I

Dense pillars of smoke drifted upwards, smothering the damp, serpentine tunnels with the thick smell of ash and the subtle tinge of roasted onions. Sveitus took a deep breath and quietly smiled to himself as he jumped down the narrow opening.

It was a shortcut he always loved to take, where he could stroll at a leisurely pace without falling behind on his schedule.

A whistling breeze carried on quietly through the morning, humming all over warehouses and shafts, cleansing the torrid summer air out of the Pits and lifting the spirits of those poor souls down in the mines.

The Pits, as the Chthonic men of Eridanos took to calling the labyrinthine complex of tunnels and shafts that housed them, were the beating heart pumping upstream the Earth’s very lifeblood in order to fend off the arid wastes. A rhizome-like complex of intricate hydraulic machinery hauled the ore and precious water out of Gaia’s granite heart, spilling its life essence unto the floodlands above.

The purple ones had raised this trifling, artificial Eden from the cold mud to nourish a small community of outcasts and exiles. A pigpen for the savage ones, the tainted ones, the stray souls unfit even for Charon’s skiff. Majestic, silver-lined Aikinaas, the Great Light of Epirus, called out and a saviour heeded. An architectural genius, fit for the task of handling the finest of human surplus. Gifted his own empire of waste.

The thick leaded pipes rumbled with a hasty stream of water. Sveitus paused to look at the pebbles dusting off the ceiling above. The mountain’s bones rattled under the weight of grumbling machinery, struggling to fill vast water tanks guzzling for their sustenance. These tanks would spit out raging streams against heated rock for days on end. Those water-hushing days were a joyful respite from weeks of eye-soring, head-splitting ashen hell that preceded them. The naphtha fumes rising on rock-heating days could be so noxious, they made even the strongest of men bawl their eyes out all day long. Some had started looking forward to it.

Thinking back on some recent, fateful events, it occurred to Sveitus that the one thing truly worse than having to endure yet another tragedy, would be having to be the one to break the news.

“It’s always us, poor messengers who have to suffer twice for every calamity.” He concluded, with sardonic belittlement at his own self-pity.

Leaping out of the tunnel and into the pewterers’ workshop, the long-haired etruscan man dusted off his smoky red tunic and greeted the smiths with the usual playful, yet aloof smile.

“How’re you making out, boys? Don’t work too hard now, eh? It’d be a catastrophe for your poor backs.” He jested. The workshop was a long, narrow hall of polished stone. An old leakage dripped down into a pile of rubble in the corner, beating even louder than the fire and the men’ sporadic gruntles.

The men gawked at him with puzzled, downtrodden looks. Barely a low wheeze and a couple of tired, awkward smiles. Sveitus recalled how the vapours from the lead pipes used to get to them like that some days, sniffing the light out of their eyes and what little sharpness was there out of their minds.

They had pushed away all the tools, benches and bellows in order to sit by the fire and roast some onions. Had they not been arguing over childhood stories about shoe-eating goblins while passing around a jug of honeyed milk, the sight of the soot-covered shirtless men, dead eyes affixed on the jittering void of fire, would have been quite intimidating.

"'Godsake. Who let the sissy in?! The air-headed pastry-guzzler forgot to block the airway again, eh?" A coarse, high-tinged voice rang from Sveitus’ back. The weight of a greasy palm bluntly fell upon his shoulder, making him stumble, almost falling towards the flaming hearth. The bare-chested, stout man to whom it belonged walked around towards one of the benches, lazily scratching his belly. His broad shoulders stretched widely, protruding the chest and the rounded belly in an ungodly forced stance, closer to the fighting cock than a man

“My back is fine. How about yours?.” Rotund Theophrastus sat down with a broad, sarcastically polite smile. “Take care you don’t fall and break it with all that crawling through the latrine shafts.” Some of the men laughed unenthusiastically.

"You jest as though the mere mention of excrement turned your coarse babbling into some kind of joke." Sveitus crossed his arms and rested his lower back on the marbled workbench, trying to hide an insidious smile. "I can see you’re mighty curious about my job, eh? In any case, the way I take my shortcuts is no weird nor perilous feat, my Achaean friend. All the skill it takes is being able to fit through the airshafts, really. But despair not, my colleague, for I trust you have quite an important job down here at the shop as well. I’m sure you’ll get good at it someday.” Said Sveitus, gesturing with his hands open wide.

