The first few minutes of walking into the tunnels were pulse pounding. The dark and the quiet closed around them, every sound amplified over and over like a mirror.
Alouella's light shone only so far ahead and every step they took showed only more carved stone. But after a few minutes of the same tunnel going down at a slight angle and the same darkness around every slight twist, pulses calmed. Walking was the part they left out of all the good adventure stories.
“Timbers get newer the further in we go.”
Gwen knocked on one, the sound echoing down into the tunnel and coming back several times until it faded to silence. Then came the pile of rubble, small piles laid out in long lines against the wall and the big cave-in where the rocks were cleared from. The path between them had been cleared away and fresh timbers and braces laid out
Gwen knelt, tracing her fingers over chips in the rock.
“Recently cleared away.”
“These aren't so recent.”
Clarke had stepped to the edge of the light and pulses quickened once more. Skulls, bones, bits of broken and long buried bodies brushed to the sides of the tunnel with the rest of the debris. The many bones were old, half melted away into dust by time.
His shadow swung around him as Alouella waved the light across the wall, revealing a sign. It was printed in block letters chiseled from the stone. Clarke was writing it down before he'd even fully read it but Alouella spoke for everyone.
“On-der-vale. Does that mean anything to anyone?”
Gwen raised her hand.
“I've been to Ondervale.”
A few looks and she quickly corrected herself.
“Well, not this one. But it's a pretty common name for dwarven communes underground.”
“And they say dwarves are creative...”
Wade muttered, significantly amplified in the tunnel that whispered it back to them.
“Not with words, jackass. With our hands. And one thing you should be afraid of is an empty dwarven city. A dwarf builds something, it blows up and kills her, the others mourn and take over her shop. It's not uncommon but we don't waste space.”
She looked down into the tunnel, a very slight tremble in her voice.
“You see a whole dwarven city abandoned...well, it's not because someone invented soap, lemme tell you.”
“Careful as we go. Eyes and ears open everyone.”
Clarke spoke just above a whisper and led them further, renewed pulse pounding that turned to awe as they came up to the exit of the tunnel and the first dwarven commune all but one of them had ever seen.
Before and below them was hard to make out, like a trick painting of impossible design. An empty cube criss-crossed by hundreds of stone bridges built from one wall to its opposite, though many of them had crumbled and broken, falling down and down into whatever lay so far below. Hundreds of darkened open doors that previously housed families and now only gaped back at them like empty, dark eyes.
It wasn't Alouella's light spell that lit the deep dark enough to see for that would have been like a drop of white in a bucket of ink. Moss grew in tiny patches along every bridge, on every wall, small communities that glowed a dull green but in such great quantity that it gave the entire area a faint glow enough to walk by.
“It's gorgeous!”
Alouella whispered and raised a hand to her mouth at her words.
“OH! I'm sorry, I'm really sorry Gwen. I just meant-”
Gwen waved the apology off.
“It's kinda pretty, yeah.”
Clarke took a knee, rolling some of the moss between his fingers. Springy, like exceedingly tiny mushrooms. He'd never seen anything like it and for an alchemist that meant stuffing one of his pockets full for later experimentation.
Wade kicked a rock past Clarke, off the edge where it bounced and clacked from surface to surface until the sound disappeared far below.
“So where's your town destroying monster? The way in was too neat and organized for anything to have broken through. The thing that was written about didn't sound like it was subtle about stomping around.”
“It's not necessarily about the monster. It's why did things change? There has to be some kind of clue.”
“You know what would be better than looking for hints about the non-existent past you made up for attention? I say we go back to Deraforda and see what the Weatherworn pointy ears wants. I know this might be hard for you but be smart and let's take a job that can earn us some real money.”
Wade rubbed his thumb and index together as though he already had the sweet feel of cash between his fingers. Clarke clicked his tongue, briefly entertaining the idea of pushing him over the edge.
“I already have a job where I don't have to constantly lick boots all day so I'm in no hurry. Why are you in such a hurry? You like the taste of leather?”
“Hey, I tried to be NICE-”
“Knock it off you two.”
Alouella swung her staff between them, destroying their head to head.
“I was hoping when you came to see me together you might have put all that bickering behind you. Now are we investigating?”
Having her scold them reduced each to a state of childish embarrassment, when mother catches you doing something naughty. Wade smiled big and clapped Clarke on the back just hard enough to make his coat rattle.
“Of course! I was just trying to bring Clarke here in on a good deal working for an important figure. He's being stubborn about something good for him.”
“Don't break your neck changing faces there.”
Clarke whispered to him. He stopped to examine the entrance, the tracks having ended there. It was evident they could have gone no further with all the broken bridges and foot paths blocked with random debris. There was a path evident in its cleanliness though.
Alouella closed her eyes, ears twitching slightly, tuning in to something in their presence.
“I've been feeling a power here for a while...something good. It might be related or not.”
