“If you roll your dice right,” she said, smiling again. “Now follow me.”

  As Dagny stepped over the knee-knocker, she paused long enough to shake her bubbly backside in his direction before continuing along the corridor. It was his turn to blush. Yax hadn’t felt this airy and young in longer than he could recall. And he liked it.

  II. Tour, Interrupted

  The Gar-class submarine measured less than two hundred feet in length, but it featured four squat decks and a labyrinthine network of rooms, holds, chambers, corridors, and crawlspaces. Calling upon one of the Aethyr rotes taught to him by the war college on his home island of Xocne, Yax memorized the layout of the vessel and collated it into a mental map that would allow him to navigate it blindfolded. Without this critical ability, he wagered few Eternal Warriors would survive the perils of the Underworld for long, not that most of them survived for an extended period anyway.

  Extended periods reminded the elf that the tour had gone on for longer than he cared to remember. His curiosity for the mundane marvels on the submarine had long passed as the constant ache in his back and knees from stooping, bending, and crawling took its toll. Yax had sat too long in the bars and taverns of Delve Deep waiting for the decision to come through about his appointment as special advisor. But his carousing and bribery had paid off in the end, mostly the bribes. Now he’d set himself on a course to voyage deeper into the Underworld than any of his people since before the time of the Cataclysm. Still, he’d come aboard to see something other than the black of the Abyss.

  “Is there any reason we’re avoiding the sub’s sensitive systems?” Yax asked. “Or are you saving the best for last?”

  Though he enjoyed Dagny’s company and conversation, he’d grown weary of being introduced to mess cooks, supply clerks, and sewage maintenance technicians. She shuffled her feet and cast her dark eyes about before answering. She looked conflicted.

  “I don’t like dealing with the back’afties,” she admitted. “Working that close to the reactor makes the mechanics battier than the ‘mascots’ they keep to test air quality.”

  “Corrupting emanations aside, I’ve never met a sane tinker.” Bowing before her, he added, “But worry not fair damsel, I shall protect you.”

  “Is that a promise?” Dagny laughed, and her bright smile returned. But something else lingered. Long accustomed to tactical situations, Yax backed off for now. He’d gotten a confession out of her about the engine room, so if he played his cards right, she’d show him everything eventually.

  Looking into her eyes, he answered, “An elf’s word is his bond.”

  The evasive answer served him well.

  “Follow me then. I’ll take you to H.E.A.R.T.”

  “So soon?” He quipped, “But we’ve just met.”

  Dagny blushed and giggled like a schoolgirl with a crush. She replied, “No, silly elf. The High Energy Aethyr Reaction-Transduction Chamber, of course.”

  “That’s all I needed to know.” At least for now, he thought.

  Yax and Dagny joked, flirted, and made small talk on the way to the submarine’s engine room. And before they reached the H.E.A.R.T. of the boat, situated far aft of the bridge, the elf found himself sharing as much information as he managed to extract from her. She told him about growing up on a skimmer craft, one designed to net fish, mussels, and crustaceans from the series of rivers snaking through Delve Deep. She regaled him with descriptions of all manner of creatures pulled from those waters. So he related the story of his first oceangoing voyage. He told her about being impressed by the radical elements of a foreign navy, his unintentional involvement in a civil war, and his eventual imprisonment after the enemy sank his ship out from under him and his crew.

  Dagny interrupted his tale of high seas adventure several times to ask him to expound upon details he considered frivolous or at least secondary to the line of action. The dwarven woman asked him how the fresh sea air had smelled, how the rays of the sun had felt on his skin, and how the sun itself looked on each of the days he described. To him, it remained the same, a bright ball of burning gases lighting the sky.

  As Yax told her about being locked away from the sun in a dungeon beneath a coastal fortress, he heard her sniffling. He placed one hand on her shoulder. She turned toward him with tears in her eyes. Her lips trembled as her mouth failed to form words.

