Pondering and Surface

Up and up Wanderer went with single minded purpose, lacking any thoughts or emotions in their mind to distract them.

The shaft recommended to them by the librarian was different to the messy tunnel they had entered the library from, a great deal more effort was put into its presentation, though it still could not be called finished.

It was almost three times the width and double the height of its counterpart and contained rough hewn steps instead of a dubious slope.

Occasionally, Wanderer would pass by tiles of stone and tools such as pickaxes and chisels, signalling to the Golem that this place was very much in the process of being worked on when it was abandoned.

Despite their inner exhaustion, the Vessel’s mind still instinctively searched for answers in the world around them and so they found themselves pondering a question, surprising themself in the process.

As the tunnel passed by, they wondered what exactly had happened to this place such that it could be abandoned so quickly, and specifically what caused this particular tunnel to be left faster than all the rest, such that its workers did not even have time to take their tools.

Multiple times, by way of carvings on the walls and Ka-cketika’s explanations, Wanderer was informed that some great calamity had destroyed the previous inhabitants of the desert.

Yet while this calamity was undoubtedly part of the problem, it surely could not be the entire cause of the ruin’s abandonment.

Humans still lived in the desert even now and if anyone survived this great calamity then surely they would not just forget about an underground city this expansive.

What could have caused them to leave?

They reached to ask their Spirit, but quickly rescinded their query with an unfelt wince, they would have to work out this mystery themself.

They began to ponder, blocking out the world around them and trying to see the issue for what it was.

The critical problem was that they didn't know what the catastrophe that forced everyone out was, it was referred to many times, yet in so many different ways that Wanderer couldn't be sure.

They thought back to the carvings on the walls, each and everyone depicting a leader of a great land losing their power to a tyrant from the sky.

Before Ka-cketika, the Golem couldn't work out what exactly this scene was depicting, but with their new knowledge they were quite certain they had worked out the symbolism.

The previous leader of the happy kingdom was obviously Rarkeh-shh and their usurper as well as the calamity, would be Orsha.

But that didn't quite make sense, the previous land of Rarkeh-shh was bountiful and full of life, and while Orsha was powerful they didn't have the power to change that on such a massive scale.

It was far more likely the calamity changed the desert, then Orsha took over.

But that just took them back to their original question, what was this calamity?

They pondered the question in earnest for about 100 steps, but soon found their mind wandering to a different problem.

“Why are the Earliag in the desert, why are there slaves?” they wondered.

The more they thought about it, the more it didn't make sense.

The desert was a barren and harsh place, by all means there was little to no reason to want to take it over.

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Maybe, perhaps it was the Earliag’s purpose to bring slaves over to their home in the valleys and mountains, but in the one place Wanderer had seen slaves in the forest, at the larger Golem’s destruction, the majority of the people there had the pale skin of the Earliag.

There were of course a few people here and there that hailed from the desert, but they were vastly outnumbered and that signalled to the Vessel that, for the most part, the Earliag didn't like slaves entering their own land.

“Why are they here then, why do they want slaves? There must be something I'm missing.”

They thought deep and hard, calling up everything they knew about the Earliag and the people of the desert, and then finally, after a long while managed to remember something of critical importance.

From their view on top of the mesa, Wanderer remembered that all across the desert there were huge quarries into the earth, cutting deep into the sand in massive circular basins.

Those quarries had to be the cause, they were frequent and intensive and would likely require thousands of people to man and dig each day.

“But what are they digging for?” The Vessel sought further.

In a flash of realisation, it all came to them, causing them to dig in their satchel for one of their many collected items.

They fished out one of the shimmering blue coins, relishing the feel of the metal on their fingers.

They pushed the coin into the soft clay of their arm, ignoring the pain and felt the magic inside them increase in speed and power tenfold, filling their arm with a power they had yet to fully understand.

Then they pulled the coin out, noticing how their channels had already been worn thin by the increased flow.

This metal and its ability was simultaneously the reason for the enslavement of the Orshraka and the calamity that befell Rarkeh-shh and their people.

The metal was highly valuable, as shown by the comparatively small amount in relation to the other coins and its use in physically enhancing the militia members that chased the Vessel.

Those massive quarries in the sands were to find more of this metal, which could doubtlessly only be found in the desert.

Yet as Wanderer realised this, a peculiarity of these mines was made apparent to them, in that, shallow as they were, they took all their metal from the black sand and not the rock below.

Not once had the Vessel seen any type of rock or mineral suspended in the sand, apart from dark glass, the land seemed to be sterile of all worth.

And this made sense, if the sand was born of the glass from the volcano, then all of it would be even lava, with metals and valuables only occurring deeper in the rock.

But Wanderer had already worked out why the star-silver was an exception to this rule, the metal had not come from the earth, but from the sky.

It explained so much, why it was found in such an odd place in the earth, why it could only be found in the desert, why its abilities were so unique and so rare.

But most of all it explained what the great calamity was and why it had turned the desert into the wasteland it was now.

The metal had come from the sky and impacted with great force, splitting itself all across the desert, explaining why there were so many quarries in the sand.

The force had reawoken the volcano at the centre of the desert, spewing black lava which degraded into shimmering sand, covering the whole land in a layer of darkness.

Now that they thought deeper into the calamity’s consequences, the meteor was likely responsible for the aurora that appeared at night, its magical power eliciting some otherwise impossible reaction from the volcano.

At working this great mystery out, a tiny vestige of joy and pride wormed its way through the all encompassing apathy and brought the slightest spring to Wanderer’s step, happy that they had worked out such a massive mystery from such a small amount of evidence.

Returning to the real world, Wanderer was shocked to find that just up ahead, the solid stairs stopped and gave way to a flow of long hardened magma, its pitch black form taking up one side of the hallway.

Where the lava emerged, the hallway thinned and became more unfinished, cramming the Vessel yet still permitting them through.

If they had the energy, Wanderer would have laughed a little as their initial question, the one that started the spiral they had gone down was answered so simply.

“The humans abandoned this tunnel before the rest of the ruin because lava had breached through the walls and began to flow, likely because of the chaos caused by the meteor.” they knew.

“Eventually, the whole of the ruins probably had to have been abandoned, for fear of cave ins and lava caused by the volcano’s activity.”

The Vessel was interrupted from their pondering by Emio shooting off down the passage, leaving a trail of dust and chipped stone in their wake.

For a long moment, the Golem was confused, why did Emio abandon them like that, what did they see?

But soon enough even Wanderer saw the verdestry’s goal and ran with equal abandon, as there, far ahead of them was the brilliant azure light of the sun, shining through a gap to the surface.