Something in her rod fizzled and popped. A spiderweb of cracks blossomed in its quartz brain. Liesl increased the intensity.

  Inside the field, the creature made of phlogiston seemed to stand perfectly still, even as the force crushed and twisted it. For it, every second was an eternity of pain, as the immortal fire within it burst out with even greater intensity, to mend the damage to its body.

  The Gravitron rod heated up. A knob on its surface popped. A cog missed one of its turns. Leisl felt the heat creep closer to her, let out a cry but held on.

  The world slowed down around her, as the creature inside the field was suddenly compressed into a tiny point. Liesl felt the world stop around her, as the tip of her Gravitron rod cracked, screamed and then died.

  There was a terrible pressure around her and a sense of tugging at the same time. She saw the field now only as a blank point that averted her gaze around it against her will, a black well that existed in and of itself, sucking all light toward it.

  Liesl found herself too terrified to even scream.

  *****

  The caretaker felt the terrible tugging even in the bowels of the Earth, the sensation of falling upwards. His master cried out in terror, urging him on. He wasn’t long now.

  Breaking contact with his master, the caretaker ran along hallways obscured from the eyes of men. His senses (no longer enhanced by his master’s mind, but still proficient at seeing the invisible) led him toward the disturbance.

  With a leap, the caretaker smashed through the rock above and tunneled upward with his bare hands.

  But there was no light when he emerged, no sound or sight of feeling. There was only the screaming of the damned, filling the universe.

  *****

  Liesl did not (could not) notice the raggedy, wrinkled old ghost of a man that burst out of the ground and walked past her, unaffected by the tearing of gravity. She only watched with horror as her limbs extended toward the center of the black well, long and distorted. She saw the phlogiston creature, its body compressed and turned into a spiral that twisted and fell inside the center of the well, madly spinning toward an unknown destination.

  The old man walked inside the black well, protected by the last vestiges of power inside his master. He reached out to Phlogiston Kane and touched him, ceasing his torment with a flex of his mind.

  The emaciated man that burned like a sun stopped and noticed the old man that held his hand, smiling. His skin was brittle and cracked like ancient parchment, his fingers stalk-thin and strong. He spoke and his voice carried across the engulfing darkness.

  “It is over.”

  “It cannot be over. It will burn. Earth will burn, like every other world before it. I will kill my place of birth like I did all the others,” Kane whispered.

  “It needn’t be so. I can change this. I can make it stop.” The old man’s voice was calm and reassuring.

  “Then do it. Take it away.”

  “You will not survive. You should know this.”

  “I do.” Kane nodded. “I have lived for far too long. I’ve seen and sinned far too much.”

  “Then let go. I will take care of the rest,” the old man soothed him.

  “Will it harm again?”

  “No. It will give life to something old and dying. It will give it the strength it needs to create life once again.”

  “Then do it. I am ready.”

  It took no more than a nod and a gentle touch. There was no fanfare or ritual to the proceedings. Only the feeling of the old man’s hand, as it touched Kane’s chest and receded through the flesh, enveloping something inside him. There was only a gentle push and then, it was gone.

  “Thank you.” Kane whispered. The old man just nodded and was gone, just as Liesl’s Gravitron rod imploded in her hands.

  *****

  The black well vanished as the rod tore apart. Liesl was saved from the backlash by her remaining fields, which automatically reverted to their default formation moments before the rod ceased to function.

  Around her, gravity settled like a great steam hammer, smashing into the Zlata Ulcika and Kane himself, crushing everything into pure white dust, including the ground beneath them. She remained in the middle of the crater, secure in the absolute center of destruction.

  Her Gravitron field held for exactly thirteen seconds; exactly as long as it took for the black well to completely dissipate allowing time and normal gravity to take its place. Then it vanished, leaving Liesl behind, unharmed.

  There was a puddle of something that looked like murky black water, pooling in a crack on the ground. Liesl tried not to think that this was once the Phlogiston creature. Somewhere far away, she heard the distant wailing of sirens. Somewhere above her, twin shadows briefly obscured the sun as they descended.

