82. No more colors
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"It's blocked!" Veem shouted as he rushed up to the pile of stone, his fingers digging into the loose shale as he tried to dig through it.
Tovoth watched him silently, mind turning rapidly. So they hadn't been anything more than bait. He should've seen that. Should've realized.
Well, if they thought he placed so little value on his own life, they had another thing coming.
"Come on."
"What?"
"Come on, we can't dig through that."
"But, but the explosives! They're going to detonate in seconds!"
"I know! So keep up with me or you can try to dig yourself out," Tovoth turned away and slammed his wings open.
"Wait! Wait! I can't fly, your wings are smaller than mine!" Veem dashed after Tovoth, trying desperately to keep up with him on foot.
After several minutes of just barely catching a glimpse of Tovoth's heels as he turned the next corner, Veem was convinced he was going to spend the last few minutes of his life chasing a crazy doctor down a tunnel. Then Tovoth landed and crouched, holding out a scanner to the side of the tunnel.
"Shoot that."
"W-what?"
"Shoot the wall."
"Wh-"
"Just do it already! We don't have time for questions and explinations!"
He did as he was told and pulled out his gun. The wall shattered in a spray of fragments, leaving a gaping crevasse.
"Go."
"In?"
"Yes, my scans say that it leads down, hopefully far enough to get us clear of the blast."
Veem shivered, but Tovoth had already cleared the
ragged edges and disappeared.
"Hurry up!" Tovoth's voice echoed faintly.
Veem clenched his fists and jumped, wings half open.
Darkness enveloped him as he plummeted, only a pale glow emanating from the lights hooked to his wings.
"Close your wings," Tovoth said from somewhere beneath him "We have to fall faster if we want to reach the bottom before the explosives-"
An all encompassing rumble shook the very air they were in and the crack of shifting stone sounded above them.
"Look out!"
A shower of dust hit Veem seconds before a massive stone grazed his shoulder.
He dodged to the side, his wings full out now as he looked upwards at the rain of earth that fell towards him.
"Close your wings idiot!"
Veem did as he was told, narrowly missing having them torn off as another huge stone dropped past him. Several tense moments passed as the two of them did everything in their power to avoid being crushed. For a second, Tovoth's lights disappeared, leaving Veem absolutely isolated.
"Doctor?" His own voice replied, hitting the walls and collapsing inwards on him "Doctor!? T-Tovoth!?"
"What, what?" suddenly Tovoth was beside him, hovering in the glow of Veem's lights.
"Are you alright? I thought you didn't make it out from beneath the rocks."
"I'm fine," Tovoth snapped "My lights got smashed though."
"Oh," Veem shuddered as he imagined being trapped in the pithy dark "How...how much further down?"
"No idea, I lost my scanner, but it's far."
"And when we get to the bottom, then what?"
"I'm...not sure," Tovoth admitted.
"Maybe we should try to go back up?"
"Are you insane? After what came down on top of us? There's no way we'd get out," He sighed "Look, some of my short range scans showed a network of tunnels down here. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll find one that leads back up to the surface."
"And if we don't?"
"Well," Tovoth shrugged "I'm sure in a couple thousand years we'll be a very intriguing archelogical find for the humans."
---
Veem didn't know for how long they soared downwards through the darkness, it felt like cycles, but finding the ground wasn't much of a comfort. The darkness solidified and they hit it hard, going to hands and knees as they made contact.
"You in one piece?" Tovoth asked, standing up and checking over himself for damage.
"I think so...oh Void's teeth no," Veem winced as the light on his left wing died, the faint light growing even dimmer, the outlines of everything growing even hazier.
Tovoth stepped closer to him, eyes wide as he tried to pull everything into focus "It's dead. No use trying to fix it. Is the other one working alright?"
"I don't know."
Tovoth shrugged "Let's get going, make as much use of it as we can."
"Are you sure we shouldn't just try to go back up?"
"Positive, now stop asking me that," Tovoth opened his wings and hovered a few feet in the air "Come on let's go."
Veem followed him, unable to think of an alternative.
Again time seemed to warp, losing all meaning after only a short while. It was just him and the fading outline of Tovoth in front of him. Nowhere, nothing, no one else, just them and the bleeding monotone twilight they sifted through.
