The great Prussian monarch and reformist Frederic the Great once wrote volumes of wisdom for his descendants, composed of nuggets such as: “An army is a great meandering Basilisk, moving via the scales of its belly.”
And so it was in Shalkar where both parties had learned this lesson well.
Each day, as the construction of Shalkar’s Tower progressed and the day of its Core ignition came nearer, Nizhny, commanded by the ever-loyal Petyr Shuysky, drifted closer and closer to the agricultural tableland outside the city limits. Like a voracious hornet hive, its belly spat forth Mages that once shielded Moscow’s own tablelands from the Undead, now re-tasked with the harassment of local civilians.
These militias were met with Centaur patrols, occasionally aided by mobs of Rat-kin with their Dwarf-made shock staves, resulting in chaotic melees of variable lethality.
Behind Nizhny, bloated with troops and an atmosphere of wanton violence, floated the fortified assault Tower of Novosibirsk. Unlike Yekaterinburg, whose origins were tied to Henry Kilroy, progenitor of the Tower network, Novosibirsk was a monstrous thing designed from the ground up with impure, imperialist ambitions. Shaped like a hovering prong with a spearhead base, the roughly Y-shaped silhouette of the Assault Tower housed both mass Mandala Arrays for the amplification of strategic spells and a separate section for its armada of Mages Flights. Unlike its siblings, it was an offensive counterpart to the stationary, defence-focused Yekaterinburg.
The Tower’s exterior was as imposing as its looming aggression, a hallmark of its industrial-centre birthplace. Upon its concrete, Brutalist facade, Mandalas of warding and self-repair, designed to reflect away the attacks of a very specific Radiant Mage, were inscribed. Its Mage Flights also wore battle armour and carried a complement of meta-magic wands, all products designed to strong-arm the Demi-human tribes and its Eastern European neighbours still reeling from the Beast Tide.
This way, with a fodder Tower in front and itself posed to wipe away reinforcements and entrenchments, the two Towers would move slowly but inevitably into the heartland of Shalkar, this time not to burn it to the ground but to occupy its untold riches and resources.
All they needed was a sign. A sign that the Regent of Shalkar was occupied and distracted, and they would swoop into the city to restore what was historically Mother Russia’s property.
Meanwhile, deep in Shalkar’s Citadel geo-front, the same exercise was carried out in a magnitude no man or Dwarf upon the Himsegg had seen in their lifetime.
A mining crew of two thousand Dwarven volunteers.
Two Hundred Hammer Guards.
A hundred and fifty journeymen.
Fifty Shielding Golems.
Five Fabricator Engines.
Twenty-one Engineseers.
Two Deepdowners.
It was everything the Deepdowner Factions could spare, drawn from Shalkar, Bavaria, Wales, and six other sympathetic Citadels.
All were dispersed into parties and convoys leading away from Shalkar, not horizontally, but directly “downward” via the warped geometry of the low-ways.
Yet, these hopeful Dwarves were not even the “belly” that marched first.
Weeks before the regimented departure time of each Fabricator train, the Rat-kins of Shalkar had already swarmed into the Murk.
By the reports received from Strung, Commander of the Deepholm Expedition, they were twenty-thousand in number: The bulk consisted of the ten thousand faithful who volunteered to ferry supplies and make ready the ever-extending low-ways.
Six thousand were warriors from resident Clans who had volunteered their best rats to fulfil the Call of the Pale Priestess.
The remainder consisted of Shalkar’s standing army, split into elite regiments of Dwarven-armoured Exterminators, lightly-armoured Shadow Scouts, the Officer Corps, and the Chaplaincy, whose role is to ensure undying loyalty to the Pale Priestess.
Unbeknownst to Gwen, the latter was also the keeper of her sacred juices. These are the Preachers of the Great Tree, whose blessed words, combined with vials of Almudj-blessed Maotai, could drive the masses into fearless frenzies.
In the first stages of the expedition, Rat-kin scouts flooded into the tunnels, using their natural agility and dark sight to map the tens of thousands of branches created by the fracturing of the old Dyar Morkk. Within days and with growing alarm, the returnees' stories of wonder and horror populated the Regent’s daily briefings.
Most were reports of monstrous beings from the Murk that had made isolated tunnels into death-filled domains. A few found verdant paradises of fungi that thrived in pockets of space without natural predation. Fewer still found actual pockets of edible wildlife.