  And in her hands she clutched the tiny metal ball that was once her Gravitron rod as she wept.

  *****

  The caretaker brought his prize to his master and placed it inside the alkaline lake. The skin had burnt off his hands as he carried it, but the gentle touch of his master’s tendril felt soothing against his skin. There was a great sigh inside his mind, as he saw the brilliant prize descend, before something old and massive snatched it from the unknowable depths.

  The caretaker felt a gentle caress within the folds of his mind and a voice that was wiser than God and twice as benevolent speak once again, for the first time in centuries. It spoke only two words, before it ascended from the lake that had become its millennia-long home:

  Thank You.

  The caretaker nodded back, smiling. He closed his eyes, only for a moment, and felt his master ascend to the heavens and beyond, faster than thought itself. He thought of it crossing the vast stellar distances, dancing across the ether, outracing steam-powered rockets that carried mankind across the stars. He imagined him re-igniting suns, powered by the phlogiston he had harvested, shaping lifeless rock into life-giving worlds.

  He imagined his master, radiant and benevolent, reaching out to every corner of the Universe and bringing life in his wake.

  Content, the caretaker closed his eyes for one final time and slept, never again to wake.

  Deep Diving Death Defying Dwarves of the Deep:

  A Tale from the Cycle of Ages Saga

  Jeremy Hicks

  I. Underwater, Underway

  Life on a dwarven submarine wasn’t just a job or an adventure; it was a sacrifice. Everyone aboard knew that they’d signed on for a suicidal voyage into the lair of the enemy, the lightless Abyssal Sea deep within the Hollow World known to the Men of the Overworld as Faltyr. But the doomed members of the Submarine Corps fought for the Divine Mandate, the liberation of their people.

  If the enemy didn’t kill them, one of the myriad natural horrors prowling the inner sea likely would. And if a dwarven submariner managed to survive predation, he’d die a slow death from the Aethyr reactor powering the formidable Gar-class vessel. The incredible amounts of energy created by the device superheated the water in the tank surrounding it. The steam produced in this reaction pushed the screws that propelled the fish-shaped sub and ran the generators required to power the auxiliary systems.

  Such wonders of Aethyr-fueled technology came at a price. The dwarven peoples possessed a natural resistance to poisons, toxins, and gases, but the invisible energy released by the reactor mutated most organic tissue, even the hardy skin of the Free Dwarves. Those submariners who weren’t killed in the line of duty found their life expectancy reduced significantly. For the back’afties, the mechanics and engineers who serviced the reactor, they could expect to have their life spans cut in half.

  Due to the demands and dangers of the job, only the most dedicated or desperate sought entry into the Submarine Corps. As a result, the motley crew was a mix of two extremes trying to coexist together in a confined, pressurized space for an extended period of time. Their reality consisted of long intervals of dutiful routine interrupted by short punctuated periods of frantic action that meant almost certain death.

  Life on a dwarven submarine took its toll in other ways. It asked its brave volunteers to sacrifice even more. Privacy didn’t exist. Alone time? What in the Nine was that? Family didn’t exist while on the boat. There was the Corps, the Naval Guild, and the Homeland…and of course, the one True Sun of the Overworld and its shadowy foil, the False Sun that nested at the heart of the Hollow World.

  Free Dwarf was a misnomer. The only true freedom for a dwarf came in death and that wasn’t a guarantee. Their brethren, the Deep Dwarves, might remain enslaved to the faceless Lords of the Underworld, but those lucky enough to survive the Exodus had accepted new chains, a new master. The Divine Mandate of the Free Dwarves, the liberation of their kin, had enslaved them to the Eternal War, a simmering conflict for the fate of the Hollow World that had seen the ruination and near extinction of dragons, elves, ogres, bugbears, and countless others over the eons. Freedom became their new yoke; liberty their new taskmaster. And the Free Dwarves meant to spread these alluring alien concepts to all their kind…whatever the cost.

