Victors Quill

We pushed deeper into the building's shell, the air turning thick and cold the moment we passed the outer hallway. The light outside didn't reach here, and it wasn't the kind of dark your eyes adjusted to.

It was dense, it pressed in around my face and made me second-guess where the floor ended.

I slowed as we passed a buckled doorway. Beyond it stretched a wide corridor, walls scorched black, floor warped with time and pressure. Shattered glass glittered like ash beneath our boots.

Then something shifted.

A thin glow peeled out behind me, just enough to pull shapes from the black. I turned to see it, not the glow itself, but how it shimmered along Plor's coat, drifting out from a small, fist-sized shape half-shrouded in her hand.

"You were holding that this whole time?" I asked.

"Had to wait 'til your whimpering got loud enough." she said. "Didn't want to ruin the suspense."

I narrowed my eyes.

One day you're going to fall into a pit and I'm not going to help.

She led the way with the light low, casting everything in long shadows. The hallway bent left, then opened into a yawning space—a kind of reception area, maybe. Hard to tell with everything half-crushed or peeled from the walls.

We stepped around what had once been a pillar, now lying flat across the floor like a dead limb. A hollow wind threaded through a crack above us.

Just ahead, a heavy double door, metallic and sunken into the far wall. One side had been wrenched slightly open, the frame cracked inward. Just beside it, the floor had caved in, revealing a vertical tunnel descending into pure black.

"Well, that looks pretty deep." Plor said, her voice unusually quiet.

The light caught on jagged metal rails running down the sides—some twisted, some snapped completely. A few torn cables hung loose, swinging gently, though I hadn't felt a breeze.

She stepped close to the edge, crouching.

"Can't see the bottom."

I leaned over her shoulder.

Nothing but darkness.

"You think this is where the good stuff is?" I asked.

"No idea." She stood again. "But the best stuff is normally never easy to get to."

Then, without warning, she walked off the edge.

I flinched, hand shooting out—but she didn't fall. She floated, slow and effortless, like her weight had simply been denied. Her coat hung still, her body level, arms crossed as she drifted downward like a leaf in reverse.

"Come on." she called up.

Her voice echoed along the shaft walls, growing stranger as it bounced, overlapping itself.

I hated how fast my heart started pounding.

Nope. Nope. This is a horror story setup. She's the bait and I'm the idiot who follows her into the throat of some ancient monster.

I crouched by the edge and peered down. Her torch flickered below like a fallen star, shrinking as she descended. Thirty floors deep, maybe more. The shaft walls stretched around her like the inside of a massive metal throat, lined with old signage, warning lights, maintenance rails.

There were strange markings on the support beams, some jagged and coded, some pictorial, like directional maps long worn away.

A broken panel flickered halfway down. Orange. Then gone.

Far below, Plor turned slowly in the air, looking around. Her torch revealed part of a metal walkway clinging to the edge of the shaft. She drifted toward it and landed, light falling just enough to let me see her boots touch down.

That was all I needed.

I locked eyes on her position.

Down there. Just like before. Just like the roof. Not far. Not dangerous.

I blinked—

—and reappeared beside her with a crack.

The air shifted. My breath fogged the second I landed.

"See, easy." she said, amused.

"I don't fly, remember?" I muttered. "Also next time, warn me before you float down into hell."

We stood on a narrow ledge, one wall of the shaft at our backs, open abyss in front. The metal groaned under us—just barely—but it held.

I looked around.

The floor we'd landed on was part of some sort of access ring, half-bent and missing its railing. A control panel was embedded into the wall nearby, half-lit, its screen flickering with dead code. A long hallway extended beyond it, choked in black.

Plor raised the torch again.

Then I froze.

Something flickered in the corner of my eye—low to the floor, small and fast.

A rat?

Then, just ahead of us, something stepped halfway out of the wall.

I jolted back.

It was small—maybe the size of a dog—but shaped wrong. Long ears. Mottled grey skin. Limbs too thin, but its body was solid. Heavy, almost.

