As he sipped his tea, he thought over the past few weeks, the litany of failure. For the first few days after he'd arrived, Tarlain had started to try and build the vision that he and Karnav Din Baltir had spoken of together. The fire of that vision burning inside him, he had wandered the endless tunnels and passageways, seeking an audience for his impassioned words among the Kallathik. That had been the idea. And instead, he had met disappointment. Slowly, the fire had dwindled, fading to a guttering flame. Once or twice, he had become hopelessly lost and spent hours, even whole days trying to find his way back to his meager cubby hole. The Kallathik had been unhelpful at best, either ignoring him completely, shoving him aside with their large bulk as they ambled up the passageways, or failing to understand what he wanted when he finally managed to attract their attention for a moment or two. There were times he could have cursed the damned aliens for their stupid incomprehension. He caught himself and frowned at the strength of the thought -- his people were the aliens here, not the Kallathik. Hundreds of years, hundreds of Seasons, but they were still the aliens. And still this cursed world tried to reject them.
A creak and groan came from further down the corridor as something within the surrounding landscape shifted. He sat where he was, waiting to see if it was the herald of something new. They had had a brief quake about ten days ago, and the noise had almost deafened him, metallic booming noises pulsing through the entire complex, loud creaks and the sound of metal under stress. How the Kallathik lived with it Storm Season after Storm Season, he had no idea. He swallowed the last few drops of tea and placed the mug carefully back down. After a few more seconds had passed, he sighed and relaxed a little, feeling the tension go out of his shoulders. It looked like they were clear for now. He glanced around the chamber. This was no place for a person to live. No place at all. The Kallathik could have it.
Standing again, he shrugged off the blanket and bundled it onto the bed. He had either to achieve something here, or leave, find some other way to do what he needed to. Enough. Curse his father anyway. Sufficient time had passed. He could spend the rest of his life down here moping, but it would achieve absolutely nothing. And dammit, he would achieve something here. He had to.
Resolved, he moved to the high, roughly shaped doorway leading out from the chamber. He felt around the edge, searching for the scratched star shape he had scored into the metal on the other side. He didn't need to check that it was there, but it gave him a sense of comfort knowing that it was. He stepped out into the corridor's gloom and headed deeper into the complex. It was hard in the semi-dark avoiding the pools of water, and before long, his boots were damp, squelching with every step he took. At each intersection, he felt for his mark, tracing his fingers across the metallic surface, confirming that he was traveling in a direction he knew would actually lead him somewhere rather than around and around, retracing his own steps. It would do no good to get lost yet again and spend the rest of the day wandering aimlessly through the passageways trying to find his way. Somewhere down in this direction, he knew the central meeting chambers lay. He'd been there once or twice, and if anywhere, that was where he was going to find his proper audience.
He found another mark at the entrance to a tunnel, and headed down that way. He'd not gone a dozen steps, when a vast shape loomed out of the darkness ahead of him, and he was forced to press himself flat against the wall or risk being scraped along beside the shuffling Kallathik. He stifled a curse and when he was sure the beast had no companion trailing along behind, peeled himself off the wall and stepped out into the passageway once more. He shook his head at the thought. Even he was starting to refer to the Kallathik as beasts in his own mind. That was not good. It was not good at all.
He sloshed down the corridor, heading toward a patch of light that he knew to be another randomly placed vent hole to the surface. There seemed to be no pattern to the spacing, but the murky shafts of light gave welcome relief from the gloomy dampness of the corridor's depths.