Sadder were the literal tombs sealed by Dwarves trapped in torn dimensional tears of the Elemental Plane of Earth, with no way to escape or extricate themselves. Of these, the kinder circumstances belonged to those who had calmly accepted their fate and whose bodies were found in the prayer pose, their arms crossed in the sign of the Turning Cog. The less fortunate families or individuals died with their assailants, either butchered and quartered, leaving only armour and bones, or bled to death in Golem Engines that could not be pried open.
A week later, deeper into the expedition’s recovery efforts, the Rat-kin found signs of the Sinneslukare. The victims, for the lack of a better classification, were a tribe of wandering Fish-folk that lived in the periphery that was the Para-Elemental Plane of Mud. Usually timid, the large-eyed Fish-folk flew into a rage when they saw the Rat-kin explorer parties. An extended melee ensued, resulting in Strun’s commitment of two squadrons of Shadow Scouts and a team of Exterminators.
When finally they sought to recover the bodies for disposal, the Rat-kin labourers were attacked by worms with the beaks of squids, with tentacles that could burrow through fur and skin.
Thankfully, the infected were immediately presented to the Chaplaincy, whose administration of her Sacred Elixirs expelled the parasites. Even so, the report stated that survivors suffered irreparable damage to nerves and their brains that not even Faith Magic could fully repair, truly putting the dangers of the Sinneslukare infestation into the limelight.
To gain the relevant knowledge for prevention, Strun then necessitated extensive experiments, delivering a bleak report that preventative administration prevented cranial infestation but did nothing to prevent the Sinneslukare larva’s attempt at lobotomy.
Undeterred by the expected losses, the Rat-kins’ foray continued. Along the way, they encountered creatures told only in the Forge Scripts of the Deepdowner’s throat songs. Malformed, Dwarf-like giants with two heads stalked the cathedral caverns and fungi forests of the Murk, seeking their next meal. Land Sharks as large as Fabricator Engines swarm through sandstone-like water, emerging from unseen nooks to swallow entire patrols that had to but cut out from their belly. Legions of Mud-Gobs, savage and cannibalistic, emerged from cracks in the stratum no larger than a palm to overwhelm the scouts, leaving Strun no choice other than to Purge the tunnels with extreme prejudice. The quiet zones were harrower still, for there lived primordial oozes capable of digesting any creature, no matter how resilient, each laying in ambush in caverns as old as Almudj itself.
The landscape, as well, was far more varied than Gwen had expected. Where the stratum closer to the Himsegg was the usual spaces excavated by time, lime, flowing water, creatures, and Dwarven colonisation, the deeper reaches consisted of fragmented microcosms. These underwater lakes, mushroom forests, crystalline caverns, magma seas and forgotten ruins the Dwarves could identify filled the Regent’s desk with new assessments for her risk index and new opportunities.
From this expanding webway, the Dwarven Deepdowners called upon their knowledge of the old ways to map out the most secure route for the new Dyar-Morkk, its path bored by none other than the sacred Worm of Shalkar—Garp.
With the pace of a slow train, the now-healed body of the Afaa Al-Halak moved forward with the inextricable momentum of a roving glacier, consuming all in its path, be it biomes, Mud-gobs, alien fungi or old runes. As a living engine, it cut a swarth of smooth-bored destruction, guided by the mind of Strun, the expedition’s Commander, as he sat a safe distance away from Garp’s rear, inside the shielded shell of a Fabricator.
In the Afaa Al-Halak’s passing, its transmuted mud made excellent materials for the rockcrete the Dwarves used as cement. With their many mechanical limbs tethered to dozens of Spellswords, Mastercrafters of the Logistics Guild expertly laid down the frameworks of iron scaffolding that formed the tunnel’s new walls. Behind the Master, a small army of construction Golems and their Runesmith Engineseers rolled out pre-fabricated Mandalas brought to life by live circuitry that would distort space and distance.
Once the hallowed rites and Runes were in place, a second team of Fabricators and crew completed the shielding that would isolate the Dyar-Morkk from being breached by the creatures of the Murk. To achieve the effect, they used methods long devised by their forefathers to spatially obfuscate the existence of the Dwarven passage.
Behind all that, following the main troop, the Rat-kin legions, together with the Rail Guild, ran lines of levitation back to Shalkar, ferrying back refuse, construction waste, and the occasional rare metal and gem that Garp disposed of in its cement sludge, simultaneously ferrying forward food, water, HDMs and equipment.
Finally, the rear team of the construction crew consisted of a team of Dwarves, Rat-kin and Human Enchanters under the watchful advice of one Petra Kuznetsova, Chief Enchanter of her Pale Priestess, the Regent of Shalkar.
