“We need to get across the mid-quarter, with nothing but handsign to communicate, and then make it up the only working lift, into the high quarter, and up into the upper reaches,” Calisto fumed, “With an urvai swarm in full feeding frenzy.”
The delvemaster paced about the tiny safehouse office, one hand on her chin and the other wearing at the leather of the tome at her belt with a restless thumb.
“It’s a suicide mission,” she concluded, “Even with the expedition at full force, it would still be a godsdamned suicide mission.”
Sitting quietly in frustrated contemplation, Talia let her superior pace.
Morale had dropped. Again. If she was honest with herself, Talia couldn’t blame them this time. Urvai were not to be underestimated. The swarm of fifteen years ago had done nothing if not hammer that realization home. With an infestation this large, Calisto was right. Crossing the city was a death sentence.
And yet…
I’m missing something, I know it.
Thooommm
Rumble
The shelter shook with another tremor. Calisto swore viciously.
“These quakes are getting ridiculous. I swear the gods have cursed us. Damn Evincrest for sending us here without doing her due diligence.”
Talia nodded absently, still picking at the edge of an idea in her mind. Calisto had a point. Evincrest’s biggest sin was one of assumption and under-preparation. From what Talia understood, the last expedition to return from Karzurkul had reported a clean, profitable trip —one that had been unusually quiet to boot. Assuming the follow-up expedition would have it just as easy was a major blunder that had already cost lives, but griping about it was a waste of breath. Circumstances didn’t matter, only solutions. Namely, how in the hells they were supposed to even get to their objective.
Dammit, I’m missing something.
Wracking her brain for anything of use, Talia absently noted the delvemaster sitting down with her logbook and beginning to furiously flip through it.
It would do her little good. There wasn’t much even a library could do against a ravening swarm of insects.
A library…
Talia’s eyes widened a fraction.
A library!
Talia flicked a look at the chronicler, noting the single-minded focus that had consumed her. Fingers flicked desperately through the thick book, ice-blue eyes bloodshot and frantically roving.
“I’m going to get some rest,” Talia said as she stood from her seat, “I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
She stalked out of the room at the chronicler’s distracted grunt. Ignoring the looks she got from the team as she left the arcanically silenced room, Talia scouted out a quiet spot in a corner where she could feign sleep. The delvers followed her with their despairing gazes. The suspicion and fear in some of them did not escape her, but neither did it worry her. They would not turn on her. They couldn’t afford to. And if the beginnings of the rash plan in Talia’s mind had any chance of working, her secret would likely be out in the next few hours.
As she spun up her Core and sent a trickle of mana into the Fragment of the Weave, Talia could only hope that they would come to the same logical conclusion she had.
Having to defend myself from ignorant zealots would be a monumental waste of our time and of our manpower.
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Focus razor sharp, Talia skipped past the wonderment of entering the liminal space of the Weave and materialized already seated on her throne, several threads already at her fingertips. Ones she’d already marked for further examination weeks prior. Finding them had been a scavenger hunt. Like sifting through a bundle of tangled, multi-hued yarn in search of a single strand and colour. The memory fragments were paradoxically bright and dim, both lustrous gold and faded brass.
Talia had been waiting for the right time to look them over, having sensed the importance that had been imparted unto them. A sense of inexplicable gravitas.
Though the threads captured disparate time periods and topics, they all had one thing in common. They practically screamed it at her when she touched them. They each featured the Ancients.
The memories warped around the towering figures, as if the sheer weight of their significance defied recollection. Tall, hazy, silver-wreathed figures wielding magics beyond Talia’s comprehension. These remembrances of the Ancients were not numerous. A dozen or so threads, all told. A pittance. But the potential of them. Oh, the potential.
But she was on a mission. There would be time to scour each second of the threads later. Right now, she needed a solution to their dilemma. The Ancients hadn’t built the dwarven undercities, but they’d left their mark on them. Talia refused to believe that they hadn’t left behind something that could help her.
Like a harpist plucking at an antique, Talia picked through the ancient memories like a prospector looking for a nugget of metal amid a pile of rubble.
More than half of the threads took place on the surface.
Useless.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
She gently pushed those to the side, until she was left with four. Four broken, flickering wires spun from the purest gold, quivering weakly under her metaphysical fingers.
Here goes.
Picking the first one at random, Talia pulled it to her head.
The first thing she heard was a voice. No, not a voice. A Voice. A Voice.
Something in her subconscious twinged as the Ancient spoke in a language utterly unrecognizable but oh-so-familiar. Recognition danced on the edge of her thoughts for a moment. Then she was swept away.
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She-Who-Paints-With-Drips-Of-Thought scuttled at the back of the procession with the rest of the crescians, her fledgelings clinging to her gargantuan legs and the underside of her belly. The alvs and verga around her kept their distance. She could taste their fear. Feel the hateful looks thrown at her and her sisters by the little starkin that speckled the Exodus.
A millennium of coexistence and acceptance rent asunder by nothing more than a— S-s-Scre-eaaa-mmmm—
Argghhhh fuuuuuckk
The recollection of the cosmic breaking staggered the memory, tearing it at the seams, and then Talia was somewhere else. Someone else.
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She-Who-Feasts-On-Knowledge lurked in the shadows with her sisters as the dveri welcomed the Exodus of surface-dwellers with open arms and heavy hearts. Fear festered in the minds of the people of this…Kar-za-ka-ad. The weight of uncertainty bore down on them finally, when it had long since twisted the lives of those who lived under the day star.