  “Shhh…” he said, uncomfortable with his own emotions, much less those of others. Unsure of what to do, the elf embraced her. Dagny buried her broad face into his stomach and wept for several moments before she collected herself. He didn’t know what else to do, so he stood there. Though he’d had many lovers over the centuries, he’d never had a wife or children, so intimacy repelled him as much as it attracted him…if not more.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry.” She pleaded, “That was unprofessional of me. Please don’t tell the captain.”

  “Don’t tell the captain what?” Yax asked. “I’m not sure what happened here.”

  “Your descriptions of the Overworld and the True Sun were beautiful. But also painful, especially since I’ll never see it. Not again anyway.”

  “You’ve been topside before?”

  “No, but I’ve seen the sun. Once upon a time, I tested high enough to be trained for the priesthood. I scribed till my hand wanted to fall off, studied every language of the Abyss, and charted the movement of the sun and the stars in a proper stellarium.”

  “What happened?” Yax inquired, his curiosity peaked by her revelation.

  Wiping her eyes, Dagny laughed, “That, my new friend, is another story. But I’m afraid it’ll have to wait. We’ll need more privacy and alcohol than we’ll find here.”

  “Deal. As soon as we get back to port, we’ll kick back and talk all about us.”

  “I like the sound of that.” Her tears passed, and her smile returned.

  No further tears or tales interrupted their tour of the dwarven submarine. The pair walked in silence until reaching a heavy brass hatch inscribed with a blazing heart. Subtle, very subtle, Yax thought as they approached the secure portal.

  Two severe-looking crewmen stood at attention on either side of the door. Both were clad in the familiar spider silk coveralls issued by the Naval Guild. Unlike the other members of the crew, they wore longer beards, braided, and tucked into a lamellar breastplate constructed of the chitinous plates of some armored monstrosity. Short, straight blades hung from their weapon belts alongside lethal little air pistols, the shorter, smaller bore cousin of the pneumatic cannons and rifles used by dwarven military units. Common enough before the Cataclysm, this ‘lost’ technology was all but unheard of outside of the Underworld now, except for the rare gnome that traded for one with a deserter who’d evaded or eliminated the spiders sent to retrieve him.

  “That’s close enough, sea rider,” the taller dwarf on Yax’s left warned.

  “It’s okay, Chief,” Dagny said. “Yax has the captain’s blessing.”

  “And he’s welcome to it. But not with those,” the chief replied, pointing to the elf’s only visible weapons, the sword called Demon Queller and Starkiller, his jade wand. “Rules are rules. Gotta be a Barracuda to carry in sensitive areas. And he isn’t one of us.”

  “You’re welcome to try and take them from me,” Yax responded, baring his teeth. He didn’t allow himself to be disarmed in the best of circumstances, certainly not in the heart of the Underworld surrounded by untested allies and petty tyrants like the chief.

  The shorter dwarf put his hand on his pistol, but the chief crossed his arms and stared up at the elf as if unimpressed by the challenge. “I’d be happy to, but the captain would have my hide if I put one between those pretty blue eyes of yours, elfie.”

  “It’d be faster if you boys pulled them out and measured them right here,” Dagny teased, causing the three men to laugh. “Regardless of race, men are all the same.”

  “Guess we could make an exception this one time,” the chief said, glancing over at his subordinate. “Since he’s got the captain’s blessing and all.”

  “Thanks, Oddr, er, Chief,” Dagny responded, beaming her familiar smile.

  “Don’t make me regret it, Starshina. He’s your responsibility.”

  As the other Barracuda opened the door, Chief Oddr waved them along. Yax nodded to Oddr as he passed through the portal and received a reluctant one in response. Dagny continued down the flight of stairs beyond the doorway and into the H.E.A.R.T. He waited until they’d almost reached the engine room at the bottom before speaking.

  “Now that’s what I call powers of persuasion. You transformed those two from suspicious guards to courteous doormen, er, doordwarves, with a joke and a smile.”

  “Not the most potent weapons in my arsenal. But the girl knows a few tricks.” Winking, she whispered, “Plus, he and I have a ‘past’ shall we say. And if it came out, he’d be the one in hot water. Our Guild takes a dim view on affairs with subordinates.”

  “Guess it’s a good thing I’m an advisor and not a superior officer,” Yax quipped.

