Both of the men looked towards the window, as the clap of thunder drew their attention away from their conversation. “Oh, how unusual it is for it to rain at this time of year,” said the portly man.
“Hmm, yes,” answered the smiling man, reclining the wooden chair that he sat on back onto its hind legs, as he stretched his body out. “So, let us return to the topic at hand,” he said.
“Yes of course,” the round man returned back to behind his desk and pulled out a single slip of paper from inside of the drawer, after carefully examining it once more himself, he reached over his desk to hand it to the smiling man.
“I feel you will find everything in order.”
The smiling man let his chair fall forwards, back onto all four legs, and reached over to take the document. Gazing at it carefully, he nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Oh, these are some numbers, magistrate.”
“Yes” said the portly man, turning in his chair to face the torrent of rain now streaming down his window. “I am sure you saw how well we’ve done for ourselves, as you passed through. I was only a young man back then-,” he said with a nostalgic gaze “- I was with the guard you know, we put everything we had into rebuilding. Hours and sweat well spent,” he proclaimed with pride.
Returning his gaze to the smiling man, he slapped his large stomach with a jovial laugh “And we were well rewarded for our hard work!” The smiling man cocked his head slightly to the side and pulled out his journal again, nodding once, before nonchalantly taking the portly man’s quill off of his desk. Scribbling in several different things, in a seemingly nonsensical order, onto the page he had opened on the way here, he nodded. He seemed pleased with what he was putting down. “How many have been sighted since?”
“None,” answered the magistrate, matter of factly, causing the smiling man's head to shoot up.
“None?”
“Not a one. Neither from above nor below,” answered the magistrate, shaking his head. “After the initial surge, my predecessor took… precautions to stop the ones from below. And the ones above were too busy going up to bother coming back down.”
“Precautions?” asked the smiling man, now greatly interested.
Magistrate Brennen shifted uncomfortably, his gaze shifting. “You must understand the circumstances we found ourselves, as the second closest town to the origin.”
The room was silent. The smiling man turned a page in his book. “Magistrate Brennen. How many travelers have come through your city from Neuntel this year?”
“None,” answered the man. A scratching sound of a rushing quill came once from left to right.
“The year before?”
“None.”
The smiling man looked up curiously. “And the one before that?”
“None,” answered the magistrate uneasily.
“Magistrate Brennen. When is the last time you have received word from the lowest level?” he turned a page over for a brief moment “- from a magistrate… Formor?”
“I have never exchanged words with a man by that name,” answered the magistrate blankly. Furious scribbles came into the book.
“I see. Magistrate Brennen. What precautions were taken nine years ago by your predecessor?”
“I am uncertain,” said Brennen. The scratching of the quill came once again, but this time stopped abruptly.
The smiling man shifted his head from side to side and then returned his eyes to the magistrate’s. “Magistrate Brennen. What precautions were taken nine years ago by your predecessor?” asked the smiling man again.
“What? I- I don’t know. It was before my time.”
“You have lived here all of your life, correct?”
“Yes”
“You were in the guard at the time of the rising?”
“Y-Yes.”
“You are the Magistrate of the city of Achtel, yet you do not know the fate of your sister city below?”
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“I mean. That’s… Yes. That is correct.”
“Magistrate Brennen. It is the duty of each and every Magistrate to stay in tandem with their sister cities both above and below,” informed the tall man.
The magistrate shifted uneasily, as the smiling man continued. “Despite the events of the past, and despite having no word from the capital, these duties are still now self-evident, as they had been before. It has been nine years since the cities of the pit had been left to their own devices. I have come through every single one of them in this past month,” said the smiling man, now rising from his chair. He walked behind the man's desk and faced out the window, the magistrate still sitting behind him.
“Every single city has kept tight contact with their sisters. Some are worse off than others, but they hold as one. Working in tandem to better our country. You are the very first to tell me that you have broken the vow.”
The magistrate shot to his feet, flinging his chair off to the side away from him. “There is no more Neuntel! Alright?!” shouted the man, slamming a large fist onto his desk. The smiling man continued looking at the torrential downpour. He already knew that. Another clash of thunder came, stemming from far up in the ever distant sky.
“Magistrate Brennen. What precautions were taken nine years ago by your predecessor?”
The magistrate lowered his head and shut his eyes, with both hands planted on his desk. “Magistrate Kohle. He ordered the path sealed, however possible.”
Silence.
