“Run!” Bear One said, but the warning came too late. The tunnels around them exploded with rock and metal spikes. Cha Ming pushed off the walls with fiery steps, summoning his Clear Sky Staff to smash aside obstacles. Bear Five, the mountain of a man, took a spike to his gut. It pierced his thick skin, leaving behind a trail of green blood.
“Leave him!” Bear One shouted.
Cha Ming ignored him. He pushed back against an oncoming boulder and rushed back to the staggering man. He grabbed Bear Five by the arm and dragged him, pulling him off the spike just in time to avoid a large stalactite falling from the ceiling. They ran, and as they did, Bear Five healed. He wasn’t as fast as any of them, but his defenses were top notch. Moreover, his regenerative abilities outstripped everyone’s in the group but Cha Ming’s.
They rushed through the falling debris using everything they had. Cha Ming used his gravity-manipulation abilities to avoid many of the obstacles and his staff to crush the rocks. The heavy Bear Five used his fists to knock them over. Their teamwork allowed them to gain ground on the others, who’d been slowed by a large-scale collapse of the tunnel up ahead.
Just a little more, Cha Ming thought as they approached the team. And then he saw it. A large break up above them. “Look out!” he shouted. A loud crack filled the air as the rocky earth tore apart. The other four, farther down the tunnel, heard his warning and rushed out from beneath it.
I can make it, Cha Ming thought. But Bear Five can’t. The man was simply too slow and too large to fit through. Not unless he had help.
Time stood still for Cha Ming as he considered his choices. If he rushed forward, he could save himself and join the others as they exited the collapsing tunnel. But if he did so, Bear Five would have to stay behind. Bear Five might be durable, but he wasn’t as well rounded as Cha Ming. If he stayed underground, he would likely perish.
Gritting his teeth, he made his decision. Cha Ming grabbed Bear Five’s arm and pulled. The man looked outraged for a moment, but then he simply looked resigned. This was the South, where the law of the jungle reigned. Cooperation only lasted as long as there was mutual benefit, and everything was enforced by contracts. It made sense to him that Cha Ming would pull him back to pull himself forward.
Cha Ming rushed ahead past the large man, but then, to the man’s surprise, he pulled. Then, digging his staff in the ground, the earth cracking around it and his muscles bulging as he did so, he heaved and threw the large man forward beneath the rapidly collapsing ceiling.
The ceiling fell, barely missing him. Cha Ming grabbed his staff, wasting no time to retrieve it, and pushed back. A rush of wind buffeted him from behind as the ceiling hit the ground, blowing whatever tiny rocks were behind him, shoving them into his back like a rain of roughly made arrows. A giant boulder flew down at him; he smashed it with Crushing Chaos, forcing two halves of the impossibly large rock apart and flying through it as the two halves prevented the ceiling from collapsing on him. He let out tiny explosions from his hands, feet, and arms as he blitzed through the air faster than he’d ever confessed to the others. His footsteps like lightning. His footsteps like wind. His footsteps were the storm itself.
He rushed into the empty room where the golden crystal jutted out, and to his surprise, he discovered it wasn’t as badly damaged as the others. As the tunnel collapsed behind him, two of the others leading out from the room also collapsed. But this central chamber, the one housing the crystal, remained. Cha Ming let out a single relieved breath as he fell to his knees, exhausted. He’d made it this far; who knew if the others would make it back to Bastion alive?
“Theirs odds are probably better than mine,” Cha Ming muttered. He might be safe in this chamber, which seemed to dampen the quakes, but he was alone. Lost. The fissures that led out from the chamber didn’t lead back to Bastion. Rather, they ran deeper into the mountain, deeper into the ground. And from these fissures, he felt a presence much stronger than he’d felt before. The leach on his vitality, which had previously been an annoying trickle, turned into a steady flow.
It seemed, he realized, that whatever leached their vitality didn’t come from deeper in the Shattered Lands as they’d originally thought. Instead, it was from deep within the earth, where the ore itself came from. That thought both troubled and reassured him. Though he was trapped down here with whatever it was that caused the leaching, there were likely pathways that led to the surface.
He just had to find one of those exits before the last of his life left him.
Chapter 25: Myriad Truths
The darkness of the cavern wasn’t as bad as Cha Ming had imagined it would be. The tall golden crystal, or what was left of it, filled the crack-filled chamber with a soft golden light. It suffused every nook and cranny of it, revealing an edge that hadn’t been part of the original stone chamber before the quake. This sharpness emanating from the stone was further enhanced by the crystalized gold evanescence. It was also likely what kept the chamber from collapsing atop him.
Isn’t this what you wanted? Cha Ming thought, finally taking note of the peaceful emptiness in the chamber. Didn’t you want a place to cultivate? A place to break through?
