Sean E. Britten

All There in the (Monster) Manual are stories based on creatures from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Over 2022 I released a different story fitting the theme every single week and I’ve now expanded to Dungeons & Dragons’ Monsters of the Multiverse and even the Pathfinder Bestiary. Could be fantasy, science fiction, horror, or something else entirely! Check them out on the main page of the website.

This Week’s Inspiration: Giant Crab

This story is a sequel to The Birth of Cities, it contains spoilers although doesn’t require a read to understand this one.

The glass harvesters follow the movements of the enormous calderustaceans, mining their abandoned volcanic shells for pockets of glass formed from molten sand and minerals once they’ve cooled. Far from home, fifteen-year-old Jairo’s most sincere desire is to prove himself a worthy member of Captain Marquez’s crew.

======

Remaining at a safe distance, the glass harvesters took shelter and watched the giant crab explode. Molten rock boiled, searing red against the column of black smoke fuming from its shell. Titanic legs splayed, braced on the glassy shore. Pincers were tucked under the front of the calderustacean’s body. Its face was as alien as any Jairo had ever seen but he thought he could read the effort, the strain, in the crab’s blazing eyes and folded mandibles.

At fifteen, Jairo looked to the other men to see how he should react. All of them were older, seasoned, travelled and toughened. Jairo didn’t want to goggle at the spectacle like some kind of dumb kid. Then something erupted inside the calderab’s shell with such power that he couldn’t help but jump. The ground rippled and the force of the blast cleared a hole in the sky for a moment. Lava belched from inside the cone of a shell and spiralled down its sides, running like syrup over the calderab’s legs and dripping on the soil. Fortunately, none of the other harvesters seemed to notice Jairo’s reaction. Several of them flinched as well, and they shrank against the clifftop from where they watched.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Captain Marquez grinned.

“It’s-, yeah, it’s very amazing,” Jairo said.

Ash began to fall from the sky like grey snow, settling on their skin and hair and clothing. The sun had turned into an angry red dot behind veils of smoke. Another explosion rocked the calderustacean. Whole chunks of flaming rock blew out of its shell like cannonshot.

“Once it’s finished, we’ll have to wait at least a day before it’s cool enough to approach,” another man, Luis, said.

The Fire Islands were an archipelago surrounded by leagues and leagues of open ocean. Emerald jungles and black, glassy deserts, burned and broken, like the shoreline below. Their isolated position had led to the evolution of some of the most unique creatures in the known world, such as the woodworker finches, trebuchet beetles, and the mighty calderustaceans.

Resembling an enormous hermit crab, the caledrab was the size of a small island and wore a rocky cone of a mountain for a shell. The eruptions, spewing lava and anarchy, helped the calderab break free so it could move into a new shell. Its body burned at unimaginable temperatures, some said hotter than the surface of the sun. When they first emerged onto land, calderustaceans were no bigger than large dogs. As they grew, they moved from rock shell to rock shell. Other cone-shaped growths, from the very small to the very large, littered the glassy shoreline and the blackened scar of ruin that extended into the island’s jungle interior. From crumbling anthills to fat but hollow mountains.

Another blast from within the cavern of the calderustacean’s shell sent a shockwave gusting through the reams of smoke overhead. Lava spasmed out of the top. Around the edges of the blackened landscape, patches of vegetation battled to recolonise the rich volcanic soil left behind from previous calderustacean eruptions. Some pieces of flaming rock landed amongst a strip of jungle and the plants immediately ignited, orange flames racing through them. Fortunately, any birds or animals inhabiting that portion of greenery had already fled.

The volcano shell loosened around its base, shifting. Beneath the rock, the calderab’s carapace was a mottled brown riddled in webs of red veins. It rose on its spiny legs. Shaking, it slid the rock shell off its back. Doing so revealed the bubbling caldera that lay open, like some terrible wound, on the animal’s back. Still filled with molten magma, it glowed so brightly it hurt to look at. The creature scuttled sideways and stretched, letting its body expand. The movements left trails seared on Jairo’s eyes.

Along the shoreline was another volcano cone, partially buried but visibly larger than the one the calderab had just abandoned. The calderab began to dig the second shell free with its massive pincers. Empty and cold, the second cone had maybe formed naturally or maybe been left behind by another, larger calderustacean. The old shell still smoked, surrounded by dripping lava, where it would cool and eventually become home to another slightly smaller but still titanic crab, like all the other shells littering the beach.

