“We’re going to Tunnel City!” the gnome woman exclaimed, looking in front of them. With magic muscle for aid, Rum The Mage carried Electroblade The Adventurer in as dignified a position as he was able.
“Will tallfolk like me even fit down there?” Rum took a step forward, peering down. The small open stone structure lead into a faintly lit set of spiralling stone stairs, ending somewhere in the underground of The Iron City.
Hours prior, the wizard had thoroughly exhausted himself with a long marathon of healing at S.H.A.M.E. And on the way here, to some random gap between some random apartment buildings in The Iron City, he’d also had a much needed lunch break with Electroblade at a cafe. The two of them were on their way for the adventurer to pick up her things and tell her goodbyes to her family.
Now, Electroblade, from her position in Rum’s arms, looked up and beyond the beard of the mage to meet his eyes. “It is true that in the old days, these” she gestured at the entrance into the ground, “used to be gnome-sized only. But that’s when the tunnels were first constructed. Almost all the tunnels of The Iron City have since been expanded to allow tallfolk in. How else would we have visitors from other kin?” She shrugged with her one arm and stump.
“Okay” Rum accepted her words plainly and simply.
The entrance was a little low, but not enough to hit his head or anything, just enough for slight discomfort. He stepped forward from the stone paved streets of The Iron City, and from the surrounding multifloored wooden houses, and went down into the sharply spiralling stairs of Tunnel City. Tunnel City... a city, within another city, within a third city, he reflected. As his own boots clapped hard against the stone steps, Rum heard the clappings of other, smaller boots, approaching them. A caped old gnome man, with a grey shirt and a sour face, turned the bend and came into view. The other gnome gave Rum and Electroblade a little glance as the odd duo passed him by. But then he was gone. The wizard, no more gnomes coming up, rounded the rest of the spiral, only to see the stairs end briefly, as an opening came upon the right side, where was a long, bending, smoothed tunnel. Looking into that tunnel there was a couple of doors in the distance, but no gnomes walked the tunnel’s flat dirt ground. Looking back and straight ahead, he had the option of continuing to the next set of spiralling stairs, which would take him deeper.
“Where to?”
“Down” Electroblade pointed ahead with her crutch. “We’re going down 8 more stairs.”
“8!?” Rum raised his voice in surprise, along with an eyebrow.
“The poor live far down.”
“There are no poors above surface?” Rum continued down onto the next set of spiralling stone stairs.
“Very few above in Iron City. Poor mecha-gnomes live at the bottom of Tunnel City.”
“Your family is poor?”
“Yes” the gnome answered, her mood turning mildly somber.
They rounded a long set of stairs, a dobbel-spiral, and came upon another smoothed tunnel, though this one was wider, and taller. There were many fine doors nearby on both the left and right side, and a T-crossing of tunnels not far ahead where Rum could see 3 different gnomes walk by. A boy gnome, an adult woman gnome, and a grandma aged gnome with a cane. She must be over 200 years old, at the least. Gnomes typically aged from 250-400 years old, somewhat older than dwarves who very rarely got beyond 300.
As Rum stepped into the third set of spiralling stairs, he decided for another question. “Electroblade, there’s something I’ve been curious of. Why are you called that – Electroblade?” He looked down into the gnome in his arms, who looked back up into his eyes for second, before looking away and down into the stone stairs ahead, a small smile on her lips.
“It’s because of my arm” she leaned and twisted over her right arm. “Pull the arm sleeve up and see for yourself.” Rum stopped in the stairs. Making sure to hold Electroblade steady with his right arm, he reached over with his left and pulled the little arm sleeve up with a bit of effort. What Rum saw, after his eyes glided through several scars, and another burn mark, was a tattoo. But not an ordinary tattoo. A gnomish tattoo? Rum was familiar with the gnomish script, which looked like combinations of geometric simples, such as triangles, squares, pentagons, or circles. He didn’t know the words on this tattoo, but he could sense with his magic that it too was magical, and significantly more powerful than the ones made by his little brother.
