In the Caverns of the Sky

"Well if it isn't another doomed princess tossed into the abyss." Vol was leaning back on her craggy perch, legs swinging over the edge. She was looking at a young woman, walking through the open air, as though on a tightrope--slow and deliberate. They were in a cavern of immense proportions--hundreds of leagues across, unfathomable depths below. Before them, the earth opened its jaws to the sky.

"Should we greet her?" Krunt asked, in his best posh accent. He was beaming and straightening his posture as he scraped his teeth with a small rat bone. He wiped the yellow and green film onto his knee, and flashed a gray and yellow smile.

Vol scowled and kicked Krunt's foot, sharp and swift, throwing her comrade's weight over the edge--it was a wink in time, that would have been the end of most people's lives: confronting the forceful wind currents rising from the depths, combined with gravity's sentient, insistent grasp. But Krunt casually shifted and regained his balance, as he'd done a thousand times before, as though these dangers were old, nagging friends.

"Aren't you the eager footman!" Vol was still scowling. "Bet you'd be real helpful."

"Wouldn't I."

"Ah, not so much as you seem to think."

A rat scurried nearby. Vol grabbed it without pausing conversation or changing posture. With the slightest flick of her wrist, she swung it by its tail, smashing its head on the rock beside her.

"Snack?" She offered it to Krunt like it was caviar, and she the gracious hostess.

Their chatter continued to go back and forth as it so often did. In a dark corner behind them, Luft dozed, half-listening, as the wind carried Vol and Krunt's voices to him. He, too, was here for the rats. But he had come to learn the humans' language, as he observed their words change the flow and shape of fate.

More often than not, fate was an unfortunate thing here--cut off long before its time. Lifelines--now empty and bereft of life--hung all about the shallow outcrop. Vol's trophies. Even now, she was fidgeting with her knife, craving more.

She smirked. "Look at her all in white--why do they always put them in white? What's she think she is, a bride? 'Come to wed the darkness my lady?'" Vol's posh accent was better than Krunt's--its cold, biting tones could have rent flesh.

The woman remained far beyond them. She may not have known that the two were even there. More likely, she felt the pressure of many beady eyes haunting from the shadows, all over the jagged walls. She might also have been preoccupied with the abyss's gusty, fitful breathing--from which she had no shelter there in the center. It came at her full force from every direction, so strong it threatened to carry her in its clutches. It was knocking her about, but still she managed to hang on to whatever held her suspended, and she continued to move forward, toward the cavern's opening, and the free expanse of sky.

"Rookie move!" Vol laughed, knowing what was to come.

Gravity's pull began to shift, become distorted, the closer one went to the opening. From where people came in (from above), it looked like the cave mouth was forward. But walking toward it, it became up--or more often some oblique combination of two or more directions--up and forward, perhaps sideways, perhaps also (somehow) down. Then gravity would confound everything, suddenly shift directions once again, sending the unwary plunging.

The woman glanced above her, at the tightly-lidded sky from whence she'd come. Light shone through the broken patches, sepia-toned. Almost like a stained glass window, dingy with the centuries. So easy to fall through in those places, impossible to get back out.

Vol remembered the faces--crazed with terror--of people trying to break back through, return to the surface. That was back when she'd been a surface dweller, a kid. She'd laughed at those people as they'd begged and pleaded to be let out. Every moment seeing them had brought their world closer, thinned the ground beneath her own feet.

She'd watched compassionate people trying to help them escape--it was like trying to save the drowning. They pulled you under with them.

But even then, she'd known she would be here eventually. And she'd promised herself she'd never be so pathetic as those desperate fools.

Vol swung to her feet, grabbing one of her lifelines--the hanging thread of someone's broken fate.

"You ready?" she asked, without waiting for an answer. "Time to show this chick nobody gets to spend time in my hole without paying--and it's going to cost her!"

Vol swung forth into the open space, right arm and leg twined around the lifeline, her left arm stretched forth, hand ready with her knife.

Krunt watched as Vol--Voline--sailed through the air. The grace of her flight was the most beautiful thing one ever saw in this place. She knew every hidden shift in the gravity lines, knew the wind's currents better than she'd ever known any home. She played with the forces, like they were beloved adversaries, like she was a master sailor in the sky.

Krunt followed. Vol always timed her attacks perfectly. Waited long enough that the sinker's nerves were raw from spooking at the thousands of shadows, the wind, the weird gravity. Usually this took only minutes. And then, in this moment of dazed terror, Vol appeared, cutting that thin thread that held them aloft.

So it was a complete surprise when the woman turned and crouched--not hiding fearfully, but like she was ready.

It was a greater surprise when the owl--the very one who'd shared their perch (to think, she could have eaten him!)--flew at Vol's face. She sliced at him with her knife, her timing and aim perfect--as natural and automatic as breathing--but the owl had moved beyond her reach. His dark, blank eyes looked at her from a broad, white face. A face of emptiness, somehow carrying messages from beyond. These held no interest for her--she was a ruler of fates herself.

She swung again, and incomprehensibly, missed.

And then, there he was, at the crouching woman's feet, clipping her line with his beak. Vol watched the woman plummeting out of reach, winding the cord around her hands as she fell, an ominous look of determination upon her face.

The descent held Vol stupefied. It seemed to be happening in slow motion. Perhaps that was why she didn't notice the owl flying higher, clipping the line that held Krunt--that big, clumsy oaf.

All the lifelines she'd cut--they'd do her no good. She'd cut them too short.

For a moment, she felt a heart inside her. She felt it breaking. Then she gritted her teeth, and made that breaking thing hard as a fist.

For the first time in forever, she looked up. She studied the patchwork of earth and illusion that sealed her world. On its surface, she saw people walking, some unaware of the realms beneath them, others feeling their presence so keenly, it appeared to bring them pain.

Those who fell through--or were thrown here--were the earth's garbage, sentenced to a long descent into darkness. She had shown them mercy.

The owl reappeared, sitting on a notch of rock--wisely out of reach. His broad, white face stared at her blankly, carrying messages from beyond. There was nothing left to do but listen.