his cheek.

“- Hello?” calls a voice from a distance. “Is anyone there?” cries a woman. “I’m stuck up here!”

He turns his head immediately, the flask crashing back down against the stones and rattling as it slides.

“Hellooo?” calls her voice again from the distance, down a dark passage.

Tenebrous stumbles forward, reaching for a wall. The man holds himself against it, stumbling onward toward the voice. It sounds like it’s coming from this passage. It’s hard to be certain, given the echoes.

“I’m here!” he calls out, making his way toward the source.

“Where are you?” he calls.

“Up here,” replies the woman’s voice. He doesn’t recognize her, but she sounds rather distant.

In confusion, the man looks up. “Up where?” he asks. The shafts of the tunnels aren’t usually tall enough to be ‘up’ anywhere, let alone as far off as she sounds to be.

It’s quiet for a moment.

“I don’t know,” she replies in an exasperated voice.

“What does it feel like?” he asks, trying to figure out where she could be.

There’s a sound of someone scuffling around for a moment. “I… I’m on a platform of some kind,” she guesses. “It’s… circular. Flat. I can crawl to each edge in a few seconds,” she explains. “It’s very small.”

“How did you get up there?” asks Tenebrous.

“I don’t know,” she replies. “I just kind of… got here,” says her voice, confused. “I can’t climb down.”

Tenebrous feels the wall as he walks along it. Her description sounds right, but he can’t find anything like this in his memory. There’s a stone column with a rough exterior, like the rest of the cave. It’s massive in diameter. Its exterior is soaked; water trickles down it on all sides. It takes him a minute to feel his way around the cylinder that is set in the middle of the mine. There’s a sour smell in the air.

Nothing like this has ever been here before.

“Can you climb up?” she asks.

“…What?” He thinks about it for a moment. “Even if I could, then what?” asks the man. “It’s a dead end up there.”

Feeling around the area, he touches something soft again on the floor, like he had done before outside of the hole Gritty was trapped in. Confused, the man touches the odd organic growth, and then works his way forward in the dark.

— Something drips onto his shoulder, cold water pressing through the fabric of his shirt. “FUCK OFF!” yells the man, swiping his hand through the air.

“What?”

“Sorry. Not you,” replies Tenebrous. “There’s… never mind.”

“It’s a dead end everywhere…” she replies quietly to his prior statement. “Maybe if you climb up, you can help me get down?” she asks. “Please?”

Tenebrous frowns, rubbing his greasy hair as he thinks. A fall from a place like this is dangerous. If he climbs up and slips halfway up some rocks and breaks his ankle, it’s over for him. He’ll never get out.

— Something drips.

Shaking his head, he grabs hold of the side of the column and begins looking for a way up.

Tenebrous climbs, listening to the woman talk as he focuses on finding good footing.

“I wish I never came here,” she says, her voice floating around his ears as he reaches up to find a new place to grab onto. He’s already high up, high enough that a fall would be more than substantial, especially with his size and weight. “I wish I just stayed in the west,” she says.

He keeps climbing up the wet column, listening to her monologuing, not really having the capacity to participate himself. He has to focus.

Tenebrous climbs, reaching further and higher. He has no idea where he could possibly be. “Do you know what section this is?” he asks, interrupting her rambling.

“- And then… huh? Section?” asks the woman, thinking for a moment.

“Of the mine.”

“Oh… uh…” She is silent for a moment. “I was in Jester Jester,” she explains. “Before the cave in.”

He stops. “How’s that possible?” asks Tenebrous. “I was in Queen Bee.” Jester Jester is a section to the back-right of where he was and even deeper. How did she get here?

“Huh? Wait but that’s…” she replies, realizing that she somehow managed to go deeper underground, instead of going toward the surface from where she started. “…Oh gods…”

His hand reaches a ledge. “Don’t worry,” says Tenebrous. “We’ll figure it out,” he says, slapping the stone surface of the upper platform with his hands. A puddle of stagnant water splashes beneath his fingers. “Help me up.”

“How did I get here…?” she mutters to herself, in a tone of increasing worry. There is a noise of something shuffling, displacing a large amount of water. The entire top of the column is apparently a flooded pool of sorts. “I’ve been walking for so long,” says the woman’s voice as she splashes around. The ripples reach the tips of his fingers. “We’re going to die.”

“Don’t say that,” he replies, feeling soft hands touch his skin. The warmth of another person, the smell of another person, these come to him. But not the sight. It is as pitch black as always. “We’ll get out of here.”

“We won’t!” she replies, her fingers tightening around his wrist as he pulls his weight up over the ledge. “We’re not going to get out of here!” she replies, starting to panic. “The last thing I’m going to feel before I die is the fucking water dropping on my GOD DAMNED HEAD!” she screams at the top of her lungs, as he hoists himself over.

Water splashes as he rolls over the ledge and into a very shallow pool of sorts at the top of the column.

Tenebrous sighs in relief, amazed that he made it. Someone with his build isn’t exactly built for climbing something like this in these conditions. A spider might have better luck.

After a moment to catch his breath, he turns his head. “Listen,” starts the man. “We’re going to…”

He stops.