A heavy hand cut his snide giggle short with a forceful shove, just as he was calmly reaching to pat the man’s wide back.

Theophrastus scoffed. “Don’t touch me, you mongrel mutt! You’re a cheerful one today, eh? Did Penthylos finally let you back outside to frolic in the fields with your crazy hags?”

“Well, he didn’t let me, but…” Sveitus gave a sidelong smile in response, still resting his back on the table while idly playing with some breadcrumbs.

“You just keep pushing your luck alright. None of those rabid harlots will come bark for your freedom after they put you down in chains. You’ll be hauling buckets for the rest of your life, you fool!”

Alas, Sveitus’ attention had already shifted elsewhere. He’d heard that one before. In truth, he didn’t really care that much for the women of the village, nor any other surface-dwellers of any kind. He knew his place was down at the Pits, but there was something about the woods and gardens just outside those dreaded mines that fascinated him. He couldn’t help but marvel at his master’s genius design whenever he witnessed the fragile, intricate beauty of it all.

Whenever he wandered around the village, the mere sight of it thriving – more or less – seemed to him like a bold affront against common sense itself. Not only was the mere attempt at designing such an ambitious eusocial apparatus admirable in itself, all the while utilising only the most defective prime matter – the literal waste of society –, but to actually succeed in such an endeavour was simply monumental.

In Sveitus’ eyes, that was exactly the kind of higher Art that would be plain inconceivable to those unremarkable sods who ran all worldly affairs and called the shots down in the Pits. Not necessarily because of its difficulty, but because it would never even cross their turgid minds. Only true men of the arcane spheres could attune their minds to such subtle, undetectable strokes of genius, the golden fruit borne out of reason and imagination’s ideal marriage. But alas, you’d be hard pressed to find any such men down in the cold, ill-forgotten wastes of Eridanos, let alone down in the Pits burrowed inside its putrid bowels, and even Sveitus was not one of them.

Most of his life he’d felt like standing on the threshold of brilliancy, barely capable of appreciating and understanding the work of all the great masters, but lacking the talent to replicate it, let alone rival it with his own. But many years away from the outside world had worn this thought away, so that it no longer troubled him nearly as much as it used to. The back-breaking tedium of life in the Pits was enough to dull the sharpest of minds, and he took that as a blessing.

Over the course of the week, several times had Sveitus heard that not a single cart of the arcane ore had come up from the southern mines in almost a full week. After making his rounds through the remaining workshops, as was his due labour, Sveitus fancied checking up on them. He saw the chance to better his standing with the foreman by discovering the truth of what was happening before anybody else would come and order him to do so, and so he seized it immediately.

He took to the stream-side path, dotted with wooden planks as it criss-crossed the running waters. Everytime the ground protruded a jagged rock along a bend in the causeway, clear water sprayed his face in a thin, cold shower. He hummed an old mountain tune and ran his fingers along the rugged cave ceiling as he walked.

When he reached the pneumatic platform, he found nobody manning it. Perhaps someone had struck big down there and they couldn’t spare a single pair of hands. He turned back towards the stream and followed it down through slippery, jagged falls and flooded corridors. He went past the crudely carved Madonna with Child that Gáspár and his magyar ascetics had carved across the walls overlooking the cascades. He made his way through murmuring pathways plunging towards endless silence, sticking to the walls on the odd narrow passage. Finally he reached the wide halls of the dispatch area, from whence barely walkable tunnels spread in all directions.

Suddenly, he heard the rhythmic sound of steel biting hard rock, even though he was still far from the lowest levels, where most of the mining was carried about. Halting still, attuning his ear to the silence, he skulked further away from the sibilant hustle of the stream. The pick’s dry thumping seemed to increase in vigour in the following stillness. Sveitus made the miner’s call, clicking his tongue twice and whistling loudly.

“W-who’s there?!” A raspy voice echoed with unease from further down the slope. “Please, don’t leave! We’re trapped in here! Can you hear me?! The walls collapsed and something…!”

“I’m right here! Who is this? Moskos? It’s me, Sveitus!” Sveitus was already rushing down the dark shafts.

By the time he’d finished his sentence, he had arrived at the foot of a huge pile of rubble and wood, blocking the way.