Her job was vital and essential—for her crew was responsible for installing Divination Beacons that would extend the range of communication from Shalkar, enabling the use of mid-tier Contingency Rings. More importantly, so long as the redundancies remained in place, the hybrid Magi-tech implemented by Petra and designed by Magister Williams enabled long-distance Teleportation. Unfortunately, the effects of Contingency magic on Demi-humans, particularly those with innate Creature Cores, remained a difficult hurdle, as demonstrated by an unfortunate test where half a Golem and most of a test Pilot arrived at the triage bay.
Night by night, in a place without daylight, the path was forged, mapped by a vivid red line that snaked its way through the fog of the Elemental Plane of Earth, worming toward a rotten fruit, bearing the hopes and fears of an exiled people.
image [https://i.imgur.com/2b85nMm.png]
Shalkar. The Bunker.
“She’s gone to the tunnel for the day?” Richard asked his aide, the uncommonly pretty young woman named Natasha, now interning under their mutual mistress as a Sparrow Hawk.
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“Indeed—her Paleness is away from here; I can feel her blessings fade.” replied the raspy voice that sounded like a man’s gurgled drowns. “It is pleasing that our promised work is complete.”
As interim Regent and the man responsible for his cousin’s private queendom in the steppes, Richard Huang gave his counterpart from the Fifth Vel a warm, affable nod.
A dozen whiskers and tentacles nodded back, together with a pair of over-large, lens-like eyes the hue and texture of runny mustard.
Together with their mutual entourage, the two stood in yet another section excavated by the Dwarves, a cathedral cavern about the size of a duelling stadium, which branched off into additional sections terraformed for the comfort of their underwater allies. To Richard, the likeness of the new addition to Shalkar’s geo-front complex was like entering into a lavish national aquarium, only the sole purpose of the Walls of Force was to keep the elemental influence of the Elemental Plane of Water contained. Once past the checkpoints that marked increasing “wet” thresholds, the final frontier was the great cathedral that housed the trading station, punctuated by a four-storey tall portal sung into place by the Sea Witches and anchored into being by entwined coral.
Such a feat was impossible by all measures of Human Spellcraft.
Unless, of course, one had access to Cores from a deceased Leviathan, whose mana-sympathies with each Core excavated from its carcass allowed for communication across the fabric of the Elemental Plane of Water and the Prime Material.
Thereby, in abusing the properties of the World Tree as harnessed by Sanari, the portal allowed for the passage of creatures up to the size of Golos’ Dragon form, though at significant costs in HDM. The portal's purpose was to establish an avenue of commerce and communication between the Mageocracy and the Vel—a link that would remain so long as Lei-bup’s crew controlled the hearts and minds of the Great Shoal Forward. The latter’s questionable longevity was a curious debate, for looking at the pustules that came and went on the face and body of his fishy brother, Richard was sure the Shoggoth’s fragments were eating the Mer alive inside out.
Biologically, Lei-bup should just be a mass of Shoggoth-things wearing fish skin. Yet, the booming Mer was one of the chief benefactors of Gwen’s Sympathetic Essence Tap into a bloody Leviathan and the vessel of faith for a billion sentiments floating in the depthless dark of the Elemental Plane of Water.
And for that, Lei-bup had Richard’s utmost respect.
“Will you return later, milord High Priest?” Richard found the eldritch horror endearing even as his femme fatale assistant looked to be swallowing the vomit swimming in her throat. He suspected that the Sparrows were trained for many things in Moscow Tower, but close encounters with deep-sea arcane horrors from the depth of psychic nightmares were a post-graduate course. “With our Mistress away, the sharks will smell blood in the water. We are well-prepared, of course, though I am a man who already appreciates redundancies.”
“I am afraid I am not much help,” Lei-bup burped and gurgled as a lung collapsed before finding newly working tissue in a neighbouring chamber. “We’re fish out of water, I fear. However, I can arrange… proletariat fodder if you need bodies.”
What the Mer meant, Richard understood, was that the fanatics of the sea existed on a level that made Strun’s Rat-kin seem like weekend Christians. If need be, an infinite amount of bodies could be called upon from the deep to fill the trenches as Gwen’s liberation of the Fifth Vel had already normalised death on an industrial scale.
Comparatively, while the Rat-kin talked a great deal, their dead and maimed are the result of the aggression of those who coveted Shalkar, which is a far cry from a direct order to pay for every inch of ground with the bodies of fathers, brothers, mothers, sons and daughters. If there were ever a true test for her faithful, only the extent to which the Rat-kin may mimic what the Mermen had already paid would plumb the depth of their faith.
