1.01

The art­work of CHALLENGER’S CHASE is still under devel­op­ment. Please for­give the rough drafts. For any offers of col­lab­o­ra­tion, please con­tact: ccghawkins00@gmail.com

Beneath open blue skies and a bright and shin­ing sun…

 

…in the heart of peace­ful desert, a hun­dred miles away from civ­i­liza­tion…

…down a hole, hun­dreds of feet deep…?

…there was an under­ground vil­lage, with an under­ground school, with under­ground class­rooms. An elder­ly woman stood in one such room, sur­round­ed by walls of pure slate, with a piece of chalk read­ied in her hand. Like it was total­ly nor­mal.

Her name was Miss Eleina, and she was a six­ty-four-year-old retired gov­erness. She stood tall, despite her years.

Through­out all of her years in edu­ca­tion and child-rear­ing, she’d start­ed each and every ses­sion by writ­ing out her name for all her charges to see. Miss Eleina. And even now, retired as she was, she still proud­ly claimed that appel­la­tion. She was, with chalk in her hand, a career gov­erness, tutor and edu­ca­tor of the bright young minds. With­out it, she was mere­ly a retiree named Lily, with no fam­i­ly or lega­cy to speak of. She had not expect­ed to reclaim this iden­ti­ty in her end­ing years, but here she was, hav­ing done so. And she was glad for it.

But pride didn’t reverse time. On her head was the same fad­ed flo­ral head­scarf that she’d start­ed wear­ing ten years ago once she real­ized that the hair on the top of her head was going scant. And unlike her hair, the lines on her face had only grown more abun­dant with the pass­ing days. They were lit spec­tac­u­lar­ly from two dif­fer­ent direc­tions; by the cyan glow of the water-bulbs that hung over­head, and the dull half-light that drift­ed in slant­ed through the long, open slot that lined one side of the class­room. At least the nat­ur­al twi­light per­vad­ing the room was flat­ter­ing.

Tuck­ing away such sil­ly thoughts of van­i­ty with a small smile, Miss Eleina dug her chalk against the slate and began writ­ing in neat, curt, hand­writ­ing.

“In the year 524,” she dic­tat­ed, chalk tap­ping and scrap­ing, “Direc­tor Rouiac declared the begin­ning of…?”

“The Age of Expan­sion!”

An excit­ed voice answered from behind her. It belonged to the younger of her two pupils, Opal Peb­ble­bot­tom, who was so new to school­ing that baby fat still touched his cheeks. She heard his excite­ment quick­ly fade, with the that pecu­liar seri­ous­ness that only chil­dren and diver­gents knew how to pro­duce.

“But it end­ed in dis­as­ter,” he added solemn­ly.

The for­mer gov­erness nod­ded with­out turn­ing away from the board. She her­self had suc­cumbed long ago to black humor, the clown-sword of the elder­ly that was always a bit too sharp for younger people’s tastes, but she kept it under wraps for the chil­dren.

“That’s cor­rect,” she said, “With the sup­port of the rul­ing pow­ers of that era and, of course, the Chal­lenger Guild that she led, Direc­tor Rouiac declared the Age of Expan­sion and formed four coali­tions of explor­ers to lead the charge for a new gold­en age for human­i­ty. These four expe­di­tions —two to chal­lenge the glacial bar­ri­ers of the north and south, and anoth­er two to face the end­less oceans of the east and west— each end­ed in almost com­plete loss of life. This event is referred to as…?”

Hear­ing the anx­ious kick of Opal’s legs beneath his desk, Miss Eleina refrained from writ­ing out the answer. Knowl­edge was best built, not giv­en.

“The Car­di­nal Cat­a­stro­phes, Miss Eleina?” asked Opal hes­i­tant­ly.

“Cor­rect again, Opal. Well done!”

Miss Eleina nod­ded as she wrote down the name of the event and under­lined it three times emphat­i­cal­ly.

“Only a few dozen out of the tens of thou­sands of explor­ers that were recruit­ed sur­vived. Even Direc­tor Rouiac, in her des­per­a­tion to make her mark, lost her life in the west­ern expe­di­tion. It would not be an exag­ger­a­tion to say that the Car­di­nal Cat­a­stro­phes are the black­est marks on the Chal­lenger Guild’s oth­er­wise near-spot­less record. But their efforts weren’t entire­ly in vain. The only ship that sur­vived the West­ern Ocean expe­di­tion returned with a per­ilous route to a new land. A place we now call…?”

For a third time, Miss Eleina asked a ques­tion, and for a third time, Opal answered.

“The new colonies! I want to go there some­day!”

“Oh, that wouldn’t be wise, dear,” she replied with a sad shake. “Even if you received per­mis­sion for such a high­ly restrict­ed voy­age, the jour­ney to the new colonies is extreme­ly dan­ger­ous. Liv­ing there too. Even if you sur­vived, you’d cer­tain­ly be pro­hib­it­ed from return­ing. You wouldn’t want to leave every­one here behind for­ev­er, would you?”

