4. Into the Pit

Having explored the towers, the group turn their attention to the pit and the secrets it holds. Nox, haunted by ghosts, is sure what something wonderful was lost forever.
 
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The remaining white cubes in the catwalk flashed blue and slowly started disappearing. The two cubes in Nox’s hands flashed and disappeared too, taking with them the hologram and the blue humanoid. Nox cried out as if in pain as her hands closed on nothing. She snatched at the air around her, but there was nothing there to grasp. What had been the most exciting find of her young life had evaporated in thin air. Once more, the black sphere around her neck flashed before returning to swirling black.
 
“Come on, guys. I think we’re done for today?” Marius said, suddenly sounding tired for the first time since the group had fled from Cerelon.
 
Nox started scanning every surface she could reach for any sign of the cubes, their unique signature or the mysterious blue figure. Occasionally she glanced up to where the figure had last been.
Fureva-Yung watched bemused as the infant, in her eyes, snatching and glancing up at nothing.
 
“Don’t worry, kid. They’ll turn up,” Marius called again, and reluctantly Nox came, her head hung in thought, “Don’t stress.”
 
As Nox went to walk past Fureva-Yung, she stopped and looked at the giantess thoughtfully.
What were you looking for?
Huh?? Fureva-Yung replied. She wasn’t the one running around looking at nothing.
You asked before what Marius and the rest of us were looking for. But, what were you looking for this morning when you walked to the small tower?
 
This made Fureva-Yung pause in thought.
Because it was there?
She thought again, pondering how the idea tasted and chewed on her responsive synth. She finally nodded, Because it was there.
 
The two walked side by side back to camp, the calm massive muscle woman and the slight girl. Slowly Fureva-Yung could hear Nox’s self-talk, a mix of self-recrimination and questioning that circled the thought, ‘Did I do something wrong?’
Did you break it? Fureva-Yung asked, surprising Nox, who was not used to people hearing her.
I don’t know, She finally replied despondently. She could not have been more contrite if she'd confessed to the white cube’s destruction.
Was it important? Nox thought of the blue figures she had been seeing. Were they responsible or involved with the Numenera somehow?
It was powerful...there’s a...mind behind it.
Does it threaten the herd?
I don’t know. This was not a concept that Nox had considered. The figures so far had not been evil, and neither had the Numenera found, but they had been spying on Cerelon.
I don’t know.
Fureva-Yung squared her shoulders. We will find it and kill it. She said it with such confident self-assurance that Nox couldn’t help but feel better.
 
They continued in silence as the group entered the camp. The others had been busy while the group investigated. Oslo had checked the caravan and made sure it was in good condition for the next leg of the journey, and the Dritmen had found and caught a wild mothekko and were busy hoisting the lizard-like carcass onto a spit. With the mushrooms, Marius had somehow enlarged, the was plenty of food for all, and a celebratory mood broke over the small group of refugees.
 
It is nice to talk, Fureva-Yung said as the group split up to prepare for the evening meal.
It’s nice being heard, Nox added with genuine feeling, I don’t have many people I talk to.
Neither do I.
 
Over the meal, Jaden made herself useful around the camp and relearning all the little tricks to living off the land. When the mushroom stew was ready, there was more than enough to go around. Even Fureva-Yung was given a large bowl. Warm and surprisingly tasty, Fureva-Yung thought it still required crunch and added a few broken sticks.
 
Marius and the Dritmen fussed over the spit, cooking it for hours until all the subcutaneous fat had rendered throughout the lizard meat. The meat carvers presented Fureva-Yung with the bony head of the lizard as a sort of prize to their best fighter. With a hot tasty meal with real crunch in her belly, Fureva-Yung crashed after dinner. She did not move until morning.
 
Nox sat quietly, waiting for Jaden to finish. She was desperate to talk to someone about the figures, but she needed Jaden alone. Jaden had the annoying habit of talking aloud, and Nox was certain she didn’t need anyone else, thinking she was seeing ghosts. She watched the tiny community of refugees gather. Some gathered around Oslo and his caravan talking about life on the road. Jaden was with this group, reliving stories from her younger life. Some around the Dritmen and their supply of moonshine that has mysterious appeared with the spit roast. Marius was part of the latter, drinking with his mates when a movement from around the campfire caught his attention. He quickly snatched up a second cup and offered it to Temila, who looked like she may have been turning in for the night.
 
