Along the ruined roads of the dilapidated city stood what remained of the short structures. They dangerously hung onto what was left of the foundation, threatening to crumble at any given moment. Red vines like those from the staircase before, were found in large patches across the city, most notably near the fallen boulders.
Exrite was surprised when he realised that the city was far more ruined than he initially thought. He could only imagine what happened to the floors beneath.
He explored the ruins with Frosty, checking every structure that could soundly hold itself while Khaos set out alone. This was only an hour ago, after they had some bread and coffee.
The tiny doorways annoyed Exrite every time he’d have to duck through, only to smack his head against the short ceilings. Dwarves were certainly short, but these ones were abnormally shorter.
“Nothing here as well.” Frosty hummed as she scanned the small room, which contained rotting furniture and a pile of bones in one of the corners. “Watch your head.”
Exrite followed her outside with a sigh.
“I doubt any limeite or cobalt would be up here.”
“Only option is to go down, huh?”
He walked beside the girl and followed the road. They dodged various rocks and debris along the way until they reached an intersecting path. With a sudden pause, Exrite looked down both directions before adamantly stating:
“Let’s head to the centre. We can ask the other adventurers for directions.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” She folded her arms. “Just hope Khaos didn’t wander off too far.”
“Any idea why he wanted to go alone?” Exrite curiously asked as he began walking.
“Information hunting. I think he wants to know what the ancient dwarves knew of the Frostbitten.”
It was only natural for Frosty to know his motive, even if he kept it a secret. After all, their ultimate goal was to reach the Maiden of Wisdom for answers on their race – courtesy of Khaos who planned the whole thing.
Again, the sour-bitter smell returned as they grew closer to the centre of the city. Small groups of no more than five adventurers hung around what seemed like a massive sinkhole.
Prying eyes were glued to them as they approached, stopping just a meter away from the bottomless pit. Nothing could be seen at the end of the darkness below as a powerful stench of sour iron made Exrite silently mutter.
“Smells like explosive powder.”
There was a chance that the whole collapse wasn’t from a demon, but instead, caused by the explosives. Although he had no proof of this, it wasn’t farfetched.
But just how much explosive powder would it require to cause the collapse of a dwarven city?
“You arrived pretty late. Did you get lost in this place?” The swordsman from before caught their attention.
Unlike before, he didn’t find the man as annoying and welcomingly responded.
“We went to eat first and had a look around. Surprised that this place is still holding up.”
The group of five were oddly relieved when they saw him smile. But when they glanced over Frosty, there was still some tension. She didn’t seem like the type who would open up easily, and her cold front only made it harder to like her.
“Aye. Karkingram’s lucky to still be afloat here. Must be because so many vines are holdin’ up the broken walls.” The female dwarf spoke with a similarly thick accent to the male dwarf beside her.
“Karkingram? The name of this city?” Frosty sought for clarification with a serious stance.
“Was. Now it’s just a giant dwarven graveyard. Just these dwarves were little compared to us normal sized ones.” The male dwarf answered, looking down into the pit before he noticed that they were being overheard by the other groups. “Lads, let’s talk elsewhere. Bunch of rude fellas here eavesdroppin’ like fairies.”
“Huh…” Frosty was lost to his jarring way of talking, while Exrite found it humorous and managed to hold back a chuckle.
The strange, black-haired girl wondered for a moment as she stared at the two, noticing that Khaos wasn’t amongst them.
“Your friend isn’t here?”
“Ah… he’s still strolling around the city.” Frosty vaguely answered with slight hesitance.
She wanted to avoid giving them a bad impression, since Exrite was willing to mingle with them.
The spear-wielding man began leading the group away from the sinkhole, as the two trailed behind with some distance. The dwarves quickly threw themselves onto the dusty ground and pat the space beside them.
“Sit down! There’s no rush since those fellas are all trying to get into the hole.”
“Too bloody dirty. I’d rather stand here, and away from you dwarves.” The spearman spoke with unexpected spite against the dwarves.
Exrite didn’t know where his hatred came from all of a sudden. Just earlier, they were eating together with no complications – at least it was how he saw it from the short time he watched.
A mildly tense air surrounded the group. It seemed that even if the dwarves were close with humans, there were still people who disliked them.
