Burning Night: A Tale of the Everburning City

Chapter 1: Adrian

Adrian's hands bled as he crawled over broken, jagged rocks in an unlit tunnel. Without the dust and granules of rock, his fingers would be too slick to maintain his grip as he fumbled his way forward.

He crawled forward on instinct and faith, unable to even see his own bloody hands in the dark of this unused tunnel. It had taken the better part of an hour to make it this far, so long that he was worried he'd forget what firelight looked like.

"I can't take a torch through there, boss." He had said to Stenman Xavier, as he explained the plan. "There's no airflow in that old service tunnel. I might turn the air un-breathable before I reach the other side."

This part wasn't the favourite part of his boss' plan. "I don't like it. I should send Marigold. She doesn't suffer from our limitations."

"I can do this, sir." Adrian had assured him. "One of the other crews could use her more."

Which was true. Inconvenient as all burning hell, but true. Marigold was a reject, a failed apprentice from the Crafters who preferred being an enforcer for a gang boss to living with the Bureau of Oversight over her shoulder. Even a reject could stand lethal heat, and breathe when fire made the air unbreathable.

Instead, Adrian crawled alone through the dark, scraping his hands raw on jagged rock as he began to hear the familiar ting of picks striking stone.

As he crawled, his thoughts wandered back to the reason he crawled through a dark, jagged tunnel. Why he worked for a man like Stenman Xavier. Why he willingly worked for one of the Undercity's gangs.

"I'm not going to get better." His sister, Daedra said just a few days ago.

He had held her hand as she struggled to speak. Her words were little more than a faint rattle, a ghost of the voice she used to have.

"Don't say that." He had said, tears in his eyes.

Deadra struggled to turn her head to look at him, the effort to move her neck and shoulders against the soft hospice bed as much of a strain for her as carrying a grown man would be for him.

"You don't get better from this, Adry." His sister had insisted. She was crying, and her hand quivered in his. "I won't get better."

Adrian blinked back the tears welling in his eyes, and deliberately ground his hand into the cave floor. The pain was sharp and shocking, and pulled him back into the moment.

It only took a few more feet of crawling before he saw the faint lines of distant light. Adrian laughed, relieved, and scurried with renewed vigour towards the exit.

As he reached the exit Adrian pressed himself against the cave wall, hugging the shadows. In the larger cavern ahead, hundreds of figures were pounding the rocks in the distance. The air was thick and stale, and left an aftertaste of salt and iron.

It took Adrian a moment for his eyes to adapt to the firelight, before he saw the hundreds of raggedly clothed, weary looking labourers swinging pickaxes into the rock. Those who could were sweating hard, and none of them willingly turned their heads away from their work.

Salt from sweat. Iron from blood. Smoke from cremations.

Knowing why the air stank the way it did didn't help make the air easier to breathe. Adrian hissed, wrapped his ragged grey scarf around his neck, and moved.

He looked from the labourers to the overseers: stocky and plump enforcers who kept the labourers working with shouts, whips, and the threat of truncheons. Adrian had known them, and their whips, more than a few times over the years.

Adrian slipped past them in the shadows, and made his way towards a group of people observing from a distance.

There were six, none of whom were looking at him. Three burly looking enforcers, one well groomed man with a coat that looked like it belonged in high society in Upper Central, a woman dressed in loose, black clothes, and an old woman with a cane.