“You’re a hard lady to get a hold of. I just wanted to thank you for coming to my aid today,” Nox could hear him say as Temila took the cup and sipped the near cleaning fluid. Nox knew the brew from her Father's old stash. Surely, it was what you gave to your enemies as poison, not to a pretty young girl you were thanking.
“My pleasure. We need everyone as fit and healthy as possible if we’re going to get through this,” Temila replied politely enough, but Nox noticed that Temila now turned to face Marius, sweeping loose hair off her face with a wave of her hand.
“We hadn’t had a chance to get to know each other. Tell me about yourself?”
 
Nox listened in silence as Temila gave a short history of her life growing up in The Buckles and looking up to Zin Akatoa. Nox knew much of Temila's life story and found it hard to keep her eyes open at this new rendition.
“I was always interested in plants and apprentice to Zin had a lot more status than just being '...a girl from The Buckles...’”
 
Just a girl from the Buckles?Nox’s stomach lurched. She'd never heard Temila speak about life so disparagingly. As she listened and watched, Nox realised the two in some sort of social dance of words and gestures that she had no understanding of. He would move closer, somehow taking up more space than he should. Temila would flutter her eyelids, or at least that’s what it looked like, and look up at Marius with her head off to one side as if exposing her neck to him.
 
“Zin took over the apothecary, picking up on the research done by the previous owner, Hagin Vash. He’s made great strides in finding a cure for Glowfetcher’s Dreaming as well as reclaiming knowledge from Vash’s old journals.”
“I heard about that. It will help a lot of people,” Marius replied, conversationally, but Nox noticed a softness to his voice that didn’t happen when he was talking to the Dritmen, or with her.
 
Temila and Marius chatted about nothing and everything. Unimportant things about her work with the rich and powerful of Highside Redoubt or discussing people they knew in common. When Temila finally said she better get off to bed and gave Marius a small peck on the cheek good night, Nox was sound asleep, leaning against a dead tree stump.
 
24/06/152 CF
 
Nox awoke to condensed dew and rolling down her neck and into her clothes. For a moment, she couldn’t remember why she was outside, instead of in her bed. When she realised her bed was at least three hours walk away. She also remembered she was alone, with not even Father to wonder where she was.
That’s not true, She told the nagging voice inside, I've given Fureva-Yung a voice and helped with the Numenera. While there were people around who needed her, she wasn’t alone. Standing creakily from the hard ground, she quickly cleaned herself up before running to find where the others were.
 
She found a group around the pit, a pentagonal hole between the two towers and the old destroyed building. The pit walls were smooth except where bracing of a now long gone catwalk pot-marked the sides. Also, cut into the walls, were several openings, or rooms, the first being ten metres down. Below all the openings, a dome stretched across the whole pit. Maybe at one time, it had a purpose, now it had several holes through it where things had fallen through.

Marius and his friend Yitti were looking down the pit as Jaden checked her rope ladder from the day before. She reinforced the top section of rope to stop fraying against the pit’s edge before attaching it to the surface where Marius indicated.
 
“It’s a little short of that first opening,” He called once the ladder was dropped into the hole, “And I wouldn’t suggest Furry go first.”
I will hold the ropes so that she will not fall, Fureva-Yung thought once Nox linked to the large woman. Nox was about to translate when she had an idea.
“Mr Marius, do you want to hear Fureva-Yung?”
“What do you mean, kid? I hear her just fine. Hard not to when she’s so big. No offence, Furry.”
I am big, Fureva-Yung took no offence, in fact preened over the comment.
“Do you want to hear her speak?” Nox tried again. It was always like this with adults. They just couldn’t understand things beyond their senses.
Marius smiled nervously, “She doesn’t speak.”
Nox sighed. She’d tried. Reaching out, she linked with Marius’ mind and made him part of her network.
Fureva-Yung will stay here and hold rope. You little ones can go down and see.
 
Marius blinked. Blinked again.
 
