CHAPTER 4: In Some Deep Stuff

Elsewhere in Shaydon, a laboratory in the city’s Research and Development district stands tall and glowing. Deep, deep beneath its floors of shayd scientists testing new and progressive ideas to be implemented in their city, a prison lays beneath its floor, holding one of Shaydon’s darkest secrets. Each cell of the horrid place was inhabited by loathsome creatures, created by the unnatural combining of elementals throughout the world of Crux with that of the native shayd. Primal amalgamations of water, earth, fire, and shadow shambled within their cells, their minds lost and instincts reverted to a bestial state. They clattered against their electrified cages, screaming for freedom from this pain that they could never hope to attain, even if they were outside this prison. One of these cells, however, was shockingly home to two separate inhabitants. The first of these was Jacob, a rather large, slug-like elemental made from dirt, wearing a shirt made from burlap and claws of bright blue glass adorning his massive hands. He sat with a cold expression on his face, his brow furrowed, and his arms folded across one another. His cellmate was Vino, who surprisingly wasn’t an elemental at all, but rather a living plant native to Crux known as a flauna. He was short and spindly, with a flowery head decorated with bright yellow petals. He had slender, leafy hands, and three roots that had developed into flighty legs. Vino was peering out of a small window Jacob had dug out from behind a brick, using two flecks of shiny metal as a periscope to try and scout out the area outside. He scratched lines onto the brick’s weathered side, attempting to make a map of the surroundings.

“Any luck?” Jacob queried, keeping a lookout for any folks that could be trouble for the two.

“No use. I’m beginning to think this is hopeless.” Vino sighed, tucking the makeshift periscope behind the wall and trying to place the brick back in its slot. Seeing him struggle, Jacob helped him out, neatly inserting it in place. The two then kept up appearances, resting on the bench opposite one another.

“This whole city is built like a maze,” Vino explained.

“That bad, huh? I thought you said you broke out of here before.” Jake accused.

“I said I broke out of the police station, and even then, that was when I had half a dozen people to help me out. We never made it out of the city because it’s essentially unnavigable”

“Is there anything else you can remember about how this place works?”

“It all happened so fast, and everything looks the same out there. The only thing I can say for certain is that there’s a big tower in the city’s center and that there are canals everywhere that provide transport. Our only hope for escape comes from knowing how to navigate this place.”

“I don’t know how shayd live like this.” Jake grumbled. “Almost makes me feel sorry for ‘em.”

“Well, to be fair, their livelihood depends on being able to traverse this city. Besides, they have their whole lives to learn its layout and intricacies.”

“Yeah, before they’re smashed in a work accident or arrested for looking the wrong way.”

“Oh, don’t be crass, Jacob. Besides, I think I may have just given myself an idea.”

“Yeah, and whuzzat?”

“Simply put, we-”

Vino’s explanation was suddenly interrupted by the clanging of a trapdoor, and the echoing of steps down a stairwell. A slender shayd by the name of Eyve made her way down, hauling a pot of foul-smelling sludge. Beneath her cloak, it was apparent that the right side of her body, instead of the usual coiled tendrils of darkness that shayd bodies consisted of, was made almost entirely out of metal prosthesis.

“Hello everyone!” She announced in a singsong voice. “Guess what? It’s mealtime!” She clanged a spoon on the side of the pot, awakening the creatures in the surrounding cells. They began to screech and roar, banging against their high-voltage cages and receiving massive shocks for doing so. “Yeah, yeah. Listen, we know you’ve all got two cores to take care of now, so we need to make sure you keep up your energy, now don’t we?” She slung a spoonful of the gruel into a slot in each of the cages, where it landed lovingly on the cell floor.

“Rest alone isn’t enough for you anymore, no, no. You need to FEED.” As the other cellmates ate up their share of the meals, The scientist finally made it to Vino and Jake’s cell. “And how’s our organic life doing? Good?” At the sight of his captor, Jake stood up and began to pound on the cell’s wall. The pain from the energy coursing through the bars was somewhat nullified for him, since he was made of dirt.

