Karzurkul was…not what Talia had expected, though in hindsight, it was all in the name. Urkulez, in old dwarvish, meant ‘rushing water’. Which was fitting, considering the dead city’s placement. Whatever credit the dwarves got for their ingenuity and hardiness, naming conventions were not their strong suit.

The cavern that held the abandoned city was longer than the one that held Karzgorad, but also thinner, and that was the least obvious difference. To start, the entire back wall of the massive chamber was a gargantuan waterfall. The foamy curtain—millions of litres of falling water looked like a deluge of ink in the darkness, spilling into a deadly rapid that wrapped around the ledge that the city was perched on. The river took up a full quarter of the cavern, winding its way through a ravine that ran the entire left side before disappearing into the lower levels of the Deep.

The right side of the cave held the city proper, with most of it climbing its way up the right wall like a cluster of creeper lichen. Roads and staircases were carved directly into the side of the cave wall, with what looked to be lift shafts set up every half kilometre or so. The buildings, unlike Talia’s home city, were not stone, but dark, matte metal, ranging from small huts to midsized, two-story abodes and towering edifices dressed in darkened glass.

The sight made Talia think of what Calisto had said about Karzacath, and how small and backward Karzgorad seemed by comparison. Now that she’d seen a dead city for herself, the arcanist couldn’t help but agree. That was not to say that her home’s architecture wasn’t impressive—it was. But it was clearly, starkly dwarven. Karzurkul was as well, but in many ways, it wasn’t.

Where dwarven architecture was all hard lines and cold stone, the metal buildings of the dead city were all sweeping lines and gentle curves. Buildings seemed to meld into each other, flowing smoothly into the next and curling around open squares and public areas. Underneath the elegance and the metal arches, the city planning was pure dwarven utilitarianism painted over with a glossy finish.

But that was about the extent of Talia’s knowledge on the subject. To her, it looked familiar but different, like coming home to realize someone had changed out all the furniture for a more expensive set.

The caravan approached the wall that blocked off the entrance to the city from the Ways, a great stone gate, its doors ajar. Parapets and watchtowers dotted the fortification, a near twin to Karzgorad’s Final Outpost. Beyond the open gate, the psion caught a glimpse of a long bridge into the city, and the road that wound its way through the only flat part of it: a plane of dust, overgrown drearwood and metal pipes.

Must’ve been the space they used for farming. No wonder the city is carved into the wall, there wouldn’t be space for growing much of anything if it wasn’t.

Hoping to catch a glimpse of Karzurkul’s arcano-sun, Talia crouched down to get a good angle, to no avail—the ceiling blocked her view—she’d have to wait until they were in the city proper before she could get a good look.

Suppressing a sigh, Talia turned to look at her fellows. She hadn’t been the only one enamoured with the view of the city. While the veterans kept their eyes roving across the tunnel, the young boy who’d joined her in voiding his stomach a few hours prior was staring with utter fascination, his brown eyes gleaming in the dark through his mottled black and grey face paint.

Talia smiled in her hood, glad that a little wonder had managed to sink through the thick coating of fear and tension that had seemed omnipresent since they’d left first haven. Even the more experienced delvers, though they remained vigilant, stood a little more relaxed. Extending her mindsense over the caravan for a light gauge of how the rest felt showed a similar sentiment. The finish line was in sight, the safety of walls and familiarity.

Reatcheeech

The warbling cry echoed down the Way, scattering packs of sarkians and sending rodents scurrying to their burrows. Talia froze, looking back the way they’d come. She stretched out her senses and waited, scanning for the tell-tale flickering that signified that the Aberrant were on their heels.

Her comrades on the roof thumbed at their weapons, awaiting the command to move to the back, the call of enemies behind.

Neither came.

Talia swore in her head, pushing her sense out as far as she could, to the point where it started tearing mana from her Core. Still nothing, but she kept pushing until she’d almost written off the sound as an echo, one that had made the magmamander sound a lot closer than it actually was. She pushed harder, spreading the net out in one direction, farther than she ever had before. Her heart beat staccato in her chest.

Then she felt it, far, far behind them, a glimpse of flickering minds and a rage she was careful to avoid connecting to. If Talia could have sworn without choking on her clicker, she would’ve. Instead, she shut off the sense, bringing it back to its usual range and reducing the mana requirement to a trickle that she could sustain indefinitely.

