Siren Stone

Though they were empty now, the mines still echoed their siren song as they had when Olvar was a boy, diligently following his father with their cart of treasures. 

It had been years since he’d dredged up the last of the Ildrae. Years since he’d found enough to make use of his men or pay their wages. They couldn’t feed their families if he didn’t pay them, but still he’d held grudges when one by one they’d left, even his own son. 

No matter what excuses he’d tried to make for them, the bitterness weighed on his heart like a crushing boulder. All of them without so much as bidding an old man farewell, leaving him to wither and dig until the mine collapsed around him— alone. 

That was fine. He could mine to the other side of the Silverspine mountains on his own. 

Olvar hefted his pickaxe, running his weathered fingers across the cold, dulled metal. A haggard thing. Just like him. The walls of the mine were beaten too, hacked away to uncover its silvery treasures, and Olvar closed his eyes against the whisper of wind through the wounded stone. Druhn was gone, but Olvar was home.

Tugging the length of his beard he stood and sighed, glaring at the last vein where he’d found anything. It was gone too. The mine once overwhelmingly filled now barren. He couldn’t believe he’d lived to see it. The Silverspine, abandoned by all those who had any measure of sense—or cowardice— while he wandered its tunnels like a ghost, confounded by some unfinished business with no one to help him pass on.

This place had belonged to his father, and to countless fathers before him. How could he be the last? Logically, Olvar knew all resources came to an end, but he’d been so enchanted by the consistency, the lull and ritual of mundane life. Still, his mind couldn’t seem to fathom it. So, here he was; mining deeper and deeper with nothing to show for it but a few pretty crystals worthless to anyone but a king. 

Clouds of perl moths drifted through the pale glow of his crystalline lantern, their wings gleaming like iridescent glass. In his early years, they were constantly frenzied, clinging desperately to the walls where they sensed Ildrae veined through the dense rock. Though they were simple creatures, he fancied himself more alike to them than his human counterparts. The never-ending search for Ildrae. And they hadn’t left him. But, mining Ildrae was a noble cause; the livelihood of his people. 

This mine was one of the oldest and most bountiful. It was. And Olvar was once the greatest stonecrafter of his people, but all of this would soon pass into memory. Olvar could tell himself all he wanted that this was natural- the simple passage of time, and it was alright to accept it, to let go of what once was. 

Sniffing, Olvar stopped at the end of his most recent tunnel and hefted his pickaxe. The telltale shimmer of magic rippled across it as if it were a sentient creature eagerly anticipating the act of what it was created to do. Dull pride shifted in Olvar’s chest, and he smiled, swinging the point against the rock.

Moths clustered around him, centuries of evolution telling them that even if they couldn’t sense the stone beyond the rock, a miner would stumble across it at some point. He ignored them, falling into the swing of his pickaxe, its clang stark against his eardrums.

Thousands of times he’d shattered the stone of this mountain and he would do so until his last breath, until neither he nor the mountain had anything left to give.

Olvar stumbled forward, a heavy swing sending him barreling forward into the dark. How had he missed the sound of hollow stone? Despite so many mishaps in his mines, he screamed, cold unlike anything he’d ever known wrapping around him. 

He hit the ground, face half-bloodied in a shallow pool of stagnant water. The cold gripped tighter, something bone deep.

His muscles seized as he struggled to breathe past his aching ribs while the muffled quiet settled around him. The shards of his lantern showered outward in an arc, glowing in separate pieces as if this broken form was what they’d always been. He looked up to see dim light wavering at the edges of a jagged maw of stone.

The hole he’d fallen from.

A cloud of moths descended, like silver snowfall. They fluttered past him, a tease of hope before disappearing beyond the reach of the light of dying lantern shards. He had to follow. As he always had. 

He struggled to his side, ran his tongue across his teeth with a wince and tasted iron. His teeth had nearly gone through his lip. Sound crept back into his ears, some song from his memory tugging him further into consciousness. A weary smile pulled at the edges of his chapped lips and he sat up past his screaming ribs and pounding head. 

The melody grew louder, clearer. He blinked, realizing he was no longer beneath the hole he’d fallen through but winding his way through a maze of stalagmites. He was walking… 

Olvar stopped—tried to stop but his legs walked on. He clenched his hand, feeling for the comforting weight of his pickaxe, but his fingers refused him. Only his eyes would obey him. His hands were empty. The pain returned to him then, lancing through his side and he slumped, waiting for the cold smack of ground. But still, his body went on. What was happening? Was he in shock? He must’ve hit his head in the fall.

His body continued to betray him.

Alarm cut through his confusion.

Singer magic.

Fear spiked in his throat like a vice, crushing his breath. But as the song crescendoed, just before it clouded his thoughts, he remembered where he’d heard it before—a faint whisper at the end of a tunnel his father was about to collapse.

"Nothing good can come from that," he’d said as dust barreled out from the deep, silencing the siren song.