“YOU LET US OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW, YOU MONSTER! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT KEEPIN’ US IN HERE!”. Eyve’s eye lowered as she put down the pot and rolled down her right sleeve. Instead of a hand, there were two long, metallic tendrils wrapped around one another. She partly unraveled them and stuck them into a socket next to the cell door. Moments later, Vino and Jake felt a tremendous JOLT of electricity arc its way through their entire cell, painfully shocking them

“Now, are we going to be quiet today?” Eyve asked smugly. Jacob was furious, and every ounce of his body was screaming at him to tear down this door and rip this horrible, horrible lady in two. However, one look at his shivering cellmate convinced him otherwise. Vino clearly had a lower tolerance for pain than he did, and sparing him from the collective punishment was unfortunately Jake’s only option at this point. He looked away from Eyve in shame and sat back down on his half of the cell. “That’s more like it.” Eyve proclaimed, picking up the pot and spoon once more. “Now eat up, flauna! We need that body and brain of yours in tip-top shape for our special project!” Vino held his hands out and winced as the cold slime was shoveled into his palms. He wore a look of disgust on his face as he chowed down on the stuff, struggling to keep it down as he reminded himself it was his only source of nourishment. Eyve scraped the bottom of the pot with the spoon. “What about you, big fella? You want a snack, too?”

“I’ll… pass.” Jake rejected.

“Suit yourself.” Eyve sang, packing up her supplies as she made it back up the stairs. “Ooh, just think! You guys are going to help us out soooo much! Bye everyone!” As the door to the holding area closed, Jake muttered to himself.

“I like the other one better. She’s quiet.” Jacob complained, running his claws against the cage’s bars.

 Vino ignored him, as he was still taking care of the “food” he was provided. 

“Ugh, this stuff tastes like pure poison.” He griped.

“At least it keeps you alive.”

Vino grimaced.

“Debatable.”

As Vino finished the last bite, Jake remembered what the two were talking about before they were interrupted by their meal.

“So, you were saying something about an idea?”

“What? Oh, yeah. We’re gonna get a shayd to help us out.”

A deafening silence fell upon the prison cell, the only other sounds being the continued feeding of the other creatures.

“Did you hear what I said? We get a shay-”

“I heard what you said.”

Jacob took a deep breath.

“Vino, I’m gonna keep it flat with you- I am not working with a shayd.”

“Well, I’m afraid it might be our only choice.”

“There has to be another way. They’re cunning, they’re sneaky, and you can’t trust ‘em.”

“Possibly. However, any of them that end up down here are bound to be out of options.”

“Down here?”

“Of course! Think about it.” Vino gestured to each of the other cells around them in the prison. “Each one of these… things were made by combining the core of a shayd with another elemental. So logically, they’re going to do the same for us. I theorize they’re waiting for an eligible shayd to toss into the mix.”

Jake’s expression lit up. “… And once he’s in here with us, BAM! We’ll have ourselves a map to the city!

“Exactly!”

“We don’t have to… take him with us, do we?”

Vino began to knock on a few bricks in the cell, checking if the space behind any of them were hollow. “We’ll see. Best case scenario, he gives us everything we need right here.”

“And the worst case?”

“Well, it’s an even tie between him either killing us both or ratting us out to those scientists.”

Jake’s expression soured, “You really have a five-star head on your shoulders, huh?”

“You could say that.” Vino said as he knocked on one last brick, mildly pleased with the sound it made. “Now, we still have some prep work to do. You think you can dig out this brick?”

Jacob chuckled, “Do shayd commit war crimes?” Vino’s expression was blank. Jake cleared his throat and began to scratch out the brick’s grout.

CHAPTER 5: What Goes Up…

The staff of Shaydon Municipal Construction had eventually made their way to their worksite. It was a dismal place near the outskirts of the walled city, with the promise of becoming a brand-new beacon of architectural prowess. The scaffolding of the building they were going to build stood dead in front of them, an unstable mess of wrought iron and rivets. The stabilization brace they had brought played an important part in the construction of Shaydon’s buildings, providing a stable foundation after being hung from the crane and fastened precisely. Once the barge stopped, Refanom gave his go-ahead to the workers and business began straight away. The first order was to move the crane from the barge onto solid ground. One of Orsel’s coworkers, Zoder, strapped himself into the cockpit and started up the massive apparatus, its internals chugging and straining as he moved the levers around. This crane, like most of Shaydon’s mechanical equipment, was either imported or inspired from another nation on Crux, Tallem, to the point where they had become the industry standard. Ramps were extended from the barge to the edge of the canal and the now-unstrapped crane chugged slowly towards the land, the barge tipping slightly to accommodate the massive shift in weight. As it finally struggled to leave the canal, Orsel caught himself thinking about how lucky Zoder was to have gotten his heavy equipment license. Now that he was the designated driver, he wasn’t stuck with any of the grunt work that he and the others had to do. Whatever the case, there was still a job to be done. The crane hoisted the stabilization brace high into the air, while Orsel and three other shayd made their way to a makeshift elevator set up next to the building’s scaffolding.

