Talia’s body ached. The walk along the upper terrace of the Maw should have taken three hours at most. Either her injury had slowed her, or her sense of temporality had slipped; she’d been walking for what felt like double that time, at least.
Her feet dragged along the almost artificially smooth path; a deep purple bruise had formed in her armpit where her improvised crutch pressed painfully, joining the myriad host of aches and throbs that pulsed angrily across her body. Her left knee had swollen to almost double its size and screamed at the slightest pressure.
Talia chewed her tongue, mouth dry as sandpaper and stomach revolting. Despite her glacial speed, sweat beaded on her face and neck under her gas mask. Her skin burned feverishly.
A few hours prior—as far as she could tell— Talia had been jolted from a daze by the smell of sulphur, at first wafting up invisibly from the depths of the chasm and then all at once in a near tangible deluge of pus-green vapours which prompted her to fumble her gas mask onto her face. The gas flow wasn’t a true Eruption, a flood of noxious fumes strong enough to make it up the walls of the Maw and coat the surrounding caverns and low areas of Karzgorad in a smog of deadly gases. Those occurred rarely, once, or twice a year at most.
Instead, the deadly fumes rose right up to the Maw’s lip, a hungry, turbulent fog that lacked the final push it would need to get over the edge and invade the city that sprawled across the chasm.
The viridescent haze tinted her plodding journey through the titanic gash in the earth, shifting the orange glow of the arcano-sun above and ahead to a dirty brown colour.
Talia sagged, stumbling towards the chasm wall, and looking up at the safety that mocked her in the distance. She was so close she could almost taste it. Close enough that she could make out beast-drawn carriages rolling across stone bridges that spanned the Maw, could just barely spot little splotches of faded colour hustling along the spacious streets of the Mid Quarter.
Karzgorad was chiselled straight into a subterranean mountain, a gentle incline within the gargantuan cavern that was Talia’s entire world, buildings and thoroughfares carved directly into the stone hill. Deepmount Gorad, so named by the dwarves, who were the city’s original builders, was divided into four districts—five if you counted The Warrens. In ascending order, they were: The Warrens, the Low Quarter, the Mid Quarter, the Market District, and in rings around the summit, the High Quarter.
To draw a line from the top of Karzgorad to the bottom was to create a spectrum from opulent colourfulness into drab subsistence, with her home quarter wedged in the middle.
Even from her low vantage in the Maw, the divisions in her home were obvious. The High Quarter favoured sprawling compounds roofed with dark clay tiles and adorned with intricate carvings. If Talia squinted hard enough, she could spot the numerous statues that dotted streets and gardens around the richest part of the city, arcano-lamps emitting bright blue light turned to greenish turquoise through the haze of gas.
The Mid and Low Quarters were bland, going into run-down, row upon row of rectangular stone huts with flat tops and smooth, ascetic walls, the tallest of which reached three stories at most. Brown leather tarps served as impromptu windows and coverings in homes damaged in rockfalls or quakes over the centuries.
Above it all, the arcano-sun glowed, steadfast and radiant, casting deep shadows across the cavern ceiling high above, shining light and life down into the city, onto Lake Wyrr beyond the Deepmount, and the fields of drearwood and farmland on its shores. It was the one constant of Karzgorad, and her guiding light through the abyss of the Maw.
From amid the haze of noxious gases, it looked sick.
The city itself looked sick, like a putrid morass had engulfed it. As if to punctuate that dark thought, wind blew through the chasm, reaching a crescendo and shifting into a low wail. It howled and Talia shivered, hearing what sounded like dissonant whispers at the edges of the haunting noise.
She shook her head. A mistake—it throbbed painfully at her as if her skull was full of rocks. The bedraggled young woman surged upward with a groan, pushing away the weariness and the voice that murmured of mage-madness in the back of her mind. The city—home, safety—was close.
Just a little longer. One more step. And then I can… I can sleep.
----------------------------------------
Talia’s breath came in short, pained bursts now. The staircase had been unending. When she’d finally tripped over the first steps, it had taken all of her remaining strength to not collapse into a weeping mess. After a climb that had stolen the last of her energy from her, she’d surfaced in a maintenance shaft for the sewers, dusty from disuse and illuminated only by the light that shone through stone grates high above. With her stench, she must have blended right in, though all she could smell were the filters of her gas mask. She thanked the gods for small mercies.
The young woman limped through the back alleys of the Mid Quarter, past clotheslines, and patchy mushroom gardens, avoiding busy streets and the gaze of watchmen. One look, one whiff of her and she would be politely asked to return to the Low Quarter, excuses and explanations be damned. Besides, while the mage-hunters probably thought her dead, she couldn’t afford the risk that the news hadn’t spread yet. For all she knew, the guards were still on the watch for a virulently redheaded woman, a dangerous rogue mage and murderer.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Talia’s surroundings became more familiar. When she passed behind the tall stacks of McPhearson’s bakery, she knew she was within a stone’s throw from home. She picked up the pace, her crutch digging painfully into her arm.