“…Hello?” asks Tenebrous.

The woman’s smell is gone, and her warmth is gone. He reaches out, crawling through the water to try and grab around the area. But she’s just… gone. Vanished.

The man sits there in the pool of stagnant water, listening to the sound of a single droplet dripping down from above.

He sits there in silence for a while.

“So are you going to fucking eat me or not?” he asks the darkness, but it does not respond.

Tenebrous feels around the edge of the platform, reaching around for anything to touch in the hopes that he won’t have to climb back down again. He’s so hopelessly lost that he has no idea where to go or what to do.

— His fingers find something.

Confused, the man reaches out over the edge, touching what feels like solid rock. There’s an opening, a cave-mouth. There’s a slight gap between the cylinder and it, but it’s definitely there.

The man hoists himself out of the water, carefully straddling the edge as he feels the distance, and then scrambles over in an awkward combined jump and flop.

His heart racing in his chest and lurching at the prospect of falling, he scrambles forward and then gets up to his feet again.

Feeling around the area, he works his way forward in the dark.

Every footprint he leaves behind himself as he walks acts as a container for a single drip coming from above and behind him.

He walks until he comes to a wall, feeling his way around.

It’s a dead end.

Tenebrous, exhausted, falls down and slides against it with his back. His head rests against the rock. The man isn’t even sure if his eyes are open or closed anymore.

He can’t do it anymore.

He doesn’t want to do it anymore. There’s no point.

The man stares blankly at the darkness above his head as he thinks about his journey so far.

“I give up,” he says, relenting. The tired man bows his head, listening to the dripping droplets strike against the stones one after another in a slow, tedious procession. “I don’t…” He sighs. “- I just give up”

He’s going to die.

He really is going to die down here. He gave it a good try, but there’s no point. After all, the main shaft collapsed. It doesn’t matter if he walks all the way from Arrow-Arrow to Zircon-Zircon in the dark, feeling his way along every damned wall, if the only way in and out of the mine is sealed. That’s apart from the fact that he has absolutely no idea where he’s supposed to be right now anyway.

A droplet strikes against his leg.

It was a good try — the trick his brain had tried to play on him, the survival mechanism, the hallucinations it had played to get him to keep going, to get him to keep pushing forward, so that it wouldn’t be interested in him.

The Thing that Drips.

There is a lie at play here — a lie he had told himself, really.

Gritty was never alive. He was never in that hole.

Gritty was the soft, organic thing lying on the floor. The boy drank the lantern fluid. It’s highly poisonous to ingest. It must have burned like wildfire. That’s why it was empty. He took his life to keep control of it.

— Something drips on his thigh.

The woman, whose name he didn’t know, was never up on the cylindrical platform. The soft thing that he felt down below the towering spire was her corpse.

She must have jumped off the edge to end it before he got there, choosing to end her own life rather than letting it slip away.

Maybe it was the smell of decay that let his mind know where she was; maybe it was the acoustics of the area that let his mind know there was a structure of this nature to begin with; it’s hard to say.

He’s been seeing ghosts, seeing people who chose to hold control over their destiny until the very end.

— Something drips on his face.

“Come on, you fuck,” says Tenebrous. “I’m ready.”

Whatever it is, he’s not going to fight it. He’s ready to let whatever happens happen.

The smell of sulfur and rot becomes present, moving closer and closer toward him, overpowering his senses.

— A roar shoots through the world, the mine shaking and the stones rumbling. Tenebrous covers his head instinctively, yelling now in surprise as the ceiling above him breaks, having erupted away from an explosion that sends hurtling debris out in all directions. Somehow they miss him, despite the impossibility of it…

It is as if something had been blocking the shrapnel.

“There’s one here!” yells a voice from above.

He can’t open his eyes. The light coming from over his head is too bright.

Heavy rain rattles outside the structure, hammering onto the wooden roof.

Tenebrous lies on the bed in the field clinic on his back, established outside of the mine. All around him are full beds. Hundreds of injured people have been recovered from the site.

He’s been rescued. Despite the impossibility of it, he made it out.

“You must sleep,” scolds a voice from the side. He turns his head, looking at the strict priestess who comes to give him his medicine every few hours. She’s cutting some bandages with a knife.

His bloodshot eyes stare at her. Deep purple, almost black bags hang under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in a deathly long time.

“I… I can’t…” replies Tenebrous, rolling his head back to look at the ceiling above his head.

She sighs. “I will get you your medicine,” she says, walking off and setting her tools down.

But he knows that it won’t help.

— His body flinches together again as the next droplet hits him right in the middle of his forehead.

Tenebrous stares up toward the ceiling, toward the drip from the roof that centers itself straight above his bed.

A droplet strikes his face as they always do, no matter where he sits, where he lies, or where he tries to rest. It always drips. It always drip-drip-drip-drops right onto his head, into his eyes, and into his mouth.

His shaking hand reaches out toward the table at the side of the bed, toward the knife the priestess left there.

And all the while, the dripping becomes faster and faster, and the storm outside never stops howling with intensity.