New Cthonic 4

Jake Quigley and his father walked in a tight single file, their headlamps dim and pointed down at the dew-covered ground. A Code Orange hung heavy over the pair, spoiling what would have otherwise been an ideal Friday morning hunting trip. Less than forty miles away, a National Guard drone had spotted a Helcat stalking through the canopy last night, about eight hours ago. That could mean nothing or everything; the beast could be in New York by now, or, it could be here, prowling silently amongst them.

Jake strained his ears with every step, listening for the creaking of trees followed by a heavy thump, the sounds of a Helcat leaping down from its perch to the forest floor. From there, he would draw his single fancy super-tech arrow, a Christmas present from his parents, while his father loaded two depleted uranium slugs into his shotgun. Together, they’d have but three shots between them and certain death.

It was wishful thinking. Even the runtiest of the enormous mountain lions currently terrorizing Appalachia could pounce at over a hundred miles an hour, tear through steel, and survive dozens of rifle rounds to the body. But the pair were rednecks through and through, and every redneck had a plan. Said plans weren’t often sensible, but they were had regardless, and that had to count for something.

Neither man would be out here today but for a combination of the ten-thousand-dollar bounty on tunnel wolves and a surprisingly thorough blogpost by self-described intrepid reporter, Ginny Ennis. The Quigleys had decent farming jobs and had been content to let the bounty pass until the teen girl had come out of the woods yesterday morning, huffing and puffing with one slung over her petite shoulders. It had been eighty pounds, lean and sinuous, and around five feet long but narrow, akin to something between a monstrous eel and a weasel. Ginny had been the one to name it: tunnel wolf, implying that there were more and that they were social creatures. Her description of a trapped rabbit and its screams echoing out from a crack in the ground as it was eaten slowly had carried over into his dreams last night. Horrifying yet evocative, the scene seemed to stick to the insides of his skull. The town may have gained a new fear to linger over them when out and about, but he'd bet her story had sparked something in every hunter in Dudlin. They were all, he was sure, full of clever ideas and not-so-sensible plans for how they'd have done it if they were in Ginny's shoes.

The Quigleys came to an abrupt stop. The sound of hammering echoed out through the trees ahead. What tweaker would be putting up a hunting blind during a Code Orange?

Merrit Quigley glanced back at his son, careful not to blind him with his headlamp. “What do you reckon? Keep on ahead, or leave the fools be?”

Jake thumbed the string of his compound bow pensively. It was probably one of the more hillbilly-ish families, those bold enough to put up an illegal hunting blind on State Game Lands with a potential Helcat about.

“Should at least see who it is. I wouldn’t mind coordinating with the Springfields or the Cassidys.” They may have been dumb and drug-addled, but they were agreeable enough in short bursts.

His father nodded and turned around, switching his headlamp to high so as not to surprise a group of armed men on high alert. The woods were still stripped bare by winter, spring just now beginning to return some color and brush to the hillside. They made their way quickly across the dead leaves and broken branches to Salem's Cave, favoring haste instead of stealth.

To Jake’s surprise, whoever had beaten them here wasn’t building a hunting blind after all. The hammering came bellowed out from past the massive carved stone blocks that framed the entrance to the cave. A distorted, clashing chorus of echoes bounced back and forth across the wooded hills, surrounding them on all sides.

His father grumbled and scratched under his thick fleece. “Excavating…this is going to be a headache and a half.”

They carefully made their way down to the cave, following the paths freshly cleared of leaves by recent visitors; men dragging tools, it looked like. The entrance slabs were bigger in person and had an air of impossible age, as though they were older than the hills they sat in. Eyes of different sizes and styles had been carved across every inch, some with incredible detail, veins visible and each lash distinct, and others crude, looking to have been hacked violently into the walls. Jake ran his fingers across them, his stomach sinking. He couldn't help but feel like they were warnings. You are being watched, perhaps.

His father stuck his head into the cave, illuminating a cloud of dust and the silhouettes of four people. "'lo, there! It's Merrit Quigley and son! Mind if we come inside?"

The sounds of work ceased, and three headlamps turned to regard them. A deep, silken voice that sent shivers up his spine responded, "Free country, Quigley." His tone was a mix of dry and mocking.

Ah, Christ, the Laponte Clan were excavating the cursed cave out – as if Dudlin needed something else to worry about.