Captain Marquez covered his mouth with a handkerchief as ash filled the air. Most of the men did the same, and Jairo pulled his scarf up over his mouth and nose.

“We won’t be able to approach until at least tomorrow!” Marquez said. “Time to set up camp, let’s get to it!”

The men unpacked a series of heavy canvas tents, held together by ropes and metal poles. As the youngest and least experienced member of the crew, Jairo ran around the camp and acted as a second pair of hands for anyone who needed him. The captain liked to see him busy. As the men created their temporary home, the smoking calderab was organising its new house as well. Slowly, carefully, it unearthed the base of the larger volcano shell. Huge chunks of dirt and rock fell away. The process took it at least an hour. When the new shell was clear and clean, the giant crab turned and began to work its way backward into the opening at the bottom of the cone.

“Look, watch! It’s finishing up!”

The bubbling caldera formed by the open bowl in the calderab’s back disappeared inside its new shell. Its eyes and the red veins across its carapace still glowed. The calderustacean wriggled deeper, until only its legs, pincers, and face emerged from the lower curve of the volcano. The heat of its body would help fuse it to the shell. Once it was ready, the calderustacean dragged its new home toward the sea. As it entered the water, the ocean boiled and steamed. Even fully submerged, the calderab would continue to produce tremendous heat but the longer it had been out of the water it would have been getting hotter and hotter. Smoke started to seep from the tip of its new shell. That was the last part visible as the titan waded out past the breakers and the shallows, deep into the cerulean blue, and disappeared. Back on shore, lava streaked the discarded shell and the ground around it but was already beginning to harden and turn dark.

Air around the camp remained dry and hot and smoky following the departure of the calderab. Some of the men broke down in coughing fits and spat streaks of sooty mucus. Four large tents were erected, however, to sleep the three dozen men and women. Some of the crew dragged logs into the middle of the clearing where the tents sat and rested them around a firepit. Jairo helped gather firewood from the nearby jungle.

A pack of small raptors investigated the camp, searching for food. They only stood as high as Jairo’s knees and their plumage was the most brightly coloured he had ever seen on the vicious little lizards. Sapphire blue with coal black and pure white on their breasts, and streaks of vivid yellow. Their heads were naked and scaly though, mouths lined with hacksaw teeth, and they still had dangerous sickle claws on their feet just like their larger cousins. A couple of the crew banged pots and pans together and scared them off.

“You see, the calderab, they’re what you’d call a true omnivore,” Luis explained to Jairo as they sat by the growing fire. “Other sea life, seaweed, rocks, sand, it all gets sucked in to feed that furnace inside of them.”

Jairo knew all that, but he let the older man talk. He’d been told how the glass harvesting worked when he’d been recruited for this expedition to the Fire Islands.

“Of course, all the fish and weed and such just burns away to nothing. But the rocks and sand turns into magma. Some of it gets expelled but some of it coats the walls inside their shells, or gets trapped in chambers in the rock. When the calderab leaves its shell, that molten sand cools and hardens, and turns into glass, right? We climb into the shell and mine it, provided we can get to it before another calderab comes in to call it home!”

“And there’s different types, right?” Jairo encouraged, trying to sound like an interested pupil.

“That’s right! Different types of sand or rock makes different kinds of glass. Mostly we’ll be harvesting obsidian, but different minerals, metals, in the rocks and sand leaves different colours.”

“I fought something like it, the calderab, you know,” Jairo said, and a few nearby harvesters laughed. “No, it’s true! A titanus crab. Okay, I didn’t exactly fight it but I drew it into the path of a rockback. It was, honestly, it was pretty terrifying.”

“There’ll be no fighting this time,” Captain Marquez said, coming up behind Jairo and resting a hand on his shoulder.

xXx

The next day, two of the harvesters went down to the shoreline and scouted the volcano shell to see if it was safe to approach. Jairo, when not performing his tasks around the camp, watched them pick their way across the broken plain, antlike and discernible only by the colours of their clothing. The ground was black and glassy but cooled. Any of the fires set by the calderustacean’s eruption had burned themselves out.

