Chapter 15
Anom packed his mount and rode for another week. Finally making his way to the last, and largest, of the mountains, on the king’s mountain range. "According to the map, this should be where the Hephaestus guild is" Anom muttered to himself. The mountain was massive, with half of it being so tall, it was hidden in the clouds, and unable to be seen. The other half was frozen in ice, with smoke clouds everywhere, from the multiple, massive chimney’s, pumping out smog all across the mountain.
This made the whole area appear foggy, and constantly smelled of sulfur and smoke. It almost reminded him of his old world. If not for the sun still beaming overhead, attempting to break through the ever growing clouds of smog. He moved forward, looking for a path into the mountain, until he heard the pings and cracks of miners working on the mountain. Coming closer, he could see they were mining coal and iron on the mountains surface.
As he approached the mining site, multiple people saw him, and began to scream, and panic. They looked like humans, except they were much shorter, and bulkier. He put up both of his arms and yelled to them, “I mean you no harm.” “I’m looking for the entrance to the Hephaestus guild.” The short men looked at him nervously, and looked towards one man in particular, near the cart that they had been loading. "He must be the foreman." Anom thought to himself.
The foreman looked at him, and then his mount, before shouting something to the other men, in an unknown language. They then looked back at anom, nervously, before returning to their work. The short and stout man made his way out the mine, wearing a full set of plate armor, and using a war hammer as a walking stick. As he approached, anom finally got a full view of the little man, seeing him up and close, for the first time.
He looked to be around four and a half feet tall, with a big, bushy, brown beard, and eyebrows that almost touched each other. The man had pale yellow-pink skin, and robust, stocky features. He looked exactly like what he imagined a dwarf would look like. Standing there, the stocky man spoke up. "If you are looking for the Hephaestus guild then I can take you to the doorway, but whether they accept your request or not, would not be up to me. I’m Sidian, I run one of the surface mining crews. Don’t mind the twitchy boy’s. A lot of them have never been above ground. It took them a full day to finally believe they wouldn’t fall into the sky, and set down the rocks they tied to themselves. HA!"
Listening to the stocky man, Anom chuckled lightly. "I don’t mind. I’m use to the reaction. Im just glad you guys didn’t try and attack me out of fright. Also, that would be fine, im sure they will be willing to see me. How long until you guys go back?" Thinking for a second, Sidian replied. "it will take a few days to fill up the wagon. If you can’t wait, I can try and point you on the right path, but it can be easy to get mixed up, and flipped around, on this mountain."
Thinking of how to speed up the groups departure, Anom asked. "How about I just help you out, and then you can help me out by showing me the way? Taking out his poleaxe, it began to morph, and shift, changing into a miner’s pickaxe." Surprised and excited, Sidian retorted. "Well, I won’t say no to an offer like that! We should be able to greatly reduce our mining time up here with your help. I’ll gladly thank you for the help!"
Walking into the pit, after tying off the slepneir, he began to slam the pickaxe into the coal line, pulling up bus size chunks, one at a time. “Wait, Wait!” Turning his head, he saw Sidian looking terrified. “These two pieces are more than enough. We just need to smash them down into smaller pieces, so we can put them on the wagon.” Putting his pickaxe down, anom grabbed one of the bus size pieces of coal and picked it up, placing it inside the open wagon.
Turning to pick up the last piece, the dwarves stood there, slack jawed, and more nervous than ever. “Never mind, that works fine.’ Looking at Sidian, anom asked if they could leave now, as the dwarf nodded nervously. "Great!" Going back to his slepneir, he had his weapon change back into a poleaxe, and walked with his mount, towards the wagon. The small dwarves attached a few dozen large mountain goats to the front of the wagon, and began to collect their items. Picking everything up, they began to move, with Sidian driving the cart.
Anom was glad that he chose to help the dwarves early on. As Sidian went down multiple, confusing roads, seemingly changing direction at random, and moving steadily in the thick smog, along the way. He still did not know, how he knew the direction to go, in this strange mountainous maze. This was a new feeling to him, as the mountains were like his backyard, especially with his height and senses.
This might be the first time he ever really, ever felt lost on a mountain. Fortunately, this maze did not last very long. As around half a day later, he noticed metal torches, lining a main road. Other carts full of coal, and metal ores, were lined up, along the road, and waiting to pull into a massive, dark, steel door. Seeing the entrance, the dwarf spoke up. “That’s the entrance anom. Thanks again for helping us out. If you need anything once your inside, just look me up. Im part of the loadstone family” Thanking the small dwarf, anom continued walking towards the front of the gate. Seeing the main entrance, next to the congested road, he grabbed his mounts lead, and pulled forward, making his way to the front.
