Kaldiel sat atop that grassy hill until the sun began to set, and the two moons began to rise. The chirping of birds was replaced by the vibrations of bugs in the night. The city of Kin’castello went from bustling with trade and business to falling silent as its streets were lit with the dim light of torch fires. Deciding that this was the perfect time to make his way inside the city, the pale elf rose from where he sat upon the hill, and with his cloak that still had a bit of sand on it covering his form, he began his way down.
He enjoyed the more hospitable environment that he now found himself in. Instead of a constant dry heat bearing down upon him at all times, there was now just a cool breeze that ran through his short black hair. There was no longer a sandstorm that obscured his vision but brush, trees, and small hills covered in grass. The best part was that he no longer had to run for his life, well, not right now anyway. It was like entering an entirely different world, with the only reminder of the Dead Plains being the barrier that guarded the Sanctuary against its corroding touch. Entering any sanctuary was like this. Going from a heat that threatened to wither the living that stood within it to a more often than not, more suitable climate for living.
As Kaldiel approached one of the few gates within the stone wall surrounding the city, he reached into his cloak and began to fiddle around with a pocket upon the tunic underneath. After a few moments, he managed to procure a smooth, circular stone that fit within the palm of his hand. On one side of the stone, a violet-colored gem was implanted into it in the shape of a footprint. The gem within the stone glinted in the light that the moons as the pale elf stared down at it, a sigh soon escaping him as he flipped the stone in the air like it were a coin before continuing onwards.
It wasn’t long before the man arrived at the gate within the wall. Up close, the wall was larger than what it appeared at a distance. The stone was colored white, almost as if it were made out of beautiful marble, but that was just to make the wall built to block the power of siege engines look pretty and inviting. As for the gate, it looked a little less inviting. Three figures, each of equal height and dressed in plate armor tinted a soft blue with edges marked in silver, stood in front of a gate made of metal bars with pointed tips on the ends that jutted into the ground. Upon each of their chests was an insignia that looked akin to a horse, but a horn of some sort extended upwards from the front of its lower jaw. The figures were completely unarmed with no sign of weaponry visual.
When Kaldiel got closer to the gate, one of the armored figures stepped forward, the weight of the figure’s armor leaving prints in the dirt and grass with each movement that it made. Once it was standing before Kaldiel, it stood at least four heads taller than he did, towering over the now seemingly puny elf in its presence. When the figure spoke, its voice sounded like a chorus of men and women.
“You shall move no further without identifying yourself and your intentions. What brings you to the City of Kings?”
The pale elf looked downwards towards the stone with the foot-shaped gem inside of it before offering it out towards the behemoth of armor in front of him. The armor’s gaze turned towards the offered stone, taking it in hand and inspecting it for a brief moment before handing it back to Kaldiel. It turned on its heel and made its way back towards the gate, and with the help of the other two behemoths of armor, they’d latch on to the bars of the gate before lifting it above their heads.
“Welcome to the City of Kings, Stonewalker. Familiarize yourself with your surroundings. A hostelry for your kind can be found on one of the four main roads that lead from the gates to the heart of the city.”
With the gate opened for him and the stone road behind it practically laid out before him like a red carpet, Kaldiel entered with swift strides while putting the stone into his tunic where he had retrieved it from initially. The moment he was clear of the gate in its entirety, the armored behemoths dropped it with a loud thud of metal hitting dirt, the pointed tips digging deep into the soft ground below.
Kaldiel’s pace started to slow after the gate slammed down into the ground. He hadn’t realized it, but he was holding his breath until that gate came back down. He didn’t know why or when he had stopped breathing, but when the gate impacted the ground, he gasped for air. Once his breathing steadied, he began to fully observe his surroundings while making his way down the wide cobbled road in front of him. It was a straight road that led directly to the city's heart, where a building that looked more like a small castle than anything rested. On either side of him were rows of mixed buildings. Some served as a residence, while others had signs in front of them or hanging from their doors to indicate that they were a shop of some kind. Most of them had their lights out, though a few buildings which were bars or disorderly houses of some sort still had them on and bustled with a bit of life in the quiet of the night.