“Can you see all my thoughts, like read minds?” He said out loud to Nox, who shook her head.
Not yet.
Marius did a double-take on the slight girl in front of him.
 
“So...how does this work? Do I have to think at you or something?”
Something like that. We only know the things you direct at me. Nox nodded.
This is going to be handy. Thanks, kid! He patted her fondly on the head. The touch sent a thrill down Nox’s back.
 
“So tell me again why you’re going down into this pit?” Jaden asked as first Yitti, then Marius shimmied down the rope.
“Because it’s there,” Nox replied, quoting Fureva-Yung from the night before.
Be careful little ones. Your tiny bones will shatter if you fall.
Marius smiled as he went over the edge, Nah, it’s bottomless. Now that would be an adventure!
 

 
Marius climbed down the rope in front of the first room. Short of the floor by more than a metre, Marius used his momentum on the rope to swing in, away from the pit. Landing like a gymnast, he noticed the metal under his feet echoed. Keeping that in mind, he squinted through the darkness, seeing that the metal ground went up the walls either side. When he and Yitti investigated, they could see a gap between the wall and what was obvious a sluice that may have moved liquid at one time. Indeed, the end further from the pit was slightly raised.
 
Hey kid, this is really interesting. Could you come down and see what’s below this thing?
“We’ll need to add a few more metres to the rope,” Jaden called back as the rope wriggled back out of sight. It was soon back with Jaden’s light spear attached to the end, “You may find this useful.”
 
 
The rope wriggled away again, and the boys started exploring in earnest under the light of Jaden’s spear. The walls were smooth, free of masonry tool marks or stone imperfections. To the right, a twenty by twenty-metre square room held what looked like an old set of stairs. Rubble and rock blocked the stairs in either direction. A little further on, the passage turned left. An opening to their left told them they’d found a way to the second room, slightly lower than the first. A small set of stairs in this room led down to two sheets of metal, hinged at one end and a pile of discarded refuse in the corner. Yitti and Marius tried lifting the sheeting, but rust and crude had seized the mechanism, and it would not budge. Instead, Marius scavenged through the rubbish finding six units of parts, two units of responsive synth and a cypher. Marius found cypher hard to work out. Over the eons, the great civilisations of before had created many crazy things. They all felt a little like magic to Marius, but this one he thought would give a person access to the Datasphere, an almighty collection of information...somewhere else. He tucked it away with the other treasures and kept exploring.
 
He returned to Yitti in the staircase room and Marius climbed the stairs and started clearing the rubble. With luck, it would lead them back to the surface and provide easy access to the pit and its ruins. His luck was in. He removed one piece of rubble, and the whole fragile conglomerate above his head started to rumble. Sliding down the stairs, he made it back to where Yitti was waiting.
 
“Quick! See if you can nab a shiny on its way down!” He leaned out to do just that as the whole ceiling collapsed into the stairwell.
 
On the surface, Nox was sitting back from the activity, watching. Marius had gone quiet, which wasn’t surprising. She could only keep connection with people over a distance of fifteen metres or so, less when rock and walls were in the way. She was so intent on listening for the reconnection that she almost missed the rumbling and the earth sinking around her. Just in time, she rolled out of the way and looked back to see the ground she had been sitting disappear into a square hole, with Marius looking back beaming.
 
Hey kid, I’ve got something for you, He sent, pulling out the cypher and climbing back up the stairs and rubble.
Uh, thank you, Mr Marius, She took the offered cypher and recognised it instantly as a Datasphere siphon, It is very beautiful and powerful. She knew it was good for one question. Like a wish, she could ask whatever she wanted, and the information would be granted. She tucked it away carefully, contemplating the uses she could put such a device.
 
Fureva-Yung and Jaden looked down the hole, speechless. Their shocked expressions gave Marius pause for thought.
I guess I could have done that a little better, He said sheepishly, before remembering what they’d found in the other room, Furry, I have something for you too! We couldn’t get it open.
I am much stronger than you are.
That you are. A true model of feminism.
Fureva-Yung swept a hand over her bald head, pleased with the positive attention.
 