“Oh, thank God in the heavens! Y-yes, it’s Moskos! Lord, I have been waiting for so long, I thought it…” The old man’s words were suddenly cut short with mounting disquiet.

Sveitus heard a desperate prayer in the Hebrew tongue. Then, the miner’s voice returned in the form of an emphatic whisper: “Listen, Sveitus, listen, there is no time, please! We’re trapped here... T-there’s several of us. We have to clear this rubble right now!”

“Calm down, old man! Is someone wounded over there?” Sveitus enunciated every word to make himself audible through the rubble.

“Y-yes, although… there’s no time to explain, Sveitus, you have to tear down this damned wall now, I beg of you!”

Moskos was a quiet, solemn man who kept to himself at nearly all times. Not once had Sveitus heard him raise his voice, nor address him as anything other than his station. The sight of such a grizzled, callous man – a stoic survivor of lifelong slavery – reduced to such desperate, heart-wrenching pleads, was enough to tear a gaping hole in Sveitus’ chest. A sinking arrow of dread pinned his entire body stiff.

Then he heard it. The ungodly wail, echoing through the maze-like tunnels, just past the thin wall of rubble.

Like a deceased bison howling away in pain... Then, a gurgling hum, rotten, ash-like; a bitter peal like the cracking of bones. The ground shook, cascading sandstreams rattling along the walls. The hellish gargles faded away slowly into the distance. Not a loose pebble dared make the faintest sound in the following silence. Just past the rubble, Moskos’ frantic breathing turned into quiet, stammering prayers.

“Dear Almighty...…” Sveitus’ words fell from his mouth. Moskos was clearly lost in a mumbling stupor, thrust towards his fate like a shivering fawn. “D-did you see it, Moskos?”

Moskos was hurriedly praying to himself in the Hebrew tongue, far gone. A second howl echoed from further down the slope, and vanished into the endless depths. A heart-gripping silence crushed the air out of their chests in sordid sighs. .

“Twice more than I would’ve ever hoped to.” Moskos replied with the last of his composure. “First time, I saw it tear Lycomedes in half. And just now… it was dragging Oeneus’ body. At least I think it was him.”

“I-I think I should go get the foreman.” Sveitus replied with unusual perplexity. Usually, he would’ve already been half-way there at this point.

“Tell him” Moskos’ voice was oddly resolute. “I don’t want no Greek burial. Just toss this old meat into the fire. I’m going to Sheol anyways.”

A small crowd had gathered in the foreman’s antechamber. Sveitus shut the door, leaving the racket behind him, and threw himself at the armchair, still panting.

The room sat atop one of the larger storage halls, carved straight into the monolithic slabs of singing stone that formed the western face of the main entrance. A location specifically chosen by the foreman himself. The office walls were draped in tapestries of all colours, all except one where the singing stone was left bare, in front of which a vast assortment of various minerals hung from the ceiling, neatly polished into fist-sized spheres and arranged in alphabetical order.

During restless nights, the foreman would make the walls sing and study the tones each rock drew as they striked the masonry. Then he would sit still for hours on end, contemplating the individual sounds and their various permutations grow and change before slowly fading into silence. Once, he had drunkenly confided to Sveitus, he had managed to perfectly synthesise the sound of his mother’s voice by combining several individual tones produced by different rocks smashing against the singstone walls. But the process, he admitted, was so complex that he’d already forgotten the steps by the time he was done, and never again could he recreate it.

Sveitus noticed the foreman's scoff aimed directly at him and awkwardly fumbled his way into a more formal posture, meeting his eyes with a shaking gaze.

“Just tell me what is it no-”

“There’s been a caving and something’s stalking the mines anditkilledLycomedesandOeneusandMoskosisstilltrapp-”

“Some thing?” Foreman Penthylos leaned in to inquire intently, the deep wrinkles in his frown threatening to crawl all the way up to his bald skull.

Sveitus nodded, still catching his breath. “I swear, Penthylos, a horrible creature! I swear in the name of my Master! That Astraea cast me down in thundering ire! That these ravishing locks of mine alight and consume me whole in flames!”

The briskly stream of his voice barely cracked as he waved around a strand of curved auburn hair. Such gesture caused the distraught foreman to flinch, furious at the laconic pantomime in such a desperate hour.

Penthylos fell back into his chair, leading a hand through his scalp, glistening with cold sweat. “And you say there has been a caving?”

