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“We just came from a weeklong mountain trek. Now we must go back and climb another one?” Lloyd asked, burnt out on a footpath of a considerable grade.
Rita the Witch had specifically requested Maat, Lloyd, and Kur to accompany her on a trek due south through the middle of the night. Sam had requested to stay behind to continue reading via moonlight. Four would be a crowd, and so Sara stayed behind to keep one eye on the kiddos and one eye on the surrounding plains.
“Climbing the mountain is not required,” Rita said.
Standing atop a trailside boulder, Lloyd merely gestured to the uphill climb ahead. The path sloped upward for as far as their modest torchlight could reveal. Moonlight bathed the rocky terrain beyond in a pale, purplish glow. The mountain ahead loomed in silhouette, blocking out the southern sky.
“These are the initial foothills,” Rita explained. “There will be a shortcut well before the base of the mountain.”
Lloyd groaned but nevertheless continued up the hill.
In the distance down on the flatlands, there were a spattering of lights emanating from the occasional tree manse. Not every copse was alight. Indeed, most of the horizon was lit only by the moon.
“We stick out like sore thumbs out here with the torches,” Maat said.
Any light on the prairie or nearby hills would stand out for miles.
“Ah, but this works both ways, yes?” Rita panned along the footpath with her torch. “Pursuers make themselves obvious. Unless they walk in the dark. Let’s hope nobody thought of that. Eh, it’d be impractical. Carry on.”
Maat checked the route behind them. Lunar glow faded against the darker soil of the plains. All at once he thought he could make out two dozen figures stalking them in the dark. Even the slightest attempt at focusing, or simply raising his own torch, and these tricks of the eyes disintegrated like a mirage.
The footpath continued upward until, all at once, it cut into the surrounding stone. Layers of reddish, then whitish stone rose at their flanks, then continued arching upward until the group was dwarfed by the walls around them.
Maat’s moccasin caught on a divot in the floor. He stumbled forward, only to be caught by Lloyd and Kur.
“Thanks.”
Deep quad-footed talon prints ran down the center of the channel. So well-tread was the path that individual scratch marks where the middle claw dug into what was once mud (now dry stone) could be made out. The numerous humanoid footprints trailing in their wake were more varied and produced shallower indents.
After a short jaunt the mountain had entirely disappeared, hidden by the canyon. Rotted whitewood supports held up some outcroppings, and the crew descended beneath the mountain.
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Rita’s pack was almost entirely made up of spare bundles of flammable cloth for the torches. She made sure to top everyone off and used the smoldering remains of their wicks to mark the first major intersection.
“Eight-sided intersections.” Rita pointed around the junction. “Uniform. Throughout the mountain. Like a honeycomb.”
“What’s honey?” Lloyd asked.
“Right. No bugs. Mountain’s hollow, carved into these eight-sided cells. Just… follow me and stay close.” Rita declared.
The junction was laid out in an eerily symmetrical layout unlike anything on either the plains or jungle sides of the mountain. No natural wood here, carefully crafted into livable designs. Even Secondhome was built from naturally occurring caverns and hand-chiseled with a haphazard, not-necessarily-people-friendly layout as a core from which living spaces were carved.
“Look at the supports at the entrance to each tunnel. Purple is good. Even if you get turned around, there’s a fifty-fifty chance it’ll at least bring you back to the entrance, yeah?”
Rita pointed to the tunnel they’d just entered through. Indeed, there was a single thick streak of purple dye, visible only under close observation by torchlight.
“What’s this made out of?” Lloyd wondered.
“Dye-based paint. Made from snails. It’s quite expensive,” Rita said. “Now, red is bad. Don’t go down those. They’re marked with three horizontal lines on the ceiling, and both supports, just in case. Don’t go there.”
“Now, bluish circles mean dead ends. If you go down those you’ll be doubling back before long. Lastly, red X’s mark potential cave in risks. Try those at your own discretion, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Ground rules established, Rita brought them to the fifth entrance from the left, demonstrated the purple marking above the entranceway, then led the group through.
Artificial straightaways shaved hours off what would’ve been a steep climb up the island’s largest mountain. They turned only twice – a purple-marked door to the right at a four-way intersection. Then another juke left at the next junction. Beyond that, the odd half-formed stalagmite produced a trickle of water matching their course.
The path leveled out in what Maat could only assume was the center of the mountain. The caverns became walkways over natural cavernous hollows. Rotted whitewood trestles were the only guard rails.
Lloyd kicked a rock down one of the pits. There was no considerable delay before the echo returned. Next, he shone a torch over the edge, careful not to burn the wooden handrails.