  “Now who’s the one using humor as a means of persuasion?”

  “Me? Never.”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Smiley-Elf,” Dagny replied as she stopped at the base of the stairwell. She gestured toward the open doorway and added, “If you’re grinning like that over one of your own jokes, wait until you see the reactor. It’s scary but awesome.”

  “Kinda like you?”

  The young yeoman blushed as crimson as her hair. Whispering to him, she cooed, “Careful. Flattery is liable to get you everywhere.”

  As he eased past her into the H.E.A.R.T., he said to himself, my thoughts exactly.

  Thoughts of tender flesh and the warmth it would provide turned to those of cold steel and a fire that blazed like the heart of a miniature sun. As a servant of the Aethyreal Flame, Yax’s primary elemental affinity as a war-mage, he sensed the tremendous heat coming from the metallic sphere dominating the center of the vaulted chamber. And it called to him in the tongue of the residents of Phlogiston, the Eighth Hell, the fiery mantle encircling, protecting the False Sun at the heart of the world.

  What had the Dwarves of Delve Deep created to power their technology? Or recreated rather, he reminded himself. Whatever they’d harnessed inside the heavy metal device was angry. It didn’t like being confined and milked for its power. The heart of the H.E.A.R.T. wanted to exhaust itself in one big bang and then return to the endless lake of cosmic fire from whence it came. But somehow the dwarves had managed to harness its abilities and sustain its lifecycle almost indefinitely, albeit imperfectly.

  The beast in the ball raged; and in its terrible tantrum, it struck out at them in the sole way available to it, its lethal, invisible emanations. As an advisor brought in to find a way to make the Aethyr-powered systems on the submarine safer for its crew, Yax saw the obvious solution. Take the sphere somewhere deep, crack it like an egg, and unleash the fiery elemental trapped inside. But the dwarves would never go for it. They’d never relinquish an element once they’d harnessed its powers. And why would they? He wouldn’t. After all, power existed to be wrested from others and then used by the victor.

  “Sheer madness,” Yax commented, “or pure genius.”

  “If ya were tah ask me,” an unfamiliar voice replied, “I’d have tah say it were a bit of both.”

  For a moment, the elf thought he’d heard the voice of the elemental inside the reactor. Until he looked down and saw the shortest dwarf yet. The bug-eyed, bald crewman, standing a mere three feet in height in a baggy set of coveralls, saluted him.

  “You don’t have to salute me. I’m just along for the ride.”

  Turning his salute into an extended hand, the back’afty grinned when Yax shook his grubby, grease-stained paw. “Nonsense, it’s a pleasure. I’m First Starshina Kettil, and I pretty well run the show down here.”

  A gnarled dwarf with sparse white hair and ratty beard wearing the gold bars of an officer said, “Don’t be filling the poor fool’s head full of nonsense, Kettil. He’s my mechanist mate and a damn fine worker, but he’s not in charge. I am.”

  “And you are?” Yax said, extending his hand this time. The dwarf stared at him.

  “This is Doctor Osmir,” Dagny interjected, as if he should recognize the old dwarf. “He’s Chief Mechanist onboard Nineteen, and one of the finest minds in the navy.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Yax nodded, lowering his hand.

  “The pleasure is all mine,” the doctor said, grabbing the elf’s hand with enough force to almost wrench his arm out of its socket.

  “Seems like it. Can I have my hand back now?”

  “Oh, sorry, I get a bit excitable. I’m overjoyed to have you onboard.”

  “That makes two of you so far,” Yax laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” Osmir said, “we’re all a bit standoffish at first. Comes from living in a siege state. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, mainly because it comes back to try again.”

  “Seems like you’re doing a damn fine job of killing yourselves.”

  The doctor furrowed his bushy brow, “You mean the Aethyr reactor.”

  “Among other things but let’s start there.”

  “By all means, let me introduce you to the little engine that could kill us all.”

  “If you’ll pardon the pun,” Yax replied, “I’m all ears.”