Sveitus nodded again, edging impatient on his seat. Penthylos sighed deeply.

“Go fetch Heraclius. We’ll gather at Master Nemsu’s tower. It’ll be easier than bringing him down here.” The plump man fell back pensively on his creaking chair, anxiously stroking his long beard with a reddened hand, swollen and apple-like from gout.

Sveitus bolted his way through the crowd, tumbling outside and across the northern dam. That was the shortest road from the depository to the Unbroken’s quarters, tucked in a damp corner, where old Heraclius had fashioned his small fortress; his own humble sanctuary to virility.

Everything about this man, from the iron hand with which he handled all common disputes, to the martial trade which he professed to master, to the stern, stoic gait with which he conducted his daily patrolling, seemed like evocations to the herculean namesake he’d chosen for himself.

He had been around for longer than most, and those few senexes able to recall his trueborn name rarely dared mentioning it out in the open. As far as most of the men knew, he had always been Heraklios Porphyrogenios.

Sveitus knew him as the infallible sign of tumult, scurrying the halls and mines with prey hound step, day in and night out. Wherever chaos, confusion and violence occurred, old Heraclius would manifest like a wrathful apparition, always on the look for disobedience and insurrection, with a scabbard as loose as his foul mouth. No matter the topic, his mind was always made, at least according to the conviction of his words, which were often outrageously improper, but painfully honest. Getting to understand the man and how to take his unsolicited advice was almost a passing rite in the Pits, therefore it comes as no surprise that Heraclius’ peacekeeping record was far from perfect, but he was deemed a necessary evil by the rest of the elders, even if just as a deterrent.

The gates to his compound were unattended. Once it had housed over a score of men, overlooking the whole of the living quarters from its stone carved terraces. Now the balustrade was blackened from smoke, riddled with more gaps than master Nemsu’s jagged smile. The crude villa stood as proud as its master, grinning at the view of his crumbling domains just down below. Sveitus pushed with his whole body against the cold, rusted door, which creaked and ceded unevenly to his effort. Suddenly, the gates seemed to slide open, and Heraclius’ figure emerged.

“Boy, don’t waste any more of my time. If I hear about one more brawl in the foundry I will go down myself...” Heraclius’ gruff voice was a tone lower than usual, and his words harsher.

“My lord! This is nothing of the sort. The foreman has summoned you, we’ve to hurry to Master Nemsu’s quarters immediately!” Heraclius’ arm was coarse and heavy as Sveitus pulled, leading him away in a rush.

They cut through the rookery’s narrow alleys. That old, long strip where many of his fellow Rasna youths had recently taken to hoveling together. Shortly they emerged at the foot of Master Nemsu’s pointed tower, which was carved into a rocky pillar-like formation which rised not from the ground up, but down from the cave entrance’s ceiling like an old beast’s last remaining fang. Its dark surface was dotted with tiny resplendent crystals.

As both men stood at the shadow of the inverted pillar, they looked up in search of a glimpse of the Master’s young aide, that he could man the hydraulic lift.

After a brief moment of fruitless hollering, Heraclius sprang towards one side, smashing his heels against the cold gravel. “By the furies!” The old veteran grumbled. “Get on it, boy, I’ll lift you up from here! Just be quick and go get that lazy Hungarian eunuch when you arrive, so that he can lift me up.” The elevator’s brand-new hydraulic system could only be activated from the top, but the old pulleys were still usable from both sides, so Heraclius had seized the swivel and poignantly gestured at Sveitus to get on top of the platform with a sharp, intense gaze that seemed almost out of it.

Sveitus tried, but eventually decided against, coming up with any sort of reply. As he stepped onto the platform, he caught himself instinctively gazing southward. Something kept pulling his mind back towards the southern mines. Towards the scent of bloodied mud, and the sound of Mosko’s raspy breathing. A cold breeze gently brushed Sveitus’ elbow as he ascended. He found the feeling of being slowly elevated above the ground - or, rock - more or less soothing. From his vantage point, the canal that ran through the Pits’ cave entrance and towards the green fields looked like a glistening serpent, well fed with the mountain’s lifeblood, through the many streams they themselves had carved into its stony flesh. The wooden boats rocking to and fro on the berth now looked like formless debris, gleefully swaying.

