12 Miles Below

Chapter 21: The Meadow Underground

The caverns were lit with sunlight. Which was not what was expected for a tunnel system half a mile into the ground. But then again, when did anything that involved mites make complete sense?

In this case it was a simulation of sunlight, which made traversing through these caves feel more like climbing through a dim chasm instead. There were many ways into these caverns and hiking up the mountain we naturally slipped into the first passage large enough to squeeze into. Father didn't seem picky about which, any would work.

Wide warm flood lights scattered across the ceiling, looking like glowing beams of sunlight through the dusty air. Walls took on the shape of geometric cubes intermixed with broken down rocks. Green lights shone through these. Not from mites, but actual circuitry inside the rocks. Wherever there were cracks, the interior revealed some sort of electronics.

I couldn’t see any buttons or any way to access whatever these cubes had inside. It all just seemed like pure circuitry. More mite creations, though this was the first I’d seen that was both active and yet missing the mites.

The tunnel quickly became cramped, and I was forced to get off and walk on my own - crawl on my own for some parts.

“The undersiders had a name for a network of tunnels like this, they call it the underpassage.” Father said beside me, ducking under a rock overhang. “Caverns like these appear on all levels, or at least the ones I’ve been to.”

His helmet turned to me, watching as I brushed my hands over the walls. “And no, before you ask, I don’t know what any of the cubes and electronics on the walls do. As far as I can tell, it is only more mite madness.”

Okay, but where are the mites? This all looked like mite madness for sure, and it was clearly powered too considering all the lights. But not a single mite that I could see. All these lights were from circuits.

“Any trick to navigating here?” I asked, “Seems a little too easy to take a wrong turn and never find the right one again.”

“There are a few... ‘tricks’ as you would call them, to navigate through the underpassage.”

Father pointed out to those lights on the walls. “Green lights inside the rock cracks signify the tunnel leading up a level. Blue lights mean the tunnels will stay at this level.”

“And the tunnels with red lights?” I asked, pointing in one direction we’d passed by. It led to a rock bridge over a chasm, the tunnel at the end held only dim red darkness.

“Those will lead you down a level. Obviously, we won’t be going down that direction.”

I was rather glad to hear that. The red passageways did not look inviting. Not inviting in the least.

We continued making our way into the darker green lit caverns. Two lost souls, one carrying the other whenever it was spacious enough. He wasn’t sprinting like he had in the city, but our pace was still quick and efficient whenever he had a chance to push it.

The hike was long, and deep into the mountains. Most of the time it wasn’t just some closed up one-way tunnel, but rather filled out into larger pockets, with wide cave ceilings, where we’d have to search the walls for the next tunnel out.

The city building mites had been more like craftsmen, trying to build a massive multi-layered something that when looked at from afar could pass as a city. And inside they’d filled the buildings and pipes with their own constructions.

The cave mites were clearly a different breed. These felt more like true artists, with a unified vision. The tunnels and caverns were absolutely breathtaking.

Light shafts almost perfectly lined up with the rock platforms, each chipped in just the right way to both balance circuitry and stone. Waterfalls and stepping stones, carefully placed across the streams. No matter where I stood, the view felt like some kind of painting.

It gave a feeling that these underground tunnels and rooms had been deliberately built to look undeliberate - but artistic at the same time. They even had perfect little niches to restock our water supplies, the water clear and fresh with easy access by a convenient stone not-quite-boardwalk... but obviously made to be used like a boardwalk.

During a section of walking, I got curious about knowing whether we were walking in the right direction or not.

“There’s always one lit up arrow somewhere in sight at all points, though usually more hidden. So long as you follow the arrow, you’ll follow the color’s intent.” He pointed up at the ceiling. There, about as wide as a hand, was a glowing lit arrow, pointing the direction we’d been walking. “Mites always follow rules, and having an arrow somewhere at all times is one of them. They are not always easy to find however.”

“So, if we’re walking down a green path against the arrow, we’re walking down a level instead of up one?”

The entire system screamed of a far more intelligent design, like somehow the mites had gone the extra mile to make them traversable specifically for humans.