Twin shallow pits awaited on either side of the walkway. Water gathered in the lower one to create a natural pool, but the other was still relatively dry. Below there were more narrow paths filled with dead ends and artificial right-angle turns.
“Someone built a labyrinth down here?”
Rita peered over the edge.
“Oh, could these mazes not be a natural formation?” she asked, then chuckled to herself.
If the clear intelligence behind the labyrinths didn’t prove it was forged by elvan hands, the stone making up the walls was a dark black, imported from elsewhere, at odds with the white stone of the surroundings.
“Ignore the summoning pits. This is the halfway point.” Rita said.
They stopped at an eight-pronged intersection, atop a central column at the epicenter of eight of these “summoning pits.”
“Alright, here’s a theory: the mountains were home to yet a fourth race of squat, cave-dwelling miners.” Lloyd postulated as they redid their torches.
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“That doesn’t make any sense,” Maat said, then pointed up “The ceilings are built to Plainswalker height.”
Lloyd shrugged, acknowledging the point.
There were other clues, of course. The bird-tracks evidenced the use of pack animals dragging something up into the central plains, for instance.
Rita began to chuckle to herself. “What, a species of humans who live entirely underground? They could be separated from all the other elvan and humans for a thousand years and it wouldn’t make them that short; they’d just get really pale! Might go blind eventually too.”
Kur scrunched his face up. “Are you saying elvan and humans come from the same stock? Ridiculous. Every Laval knows we were born from an Alabaster condor that chose to give up its wings so that they could conquer the ground as our kin conquer the skies.”
“Sam always said the Plainswalker history books have detailed family histories dating back to when the founders of each manse emerged from a hole in the ground.” Maat said, though with the raised tone of a question at the end indicating he didn’t quite believe it himself.
Lloyd waved his torch around haphazardly. “Funny thing: each manse says they emerged from the biggest, best hole in the ground. And they use that to justify why their dinky little copse should dominate all others for several day’s ride around.”
“So, we really all have a common ancestor then?” Maat asked.
“Elvan – both Stormlander and Plainswalker? Definitely, and relatively recently. Human and Elvan? Well, they can certainly intermix.” Rita motioned to Lloyd. “No offense meant, just usin’ you as an example. But you catch my meaning, I’m sure. Now, this is practically common knowledge on other islands. It’s just been started to be studied by those natural philosophers of theirs in maybe the past ten years.”
The group was silent for the longest time as the remaining torches were prepped. A last call for snacks was called out before they were to move again.
“So, Miss Rita. Does this mean that Outlanders and Stormlanders are also of the same origin?”
“Well, there’s an excruciating circumstance there, but nevertheless it does seem likely at some point in the ancient past. Case in point: the twins here.”
Lloyd let out an amused scoff, evidently finding it quite novel to be used as a prop. Sara was not present and so could not comment.
“But in short: Outlanders are much the same animal as those humans who hail from the distant islands, or Jean’in if you must other them entirely. Both can, ahem, intermingle with elvan of all kinds with basically no downside when it comes to, ahem, ahem, offspring. Do the math.”
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At Rita’s behest the crew left this nexus above the so-called “summoning pits” and soon found themselves back in the more traditional mine-like tunnel and junction structure.
The back half of this journey felt far longer than the front half. Maat really had no way of judging the passage of time or distance down here. He’d always had either the sun, moons, or stars for navigational aids and time telling purposes. Only the fact that these routes had been well-tread long before, with handy signage painted over most of the passageways, kept his nerves from gnawing at him.
Even then, he really was morbidly curious as to what a ‘summoning pit’ was.
After untold hours, their journey reached its end at a blockade hastily erected over a final, purple-marked tunnel. Random stones, bits of wood, and odd bars of shiny metal were piled up in a haphazard fashion.
“Ah, nearly forgot we boarded this place up,” Rita said offhandedly. “No matter. It was barricaded from the other side. Should be easy to deconstruct here.”
Rita spent several minutes fiddling with various bricks and logs to find a structural weak point. A single stone smaller than a human hand fell from the top of the pile, bouncing off the larger stones that refused to budge.
“Huh. Never really put much thought into how to clear this thing,” Rita said after a time.
“Did anyone hear that?” Kur asked.
The group fell silent. There was a slight whistling breeze whistling through narrow gaps in the blockade.
“It’s coming from behind the rubble,” Kur said. “Does nobody hear that?”
Lloyd put his ear up to the gap in the rubble. “Now that you mention it, there’s someone down there. Can’t make anything out though.”