And then it vanished.

It phased, it passed through the wall without resistance, as if the concrete wasn't even there.

"What the hell was that?" I hissed.

Plor stared after it, thoughtful.

"I've never seen something like that."

"Even you've never seen stuff like that before?!"

"Not exactly." She crouched, scanning the wall it disappeared into.

"But it is pretty deep, who knows what's down here."

I looked at the spot.

Nothing there.

No sound. No scratching. Just cold metal and the edge of the unknown.

I should've stayed on the surface. I should've let that woman chase her dellumite ghosts on her own.

But I stayed. I breathed through the tightness in my chest and followed her as she walked into the dark, torch held low, and a strange silence settling behind us.

Plor's torch catchlight sliced through the gloom, revealing a steel door set into the far wall of the corridor. Its surface was scarred and pitted, but the lock mechanism—once massive—hung open, rusted clean through.

"Looks inviting." Plor murmured, amusement in her voice.

She stepped forward and pushed the door. It swung easily on creaking hinges.

Inside was a small chamber: concrete walls, a grate in the floor, and a low plinth in the center, upon which sat twenty rectangular bars of metal—each roughly the size and shape of a gold bar.

Dellumite? Surely not, that's a bit too easy. All of it, right here?

Plor ducked under the lintel and gave me a theatrical bow.

"After you."

I swallowed, stepping inside. My boots clanked against the concrete slab. Heavy, heavier than I expected.

I turned to see Plor, she was quite literally gleaming. Her smile looked like it was trying to tear apart her cheeks. I could swear her eyes looked like coins right now.

"Well, fuck! Kael, want to buy a nation?"

"…Seriously?"

Each bar gleamed a dull silvery-blue. I lifted one with both hands, it took unexpected effort. Fifty kilograms, at least.

"Feel that? Pure dellumite, we've seriously hit the jackpot" Plor said, floating one bar up a couple of inches.

She's making it look effortless.

"So, how're we gonna get this all out?" I said, shifting the bar until it settled against my ribs.

"Well, we aren't going to be carrying this out that's for sure."

"Would it be better for me to teleport it? I can probably take two at time."

She glanced at me, her face stern and resolute.

Why does she look mad…

"And leave the dellumite unguarded whenever you come back?! Even if we haven't run into anyone, this stuff is too precious to leave to chance."

Isn't this going to exhaust her though? Can she seriously control twenty bars, and delicately?

Plor grinned.

"Don't worry and just watch, I'm strong and extremely motivated."

She started spreading the bars across the ground, delicately touching every single one, multiple times. Suddenly it all hovered in midair.

Plor guided it forward, it looked like she had leashed a flock of birds. She was precisely changing the force on each one to stay floating, balanced and moving.

Well, seeing this level of control is pretty magical.

In thirty seconds we got to the pit and she crept back up towards the reception area. The torchlight glinted off every edge, broken ceilings, flickering control panels, shards of glass.

I watched as Plor slowly disappeared upwards, the silhouettes of multiple bars following her.

Well, guess I just go up and wait for her?

As if to confirm my thoughts, plors voice echoed down the shaft.

"I'll meet you up there Kael!"

Well, guess I'll just go up then.

I took a step into the pit, just when my foot started to fall it hit loudly against the floor.

The world had warped. I was now staring down at Plor from the reception floor. She slowly crept past each floor, illuminating broken wires, rusted steel and cracked concrete.

Guess my points useful sometimes.

After a while, she floated through the hole in the floor. She was trailed by the bars, each settling down in a small pile on the floor with a dull clunk. Plor exhaled hard.

"Well, your turn." She said, stepping back.

I blinked.

"Uh, what?"

She smiled, eyes bright.

"My bad, you couldn't even deal with two."

I stared at the dellumite bars, slick and alien.

We actually found it.

"So what are we gonna do with all of this?" I asked.

"I'll tell you when we get back." Plor said.

"For that though, we need to get it back to the house."