From The Layer's Darkness

Descending - Act 2 | Chapter 31 - From The Layer's Darkness
Nineteen Hours Since Juna Was Found Dead

“You lied,” Sorina said, pouting and crossing her arms.

Groaning in a mocking tone, Tereza reached into her pocket and pulled out a smoke. She then Tuned a Stone and lit the end of the smoke with it before taking a puff.

“People love to hear lies,” Tereza said. “If you told a few more white lies then your chin wouldn’t end up like that.”

Sorina touched her chin, a dab of blood stuck onto her fingertips. “Still…someone who can’t act is in pain. Isn’t it our job as Corpse Readers to make sure we can be their voice?” Sorina asked.

She looked up at Tereza with pleading eyes, hoping to hear her agree and tell her oh so how right she was. Instead, Sorina met the face of a woman who looked as if she had stepped in a beast’s waste.

“I only work to get paid,” Tereza replied, taking another puff of the smoke. “Metal doesn’t come around often you know.”

“Still!” Sorina cried. “The dead are helpless and you know how people are. They’re greedy with life and make assumptions about those they carry about, overlooking their pain just because they say the living don’t want to give up. Tereza, look we have—”

A hand pressed against her mouth and Sorina mumbled the remaining sentence.

“Okay, okay I hear you, geez.” Tereza tossed the smoke down and stomped it out.

The conversation went quiet. Sorina spoke again.

“I thought you stopped smoking those things?”

Tereza scoffed. “You make it really hard to stop.”

Quiet lingered until both girls gently giggled. Tereza turned and faced Sorina. “Look, I'll cover the rest of our shift alone. We only got about one more batch to Depart, so it won’t be difficult alone. Just…go and patch yourself up. Take a break for once, if you don’t then you’ll end up a corpse too.”

Sorina nodded in agreement and skipped off, but stopped just outside the marble circle.

“Tereza,” she said.

“What?”

“The Gritborns that refuse to have their loved ones Departed. Where do they take the corpse?”

Tereza pointed downwards. “The Fourth Layer.”

“For The Chasm’s Mercy, right?”

“Though that's only a tall tale,” Tereza replied with a nod. “They hope that somehow they would be the ones to reach The Chasm’s bottom and dip their deceased friend into The Chasm’s Mercy. Foolishness is all it is.”

“So,” Sorina said in a hush. “The only real way to save a corpse from the pain is by Departing them? Since The Chasm’s Mercy doesn’t exist.”

Tereza frowned. “Well, there is one name I have heard tossed around by other corpses throughout the years.”

“Corpses?” Sorina asked.

“Yeah, every now and then I hear the same name from different corpses. I get about three a year and honestly it gives me the creeps.”

“And the name?”

“A researcher. Radu, someone who lives above The First Layer in Ground Zero. They talk as if he knows about The Chasm’s mercy.” Tereza shrugged. “Just another rumor though.”

Radu, Sorina thought. She would remember him.

With a gleeful nod Sorina left, walking into the village of Ground One.

Things never really changed. The population, corpses, her job, everything in Ground One always remained content so long as the Living Fossil delivered them fruit. The only real threat they ever had to worry about was the Coloana-Vie that tunneled in the Layer below.

To live alongside the tunneling beast, Ground One had brick huts all raised off the ground ten yards by sturdy pillars beneath them. Every building in Ground One was like this, even Sorina’s own hut.

She approached her small raised hut and grappled the thick rope that dangled from the door. She pulled herself up until she could grab the ledge and walk inside. Finally she could rest without worry.

Her grey tunic came off first as she tossed it somewhere behind her hide blanketed bed. Then she unzipped the back of her skin tight under layer and tossed on more comfortable clothes—a puffy cotton sweater and some joggers. A Corpse Readers clothes were always itchy and uncomfortable. Her pajamas were not.

Walking into the kitchen, Sorina sat an empty glass onto the wooden counter. She first opened a cabinet and pulled out a rounded, squat Stone, chalked up a couple of lines on its surface, then rubbed her thumb across it.

Water flowed from the Stone and filled the cup with its clear hydrating liquid. Though Sorina was far from done. Next, she dug deeper into the cabinet and pulled out another larger Stone. Chalking up lines on its surface, she Tuned the Stone and out came a blazing heat. She sat the hot Stone on her rock foundation and rested the glass cup on top of it. Boiling the water.

Sorina squatted in wait as small bubbles appeared in the glass, thriving to burst out. Slowly, the water turned to a boil and steamed to the top. Though Sorina let it topple over, and watched as the hot water ran from the glass out onto the Stone and then onto her floor.

A man was in pain. She knew it. Even after the rude Gritborns ushered their dead friend away, Sorina's flesh still itched. She was a Corpse Reader. Her job was to Depart those who perished in The Chasm. What was she doing watching water boil in her pajamas?

She sprung to her feet and yanked the cotton sweater off, then pulled her pants to her ankles. Kicking her dangling pants away, Sorina equipped the skin tight black under suit and then frantically dug for her grey tunic.

