“That was a ridiculous eight hours,” Arne stated, looking at the bracelet around his narrow wrist, which was now, theoretically, set up to be used for paying for things. Somehow. They had just left the Office of Commerce and had had to fill in an incredible number of forms, sit through three interviews with various officials telling them the same thing several times and give a lot of justifications for why they wanted to trade in Uldran.
The bracelet also identified them and more importantly, read them on an arcane level, as the officials had explained. If they did anything criminal, the internal wards of the city would alert the authorities and they would be detained immediately. Unless the bracelet sensed they were committing grievous crimes that needed to stop immediately, such as, but not exclusive to, murder, in which case they would explode.
Arne wasn’t completely sure he actually believed that. But then again… If exploding bracelets holding people in check could be found anywhere, Uldran seemed a likely candidate.
The city was vast and daunting with buildings sometimes built on hewn-out platforms and sometimes carved out of the rock of the huge cavern. There were other outsiders here; a few other elves and humans and one memorable tattooed ogre woman who stood about as tall as a two-storey building.
“So, we need to locate the statue,” Arne said to nobody in particular. “I can't steal money from people…” he said out loud, although the statement was supposed to have been part of his inner dialogue. This was an unthinkable and unforgivable slip-up just a few weeks ago but now, feeling something break inside his chest on a daily basis, small though it might be, again and again, these slip-ups had become a well-known occurrence. He had never known how many …breakables resided inside of him. He had thought he had lost everything that night in the desert when the merchant had told them that all of his freelancers and associates had been slaughtered. Somehow, a small part of Arne’s mind had since then been constantly mulling it over, their deaths. Turning it over as though it were assessing the value of a stolen item.
Had it been quick? A sudden emergence of Family cultists, stabbings, violence, honourable deaths for people of his sort? Well, maybe not honourable but at least perfectly to be expected. Had a tentacled horror that hid in plain sight in the dark part of reality suddenly revealed itself in the cosy taproom, so well-known and comforting? A place of business that told stories of victory celebrations and fights alike. Had it sat in the ceiling, a many-eyed horror regarding the gathering of professionals? They had all gone to their death. Lured there. Probably using Arne’s name to entice them. Had they died cursing him? Thinking he had betrayed his own? Broken every rule and code? Lost his mind and heart? Had it been slow? Had they been silenced somehow, so the Family could take their time? Had they been alive as their skin was loosened from fat and muscle? Had it been yanked off in slow, small strips or had they been cut to make it easy to flay it in large swathes? Agony and horror at their destiny colouring their gazes until the eyelids were torn off and the eyes no longer held any expression?
Arne stood still in the busy street, yet another small twig of …sense of control, perhaps, snapping in his chest and leaving a cold, vacant sensation behind. He had to keep himself going. There was no alternative. Nothing mattered. But it never had since this had all begun. Since he had become the plaything of something much bigger.
“Baby Snuggle-whump?” Toog asked, stopping a few paces away and looking back at him.
Dia sighed exasperatedly and rolled her eyes.
Arne took his language amulet off so no passers-by would understand him unless they happened to speak a form of Tammen, the language spoken in one shape or another all over Arabesk, the desert and the coastal cities, which was highly unlikely.
Toog pulled off the amulet as well. “The tether is in the temple. At least that’s what the devil said. Or rather, what your Imp said the devil said. What holds a devil together, I wonder?”
“Don’t you dare get near my familiar!” Dia snapped, not bothering to remove the amulet. “This is the shittiest place I have ever been to, and I can't even murder anyone.”
“So if we also take your devil away from you, you will… what, exactly?” Arne asked, staring up at Dia, twiggy little-girl arms crossed.
Dia just looked down at him, raising an eyebrow.
“Forget I asked!” Arne quickly said and pointed to the vast open plaza at the end of the busy street. “Let’s go visit the temple, shall we?”
The temple of Hilden dominated the upper reaches of the city’s western side. It looked as if it had been carved out of the rock of the platform itself, as if the temple had always been there, inside the bedrock deep below the ocean, and had just waited for the dwarven shape-givers to excavate its form with tools and magic. The dark stone shone in the light from the blue flames burning brightly all along the enormous building. There were no flourishes, carvings, metalworks, or decorations on the building. Only its massive size and corners that looked sharp enough to cut yourself on adorned it.