The starwalker, Starwalker-Who-Guides-With-Care-And-Forethought, discarded his mellifluous language for the guttural rasps and grunts of the dveri, the intent of his speech chagrined and thankful both. It baffled Feasts-On-Knowledge that the ward races were so reluctant to use the imitation of the Weave the starwalkers had gifted them. With it, the chances of misdirection and misinterpretation lay only in the realm of intentional deception, and even that was rendered difficult.
And yet they insisted on primitive grunts and gesticulations. Though she supposed that if the starwalkers allowed it, there must be some purpose to it. She would ask later if she got the chance.
Turning her attention from Guides-With-Care and looking to the dveri city, Feasts-On-Knowledge could not help but be skeptical. Where were the towering edifices of glass and metal? The lines of power and starwalker genius.
Where were the libraries?
An intellectual disappointment filled her. So much had been lost to that Tide of Darkness, that twisting of all that was. That Scre—
The memory fizzed once more; Talia’s mind throbbed with a brief migraine. The next thread began without her prompting.
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She-Who-Serves-The-Radiant-Saviours skittered to the edge of the alcove she’d been assigned for her brood.
It was time.
The capital of the dveri was too small to fit the entire Exodus. Many had already left for the remaining four, under the guidance of Guides-With-Care and his fellows. Starwalker-Who-Dances-With-Metal had stayed. Serves-The-Radiant had been blessed, tasked to aid the starwalker in the construction of another amplifier. Smaller than the ones on the surface, but no less important. No less sacred. The first of five.
But first, true to her name, Dances-With-Metal would remake the city in the saviours’ image.
Talia and Serves-The-Radiant gaped in unison as the cavern above Karzakaad came alive. Liquid tons of metal swirled above the crescian’s head, sliding gently over buildings, adding onto the dwarven bones that were already there. Three-story buildings and squat hovels carved into the stone rose up, elevated by the metal as if gifted with life.
The sound was indescribable. Like music. A cross between the chime of bells, the tinkle of crystals shattering and the whisper of a sword being sheathed.
At the centre of it all, hovering, spinning, dancing, was a hazy, warped figure encased in glowing armour, hands upraised as if guiding a symphony.
In the span of fifteen minutes, the Ancient had wreathed the lost city of Karzakaad in alloy and runescript. A final clench of her fist made it shine. Lines of Ancient Runic sparked to life like the nervous system of some titanic creature coaxed into being.
Cheers resounded through the cavern, deafening in their intensity, frantic in their jubilation.
At that moment, Talia understood what Serves-The-Radiant felt. She understood why the Ancients were worshipped as gods. What else could she call what she’d just witnessed?
But Dances-With-Metal was not done.
As if to prove that what she’d done was nothing, the Ancient brought into being the first arcano-sun. Twisting, blackened lines of fluid alloy collided elegantly, twinning themselves into a hollow sphere that slotted itself into the cavern ceiling with a resounding crack-boom.
And then there was light.
As Serves-The-Radiant quivered in awe, the memory shifted, flowing smoothly from one thread to the next.
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The rush of an enormous waterfall rumbled in Serves-The-Radiant’s ears —familiar to Talia, but grating to the crescian, who harboured a primal fear of water. The giant arachnid skittered across the rooftops of the metal-wreathed city with a grace that belied her size. Below, the saviours’ charges went about their lives, milling about, talking, laughing and hawking wares. Bustling about the way small ones did.
All across the buildings, runescript glowed softly, eclipsed by the light of the false sun. Greenery and verdant nature melded seamlessly into the dark metal of the city, creating a tapestry both organic and artificial.
The saviours’ work was beautiful. Radiant. Rivalled only by the majesty of the abandoned surface cities. But Serves-The-Radiant was not here to bask in its glory. The first Under amplifier had been completed, and her sisters, like her, had left Karzakaad for the other cities to create its siblings.
Ascending past the first plateau and onto the second one, Serves-The-Radiant then descended from the rooftops and into the service tunnels Starwalker-Who-Sings-To-Stone had created. The amplifier site was hidden high above the city, a secret to all but a select few.
The saviours feared the Tide following them into the Under, even when their might was more than enough to protect everyone. It had to be. To believe the Tide was beyond them was unthinkable.
No. The saviours simply cared too much. They wished all of their wards to be protected. Even though their wards would happily fight. Die. Rend metal from bone from blackened flesh and ichor in the defence of their gods. If they only asked them to. That they did not was but a mark of their benevolence.
The saviours wished them protected. Ordered them to flee. Serves-The-Radiant heard and obeyed.
And so she scuttled through rune-lit corridors, rising up, and up, and up. She had a purpose, and she would complete it.
Once she did, stars would rain from the sky once more in a second coming of the saviours. Sings-To-Stone had said it was so, and so it would be. She would not be the reason the starwalker was wrong.
Talia tasted victory as the memory began to fade around the edges.
For once, it's that easy.
Though the focus had been off, she’d found what she needed. Tunnels. Below the sewers, secured by ancient access points. Ones that at the very least, would get them through the mid-quarter, possibly all the way to the high quarter.
The fourth and final memory hovered insistently in the back of Talia’s mind, tempting her. Calling to her. She hesitated. Before the crystal mind spell, she might have succumbed to the intense need to know. But now…
The mission comes first. No distractions, no obstacles.
Replaying the third thread, Talia paid special attention to Serves-The-Radiant’s trajectory. Noting landmarks and recognizable buildings. The memory was hazy, and the city almost unrecognizable, but she didn’t let that stop her, committing to memory every instant leading up to the entrance into what she began to call the spiderways.
Their saving grace. If she could find it.