She found it, tossed it on, then approached a mirror to check her auburn hair. Then—out the door in search of the dead body. Sorina slid from the ropes and jogged across Ground One, letting the crawling feeling in her flesh guide her.

The Second Layer’s entrance was behind her an hour's reach away. The First Layers was half that and on the opposite side. She waited, felt the crawling skin, and decided which way to go.

The First Layer.

As she walked through the village, whispers of The First Layer entered her ears. Something about Snatchers and how not a single Gritborn has made it back from The First Layer in four weeks. An alarming and unusual thing. Almost as if the entire section of The Chasm had been closed off.

The villagers spoke in scattering voices of how almost a month ago The Chasm Shifted and brought Snatcher’s from The Second Layer up to the First. Because of that, not a single Gritborn from Ground Zero had been able to Descend down to Ground One. Likewise, Ground One couldn’t go up.

If such a case was true then it only meant Sorina needed to hurry before the two Gritborns traveled into their own death. She pushed through the crowd and continued her journey. If Tereza was to be believed, then the researcher named Radu awaited at Ground Zero. Someone who the corpses believed to have The Chasm’s Mercy.

All of it seemed weird in Sorina’s head. The oddest one being why multiple corpses said the same things. In death a person tends to only speak what they obsess with, and of course, half of the time those things are pain and survival. Occasionally you will get a corpse that speaks of something different. And rarely do you hear one speak a name.

Radu, Sorina thought. Who are you?

Sorina fell to the ground in pain. Her chest burned as if something impaled straight through her. Then another slump of agony washed over her as the spine on her back twisted like a fool until it snapped into three separate pieces. Finally, her head began compressing in on itself with unimaginable pain.

Then nothing. Silence. And Sorina was still alive—curled up in a ball on the street. She shakily rose, catching her breath as she balanced herself. The crawling feeling had stopped. Not good. Not good at all.

She rushed through the village, it took time but eventually she made it to the outskirts. Where now? She never once tried to leave Ground One, not like this. No longer could she feel the corpse, as if it was taken by something and dragged away whole.

How? By what?

She crept closer, and there in front of her the entrance to The First Layer sat. A large gaping hole in the wall that could fit five raised huts stacked on top of themselves. She always saw the entrance from her hut—never up close. There were rumors that the entrance to Ground One was made by Coloana-Vie who tunneled through The First Layer into The Second Layer.

The rumor had to be true. Sorina took a gulp, then inched forward. The dark entrance loomed and the white light she was so used to cut off immediately. Sorina could go no closer, she waited twenty yards from the gaping hole, and far away from the village or anyone else.

“H-hello!” she called, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Please, if you can hear me say something!”

No response.

“Hello!”

Nothing.

Sorina stood on her tippy toes, ready to shout once more, but stopped.

Corpses.

Not the same. Different. A set of four approached from inside The First Layer. Sorina took a step back, wanted to run away but froze still. Snatchers lay inside the Layer. In over a month not a single Gritborn had managed to make it out of The First Layer alive. Now—now the feeling of four corpses grew closer from inside it

Darkness coated them and Sorina waited in chopped breaths as the feeling continued to move forward. Her skin crawled. If not a Gritborn—then what? What thing was pulling the corpses closer?

The answer soon came. Sorina didn’t know how to respond. Out from the darkness of a Layer that no Gritborn had returned in a month, came a man bearing no DepthStone. He had black hair and eyes switchblade sharp, wearing something that looked like clothes from another world. A deep scar ran from his forehead to the bottom of his chin on the right side. The man was covered in soot and though he stepped into the bright, white light from crystals above, not once did his eyes shimmer. Hollow. Empty.

Slumped in the man’s arms was a girl with long crimson hair. Her eyes were pure white, gone, faded away. Her abdomen had been pierced as well and blood still continued to drip onto the man’s shirt from the wound. A horrible way to go that brought Sorina to her knees.

Strapped to the man’s back was the second corpse stuffed in a sac. The top string was frayed, revealing a young girl with amber eyes slightly covered by mercury hair. Her face looked worse than the man's. Bruised purple and gashed like a cutting board. She had been dead the longest.

Behind the man, a makeshift sled from a thin slab of wood was being pulled—a rope wrapped around his waist. On the wooden sled was a large sculpted man with his neck torn through and one arm missing. Though, oddly enough, the man seemed to be made out of wood.

Laying curled on top the wooden man being dragged, was the last one. A girl with short dark black hair was being almost hugged in a way by the wooden man, and she wore the same clothes as Sorina. Another Corpse Reader. Pale as the skin could be, her entire body was dried of blood and her eyes gone, sockets remaining empty.

Four corpses. Four dead bodies being dragged, carried, and toted by one man who didn’t even wear a single DepthStone. He met eyes with Sorina. The eyes of someone who knew the dangers of The Chasm. A person unlike Sorina who had been surrounded in security. The lone, corpse-bearing man in front of her could only be titled by one name. An oddly fitting name—

A Corpse Carrier.