“What’s this thing a goddess of?” Toog asked.
Arne shrugged. “Being a dwarf?”
“Freedom under oppression?” Toog countered.
“That translates directly to Justice,” Dia added and raised her hands to remind them of the ropes of Justice.
“We need to know as much as we can about this place,” Arne said before the mentions of Justice tipped the conversation over on its back and exposed its tender belly to the predators. “Dia? Can you tell anything about the magic of this place we could maybe use?” He nodded towards the temple.
“Of course I can!” Dia snapped and kept walking like before.
“…Are you going to?” Arne asked. “Or are you already doing it? Can you tell me wh–“
“Fine! Shut up. Your voice is making me sick.” She looked up at the temple as if seeing it for real for the first time. Then her gaze focussed on something directly in front of her and she stepped back suddenly, bumping into Toog, who caught her by the midriff. And kept holding her.
Arne looked at the spectacle as Dia somehow didn’t protest the physical contact, lost in her scrutiny of surroundings, which he didn’t understand. Her face became steadily more fiercely twisted into an expression like someone almost about to sneeze. Occasionally, people passing them in the street looked up at her with puzzled expressions. He quickly slipped his language amulet on, lifted Sir Nanners in his arms and went for his best nine-year-old smile.
“It’s normal for elves,” he commented to no specific passers-by in particular. “My mommy does this all the time. Nothing to worry about.” …Whatever this was, he thought to himself before he quickly removed his language amulet again.
“Suck. A ferret. Ass…” Dia said slowly, turning around to face the harbour in the distance below them and staggering a few paces back again, eyes huge and expression now more awed than anything else.
Arne’s gaze flickered from Dia’s face to Toog who still supported her. Toog shrugged slightly.
Dia slowly turned all the way around, looking up into the impossibly far cave ceiling, slowly taking in something neither Toog nor Arne understood and then her gaze was drawn back to the temple of Hilden again. She stared at it, mouth now open, eyes wide.
Arne idly rummaged in his pocket, then his pink shoulder bag but found nothing adequate. Then he sneaked a finger up Sir Nanners’ grotty dagger hole and got his finger wet with holy laurel-scented lube. He stood on tiptoe and quickly flicked his moist finger across Dia’s tongue.
He expected immediate retribution, at the very least a bite, but she blinked sluggishly, closed her mouth, and then smacked her lips, revulsion slowly colouring her features.
Finally, her eyes focussed and she looked down at Arne, and then at Toog’s hands around her midriff.
He tried not to grin. He failed. “Did you experience anything interesting?” he asked as innocently as possible.
Dia looked at him with mean eyes, brushing Toog’s hands away before bending down to stare at him intently.
Arne held her gaze, still trying not to laugh. If she lost control now, she could kill him first, then she would likely explode because of the bracelet, taking Toog with her, or at the very least the guards would find and kill Toog for being an accomplice. A small giggle escaped him, but he stifled it with his hand, not looking away.
“We are not getting into the temple by magical means, I'm not even sure we can do anything with–“ Dia began, but Arne quickly popped Sir Nanners up to touch her lips.
She snarled wordlessly.
“Not here, or at least not with your language amulet on. …Please,” he whispered, feeling ever so slightly grounded by the statement. This was closer to his old self than he had been for a while. He reached up for Dia’s necklace and was surprised she only snarled at him when he winched it around her neck so he could reach the clasp and unhooked it.
“Now, can I tell you how tightly warded this place is?” she asked, anger barely contained.
“Yes, go right ahead.” Arne nodded and smiled his best nine-year-old smile.
“This entire shithole is held together with magic with magic in it and all of it converges in the temple there, which is basically the stick holding up the city like a shoddy tent infringing on my right to cause mayhem. I would not have the faintest bung-smelling clue how to even scratch the surface unless the temple itself began to crack.” Her voice became more and more agitated, but not louder, rather the opposite, and it unnerved Arne a lot more than a loud rant. “I am willing to bet that all of these massive, impenetrable wards that ward wards that lock magic down that keep lines of immense power immobile all end up or begin in the tether, and I… I don’t…”
Dia’s eyes widened and Arne looked at her in sudden horror. The despair and desperation that almost drew tears from her eyes, which in turn made her panic because he saw it clear as a flame in the darkness, was so raw and real that he involuntarily took a step backwards.