Now everyone could climb down the staircase and into the first two rooms. As Fureva-Yung moved ahead to see what Marius had for her to lift, Nox hung back, running her hand over the smooth stone of the stairwell. She’d spent a lot of time in the closer reaches of the Crawls Passage and had made scans of the various rock it contained. This smooth surface was unlike anything she’d seen before, and scans showed her there was no erosion or cracking, nothing to help determine its age. When she reached the first room, Marius pointed out the sluice. She scanned the metal floor and walls, determining that there were guide rails on the walls and floor that the metal floor could slide out on.
 
So it can be pushed out into the pit, Marius deduced, but for what reason? He gave the metal a shove, and the whole sluice slid forward. He put his back into it, and the sluice slid out five metres into the pit before clicking in place. From there, he could see an anchor place for a pulley system high above their heads and determined it was for sending large bulky items down into the pit.
 
Fureva-Yung was working on the folding metal sheeting. It was seized up, but with Fureva-Yung persistence and prodigious strength, the whole device groaned, squealed and unfolded, moving up and out into the pit. It didn’t reach the other side of the pit twenty-five metres away, but it did go further than the sluice above, reaching out fifteen metres. With Marius standing on the end still in the chamber, Fureva-Yung walked out onto the bridge. It groaned but bore her weight. She jumped, and Marius danger-sense tingled.
Ah Furry! He sent as the far end of the bridge started to sag. Fureva-Yung started walking back until the creaks and groans turned into snaps and screams of metal bending, then breaking. Now she ran. Marius stepped off his end as the cantilever was pulled out of the rock, and the whole metal construction fell through the dome and out of sight. A distant clang rang up from the pit a few moments later. The pit was not bottomless. Marius thought that a shame then moved on.
 
People who made this were not good engineers, Fureva-Yung sent, and Marius had to agree.
Though, I can’t imagine they were of your superior bulk.
 
Now that the metal sheeting was gone, Nox could see the rock underneath. Not intended to be seen, she compared it to the rock and other constructions in the rest of the complex. It was now clear that someone had carved these chambers out of the pit wall a long time after the pit’s construction. Even all the rusted metal and broken remains were much younger than the pit itself. She didn’t know what that meant at the moment, except to say several people had used it over time, and now it was their turn. She let the others know her discovery and followed the others out of the bridge room.
 

 
The corridor spiralled around to a set of stairs heading down. The stairs opened up into a large room with a cylinder of synth and metal, wrapped all around with piping. The cylinder went from floor to ceiling, dominating the room, encircled by rubble and discards. Off to the right, the glow of daylight showed them they’d entered the next chamber down, one with a little catwalk still holding onto the edge of the pit. Straight ahead, a room filled with rubble was confirmed to be the bottom of the staircase. Pulling away some little of the rubble, Fureva-Yung could see Oslo and the rest of the refugees maneuvering the caravan and its animals down the stairs.
 
Human! She thought with a shake of her head.
Um...I can’t talk to them, Nox replied nervously, unsure herself what had got into the usually sensible people of Cerelon, What would I say? They both stepped away from the stairs and explored the rest of the chamber.
 
Scanning the cylinder, Nox found it empty except for two paddles that looked like beaters or giant spatulas for mixing liquid. Though there were pipes everywhere, there was no sign of a tap that would have allowed access to the liquid. Marius did note a stain of something on the smooth stone ground, but the liquid that had made the stain was long gone now and unrecognisable.
 
Marius himself was standing in front of the closed metal doors. They were smooth, without a door handle or lock. When Nox scanned the doors, she could sense the space beyond the room but no way to open it. She listened, her ear pressed to the cold metal and heard nothing until…
 
Boooom……… Boooooom……… echoed faintly through the ground. It was very far away, a regular beating like the movement of giant feet.
 
Marius knocked, “Hello!” and the door opened. “There we are. Sometimes, it just pays to be polite,” and he walked in. Before Marius obscured her view, Nox saw the room held only a small console on the far wall. Standing in front, a blue transparent figure worked the controls. As Marius stepped up to the console, the figure disappeared, and Nox remembered to breathe again.
 
“Excuse me, Mr Marius, could I see the panel,” Nox asked, trying to remember where the figure had been standing, what had they been touching.
“Sure, kid.” He replied after making nothing of the switches and dials and checking the piles of refuse for anything useful.
 