“What does it do?” He stared at the mark of 3 independent symbols, forming a line like word or a sentence, one after the other. The symbols were composed of several squares, a diagonal line, and a single triangle.
Electroblade lay down the crutch in her own lap, then put her hand forth, and under Rum’s expectant eyes, opened her palm. ZZZAP, ZZZZZZAP-ZAP-ZAP-ZAP! Electric arcs danced across her fingers in a small intense displays of magic.
“What’s the limitation?” Rum asked, eyes wide with fascination, though he sounded more like a professional body enchanter speaking to another.
“Touch” Electroblade nodded to her own little magic show. “But it’s strong enough to kill a level 30 enemy in 10 seconds, when maximized for effect.” She looked up at him with a long smile of confidence. “And with my sword–” she continued, her eyes turning back to the buzzing electric fingers, “–I can channel the magic through the blade. The enemy could dodge my hands, perhaps, but could they dodge me with the reach of my sword?” She raised an eyebrow up at him, though the question was clearly rhetorical.
“Impressive” he commented. “Who made it?”
“A gnome from Vroovroo” she looked away and closed her palm, grabbing her crutch again. “He’s dead now. Died of old age.” She sighed briefly. “But he had over 200 years of experience, inking gnomish tattoos. I only got mine because he was married with my great grandmother, and because he liked my warrior spirit. He wanted to support me, because he had hopes and dreams that gnomes like myself would one day retake the lost gnomish urbanities; that we’d destroy the people who drove him from his homeland.” A distant expression of reminiscence formed on her face. “Otherwise I never could’ve afforded such a thing.” She glanced at her arm tattoo.
“Fascinating piece of magic” Rum stared and nodded at it. Then he pulled the arm sleeve back down, moved his left arm back into holding up her body, and continued their descent. Just this current set of stairs, and 6 more to go, he sighed internally. He glanced back at Electroblade. “So that’s why you got your name? People started calling you that – Electroblade?”
“Yeah” she gave a quick glance up at him, then looked at the spiral stone walls surrounding them in thought. “When I was with a dungeon party, some 10 or 15 years ago, I was the highest level adventurer among us. I had all my limbs then” she smiled up at Rum, who returned the smile with a smaller one of his own. “But my team mates, one of them died” most of her smile departed, “two others quit. But they boasted about me, called me Electroblade. And then I almost became famous for a whole week after one very successful dungeon run. And then the name stuck. And I thought about it. I would rather be called Electroblade. The name speaks to me.”
“What is your real name?”
She frowned slightly looking up at him. “Electroblade is my real name. It might not be my birthname, but right now, this is my real name.”
“What was your birthname?”
She frowned at him some more. “Don’t ask for anyone’s necronym! If anyone takes a new name, they do so with purpose. I certainly did. I may have memories of being called by a different name, but that old name isn’t me.” She let her lip hang in displeasure at the memory. After a few seconds of thought, her mood improved some and became more neutral. “It’s a strange thing, really” she looked into nowhere, “remembering a person, another you, which you have so little in common with. As Electroblade, people have called me brave, tough, strong, adventurous.” A smile grew back on her. “That’s who I want to be. And it’s not because I need admiration” she looked up into Rum’s eyes as if to be sure he understood that. “I just want to be more. I don’t want to read stories of other people doing fantastic things. I want my life so thoroughly filled with adventure, that any story is superfluous. I want to be my own story, heh” she produced the barest of laughs, “Electroblade – my story, the one that never ends. At least I thought it never would. But then I lost my limbs” she sighed, “and there was almost nothing left of me to be an adventurer with. Yet here I am, again” her face took on a sudden fondness as her eyes stared up the wizard holding her, “and my story, it appears, it is not done yet.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Rum nodded. Then he formed a grimace, an expression of confusion. “Uhm, I forgot to count floors while I was listening. Do you know how far we’ve gone now?”
Electroblade looked around, but as the next offshoot tunnel soon came into view, she seemed to have found the answer. “Floor 5! Just 4 more to go.”
Rum held in a sigh, and continued the descent. I’ll have to restrain myself from using Self-Moving Legs on the way back up.