She swept over to the ladder and slid down it, barely taking the time to click a warning before entering wagon one. Torval looked up in mild surprise as she whipped the curtains aside.

“The Aberrant are back,” she said.

The delvemaster froze, his pen hovering above the page of his journal. His face contorted.

“Fuck. Of course, they are. Syndra! Get in here,” he called toward his office before turning back to Talia, “How far?”

Talia skirted around the map table and activated it, panning the display up so that it showed the tunnel.

“I’m not sure, distances are great with my…” she started and tapped her head meaningfully, “but pretty far. I’d say about where we were eight hours out, maybe more, but that’s just a guess. So around…here.”

Talia pointed at an approximate location.Torval stared at her finger, deep in thought. When Calisto failed to appear, he stood and went to his office, peeking his head through the curtain and summoning her. Talia met the chronicler’s glacial gaze, explaining the situation while the delvemaster tapped his fingers on the table, parsing through their options.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Calisto, go get me Lazarus and Darkclaw. May as well include Dhustrun while you’re at it,” Torval finally said, “Talia, I need you to go ahead and get the triplets started on removing the ash lance from the rooftop.”

The chronicler swept out of the room with a snap of her robes, leaving Talia to glance at the delvemaster skeptically.

“Um—are we going to stop? Uninstalling the lance while the wagon is moving sounds like a bad idea,” Talia said before catching herself, “Wait, no, why are we taking it off to begin with?”

“If you take it slowly, and have a few of the stronger crew help out, I doubt you’ll have too many problems. The triplets may be eccentric, but they work very well under pressure,” Torval assured, a smile curling on his face, “As for why we’re removing it? Well, now that we have time to prepare, I don’t see why we would fight from the wagons when we have perfectly good fortifications to defend from.”

Talia hesitated, thinking back to her first encounter with the triplets.

Eccentric is one way to say it…

“I don’t know, even if we plan on setting up in the Final Outpost, wouldn’t it be more prudent to—”

Talia cut off as the wagon slowed under them, before coming to an abrupt stop, threatening to send her to the floor. She caught herself on the map table, and the two looked at each other in surprise, before shaking themselves out of it and heading to the door.

Once outside, their confusion only intensified. The wagon train had stopped completely, and some kind of commotion could be heard near wagon three. As the pair approached at a quick clip, what had happened became apparent.

Wagon three’s tunnel drake lay broken and motionless under its wheels, blood and viscera gushing from under its still-warm corpse and bits of its ribcage poking out from its scaly chest. The beast’s long neck was flattened, almost torn from its shoulders.

Shit.

A scary thought tore her eyes from the gruesome sight, and Talia rushed forward to inspect the wagon’s scriptwork, kneeling to ensure that nothing had been dangerously damaged. She breathed a sigh of relief when nothing stuck out to her as catastrophic. She’d been worried that the beast had struggled, potentially damaging the spokes and their runework. Silencing enchantments shouldn’t cause too many issues when damaged, but…

Luckily the steel-reinforced rims had done more damage to the drake than the beast had to the wheels.

The arcanist looked up right as a burly dwarf trudged over with a hooked chain looped over his shoulder. Torval had jumped into action, using the limited language of clicker calls in concert with hand signs to a shocking degree of flexibility.

Delvers scurried about on his orders, pulling the drake’s corpse from under the wagon and dragging it aside. One of the triplets—Fred? Ted?—the one with the metal in his hair, crouched down beside her, silently checking the wagon’s undercarriage for damage.

Brushing her hands on the inside of her cloak, Talia left the gnome to it, heading over to join Torval and Mirielle, who was looking over wagon three’s driver with a critical eye. The poor woman seemed to have been thrown from her seat when it was destroyed, sending her flying and leaving her with a broken leg and a pair of nasty scratches down her back.

With the state of the bench, I’m surprised she’s still alive.

The drake’s fall hadn’t torn the harness from where it attached to the wagon, instead ripping the whole bench from the front of the wagon off, leaving a splintered mess of leather and shattered wood for the crew to dig through and cast aside.

Then Talia watched as the crew went about their work until Torval’s job of directing them was taken over by a cloaked Dhustrun, and the delvemaster came over to beckon her back to wagon one.