The front gate was impressive, being over 50 feet tall, with wide, arching stone work, and carved directly into the mountain. In front of the gates, were dwarves, and humans, marking down who was coming in, and who wouldn’t be allowed. Walking forward, the ground rumbled, from his immense weight. The small guards on duty, looked at him, and almost fainted, from the fear alone. Anom and his massive mount made a terrifying first impression. The smaller guard yelled something to a human, who quickly ran off, to the inside of the castle.
The man took off quickly, as the leader, approached, and anom introduced himself, pulling out the black coin, that he received from his family. Seeing the coin, the small dwarf relaxed, becoming much calmer, and much more polite. He insisted, that he could not possibly deal with a vip like anom, and asked him to wait for a few moments, for a floor boss.
Half an hour later, he was met with a 14 foot tall, flaming giant, at the front of the gate. Anom introduced himself, and explained who he was, and how he came to the guild, and showed him the coin. While explaining how he obtained it. He explained that he was hoping they might be able to make him a suite of armor that could stand his strength. The giant in front of him looked wild, with bright red hair, and black steel armor.
The giant seemed to randomly burst into flame, and his skin glowed red hot. However, his armor did not seem to glow red hot with him, and even seemed to stay cool somehow. This brought his hopes up, "maybe they can produce amazing armors here." Listening to his story, and examining the coin, the giant invited him inside the mountain.
Entering into the main gate, the sheer magnitude of this place hit him, as the first area that he entered into, was a massive hall. "This hall is used to meet up with people from the outside, and make trade agreements with different kingdoms." The fire giant explained, as they walked. The room was gigantic, with hundreds of stone pillars, leading from the floor, all the way to the ceiling.
The ceiling was arched, with hundreds of thousands of jewels placed into it, making a complete star map of the night sky. Looking to the front of the room, was a massive throne, made from pure gold, that was easily, fourty feet tall. The throne was made in a way that made it resemble the Sun, and above the sun, across the hall, was a gigantic moon.
This looked to be made from shaped quarts, and imbedded with an insane amount of diamonds. The fire giant seeing me admiring the room explained. “The throne is for our leader.” “Once he sits on the throne, his light will shoot from the gold sun into the moon and reflect down, onto the world, for all his people.” Looking down at their feet, was a massive, topographical map of the entire world. Although most of the specifics were left out, it was massively impressive, nonetheless.
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The walk through the main hall lasted almost 20 minutes, until they reached the next section. This section led directly to a group of stairs, leading deep down into the mountain. The stairs were easily a mile long, and were obviously, specifically made for giants, and passed by multiple different passages, leading to who knows where.
The fire giant moved through a blisteringly hot room, with dozens of massive furnaces, roaring with fire, being belt fed with the coal carts that he had seen lined up earlier. Each forge had hundreds of dwarves working on it, and even more in the back, keeping the coal fed evenly, and properly. The whole group of furnaces were overlooked by a fire jotnar and Cyclops who were constantly looking at the different workstations, and, if the temperature was off, the Cyclops could tell the fire jotnar, to fire it up, or cool it off.
Once they made it to the next door, he was welcomed with the dull, smashing sounds, of massive hammers, crushing newly poured metals. These molds were poured from metal crafted in the previous room. Once the metal was sufficiently liquidized, they would pour it into the stone slides in the ground.
These slides lead to molds, which had been placed into the ground, and are made from granite slabs that have been chiseled, and made into any shape they need. Once a new shape was needed they would simply pull up the old slab, and put a new one in. Once the new pour would cool off enough, they would then pick it up with massive steel grips, and work it into the massive hammers.
Each of these stations had hundreds of dwarves working on them. However, at this stage there were more fire giants and Cyclops doing work as well. "I wonder how many forges this place has." Anom thought to himself. Looking at him examining the area, the fire giant began to speak again. "This is one of four of our furnace halls. Our biggest one is triple this size, and has thousands of dwarves and other races working with us.”
Looking surprised, anom couldn’t help but ask, “What are you guys making? Who could use all this metal? Is there a war going on or something?” laughing, the fire giant seemed to think my comment was funny. “There is always a war going on. And if there isn’t one now, you can be sure there will be one in the future. We take orders from all over the world. We have clients on every continent and beyond.” Moving forward, we made it out of the massive forges, and stepped onto a massive, arched stone bridge.
Looking out, anom could see multiple, massive bridges, like the one he's standing on, below him, also supporting the weight of the bridge he's on, only going in different directions. Looking out, from the stacking bridges, the area the bridges were in was absolutely enormous. The nearest wall from the bridge, excluding the one he just came from, was easily a few miles away. Looking down, he can only see a dark abyss, after multiple rotating stacks of bridges.
To his right, he can see a massive foreward facing cliff, with a town living on the top of it below him. This appears to be the direction they are headed to, after the fire giant followed down a set of stairs inside the massive bridge, and changed their direction. Following the giant as we entered the town, the residents kneeled to us, as we made our way to a massive, round building, at the back of the town. This massive building was being built into the wall, and had people mining the area, trying to dig even further in.
