The Digging by Marc Chantler (fantasy books to read txt) 📕

It had rained the night before. The ground would be muddy, something that somewhat irked Chorg, but he would dig anyway. It was his purpose. He was born to dig. His sharp, thick claws were made to cut and rip up thick roots. He relished the way the muscles in his arms and shoulders tightened as he tunneled through hard bedrock, and as he moved embedded boulders. The earth always received him with open arms. It was happy to accept a companion and he was happy to be that companion because digging was not just his purpose, but who he was.

He started at the muddied topsoil. It was easier since he didn't have to break up hardened clay. That disappointed him because he always liked that part of digging. It rarely rained so it was usually difficult. It normally rained no more than once in a cycle, so Chorg guessed this was it. He wouldn't have to worry until the next cycle about the strange way he overjerked rocks through the soppy mud. His muscles had a hard time getting use to wading through it. Or he wouldn't have to worry about the nasty sucky sound some rocks made as he pulled them from the grip of too sticky mud. He loved digging, but hated water, especially when it interfered with the comfort he had in his work.

He went outside his den, enduring the wet sucking sound his feet made as he made his way to the spot he had left off from the other day. He lowered himself down with lengthy arms into yesterday's exit hole, now with some standing water sitting at its bottom. He could see nothing at first because of the dark, but it was only a second before his eyes adjusted. The tunnels had their own glow, a dark muddy light. He blinked a few times and the tunnel glow brightened into a shadowy amber. It was much better.

He crawled on to the last dead end he carved out the day before.

Chorg worked easily through the wet. He didn't even my the slogging or noticed many of the sucking sounds as he worked. He was on the dig and that made everything matter much less. He slung mud and lifted rock shaping the tunnel as he went along. He started humming a tune not long after he started, losing himself to the task at hand.

At one point during the dig, he came to some thick bedrock and his stomach tingled at the sight. He smiled to himself because of it. This is what he dug for, moments like this. The bedrock would have to be broken if he was to continue on. He was going to get some true work on this day despite the rain. He felt energy fill him with the prospect and wanted to laugh loudly, triumphantly for his good fortune, but he didn't. Instead he began to work, contenting himself with humming a digging tune, the sound coming from deep in his chest.

Early on the morn
I dig
Till late in the eve
I dig

Starting up high
I dig down low
It's all up to me
How far I'll go

I dig
I dig, I dig
I dig

He filled himself with the minerals from the bedrock as tunneled through it. Hammering it with his huge claws, harder than most stone. Sometimes chomping at it with his flat, dense teeth. The morning was shaping up to be one of his best despite the damp tunnels.

By the time he broke through the bedrock the digging tune had move from his chest to a soundless thought-song playing in his head. His father had taught it to him and his brothers when they were young. When they got older and scattered to each of the corners of the world the song is what they took with them.

He was digging with this song in his head and heart, and since he didn't have to exert himself much after the earlier bedrock deposit (something he felt was somewhat disappointing), the song played on his lips for a long time before he ran into another being. This was a strange and rare occurrence. There were no other being for many miles, no more than ten other at a time, including Quiin Matri--his mother whom he had not seen since his own birth. His brothers dug in their own quadrants. They rarely if ever met up with one another, tending each to his own task.

That's why meeting up with this stranger Chorg didn't approach with even a modicum of expected surprise. The surprise was pure and unadulterated, verging on fear, and steeped deeply in paranoia.

The stranger looked unlike anything Chorg had ever witnessed before.

The being's skin hung away from it. It seemed limp, kind of soggy like the mud he dug through all that day. It leaned against something, a black stick from a tree the likes he'd never seen before in all his existence. There weren't many above ground, but there were a few. They all white colored like a over lit, sun soaked sky.

Its eyes glowed bright and white in the gloom and they gave off their own luminescence. Chorg had to squint to look directly at the creature. The eyes were set too close together and it kind of frightened Chorg the way they stared forward at him. It had a mouth underneath those dangerous looking eyes and sharp teeth in the mouth that looked even more dangerous than the eyes. It was unpleasant.