“We took a small group. A swordsman, a pair of sorcerers and an alchemist. The spiral path had a tight spot near the bottom.” Both men turned their heads to look at the other, neither shifting their tight postures.
“We had no choice. Another night and we would have been overrun from below. If we were overrun, then Siebtel would have been next. It would be a chain reaction, a disaster all the way up to the top of the pit! One city after the next!” shouted the man angrily, wildly gesticulating with his hands.
“Magistrate Brennen. Do you know why we have the sister system for the pit?” asked the smiling man. “Picture a rope.”
“Huh?” asked the magistrate.
“A rope is a simple, yet highly effective tool.” The smiling man wandered back to his chair. “Where does a rope fray, Magistrate Brennen?”
“At the en-”
“At the end, Magistrate Brennen” answered the smiling man, shaking his head. “The pit is an unsafe, deathly hell-scape and I hate it. Yet, it is full of many highly valuable resources as you know, Magistrate Brennen.”
The tall man spread his arms out. “You went to the academy, yes?”
“Y-yes”
“Then you are aware of why our country takes such pride in this death-trap?” the smiling man's voice shifted to a somewhat more annoyed tone now. “As they say, magistrate, hard times forge hard people, no? Well what times could be harder than living on the precipice of death?” he asked tilting his head. “Time and time again, those taken from this wretched, disgusting hole, are the cream of the crop,” said the smiling man, clapping his hands together. “Do you know which cities statistically produced the best candidates for the academy, Magistrate Brennen?”
Happy he could speak again, the Magistrate shot out “Of course, the best students were usually from -,” he stopped mid-sentence, realizing his mistake.
“From the ends of the rope, magistrate Brennen.” The smiling man raised one arm into the air, as high as he could without getting up again. “Erstel”, he said, waving his fingers and then he lowered the hand as far down as his arm would let him. “-And Neuntel,” he said, pinching his fingers shut. “Both for different reasons, but both, the ends of the rope, Magistrate Brennen. So you are telling me, and thereby the lords and masters of our country, Magistrate Brennen, that you and your predecessor have put the safety of our nation in jeopardy by not only neglecting your duties as sworn Magistrates of this land, but also by sabotaging critical infrastructure and leaving your kin and sister city below to die. With no contact, not even sending out a single man, for these past nine years?” He pulled out his journal and began to scribble again, shaking his head.
“It’s not that simple!” yelled the magistrate, now furious as he slammed his fists once more on to the desk, causing a stack of papers to fall off the side. The smiling man looked up and back to him, his curious eyes shining through the holes of the wintergreen mask, showing a smile unfitting for the tense mood in the room. He had misjudged what this would be. Looking back down to his journal, he wrote in the words while speaking them aloud “It’s- not- that- sim-ple. Oh!” He held the journal up the large man, who had now begun sweating profusely.
With bulging eyes the man stared at the words scrawled onto the page and saw how they began to fade away from the paper, as if they had never been written at all. “It seems, Magistrate Brennen, that it is that simple. No?” The smiling man sighs and shakes his head. The large man swipes his arm across his desk, throwing off the inkwell to the ground, the thick black ink oozing into the crevices of the hardwood floor.
“You left us all to die!” shouted the magistrate angrily. “I don’t care who you are! You speak to me of sister cities, well what of the capital? What of Westrise and the so-called holy city?! You sealed us down here for nine years, alone to die and you judge me now for some bond made in forgotten times, as if nothing had happened! Where was your sisterhood then, when they built those infernal towers up there?! Those walls to seal us all down here to die?!” Spittle flew from the man's mouth with every raging word.
“Where were the men from the capital when they came and took mothers and children screaming into the darkness below?! They were up there putting a lid on us, rather than sending a single footman down to help the sick and the injured!” He pointed at the smiling man, his hand shaking. “Not all of us have the luxury of just being able to leave whenever we please, to leave the rest to die down below!”
The smiling man stretched lazily, leaning back in the chair once more with a mighty yawn. “How many will you be sending this year, Magistrate Brennen,” he asked disinterestedly. The portly man, lowered his head and pursed his lips tightly shut. Taking a moment to breathe in and out deeply to calm himself. “None,” he said coldly.
“None?” asked the smiling man curiously in response.
“We will be sending none,” said the magistrate defiantly, emphasizing the last word. “It seems only fair after all,” he continued. The smiling man shook his head, sighing once again and scribbled a new line with the drying out quill and then rose up to his feet, eager to get this tiresome work over with.