The Caverns of Kronos

The Moon Trogs - Part 6

     They hadn't gone much further before the nature of the illumination changed. The natural sunlight channelled down through light pipes from the surface stopped to be replaced by glowbottles, their light harsher and greener, and from time to time they came across teams of moon trogs applying more activating fluid from large tanks carried on their backs. They must have passed the maximum depth through which they could thread optical fibres through the rock, Thomas assumed.

     They weren’t going all the way to the centre, though. The gravity grew less as they descended, and at the centre there was none at all. Some gravity, no matter how small, was useful, though. It kept the air clear from all the stuff that would have drifted around in it otherwise. The moon trogs’ main residential centres were about halfway down, therefore. An easy travelling distance from the surface.

     They stopped to rest again after one complete light dark cycle, sleeping in a side tunnel, by which time they estimated they'd travelled about fifteen miles and were five or six miles below the surface. The cavern had a neglected look to it, as if it had been years since anyone else had been there, another clue that the moon trogs went all the way from the surface to the residential regions in one go. Once again, the clumsily moving Tharians had slowed their escort to a fraction of the speed at which they normally travelled.

     The three wizards could also sense the gradual lessening in the intensity of ambient magic around them as they descended, as they had on their way down to the Underworld, the immense thickness of rock above them shielding them from the raw magic falling from the sky, and they knew they’d be unable to regain their magic until they returned to the vicinity of the surface. This bothered Thomas, but not as much as the idea of what being so far underground might be doing to Lirenna. She seemed okay, though, and he supposed that the knowledge that sunlight and greenery weren’t too far away was an invaluable tonic to her.

     The tunnel went on and on, until they began to think they must be about to emerge on the far side of Kronos, but eventually they began to see more side tunnels leading off above, below and to either side with moon trogs busily coming and going in all of them, and they knew that they were finally getting close to a major population centre. Their escort, to give them the politest possible name, led them off into one of the side tunnels, and soon they were once more surrounded by green, growing plants, growing in the light of the glowbottles.

     Unlike the tunnels around Kronosia, though, which were filled with untended wilderness, the greenery in these tunnels bore more of a resemblance to parkland or gardens, with bright flowers and neatly pruned shrubs growing amidst neatly mown lawns which covered walls, floor and ceiling. They passed several caverns on all sides, all up to a hundred yards long and fifty yards wide, full of life and greenery, each cavern containing half a dozen doorways leading into the moon trogs’ homes themselves, carved out of the surrounding rock. The caverns seemed to be their gardens, their communal meeting areas, where the children of several families met to play together under the watchful gaze of a couple of adults. It seemed to be an almost idyllic existence, and they couldn’t help but notice the contrast between life here and in the violent and oppressive human city. Only the guardsmen escorting them made them doubt the absolute perfection of moon trog society. What do they do when they’re not escorting humans? wondered Thomas. If they have guardsmen, then they must have crime of some kind.

     A few minutes later they arrived at a cavern rather less attractive than the others, with fewer glowbottles and in which the plants grew spindly and stunted in the half light. A flock of rats half jumped, half flew out of their way as they entered, disappearing into the undergrowth, and some of the doors leading into moon trog homes stood open, telling them that they were unoccupied. One of the homes was still in use, though, and seemed to have been converted into a prison, and it was to this one that the Tharians were led by their ‘escort’.