The Boy With the Wrong Flame

Chapter 4: The Hollow Below

When he would have caught me, I flipped through the air, went above him and landed behind him.

How did that happen?

The hourglass burned hot in my hand but it was basically fused, I doubted I could let go even if I wanted to.

Then I ran through the gap between two buildings. It was barely wide enough, and even though I was needle thin, I still scraped both shoulders on the rough stone, and came out into a service yard piled with rusted extraction equipment.

Behind me the gap filled with cold light. Lunaris k****e.

They were coming.

The hourglass burned in my hand and pulled me forward. It was like a magnetic field was dragging me, and I either had to move my feet or get dragged on my butt. The direction was the same, north and down.

I stopped behind a stack of extraction drums and pulled it out. The dark sand was doing something new. Arranging

itself against the glass in shifting shapes, streets, junctions. The rock face where the shaft entrances were cut. A route through it, longer than the direct path, avoiding every main junction.

I don’t know how I knew, I just did and the image burned itself against my brain. It suddenly felt like I’d lived in

Duskwall my entire life.

The route took me through Duskwall's lower residential level, cramped structures and narrow streets that turned

without logic, people who kept their eyes down because years of living adjacent to the Forged had taught them that curiosity was expensive. Nobody looked at me. At the third junction I passed within four metres of one of the agents without them turning their head because I came from the direction they weren't watching.

The shaft entrances appeared in the rock face ahead. Numbers in fading red above each one.

965. 966.

The row growing darker and less maintained as the numbers climbed.

972

The darkness inside it was dense and complete. The kind that feels like it’s breathing and just waiting to swallow you whole..

Lyra had told me she’d meet me here. Then again Lyra was currently in a building that was simultaneously on fire

and freezing.

And possibly no longer alive.

I went in.

The air changed at the sixth branching point, I may never get over the fact that I didn’t need light in this dark abyss. I

could see the entire layout in my head and knew exactly where I was headed, where exactly I needed to go.

There was a pressure behind the eyes and a deep weight in the chest that wasn't physical. Something filled the

space from every direction, something older than the Eternal Flame as anyone currently understood it, older than

the categories of Solaris and Lunaris, pouring through the rock from whatever was behind the end wall of the 972nd shaft. I could feel it in my bones.

I pressed my hand against the tunnel wall and understood immediately how many people had died in here.

Breathing this- whatever it was- over days and weeks, absorbing it through skin and lungs, the ancient

oversaturation breaking down their weak bodies with no kindled protection against it. By the time you understood

what was happening it was already finished.

There was righteous rage within me, and a dizzying need for revenge. At this point, I’d come to understand, even accept, that my thoughts were no longer mine. At least not entirely.

I filed that in the part of my mind reserved for debts to be collected and kept moving.

The hourglass glowed, and I held it up to see that I was approaching the end of the wall.

Pickaxe marks were everywhere, scattered all over the wall. The marks of someone who had spent their final hours

hitting this wall with everything they had.

I found the section of the wall that looked different, untouched, with a texture that didn't match.

All I had to do was touch the wall for it to give way, but how could I have expected what awaited me on the other

side?

The pull hit me before I could pull back, it was violent and unyielding. Something reached through the hole and

sucked me in, the walls came apart, the ground was gone, I was falling into nothing.

There was cold pressure from every direction at the same time. Only the hourglass burned warm in my hand.

I hit hot ground shoulder first and wished for death. I couldn’t even move and quite honestly, I didn’t want to, I just

wanted everything to end.

I don’t know how long I’d stayed on the ground, but when I opened my eyes a volcanic plain stretched in every

direction under a sky of permanent ash cloud. Black cracked rock, rivers of lava running slow and orange in the

distance, the air tasted of sulfur and something older than sulfur. In the distance, close enough to block out a third of

the sky, there was a volcano. It was active, and pouring dark smoke in columns so thick they looked structural.

I sat up and looked around, and then looked up.

How did I get here?

I mean, I knew what happened before I found myself here, but how? There was no portal or gate or anything. I lifted

my hand to my head and nearly bashed myself with the hourglass.

“You’ve caused me a lot of trouble.” I said to it, half-hoping for some response or at least a reaction. I got nothing.

“Welcome, Ember.”

I turned behind me to find the sharp-eyed quiet man from Soren's group.

“You knew.” I said

“I had my suspicions. Come, we have much to discuss.” Then he walked past me.

"What’s going on?" I called out as I hurried to keep in pace.

He reached into his coat and pulled out a piece of folded paper; it was old and soft at the creases. He unfolded it. It

had a brandmark; a single line, the amber colour of mine, as close as ink on old paper could get.

“I’m Cael, by the way,” He said.

Behind him, from the direction of the sealed entrance, the sound of rock under pressure.

The entrance was opening and a man, thin and tall, stepped through. He had the medal of The Forged around his

neck, and the four brandmarks of the Blaze rank on his wrist but that was not what scared me the most about him.

There was a chain in his hand, it was huge and thick and had a dark aura around its entire length with the head of a

horned-snake.

“Stay behind me.” Cael said.

“Step aside, Cael. Your time will come, but right now, I want the Ember.”

“You know I can’t do that, Samir.”

Samir laughed. "You cannot k****e your way out of a Severing chain, Cael. Nobody can." Then he stopped walking,

and the chain seemed to come to life in his hands. “This is your last warning.”

"I could say the same to you."

Samir rolled his eyes, “Fine. The Forged will be grateful for your loss anyway.”

Samir kindled a single spear the color of burning sun, and even in the distance I could feel the heat. He threw it at

Cael, and I was sure we were both going to die, but Cael kindled and it was nothing like anyone expected.

The brandmark on his wrist blazed to life, it was not gold, but it was not silver either. It was a deep, deep, green.

Another colour that had no place in any kindling record, the same way mine had no place. He raised a wall that

looked like a forest which swallowed Samir’s spear.

Everything I’ve ever known is a lie

"That is not possible," Samir said. "You were tested. You’re Solaris, Cinder rank, we have had your file for three

years."

Cael said nothing.

Samir threw the chain at Cael but Cael raised his hand and a green k****e moved outward from his palm in twists of

smoke. The Severing chain came apart as soon as it came in contact with Cael’s k****e. Link by link, from the

middle outward then it dissolved into nothing.

The agent looked at their empty hand, at Cael, at me then he was gone, back through the entrance before it sealed

again.

There was a silence again and I waited for Cael to turn around, to say something, to give me a much deserved

explanation. But he didn’t.

“What in the world is going on here? This doesn’t explain anything.” I said, holding up the paper behind him even

though he wasn’t looking.

"Trust me." He said, and turned to look at me, "Or don't. It’s your choice. But we need to reach the volcano before

the Hollow's apex predator finds us."

Something large moved in the smoke near the volcano. I couldn’t see it clearly, but I saw that it was huge, half as

huge as the volcano itself.

"What is the Hollow's apex predator," I asked slowly.

Cael looked toward where the shape had been.

"The Velthrax. It’s been in here long enough to become the Hollow itself," he said. "If the stories are to be believed,

it has been waiting specifically for the bearer of the Ember." He paused. "I do not know whether it intends to kill you

or submit to you. I have been trying to find that out for three years."

He started walking toward the volcano.

"Coming?" he said, without looking back.

Did I have a choice?