Not that it mattered to them.
Exrite didn’t mind the thick layer of rubble on the ground, and sat across the dwarves with folded legs. He was quickly joined by Frosty and even the black-haired girl.
Frosty found herself studying the mage girl beside her, intrigued by her minimalistic gear. At first glance, anyone would have mistaken her for being underprepared, but in this case – it was perfect.
As opposed to the two standing men in full plated armour, and even Khaos – it would be their downfall. The space beneath the city was expected to be narrow and tight, and bulky armour would further restrict their movement.
They did not know what they would be up against down there, but Frosty couldn’t imagine it being a demon.
“Not many people make it back from the lower levels, and fewer with the green ore. Don’t suppose that it’s the work of a monster, no less a demon.” The male dwarf stroked his magnificent brown beard as the swordsman chuckled.
“A demon? Hah! Even a dragon would be far more realistic. All the stories about how this place fell are getting out of hand.” The swordsman stated with folded arms.
“They’re not just stories, boy. They’re written down in scrolls and scribed on the walls. The demons that arrived here a thousand years ago is part of the dwarven history.” The short, female dwarf sharply explained.
While they were bickering about the prospects of a demon living in this city, Frosty discretely stared at the girl beside her.
She had thick, short eyebrows and hair that barely reached past her ears. Her eyes were an ununique light brown, and her build was small. Like Frosty, she wore a cloak, albeit rougher and mostly conditioned by her previous adventures.
Frosty only paid attention to her because she was what she believed to be a B ranked adventurer – if she went along with what Acacia said back in the Capital. Surely, the girl’s magic would be superior to hers.
“… Is there something on my face?” The girl caught her and quietly asked.
“No, it’s nothing.” Frosty spoke with a cold voice before turning her face away.
The girl looked down at the floor and brushed her eyebrows with a small frown. She was rather conscious of her eyebrows – even herself as a whole. She was only as unique as her strength would allow her.
While thinking of such things, she remembered the tall man from before.
* * *
The hideously-armoured man grew tired of mindlessly tucking himself through the small, dwarven entrances. His patience was tested, and he was already using his bare fists to smash open appropriately sized doorways. And in some cases, caused a few ruins to crumble into a pile of rubble.
Frustration vented through the sigh he threw below him. The crumbled bookshelf in front of him held nothing but grey stone and powdered rubble. The small room was strangely empty as well, and he wondered if the city had already been completely looted by previous adventurers.
He had explored most of the surface and could only find strange writings etched into the walls. Unfortunately for him, it was not written in Ecloma.
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The odds of gaining any knowledge of his race was non-existent at this point, but he didn’t want to give up. If there was a bookshelf, then surely there’d be books somewhere.
He could only hope at this point.
Before finally leaving the structure, he studied the incomprehensible writing on the broken walls. There was no knowing what it meant, but they didn’t seem like the death woes expected of those in the last moments of their lives.
Far from chaotic – it was perhaps even written before the collapse of the city.
An uneasy feeling of dread swelled within the depths of his heart. Something was amidst, and he wondered whether this truly was just a dwarven ‘city’.
The path he followed was a simple one. The chaos surrounding him was like the state of his mind – torn by the many inconsistencies this place held.
His extensive search throughout the city beforehand bared fruit to some other odd anomalies. For one – where were the furnishings? No- where were the rooms for the many families that supposedly lived in this place? For what reason was the surface set up like a barracks?
The gut feeling made him instinctively conclude that, more than anything, the ‘city’ wasn’t what people claimed it to be.
But he didn’t want to embed the thought too deeply into his mind. The thought of Exrite popped in as he planned to share this valuable information with him and work on his call, rather than his own.
“If anyone’s got a plan, it’s him, huh.” He grinned with a show of relief.
As he followed the path towards the centre of the city, avoiding the many jagged obstacles on route, he briefly remembered their first encounter with Exrite.
I’ve never seen a human endure so much physical destruction.
While he didn’t witness the tortures of Exrite, he certainly heard it. The woes and cries of agony were everlasting, even throughout the many nights he spent there with Frosty in solitude.
The thick walls of their prison did little to muffle his wails.