  At least that was the party line, the dogma spoon-fed to the industrious masses to keep their society in a siege state, a state of constant preparedness for perpetual conflict. It bound their communities as thick as thieves in a dragon’s den. But something deeper, stronger bound the disparate, duty bound souls found on a dwarven submarine.

  The isolated microcosms of the submariners defined them. Each boat, each crew formed an insular community. Regardless of their original intent for volunteering, the bonds between crewmembers grew with each passing moment cloistered together in the cramped confines of their boat. As a result, the best crews became family, while the worst imploded under the torturous pressures and unrelenting terrors of the deep. None of the crews were perfect, but they did their duty to free their kin from bondage. And more often than not, it cost them their lives, one way or another.

  This is the story of one such crew, one such family as observed by an outsider, a mere sea rider, who came to be accepted by those who lived and died fighting alongside him in that lightless sea, the Blue Macaw himself, Yax’Kaqix. The elven Wand Bearer had established his reputation among the skimmers and lubbers living in the subterranean port city of Delve Deep over a century ago, but the cloistered clutch of submariners considered the Unen’ek elf as alien as the Kappa, the Goblins of the Abyss. Outside of the captain and the yeoman he’d been assigned as a liaison, no one had made eye contact with him, much less spoken to him.

  As the Gar-class submarine, designated FDCSS-19, sank into the dark waters, Yax wondered if he’d made a mistake by volunteering to assist the members of the Silent Service in their mission. But he’d be able to head to western Ny with a sizeable fortune, one capable of sustaining a fine household full of servants for decades to come. After all, he deserved an extended vacation, a life outside of the Eternal War. If the world worn war-mage managed to survive another foolish crusade into the Underworld, he swore to have just that.

  The deep river channel blazed brightly through the viewfinder on the sub’s periscope. Yax had honed his dark vision through untold decades of fighting the minions of Chichu’äm in tunnels and caverns across Faltyr, but he’d never beheld such clear resolution at these ranges, especially underwater. Was this an Aethyr-device too?

  “Fascinating,” Yax remarked, sensing little other than residual emanations of the corrupting energies radiating from the heart of the vessel, its lethal little engine room.

  “Isn’t it though?” Captain Ingvar said, stroking his well-manicured ginger beard. Sparse freckles dotted his milk white skin, indicating that he’d been exposed to the damaging effects of the sun at some point in his life. He might die a submariner, but he hadn’t been born into the life. Like the rest of the brave but foolhardy souls aboard FDCSS-19, he was a volunteer. Ingvar’s black eyes bored into the elf towering above him but darted to the female yeoman at his side when Yax made eye contact with him.

  Peering into the articulated spyglass, Yax said, “Looks like the river bottom is lined with the same type of glowing fungi used in signs and streetlamps.”

  “A similar species, yes,” Yeoman Dagny answered before her captain had a chance to respond. “But the special filters used in the periscope amplify our dark vision as well, allowing us to triple, even quadruple our normal range, depending on field conditions.” She stopped speaking as soon as she noticed the captain’s eyes lingering on her. Saluting, Dagny snapped to attention and ventured, “My apologies, sir.”

  Of the three score dwarves onboard the vessel, the diminutive but curvaceous petty officer had shown a greater level of enthusiasm for his presence than anyone save Delve Deep’s Chief Military Commissar and its High Priest of the True Sun. Though she stood navel high to the tall, wiry Unen’ek war-mage, Dagny stared unabashedly at the elven sea rider. Anyone that energetic and enthusiastic tended to make Yax feel like an old man, or elf rather. But the comely, mercifully beardless dwarf had aroused his insatiable curiosity in a different way than the marvelous mechanical wonder around him.

  “It’s all right, Starshina,” the captain said, referring to her rank as petty officer. Ingvar added, “How many times must I tell you that excessive esprit de corps isn’t a punishable offense? At least until they make Commander Swari an Admiral anyway.”