Miss Eleina paused, expect­ing an inter­jec­tion from her oth­er stu­dent. A dec­la­ra­tion that risk or per­mis­sion didn’t mat­ter; that she’d get there one day, even if it was by pad­dle boat.

It didn’t come.

Miss Eleina frowned and, for the first time in what was prob­a­bly an unwise length of time, checked behind her­self.

“Opal…” asked Miss Eleina slow­ly, “Where’s Car­nelia?”

“She made me promise not to say!”

Opal’s bright, inno­cent smile fal­tered as Miss Eleina nar­rowed her eyes dan­ger­ous­ly. He gulped and shrank into his seat.

“She made me promise…” he repeat­ed fear­ful­ly, “She said good boys don’t break their promis­es!”

“Tell me,” Miss Eleina point­ed her chalk at him like a skew­er, “or I’ll tell your Oo’ma and Oo’pa that you’ve been a very unco­op­er­a­tive stu­dent.”

As tooth­less as it was, Miss Eleina imme­di­ate­ly regret­ted speak­ing the threat. Opal’s eyes began welling with fat, blob­by tears, and his low­er lip trem­bled. Miss Eleina dropped the chalk and rushed over to sweep him up in her arms before he start­ed wail­ing.

“Oh, dear. Oh dear. I’m sor­ry, Opal! I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Des­per­ate­ly hold­ing back sobs, Opal buried his face into his teacher’s dress and nod­ded. Miss Eleina sup­pressed a wince at all the tears and snot he was prob­a­bly leav­ing behind. She deserved it, she sup­posed. After deal­ing with Car­nelia for so long, she’d for­got­ten that most oth­er stu­dents required a much soft­er hand. Espe­cial­ly Opal, who was sev­er­al years younger than the girl, and seemed lit­er­al­ly to be made of some kind of soft pud­ding. The girl was made of stern­er stuff. Gem­stones, per­haps. Def­i­nite­ly some­thing hard and rock-like for her skull.

Even­tu­al­ly, after sev­er­al min­utes of head pats and soft­ly mur­mured dear-dears, Opal regained his com­po­sure.

“She didn’t tell me where she was going,” he man­aged between hic­cups. “She just said she had some super secret stuff to deal with, and that I had to promise not to tell you. Oh. And that if you kept ask­ing, to give you this.”

Opal pulled a slip of paper out from his desk and hand­ed it to her. A mes­sage was writ­ten onto it in Carnelia’s dis­tinc­tive hand­writ­ing; sharp and boun­cy, blurt­ing in writ­ten form.

‘Hey, Miss Eleina! I’m gonna skip class today. Got some impor­tant stuff to do today. Don’t tell Gramps!’

When she flipped the note over, she found a hasti­ly scrawled post­script on the back.

‘P.S. Direc­tor Rouiac declared the Age of Expan­sion in 525. Not 524.’

Miss Eleina glanced at the erro­neous date on the board and smiled wry­ly. Leave it to Car­nelia to catch a mis­take like that. On the sub­ject of Chal­lengers alone, she was the per­fect stu­dent.

Still, skip­ping class? Miss Eleina tapped her lit­tle nub of chalk against her lip. That was cer­tain­ly out of char­ac­ter. Yes, there had been a time when noth­ing could’ve kept Car­nelia in this small, musty class­room, but she had grown up con­sid­er­ably since then. She was a good, hon­est girl, with heart and spir­it to match. Besides, what was there for her to do in Down­town any­way? It was no des­ti­na­tion spot for chil­dren.

What­ev­er Carnelia’s rea­sons, as a teacher, Miss Eleina couldn’t let it slide. It would set a poor examp—!

A strange sen­sa­tion beneath her feet made Miss Eleina halt in her tracks.

Was that…?

One look at the water lamps hang­ing over­head, crys­tal­lized Miss Eleina’s sus­pi­cions into cer­tain­ty. There were rip­ples inside the glow­ing globes of water. This far down, that meant only one thing.

—an earth­quake!

With spry­ness she was sup­posed to have for­got­ten decades ago, Miss Eleina shoved Opal under his desk with a bark of an order to ‘keep his head down!’ and dashed for the land­line installed beside the door. Nev­er mind scold­ing Car­nelia, she had to let her know it wasn’t safe!

But as fast as Miss Eleina moved, the earth was faster. As the retired gov­erness ripped the receiv­er off its hook and began to punch in num­bers, a dull, heavy rum­bling over­took the small class­room. The water­lamps began jan­gling back and forth on their chains over­head, and a pair of old stor­age box­es in the back of the room crashed to the ground, spilling their con­tents over the floor. Opal cried out and held on to his desk as it rat­tled and scoot­ed about on its feet.

It was an earth­quake. Just a sil­ly lit­tle rum­ble of rock and dirt.

But in the small under­ground town of Down­town, that was a ter­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence indeed.