When the pair returned, they reported to Captain Marquez that the volcano was too hot to work but it was cooling at the expected rate. The crew needed to be present to claim a stake on the shell’s takings but camping on the open plain would be more dangerous than camping on the clifftop. The jungle teemed with life, like the raptors they’d seen last night. but nothing larger could reach the camp. Down on the shore, much bigger animals might be drawn to the camp and the humans.

“We will move the camp,” Marquez said. “We have to do so sometime, might as well be sooner rather than later. And we get to work as quickly as possible.”

Jairo ran around like he’d been set on fire, kept busy as the camp was disassembled. Tents came down and were folded into piles. Equipment was packed away. Every single member of the crew carried a heavy load, including the captain, as they picked their way down the ridge to the shore and across the black sand.

Heat still radiated off the cone of the empty volcano shell. Runs of blackened lava were turning solid on the slopes and on the shoreline all around it, like strange, low walls. The calderab had left the area in ruins. Its feet had created deep craters and trenches. Thin black glass crackled underfoot. They were exposed, flat stretches of shoreline in every direction apart from the shell and others like it until it reached the cliffs or the edges of the jungle.

They found a relatively clear patch and set up the tents in a vague square. They wanted to form a defensive perimeter. Tools and workplaces, and another firepit, went in the middle.

“Jairo, come along!” Captain Marquez said. “If we leave now we can make the rim and get back down before last light!”

Marquez and several of the men, and Jairo, formed a hasty expedition to climb the side of the empty shell. The intention was to identify the easiest path for bringing equipment up the slope and bringing glass back down. They circled until Marquez identified a likely passage. The rock was black, rivened with cooling lava and covered with what looked like scales. Jairo was no expert climber. To him the slope looked intimidating and dangerous but certainly conquerable. In places it was terrifyingly steep but not vertical. And all the jags and fissures meant there were plenty of hand and footholds. Identifying which one wouldn’t break loose and send climbers plummeting back down the slope was the real concern.

The crew’s most experienced climber, a man named Baudilio, took the lead. He was tall, the tallest man on the crew, long limbed, and immensely strong. Jairo had seen him win bets by bending iron bars in his bare fists with contemptuous ease. He climbed first with Marquez behind him, two more men after them, and Jairo at the bottom. Ropes trailed from thick belts the men wore around their waists and chests.

Jairo wore thick leather gloves as he climbed. Through them, he could still feel the heat radiating off the rock. Chunks of the shell flaked off in his hands. Other cracks came to edges so sharp that without the gloves his hands would have been sliced into ribbons. Even with the tough material of his clothing, he banged his upper arms a couple of times and his right knee hard enough to draw blood. As the youngest though, he didn’t want to complain or do anything to slow them down. Between the heat of the rock, the day’s tropical heat, and the physical exertion, it didn’t take long for Jairo to sweat through his clothes. His damp shirt clung to him. Desperately, he tried to wipe the stinging sweat from out of his eyes before it blinded him. His grip grew slipperier inside his gloves. Jairo yearned for the slightest breeze to ruffle the hair at the back of his neck.

Baudilio free climbed but as he identified flat stretches of solid rock he drove pitons deep into the surface. The pitons had eye holes they laced ropes through to create a path up and down the shell. Those ropes would help arrest them if they fell and would make their descent a great deal easier. More importantly, they would serve as a passage for the whole crew as they began to mine the inside of the volcano. The mountainous shell, like that of a hermit crab, bulbed at the bottom like an onion. Higher, its sides became sheer and gently twisted around the horizontal. At the top, it opened into the blasted rim of the crater.

The sun got low as they reached the top of their climb. One of the men reached back and helped Jairo onto the rim. The young man straightened and breathed deeply, tasting the ash still thick in the air. The rim was a vast, broken circle with room enough to stand. Boulders of cooled lava clung to the lip like bubbles of dried froth on the rim of a beer glass. A wind stirred, kissing the patches of Jairo’s exposed skin. His wet clothing clung to his upper body.

“How do you like it, lad?” Marquez asked.

Jairo nodded feverishly. “It’s incredible.”

