The shrill, triple shriek of Edda’s brass quarry whistle cut through the thundering rumble of Level Five with the sharp, piercing urgency of an explosive alarm.
Len Vey heard it while dropping the iron rung-ladders of the central air-flow shaft, sixty feet above the pit floor. He was moving one-handed, his boots finding each cold iron rung by touch through the rising sulfur fog, his right hand gripping the rusted metal with white-knuckled intensity. Meanwhile, his braced left forearm hung strapped tightly to his ribs inside its linen sling.
The upright shaft was an echo chamber of heavy-duty dread. Every foot of descent brought a heavier blast of freezing mountain draft mixed with the sour, chemical reek of unvented coal smoke. The jarring shaking of each step sent blinding waves of hot, red pain through his fractured radius, the broken ends of the bone grinding against the oiled ash splints with an insistent, sickening throb that made his vision swim.
Yet his Level 5 courier baseline improvements worked in quiet, desperate all at once. - Surefoot anchored his right boot-heel against the slippery limestone grease that coated the iron rungs, re-centering his balance before his muscles could strain. - Long Breath forced his chest muscle into a rhythmic, steady pace, filtering enough oxygen from the sulfur-heavy vapor to prevent lung spasms. - Road Sense shook through the ladder uprights into his calloused right palm. He carried the tremors of the mountain bedrock. Not the steady, clockwork pulse of the Cornish…
