Triple Point

Chapter 9: Cutting the Tension

Content Warning (see in-line comments for details)

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Ahead, the pathway opened up wide to the darkness. Without a word, they both started heading left; the flame began to dance towards them. They found the rubble wall again, but this time, it included a large, gaping hole, and as they drew closer, the flame's movement grew more vigorous. There was nothing but darkness on the other side of the opening, so Camilla, with noticeably strained effort, launched the flame through it and gave it an extra burst of power. The fire tripled in size before it stopped a few yards in front of them, and the two women stuck their heads through.

At first, Elsie didn't see a thing. And then she realized it was just because everything there was to see was so far away that the sparse amount of light couldn't reach it all. Directly on the other side of the hole and level with their feet was a slab of the stadium ceiling, jutting out like a giant diving board into an abyss of darkness with the rubble wall acting as a precarious fulcrum. Past that, Elsie couldn't see a thing but the black void, and she wasn't really sure she wanted to know what lay in it.

Regardless of how Elsie felt, Camilla sent the flame further out. Initially, Elsie could see the faint outlines of what looked to be partially crushed pillars, except each pillar had the width of a semi truck. She didn't realize what they actually were until the fire drifted closer.

"Are those... the tanks?" Elsie almost whispered in awe. "The tanks that hold everything they use to build the terrains?"

"Looks like it," Camilla answered, not sounding nearly as amazed as Elsie felt. She moved the fire closer to the nearest tank, illuminated some of the Japanese characters painted on the side. "This one says 'dirt.' But I guess that was obvious."

Elsie didn't know what she meant until she saw where a narrow and long sheet of metal had struck the tank like a spear, tearing a hole in the side and draining it of its contents. Dirt was still falling out in a slow trickle, but it wasn't a surprise; the opening wasn't huge relative to the size of the tank, considering that Elsie couldn't even see where the top or bottom of the tank was. Based on what she could see, the tank was at least taller than a ten-story building.

Each tank had a staircase winding up and around it, connecting to the web of maintenance pathways at every level. On their current level, most of the pathways seemed relatively intact, giving them access to most of the tanks. Unfortunately, Elsie had trouble focusing on possible ways of escape when her attention kept getting drawn to the void of darkness below them and the long fall that it promised.

"If we can get to the main walkways," Camilla's voice snapped Elsie out of her thoughts, "we can use a tank's stairs to get almost to the field level. From there, I should have enough energy to send some kind of signal through one of the access points in the platform that the tanks connect to. We'll head to the west side and see what we find; the tanks here probably took too much damage to be structurally sound."

Elsie, for once, couldn't find any words for a response and managed to only reply with a stiff nod. Thankfully, Camilla didn't seem to notice or care as she hoisted herself up and out of the hole. When her shoes hit the metal slab diving board on the other side, it rang like a giant tuning fork, and Elsie shuddered.

Camilla suddenly began to sidestep to her right and out of sight, and Elsie's curiosity beat her nerves, at least enough for her to stick her head further out the hole to look. There was a path that she hadn't noticed earlier, probably because it wasn't much of a path at all. It was a one-foot wide portion of the walkway they were currently on, separated from the rest by the rubble wall. It extended about ten feet too many before joining up with the maintenance paths that connected to all of the tanks.