From the rim of the volcanic shell, they had a commanding view over the island. The blackened beach swept across the hills and gullies along the coastline, dotted with other empty shells. The sinking sun caused shadows to stretch over the ashen landscape. Azure waves lapped the shore. Out in the water, he could see the ship they’d arrived on, anchored well beyond the breakers and waiting for their return. Greenery fringed the edges of the blighted sand. A pack of varanosaurs with brightly coloured striations moved along the edges of one section of jungle in the distance and a flock of birds took flight. Jairo was filled with a kind of satisfaction he’d only felt maybe once before in his life. Breathless, a result of the climb and the beauty now laid out before him. The other men also drank it all in with a companionable silence.

Jairo dared to venture a little closer to the open crater. Broken rock slid underfoot and he had to be cautious. The rope was still attached to the belt around his waist. There was little enough to see down there, however. With the sun at its current angle, most of the crater’s interior disappeared into blackness. A fiery heat rose from the mouth. What he could see looked like nothing more than a gaping caldera broken open by the blasts the calderustacean used to loosen its shell. He knew, however, buried deeply in the base were chambers and pockets riddling the once-living rock like termite tunnels. That was where they would find the highest quality glass.

By the time they reached the bottom of the shell again, it was dark. The men tossed torches ahead of them to light the way. The encroaching night began to cool their damp clothing. Climbing down was in some respects more difficult than climbing up but they now had the ropes to guide them. Doing it in the dark still verged on suicidal. Any time his hand or foot slipped, Jairo felt a jolt of terror. He imagined himself falling and being ripped apart on the rocks below. They made it back to the furrowed black soil without incident though, untying themselves and removing their belts and gloves.

When they rounded the shell and made their way back to camp, its tents and fire looked very small against the hollow mountain. Jairo was sent to boil some water which Marquez and the others used to wash, and then he was allowed to wash as well. Dinner was salted fish from the stores and a thin stew. That night, Jairo slept about as well as he could ever remember.

xXx

The next morning, they were up before daybreak. The crew dressed and ate, and collected their equipment, then moved to the base of the calderab shell. Ropes and platforms were slung up the face of the shell where Jairo and the others had laid a path the day before.

The basin at the mouth of the volcano was still dark but became more and more exposed as the sun rose. Harvesters descended inside on ladders and ropes. The sides of the crater looked shattered and scoured by the eruption at first glance but there were pockets and ledges and chambers where molten sand and minerals had collected and cooled into glass. Even now, the rocks maintained a steady heat that got warmer as one got deeper.

The crew threw themselves into the work immediately, drilling down and attacking any deposits they could find without hesitation. Soon, the crater filled with sounds of industry. Picks rang off stone and glass, and bits of rock clattered. Men and women shouted instructions or warnings. Ropes creaked as they swung from the ends of their harnesses.

While most of the crew started by working the open sides of the crater, Jairo’s task was different. He along with Marquez and Baudilio descended to the empty lava tubes at the bottom of the crater. These tubes and chambers riddled the base of the shell, connecting the crater to the calderab itself. Fifteen-years-old, Jairo verged on manhood. He seemed to be growing broader and longer limbed by the day, as the scruff of facial hair he’d been carefully cultivating filled in. But he was still smaller and skinnier, and much more limber, than any of the grown men among the endeavour. As such, his job was to explore the tubes and tight spaces where the other men wouldn’t fit. To decide which were worth mining or hollowing out for further exploration.

Under Marquez’s direction, Jairo began worming into different tunnels. He carried a small but bright smokeless lantern. Baudilio played out his guide rope as he crawled into the tunnels.

The walls of the tubes were tough and sometimes sharp. They twisted, sometimes funnelling into passages too narrow for him to pass. But Jairo wanted to impress the captain so as nervous as he was he wriggled and contorted himself as deep into the tubes as he could, hunting for glass. The walls radiated heat, making him sweat. The sweat combined with ash to turn to black sludge on his skin. In some spaces, the air grew thin. Combined with the heat, Jairo felt his head swim and he concentrated on finding his way back along the rope attached to his waist.

“How’d you go, boy?” Marquez asked.

“There’s some green glass in there, kind of bubbly,” Jairo said. “It’s different, unique.”

An accident drew Marquez and Baudilio’s attention away. Some sections of obsidian snapped and left edges that were so sharp they sliced through even the toughest of protective gloves like they weren’t even there. One of the men grabbed such a piece and slashed open the base of his fingers. Tendons were severed and blood haemorrhaged down his arm. Marquez and the crew’s surgeon attended the man. Once his hand was bandaged and he’d been lifted out of the crater, work resumed.