Finally, finally, she stopped before the back end of the home she had grown up in for most of her life, ever since Orvall had adopted her when she was a child. She clambered over the fence and—promptly tripped over the herb garden in the back, slamming into the solid drearwood door with a thump.
Relief bloomed in Talia’s lungs and hiccoughed out of her in the form of a manic laugh-sob. Tears pooled at the bottom of her mask as she heard agitated footsteps on the other side of the door.
“Orvall…” she croaked, her voice whisper thin.
The door was pulled abruptly open, sending her wheeling to the stone floor. A pair of worn boots lay about either side of her face.
“Oy you ragamuffin scum, hands off the—by the old gods! Poppet? Talia, is that you?” gasped Orvall in his deep basso.
Talia’s adoptive father came into her field of view, an old, bespectacled dwarf with a white beard that reached down to his knees. He gently pulled the mask from her face, concern sparking in his deep brown eyes and worry etched across his wrinkled features.
“Ach poppet, what’s been done to ye, dearie…” he mourned, cradling her head in his lap.
Talia sobbed, a wretched convulsing thing that sprouted from an ache in her chest and spread to the rest of her battered body. All the fear, the horror, the agony slipped out of her in a torrent. It took her voice from her and drowned every thought out of her mind. She cried, stuffing her filthy face into Orvall’s legs.
“Shhh, it’s alright now luv’, yer alright. Everything’s gonna be jus’ fine. Ah’ve got ye now,” he murmured.
Talia’s only answer was a wordless moan. She cried herself to sleep, embracing the encroaching darkness with open arms.
----------------------------------------
Talia dreamed. She knew she was dreaming and yet she couldn’t move. Some distance behind her, a voice babbled unintelligibly, what sounded like numbers mixed with unfamiliar tones, grating in her ears, as if the speaker had a tin can over their mouth.
Light bloomed around her, in hues alien to her. A yellow orb hung in an ocean of cyan blue, like a paler, yellower, arcano-sun, but larger and at once further away. In the corners of her vision, purple lines of glowing runes burned at her retinas, flowing rapidly downwards, too fast for her to examine. She couldn’t look down to see where the alien characters surely must’ve sunk into the ground.
Gazing off into the distance, an impossible number of kilometres away, the pool of cyan met jagged peaks of stone.
The sky. That’s the sky and those are mountains. This is the Surface. I’m dreaming of the Surface.
Her perspective spun and all around her stretched the greenest green she had ever seen. It was vibrant, almost glowing, so much so that it hurt to look at. Tall trees reached up to the roof—the sky— like living stalagmites in warm browns and viridian hues. The air smelled of fresh compost, before it was mixed with fertilizers.
Her viewpoint suddenly shifted once more; she faced the mountains she had spotted in the distance, getting closer now, racing up to meet her. The tinny voice blasted desperately in her ears. At the base of the tallest crag, a large, dark, metal gate, sealed shut, loomed over her.
The scene shifted again, images coming faster, becoming nearly indiscernible. The Sun traded places with two pale white orbs. Light and dark flashed by in quick succession. A trail through the trees—the forest— became a road which then grew overgrown and buried.
Talia felt herself pulled from the dreaming. Orvall’s rumbling basso sounded in her ears and the metallic speaker’s voice faded.
No! Wait! Show me more!
Urgently, as if sensing her plea, the scenes shifted, flashing by in a beautifully colourful blur.
She sped along the buried road, eventually ending up at the base of a gargantuan tree. It towered over its kin, branches lush with green piercing dark banks of fog that coated the sky. The arboreal titan’s trunk and roots entwined through a grand tower, wrought of the same metal as the mountain door—
The dream faded into a panoply of colours.
The voice died.
Only the desperate, urgent tone of the vision lingered.
The black called.
Talia fell precipitously into a deep sleep.
----------------------------------------
Orvall mixed a poultice at his work table, looking over to where Talia slept fitfully, burning of fever. A long, deep, cut stretched from below her right eye down to her chest, thankfully skipping over her neck. It had putrefied, leaking rusty green puss through hot compresses. A hot bath had revealed an array of bruises covering her from head to toe.
The young woman’s already sharp features were drawn to a knife point by illness. Deep purple, almost black circles ringed her usually spritely, yellow eyes, encroaching on her small, delicate nose. The brutalized girl’s thin lips were puffy and cracked, and one side of her face was swelling with nearly ochre bruising.
Anger such that he hadn’t felt in decades roiled in the dwarf’s gut, at those who had done this to his friends’ daughter.
His daughter.
Whoever they were, they would pay.
He had retreated from clan politics years ago, content, in his grief, to grow herbs, treat the sick and raise his new child. Clearly, that meant that some had forgotten him, forgotten the respect due to Orvall Angrim, as a matter of honour.
Perhaps it was time for a reminder.
Soon, Talia would wake, and he would pull from her—gently of course—the identity of her aggressors. Then he would ensure they never forgot the day they had decided to harm his family.
Orvall turned back to his work, humming an old, forgotten tune.