The sound of cracked, listless screaming suddenly cut through the calmness like a whip.

“You want to go down with your ship, ye mighty captain?! By all means, do proceed! But I won’t sit around quietly while you burn the lifeboats!”

Sveitus was startled by the commotion. It was the first time he had heard Master Nemsu raise his voice. Ever since he had known him, the man seemed perpetually under the weather and dysphonic, with a voice like dry parchment and shortness of breath, as did many of the old miners. Although since he had always been old, Sveitus wasn’t sure if he had even been a miner, and not just the elder from the day he first arrived.

As the lift grew closer, he could hear the aide’s gentle words, trying to calm the old man down amidst a violent cough fit. Even despite this, Nemsu proceeded, with the faintest thread of a voice:

“I came to this frozen hellworld… when it was still a stinking chasm of filth and dust. Forgotten by all but the most deranged of Gods,” The old man paused, briefly steadying his breath.

“If you still cling to your pride even after all these years, then feel free to look away from all this. Look away in vanity. Rot in your throne. Gods know I might as well, for all the sparse time I have left. But please, Penthylos, do not claim the young ones’ lives as yours to decide on.“

As Sveitus stepped through the door, he could see Penthylos worriedly pacing towards the window, turning his back on the sage and his aide, who was helping him to a seat and some water. Though now heavily winded, Master Nemsu’s face lit up in view of Sveitus, like a wounded knight at the sight of reinforcements.

“Boy, talk some sense into this bald knucklehead. I’ve had it with the kreitares, these mangy Greek dogs!” Although praised as an orator in his youth, Master Nemsu rarely had the energy nowadays to speak up, unless prompted by extreme emotion, and then the uncouth mannerisms of his Rasna upbringing would shine through his distress. He was descended from the odd later day Etruscan nobility who seemed to pride themselves in their own people's backwardness, always distrustful of the past.

“Master Nemsu.” Sveitus nodded in a rush, purveying the room. Penthylos barely looked at him sideways, nervously tapping a finger against the windowsill on which he leaned on with both hands. The foreman’s gaze quickly turned back to the void below, frowning pensively.

“I’ll bring Master Heraclius up.” Sveitus said as he reached towards the swivel.

The wooden pulley kept on turning by itself after the first turn of the swivel. The mechanism was held by two thick ropes, dotted with sigils and inscriptions that seemed ever so slightly to vibrate to the buzz of arcane energy. The ropes were tied on one end to the cage-like hanging platform while the other end went towards a cabinet no larger than a person, one side open for all to see the machine’s beating heart. Sveitus was no engineer. All he could see was an intricate series of pulleys and counterweights paired with a hydraulic piston device thing, made to fit inside a box with poorly-drawn sound dampening sigils, which would explain the noise. In the end, though, the less he knew about it, the better for his faith in the queer artefact, and that was the only way of getting up there.

Master Nemsu’s young hungarian aide was a quiet boy by the name of Alan, or Aram, or something of the sort. Sveitus helped him gather the myriad of books, vials, jugs, kettles and all sorts of alchemical and arcane devices and manuscripts sprawled all over the table, as he was struggling with the sheer volume of clutter. Surely, that the disarray were left alone would’ve been the old master’s order. As he stepped away to help the boy, Sveitus caught a glimpse of Heraclius and Penthylos speaking in a hushed voice. Seeing the boastful soldier engage in such petty secret-keeping struck him as quite odd, but he raised no further issue.

The four of them sat down as Sveitus explained the situation. Penthylos listened attentively, carefully weighing their options. Master Nemsu, on the other hand, questioned him relentlessly, and seemed most alarmed, if only noticeably tired. Heraclius remained in silence, his face slowly turning into a frown.

Eventually, Heraclius sprang to his heels. “I’ve heard enough” Yanking Sveitus by the arm with ease, he interjected, drowning all possible replies with his coarse baritone voice. “Come, lad, we have to haul some Alkahest amphorae.”

“To think we've wasted all this time!” Heraclius said as he stepped onto the lift with such haste he made it shake beneath his hard-soled boots. “You should be ashamed of your indolence, you lazy, dankish wagtails!” The rowdy man stabbed at the air with his pointer finger towards the other two elders. He yanked the elevator’s chain and vanished to the fanfare of rusted pipes and creaking pulleys.