  The dour executive officer cast her beady eyes in their direction, harrumphed, and then returned to monitoring the navigational charts. At Swari’s side, the quartermaster coordinated with the sounding officer and helmsman to chart their position and maintain course and speed.

  Captain Ingvar laughed in basal bleating tones that reminded Yax of black-skinned Nubari tribesmen blowing short blasts on their war conchs. The dwarven captain smiled as he turned back to the elf. Lost in his brief reverie about the wild men of Oparre’s western coast, Yax was almost taken aback by Ingvar’s toothy gesture. The Nubari treated such a gesture as an act of war. The elf smiled back, showing his pearly whites, all but his molars filed to sharp points in the fashion of his own people, the Unen’ek, whom many called savages.

  “Now that we’re underway,” Ingvar said, “take our special military advisor here and give him the grand tour, Dagny. If he’s marveling at the periscope, the rest of our boat’s wonders will turn his screws.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Dagny saluted and then dropped it without further prompt.

  “Good to see you’re learning,” Ingvar said, “You might make an officer yet.”

  The yeoman beamed at the compliment, grabbed Yax by one of his long-fingered hands, and dragged him from the command cabin of the submarine. Banging his shins on the steel lip at the bottom of the open portal, he learned a new naval term.

  “Watch out for the knee-knockers, Mr. Elf,” Dangy warned, albeit too late.

  From behind them, the Captain chuckled, “Don’t worry. She’ll make a fine tour guide, if she doesn’t kill you in the process.”

  The rest of the command crew shared a laugh at the elf’s expense. Yax limped along the corridor behind the shapely dwarven woman, unsure if he should curse his clumsy, distracted state or thank it for further ingratiating him to the crew. He decided to do both, considering it part of the steep learning curve for an unwanted, unofficial member of the Free Dwarf Naval Guild. Somehow he always found a way to find humor in the direst of situations and delving into the Abyss in a submarine filled with dwarves on a mission to free slaves ranked high amongst them.

  So Yax’Kaqix, fierce Choj’Ahaw of the Unen’ek, smiled in a friendlier fashion than normal, opened his blue eyes wide to the wonders around him, and enjoyed the view. He paid close attention to the myriad gauges, gears, levers, and switches filling the interior of the vessel and tried to remember every detail offered about crewmembers and sensitive systems. But he did sneak the occasional peak at the coverall-clad backside of Yeoman Dagny. He never thought he’d consider a dwarf attractive, but then his experience had been limited to the stern, stoic members of the Home Guard and the unwashed masses of industrial workers on the crowded, shadowy streets of Delve Deep.

  “I appreciate the hospitality,” Yax said as they made their way along the corridor. “I was beginning to wonder if anyone was going to speak to me other than the captain.”

  “Oh, that’s alright, Mr. Elf, it’s no—” Dagny turned and smiled up at him, nearly clobbering herself on one of the nasty knee-knockers.

  Yax reached, caught her by the arm, and spun her around in one fluid move. They both seemed surprised by the rapidity of his reaction to her plight and their resulting proximity. He could feel the dwarven woman’s warmth pressed against him. And he didn’t mind at all. Judging by the mischievous smile on her face, Dagny didn’t either. Returning her gesture, he grinned but stepped back to a respectful distance. He wasn’t sure about her navy’s policy on fraternization, and he didn’t want to get her court-martialed or worse. Who knew what sort of punishments could await her?

  But in the interest of preserving the moment they’d shared, he said, “I do have a name you know. Feel free to use it anytime.”

  “I would, Mr. Elf, er, mister,” Dagny explained, fiddling with her auburn curls. “I did see it once, written on the boat’s manifest.” Blushing as red as her hair, she added, “But I didn’t want to embarrass myself trying to pronounce it.”

  The elf laughed, easier and freer this time than before. “That’s okay. I get it all the time. The ‘x’ is pronounced like shhh. Yax’Kaqix. But you can call me Yax.”

  “And you can call me, Dags. All my friends do.”

  “Thanks,” he replied. “Does this mean we’re friends?”