Orsel noticed that the brace wasn’t as clean as it should’ve been for a brand-new building, with the upper segments looking quite rusted. They were each handed a waveform transmitter from their boss, Refanom, in order to communicate while they were stuck up on top of the scaffolding.

“Alright, everyone-” Refanom spoke through his transmitter, only to be met with a feedback loop, bringing a shock to all his listening subordinates. He hastily turned off his transmitter in frustration and continued his statement, “Alright, now you all know the drill with these braces. You each have an assigned spot that the posts for the brace will drop near. You’ll have about a minute to screw the bolt in once the signals are given. Are we clear? The shayd standing before Refanom gave an affirmative salute. “Good.” He continued, “Now get up there and get this thing done!”

Orsel and his three coworkers, crookshanks in hand, ascended by the elevator to the level they needed to be at. It was easy to find, considering it was the only part of the building that even had a floor, albeit one made from haphazardly balanced wooden planks. As they got to where they needed, Orsel found himself getting knocked on the shoulder again by Chwern. 

“Make sure not to screw this one up, alright?”

“Oh, knock it off, Chwern!” Orsel snapped, “I do as good a job as anyone else here.” 

“Hey, easy now! No need to drag us down with you, bud!” Chwern laughed as he went towards his post. Orsel sulked as he did likewise in the other direction, with Ytsap in tow. 

“Ah, don’t listen to him, he’s just a jerk. I remember when I was new, he practically bit my head off every chance he got,” he consoled.

“It’s been like two years, though! When is he going to let up?” Orsel grumbled.

“To be fair, you are pretty, uh, ‘accident-prone’.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, there was the cement incident-”

“The tankers looked exactly the same as the septic ones.”

“The I-beam debacle”

“I swear, someone greased the damn thing.”

“The broken lightbulb.”

“That was NEVER proven to be me!”

“Not to mention, there was the barge today. You still reek, by the way.”

“You sound just like Chwern.”

The pair eventually came to an enormous hole in their path where the scrap wood they had grown used to walking on was completely missing. A lone hazard cone stood near it, inefficiently serving as a warning. Yatsp looked down into the tangled web of scaffolding below.

“Aw, jeez, the last team must’ve lazed out on this part. We gotta go around.” Ytsap observed.

“Around?! It’s like three feet wide!”

“Yeah, and about a hundred feet down.”

“I bet I can jump it.”

“Pfft yeah, I can already see it now- the “Orsel gets shattered from falling through scaffolding” incident.”

“Oh, knock it off. I’ve made it through worse.”

“You see? This is what we’re all talking about. You, taking all these risks with us, cleaning up after. You need to start thinking about your team.”

Orsel’s eyes flattened as he leapt across the hole with hardly any effort, Ytsap’s eyes wrenched shut momentarily in suspense.

“Yatsp, have you ever taken a good look around at where we are?”

“I’m trying not to. I’m scared of heights.”

“Not the building, I mean here in Shaydon. Our place in this world.”

“I mean yeah? We’re construction workers. We build things.”

“There has to be more to it than just that, though. I want to do something that actually matters.”

“I’d say this matters. Making places for people to live or work is pretty impressive.”

“Then why aren’t I happy? Is this all we’re going to be doing for the rest of our lives?”

“Probably, yeah. It’s what we went to school for, after all.”

“Well, I don’t like that. It’s why I do stuff like jump the gap. It’s something that I like to do— a risk— nestled within a lifetime of things I don’t like to do, y’know?”

“You need to see a doctor or something, Orsel. You’re a special case.”

“I also don’t like hearing that all the time.”

Orsel and Ystap finally made it to a large pole topped with a socket. The patchwork wooden floor around it was painted to let anyone here know that this was where a part of the stabilization brace was supposed to latch itself into.

“Guess this is my stop.” Orsel proclaimed.

“Alright, I’m gonna head down to the other one. Promise me you’re not gonna “jump the hole” or whatever, alright?”

“I’ll be fine, go on.”

As Ytsap left, Orsel scratched the floor with the pointed end of his crookshank, making streaks in the paint marking the stabilization socket’s location. Zoder’s crane slowly raised the brace high into the air, adjusting, so it was perfectly in line with the center of the building. As its swinging and adjustments died down, Orsel heard his transmitter spring to life, with Refanom’s voice blaring through.

