MISERABLE PLACES 1: Carceral Mount

 Tephrotic Nightmares, by Luke Gearing. Running Mork Borg + Farewell to Arms REDUX. Alec: Pop. Asher: Mother, Thumper.

The bastards of silt beneath the stone choke guilty cattle in pens to pile their future feast...

Carceral Mount

ALREADY A WEEK IN FLIGHT. 1300 HOURS.

Mustachioed Marcellus, Private First-Class, pilots an old Galgenbeck ripperplane deep across the Sea of Ash. Gray in every direction. Private Pop, a recluse markswoman, and Private Mother, a young homesick rifleman, shiver in cockpits behind Marcellus. Their water ran out days ago, surviving off cold rain pooled into their army helmets. Stomachs rumble. Josilfa Migol, arch-priestess to the basilisk-god SHE, demands her grunts locate new sources of SLAGGVARA, as well as enemy factions, within the Sea of Ash. Marcellus sees a dark shape, and dives the ripperplane deeper into the ashy clouds.

A stumped mountain peak poking out of the gray sea. The privates catch a stone staircase leading to its top. Marcellus positions the ripperplane low and the privates jump, pulling their parachute cords. Thousands of steps up, slippery, uneven. It rained here recently. The privates slurp still water from rocky puddles and fill their waterskins for later. Still, their stomach's rumble. They carefully make their way up the steps, approaching a large carved entrance into the mountain.

1400 HOURS. 

The entrance is carved with emaciated, pleading bodies. Wind travels through the gaping mouths to sound a moaning flute that wails and wails and wails. The privates light a hooded lantern, step within, and the moaning abruptly quiets.

20ft by 20ft room carved in rough, damp stone. At the center is a hole in the floor 10ft wide that drops down into darkness. A broken winch with a snapped chain. Rotting wooden platform wheels in the corner. The privates go up a staircase to the east. Another room, this one tall and pockmarked with holes in the walls the size of bodies. Something is scratched out beneath each hole. Six wooden 10ft ladders can reach the bottom level of the body holes. The privates set off a rat trap. They realize the floor is littered with delicate, intricate rat traps assembled out of small bones. Stinking puddles on the ground, bugs skittering. Mother tests the ladders and the holes for any secrets. Pop catches a chunk of the wooden platform wheels and drops it into the hole in the floor. At the bottom is a pile of organs, bodies, parts, corpses. But the room opens up. Pop starts disassembling the ladders to create a supported structure that semi-safely drops into the hole in the previous room. This takes five hours.

1900 HOURS.

Descending. Reception room. A door northward. Voices screaming for help behind it, thudding against the door. A hallway westward. The privates notice a metal grate like a vent in the cieling. It is marked with something. They are very wary.

Westward, down stairs. Single-file, soldier-stance, corner peeking, guns drawn. Another door. They swing it open. Replica room. It's arranged the same as the entrance, with a hole and winch and wooden platforms. But everything is half the size. At the bottom of this 5ft wide hole are sharp, thin spikes. Another metal grate. A door northward. They creep through.

Hallways, winding. Southwest is blocked off. A stalagmite drips clean, clear water. Beyond is claustrophobic natural rock that winds smaller than a human can crawl. But the rich, oily, gasoline smell of SLAGGVARA wafts from beyond! With proper excavation, a team of Galgenbeck miners, it could be collected and refined.

In the hallways northward another door. The stench of unwashed bodies, feces, and blood stinks out of the cracks. Pop psychically connects with her raven and flies into the room, seeing through raven-eyes. Ratty, horrid prisoners in tattered warden uniforms sit in the darkness among refuse and broken statues. Seeing the bird, one snatches it out of the air. "I'm gonna eat ya!" 

Pop throws the door opens and shoots a sniper round through his head, killing him instantly. The other prisoners pause. One, Barney, introduces himself. 

Yon, Tlide, Marie, Granberry.

The secrets of the mount cannot survive fresh air...

After much misery the plane departs the Carceral Mount. The warden's tongue crouching within the walls is repelled, never defeated. Mother and Pop die of assassination and starvation. The only survivor is an ex-soldier, Thumper, previously trapped within the mount. He escapes with PFC Marcellus and returns to Galgenbeck.