“I don’t think wasting lives so careless will shift the aggression of our uninvited neighbours from the north,” Richard said. “But if you can make a persuasive play in the Black Sea where they have their sole warm water port…”
“Distance within the Elemental Plane is not so… inclined to the cartographical efforts of surfacers,” Lei-bup shrugged. “If the Lady wills it, however, it can be done.”
“I guess it’s a complex situation,” Richard was intrigued. “How would you do it?”
“Trial and error, mostly,” Lei-bup answered sheepishly. “But the Pale Priestess has forbidden it. She says the Mageocracy’s allies would collectively lose their minds.”
Richard burst into laughter.
“However, if someone was to say, take one of the kin with ties to Aristotle to where she wants us, the Leviathan will find the way.”
Richard’s laughter fell away. “Let’s keep that between us. Natalia, would you kindly take note?”
The Sparrow Hawk swept her gaze around the room as if to tell the other Mages present to beware! Beware! Loose lips sink profits.
“Then this is goodbye,” Richard parted the slime, shook a dozen appendages, then washed away the grime. Lea did not appear, as she shared the natural and universal revulsion of Primary Spirits for the Void Things that saw them as food. “I am sure we’ll reconvene many more times in the…near future…”
Lei-bup nodded. “When the Tower is complete. When our Lady holds her court. I shall be present as her minister, and the Shoal shall be her implement of chastisement both in the Plane of Water and the Prime Material.”
“Ah—“ Richard felt his back grow cold with sweat, or perhaps it was Lea shivering violently at the foretelling of Gwen’s Void-worshipping prophet.
Without prompting, Natalia let her companions know she was watching by giving them a smile that tightened the trousers of those with wavering hearts.
Richard marvelled at the level of professional service his newest and most prized aide projected before returning to the eldritch alien casually speaking of bodies as biomass.
“May your return be pleasant,” Richard and his entourage bowed as one. “And may our Lady’s tentacles reach long and deep.”
Lei-bup laughed at the attempted Mer-speak and the flirtatious Sea Witches winking at Richard with their triple-folded eyelids. With a swish of their tails, the Mermen leaders left for the Vel, leaving only a contingent of crustacean guards and a Coral Singer to oversee the shimmering water that displaced two worlds.
Richard nodded at the crowned priestess, then directed Shalkar’s representatives away from the intolerable wetness of the Vel Portal. Outside, Lea quickly dried the group, for only Water Mages could feel unburdened by so much moisture.
Ding—!
The Message spells bloomed.
“Sir Slylth is waiting with Lord Golos in the Sky Garden,” the Sparrow Hawk replied in his stead. “Shall I inform Marshal Li?”
“Leave Lulan to the Expedition,” Richard said, shaking his head. “Besides, she won’t be with us once they breach the outer rim of Deepholm. Our Paleness shall have her bodyguard and battering ram if she is to enter a stranger city.”
Once in the lift, Richard gave individual, compartmentalised commands to his various aides from the different ministries and departments of the city, then dispersed the crowd before he reached the Sky Garden, leaving only himself and Natalia.
The next few months would be a test—though Shalkar had progressed far beyond the realm of tests. To Richard, the incursion that would arrive from Moscow wasn’t a test for the city but a test for himself as the majordomo of Gwen’s domain.
Indeed, looking at Lei-bup, he knew he had stiff competition for the position of his cousin’s right hand.
For instance, Lei-bup held a tight net over the Fifth Vel and technically commanded her largest military force.
Charlene Ravenport and Eric Walken held the Isle of Dogs as a major supplier of HDMs and political power.
Ruxin held sway over Nagaland, while Mayuree and Marong held her investments in Southeast Asia.
She had lost favour in China, but her relationship with Jun and Ayxin gave her sway with the Communists.
And in Oceania, no harm may come to Gwen without the risk of a stern, possibly fatal warning from Gunther.
Therefore, as the man Gwen trusted to keep her city intact while she was away, he would steer Shalkar through the oncoming storm or go down, as it were, as its captain.
image [https://i.imgur.com/2b85nMm.png]
DING—!
As the crimson flower bloomed beside her ear, Gwen reminded herself that, in the eventual implementation of Project Legion, she should introduce ringtones to the Message Devices of this world.
“Speak,” she washed away the fatigue with a jolt of Essence. The last three weeks had been an orgy of incident reports and the implementation of risk mitigation stratagems, culminating in multiple days without restful sleep. “Has our expedition breached the first stratum?”