Gwen held her hand out as though she'd be able to make anything out of the strange feeling.
“No telling what that might be. Dwarfs make some weird stuff.”
Gwen led the way, kicking stones off the path and checking the sturdiness of the bridges while the boys brought up the rear. One such bridge cut close to the wall, chunks of rock fallen away until you had to press flat against the wall to pass.
“Careful there.”
Gwen grabbed Alouella's hand tight in her gauntlet as they edged along the wall, rocks clattering off the side.
“Dunno how hard you have to concentrate on the light.”
Alouella smiled.
“Not that hard but I appreciate the help.”
Wade scoffed at the tiny embrace and again when Gwen cross back and offered the same hand. He ignored it.
“Ain't dwarves ever heard of railing or anything?”
He slipped the moment the words left his mouth, Gwen grabbing his hand just before he was out of reach and his body thudding into the wall. Her hand scraped along the wall as her fingers strained to keep a grip on the wall. Alouella waved her staff and his body lightened, floating over to where she was and setting him on the ground. His face burned from embarassment.
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Clarke took her hand over the narrow bridge to be safe.
“There was a town with railing once but people kept tipping over the side getting a look at it.”
They journeyed slowly, sloping down and changing bridges, always keeping an eye out for anything the least bit out of place. Halfway down Clarke called the group to a stop when he spied something in the dust and dirt.
“Look. These foot prints are new.”
Gwen knelt and looked but didn't see anything special about them.
“How can you tell?”
“We haven't seen any other footprints since we got here. Either dust rains from the ceiling and covers them up or someone swept them away. These are the only ones we've seen.”
The imprints led to a wall of homes now crushed and broken, the wall torn out seemingly with huge claws as though burrowed out for a home. A single door still stood out without any walls, the rusty hinges shrieking as Clarke pulled it open on half a home, one side gone in the clutter and the other half untouched. Alouella's orb flooded the room with light, falling over the few chairs, a table, a kitchen with pots and pans stacked across the counter. Further in was unbroken, two doors that Wade opened, both leading into bedrooms.
In the middle of it all were some boxes stacked near the table. Clarke moved the lid from one.
“There's food in here.”
Gwen reached in, taking a bite out of the first thing she had hold of.
“It's salami.”
She chewed, rolling the food from one side of her mouth to the other with a look of concentration.
“It's still good and the shelf life of salami is about a month. Whoever was here was here at most that long ago.”
Wade came back from the rooms, his pockets jangling with whatever baubles he'd appropriated.
“No paths back there. Maybe we should check a couple more houses.”
“You just help yourself?”
Gwen smacked his pockets. They jangled like bells.
“Don't give me that. If these guys had been in any hurry to get this junk they'd have come back already.”
“Not that! You probably took all the good stuff for yourself. We should divide it up fairly. Back me up, Alouella.”
The elven adventure expert clasped her hands the way a teacher explaining just why a student is wrong about everything they just said would.
“There are a few schools of thought on adventure salvage. Shares based on work done, equal shares regardless and...”
Clarke tuned them out. Something in the box caught his sight, a small scrap of white, a folded piece of paper had fallen into the box under the meat and was partly see through from soaking up the grease. It was the tail end of a report, slipped free of the pages that preceded it and nestled in the greasy embrace of lunch meat.
-usefulness of the one-armed weapon. I'd advise that in the future, any warnings on her be changed from 'Minor berserker tendencies after use' to 'absolute bat-shit insane'. She bit several of the men, resulting in the only injuries on the mission.
Some of the machinery on the lower level threw her into a screaming fit about some place called Whaler's Wharf. Since she's such a powerful, classified tool I thought anything she said or did would be of interest.
Estimated return time is...
Clarke realized he hadn't been breathing and realized there wasn't enough air in the room. He tried to breathe, tried to fill his lungs but his heart pounded and blood rushed through his ears.
“It was her...”
“Clarke?”
He looked up. The others stared and he shook the paper in his hand, pointing to the hope spots of evidence.
“It's her, this is about my mother. See, one armed, a woman.”
Alouella looked it over.
“It also says she was used. Did your mother have powers of some kind? Was she a wizard?”
“No...well, not that I ever saw and I don't know how hereditary being magic useless is. She was just an ordinary scribe with wonderful handwriting.”
Wade took the paper, frowning over it.
“See, I wasn't lying. I really did live in Greater Rens with you. They did cut my mothers arm off.”
“All this says is that a one armed lady was used in some adventuring party and she was nutty. That's the only connection I see to you. Don't get your hopes up.”
“Wade! That's terrible, apologize to him!”
Alouella stared him down but Wade sighed, and for once, just shrugged at her.
“No, I'm serious. It doesn't say anything. There have been plenty of wars, lots of people have had amputations and anyone so powerful as to change the alleged facts of a whole area must have been in hot water more than a time or two, enough reasons to have an arm cut off. If he wants to jump to conclusions that's his business but it's bad business.”
