The chalk tally remained stubborn: four days of passage against three days, six hours, and twenty-three minutes of buoyancy. A deficit of eighteen hours. Scalding sludge bubbled along the floor joint beside Nim-Rua’s bare foot, a silent timer. Yutika watched him with calculating stillness; the two Coral-Caste survivors shrank against the bulkheads, while Nim-Rua stared at the deck in quiet resignation.
“The equation stands,” Batzal rasped, his voice rough with calculation. “To reduce the denominator of time, we must reduce the numerator of mass.” He didn’t look at anyone directly, instead fixating on a faint scorch mark on the cork-wood wall, as if the answer might materialize there.
But the heat was becoming its own equation. The thermal brass hull, designed to repel the initial mud deluge, now radiated a stifling, oppressive warmth inward. Sweat beaded on Batzal’s brow, tracing rivulets down his temples. The air inside the cork ziggurat grew thick and humid. Every breath felt like inhaling the steam from a broth. Condensation slicked the portholes, blurring the orange mire churning outside. The confined space, once a sanctuary, was fast becoming a pressure cooker.
The two underlings huddled closer to the brass bulkheads, their faces flushed, glances shifting between Batzal, Yutika, and Nim-Rua. A low murmur of anxious whispers began to circulate. “My throat… it burns,” the male clerk croaked, his voice barely audible over the rhythmic thrum against the hull. His companion wiped a hand across her brow, smearing grime across pale skin.
Nim-Rua coughed. It wasn’t the fitful, dry cough of before. This one was deeper, wetter, wracking her thin frame. She clutched her side, her knuckles white against the dark fabric of her simple tunic. She had been preparing to measure the day’s paltry water ration, but the small brass cup trembled in her hand, spilling a precious few drops onto the grimy deck. The loss, though minuscule, felt monumental in the searing air.
Yutika’s gaze, previously fixed on Batzal, flickered to Nim-Rua. A faint, almost imperceptible curl touched the magistrate’s lips, a subtle shift of disdain. “A liability, isn’t it?” Yutika’s voice, though pitched low, carried a crisp, cutting edge in the suffocating silence. “Such a shame. All that loyalty, so little utility.” The two underlings exchanged glances, catching the magistrate's implication.
Batzal looked up. “Her utility sealed the hull, Magistrate,” he said evenly. “Without her, you would be cooking in the caldera with your caste peers.” He walked to the chalkboard, ignoring the heat that made the chalk crumble slightly in his grip. He began to draw a new set of lines, a vector diagram based on the initial map Yutika had provided. The High-Peaks of Oramesh, a distant, shimmering goal, seemed to recede with every rising degree of heat.
Yutika, however, strode forward with a confident, almost theatrical flourish, her heavy, damp robes swishing against the floor. “Perhaps there are other equations, Engineer,” she said, her tone dripping with thinly veiled superiority. She unfurled the brass-etched map, its surface slick with the ambient humidity. Her finger, adorned with a single, un-salvageable onyx ring, traced a path Batzal had dismissed earlier.
“Your initial calculations are, as always, thorough, Batzal. But they assume a predictable flow. Look here.” Her finger tapped a section of the map where the delicate lines of Mokhara’s submerged lower districts converged, swirling into a dense, chaotic knot. “The old drifts through the Ash-Veins. A direct channel through the Shifting Spires of the geyser fields. Treacherous and unstable, but faster. It cuts a full day from the journey to Oramesh.”
Batzal leaned in, his eyes narrowed, scrutinizing the map. He remembered this section. The geothermal geyser fields beneath Mokhara were legendary for their unpredictability, explosive eruptions of superheated mud that could tear through solid rock. Navigating them was considered suicide. But one day. That was eighteen hours and twenty-four minutes of life he desperately needed. It shifted the mathematical impossibility closer to a mere improbability.
“The risk is astronomical,” he murmured, less to Yutika and more to the numbers in his head. “A single errant surge, a misjudged pressure wave…”
“Or a successful gamble,” Yutika countered, her eyes gleaming with a challenge. “Three days. That’s what your ledger says, isn’t it? This path offers two. A simple choice, for an engineer who values stark mathematics above all else.”
He looked from the map to Nim-Rua, who had slumped against the bulkhead, her breathing shallow, her eyes glazed with fever. He looked at the two underlings, their faces gray with exhaustion. The mud continued its relentless weep, a tiny, hot stream snaking across the deck. He closed his eyes, balancing the raw numbers against the timetable. The choice wasn’t between risk and safety; it was between a slow, certain death and a swift, uncertain one.
“Prepare for passage through the Ash-Veins,” Batzal commanded, his voice devoid of any warmth. “Secure all loose items. Brace for impact.”
He moved to the small, brass-bound steering mechanism, a rudimentary rudder adapted from ceremonial temple bells. With a grunt, he engaged the heavy lever, shifting the vessel’s orientation. The floating ziggurat lurched. The change in velocity was immediate and violent. The entire ziggurat groaned, a deep, resonant tremor passing through the cork-wood structure. Brass fittings shrieked as they strained against their bolts. The floorboards tilted sharply, pitching the male clerk into his companion, who cried out as she collided with a timber pillar. Even Yutika, for a fleeting moment, lost her composure, grabbing a handhold to steady herself.
Outside, the world churned into scalding mud and steam. A subterranean crack ripped through the air, vibrating the timber frames. Through the porthole, Batzal saw it: a thick spire of scalding sediment erupting directly ahead. It surged upwards, a churning, viscous column that seemed to touch the underside of the permanent storm clouds. Then, with a deafening crash, it began to rain. Not water, but dense, steaming clods of crust pummeling the vessel’s upper tiers. The sound was deafening, the vibrations rattling his very bones.
One particularly large slab, still glowing with residual heat, struck the hull with a sickening thud, just above the waterline. The hull shuddered. Batzal, his eyes fixed on the small, etched mark on the porthole that indicated the critical danger line, watched in horror. The sudden mass of cooling mud crust, caking the upper decks, pressed down at once. The vessel groaned, sinking as the waterline breached the scratched mark on the glass. Sludge rose around Batzal’s shins. The ledger was officially bankrupt.