“I'm sure there are some paladins here too that little nogglepip here can weaponise,” Toog said soothingly.
Arne saw the despair in Dia’s eyes give way to instant, grateful fury when she rounded on Toog and began shouting.
It looked like a violent marriage spat to him when he looked at them from a few paces away. The tall but delicate woman in strange flowing garb shouting at her handsome, patient husband who just nodded noncommittally, scratching his neat beard slowly.
People around them were definitely taking notice. Some were stopping and staring, some even looked like they were about to intervene, giving Arne compassionate, evaluating looks to see if he was an abused child standing meekly by. Some, fortunately, also just found the screaming scene funny, though some in a sardonic fashion, revelling in the stupidity of foreigners.
Arne sighed inwardly and marched over to grab both Toog and Dia’s arms, pulling them apart. “I didn’t know!” he stated. “We have to get back on track so we can get out of here as quickly as possible.”
“Good idea,” Toog said, patting Dia’s shoulder, while she stood there panting and wild-eyed.
“Follow me. We have an audience. We never should have had this conversation here. I didn’t know it would get this bad,” Arne said and put the language amulet back on. He began walking towards the open plaza at the end of the street where the temple stood in grotesquely austere majesty.
He didn’t look back, hoping the others would follow him, and forcefully pushed aside all thoughts of why he was here, what he had lost, and what it was, exactly, that kept breaking inside of him now that he had time to feel it.
If even Dia was getting to a point where actual despair that he could recognise and understand came up to the surface, they were really drowning in trouble.
o-0-o
After a long, long tour of dry facts about the uldra, the temple, and the history of both, Arne had left the others behind to see if he could find the statue on his own. He could always claim childish innocence and hope for the best. He felt pretty sure he could embarrass any who found him into believing him if he …maybe started crying? That should be doable. He just had to let his mind rest on his life in general and current situation specifically and the nine-year-old tears would probably make a dramatic entrance.
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“Your ehm… parents seem to have let you wander,” a deep voice said close by, making Arne gasp and whirl around. “Children shouldn’t be wandering aimlessly around. Especially not in the temple of the goddess of industry.” The voice was old, stern, and creaky and full of disapproval, and Arne flinched slightly, stepping out from the shadows of the statue he had been examining.
“I thought Hilden was the goddess of all dwarves,” Arne remarked to the elderly dwarf who was staring at him. He was pretty sure it was a man from the way the beard was styled.
“That’s the same thing. You aren’t a proper uldra if you just sit around doing nothing!” the elderly man grumbled. “Someone your age should be in the mines, learning a trade, or training with your unit to deal with the maze voids.” When it was apparent at a glance that Arne wasn’t following, he continued, “How old are you?” in a slightly kinder tone of voice.
Thirty-two was the honest answer. “Nine,” Arne said, trying to sound it.
The dwarf sighed. “Uldra children would never wander around like this, unaccompanied in a temple where they have no business being. Come with me, I will get you to the exit or perhaps we should have the guard see where your parents are?”
“How would they do tha…” Arne began and then looked down at the bracelet around his slim wrist. “Oh.”
“Oh, indeed,” the elderly dwarf agreed, giving him a stern glance under bushy eyebrows. “Now, come along. How did you even get in here?”
“I was on a tour and got lost,” Arne said. …Looking for the statue that tethers the Primordials here, but it would probably be awkward to add that. He shrugged and followed the dwarf. Short of murder there was no real alternative, and the damned bracelets would probably make sure he was discovered immediately. “Who is that?” he asked, determined to get as much out of his stay as possible and pointing to one of the statues they passed.
The dark grey stone figure was recessed into a square niche in the wall and depicted a grim-looking elven woman, tall and regal, dressed in the severe, traditional overlapping armour of her people and were holding a pair of vicious serrated short swords that looked deadly even in stone.
The statue’s face was set in a peculiar expression between on guard and beginning panic. Altogether, the work of art was impressively lifelike.
The dwarf stopped and looked up at the statue, then down at a text engraved below the niche written in the sharp, blocky script of the Uldra.
Arne shrugged. “I can't read your letters yet,” he explained.
“Very well,” the dwarf said. “She is Nimra Ina, Queen of the Elves Who Term Themselves Khemmen. Well, she was, obviously.”