Rum walked with the gnome the rest of the floors down, mostly in silence. A couple of gnomes passed them going in the opposite direction up, and Rum saw about a dozen gnomes on his way down walking about in the offshoot tunnels. He noticed that the doors he could see in the tunnels got increasingly plain as they descended. Eventually, Rum stepped out into one tunnel, on floor 9. He could’ve gone further though, he noticed. This wasn’t the bottom.
“How many floors are there?” the human wondered aloud.
“Here? 11. But the floor numbers aren’t the same across Tunnel City. Some places they stop at 7th floor, others go all the way to 14th.”
“Oh, wow” Rum was impressed for a second, then he remembered they were going somewhere. And so did Electroblade. He looked around, and she pointed.
“There.” It was the 3rd door on the left. All in all there were 7 doors in this tunnel. 4 on the left, and 3 on the right, with the tunnel vanishing into a T-crossing ahead.
Rum began heading towards the wooden door. The thing had little but rough cut stone slabs for a frame, making the door itself visibly airy with gaps between the stone and the wood all round. The surface-dweller, with gnome in hands, eyed the frame of the door with pity for a moment. Then suddenly, his ears heard a scream – of sorts.
“Aaaaaah! KILL! KILL IT NOOOW!” Rum turned to look. The noise had been muffled by wood. At the opposite side to Electroblade’s home where they currently stood was the 2nd door of the right hand side. It came from there? Rum listened for more.
“PEBBLE! GRAB IT! KEEP IT AWAAAY!” The mage didn’t need telling to know something terrible was happening, he speed-walked over to the shouts-emanating door.
“Muscles Grow!” The wizard had already been magically enhancing his arms to carry with more ease, but now his legs too bulged out beneath his robe as he stopped outside. With Electroblade still in his arms, the wizard put a foot back for balance, and kicked the door with the full force of his leg. However, instead of burst opening the door, Rum’s foot simply went straight through the – apparently weak – wood, opening a roughly foot-sized hole. “Naaah” the mage complained to the world. He extricated his limb through blood-scratching painful splinters. Need a different strategy.
“Maybe we sho–“ Electroblade began, but Rum didn’t stop to listen. The human man proceeded to shift the gnome woman over to a feet-dangling hold with his left arm, “ah!” she let out. The wizard subsequently slid his right arm through the splintered hole, searching with his hand for a key on other side’s lock. From inside, Rum heard running, panting, and the strangest noise, like something solid moving across ground? It was a confusing set of noises, and he wondered greatly what was going on. His hands fingered all over the handle and lock there, but no key!? Frustrated by wasting time, the mage decided for a third strategy. I’ll just have to open the lock with brute force. He extricated his right arm and, from where he stood, put his right hands on the handle. Intending to rip it out, Rum then felt the door give way, opening up a small gap. It was... unlocked? He held in a sigh. “I tried to tell you to use the handle!” Electroblade chided from her feet-dangling position in his left arm. Overwhelming his own embarrasment with his sense of urgency over the situation, Rum pulled the door fully open.
Inside there was something of a sight to behold. Rum quickly identified 3 creatures. First, a gnome man. Second, something large, made out of stone and earth it seemed – earth elemental? – and, next to it, speeding around chasing the little gnome in circles, a strange sort of fourwheeled thing made out of metal. “PEBBLE! HELP ME DAMMIIIT!”
