Chapter 13

Eleonora had found the armor in what she assumed was an army building. Most of it was too big for her but apparently the commander or whomever had owned the massive room at the top of the structure was rather slim, likely female she thought but she didn’t want to assume a gender. She had tested its durability by throwing a bigger one at a corrupted which immediately attacked it. The armor was only severely damaged after two hits.

Elly looked at herself in the rather royal mirror, which she had carried through half the city, and smiled at the still spotless armor. “Two years and not a single hit...” she said, not counting all the times she had nearly lost an arm or leg, her healing preventing her from dying. The corruption didn’t stand a chance against her strong healing anymore. Not after two years of cuts and bruises. It wasn’t poison but the corruption itself she concluded, after testing with one of the creatures from the cave that annoyed her more than any others. It showed similarities to her foes after she sliced it with a severed corrupted claw.

Eleonora got her trusted halberd and moved through the curtains that now hung at the corridor entrance. Her weapon felt the same as two years ago, its metal as strong as anything she’d found in the city. The only difference was that Elly didn’t even notice its weight anymore, not that it was ever an issue.

She came out on the other end of the corridor, now barred and guarded with huge metal spikes. Not that it would make a difference against the corrupted but it helped her sleep and it marked a barrier between her home and her battlefield, at least mentally. Moving into the city and one of its many empty houses had never occurred to her, the whole place felt dreadful and deserted. She closed the makeshift gate behind her and looked upon Isindur with her green eyes. “The night is dark...” she said “...for here I come.” her form blurred as she ran towards her destination, jumping from roof to roof, her weight and power leaving cracks on the marble.

Three corrupted that strayed a little farther than most crossed her path as they silently charged the black haired woman before them. “Only three.” she said as she parried the first beast with her weapon. The killing blow followed instantly. A side swipe of her halberd severed two arms of the beast on her right as she moved a single step in its direction to evade a claw from her left. Her blade pierced the monster and she finished the injured one with a final slash before continuing on, her tattoos still unseen.

Even with her speed she needed nearly an hour to get to the place marked on her map. It was on the opposite side of the city as her home. The faint light coming from the ceiling high above let her see the building she was looking for. It was huge, not higher than any of the adjacent buildings but nearly as long and wide as some of the biggest structures she’d searched so far. After entering Eleonora found herself inside a massive marble hall. There were tables and benches all over and at the end of it a line of receptions could be seen. She disregarded the items scattered all around the place as she approached the receptions.

Not the receptions itself but what she saw behind them made her curious. A massive passageway. “It leads downwards...” she said. Nothing she’d found so far led further down than a couple dozen meters. Cellars, underground storage and what she thought of as a dungeon were built into the stone below but nothing to this degree. She followed the massive tunnel that was easily two hundred meters wide and fifty high for ten minutes before she started to run. After another hour she paused and looked up. “I’ve long since crossed where the city should have ended.” she said to herself “Is this another part of it?” the slope wasn’t steep and became even less so as time went on. Pillars started to appear around her as the ceiling rose. It actually stayed at the same height but combined with the slope the distance to the ground increased.

The tunnel soon stopped going down and after another couple hundred meters Eleonora stood before a massive closed gate. It was nearly a hundred meters wide and just as high. “Now, how am I going to open You up?” she asked, not truly expecting the door to answer. After looking around for a couple minutes she found a small door to the right of the gate, leading to what she assumed was a control room. Magically powered machines and pipes covered the walls as she walked through it. “An immense power would be necessary to even start this whole thing up, let alone move that massive gate.” she mused, again impressed by the craftsmanship of Isindur. There was no way to the other side. This didn’t stop Elly as she looked up and started to climb up some pipes after attaching the halberd to her back. She had added two small pliers to her armor that would snap around her weapon and keep it in place if needed.

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Smithing was certainly not her profession of choice but she had time and attaching a couple pieces of metal to a backplate wasn’t exactly a master’s craft. After climbing for a couple minutes she entered a small shaft. A massive contraption like this could after all not go without maintenance. She had to remove her halberd again, not enough room for it to be in a vertical position.