The road itself was mostly empty of travel, a few stray passersby appeared on occasion, simply giving a nod of acknowledgment to the pale elf as they wandered the torchlit city, but much more than that was hard to come by at this time of night. The further Kaldiel went down the cobbled road, the more spread out the building became. In between the missing spaces were alleyways and streets that led off in different directions. Some led to dead ends where the back of a building blocked it off, while others led off into the more expansive cityscape. Down a few of these pathways were people doing certain disgraceful dealings. Drugs, unfaithful men and women, gambling, and so on. Kaldiel paid none of it any heed and continued marching on in search of this place that was for ‘his kind.’ How that was phrased was a bit rude now that he thought about it, but he had no intentions of going back to press the matter.
There was no luck on this road, no sign of any Stonewalker activity or a special place where they were meant to stay. It took him half an hour to get to the city's center, where a massive roundabout was made around a large mote that separated the court of kings from the rest of the city. It was just big enough to where it couldn’t be jumped by any normal means. Even if one got a running start, they’d fall multiple feet short of landing on the other side. The only way to get across to that massive castle-like structure was to go over the metal bridges currently raised into the air.
Kaldiel stared at the massive structure on the other side of the mote, allowing his gaze to lift slowly up and up and up its high walls until they rested upon the clock tower high above. “Blessed be damned… how did they manage to build this place.” He murmured to himself before slowly wandering around the roundabout until he found himself in front of another one of the main roads. The pale elf began his way down it with a sigh of defeat, searching for the building he was told about. It was too late at night to get any accurate information, so he’d have to find it all by himself. In his tired and weary state, he marched onwards.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Hours would pass as he wandered fruitlessly down one road, all the way towards the gate, and then back to the center when he didn’t find the Stonewalker’s Guild. Every road took over an hour to traverse down and back, and it wasn’t until about midway down the final road, when on the verge of collapsing to exhaustion, that a building caught his eye. The building didn’t look too out of the ordinary amongst any of the others, the only thing catching his eye being the very subtle sign on the front of the door that had a footprint upon it, similar to the gem on the stone he had within his pocket.
“You’ve… got to be fucking kidding me. There are only ONE of these things… and it doesn’t stand out minus a fucking sign? This city is going to kill me.” As he spoke his annoyance out loud, he approached the door to the building. A few voices could be heard inside, quite jovial in tone as they talked about recent events.
Kaldiel knocked upon the wooden door while he used his other hand to grab the stone that held the footprint-shaped gem. It took a few moments, but soon the door would be cracked open, and the chattering on the other side had fallen silent. On the other side was a female on the shorter side, her skin an awkward coloration of white and teal, though most of it was covered by tan leathers. Patches of fishlike scales covered her cheeks, and upon her neck were things that looked to be gills. Long sky-blue hair was tied up in a ponytail and hung over one of her shoulders. She briefly looked over the pale elf before her with her bright blue eyes before finally speaking.
“Who might you be, exactly?” spoke the gilled woman, her voice fell light upon the ears and practically soothed the man on the other side of the door.
The pale elf held out the stone with the purple foot-shaped gem inside of it, showing it to the odd woman before him through the crack of the door. “The sign on the building says this is where I’m supposed to be.”
The gilled elven woman looked over the stone for a moment, a hand shooting out from behind the door and snatching it so she could inspect it closer. After a moment, she moved a boot to kick the door wide open. “Hey everybody! We’ve got a new guy just kicking in from the Dead Plains! Someone get him a drink!”
Kaldiel entered the building with a huff of breath, snatching his stone back from the woman who had taken it initially. “No, I don’t want a damned drink. I want a bed. Where can I get one?” The pale man spoke directly towards the blue-haired woman, considering she was the one to first talk to him. He gave no mind to the other five people within the room.
“Oh, in such a rush to get off to bed, huh? You just got here, ease up, yeah?” The woman responded in kind.
“Nope, bed, now, if I have to pay for it, then I’ll pay for it. I just want to sleep after today.” The pitch in his voice had raised a bit to express his clear annoyance.