Rita and Maat looked to each other. Their bog-standard human ears proved unable to make out any voices over the howl of a breeze running through these tunnels. Nevertheless, with the subtle approach not getting anywhere, the four of them began to haphazardly take debris from the top of the pile and stash it along the side of the walls.
With an hour’s work there was now a considerable gap near the top of the pile. A gentle breeze wafted unobstructed through the tunnels, chasing away the damp, stagnant smell that had plagued them since the strange summoning circles. There still wasn’t enough of a gap to crawl through, let alone walk past.
“Ahoooooy,” wafted a strange sound from beyond the barrier.
Maat scratched at his chin. He could certainly hear that!
“Sounds like…” Kur wondered aloud.
“Dad!” Lloyd climbed up the pile. “Can you hear us?”
Some new voice answered. Kur translated: “They’re disassembling a barricade on their end.”
If only the two groups could meet up, the work would go much faster. As it is, they’d both be done clearing their respective blockades at glacial pace. And every second spent being delayed increased the chances of things going wrong.
Rita’s eye gleamed, a maneuver scarcely perceptible in the low glow of the torchlight. She reached for a second, separate pack on her back and produced a handball-sized globule of whitish putty.
“Why don’t the three of you retreat behind the other support there?” she said, plugging the globule in between two particularly load-bearing bricks.
Maat, Kur, and Lloyd ran back towards the purple-accented pathway they’d come in through. Rita continued to plug in all sorts of strange gadgets the likes of which the younger group couldn’t make out from this vantage point.
“Might want to put in some earplugs if ya got them.” Rita didn’t turn an eye away from her work.
They did not, in fact, have earplugs.
Maat and Lloyd plugged their ears with their fingers. Kur bent his flexible, elongated helix’s to protect his more sensitive ear drums.
How safe could this be? Maat wondered.
The blockade was separate and far enough away from the mine’s supports. It ought to prevent cave-ins. But it was quite a gamble.
“Ten seconds. Move back a little further!” Rita said, running past the group.
They sprinted back past a few support trestles, stopping only when Rita the Witch did so.
There was a dull thunk and an accompanying pillar of dust flying through the narrow corridor. They waited behind the safety of a support plank. No second roar of an imminent collapse ever came.
“Alright, dust’ll settle within a minute or two. We should be good to go.”
Rita led the youth through the freshly obliterated barricade, now just a bit of wreckage down at ankle-height.
They walked down the straight and narrow pathway. Until they reached another, more official-looking barrier. Tightly packed bricks several layers deep awaited. And behind that, the tell-tale signs of another crew trying to disassemble the barricade brick by brick.
“Who’s there?” came a voice on the far side.
“Dad?” Lloyd asked.
Indeed, even Maat could hear that; it was Hector!
“Hey, Lloyd. We’ve got half the town here. Should be close enough to shake your hand in a bit.”
“Want me to blow this one up too?” Rita yelled over the barricade.
“Belay that,” came another authoritative voice in an non-Laval elvan dialect.
“Bad idea,” Hector elaborated. “A little stealth would be appreciated. Bombs are a little… loud.”
And so, they got to work disassembling the barricade from both ends. Work went fast attacking the barrier from either end. Bricks wound up lining either side of the tunnel at first, narrowing the passageway. But a sunbeam snuck through the first hole of any size they poked into the wall. It was already daylight outside, and the Stormheaths crew carted their bricks out into the open air.
They were done in half the time in half the time they otherwise would’ve been working alone (though still much slower than simply exploding the obstacle).
When it was done, they had a fresh pathway as if there was no barrier at all. The first of a long column of stormlanders entered the tunnel. At their head was not a stormlander at all, but Hector the Outlander.
“Hey kiddo,” he said to Lloyd.
“Dad! Sara’s back at, uh, base camp?”
“That old tree fort?” Hector hugged Lloyd, then nodded at Ma’at, before moving to shake Rita’s hand. “Thanks for looking out for them.”
A Stormlander clan-chief in elaborate bird-mask regalia waited at the entrance to the tunnel. Familiar humidity wafted in from the rainforest. Outside, Maat could see only the overgrown remains of some kind of work camp.
“We’d better get people moving,” Hector said, then waved the Stormlanders through.
“Where’s dad?” Ma’at asked.
“Michael? Headed upriver, hoping to cut off some enemy action before it becomes a problem. We’re to regroup at Rita’s cabana. C’mon, there’s a lot of work to do in the Quarterchief’s stead.”
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