Chapter 67: Ch. 067 – (Then) Almost Alone

Every few hours, Jonathan heard a train, or at least he thought he did. It was impossible to know whether he was imagining it, though, or whether they were distant echos of activity somewhere on the line. Kaspov used to tell him stories about just how far sounds could echo down here. He’d believed the dwarf at the time, but he’d never really understood what he’d been trying to say until now. 

It wasn’t how far away you could hear a train from that truly mattered, but how far you could be away from everything that was important. 

Jonathan was days away from everyone and everything. He was alone in a tunnel that was just one of thousands scattered about the deeps. He was lost in the dark, and his only path to salvation was a rail that might be leading him nowhere, or worse, somewhere that was out of reach. Jonathan thought about the water that he carried. He could hear it sloshing with every step. That was how he knew it was getting low. 

There was nothing for it though. It was impossible to turn around or change his mind. He had only two choices. Wait for death to take him, or keep going into the dark. 

He chose the latter, and kept going until he was exhausted and out of water. That was when he decided to find a niche in the wall to sleep in, and call it a day. He tried to focus on the fact that it was noticeably cooler, so he was definitely making progress, and not on the fact that in another couple days he’d be dead if he didn’t find water. One could walk a very long way in a couple of days.

That night, his dreams reflected his worries and fears. He wandered in a desert so dark in cold that it would have had snow if it weren’t so dry. It was a miserable experience that ranked right up there with the intolerable heat, but he didn’t have to endure it long. Jonathan was woken from them by the sound of a train that was too close for comfort. 

This time, he couldn’t just hear it - he could feel it. The stones around him began to rattle, and the rails began to hum. Jonathan had just enough time to sit up and see the distant light of the main lamp, before it was on him. Part of him worried that the train would stop, and the dwarves would seize him, but the rest of him worried that it wouldn’t, and he would be left alone out here. In the end, it wouldn’t be his decision. He was still half asleep and stunned by the thing’s sudden appearance, so he made no attempt to flag it down as the thing hurtled by him. 

Even wedged as far away from the track as he could get, the closest parts of the freight cars that flew by him were less than a foot away. Jonathan barely had time to be terrified about that, though, because a few seconds later it was past him and continuing away. Jonathan wondered if they hadn’t seen him, or if they’d seen him and hadn’t cared. 

He supposed it didn’t matter. The result was the same. The only difference was that the next time he had to cross a bridge, he would be terrified that a train might actually show up traveling the other way. 

There was no way that Jonathan was going back to sleep after that. So, reluctantly, he got up and stretched, and wrung a few more drops out of his water skin before he continued on his way. 

Several hours later, he found a bricked off side passage that was in pretty bad shape. It was the first of several as the slowly rising tunnel cut right through a series of fissures. The third one was the most interesting to Jonathan, because the bricks were covered in moss and lichen, which meant that there had to be water, or at least moisture back there somewhere. It wasn’t in quite bad enough shape for him to find a way through, though, so reluctantly, he continued on, disappointed to be so close, yet so far away.  

Another half a watch later, Jonathan finally found what he was looking for. He heard it before he saw it, but he’d decided that he was hallucinating, and vowed to ignore it, lest him be driven mad by the delicious sound of running water. Then he saw a tunnel that had once been bricked off a long time ago. The few bricks that remained were now slowly turning to dust on the ground, near the tracks. 

That made Jonathan cautious, of course, but not so cautious that he was going to ignore the sound of water. If he was death by dehydration, or death by whatever else might be in there, he’d choose the latter. 

He paused at the entrance long enough to dig through the rucksack he carried and pull out the conductor's brand and knife. He slipped the knife into his belt, but held the brand. Jonathan could feel the heat of fire inside it, so he knew that it was still loaded, and with only a little nervousness, since he only knew how these things worked in theory, he cocked the hammer back, and slipped inside the entrance. 

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he croaked through his parched throat, as he peered down the narrow passage looking for the source of the sound, as well as anything that might want to eat him. 