Piles of glass were shuttled out of the volcano shell. Chambers were broken open and material shaved from the walls. Jairo didn’t cut out any of the glass himself. Tubes he identified as worthy of investigation, or not, were marked with flags of different colours. Jairo rested briefly, chugging water to replace the fluids he’d lost.

The next tube that Jairo tried started with a long, vertical chimney. It worked its way toward the outer layers of volcanic shell as Jairo climbed, hand over hand. Rough edges of rock and pockets of poor quality glass cut his clothing and grazed his skin. Rope played out behind him.

“Are you alright in there, boy?” Marquez’s voice floated up the chimney behind him.

Jairo struggled to angle his head down to reply. His chest wedged, twisted sideways in the chimney. A scarf covered his mouth but he could feel particles rattling in his throat and lungs. Muscles and grazes burned.

Jairo could have returned but the chimney kept going and going. He held his smokeless lantern above his head. More than anything, Jairo wanted to impress. Marquez had taken him on, and impressed himself on Jairo as a figure of what a man should be. He and many of his crew. Jairo wanted to prove to Marquez that his faith had been well placed.

The shaft became narrower, and took a couple of hard turns. He writhed his way through, knotting his shoulders. His hips ground against the walls. As the tunnel compressed his chest, Jairo felt his heart thundering against his ribs like a frightened bird beating the bars of a cage that was slowly being crushed. If he panicked, that was when he would be in trouble. That’s when he would get stuck and be unable to get himself loose. Marquez, Baudilio, and the crew would do their best to get him out but carving through the rock in time might not be possible. His breathing rasped, harder, faster, and he couldn’t entirely fill his lungs. If he made a mistake, got stuck and couldn’t get himself loose, then he would die slowly, terribly, and far from home.

Jairo considered turning back but, pushing the lantern ahead of him, he saw something glitter. The colours and texture of the light were like nothing he’d found so far. In spite of the poor quality of the glass he’d seen in the chimney, and the danger, he kept crawling forward.

“Boy, are you sure you’re alright?” Marquez sounded concerned with the amount of rope they’d allowed to play out.

“I’m alright!” Jairo tried to sound confident but his voice was thin and squeaky. “It opens up here!”

Jairo pushed the lantern ahead and it disappeared over the lip of a chamber that expanded above him. Wriggling his way forward, his shoulders popped from the tunnel. His cramped arms fanned out, grabbing handholds, and he hauled himself into a much larger space. He pulled his mask down for a moment and sucked air deeply into his bruised lungs, although the air was just as hot and sooty in the chamber as it had been in the rest of the chimney. After a few moments, he hacked and spit. Picking up the lantern, he studied the chamber and the glittering object that filled it.

The open portion of the chamber would have been four paces across and twice as tall as it was wide. Filling it was a vast mass of molten glass that had cooled and frozen into a thick and twisting cylinder. Its colours were unique as far as Jairo’s experience went. An aquamarine green from whatever minerals had blended into its main composition. Other colours streaked its surface or buried themselves deeply in the column.

“There’s something up here!” Jairo shouted back down the chimney. “One of those sculptures, the naturally formed glass sculptures!”

Like a frozen waterspout, the glass pillar cut and slashed its way to the ceiling of the chamber. It blew out and bubbled in places. Arms extended from the core to hook into and anchor the formation to the walls. Studying it from various angles, Jairo really could sense the fury and primitive forces that had been channelled through the chamber. The forces that had birthed the column from molten rock.

“I’m coming back down!” Jairo yelled.

Already, Jairo could feel stiffness working its way into his muscles and joints. If he didn’t go back now, he wouldn’t be flexible enough to make it through the tunnel. What’s more, if he didn’t force himself to confront it, if he kept thinking and thinking about forcing his way down the chimney again, he might never be able to work up the nerve. Feeding the lantern ahead of him, Jairo wormed his way back down. At least this time, he knew he could make it. That his chest and shoulders and hips would ultimately fit. But he couldn’t let himself get too confident. A wrong turn, twisting one way when he should have moved another, could still get him stuck. Bruises and scrapes rubbed against rough surfaces. He reached forward and pulled his way down.

An immense wave of relief struck Jairo as he got past the most knotted section and reached a wider and straighter tube. He still forced himself not to rush. In addition to the lantern, soon he could see light filtering through the opening where Marquez and Baudilio were waiting.