We were never lost for long, although some ways upwards were more hidden than others as Father had warned, requiring us to climb up to correctly follow the direction. Some he could outright jump over with me in tow, others would need me to use some grappling gear to climb up.

The air here was gradually warmer, and more humid. Still cold to be sure - but no longer cold enough to freeze running streams of water.

The ground under felt, and smelled, like the dirt we’d find on the lower levels of the clan bunker. The dirt we’d use to grow gardens. And where there was fertile soil and warmer temperatures, there was life.

Unlike the empty mite city, here life had found purchase. Green leafy plants littered the sides and center of caves, clumping together around anywhere the cavern lights shined brightest. Smaller fuzzier creatures would make these shrubs their homes, while mold and fungus called the wet sides of the walls at theirs.

Insects were everywhere, buzzing around or otherwise seeking out decay anywhere it could be. And tiny pipe bats swooped around in rippling swarms to feed on those. They stayed clear of us, flying around.

Anywhere my light flashed over, there was something to see. Color swirled around me, one mossy pigment at a time. The ground was littered with clues of life, anywhere from animal droppings to outright hoofprints and other tracks.

All clan bunkers had an ecosystem of some kind living in the lower levels, even in abandoned bunkers. That's because they all have leaks leading down into the underground. They’d get patched up and walled off as soon as a new clan settled in. Superstition said if any paths into the underground were left open in the clan bunker, machines would eventually stumble upon it and destroy the clan from the inside out. But small things always found a way to sneak past barriers.

“Are any of the wildlife dangerous?” I asked when I spotted bigger tracks on the ground. The wildlife in the clan domains only ever grew as large as a hand. Lizards and rats were among the apex predators.

Down here, it might be a different story. Father shrugged at my question. “No one travels the underground without weapons, so animals have long learned not to get in the way.” He turned his headlights over at the walls, illuminating the colorful moss.

“Fungus and mold can still kill if you eat the wrong ones, stick with frostbloom if you need food. As for animals, the largest you find down in the tunnels are mountain goats. Predators exist, but they’re far more skittish than the goats.” He patted the rifle on it’s strap. “Humans are not their preferred dinner.”

“Goats?”

“You’re the one who asked what animals were down here. Goats. They can climb better and faster than you can.”

I’d never seen a goat in real life before, but I had seen them in video archives. Entertainment from the third era was generally a luxury, but among the cheaper luxuries. Merchants didn’t care much if those wares were duplicated. Books and files containing knowledge were far more controlled in comparison.

Maybe if I’m lucky, I might actually see a goat. That would be neat.

“I’m guessing the big door leads somewhere else, that we’re not interested in?” I asked, pointing at my discovery. A massive slab of metal shut tight and still. Father had climbed right past it, without bothering to investigate.

“They also lead roughly the same way that the tunnels do, but mites may fill these with… different things. Treasure chests that mites have made, I suppose you would call them. And a different breed of Automaton lurks there too. No guide arrows either once you enter the side passages. The main chambers are mostly safe, we’ll stick to these.”

He lowered the rope down to me, which I grabbed and used my legs to rappel upwards as Father pulled the rope back up.

"What sort of stuff?"

“Once, we found a relic armor exploring one of these, not from a chest, but off a dead corpse deeper inside. It had been named Resolution by its owner, an imperial crusader that died a century or two ago. The armor was brought back and sold to House Resolution as their first armor.”

“That’s why they renamed their house? I thought they made a big speech about dreams they all had and the will of gods as the reason.”

It was tradition to rename the first armor a house owns after their house name. Father was quite literally wearing Winterscar itself. Subsequent armors were up to whoever owned them first.

But superstition ran deep in our culture. Father agreed with my conclusion. “They couldn’t reconcile the renaming tradition for their first armor with the terrible omen of renaming an armor owned by an imperial. The whole speech was a cover, but everyone knew the real reason for the name change.”

He grabbed my hand once I was close enough and lifted me outright past the rock ridge. Once on solid ground, I folded up the rope to stuff back into my backpack. Without the environmental systems inside, the thing was quite a bit lighter and more spacious.

“It was the only relic armor we’d ever found in the tunnels in our decades of expeditions. Other things we found in those chests usually ended up being small trinkets or items that the undersiders needed. Levels further down have more powerful treasures.”