Hadn't Tovoth's armor been green? Hadn't his skin been silver? Now it was nothing, just a fuzz, not grey or white or black. A shape and not anything more.
"I asked you a question."
Veem blinked rapidly and realized that Tovoth had stopped and turned to face him.
"What?"
"I asked what when the last time you slept was?"
"Have we really been down here that long?"
"I don't know, feels like it, but that's not why I'm asking," Tovoth pointed downwards.
"Is that...liquid?"
"Yes, unfortunately," Tovoth landed, the liquid sloshing up around his ankles "And it's only going to get deeper."
"So we go back?"
"No. No going back. This water's flowing, which mean this way is up, which means, we're going the right way. But, it might be a while before we can rest again."
"So what, we just sleep in the water?"
"It's not deep and it's not cold. There's no telling how long we might be fighting this current," Tovoth sat at the edge of the water, his back against the wall of the tunnel, his legs disappearing beneath the surface of the stream "I'm going to try to sleep for a bit, you can do what you want."
Veem joined him, curling his wings up and leaning back "Should I turn the light off?"
"Sweet Seventh Star of course, we want to save it for as long as possible."
Veem reached out an switched the light off, plunging them into pure night.
"Hey!"
"What?"
"Why'd you poke me?"
"Sorry, I didn't mean to." Veem curled his hands in his lap and closed his eyes. It felt like sleep just barely touched him before the doctor was shaking him awake.
"Come on, come on, turn that light on and let's get going.
Liquid running off him, Veem stood and flicked the light on.
Soon the tunnel grew too tight to fly and the liquid surged higher, up to Tovoth's waist and Veem's knees.
Several times Veem lost sight of Tovoth, as his shoulders disappeared beneath the rippling surface, while his own head scraped against the top of the tunnel.
"Hold on a minute," Tovoth spluttered, trying to talk past the liquid "Just, just hold on."
"What is it?"
"I-pfft- we're going to have to -pfft- swim."
Veem reached out and hooked his hand beneath Tovoth's arm, pulling his face clear of the surface "What'd you say?"
"We're going to have to swim! Is your light still working alright?"
"I think so," Veem really hoped it was, darkness was one thing, darkness, submerged, isolated, not even being able to talk to Tovoth, was another.
"Alright," Tovoth shivered and braced himself "Let's go then."
Veem released the smaller Vive and instantly he vanished into the liquid.
Veem followed him, the water surging up around him, drowning out sound in an everlasting dull roar. His light picked up swirling particles and streams of bubbles and somehow Tovoth.
It was a physical fight to make any headway against the current, hands digging forwards, feet kicking back, wings pulled flat and thrusters going at full force.
The tunnel continued growing narrower, until the stone closed all around them like a horrifying cocoon.
A moment came when Veem thought they would have no choice but to give up, turn and go back, because he simply couldn't force his way any further and the current was impossible to withstand.
Ahead of him Tovoth's heels kicked up silt, blinding him for a second, when it cleared, Tovoth was gone, a black crevasse in his place.
He had to stop himself from shouting in surprise and with a burst of effort he managed to writhe through the crack.
The pressure from the current eased and the walls just seemed to vanish, as if suddenly he was no longer beneath the planet's crust, but hanging helplessly in the infinite.
Tovoth waved at him, his motions sluggish in the liquid, then started swimming again.
Veem wished he'd slept longer.
At least there was no real current, in this strange subterranean lake, but up and down seemed arbitrary at best, with gravity being nil. But there was no going back now.
At least in the tunnel there had been no threat of losing sight of Tovoth, now every few seconds Veem felt a jolt of terror as the doctor faded out of his vision.
Those seconds seemed to grow longer and several times Veem though his light flickered. Then he fell into utter nothing, like reality had been erased with a sponge.
The light came back on, for an instant, and he saw Tovoth's panicked face, his hand reaching out towards him.
The light went out, for real this time, leaving Veem blind and alone, clawing towards where he'd last seen Tovoth.
His fingers brushed against something and he clutched at it, terrified of losing it.
Tovoth returned the grip and it was just the two of them.