Less than half an Alkahest amphora was enough to tear a man-sized hole into the collapsed wall. Sveitus and Heraclius were joined by a few of the latter’s men, who ventured forth to bring back the wounded and count the dead.

Once, Heraclius’ had been the biggest faction on the Pits. That grizzled old soldier, for all his vexation aimed at the miners' decadent ways and lack of character, had been the first one to reach a hand out to the kind of destitute young souls who don’t usually make it past the first few months in the Pits. He lifted them from despair and self-loathing, and fashioned them into his own militia, sanctioned by the Elder Council to act on and enforce their decrees, and the overall safeguarding of peace and civility.

Their numbers swelled to such an extent that the elders forbade the men from leaving behind their occupations, for joining this haphazard army with no real foe. To tell a long story short, the Unbroken’s downfall was fated. For very little can tell apart the bravest army from a lousy band of brigands, when there are no real threats to face.

Like all leashed dogs who eventually turn to barking at the slightest flutter of the afternoon fly, the Unbroken came to believe that the benign Watchers of the forest had turned wicked or, at the very least, deceitful. Indeed, those same arcane creatures who’d taken to the tireless task of protecting the Grand Architect’s realm from barbaric outsiders, as was their express purpose in existence, were now masterless and roamed freely around the bog with no clear purpose.

After several failed expeditions to the forest margins, Heraclius’ army was whittled down to a single pair of veterans and three young lads who were left behind. Now they all stood entranced around Moskos, laid down at the physician’s cave. The soft clinking of their chainmail marked the beat of their huffing breaths.

They lavished the old man with the utmost attention as he recounted how his shed was suddenly overrun by a gigantic, long-limbed devil with a starved bear’s build, but doubled in height. Its massive fangs shone a bloody crimson and its eyes spiralled in their sockets. The flowing, damp mess of its fur was clumped and flapped about like tentacles with every twitch of its purulent neck. Sheer luck, or perhaps the beast’s full belly, were all he could summon to explain his survival.

As the tale went on, Sveitus could see the relentless sheen of vengeance growing in Heraclius’ eyes, soon reflected on his men as well. The legendary Watchers of the garden were rumoured to be hulking water sprites with tangled hair and owl-like eyes that shone visibly even in the day.

“Your words do rally my heart like Laossoos, our saintly Ares who speaks the divine truth to inspire the strong and the meek alike, especially those who stand at the gateway of eternal glory.” Heraclius pressed a hand against his chest, smiling gently. “This agitation tells me that there is truth in your words, and my soul is moved accordingly.”

Moskos could hardly smile back. “Great warrior priest… Many men died today. Some were virtuous, some were vile, some were wolves, some were lambs. If you’d honour a Jewish mutt’s dying wish, sire, please do not chase after the creature. It is the living’s duty to honour the dead, not to join them.”

“A dying man should not press his stakes upon the living. You stand with one foot in Hades, and care not anymore for this world you are set on leaving behind. If I leave the beast be, many more will perish.”

“Not all men are built to last. Many of them can live an entire life longing for death, even unknowingly. They’re unfit for this life of mould, smoke, darkness and struggle. So I say, maybe sometimes the Lord does answer some prayers during the course of our lives, but only to claim them. Now, what I just told you is true of most of the men you would’ve found there, but not all. And yet still… The latter, though brave, are always the first to perish in the former’s place.” The intonation seemed almost insult-like to Sveitus. Resentful. He could see the dark streaks sprayed over his tattered shirt, which matched not the colour of his own blood, but most likely were the creature’s.

“Your bravery is commendable, Moskos. I take your plight as mine.” Heraclius said. His sour but stoic expression turned stern when turning to one of his men. “Sandal boy, take him to the Iatromantis. This pighead’s just playing his usual part. He’s got the makings of a trueborn warrior, but he’s always been too prideful to take a single order. So he will live, if only just to spite me.”

“Master, the beast is within our reach. We must hunt it down in the name of the fallen!” A young recruit roused his peers, to a lukewarm response. Of the two other youths, one nodded, big round eyes affixed on the floor, while the other grabbed his gut as if intending to vomit at any moment.

“I’ll end the foul beast and burn its head at Odysseus’ altar.” One of the two veterans said, lifting his spear. He was tall and well built, even taller than Heraclius, but slimmer. He cracked an uneven smile beneath two green eyes and his hair was dark, long and unkempt.