When Olvar reclaimed his mind once more he was in complete darkness, his shattered lantern abandoned somewhere in the mountain he knew he’d never see again. His fear twisted, steeling into resolve—  and something sharper. Curiosity. Had he finally struck something more than Ildrae? Something that would make the others regret leaving. So be it. He would face the singer without cowering and not one who abandoned him could boast the same.

Light bloomed ahead, faint but enough to make his heart leap with relief. It grew as he walked, steps more sure as he’d yielded to the singer’s pull, until light erupted like a curtain swept away. Had he control of himself, he would’ve winced and raised an arm against the glare. Instead, he was blinded, carried farther and farther until he stopped, the grind of dust and pebble absent beneath his boots.  

The song droned on. His vision blurred. Blind spots faded as his breath snagged over cracked ribs.

He stood in an enormous cavern, its smooth walls draped with tapestries he’d once seen in a binder’s sanctum, a trap for magic like ancient tales of dream catchers from the origin world. The magic sagged from them like wet rags, too drenched to hold anymore power. He still couldn’t see the singer, but what lay coiled in the center of the room was far worse than any singer could hope to be.

A great, dark serpent, bound to the floor with thick arches of Ildrae that flexed with his writhing, its eyes darker even than the abyss above. Perl moths dotted the arches, still as death like they’d found their final resting place.

Olvar couldn’t deny his fear but his resolve didn’t waver even as the singer finally stepped into view. His clothes were unlike anything he’d ever seen, an ancient style, thin bolts of Ildrae-infused cloth cut in sharp angles that complemented the high arches of his cheekbones. The cloth spiderwebbed over his thin frame as the singer cocked his head. He examined Olvar but kept up his song. A song he’d been singing since Olvar had been a boy. Gods knew how long even before that.

“You,” Olvar choked out past the magic.

The singer smiled and spread his arms out as if in welcome, as if asking what had taken Olvar so long. Understanding and melancholy swept through him, the boulder crushing his heart sinking. Olvar had never truly loved the mines. He’d been obsessed. He’d been bewitched.

The singer strode to Olvar’s left, the song pulling his gaze. This third revelation was worse than even the singer and the serpent. 

Druhn.

My son.

He stood frozen, only feet away, pickaxe in hand. Druhn’s eyes stuttered, straining to meet Olvar’s. The fear there knocked the wind from Olvar, sent his mind back to Druhn’s first day in the mines. How Olvar had comforted him, wiped the tears and promised Druhn he had nothing to fear.

He tried to move for him, to wipe the tears freely slipping down Druhn’s face, but the singer didn’t falter, his verse silken and melancholy as he ran a finger down Druhn’s sunken cheek. 

Olvar roared with fury, desperate to crush the singer’s skull, tear out his tongue, anything to free Druhn. The Singer’s attention snapped back to Olvar, his beautiful words short, commanding. 

The serpent writhed against the Ildrae bindings, and the singer faltered, attention back to the beast. The singer’s magic was stretched thin, his control slipping. Too many wills, too much to hold. To even hold this much over three minds warring against him, this man had power Olvar would be foolish to dismiss.

Their silent battle waged on, the weight of his song was a cave-in almost unbearable on Olvar’s mind. He wondered if Druhn had resisted, or had Olvar’s mind simply built immunity to this song after sixty-seven long years of exposure.

Olvar’s mind splintered as he bent under the singer’s control. It smothered the fragments of rage burning to protect Druhn and ground them to ash. How long had they been at war? Days? Hours? There was no way to tell by the unchanging air and light in this subterranean prison of serpent and song. He couldn’t even look at his son. The singer warped Olvar’s mind, magic barreling through his thoughts directed at the serpent. It crushed against the Ildrae arches, compressing the bindings to contain its fury. 

As he rested against the magic’s hold he realized the singer was switching languages, as if searching for the right one, but one Olvar understood somewhere in his subconscious, in his bones. The singer did a poor job masking his frustration but he went on until Olvar was sure no other languages could exist, not even for one so long-lived as this singer. Like fine-tuning an instrument, Olvar’s mind was but one string. The singer’s pitch lowered—and Olvar felt it.

His soul.

Something latched in Olvar’s mind, like shackles melded around his limbs, sagging him further against the magic that held him rigid. A triumphant smile flashed across the singer’s weary face as he wove new words into the song, the magic swelling, bloating Olvar’s soul. The singer’s form relaxed, like a weight lifted.

“The song cannot stop.” He followed the singer’s gaze to Druhn. “Not yet.”

Olvar had spent his entire life pilfering valuables from this mountain, and now Druhn would lose his greatest treasure. Freedom.

Resistance trembled through Olvar. His shaking hand reached for Druhn’s. They wouldn’t leave the mines, but Druhn wouldn’t face the end alone. His palm scratched across Druhn’s clammy hand, grip tightening. He gave no response.

The song built and blackened the edges of his vision, eating away at his awareness, pieces of his mind eddied out to oblivion. 

Druhn’s fingers twitched and a new song bloomed in Olvar, a beat in his chest that no magic could swallow.

Their grip steadied.

Unyielding. 

Then, the dark crashed over them.