I was itching with the need to examine the door, to see how it worked, but that's been tampered down greatly since coming down here. Constant life or death struggles does that to a person, go figure.

Instead I settled for appeasing some other bits of curiosity that wouldn’t cost us time. “Can you tell me anything about the lower levels? Stories, or things that happen down there?”

The tunnel entrance ahead was lit with green, and a tiny arrow glinted slightly off the bottom left side, hiding behind a tall rock. He climbed over a particularly large rock, then grabbed my collar and lifted me up. “When I was in… a better state of mind, there were some sights I remember well. We traveled down to a meadow once, on the second level. An escort mission to keep a few of our traders safe until they could arrive at the next undersider hold. One moment we’re walking through metal and steel alleyways. And then the next, this vast plane, almost like the surface wastes. Except all green, and breathable. Grass grew everywhere, with the occasional trees scattered around.”

“Grass?” Odd plant. Completely worthless for food so it only exists in books and videos. Nobody in their right mind would waste space and soil to grow grass. “The undersiders had an entire field of it?” What weird folks. But I suppose if they’re living in a massive plain, then space wasn’t a luxury.

“Aye. I’d only seen pictures of grass on records when I was a boy. I enjoyed the ocean and forest pictures too. However meadows always seemed something…. more to me. I thought it was how the gods had wanted the surface to look like. How it was supposed to have been. A massive plain of green, stretching in every direction, where you could walk the ground on bare feet even. Instead, something went wrong in their plans and now it’s all ice and snow.”

Plains, forests, oceans, deserts, beaches - all of that was right mystical stuff that you couldn’t really believe existed. I'd read about these in old stories at first and just assumed they were fantasy tropes for a long time. It threw me in for a loop once I'd seen real video footage.

Father shook his head, “I didn’t have many other chances at leisure, there was training to do. Winterscar's last owner had disowned his sons, and offered the armor up in challenge to anyone in the house. You remember your grandmother? She made a bid for the armor through me.”

Yes, I remembered her. A sociopath who saw everyone as tools to be used for her own purposes. Highly clever political creature that one had been. She'd thrown away Father, her own son, the moment mother died and he fell into the bottles. She took charge of me thinking I could be molded into her next proxy pawn, playing the long game. She’d tried with Kidra but cut her losses within the month. My sister was outright immune to the crazy old bat. So grandmother decided a newborn would be a cleaner slate, even if it did take years before I could speak.

Glad she bit the ice early enough. Though I’m worried some of her lessons might have sunk deeper inside than I’d thought. She certainly knew how to groom someone into a weapon, from how Father had ended up as.

To me, Father had always been someone you avoided whenever he arrived back home, until he passed out and it was safe again. Or else you'd end up with bruises. Less of a person and more a force of nature, like a storm that blew into the house each night.

Kidra and I had gotten used to him in our own ways. She still remembered who he had been before the bottle and I'd simply never known him as anyone other. I hadn’t thought much about how his own life must have been like, growing up with a parent like that. Grandmother clearly hadn’t missed where his potential was, and it sounded like she cut out anything that didn’t maximize her goals.

“You asked what I remember the most about the underground. That would be it.” Father said, ever walking forward. “There were battles and people I had met and befriended as well. If they still consider me their friend after I…” He paused for a moment. “After I stopped serving as a relic knight.”

“Did you go back there every now and then, to the meadow? While you were still active.”

“No. We only went there once. The hold refused to let us inside.”josei

“That sounds like Undersiders all right.” I mean, I understood. Scavengers had a reputation as thieves, and I suppose we somewhat deserved it. We do pick the bones of the dead on the surface.

“They didn’t want anything our traders could offer, even if it was useful.” Father said, smolder in his voice. “Ugly scrapping thing, their city. Black castle towers, rock walls and all. It looked like a blight on the land.”

There was heaviness in his voice as he talked. “Seeing that town, how it sat so strangely in the middle of that meadow. I could almost understand how the machines might view us.” He shook his head, pushing the thought away.

“I’ve seen hundreds of different biomes Keith, some teeming with far more life. But I never traveled into something as simple and… and as beautiful as that.”