The earth elemental, which Rum assumed must be the one called “Pebble”, was a magnificent and intimidating creature to stare upon. The body of the thing was a mixture of dark brown earth and stones, compacted together to form a singular body. The thing had limbs, composed mostly of larger stones. Rum counted 4 of them: 2 huge hulking armlike shapes, and 2 thick legs ending in something like the hooves of what would’ve been a truly unnaturally large horse. Every handful of seconds as Rum stared, and at uneven intervals, the dark brown earth and stones shifted along the elemental’s body, giving the impression of a creature never quite at ease with its form. Still the creature was also capable, in the seconds between its shifts, of looking hard, solid, and permanent, like a living statue. Though now, as it was passive, it was really more like just a statue. As Rum awed at the elemental for several seconds, mesmerized and mildly terrified at its towering, massive shape, standing at least 1.5 times his height, and its broad, headless, only scarcely humanlike form, he witnessed it also, slowly come to life with a motion. It started with its single, right, armlike limb, at the end of which were 3 thick fingers, mainly composed of thick elongated stones, and looking more like stiffened tentacles than the fingers of a human hand. With these strange fingers, the great being reached out from its standing position. In a single, calculated act, the earth elemental put the end of its arm in front of the chasing trajectory of the fourwheeled metal creature. The wheeled thing crashed into the sudden obstacle, and the giant of stone and earth locked 3 fingers around it.
“AaaaeeuHHH” the gnome man breathed out, before then breathing in, heavily. He ran to a stop at the other end of what looked to be a large, tall (for a gnome) main room, wherein all the spectacle took place. The fourwheeled metal creature struggled to push through the immovable 3-finger grab of the earth elemental. Rum eyed it. This smaller thing’s body had an even stranger composition. It consisted of a hollow box-like frame of long, narrow iron plates, welded together. Altogether forming something like a grid taking on the function of an iron skeleton. Around the iron plates were networks of pipes also welded together and welded into the iron plates. The mix of plates and pipes extended all over its shape, with the pipes appearing to originate from a center of fluid-containing glass tubes, near the top of what could be described as the creature’s equivalent of a torso. At its bottom were 4 wooden wheels with iron mixed in for structural integrity. Meanwhile, its hands were mostly a long stretch of pipes ending in thick needle-like fingers, each set of these fingers holding within a scissor colored with spots of a red bloodlike substance. For a head, or the equivalent of a head, there was but a single upward iron pole, on which was welded a square metal plate with the crude drawings of a face in blue paint and what was probably black soot. At the other end of the room, the gnome man appeared to have regained his breathing, as Rum heard the all-too-familiar start of a phrase. “Rithir–”. Clad in a worn and dirty black robe, the gnome’s face, ears, and the top of his head were all bleeding messes of recent cuts. Several older scars dotted the gnome’s face and neck too, with multiple spots on his head missing hair, and other spots having patches or recent stiching. But skin-deep memories aside, now, that mess of a gnome was ready for revenge. It was all in the gnome’s eyes. “–Tauthor Dyn!” From outstretched little gnome fingers, the arc of blue and white lightning ZAP!-ed over and across the distance of the room, striking the metal creature right in its blue painted smiley face. The metal being jolted, and for a moment appeared to be incapacitated... then, the creature began moving again. It wheeled backwards out from the clumsy grip of Pebble The Earth Elemental’s thick crude fingers, ending with a sharp turn – once again, metal menace facing gnome man. “Oh, you dumb evil machine! Why won’t you just END!?” The fourwheeled metal creature bolted forwards, scissors outstretched, aiming straight for the gnome. “WEH!” The gnome jumped out of fright. But then, a determined courage descended on his bloodied face, and the gnome stood his grounds, reaching out his own hand at the charging metal menace. “Fauuu Moawuuu OAAAH!” Suddenly the fourwheeled creature stopped in its place, lifted off the ground. Levitation. The gnome’s hand rose upwards with the magical act, as if magically raising the metal creature into the air, which of course, was exactly what he was doing. “Fauuu Fauuu...” the metal being, immobilized, spun slowly in the air. “Detri-KUN!” The metal body flew towards the ground like a blow from above, as the gnome mage sent his hand down like the execution of a divine judgement. The creature smashed against the hard dirt ground of the large room, its scissors skidding across the ground to either side, while a couple of wheels broke off, and so too did one of its fingers. Several seconds passed, and all the room was silent, everyone looking at the downed metal menace. It didn’t move. And, after quite a long while, it still didn’t move.
The gnome mage, apparently satisfied with his victory, turned towards the human, and the gnome being held there. With an incredulous look on his bloody face, he asked the other of his kin a very good question. “Electroblade, why did you break my door?”