----------------------------------------

“Well, that was…poor timing,” Talia snarked half-heartedly.

Lazarus shook his head.

“Had I been there, I would have advised against the use of eritroot, delvemaster. Its effects on beasts are not well researched to begin with,” the elf said, “From what Mirielle told me, the drake fell from exhaustion without any warning, and got run over before poor Witta could do anything to prevent it. As it is—”

Torval raked a hand through his stubble and cut the healer off with a slashing gesture.

“I know, Lazarus, but the situation demanded it, and I would’ve done the same even if you’d advised against it. Right now, we have bigger problems,” the delvemaster said, looking around the officer’s table, “The Aberrant are back.”

None of the assembled officers seemed surprised. Most had probably either heard the ear-piercing shriek themselves or been told afterward. Still, Talia wondered how he would write off how he knew their general location to the others, well, other, singular, as Darkclaw was the only one present that was unaware of Talia’s powers.

Luckily, the battlemaster never asked. In fact, he offered up a solution.

“Will send scouts behind. Order not engage, examine and report,” the beastkin growled.

Torval shook his head.

“That won’t be necessary, battlemaster.”

Darkclaw’s bushy brow wrinkled the waxy scar on his face.

“If they are after us, then we’ll have to fight. Luckily, we have the advantage of a good, defensible position,” the delvemaster explained, flicking on the map table, “We can set up in Karzurkul’s Final Outpost, shut the gates, and fight from the walls.”

Calisto interjected.

“The gates mechanism is broken, delvemaster. We’d have to render them operational again, or the beasts will just slip through.”

Torval paused in his explanation, but pushed forward anyway.

“Then it will be up to you and the triplets to find and repair the mechanism,” he decided, “We’ll post up the walls and rain hell down on the abominations with the artefacts Arcanist Talia has gracefully provided us and good, old-fashioned arrows and bolts.”

“Wouldn’t we be better off fighting them in Karzurkul haven? It seems an inordinate amount of trouble for us to be rearming such a large fortress, when we have a defensible position just inside the city,” Lazarus suggested.

Darkclaw responded before Torval could.

“Haven surrounded by drearwood. Make enemy hidden, hard to hit. Fortress good plan, but not close gates. Leave open, put defenders. Draw attention away from walls,” he said, smacking his clawed hands together, “Rain hell. Is good plan. I fix.”

The meeting devolved into strategy discussions that went over Talia’s head, though she tried her best to follow along. In the end, the officers decided that the combat-ready members of the crew would stay behind at the Final Outpost, along with wagon seven. The rest of the wagons and the crew would cross the bridge and wait for them on the other side. If the defenders were overwhelmed, they would fall back in a fighting retreat across the bridge. The topic of retreat brought Talia back into the conversation.

“Talia, I believe you’ve mentioned that artefacts improperly created or egregiously damaged can, on occasion, explode?” Calisto asked, turning to the psion.

“What? Oh yes—wait, what? You don’t mean…” Talia trailed off as she caught on to what the chronicler was implying.

Lazarus understood as well, raising an eyebrow and giving Calisto a scrutinizing look.

“Destroying the bridge would mean blocking off our return, if my memories of Karzurkul are correct,” the healer said, “We’d be trapped.”

Calisto scoffed.

“Better trapped than dead, I say. Besides, we have the extruder, for when we need to cross the gap to return.”

The elf looked green in the face, and even Darkclaw looked uncertain. In the end, it was Torval who ended the debate.

“It’s a good plan b, but let’s hope it doesn’t become necessary yes? For now, we should focus our efforts on planning out the defense. Talia, it strikes me that this unexpected pause might be a good opportunity to unhook the ash lance from the roof and prepare it for reinstallation.”

Talia nodded absently, having been caught up in how she might go about destroying such a large structure.

It wouldn’t be too complicated. I could rip one of the waste disposal units from a wagon and re-etch the scriptwork poorly. The trouble would be making sure it goes off when I want it to, and not before…

Shaking away the thoughts, Talia nodded.

“I’ll get the triplets on it,” she said.

“Good. Once you’re done, work on our—ah—plan b.”

Talia wasn’t sure whether she should grimace or smile. In the end, the expression came out as something of a mix of the two.