The console held only a few controls. One was for the door that Fureva-Yung now stood between in case they closed again. Another control was for a hexagonal platform in the centre of the room. Flush with the stone, it blended into the floor and wasn’t obvious until Nox went looking.
It goes down, She told the group, and Marius rummaged through a pile nearby. Behind him, the pile shifted on its own and started growing. It rose, leaning out like a cresting wave that threatened to engulf him if not for his danger-sense. Pivoting on one leg, he let the rubbish collapse onto the ground in front of him.
 
“Oh, this is just complete garbage!” He quipped as he and the others spotted two other rubbish piles rise from the ground.
Fureva-Yung was quick to unsling her chain. Doubling it up on her fist, she swung on the pile rearing up on Nox. She missed, doing no damage to the thing but succeeded in getting its attention.
“I ain’t taking any of your rubbish!” Marius tried stabbing the pile near him with his sword, missed and slipping on loose rubble. Jaden stayed back, trying to poke the pile on her with her spear but hitting nothing of significance.
 
Making the best of Marius’ near stumble, the rubbish monster reared up again, this time engulfing him, pinning him to the ground. He could not move, he could barely breathe, and that was getting harder by the moment. Terror swept through Nox as the creature nearest her went to do the same. Pushing away her paralysing fear, Nox scuttled away from the pile’s attack. From a distance, she scanned the creature for what kept it all together. She was astounded to discover that it was rubbish all the way through. Some malevolent intellect no matter how small willed the junk together. She did discover the hold on its physical parts was tenuous and could make it fall apart with damage.
 
“Don’t worry about me. This rubbish can’t keep me down forever,” Marius choked out, and both Nox and Fureva-Yung directed their attacks on the other. Nox Slashed at something vital, rubbish spilled out all over the floor, but it wasn’t until Fureva-Chain smashed through the collection of detritus that it finally lost hold and crumbled into its constituents.
 
Still trapped, Marius celebrated the freeing of his sword hand, “I’m going to stab it in the goolies!” Marius cried as he lashed out at the pile. The sword brushed across the surface, doing no damage.
“I guess it doesn’t have any,” he joked as the pile tightened its grip once more. He could feel the weight of the rubbish pushing down on his chest, trying to press the air out of his lungs. Flexing against the tide, and gaining a little space, he caught a breath of air. Still in the game! It was in that moment’s respite that he recalled the old-timer stories of rubble and detritus pile coming to life. If he lived through this, he’d have his own old-timer stories to tell.
 
Nox snuck up behind the pile on Marius and dug her dagger in deep. At the same time, slashing and punching and what he thought was the creature’s head, Marius fought his way out. The pile collapsed, and Marius crawled away, bludgeoned but whole. He and Nox rummage what remains of the piles and found two cyphers and a good pile of parts. A third cypher damaged or inherently unstable turned up in Marius’ search, rolling and bouncing until finally....WHOOMP! the cypher imploded, incinerating the trash. A final dramatic end to The Fight of the Rubbish Piles.
 
It was in the relative quiet of the aftermath that Ralin Ghan skidded into the room from upstairs.
“The whole caravan’s had to move. There was a rumbling sound from the mountain. The servitors from the Crawls Passage have escaped and are heading this way.”
“We can use the platform here to go further down the pit,” Nox suggested, and Ralin ran back up the stairs to tell the others.
 
“I have an idea, “ Jaden pulled out two cyphers, a device enhancer and a tube of friction-reducing gel. She followed Ralin back upstairs and up the stairwell, where she started applying the gel to the stairs.
“That will slow them down, or keep them moving whatever the case may be.”
 
Fureva-Yung moved rubble from its current level back up to help block the passage after the shoot where Jaden’s gel was slathered out onto the sluice. With luck, some unsuspecting servitors would slide into the pit itself! As Jaden stood from her work at the top of the stairs, she could just see the top of the ten-metre tall servitor through the trees. Meant for carrying caravans, it would make short work of their small group. It was time to go.
 
Boooom……...Boooom……… Boooooom………
 
The two mothekko and the fifteen refugees crammed onto the platform with the caravan. Nox closed the door and then flicked the switch to send the platform down into the depths of the pit facility.
 
To be continued….