The Pit

         "We weren't about to just saunter on in there like we owned the place," the digger protested. He was gap-toothed and milky-eyed, a burrowing creature dredged up and thrust into an environment he wasn't suited to. His age couldn't be guessed at, lines etched into his flesh from hard labor and exposure cut into even more stark relief by the red dirt that lived in the creases.

         "You were ordered in, last I checked," snapped the foreman. They could have been brothers, the two of them, miner and herder of miners. Not that they necessarily looked anything alike, but more that the earth they carved into the bones of had left them both withered and shapelessly brown.

         Corvex ran a hand over his face, looked at the sky as though it would lend him assistance, and sighed. "Listen, both of you. I don't care why either of you are out here or not in there or whatever the last set of instructions were. I want to know what happened in there." He jabbed a finger at the mouth of a tunnel, yawning dark, at which a gaggle of other brownish workers had gathered and were peering in. They leaned as though they were teetering at the edge of a cliff rather than on safe ground, and each pulled away, in turn, wobbling and wearing stricken looks, like they had thought to jump.

         The digger snorted loudly and hawked -- thankfully away from Corvex -- a gob of brown phlegm. "Place went wrong," was all he said. The foreman moved as though to start shouting again, but Corvex held up a hand and the bluster left him.

         "Please, elucidate."

         "E-what-now?" This time the digger and the foreman were in agreement and they looked at one another with grave distrust at the realization.

         Corvex stifled a frustrated noise. "Digger," his turn to snap now. "'Place went wrong' doesn't tell me much. What went wrong? It couldn't have just been a cave-in. This place is notorious for being unsafe. Why is everyone milling around?"

         "Bunch'a freeloaders, is what," the foreman grumbled.

         "You've the right of it," the digger responded, folding wiry arms over his chest. "We ain't out here just to be out here. Ain't getting paid to be out here," he jerked his head back to the tunnel. "Zero is more than we're getting paid to go back in there, though."

         "Just start at the beginning." Corvex pushed the long tail of his leather coat out of the way and settled down on the rock next to the digger. A man of the road, Corvex himself was weather-worn and suntanned, his blond hair baked a deep brownish-gold, his sharp features marked here and again with scars, large and small, but next to the digger he looked as fair as a lord's daughter. "You may go," he waved the foreman off.

         The digger watched the foreman go, waiting to start until the other man was well out of earshot. "Not going to know a thing, that one," he said, eyes lingering on the foreman for a moment longer before turning back to Corvex. "Ain't been back in the tunnel since he promoted out of it. Probably smarter'n the rest of us for that."

         "Not going back in?" Corvex prompted.

The digger nodded. "Ain't about to reg- regl-," the digger's face screwed up as he tried to dig a word out, prizing it out of some dusty fold of his brain like the stone in the tunnel. "Regale," he said at last. "You with ghost stories. You know us miners are keen on the folk tales and our charms and whatnot. But, you wanted me to start at the beginning, so I will. Was a few months ago."

         Corvex rested his elbows and his knees and listened. The digger seemed to have wanted to tell someone this tale, someone he thought would believe him, and the words just fell out of the man without any more prompting.

         "Thing is, this tunnel was ordered for a new road, I'm sure you knew that. Thing is, this whole damn thing has been a mess since day one. Ain't sure who would bother to curse a stretch of rock so far out of the way as this, but it sure was a soul with a mighty temper. Water started seeping in as soon as we broke ground, not ground water, neither. From up above. Not much of it though, enough to make the air stink. Caused a bit of rust if you got it on anything, just had to be right about yourself, we thought. Then folks started up and disappearing."

         The digger paused for effect. "Mining is hard work," Corvex offered. "It's not unusual for men to walk off a site when they learn that, is it?"

         Satisfied, the digger shook his head. "No sir, got the right of it again. Same as you, thought nothing of it. Bless 'em for trying the road back alone and all that. Then one turned back up! Grufin was his name. Didn't know him well, but I'll not be forgetting him now. We hadn't been digging long, but we'd made good work, found some fissures in the stone that got us farther along than had the stone been solid. Made for some twisty tunnels, though, easy to get turned around in. A handful of us came 'round a corner and sure as daylight, there old Grufin is! Standing with his back to us. Thought we'd gotten lucky and found him before he starved or some such."

         "No such luck I take it?"

         "No such luck," the digger replied. "Targ, other fellow we was with, reaches out and claps him on the shoulder, all friendly like, and Grufin falls right over. Targ brings his lamp around to see what's the matter and we all see Grufin's face. Blue as a cornflower, skin all saggy like he'd been left in a wash basin."