Stepping into the building, the giant walked into the main hall and asked him to wait as he went and talked to the other fire giants in the building. It was at this point that he noticed, all the servants and guards in this building were fire giants, and even a few Cyclops. Looking at the massive, stone vaulted rooms, with ornate, beautiful wooden doors, and gold trimmed furniture, he was fairly certain, he was meeting with someone important.
Looking around the massive room, he was able to see, beautifully crafted, giant swords, axes, hammers, poleaxes, and a variety of armors. He could also see many shields and even horse, elephant and even dragon armors. Looking at an especially interesting plate armor set that looked almost big enough to fit him, he began to thoroughly examine it. It looked almost like steel, but it was obviously much stronger. He could crumple steel like tissue paper with his size and strength, but this armor wouldn’t budge or tear.
Suddenly, a deep strong voice came out of the room. "How do you like it? It’s a bit crass for my taste but it was the life’s work of one of my dwarven apprentices that he gave me after he died. He did have some unique thoughts in material craft but it still fell too short to be hung up in Master Forge but it didn’t feel right to just leave it to history so we ended up putting it here in my home. I guess I’m still sentimental. I’m Arges. I was told you have something of mine?"
Looking ahead, a 23 foot tall Cyclops with a bald head, and wearing a white and gold trimmed toga, was watching me as he drank some ale or wine from a metal cup. The man looked almost bored with a calm and collected type of personality and a distinguished face with a sharp nose and cut chin. Wearing the toga did very little in hiding his massive muscles and bulky legs. Quickly, I grabbed the coin given to me, and explained the situation, and reason we ended up with the coin, from his savior, as to not be misunderstood. Holding onto the coin, he looked to almost be in a daze, eventually looking back at me and examining me. "What is your name?"
Looking at the Cyclops, I replied. "My name is Anom. I was sent here in hopes of receiving your favor, and receive a strong armor, able to stand up to my strength, and my enemy’s punishment." Smiling smugly, Arges asked. "What do you mean your strength? You are bigger than most giants I have seen but you are far from the biggest. Show me your strength." Confidently, Anom replied. "Here? I might break your house though and I don’t want you to get upset if I do. Do you have a bigger place I can fight?"
Surprised at his confidence, Arges rebutted. "Let me ask you first are you truly sure of your strength? If we go to the place I am thinking about and you do not have sufficient strength, you could die. So I will ask you again. Are you truly certain your strength needs to be tailored to?" Assured me himself, Anom responded. "I do not mind fighting to show you my issues as long as after I win and you see it with your own eyes, you make me a promise, and build me a piece of armor that can keep up with me."
Amused, Arges replied. "Hahaha! I’ll tell you what, if you can make it through the fight and win I will not only make you a set of armor personally, I won’t even charge you a penny for it. However, if you turn out to be bluffing and this strength of yours turns out to be nothing but regular brute force then on the account of my former savior I will not allow you to die, but you will never get a set of armor from me or anyone else in the guild. But if you win not only will I give you a masterpiece, I will also let any of your tribe members come and receive an armor and weapon from the guild." Anom happily replied. "Deal!"
Still believing him to be overestimating himself, Arges replied. "Ok, follow my servant back and he will take you to the coliseum." Following the flame jotnar back towards the group of stacked bridges they began to descend again, going deeper, and deeper, into the abyss. Finally reaching the fifth bridge, and following it towards what he believed to be the center of the underground facility.
If said this because everything was becoming much more ornate and flashy. He believed this, was one of the living sections. The room was massive, and shaped like a rectangle, with three distinct areas. The first area was lowest main floor. This area had the smallest and poorest looking houses along with horses, mountain goats, and pigs, living in fields next to the housing. The second area was set up in stone, like a cliff face.
The section was around 10 feet taller than the first section and the houses were nicer and larger. The third section was cliff faced above the second by around 15 feet. This section had a lot of homes carved into the walls and were much larger than either section. This looks like an area that the fire giants or perhaps the Cyclops live in.
The jotnar lead them out of the section, and past two more residential areas. Finally arriving at a room so massive, he almost couldn’t believe they were still underground. This was a city. A massive city, under the mountain. He could see massive doorframes, leading into the city from every wall of this room and an uncountable number of smaller doors next to them along with hidden doors in all the corners. Even the massive 50 foot arches looked tiny from the entrance of the far side wall.
The whole city must be at least 20 miles wide. Looking up, he could see a massive piece of quarts that they have hanging above the whole city. Attached to the crystal was a strange machine, that looks like it was using an engine, to rub another smaller, but still massive piece of quarts on it, and producing light for the whole city. Looking at the massive city, he could finally see what looks to be his objective. A massive coliseum in the middle of the city that was exceptionally decorated, and seemed to be full of vitality, as shouts, screams, and cheers, were constantly heard, even from this distance.