  The sudden sounding of a siren punctuated his remark as it forced him to cover his pronounced pierced ears. The reverberating cacophony continued unabated, amplified by the bell-shaped ceiling of the metal engine room, until the Doctor pulled a length of chain hanging from a glass-and-brass box along the wall. The irritating noise dissipated at once, but a metallic ticking like that of a clockwork automaton replaced it. Some of the tones struck were long and others short, creating some kind of encrypted message.

  “Battle stations, everyone!” the Doctor cried, providing a rough translation.

  “Looks like we’ll have to interrupt our tour,” Dagny said, grabbing Yax’s hand.

  “And our conversation,” Osmir added. “If we don’t die, come visit soon.”

  The white-haired physicist waved as if he didn’t have a care in the Hollow World about whatever danger lurked beyond the thin skin protecting them from the cold waters and the crushing pressures of the Abyss. Yax returned the gesture as Dagny dragged him from the poisonous core of the craft toward the bridge.

  The possibility of being killed by the unknown enemy without or the unseen enemy within did not affect their sense of duty. The back’afties threw themselves into their work as if they were diving into the arms of a maiden rather than the coldest, blackest layer of the Nine Hells. Yax admired their spirit, happy to be along for the ride.

  III. Countermeasures

  Yax and Dagny emerged onto the crowded bridge of the dwarven submarine. The elf noticed an immediate transformation. An observation window dominated the far wall. He reckoned steel blinds retracted for maneuvering in close quarter scenarios such as combat or pursuit. The forces acting on the panel have to be extreme, he thought. Let’s hope dwarven glassmakers are as skilled as their gnomish cousins.

  Ignoring the chatter of the bridge crew, Yax fixated on the alien aquatic vista beyond the transparent panel. He assumed it operated in a similar fashion to the periscope. The image was bright, crisp, and clear, despite the murky conditions outside.

  Before he realized it, he stood with his stubby nose pressed to the glass. Schools of albino fish darted this way and that to avoid the submarine. As the vessel navigated a deep-sea trench wide enough to be a valley, a host of bioluminescent creatures crawled along the crevice’s steep, stony sides. But a bigger fish in the distance drew his attention.

  “What in the Nine Hells is that monstrosity?” Yax asked.

  “That’s no monster, but it’s full of ‘em,” Captain Ingvar replied. Yax had been so preoccupied with the scene outside the boat that he failed to note the officer’s approach.

  “That’s a ship? Looks like a giant Ja’Kan to me.”

  “I’m not sure what a Ja’Kan is, but if it’s a marine predator with flippers, a toothy snout, and a taste for flesh then that describes it.” Tugging at his beard, the captain explained, “We call ‘em Leviathans. Kappa and others capture ‘em with some form of witchery and then alter ‘em by adding ablative armor and building crew quarters and other compartments on the broad backs of the big bastards. Modified Leviathans are nigh on immune to anything short of acid, fire, or electricity. That’s why we pack all three.”

  “So how does it fit into our mission parameters?”

  “Because that’s what we call a Throne-class Leviathan. She’s a slave ship.”

  “So ‘Throne’ is an affectation?” Yax asked. He hoped for the best but prepared for the worst. Thrones, also known as the Ophanim, were the most vile and vicious of the countless slaver races serving Chichu’äm.

  “Oh no, boy-o. Every one of those slavers is captained by a Throne.”

  “Sonuva…” the elf cursed, “And I thought this was going to be easy.”

  “Easy might be safe but rarely is it fun,” Captain Ingvar reminded him.

  “Never a truer statement was spoken, sir. Not even by high priests of Kümatz.”

  “Now that’s the spirit,” the captain cheered. “You heard the elf, Commander Swari. He’s got a death wish too. Order intercept course and speed.”

  “You heard the Captain,” the stern commander snapped to attention and shouted. “All ahead intercept speed. Flood all tubes. Auxiliary defensive systems to hot standby. Barracudas report to forward airlock.”

  Swari relayed orders while another female crewmember typed away on a machine with brass keys. The words she keyed into the device triggered a response from another mechanism that translated them into a series of long and short clicks. It looked to Yax as if the system carried orders from the bridge to other areas of the boat.