“What was it? What did you see, boy?” the captain asked.

Jairo described the naturally occurring sculpture he’d discovered in the chimney. The size of it, the colours and clarity, and the frozen fury created when the molten sand and minerals swirled and got caught in the chamber. With every word, Marquez’s eyes got wider and brighter.

“If it’s all that you say it is, a piece like that could pay for the whole expedition!” Marquez said.

“Why is that?” Jairo asked.

“Rich folk want to possess something truly unique. Formations of the size and quality you’re speaking of are incredibly rare, and difficult to recover, but if we could get it free-,” Marquez trailed off, stroking his beard.

“Why is it so difficult?”

“Well, it has to be taken out in one piece, or what’s the point? Maybe you can glue a few hidden joins back together, but the client is paying for the sculpture the way it naturally formed, not a pile of broken glass.”

While the memories were fresh, Marquez had Jairo draw the formation and the chamber, and map out the chimney that he’d travelled. Jairo had already explained about the tight confines of the passage. He was grateful for the respite. Taking off his gloves, he found both hands bleeding. The fingernail of his right ring finger peeled off with his glove. Taking some water, he drank heavily and then washed the worst of his scrapes and grazes. He didn’t rush the drawings, both to make sure he got it all as accurate as possible and to avoid having to go back into one of the tubes. All around him, work continued along the walls of the crater and inside some of the other passages.

“It will be easier to attack this from outside than in.” Marquez studied Jairo’s drawings of the tunnel and mapped it against the wall in reality. “The chamber appears to be closer to the outer surface than the interior. Not worth trying to hollow out the chamber from in here. We’ll have to triangulate from the outside, find the vent, and blast our way in.”

The rest of the afternoon, Marquez and two of his engineers planned an approach into the chamber. Jairo was allowed to tag along as they quizzed him again and again. They mapped the position of the chimney from inside and then positioned themselves outside. The sunlight and sea breezes made working outside the shell a lot more pleasant than the interior. By the time evening rolled around, and the crew quit their labours for the day, Marquez had a plan in place.

xXx

Black powder charges thundered, the echo of the blasts rolling across the blackened shoreline. There were no flames, just puffs of dust that sent pieces of rubble high into the air. They had to be careful with the explosives, of course. Making sure not to damage the glass formation. Shockwaves could cause it to crack or completely fall apart. The black powder had been carefully measured and placed. The spot they had to access from the outside was sheer and not easy to find purchase on, hence the need to make a first strike.

Huge sections of rock snapped and fell away, breaking into pieces as they tumbled down the slope. Stones and dust rattled to the ashen ground. Smoke drifted into the sky. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as if the rock fell away like a curtain to reveal the chamber and glass formation. All that showed underneath was more rock, broken and raw.

“Alright, get in there, boy,” Marquez said.

Harvesters descended from the rim of the volcano shell, abseiling backward on ropes that fed through the harnesses around their waists. Picks and shovels bristled from their fists. At Marquez’s insistence, Jairo joined them. First he had to make the climb to the rim of the crater itself. In the rising heat of the day, he was soaked in sweat by the time he got there. Then, he had to be harnessed and roped, and he cautiously made his way halfway back down. Iron tools rang off the volcanic rock, some of it soft, some almost as hard as the tools themselves. The section of shelf was as sheer as any face around the bulb-shaped shell.

In their probing, Marquez’s crew found the vent attached to the chimney where Jairo had found the glass formation. At least, they thought it was the right vent. In the intricate labyrinth of tubes and chambers and chimneys winding throughout the calderab’s discarded shell, it was hard to tell. Certainly it was far too narrow for Jairo or anyone else to crawl inside it to confirm.

After an hour of work, they’d opened the throat of the chimney. It snaked through the rock and led into another gap that Jairo could have climbed down. A lit torch was dropped into the void and below they could see tantalising glimpses of the aquamarine glass formation that would have been formed in that last eruption. It felt like something ancient. Something that had been waiting hundreds of years for Jairo to come along and discover. The chamber itself was probably genuinely that old and had never seen sunlight. Strike by strike, piece by piece, they exposed more of it to the open air.