“Ehm… She is?” Arne said. “I did think the statues here were a bit too lifelike…” He shuddered involuntarily, looking around in the statue hall holding at least fifty wildly different, far too realistic statues of all species and genders. The only thing they shared was their profession; all of them were warriors and conquerors of one kind or another.
His dwarven guide nodded wisely, seemingly with a smile hiding in his beard. “Exactly. They all came to know the consequences of their hostile intent towards Uldran.”
“What is that?” Arne asked, pointing to a huge beetle-spider-creature with odd arms and handlike pincers jutting from its carapace, strangely distorted though caught in stone for eternity and occupying a space on the floor since the niches would be too cramped for its mass.
“That is a maze void,” said the dwarf in an almost grandfatherly tone of voice now, clearly warming to his role as teacher. “They are twisted, disgusting monsters who lives out in the Maze beyond Uldran Underwaves.”
“Are they all that big?” Arne asked, not bothering to hide his trepidation standing at the too many spiked feet of the creatures. It was about two and a half times the size of his grownup form, an awful mix of spider and spiky crab or beetle, its strangely ethereal quality being clearly conveyed despite the petrification.
“No, most are smaller than Aiquix the Devourer. That monster led an army here six hundred and eighty-eight years ago. My grandmother served her people here in the temple of Hilden back then and had a hand in bringing him down. They never did catch his vampire mistress, though, much to everyone’s dismay. But–“
“Vampire!” Arne interrupted, suddenly snapping to attention. There were entirely too many vampires in his life at the moment.
“Don’t interrupt, young one. It is unacceptable and quite rude.”
“I'm sorry,” Arne said. “I'm very, very, very scared of vampires!” He fished the grotty Sir Nanners-bear from his bag and tried to hide his reluctance against holding the nasty thing close as if for comfort.
“As rightly you should be. Those things are on the awful side. But fear not, no vampire can set foot in Uldran.”
“Really?” Arne asked, excitement shining through in his voice. “You are not just saying that because I'm a child?”
The temple warden looked at him with a puzzled look in his grey eyes.
“That’s just something my mother growls at me sometimes,” Arne quickly added. “It’s normal for elven-human-adoptee families, I think.”
The man still looked less than placated, but Arne quickly said, “So tell me all about how you repel vampires.”
o-0-o
Dia stared blankly at Arne. Then she yawned. Then she stared blankly at Arne.
“I had honestly hoped for a little more cheer, here. This is a gem mine of information and I'm going back tomorrow for more. We have vampires, maybe even The Vampire – remember how she said she had personal reasons for not dwarving us? Maybe that’s because she’s the vampire who tried to take over the dwarves with the …maze void thingies ages ago.”
“The edder,” Toog interjected. “I think that’s their name in reality. As in the sound they make to describe themselves. Although they are supposedly able to communicate both verbally and using scent glands if my anatomy sources are correct. But I don’t know the smell to describe–”
“Alright. Point is,” Arne interrupted, “The Vampire might have ties to this place. Maybe we can find something here to slap h–“
“We didn’t bring you up very well,” Toog stated. “You're a rude child. You keep interrupti–“
Arne shrugged. “Maybe we can actually get out of the contro–“
“But to do anything useful with that information we would have t–“ Toog interrupted.
Dia screamed loudly and incoherently. Toog and Arne flinched and looked at her where she sprawled across the pillows of the bed.
“I have not. Killed anyone. In weeks,” Dia stated slowly when she had their attention. “We are going to do what we are here to do and then leave. I don’t care how. I just want Chuckles out of my brain so I can kill again. No extras. No funsies. Just get. The job. Done.” She flopped back on the pillows, staring blankly into the ceiling.
Arne went over to the door and flung it open, just in case the scream had attracted eavesdroppers. The hallway outside was deserted. He closed the door and leaned on it. “I’m going back tomorrow. I asked Krobol, Beardy Beardface the Bearded Beard Dwarf at the temple of beardness, to educate me. He said no, but I'm sure he’ll crack eventually.”
“Why the assweasel do we care!” Dia exploded, sitting up in bed and throwing a lantern at Arne. He dodged it easily and it impacted on the door with a metallic clank.