On that fateful night, he could have sworn the figure that had murdered the guards with only a bone torn from their exposed rib was the phantom of the finally deceased man.
He didn’t know Exrite’s motivation behind rescuing them. He could’ve left them behind in the prison cell and ran away. But if he had to put a finger on it-
He probably saw himself in us. We were going to be next in line, for whatever they did to him.
Neither did they have to follow him as well. But his miraculously retained sanity was something he eternally awed, and immediately knew – that he was someone to follow.
Compassionate, kind and easy to talk with. Exrite was selfless, and enjoyed helping others when they needed it the most.
A frown formed on his face as he unknowingly smashed through a thick, golden wall with a mighty heave. His walks became strides, brows knitted, and fists clenched like balls of iron.
But that eye…
He was torn. Ripped. Shattered.
When he heard about Exrite’s inevitable plunge into despair, he wanted to smash everything around him. The Gods, like his sister claimed, toyed with their lives.
In that moment, he realised that the Exrite they knew now, would come to an end. The eye fed on his deepest despairs – and it was a miracle that he hadn’t fallen prey to insanity yet.
Above all else – he was afraid of losing his best friend to something out of his reach. He wanted to help him. The outstretched kindness he offered in the depths of their despair wasn’t something he wanted to go unpaid.
While lost in his thoughts, a voice suddenly called out to him.
“Khaos! We’re you going!? You’re going to walk straight into the pit!”
It was Exrite’s voice.
Startled by it, he turned to the voice with a lit face.
There, in the corner of his eye, was Exrite who was in the middle of a charge towards him, along with many others showing shocking faces.
He didn’t realise why they were so frightened, until his next step seemingly missed the ground. In that moment, every hair in body rose as his blood shot an ice cold.
When he turned, there was only an abyss.
“H…HUHHH!?”
Attempting to maintain his footing, his other foot dug deeply into the edge of the pit. However – the floor was far too unstable and failed to ground him in place as he toppled over head first into the darkness below.
“KHAOS!?” Frosty shrieked and instantly vanished from her place with an explosion and appeared at the edge with an outstretched hand. “KHAOS!”
She cried again, her hands beginning to tremble when she realised that her efforts were in vain.
Exrite slid beside her and tried to make use of his senses. He had a better chance than Frosty of finding Khaos down there, but that didn’t seem like the case.
After all, she could still see his soul.
“FUUUUUUUCK! Thank fuck for this sword. Thank fuck for this strength. Thank fuck I’m a Frostbitten!”
Soon, other eyes stared down at the hole, astonished that they could still hear the man’s voice. The last part went widely unnoticed and ignored, believed to be spouted nonsense from a man who was barely spared from a horrible death.
“Why didn’t anyone stop me!?”
“Idiot, we called out to you so many times! We thought you just wanted to see what was in the pit!” Frosty made an irritated retort.
“Aye lad, how’re you still alive down there!?”
“I’m stuck in the wa- I found a root to hold onto!”
His lie was so blatantly obvious that it made Frosty even wonder why she was concerned in the first place. Still, she couldn’t help but to smile in relief.
“Hold on! We’ll help you up the vertic-port!” An unknown man cried from across the pit.
“This is a vertical teleporter?” Khaos wondered from within the darkness.
Suddenly, a yellow spark gently began emitting from behind him.
“Not active, I’m afraid. Here, take hold of this before- “
The man spoke too soon.
A barrage of tiny sparks suddenly consumed the space around the dangling man as it lit the pit enough to reveal that this ‘root’ was actually the handle of an embedded, unfathomably large blade. The sudden light caused a short-lived cheer to erupt from the few adventurers that surrounded the pit as they thought that it was the work of one of the mages.
However, that light was no saving grace in the eyes of Exrite, who immediately recognised not the sparks – but the magic circles on the walls of the pit.
“Be careful down there! We’ll be on our way to find you!”
Khaos didn’t know what he meant but replied with a thumbs up anyway and smiled, before completely disappearing from the space, along with the sword and light.
Dumbfounded by what had just happened, the surrounding groups remained speechless as Exrite tore himself away from the hole. There was no time to waste –
Frosty jumped back and began frantically searching for his soul through the floor, while Exrite tapped his crossbow. But before he could ask for directions, it seemed like the dwarves had already caught onto his motives and yelled:
“Oi! The poor bugger’s going to die down there if we’re not speedy!”