Over the course of several hours, they carved out an opening the size of the chamber. They chipped around a couple of the glass arms to dislodge them from the walls without damaging them. They protruded, reaching toward the light, their ends fringed with spikes of rock. Jairo looked up from under the whorls of glass.

“Now, how to get it out from there,” Marquez said, looking up at the hole from ground after Jairo had climbed down and joined him.

“You know, my dad was a fisherman back on Yoruga,” Jairo said.

Jairo paused and Marquez looked at him as if wondering if there were more to the seemingly pointless anecdote. “Yes?”

“Well, my dad was a fisherman and I remember how the floating docks were towed behind the city on ropes. There were cargo sleds attached to the ropes. They shuttled cargo back and forth between shellside and the docks. If we could set up something like those, maybe that would work?”

Marquez smiled. “I know what you mean. Yes, I was thinking something like that.”

It took some time to create the sled-type arrangement that was needed. Two thick guide ropes were anchored inside the chamber. They were placed beneath two of the thickest arms of the formation’s central column. Those guide ropes were angled out of the opening and down, on a slow, shallow trajectory, to a point of empty ground. While that was being created, some of the crew chiselled carefully around the anchor points where the glass was rooted inside the chimney. Its anchors did not go deep but they had to be careful if they wanted to claim the formation in one piece. Many of the more fragile whorls and joins were bound tightly in protective sailcloth and other forms of makeshift padding. Once they got it down, the formation would be further padded, reinforced, and crated, before being loaded onto the ship.

“We’re almost ready? Well, good luck,” Marquez conferenced with some of his men.

When they were absolutely ready, hand signals were exchanged between those on the ground and those in the chamber. Almost all of the harvesters were present either on the ground or up on the slope. Given the potential price of the formation, all were invested in making sure the extraction went well. Now that the chamber was fully exposed to sunlight, every single member of the crew who had seen the formation seemed to agree it was the finest they’d ever personally come across.

When the signal was given, the last of the rock holding the glass column to the chamber roof and back wall was chiselled away. Half a dozen men and women steered the formation onto the two thick guide ropes. They sagged visibly under its weight. It appeared even heavier than they’d been expecting.

“Coming down!” one of the men shouted.

Other ropes had been tied around the column. Feeding slack into them, they eased it down the guide ropes. Pieces of the formation wrapped in cloth scraped against the rock. It wasn’t evenly weighted. Far above the ground, it swayed dangerously as it exited the chamber. If it fell, there would be nothing to protect it. No amount of cloth or padding would save it. The beautiful and furious formation would shatter into thousands of practically worthless pieces. The crew leading it slowed. They let it sway until it grew steady and secure on the ropes.

Jairo remained near Captain Marquez’s side, close to the anchored bases of the guide ropes. He felt fiercely protective of the formation, his discovery. It wasn’t just the extra pay he’d been promised. This was physical proof of his achievements exploring the tunnels, and a kind of legacy. The formation appeared to have a long way to travel over dangerous ground.

It was almost halfway down when one side began to sway more than the other. The crew who’d been feeding it down tried to hurry but it meant the formation started to swing again. Jairo looked around in fear.

“What’s happening?” Jairo asked.

“It’s slipping!” someone said.

The anchors for the guide ropes were wooden frames weighted with stones. One of the ropes looked firm. The other, however, began to loosen. Rope oiled its way through a complex series of knots. Rocks shifted and gave up their support.

“Seize it! Seize that rope!” Marquez said.

Harvesters swarmed toward the rope, Jairo among them. They grabbed and pulled it tight. The weight of the formation was too heavy for them, however. Combined, they had the strength to hold it but no way to anchor themselves. Jairo leapt forward and snatched the rope. It burned through his hands, the course fibres running against his unprotected palms.

The glass column, with its protruding arms, slouched violently to one side. Thankfully, some of the rough points of the glass hooked themselves to the guide ropes or it would have fallen. The drop from halfway was still more than enough to shatter it. Jairo and the others were yanked forward, tripping, stumbling. Jairo felt like his hands were on fire, the rope burning, but he didn’t let go.

Marquez joined them at the rope, knocking Jairo backward. Baudilio joined as well, with all his considerable might. Above, in the open chamber, the crew struggled to hold the formation steady.

“Heave!” Marquez yelled. “Now, on me! One, two, three!”