“Alright, Brace quarters are dropping down soon. Is everyone ready?” Synchronized “Yes”es, “checks”, and “affirmative”s came through the transmitter from Orsel and his coworkers. “Good.” Refanom confirmed. “Post one coming down!” A latch on top of the crane’s hook popped open, unfolding a part of the stabilization brace and sending it plummeting downwards. Orsel could see the pole near Chwern through the maze of scaffolding as the pole slotted itself in, and he hastily screwed in a bolt with his crookshank to stabilize it.

“Post one stabilized and in position!” Chwern reported through the transmitter. 

“Good. Post two coming down!” Refanom barked, the unlatching of the second post of the stabilization brace descending on cue. The entry for this section was unfortunately rougher than its predecessor, as it scraped against its entry tube and shook the scaffolding with an ear-splitting SCRREEEEEEEEECH! As it was fastened in, Orsel noticed some scaffolding further up was continuing to shake, with popped rivets raining down onto the wooden floor. 

“Post two stabilized and in position!” The transmitter shouted. Refanom was pleased. 

“That’s what I like to see! Post three coming down!”

“No, wait!” Orsel tried to interject as the scaffolding was still shaking on his end, but it was too late. The third latch unhinged and pounded into the socket amongst the building’s shuddering frame. Beams from above were beginning to fall down along with torrents of bolts. Orsel leaped out of the way of his station as they pelted his head.

“What’s going on up there, Orsel?” Refanom asked impatiently through the radio. Not having any time to respond, and as more of the scaffolding came tumbling down, Orsel noticed a particularly large beam was about to fall square onto Yatsp.

“Yatsp! Get out of the way!” Orsel screamed as he bolted across the length of the floor. In the middle of turning his head, Yatsp found himself promptly tackled by Orsel as a beam crashed through the floor where he once stood.

“You alright?” Orsel asked, but was met with a glassy-eyed stare from Yatsp as he pointed upwards past Orsel as he lay on the floor. Orsel looked up behind him to see more of the girders were starting to come loose. Yatsp’s radio switched on, with Refanom’s voice shouting through it once more.

“THE WHOLE THING’S COMING DOWN, EVERYONE EVACUATE!” Chwern and a coworker Orsel had never bothered to learn the name of rushed towards the scaffolding’s elevator and prematurely descended without their better half. Yatsp hazily stood back up and panicked.

“They left us behind! We’re not going to make it!” he blubbered, darting his head around. Orsel grabbed his arm and dragged him through the tumbling wreckage, making sure to keep his ball and chain, so to speak, unmarred.

“Come on, we’re gonna get out of here, trust me!” Orsel exclaimed.

When the two finally made it to the place where the elevator once stood, they looked down to see their two coworkers already halfway to the bottom.

“Just our luck, we’re doomed,” Yatsp complained. Orsel looked over at the elevator’s cables, then back at the hooked end of his crookshank.

“I’ve got an idea,” he proclaimed, extending his hand to the panicking Yatsp. “Here, grab on.” Yatsp was hesitant to trust Orsel with anything in a situation such as this, let alone a rescue operation, but it was painfully clear he had no choice if he even wanted a chance of staying alive. He slammed his eyes shut and took Orsel’s hand. The two jumped off the edge as Orsel hooked the crookshank onto the elevator cable, sliding down alongside a flurry of sparks formed from the friction. Moments later, they landed on the elevator with a loud THUD, much to the surprise of the other coworkers.

“See?” Orsel panted. “We made it safe and-” The elevator suddenly shifted, the clanging from the scaffolding around them now mirrored by the apparatus they relied on to descend. Then, the sudden excess of weight on the platform finally revealed its consequences on the passengers as it entered a state of free-fall. A few, harrowing seconds passed before it clattered to the ground below with an ear-splitting CRASH! The passengers, thankfully, seemed dazed but unharmed, but seeing the state of his workers was the least of Refanom’s concerns right now as he stared daggers into Orsel’s soul. The scaffolding soon followed the example of the elevator, where after the course of around half a minute, the carefully-riveted mangle of girders and pipe eventually collapsed in on itself. This brought Zoder’s massive crane careening to its side, since it was still latched to a quarter of the stabilization brace. Once the dust settled, there were two individuals still standing amongst the wreckage. A shayd and his boss. 

Chwern, still laying down from the elevator’s sudden re-entry, looked around at the mess Orsel caused and gave him a swift punch in one of his tendrils.

“Way to go, Orsel.” He snapped.