The voice that came through with a faint crackle was that of her Expedition Commander.
“Yes, Regent. We have breached the old Low-way.” There was a pause as if someone was taking in the sights. “The gates of Vrithr avor Il-jrogor are within sight.”
Gwen also took a deep breath, knowing that she would soon leave the depth of the Bunker for the deep city within the Elemental Plane of Earth, embarking on another journey that would shake the Mageocracy.
“Inform Petra and Lulan that I’ll be right there,” she stood from the table, then sent the foretold Message to Richard, informing her cousin, her Slylth and her Thunder Dragon that they now held the fort. “Congratulate Mistress Kül-Hildenbrandt and Lord Axehoff for me, but do remind them to cool their hearts and wait for my arrival.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/2b85nMm.png]
Deepholm.
The Outer Ring.
“The fabled gates of Vrithr avor Il-Jrogor,” said the Deepdowner beside Gwen, now without the stylised helm that covered her face. In addition to the liberties taken of her own religious stance, standing on the sacred earth of Deepholm’s domain meant that there was no longer the taboo of perceived impurity. “Noted in the great records of the Ancestors as impenetrable, forged by the Rune Magic of Zairic and Zethoag Gul-Zūh.”
In a row, the expedition’s leaders stood, with Gwen in her Crow-skin combat suit standing the tallest, followed by Lulan, Strun in his battle armour, Petra in her artisans' garbs, and the two Deepdowners in their unique Golem plates.
In front of them was a bustling scene of immense patience. Rather than approaching the gate with haste, Rat-kin scouts scoured the place for dangers, followed by the deployment of the combat engineers who cleared the fallen debris and repaired the circuits of the neglected Low-way. Meter by meter, with meticulous care, the Expedition reformed the cavern. Her rats, men and Dwarves distributed the supplies, set up Spellsword turrets, fortified the barricades, and transmuted vantage points around the cathedral cavern.
“The name implies a gateway, but it truly translates as The Iron Orbit,” Hilda translated the Ancient Dwarven, aware of the imperfections offered by Translation stones.
Once, the Dyar Morkk extended as “rings” around the city, not as a circumference but as entwined spirals that allowed transit to any part of the roughly spherical metropolis. The new arrivals could only clear a kilometre or two of the path to their left and right while ensuring that any wayward passages were sealed or guarded. Even so, the grandeur the place once held was plain for all to see.
For Gwen, who had seen Jordan’s Petra in real life, her dismay wasn’t for the translation but for the dilapidation of a Dwarven World Wonder that now lay in ruins.
“I am so sorry,” Gwen sighed. “That it’s like this after all.”
Even in their armour, Gwen could read the horror and disappointment on the Deepdowners’ bodies.
Axehoff was older, but he had never seen Deepholm as Hilda had. Hilda had grown up inside the Gates of Iron and had seen the unmatched machine glory of Deepholm in her youth. That a city beyond the timelines of Human civilisation would be so reduced in the mere span of forty years since the Beast Tide was incredible.
“I am terrified of what we might find in there,” Axehoff remarked drily. “Something had completely collapsed the Vrithr avor Il-Jrogor. From everything we’ve found and seen on our way here, there were plenty of attempts to break out from the outer orbital ring and into the Murk.”
“That, and Sinneslukare,” Hilda groaned. “There’s no denying it, now. The mid-way cities are lost or infested. I don’t think Umgor èron Varèkan would have survived—at least not as the Dwarves the Ancestors would recognise.”
Gwen nodded with sympathy. Umgor èron Varèkan was where the infected traitors who had tried to parasitise Hilda came from. The citadel was situated between Deepholm and The Murk’s surface Citadel “farms”, meaning it was isolated and ripe for predation.
“As you know,” Axehoff took a step back. “We surface citadels originally existed to procure food for Deepholm because the areas around it had become inundated with Elementals and other dangers. Food was one of the chief reasons for Deepholm’s colonial ambitions. Yet, for our efforts, we workers were decreed as ‘Verol’ because we would be tainted by the Murk, warped by the Himsegg, changed by the light from the surface, which the Ancestors had never needed.”
“I am deeply ashamed that this is true, cousin,” Hilda lowered her head. “Thank you for digging this deep despite everything.”
“No matter our history, we are kin,” Axehoff smiled. “The problem, unfortunately, is what comes next. I don’t know what’s in there, milady Kül-Hildenbrandt… but I have suspicions and questions…”
Gwen felt her skin crawl as Axehoff delivered his final, depressing rhetorical question.
A question about food. Water. And between one to two million Dwarves.