Boots dug into the ashy soil. Together they pulled the rope straighter. Jairo felt his palms tearing. Blood oiled the fibres. His gloves stuck out of one of his pockets but he couldn’t do anything to reach them without releasing his grip, and every iota of effort counted.

“Heave!”

Muscles straining, they dragged the rope back toward its original anchor. Its knots had given way but the crew held. Seeing their best possible opportunity, the harvesters in the chamber began feeding the formation back down the guide ropes as quickly as they could. The formation jostled and bounced but rapidly made its way down the guides. Jairo felt every vibration. Fibres of rope dug trenches deeper and deeper into the flesh of his raw, burning palms.

Finally, the glass reached ground. The weight went out of the guide ropes as it settled on its extremities, wrapped in sailcloth. Jairo and the others let the rope fall out of their hands. Jairo let out a quivering sigh of relief. Looking down, he grimaced at the ragged flesh of his hands. A cheer went up throughout the harvesters.

“Great work, boy!” Marquez clapped Jairo on the shoulder, leaving blood on his shirt as his hands also bled.

Once the glass formation was secured, the camp doctor went through those who’d injured themselves getting it to the ground. Jairo’s hands were bound and he was given a draught of rum for the pain, which he almost hacked back up. Marquez told him to rest for the remainder of the afternoon.

Wandering away from the camp, Jairo found a volcano shell sitting on the black sand. It was much, much smaller than the one they’d been working on. With the base partially buried, its rim only rose as high as his waist. He settled down on the side of the shell, careful not to use his torn hands. From there, he looked out at the waves crashing on the shoreline. Someday, an immature calderab might emerge from those waters and claim that shell as its new home. Just like, at some point, one had crawled up there to abandon it in search of something bigger.

It was funny, Jairo thought. He’d proven himself today. He’d found he had the right to stand among the rest of the glass harvesters and, by extension, proven himself a man. But the tide kept coming in and everything remained exactly as it always had been. The biggest moments of our lives were only moments, and we went on living as normal after they were done. Until it was hard to say whether anything had really happened at all.

Something stung the side of Jairo’s left calf. He looked down and spotted a small beetle, a trebuchet beetle, scuttling across the black rocks. It was about the size of one of his fists. For its size, it was a long way from the jungle. The sting had come from a tiny rock that the beetle had just launched at him as a warning. Native to only the Fire Islands, the insects had an aggressive nature but very much resembled a perfectly normal beetle, with six bristly legs and a black shelled barrel of a body. Emerging from this one’s back, however, was a kind of organic trebuchet frame and arm realised in perfect miniature. Grasped at one end of the trebuchet was a small, grey stone.

As Jairo watched, the beetle scuttled amongst the sand and stones until it found another perfectly sized rock. Much like the calderustaceans, trebuchet beetles needed to find new counterweight stones as they grew in order to keep their organic weapons working to the best of their ability. The beetle released its current stone, letting it fall to the ground, and picked up a new counterweight with the grasping socket on the end of its arm. After adjusting to the weight, it scooped up yet another rock from the sand and used its natural trebuchet to fling it a much greater distance out toward the surf. Waves crashed. Behind him, he could hear the harvesters banging together a crate to store the glass sculpture. And in the shadow of the enormous shell, the trebuchet beetle scuttled on.

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Sean: Something a bit different about this one, at least that’s my feeling. It is the very first sequel for any story I’ve done for All There in the (Monster) Manual! If you haven’t read The Birth of Cities but you enjoyed this one maybe go check it out, it’s a bit longer and has a bit more action than this quieter piece. It felt like a natural continuation of Jairo’s story to me, that in The Birth of Cities he’d gotten out and seen a bit of the world and now he wants to see more of it.

All of the stories I’ve written for the Land of Giants setting so far, bar one, have been young adult, coming-of-age kind of tales. I think Captain’s Log was a bit of early installment weirdness. It wasn’t intentional, I didn’t conceive of it as a particularly youthful setting even if it is fantastical. In my mind, I think it’s because there’s a bit of an evolution happening in the setting, there’s changes going on that affect the world at large because it’s in this age of expansion time frame, and it’s those changes that to me mirror the changes that the protagonists are going through.

No idea what I’m releasing next but I’ll try to keep some momentum going! Keep your eyes on the website for what that might be, and for more updates you can find me on Facebook and Twitter.