Merrit flashed his son a meaningful look before leading the way in. Through the dust, they saw three Laponte men, including the Clan's pale and ominous patriarch, Charles Laponte, at the far end of the cave. They had hammered planks of wood in place around the formerly thin crack in the wall to act as bracing and were using chisels to cleave it wider. The Laponte men were as gaunt and unwelcoming as usual, their hard eyes glinting in dusty darkness at him, silently bidding him to depart. The looks were wasted on Jake, though, pointless while there were two strikingly feminine figures present.

The first was the stone statue he'd seen pictures of on Ginny Ennis's blog, a pretty girl a little younger than he, carved to appear like she wore thin, damp robes that clung to her body. Down her eyes, dripping off her face and into her palms was a steady stream of water that left gold dust in its wake, painting her tears and weeping hands that radiant color. Ginny had deemed this statue 'The Maiden of Infinite Sorrows.' He'd found it needlessly dramatic on first read, in person, however, Jake could think of no better name for her. The Maiden was haunting, her anguish devastatingly lifelike. Word around town was that it was bad luck to disrespect the statue, and potentially fatal to go so far as to steal her gold. This, too, he could no longer doubt while in her presence.

Jake found himself doffing his hat and nodding to the statue out of respect. The gesture earned him a single raised brow from the other woman in the cave, Charlotte Laponte, who was knelt by the statue's feet. The rail-thin, pale woman wore a modest handmade dress in a style common to the women in her family, and had the same pitch-black hair as the rest of the Clan. She was around his age, a little older but close enough that they'd have gone to high school together if the Lapontes hadn't opted to homeschool. She had been arranging candles, flowers, and wreathes at the base of the statue when they'd interrupted, making a shrine to the Maiden. Jake had grown up hearing tales of the reclusive Laponte Clan and their dark, occult ways, but this was the first time he'd taken the rumors seriously. There seemed to be a purpose to the candles and wreathes, an uncomfortable geometry to their placement that simultaneously drew and repelled his gaze.

“You sure about this, Laponte?” asked his father, waving some of the dust cloud away. “More hazards to mining here than just a cave-in.”

The tall and angular patriarch was unusually still, his voice slow and melodious. “If you could hear the Call, Merrit Quigley, you would save your breath for labor and take up a pickaxe. The Lord has delivered to us this great earthen treasure, and we work now to show it its proper due, our sweat and pain a sacrifice made in earnest. Glance the statue, Quigley; her golden tears vanish into cracked earth below. She promises us wealth and sustenance in the Cave yet weeps for what must be given to attain it. Your son understands. Don't you, boy? These shadowed halls awake a greater curiosity in you."

Charles Laponte stared at him expectantly. Between the dust and the man’s own headlamp, Jake could barely make out his face, and yet his gaze cut through the light-stained haze. He nodded at his question, only realizing after his head was already moving that, yes, something was stirring in him. Jake wasn’t sure he’d go so far as to help the Lapontes mine the Cave out, but for some inexpressible reason, he did need to know more about what lay deeper.

"She weeps for you," said Charlotte Laponte, tone utterly devoid of emotion. She had her father's grey, piercing eyes. "She weeps for those foolish enough to seek their fortunes within this place." The woman held out a white flower to him, its petals dyed gold by the statue's tears. He felt his mouth go dry. God, she was pretty, though.

Merrit grunted noncommittally. "Right. We'll let you get back to it." Putting a firm grip on his son's shoulder, he walked the two of them outside and kept going until they were a hill away before stopping with a shudder. Dawn was starting to break, thank the Lord. He released a great, relieved exhale and shook his head. "Something wrong with them folks."

“Yeah…” Jake winced at the renewed sounds of mining. He knew that they ought to be making haste away from here – Helcats associated construction with food – but he couldn’t shake the sensation that he’d left something important back in the cave. “What now? We shouldn’t be within half a mile of the hammering.”

“Mm, almost daybreak. Let’s see if we can’t track one of these new bats back to its home and find another way into the cave complex. Make a note of it and maybe return on a Code Yellow or Green with some traps.”

Jake looked around, confused. His father pointed up at a pine tree nearby where, sure enough, three palm-sized bats with grey-and-black mottled fur were gnawing on infected nodules from a rust fungus. No wonder his old man had spotted them; White Pine Blister Rust had wreaked havoc on the farm their family managed.

“I seen them feasting on elongate hemlock scale, gypsy moth eggs, and spotted lanternfly eggs on the way here. Don’t care much for Laponte’s preaching, but that Cave might of given us something alright apart from monsters. Think they'd let us name them if we bagged one? I like the name Cooper's blightguards, poor kid."

