“You alright?” The speaker’s concern was palpable in the absence of Vievel’s reply.
“Yeah, sorry, just gonna look for the exit, give me a moment,” Vievel said, attempting to reassure the unseen Aelfr. Beneath him, his feet felt unsteady.
“Sure?”
“Yeah, sure,” Vievel sighed. He took a few tentative steps into the shadows, his hand and flashlight both hanging at his side.
What hatch? He wondered. The passage continued into the darkness further than Vievel could see, but as he walked into the gloom he was unable to make out any tell-tale reflections of metal, much less a Dwurkn-sized hatch. After a few minutes of exploring he turned back, walking to the curve in the passage where he had first heard the speaker. As he approached the tunnel’s curve from the opposite direction Vievel noticed a rise in the floor-side vent; it grew as he walked alongside it, climbing up the wall until it stopped at a rectangular-shaped panel pressed up against the interior of the corridor, hidden from view for anyone walking from the direction he’d originally came.
“Found it,” Vievel murmured, though the speaker didn’t reply. For a second Vievel considered repeating himself, louder, so that he could be sure that he had heard him, but then a grunt of acknowledgement rose up from somewhere outside the tunnel.
“Good, just kick it out and c’mon down,” the unseen voice said. Vievel glanced at the mesh panel. It was firmly bolted to the stone.
“Kick it out?”
“Yeah, give it a good boot”. Vievel stared at the vent for a moment, sure that it was far too firmly locked into position to be forced out like that. Against his own doubt, he strode closer to the panel and, mid-stride, swung his leg towards it. His foot struck it head-on, his toes curling beneath the malleable metillion alloy as the force of the blow brokered a new dent in his boot.
“Illandr!” Vievel cried out, cursing. The vent rattled and shook with the blow, creating something of a din, but otherwise, it remained securely fixed in place.
“You okay hoss?” the voice enquired.
“No-” Vievel yelled, dropping to the floor and cradling his foot. He pressed his fibreweave cloth against his boot and tried to squeeze away the pain pulsing behind his toes; the metillion alloy began to regain its shape as Vievel massaged it. “T-that didn’t work,” Vievel managed, between grunts of irritation. An uncharitable part of Vievel wondered whether the unseen speaker had known what would happen and whether he had tricked Vievel into doing it anyway.
“Oh,” came the reply. A mixture of disappointment and confusion rode alongside the word. “-oh I guess that makes sense. Guess it makes sense you can’t do it,” he said, not explaining himself. Vievel silently cursed the unseen Aelfr, meaning to leave his annoyance there; his toes chose that moment to throb particularly painfully however, and Vievel’s anger slipped out despite himself.
“If you knew it wouldn’t work, why on Ganymede did you ask me to do it?” Vievel shouted.
“Thought you’d be stronger than that, that’s all,” the speaker replied. “Maybe you can loosen it?” he offered. Vievel pressed down on his toes, letting the pressure relieve some of the pain, and looked over at the vent beside him. Some of the screws and bolts on the panel, where it attached to the main outer portion of the mesh, were indeed loose. Twistable spiral screws were embedded into the inner frame of the panel, whilst wrought metal bolts had been hammered into the thinner outside frame, creating three separate pieces to the vent including the segmented outer portion. Vievel lifted himself up, heaving himself to a crouch by pushing off the floor with his hands. The nearest screw was so loose that it only took a single rotation before it dropped out and clinked against the stone floor of the tunnel. The rest were more firmly stuck in place; Vievel twisted at the nearest with his hand and found it stiff and slippery, covered in some kind of grease and resilient to his attempts to free it from the frame of the panel. Unable to work the screw free with his hand Vievel began using his fibreweave cloth for grip, holding the screw with the cloth in hand so that it wouldn’t slip as he turned. After freeing the interior screws he began to work on the exterior bolts, using the butt of his torch as a pry bar where necessary to force the stiff bolts free. Once the last bolt popped free, shooting across the dark maintenance tunnel and rebounding off the opposite wall, Vievel felt the panel fall slack.
“Got it,” Vievel said, wondering if the now-silent speaker was still listening. Vievel put his hands on the outer edges of the vent, where there was room to grip, and reached around it so he could wedge his fingers in the gap behind. Giving the panel a mighty heave Vievel fell over, stirring up a cloud of dust from the ground nearby; it came loose much easier than Vievel had expected, the force of his pull catapulting both him and it backwards.
“You got it?” the Aelfr enquired after the noise had settled.
“Yeah,” Vievel grunted. A light streamed through the hole where the panel had previously been set, illuminating a narrow corner of the maintenance passage. Vievel reached down for his flashlight, twisting it so that his own light was shut off, and kneeled down. Vievel leant forward, crawling on his hands and knees so he could see through the vent and into the corridor beyond.
With his head poking through the space the panel had occupied moments ago, Vievel marvelled at the new corridor in front of him. The corridor was narrower than the passages he had travelled through earlier, but it was still much wider than the maintenance tunnel he had emerged from. Thin oblong light fixtures were set into the walls at an even spacing of fifteen or so feet, the first such fixtures that Vievel had seen in the whole ship. The surfaces of the new hallway were as smooth as the stone from the central corridor, smoother even; yet like the red ward this new area was carved from a different type of stone, indicating it was a separate ward altogether. All around him Vievel stared at a stone so without colour, so absorbing, that he imagined himself staring into the deep and dark itself. The black of the walls, floors, and ceiling, threatened to swallow him. Without his hands pressed to the ground Vievel would have doubted the floor stood where he now knelt, nothing separating it from the adjacent surfaces. Even with the light from the embedded wall fixtures, the transition between wall, floor, and ceiling, showed so little contrast he could hardly tell where one ended and another began. He brushed his arms, cleaning himself of the dust from the maintenance tunnel, and stood to look at the door beside him.
The prison door was carved from an overcast dull rock which wasn’t quite grey and wasn’t quite black. The dreary stone was a great deal brighter than the surrounding ebony wall, and in comparison it stood apart from the latter as though it was luminous, giving no concealment to the cell it sealed.
“Don’t try anything,” Vievel said suddenly, inspiration striking him. He gathered up the cloth in his hand and balled it together, wrapping it around his flashlight to form a vaguely threatening shape. “I have a gun,” he lied. Vievel heard his pitch shift slightly and hoped that his voice hadn’t shaken or quivered. “-a smart-revolver,” he added, flourishing atop his empty threat.
“Well, that makes one of us,” the speaker replied. “Ain’t we a pair? One of each possible combination,” he said. Vievel didn’t respond, putting a careful hand on the deadbolt of the prison cell; he slid it forward to release the lock and stepped into the cell as the door moved with him.
Despite his threats, Vievel found himself frozen once face-to-face with the man, unable to move. Some of his thoughts turned instantly to flight, whichever few didn't immediately surrender and profess their hopelessness; the din of conflicting ideas was already enough to root Vievel to the ground but in the midst of the noise a lonely and deranged thought rose up, over all the rest. The thought was laughing and celebrating his tumultuous fortune. He was the first Aælfir in centuries to meet a human.
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