Chorg didn't quite understand the being's strange anatomy. It was wrong in multiple ways. He wondered if he could communicate with it. Started to say something, ask it something to get an understanding of its intentions, but couldn't. Fear seized his words. Snatched them right out of his mind before he could produce a sound. He stood and stared back at it, not know what to do next.

The creature relieved him of the burden to act. It moved, shifting from supporting itself with its stick to standing straight up. It moved smoothly toward him, extended its hand, and began to speak.

Chorg moved back and quickly away from it, tripping over a rock. He continued to scrabble backward as he got to his feet.

It said something else in its tongue with a voice like grinding rock, gesturing with its tiny white hands. Both hands out facing Chorg, back in toward itself, then it lifted a single finger. It bared its teeth at him again. It went into the folds of itself and Chorg started to flee again as his fear rose once more at what he was witnessing, when he heard that gravelly voice again. This time he understood.

"Salutations, allow me to introduced myself. I'm called Faerylwake," he said. "I know I'm not a being you're use to seeing on your world. That being because my kind left this place long ago my good groundling."

He spoke quickly and melodically. His word rumbled from his toothy mouth. For something so small he had such a deep, gravelly voice. Chorg's father rumbled similarly, but he was much larger than Chorg himself, probably three times as large. Faerylwake's voice was soothing in a way, but Chorg didn't that lull him into a false since of security. He watched guardedly as Faerylwake talked, still half lost in the surprise of finding someone in his tunnels.

"I need to tell you something, a story. It will explain what I am, why I'm here, everything. Even why you are here. The question is, do you want to know?"

He was gesturing fast like something was troubling him. Chorg understood him, but he didn't understand how--the being wasn't speaking like him at all. What he spoke flowed and washed over Chorg and what should have been senseless, yet somehow soothing, sounds. He sounded like the rumbling of a staying storm. Chorg understood the contents of what he spoke despite this. This was all fine except he didn't quite hold the being's meaning.

"What do you mean, why I am here?" He spoke to the creature for the first time. 

Faerylwake displayed his teeth again. "Good. This is good. But I can't tell you that without telling you the story. Do you want to hear it?" 

The creature, Faerylwake, struck more than fear in Chorg's heart. He sparked curiosity there too, and it was slowly replacing that fear. 

"Yes," Chorg said. "Tell me." 

And Faerylwake did. 

The story begins long, long ago. 

The beginning started before the land Chorg dug daily existed. This was even before the ancient creature, Faerylwake, that stood before Chorg recounting the story of creation existed. Long, long ago, the universe was born into darkness from light. There was nothing, then there was a universe born from light and out of that light also came many creatures, some with understanding and other creatures without it, but before them, in the darkness, was something older.

It was an evil, hiding thing waiting in the void for creation. As the seas unfolded and the trees stretched to the expansive heavens, as living creatures filled all of it and moved on the face of the worlds, it lurked and bided its time. Waiting, as the light shown, to a creature, on everything. It grew jealous. 

Time was on its side and soon the days cycled, changing places with the night. Shadows extended away from their objects. The depths of the waters reached deeper. It knew the right time approached. It waited. 

The wheels of the universe had begun. There were few sentient creatures in the universe then and not many more after. The Alteuine were the first.

"The Alteuine are my brethren and susteren and we settled first on this very land, well before we brought

your kind." 

Chorg sat on the tunnel floor entralled, listening to Faerylwake tell him about things he couldn't understand. He couldn't even prove Faerylwake's tale of creation and lurking beasts in the sky. It was an unbelievable history, though the conviction in Faerylwake's telling was undeniable. 

"I don't understand your story. What do you mean when you say, "brought my kind"? I can not

understand half of what you tell me."

Faerylwake started to say something, paused and ran a black tongue over his gleaming teeth, then he