Page 50 of Dark's Savior

"I hope it doesn't flood," she said.

Ryziel turned away. "We will be done and gone before it does."

Aly looked back at him. "So, it will?"

"There is a possibility, but I'm not worried."

Aly thought about the Keep being underwater and wondered if it had been a great flood that had destroyed the civilization that once lived in it. "I couldn't fathom living underground like this," she confessed.

"Because of the dark?"

Aly looked back at him. "Not necessarily." She thought about it. "Though maybe that too. But just the idea of being, I don't know, trapped."

Ryziel took out his dissolver. "To some, maybe it's more a feeling of being secure. They never had to worry about the dangers on the surface."

Aly snorted. "Yeah, just whatever came around from underneath. And that is way too many things for my liking. On Earth, there are, like, maybe a handful of things I can think of that live in caves, and they are pretty harmless."

"Your world sounds fairly safe, then," Ryziel said, the hint of sarcasm not going unnoticed by her.

Aly smiled. "No, not at all, really. But I would never choose Lethe Maws over it, that's for sure."

"Few would. Only urks remain now that those of the Keep are gone."

"Speaking of, I think Nar would agree I wouldn't fare well down here," Aly said, taking up her own dissolver. "In fact, I think he would prefer I was anywhere but down here with you."

Ryziel made a low grunt as if to agree. "Nar is slow to trust. And quick to think the worst about everything. Most urks are."

"I can't blame him." Aly crouched down to the most recent hole she was working on then looked back at him. "Whatever happened to him?"

Ryziel went over to the wall he had been working on and started to spray the liquid fire onto the wall. "He got caught by something, possibly a nyghi. His legs were gone, and he was dying when I found him. I was able to restore him and return him to an urk den. A few weeks later, he came back with metal legs, saying he wasn't returning home and that he was going to help me escape Lethe Maws in return for saving his life."

"He chose to leave his family to help you?" she asked as she, too, began to work at the rock face before her. One thankfully closer to him, so they could talk in low voices.

"He was no longer of use in the den. The urk pride on working together to survive. Their worth is judged by what they can do for others. When he could no longer work to help provide, he was seen as a burden."

"That's awful!" Aly said a little too loudly. She winced. "Sorry. So, he had to leave?"

"He didn't have to, but he would have been looked down upon. So, he chose to leave instead."

Aly thought it over as she worked. A bunch of outcasts, that's what they were. "What will he do then when the ship is finished? Where will he go?"

Ryziel shrugged. "Maybe come back to my home and serve me there if he so chooses. Though it is debatable whether he'd care to, since the sun rarely sets on Nihl. And urks cannot see in the sunlight."

Aly paused in her work to look back at him, wide-eyed. Both these realizations were equally fascinating, but she chose one to ask more about. "Nihl doesn't have a nighttime?"

"It does in the southern regions of the planet, though they are few and short. In the city of light to the North where I am from, however, night only comes once a month and only for an hour."

Aly had heard of places on Earth having seasons where the sun rarely set. They called it the "midnight sun." But that only lasted for maybe six months if she wasn't mistaken. She had also heard of civilian worlds within the governing system having odd hours or irregular days and nights but nothing to the extreme to which Ryziel mentioned.

"What do you do on that night?" Aly asked.

"There is a ritual held. ‘Nihl's reawakening,' as they call it. Some Houses settle down into fasting and prayer, others just have gatherings. I didn't encounter much of them myself, admittedly. I was usually on an...assignment for my father."

Aly understood that feeling. She missed a lot of parties with friends, all because her parents told her she couldn't go, usually because they wanted her studying to fulfill her role in the business. A business selling shipping bots to the military, of all things.

They continued on with their work, Aly spraying the cave walls, waiting a turn till the chemical foamed over, then pulling and scraping away the rock till a mineral was found.

When they were halfway through, Ryziel called for a break, a usual routine when they came down so that Aly could rest a moment and eat something to regain her energy. Usually, it involved Xilya teasing her most of the time about human needs and their ability to survive, and Aly took it pretty well, thinking she was doing pretty good, all things considered.

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