“We’re?” Frosty unpleasantly hummed as she caught a glimpse of a shallow light from below.
“Sorry Frosty, but they’re right.” Exrite quickly snapped. “Do you know any way to get down?”
“Aye! We can follow an old path that was built before the vertic-port!” The female dwarf claimed as she pointed past Exrite’s waist with a muscular arm.
An unappealing frown formed on Frosty’s face, followed by a sigh. Khaos was safe and sound, by the looks of his soul – and it didn’t seem like he was teleported that far off.
“Geez… alright. But we’re getting my brother back safe, before anything else.”
Her commanding gaze struck the group. A feverish chill ran down their spines, while some silently gulped. Frosty’s crimson eyes were something to behold in that moment – it was as if there was an eternal flame within the depths of her gaze.
However, the spearman appeared unhappy to the proposed condition. He came here for one thing, and one thing only – limeite. The search for those already down in the depths of the city was hopeless.
“Ridiculous- surviving down there alone is impossib-!”
“Enough! If you’re not coming, then go alone. Please, let us join you in this endeavour!”
Surprisingly, the swordsman was willing to embark on their rescue mission.
Not only he, but the dwarves too realised that this was the perfect excuse to group along with them. Their gear left an impression in the beginning, but – Frosty’s explosive speed and the man’s ungodly strength in the split second of light made them realise – they were no ordinary adventurers.
“So – are you with us or not!?”
“… Fuck it. But the first pool of limeite we find – that’s mine, got it?” He glared with animosity at Exrite and Frosty, who honestly didn’t mind.
Khaos was far more important than a piece of metal, no matter how powerful it was.
“That’s fine with us.” The small, black-haired woman assured as the swordsman softly smiled in response.
She then turned to the two with courageous eyes, which were unfitting for such a young-looking girl.
“I know we might be a liability – but we’ll do our best to help!”
“If you’re helping us, then you’re far from a liability.”
Exrite’s calm, yet stern voice made both the girl and the swordsman reply with a firm nod. In that moment, he held back a hand that wanted to pat their heads. However, there was no urge towards the dwarves, much less the unwilling spearman who chattered their teeth.
“Aye, let us lead the way then! C’mon lads, let’s not waste any more time!”
The two dwarves suddenly broke the warm silence as they charged through them and made their way down a tattered road. There was no need to make second guesses at this point – Khaos’ life was on the line.
While they hastily followed the dwarves, Exrite calmly gazed through the gaping hole of the mountain, high above. Only a shroud of thick clouds presented themselves.
He sighed.
“Let’s hope the storm lets out before we return. Stay safe, Khaos.”
* * *
Khaos studied what seemed like an etching of the entire city, a red marker pointing just below the surface. Using his honed mind, he deducted that he had been teleported to the first floor of the dwarven city.
As much as he wanted to celebrate his findings with the others – no one else was here with him. Not even the adventurers from above were exploring these floors.
An oddity that could be added to the other various anomalies of this city.
He sighed and blankly stared at the wall holding the clawed map.
His indecisive nature kicked in. Without his leading figure, he was torn whether to wait for the others or head on deeper into the floors. While waiting seemed like the obvious answer, the later made more sense since –
“Why’s there a maze on the first floor?”
Brown bricked walls made strange twists and turns at nearly every corner, and the height of the ceiling was unnervingly generous. He didn’t know what to make of the place, but when he found the charred outlines of the invisible fixtures on the walls and floors – he became utterly confused.
Is this place a maze, or just a poorly laid out floor? Are the dead ends rooms or something?
The thought was infuriating, but he managed to shrug it off by smashing a fist into the wall before him. With ease, it crumbled underneath him and revealed an opening to another section of the ‘maze’.
He grinned.
“Hey! I guess this is where smashing walls is actually useful!” He slapped his bicep and bared his shiny teeth.
There was no stopping him now. The shortcut was too sweet of a drug for the juggernaut, who would much rather smash his way through the maze than to spend an eternity solving it.
Upon crumbling another ancient wall, he wondered if he was even headed the right way.