His jaw dropped; now that he knew what to look for, Jake could see the little bats throughout the canopy. Not far above them, one was silently combing through the undersides of an eastern hemlock's branches. Its hair-like teeth flashed, reflecting his headlamp as it delicately worked to pick scale insects off the tree.

Incredible, it was an honest-to-God miracle. They fed on at least four separate invasive species, and he had a strong suspicion that they ate more than that, too. Something…something was happening here. Maybe Laponte was right - they were just so inexplicably intentional, as if they really were gifts from God. By themselves, the bats could permanently alter the trajectory of Appalachia – and they were only one of the new creatures emerging from Salem’s Cave. Who knew what else lay within?

He had to find out.

..........

Salem was feeling quite chipper, as much as he could be without human biology, at least. The future seemed much brighter now that people were visiting him daily! Granted, they didn't know they were visiting Salem Cooper, but they were visiting all the same, and that was all that really mattered to him. For as much as he loved his own creations, nothing could relate to having actual humans around. He didn't even care why they came or what they wanted from or for him, just that they came and stayed. Even the Laponte Clan were welcome. They were still odd and somewhat disturbing, even as a living cave system, but the occultists were growing on him. The men came after midnight on most nights to sacrifice chickens to him, cutting off their heads and throwing the still-twitching bodies into the entrance fissure for his wolves to eat, and the women liked to adorn the statue of Samiah with flowers while quietly praying to her. He was beginning to understand why Gods demanded sacrifices and adoration – both were incredible sources of power. Each chicken willingly given granted him an order magnitude more energy than the deaths of other similarly sized animals, and the worship raised his passive power gain measurably.

But more than all that, he was just glad for the company. He'd been in a rough way emotionally after his first night as a dungeon. Watching that man crawl away after losing two dogs in an attempt to rescue him had sent Salem into bit of a spiral. He didn't want to terrorize Dudlin – his family and most of his friends lived here – nor did he want Samiah's statue to sit at the entrance to some wretched and accursed hole in the ground. At least his would-be-rescuer managed to kill one of his tunnel wolves and gained some Experience out of the mess; that made him feel marginally better about killing his dogs. Salem wasn't sure what it actually meant to gain Experience or what it was exactly, but hopefully, it could make a difference in the man’s life.

That hope and desire had been what he’d latched onto in the aftermath. Salem was powered by capital-C Change, and while chaos and havoc accomplished that goal, he didn’t have to represent negative change. He could at least try to make a positive difference in the world.

Salem wanted to be the kind of dungeon that people could build a civilization around. It was an ambitious goal. People had fled from places like Dudlin because of the danger, for the danger, or what it promised, to suddenly become the draw to bring them back was a tall order.

As super-tech made it easier to support and build megacities, Americans had, over the course of decades, slowly abandoned the countryside for major population centers. The consequences formed a negative feedback loop. Fewer people meant fewer supers and fewer resources to manage the various threats that inevitably congregated on the outskirts of society. More threats meant more people fled to better-protected cities, and on and on until you had a nearly perpetual state of emergency across wide expanses of the rural United States.

Ottoman agricultural tech and good old American superplastics had killed this once-prosperous town. Every farm left abandoned created more once-tamed wilderness on which problems could fester. Penn State had shut down its research stations and observatory in Dudlin due to the risk, and the lumber industry across the world had been in a slow collapse for decades. If nothing changed, there would be yet another ghost town dotting the mountains of Appalachia.

He could fix all of that. Dudlin, Pennsylvania needed a reason to exist into the twenty-first century, and he would be that reason. Salem would create new resources and drive a gold rush, one both literal and figurative. There would be gold, yes, and other precious minerals – they were cheaper to add than much of what he'd already done – but they would pale in comparison to what his imagination could make. For the first time in his life, he had a real vision for what his future as an artist looked like. He would turn himself into an entire ecosystem, ripe for plundering and eternally explorable, filled with never-before-seen wonders, strange alloys and organisms, and monsters packed full of more than simple Experience.

Salem had left the cave entrance he'd made during the tutorial untouched. Its aesthetics were broad enough to work with whatever he came up with in the future, and more importantly, he could sense that myths were beginning to pop up around the eyes and the statue of Samiah. He couldn't intuit them, the rumors appearing like fuzzy, vibrating clouds that hung around the objects to his perspective, but many visitors had been kind enough to speculate aloud. It was 'bad luck' to touch Samiah and her gold, and the carvings were a warning that ancient entities watched over the cave. He found both myths charming, and they generated a little energy each time they proliferated, so Salem had decided to keep the entry.