Standing now at what she assumed the opposite side of the gates she swung her halberd at the metal. A loud noise traveled through the shaft. “Not a dent...” neither the wall nor her halberd were stronger. “Well if not the wall...” Elly said as she looked up and climbed higher, soon reaching the ceiling. No metal covered it but undoubtedly much of the outer walls reached far into the rock. “Let’s start then.” her weapon dug into the stone above as she attacked it with all of her non empowered strength. The digging didn’t take long as she found the edge of the metal wall only twenty meters higher up. “Hah, only twice as tall as the wall of Dunewatch. Not as impressive as I thought...” she remarked sarcastically and punched through the rock.

She had to dig down again to actually reach the tunnel on the other side. Looking down at the ground she let herself fall. The air rushed around Elly before she gracefully landed in a slight crouch. The force of a hundred meter landing barely noticeable to her. The ground was covered in a slight film of snow. “The third winter already.” her breath clearly seen in the cold air. “So Isindur wasn’t all...” a valley opened up before Eleonora, mountains to the left and right. Buildings covered most of it, some made with stone, some with marble. A lake claimed nearly a third of the valley, touching the snowy hills to the left.

Compared to the city inside the mountain behind her she could see trees in the valley. Many had grown around and into the buildings, showing the incredible age of this civilization. Even more so when considering that they had little time each year to grow, as even the summers were cold and short.

The sun was already setting and Eleonora considered going back to her home. Her curiosity overwhelmed her though as she took her first steps towards the city before her. It was around a fifth the size of Isindur. “As big as Dunewatch.” She stopped near a tree and touched its bark as she thought about what to do, where to start. “Should I prioritize exploring Isindur or maybe..” her monologue was interrupted as the snow behind her shifted, revealing a snow covered corrupted, his clawed arms already closing in on her. It was too close and fast for her to evade, not without her power. It didn’t matter though as she couldn’t see or hear any more of the beasts.

One of the claws cut into her leg and stopped already before the bone while the other easily sliced through the tree. Eleonora caught its claw with her hand, blood flowing from it as the beast struggled to slice through her. Her halberd blurred as it entered the beasts torso. Removing the claw from her leg she scanned her surroundings. “Clever girl...” she whispered as she yanked her weapon free in a spray of blood. Her leg was already healing and it would only take another minute for it to be back to normal.

“So far out...” looking at the corrupted before her she concentrated on the magic around her. “I can’t sense the pyramid at all...” resuming her walk she was now more on alert, ready for any sudden movements “There must be another source of power here...” not feeling anything but the normal amount of magic in the space around her she was perplexed “They might have followed someone out here and got stranded after they lost the pyramid.” She had tested how far away the corrupted would follow but they never stopped, not until they couldn’t hear or feel her anymore. She became rather proficient in hiding both her magic and her general stealth trying to get away from a swarm she accidentally drew to herself. They always left for the pyramid again after a while.

“What if they don’t have the pyramid to guide them though.” her conclusion about the buried corrupted made sense to her “That means there were people unaffected by the corruption...maybe even people that survived.” she got excited at the thought of meeting one of the survivors when she realized it had been hundreds if not thousands of years since a living thing walked the streets of Isindur.

The sun had set as she arrived at a big building overgrown with trees, cracking the stone around them. She encountered only two corrupted on the way but seeing how she was more in an exploring than fighting mood she tried to hide herself as well as possible. The corrupted didn’t emit magical energy though, didn’t make a single sound and didn’t move up until they attacked so detecting them was very difficult. The smell was normally the only thing but covered by snow and ice even that didn’t help Eleonora much as she quickly dispatched of them before entering the building.

“It’s been a while since I slept under an open sky...” remembering her nights in Honhill she prepared to sleep on the roof of the building. The cold wouldn’t be a danger to her, not anymore. And the corrupted wouldn’t move until they sensed or heard something. If there was no corrupted attacking her now, there wouldn’t be in a hundred years. The stars shined above and below as the lake reflected the cloudless night. Eleonora fell asleep with thoughts of the past.