He found neither right away, but the soon enough he didn’t just feel the dampness in the air. He saw its signs in the small patches of albino mosses that clung to life in the dark crevices and the shadows of large stones. Unlike the tunnel he’d left, this was part of some natural, water carved formation, and it wound slightly to the left and the right as it went. Sometimes it expanded so much it felt like a room, and other times it was so narrow he had trouble squeezing though. 

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In the final stretch before he reached the sound the tunnel got so low and tight that Jonathan had to resort to first crawling, and then squirming to make it through, and at the end he had to push what meager belongings he had on him through first. If he’d gotten stuck in that narrow limestone vice, he would have certainly starved to death, but if he’d chosen to turn back he very much doubted that he would have found another oasis before his strength gave out, so even though it was a terrible chance, he still took it. 

It wasn’t bravery, he realized, as he finally forced himself through far enough that he could free his arms and push his way out. You didn’t have to be brave to take the only move you had left to you. 

Once he was free, Jonathan quickly scooped up his weapons and looked around for threats, but found none. There were no giant spiders laying in wait, or goblins that were about to ambush him. Besides him there were only a few giant mushrooms on the far left side of the cave, a trickle of water raining down from the ceiling, and a broad but shallow pool of crystal clear water. It was only a few inches deep, but it was so large he couldn’t see the far side of it with the thin bluish light of his light stone shard.  

“It might be poisonous,” Jonathan told himself as he bent to sip from the waters, but even with that caution he couldn’t make himself slow down. Not really. It tasted stale, but once he’d tasted it, he could hardly make himself stop. 

Jonathan quickly filled his skin and downed it almost immediately before filling it a second time. The second one he was able to drink slowly at least. Now that there was no chance of running out of water, he could finally calm down, and appreciate the little details of this tiny oasis. 

Besides the narrow passage he’d crawled though, the cave continued both in front of him, across the water, and to his left where giant mushrooms dotted the shore. It was a surreal place to be - for there to be any life at all down here in the dark struck him as strange. Jonathan sat there for a long moment, appreciating the trickle of noise and the silhouettes of the distant fungus, as he wondered whether or not it was worth the risk to try to eat them. That was when he noticed the movement in the water. 

Jonathan’s first impulse was to reach for a weapon, but he hadn’t even picked up the knife when he realized what a silly impulse that was. The flicker of movement hadn’t been some monster ready to jump out of the water and grab him. It was front small and nearly translucent fish that lived in this Stygian pond. 

He spent several long moments just watching them swim around. In the dim light there were only visible from certain angles, and as soon as they changed direction they vanished in the clear water like they were magical creatures. They weren’t though. It was just a trick of the eyes. The dwarves had a type of magic related to that too. They called it optics, though Jonathan had only ever heard about it in passing from Anda. Optics wasn't’ much use to anyone in the rail yards. 

Eventually, when Jonathan tired of watching them, he used the remains of his shirt to catch them. It was a tedious process, but over the next half hour he gathered and gutted half a dozen. Cooking them was harder than he would have thought, though, and took almost as long. 

This high up in the deeps, the tunnels had been several degrees cooler than it had been in Khaghrumer, and this cave was a few degrees cooler than that. It was a very comfortable temperature, but compared to the heat he’d had to endure for so long, Jonathan found it downright chilly, and the stones around him were much more reluctant to give up their heat than usual. 

Eventually he was able to make them steam, getting them crispy or blackening them was beyond him without using the fire tripped inside the gunpowder as fuel, and he was unwilling to do that for now. He would need a weapon, and the higher up he got, the less likely that was to be fire. 

The fish were rubbery and tasteless, but it was the least salty meal that Jonathan had eaten in years, and he enjoyed that part at least. The dwarven diet was so laden with preservatives because of all the transportation involved in their food that it tasted completely different from what food was supposed to taste like. 

Jonathan lay there on the shore, using his sack as a pillow, while he appreciated the moment. He was free. He was going to live and get back to the surface. He wasn’t going to die alone in the dark down here. They were more positive thoughts than he was used to, be he wasn’t about to argue with them. This is how he should have felt when he stole the train, but that victory had been too bloodstained to really appreciate. This one though, This one was perfect just the way it was. 

He was finally free, and everything was going to be okay. He’d get a few hours of sleep here, then refill his water and go back to following the tracks wherever it was they were leading him. 

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