“Yeesh, that bad of a day, huh? Fine, fine, you can get to know everyone in the morning then. Falien!”
As the gilled woman called out a name, a short man whose head hardly peaked over the counter swiftly popped up. His skin was a light shade of red, and his eyes almost looked like bright lime gemstones. He had a thinning head of hair and a thick beard, both of which had turned a light shade of gray due to natural aging. His tone was gruff, yet his words were refined. “Yes, yes, that’s my name. What do you need, Ambasil?”
“Get some keys for the purple gem over here. He needs a room.” Ambasil lightly nudged Kaldiel with an elbow before motioning towards the counter in the back.
In response to the nudge and being motioned off, Kaldiel made his way to the counter and stood before the older gentleman, who was only a head shorter than him. This counter was just massive. “Key?” The elf asked simply as his purple lightning-like hues turned towards the man on the other side.
“Aye, I’ve got your damned key just… one moment.” The small red-tinted man bent down, fumbling with something under the counter for a few moments. Those few moments soon turned to a few minutes before he finally popped up and slammed a silver key on the countertop with the number eighty-two engraved in it. “Go through the door behind the counter and head down three flights of stairs. Each flight leads off into an underground hallway that stores a bunch of rooms, a hundred and five to be exact, with thirty-five rooms upon each floor. Go get your rest, new kid, because you’re going to need it by tomorrow morning, aye?”
Kaldiel gave the man across the counter a curious glance before shrugging and doing as he was instructed. He snagged his key and went through the door near the counter, which opened up to a tight staircase, not meant for more than one person to go up and down it at a time. Squeezing down this tight little staircase led the man to a hallway that offered a bit more room in front of him, and off to his left was another flight of stairs. Looking down the hallway that was lit by ceiling lamps revealed rooms that altered in number. Odds were on the right side, and evens were on the left. From where he stood, there seemed to be an open space of sorts at the very end of the hallways, but not much could be made out from where he was. The pale elf decided not to pay any more attention to it and made his way down the second flight of steps. From here, the walls on the side of the stairs would change from stained wood to cold stone, giving the lower levels a cooler atmosphere. Arriving at the bottom of the second flight of stairs, Kaldiel found a similar scene, a long hallway with alternating numbered doors going from left to right with the very end looking to have an open space of some sort. Finally, he went down the last flight of stairs and, with no surprise, found the same thing he had on the previous two flights, though this was the one where his room was supposed to be, so he started to make his way down the dimly lit hall.
As Kaldiel made his way down the hallway, he could hear light snores from a few of the rooms, while others were relatively quiet, with either whispers echoing from a few doors or absolutely nothing from the rest. He soon found his room about a third of the way down the hallway, a simple wooden door with the number eighty-two engraved into its wood. He took in just how long the hallway was, looking from side to side. It was big enough to fit at least seventy people from end to end comfortably. “This place sure is a lot smaller on the outside….” He said to himself in a whisper before pressing the key into the lock of the door. It took a bit of shimmying about, but eventually, the sound of the lock clicking rang out into his ears. He took the key out of the lock, slid it into a pocket, then wiggled the door handle until the door opened.
When the door swung open, a small bedroom was revealed. A simple bed looked to be made to fit two people with white sheets, and brown covers sat in the corner farthest from the door with a bedside table to its left. A lamp lit the room like the hallways, dim but enough to see relatively well. A mirror was hanging from the wall closest to the door, and the rest was just empty space. Overall the room was big enough for him alone, especially if he was just going to take a night's rest before heading out once again.
Kaldiel let out a sigh of relief, entering the room before shutting the door and locking it behind him. He removed his desert cloak and lazily tossed it off against a random wall, then made his way over to the bed and fell on top of it like a sack of bricks. The bed groaned as its wood bent under the pressure of him falling on top of it but soon relaxed and became stable once again. The man didn’t bother to do anything else, he was somewhere he assumed to be safe, and he was now in bed. As the cloth touched what little skin was revealed and the singular pillow upon the bed touched his head, it’d be only a few moments more before he faded out of consciousness and fell asleep, leaving any worries of issues he had at the moment for future him.