“Have you already forgotten, Asclepius? It was you who recounted an encounter with a Watcher, how it shrugged off lances like splinters. That day, we fought as warriors, for war was the only trade I ever plied and the one I bestowed upon you as well, when all this time we were looking at nothing more than a wild beast. No soul gives breath to their ruffled mumbling, no reasonable mind shines beneath their bloodshot eyes, nor dotes them of any human passion other than thirst and hunger.”

Sveitus could see where the old man was going, and wasted no time.

“And, just now that you mention it, Moskos said it had the complexion of a famelic bear. It stands to reason that the creature, starving, might’ve descended to the mines in order to feed on the Orichalcum. I recall you saying that is how they gain their sustenance, correct, Sir Heraclius”

“‘Tis true, lad.” Heraclius smiled with an ample nod. “Our enemy is naught but a cornered beast. We will hunt it thus.” He stabbed his palm with his pointing finger. His eyes trailed over the men one by one, jerking the Unbroken into submission like the crack of a whip.

“What’d’ye suggest, chief? Should we drown it like a groundhog?” The other veteran said. Bald and bulky, with two bushy eyebrows parting his skull in the middle, right above his minute face framed by an equally bushy moustache, each hair as grey as the next one.

“It’d take months just to drain the water afterwards. Not to mention the machinery…” Sveitus replied, raising a baffled eyebrow.

“That ogre will not travel far. It will feast on our warehouses, until well-fed and healed. We will dam all of the streams and head for the southern entrance overland, through Maenad’s Gorge. We'll make camp there and lay in ambush as the lads over here fill the tunnels with smoke. But first and foremost, we have to close up this wall.” Heraclius’ eyes jumped around with the racing tempo of his own thoughts washing over him like a divine revelation.

He turned to Sveitus, pointing to the living quarters with a flick of his head and a short whistle. “Go inform Penthylos, lad.” He placed his hand on one of his shoulders, with the slightest raise of an eyebrow. “I imagine you’ll set course with us tomorrow, right?”

Before Sveitus could reply, Heraclius had already turned towards the whole group.

“We part at dawn, men. We will set up camp right outside the southern entrance. I must withdraw to my quarters in order to draw our plans. At rest, for now, Unbroken. I entrust you to Hypnos’ arms, and may Morpheus bless your dreams with a prophetic glimpse of our inexorable glory.”

There was a quiet unanimous agreement. A short, awed pause that often followed Heraclius’ fits of fancy. Always on a strange path of his own, so careless and yet so reassured. Called upon by passions beyond all reason or wisdom. Seemingly safeguarded from peril by those same daimons who mobilised his undying resolve towards one or another goal.

Sveitus could still hear the Unbroken eagerly quarrelling as he made his way towards his quarters. Surely the grizzled ones cutting the kids short for their foolish enthusiasm. He rested his bag on the table and laid down on his bed, gazing outside. Laughter and muzzled hollering creeped in from the docks below, soundscapes spread over the ever-present screeching of wheels, pulleys and cranes and the canal's frenzied current. There was a faint, faraway light coming from the cave's entrance directly opposite to the window, like a frozen sun, rotting affixed on the horizon. It occurred to him now that it was like a moon, perpetually Soli opposita, otherwise simply known to surface-dwellers as ‘an overcast day’.

Sveitus felt rushed, in a dreamlike haze where a blink could turn into an hour, and viceversa. Somehow all he could think about was his master, how he fared back on the realm of the living (for these forgotten wastes must surely be Hades). How he had left behind his magnum opus, lost in mad grief, and now his own work was eating itself alive, quite literally.

He felt a pressure in his restless legs. Many moons had passed since he'd first contemplated his own death at hand. Many times had Charon whispered in his ear, but his song had always beckoned a calm, alluring respite from the cold and the hunger, a call he knew was equally heard by all the young boys in the slums on the daily. But this time, there was no such solace in company. Now it seemed like the boatman clamored his name alone, with a warm ring beckoning an old acquaintance and a sturdy, withered oar in his hand, tailored to fit Sveitus’ hands.

Trying to put such thoughts aside, he recalled how he had sworm to himself that he would not go out without showing his worth. That the world would know him for the entire worth and width of his immense soul before daring to snuff the light out from his tired eyes.