         Corvex cocked his head to one side in spite of himself. "He drowned?"

         The digger nodded. "True thing. Not a drop of water when we found him. Spilled a lungful when Targ and Fex picked him up to haul him out of the site. Can't leave a body or the whole crew is in for it. Anyhow, it gets odder from there. We ain't got a medic on post here, not a big enough dig, so Targ and Fex haul old Grufin out to the heap and bury him there. Things go on all the same for a few days then," the man waved his arms. "Whoosh! Targ and Fex are gone, too."

         "Found them drowned as well?"

         "Wish it made that much sense," the digger lamented. "Found 'em both, but only because we heard Fex putting up a right fit out at the heap in the middle of the night. Rushed out there just to find Targ and Fex buried in the heap, right next to old Grufin like someone had made graves special for 'em too. Targ was already dead, didn't look like he even put up a struggle."

         "And Fex?"

         The digger's lips twisted as though he'd bitten into something sour. "Had to load him up and send him back to the city. Couldn't get any sense out of him when we dug him up. Wouldn't talk when the sun was out, soon as it got dark his keenin' would start up again. Turned into a right banshee if we took him into the tunnels. Got under the crew's skin, couldn't keep him."

         Corvex frowned and pondered, rubbing his palm over the brush of stubble that had grown on his chin on the ride out to this dusty hinterland. The outfit that was funding this venture, a conglomerate of trading families that had decided to dig their own trading route, had decided to see what, exactly, was holding up their project. Those wealthy dynasties had turned to the government's own elite investigators, the Inquisitors, who had, in turn tasked Corvex with teasing out the details. Corvex was more well versed in the fine art of plucking secrets from the flesh of criminals and madmen, but he supposed his superiors felt he needed to broaden his horizons.

         "You alright there, son?"

         Starting, Corvex brought his green eyes up to meet the digger's. "Take me in."

         The digger snorted. "Already told you, ain't going in. You might look like one of them city princelings, but you're just a set of soft hands out here. What are you going to do to me?" he preemptively guffawed at his own joke. "Send me to work in the mines?"

         Corvex allowed himself a crooked smile. "You said you would be willing to part with a lantern, however?"

         That earned him another snort. "You can take all the damn lanterns you can carry, 'long as none of us need to follow you in there."

         "Help me outfit myself, then," Corvex said, standing and brushing the dust from his riding leathers. Dirty as his pants were, the mine's disgorged powders left reddish smears behind, sticking stubbornly. He wondered if he should ask for a mask.

         An hour later, he found himself standing before the mouth of the tunnel. The other diggers and foremen had been out in the open air long enough that the hanging lanterns hadn't had their oil filled and those that remained lit were lonely pinpricks of dull orange that somehow seemed less real than the darkness that pressed in around them.

         "Good luck." The digger had been brave, coming this close to the tunnel's entrance, but even as he spoke he took small steps backwards, closer to safety, seemingly unaware that he was even moving.

         Corvex didn't turn to look at him. He felt a crawling sensation along his neck and shoulders and sensed that if he broke eye contact with the darkness, he wouldn't be able to turn back to it. It also struck him as a wise decision to ignore the fact that he felt like he had eye contact with the darkness at all.

         "You said it started with the water?" the Inquisitor managed.

         The digger's voice was growing increasingly distant. "Seemed to be."

         Squaring his shoulders, Corvex triple checked his lantern. He had his own equipment, gear that had seen him through a dozen campaigns and a score or more expeditions, yet the usually comforting weight felt off. As though the maw he stood in front of had thrown off gravity, shifted its center. Corvex felt like he was tilting.

         Finally, he was able to tear his eyes away to look over his shoulder at the digger. He painted a cocky grin on his face that he didn't feel. "Wish me luck."

         The digger offered a weak wave.

         Stepping into the tunnel, Corvex could have sworn he had stepped into a new ecosystem, one not typically found in the belly of the earth. Where he had expected the deep, damp breath of the living earth mingling with the dust from outside, Corvex instead walked into an eerie stillness. The flame in the lantern clutched in his hand wavered only with his own pulse, and his own breathing seemed the only sign of life in the tunnel.

         A short distance away, the first of the surviving lanterns hung from a hook hammered into the rough-hewn walls.

         "At least I know there's air," Corvex murmured and winced. His voice trailed away from him down into the darkness and left a sense of having deeply disturbed something. Something that resented the intrusion.