Beyond that, though, things were completely different. Past the fissure at the back of the entrance was a Room of Respite. There were only two ways in or out of the room, both of which would be easy to seal with a bit of ingenuity, and in that relative safety, Salem had placed a pool of crystal clear, potable water, and ringed it with smooth, stone sleeping nooks. Above, for natural lighting, were curtains of glowing, poisonous silk strands hanging from the backs of glowworms. These insects were of his own creation and harmless to mammals, but deeper within himself, he had placed their much larger, much deadlier cousins with webs capable of ensnaring humans and clogging machinery. The ones here served as ambiance and as contrast for those so that a man, upon his return from the deep, could look up and shiver at their memory.

Past the Room of Respite was a worked hallway that opened into a natural, one-hundred-foot-deep pit with thin rough-hewn stairs carved in a spiral around its sides. At the bottom of this treacherous climb was his masterpiece, a massive cavern that sloped unevenly into the flooded depths a football field away. Beyond those lay only his Heart Room for now, the cavern and its ecosystem having exhausted his energy and focus.

At the core of the great cavern was the interplay between two weak Lures. In one of the hot springs that crowded the entrance, he had placed a very mild Source of extradimensional energy, a connection to an ephemeral dimension rich with Life Magic, and set the springs to bubble forth irregularly. Every few hours or so, the water would churn and spill out over the edge, trickling down the stepped natural terraces until it soaked the section of the cavern that was like a swampy forest. The soil for the plants came from the sporadic gashes and holes in the ceiling far above, and was fertilized by his second Lure, the enriched guano of his Source Bats, which nested among the thousands of stalactites. The small magical creatures were his gift to the mountains around him; they fed on almost exclusively invasive species of fungi, insects, and plants, and converted them within their digestive systems into a potent Source of Earth Magic. With time, as they grew in enough number to spread beyond his caverns, they would return the ragged woods of Appalachia to mighty, dense forests.

It was atypical dungeon design, he knew, to focus on a single massive chamber, but Salem thought he'd knocked it out of the park. By soaking the room with the ultimate magical fertilizer and Life-touched water, the energy cost for all sorts of in-theme monsters and living Lures had fallen precipitously. As long as something could plausibly exist within what was already there, it was easier to create, and with every organism he added, his understanding of their regulatory feedback loops expanded, giving him more ideas. The source bats had a symbiotic relationship with the giant glowworms; they spared their eggs and larvae, and the adult glowworms protected their roosts from tunnel wolves while they slept. The glowworms also ringed the holes in the ceiling, helping keep external Pennsylvania insects out and the bizarre and incredible breeds he was making in. And below, within the wetlands of the cavern, plants rich with Earth and Life Magic fed solar bees, which processed the pollen into glowing, golden honey. Their hives, in turn, nurtured said plants with their light, giving rise to more magical vegetation – and so on.

Yes, the cavern was coming together nicely, and once he had people coming in and out and taking his bounties into their world, there would be energy in spare to take it to the next level. All of the hot springs would tie into Sources of Magic, the plants that processed the water and guano would be improved, and every niche that could exist in this ecosystem would be filled with awesome and bizarre creatures. Fortunes would be made within this grand chamber, lives changed for the better.

Unfortunately, his tunnel wolves had thus far kept people from pushing deeper, either out of fear or, in Ginny's singular case, because she'd been too excited by her kill to keep going. Charles Laponte had commanded one of his youngest to wriggle through the fissure, and the boy had made it to the cavern, but the Clan was notoriously reclusive. Salem doubted they'd told a soul what they'd seen. It was reasonable, he supposed, the animal sacrifices they performed for him regularly were extremely illegal, but still, he was dying to see some real action. He just had to take it on faith for now that his efforts weren’t in vain, and that somewhere out there, real adventurers were on their way.

AN: The creative JUICE is low so I'm taking a bit of a JUICE break by focusing on New Cthonic for a few chapters. I should be back to Play Test soon enough, but I was starting to burn out a little, and I've learned that it's best to listen to your brain and step in early there. Powering through can produce a mid or bad product which in turn further demoralizes you and can kick off a death spiral. Working on another project keeps me writing and keeps my creative urge as something fun and exciting to indulge.