“We care, because we need to find the tether of the Primordials, which the hellduke, who Imp works for, said was in a statue here, since apparently you have completely forgotten the entire godsdamned reason we are here and have a strong incentive to seek vengeance!” Arne exclaimed, exasperated. “This is why I go alone.” He pointed angrily at Dia.
Toog quickly crossed to his side and slapped his hand. “Don’t talk to your mother that way.”
“I honestly cannot tell if you have just lost your mind or if that was evidence of a sense of humour,” Arne said.
“Same,” Dia said at the ceiling, lying back on the pillows again.
“Both of you just shut every orifice everywhere. I will go and get as much intel as possible at the execution.”
“What execution?” Toog asked.
Arne shrugged. “Krobol Beardy said it might be educational. Besides, he said there's snacks, and that around here, snacks are usually alcoholic. He recommended I try some to get my beard going. Only good thing to say about the place.”
“Maybe there's Family in town. If there are executions, maybe they will go hug the condemned,” Toog mused.
“You go keep an eye out for that. I’ll work the crowd and see if I can learn anything about edder, wards, vampires, tethers, or statues.” Arne tiredly went over to pick up his bag and Sir Nanners. There were so many avenues of inquiry and so many things that could go wrong in this place. The weight of the bracelet around his small wrist felt much heavier than it was.
o-0-o
The massive lagoon harbour they had emerged from on the ship-swallowing submersible fish was domed, like the rest of the city, by rough-hewn rock far, far above. But at the far wall, Arne learned, was a hole in the rock, opening up to the massive pressure of the ocean beyond, held in check with magic like a sturdy windowpane against the elements.
Apparently, however, things could pass through the magical window from this side with no problems, as he experienced when the condemned criminals were literally catapulted through it to be crushed by the forces of the water. Sometimes the horrific giant squids with pale, barbed, fleshy arms, pawed the dying as if to rob them of their crushing and drowning deaths.
Arne had placed himself at one of the myriad tables full of food and drink provided for the festivities, and happy, excited crowds cheered for each of the ten deaths and booed heartily when the crimes were read by an official prior to the catapult being released. At the first execution, horrifically hilariously, the catapult had been configured wrong and sent the condemned to a slightly quicker death on the cliff wall just next to the magical window. Perhaps it was an entertainment gimmick? Like when a puppet show started at the bazaar in Arabesk, and the puppets began by demanding better wages. Of course, that bazaar was a smoking crater now, in Dia’s wake.
He had grabbed a skin of something drinkable, filled his pocket with some sort of small cakes and was snacking as he made his way through the chatty, happy crowd.
Amusingly, every list of crimes, which seemed to only be theft and economic crimes of different kinds, were also finished off with the charge of ‘laziness’, though clearly that couldn’t be true of someone who systematically cheated, stole, tricked, and undercut markets to dictates price settings, Arne mused and couldn’t help but notice that one of the houses near the docks was melting really slowly.
It was probably just a …dwarf thing? It had to be. And besides, the glowing green mites in the air were flying towards the melting house. So they were probably going to put it out. Or inflate it.
Oddly, people around him were changing colour too. He looked up, away from the madness of the crowd and saw the bloodstained wall near the magical ocean-window wobble and stretch impossibly accompanied by a gentle singing from a layer of small turtles covering the entire lagoon.
“I don’t think this is supposed to happen…” Arne mused slowly. Sir Nanners sat in his arms, staring at him, and nodding wisely. “Clearly, you have to find someone you can blackmail into doing your bidding. There have to be actual professionals in this city, not just whiny accountants behaving badly,” Sir Nanners opined.
“You are very right,” Arne agreed. “There is no real future for me in the personal lube business, no matter what they say.”
“That is just your cover,” Sir Nanners reminded him with a note of irritation in his voice while his mismatched button eyes drooped in weird directions. “See, you are already well on your way now. You just have to listen.”
Arne looked around at the living, clamouring city. It was a good thing nobody were around, because the houses were all so busy wobbling and pushing each other it could have gotten dangerous for pedestrians. He should probably get off the street before he was crushed.
o-0-o
Everything around him was completely dark and Arne had to blink several times to figure out if his eyes were open or not. He was lying on a bumpy surface and all around him was a silence so large and close it was oddly comforting. There was nothing here, he had to worry about. It was all silent.
The only good thing about his current body was that the shadows accommodated it a lot easier than his actual shape, but he fervently wished The Vampire could have given him night vision of some sort. He moved a little and felt his bag and what felt like a wineskin next to him. And now that he had moved, he could feel small rocks and pebbles under him. The stone he had lain on was warm from his body but when he moved, the rock surface just next to him was cool to the touch.
Actually, everything here was a steady chill temperature.
In the darkness.
The unknown darkness.
“Oh, fuck…” he whispered softly and sat up, panic slowly creeping up on him. It was silent all around him and the words lingered oddly in the perfect stillness. Slowly, he rummaged through a belt bag and sighed in relief when his fingers found the lightstone. Arne hissed in pain when the bright light illuminated the rough-hewn stone corridor he was lying in.
When his sight returned, he realised that he was in a mine shaft, needed to pee, which was a much more cumbersome operation for a girl in trousers than what he had been used to from his old body, and that the walls were moving in peculiar swirly patterns when he looked at them. So, he was still a bit high. Fortunately, it seemed to only be visual disturbances now, not altered perception like earlier. Vague memories prompted him to look sceptically at Sir Nanners who had the good manners to stay silent now.
Tentatively, Arne sniffed the wineskin. It had a sweet, milky kind of scent to it, and he vaguely remembered it. Should he be surprised that the dwarves would serve something violently reality-altering? Maybe it wasn’t for a dwarf? Maybe he was just lucky it went askew in his human body.
The drug had to work differently on the uldra. Perhaps that was one of the ways the Foreman and the High Priestess of Hilden kept the dwarves in line? Drug them up at every public event in addition to threats and curbing their crimin– creative activities by keeping them busy?
Odd that the bracelet system hadn’t registered that a foreigner had wandered into a mine. He could be doing all kinds of industrial espionage in here. Maybe. Wherever he was. The entire corridor he found himself in was devoid of any kind of signs or hints as to what way was out, but he supposed he could just follow a wall and hope for the best.
At least he was alone.
When that changed, Arne swore in his mind and quickly whispered the command word to turn off the lightstone. Darkness descended on him, heavy and complete once more as the voices ahead of him came closer. Desperately, he thought back to the layout of the corridor of a second ago and hurried back in the darkness with a hand on the wall he had been following. The corridor had branched a little way back, and hopefully he could hide there. At least it gave him a chance to stay hidden. If he was lucky, whoever it was could lead him out safely if he followed them.
The group of three dwarves walked past him with their lamps and down the way he had come from. Slowly, Arne followed, keeping a respectful distance.
“Here,” one of them, a woman, as far as Arne could tell, said. “We should be outside the reach of the bracelets.”
“Should be?” one of the others asked. He was taller than the others and had an impressive red beard.
“Are!” she amended sharply.
“Well, if it’s not true, we will all pay with our lives,” the third of the group said cheerfully. “So, what have you got for us?”
It was interesting listening in on other people’s underhanded, shady deals. Arne kept himself hidden through the entire encounter and learned several interesting things. First, he was happy to know that the criminal elements of Uldran Underwaves were active doing other things than accounting. These three were siphoning off precious stones from other mining operations and smuggled them out of Uldran around the tax system to enrich themselves.
It was curiously good to know that ruthless self-interest was alive and well in a hostile environment like this.
The second thing he learned was that the bracelets only had a certain reach. A lot of the mine shafts reached beyond the limits of the city’s wards that registered the bracelets and when you crossed beyond them, you removed the threat of sudden explosion because the bracelet couldn’t report that you were doing something it deemed naughty.
Immediately, Arne wondered why people didn’t just go outside the limits of the wards all the time, but he supposed the threats lurking in the Maze beyond, with the voids or edder, as Toog had called them, being hostile to dwarves as he understood it, made that kind of tourism risky. It opened certain possibilities, though. Presumably, out beyond the wards, the bracelet could be removed safely, which would mean he could go into the city and murder whoever he wanted as long as nobody looked at his arm. He could even just wear a replica bracelet. The likelihood that anyone would look too closely at a child was slim to none.
Lastly, he learned where the red-bearded man lived after having followed first the group and then red-beard through the city.
Arne felt more at ease now than he had at any point since they came here. It was good to have well-connected people to extort.