Wade looked at Clarke, a hard look that bore down on him. Strangely there was no malice, just the look of stony facts.
“You're supposed to be smart, Clarke.”
Despite it coming out of Wade's mouth, it wasn't terrible advice and that's what confused Clarke the most. Violence was the last resort of poor debate and Clarke was seconds away from putting his fist in Wade's teeth. The sudden rumble and shake of the earth was a saving distraction.
“That ain't good!”
Gwen rushed to the edge of the walkway, shelves falling over as they ran, cracks tearing the stone apart. A deep, bass groan filled the cavern, rattling their brains in their skulls. Something outlined in moss rose from the bottom, exact size hard to determine but big enough to be its own house, maybe even mansion.
“What is that!?”
Wade hissed. The lights on the thing turned as it did, the moss swinging through the dark towards their light. Alouella tossed her light closer, brightening it into sun-like magnitude. Craggy stone looked at them, a hand as big as a wagon reaching towards them. Jagged edges formed the rough shape of a humanoid, giant pools of glassy obsidian where eyes might have been.
“It's an earth elemental!”
The hand collided with the spot they'd been, splinters of rock and stone exploding out and away, rock scattering down the new cliff face as the fingers dug out the wall as easily as fresh tilled soil.
Everyone had dove aside, scattered by the fingers. Clarke rose to his feet, taking quick stock. Alouella was with him, Gwen and Wade across the now broken path.
“Run! Run for the exit!”
“HOW!? You have the light!”
He hurriedly picked a bottle out of his coat, a smaller, thin glass bottle inside that he smacked against his thigh. The two liquids mixing blazed into a bright green light that he hurled at them. Gwen snatched it from the air.
“And you've got a dwarf! Now go!”
Alouella grabbed him, jerking Clarke back as the hand crashed into the wall again, scraping along towards him and Alouella. They ran deeper into the city, vaulting rubble, the light bobbing with every leap across the stones but it didn't let up.
Alouella turned, planting her feet and the giant hand brushing past them in a wave of stale cave air. Clarke tried to grab her and pull her away but she'd begun a spell, light gathering at her fingers, spell symbols forming in the air.
“I don't think I've ever seen the ground flinch from getting hit by lightning.”
Her lightning orb flew down, lit the path for her spell to follow and hovered over what could pass for one of it's earthen knees. Her hair rose and she thrust her staff forward, a great surge of lightning pouring from the tip of the staff and crashing into the knee, dirt blasted away, rock crumbling under the torrent and breaking.
The creature lost its balance and fell, breaking the bridges and slamming the wall in a cacophonous rumble that shook the entire cavern.
“The ground has the whole world supporting it. That elemental only has a leg to stand on.”
She looked very proud of herself and Clarke sighed, writing it down in his mental notes for later.
“Yeah, that's pretty good.”
They heard the whoosh and deep wind of something flying through the air, turning only too late to see a boulder light up as it passed by the returning lightning ball, the elemental's hand still pointing at them as it had lobbed the stone. The bridge shattered on impact and Clarke flew up into the air, tossed like a ragdoll out into the wide open darkness and falling end over end with the light whirling by his vision as he spun and Alouella grit her teeth and thrust her hand out. He felt her magic tug at his leg, catching him just before he was out of range.
Clarke felt terror and fear rush through him, his pulse a drum beat as he dangled upside down. Then he saw the thing looking at him, its gaze watching the tiny human, pinpoints of light through the gemstones of its eyes and he clenched his fist and glared at the thing. It began to reach out.
“Drop me!”
“What!?”
“DROP ME!”
He fell just as the hand closed where his squished body would have been.
Alright Clarke you can't die. First clue in so long and you just die after finding it? No...what can we do?
He whipped a potion out as he felt gravity take hold, unstopping it and splashing the contents across his chest. A foam sprang from the liquid and grew around him when it met air, a fluffy white coat. The first bridge he hit was like landing on feathers, bouncing down and down from ledge to bridge, bouncing from the wall until he slammed into the ground, the foam wearing away around him, the blows having crushed it and him with it. Water rushed all around him, flowing around his shins as he he staggered to his feet, the true enormity of the creature like a human about to step on an ant.
Machinery was all around him, tubes and pipes long broken, outlined in bioluminescence.
The monster looked down on him even sitting in the muck at the bottom of the city and Clarke rifled his jacket for a new potion. The ground rumbled under him and he fell back into the water, lifted up on the edge of a stone to see that he'd landed on the stump of it's leg, broken bits of elemental crystal unearthed all around him.
Great, I'm the richest alchemist in the world and I'm about to die.
Its hand swooped down on him to swat him like a bug. He took one in his hand and leaped, falling face first in the liquid as tons of rock crashed down where'd been, the shockwave blinding him as he tried to run ,holding firmly to the crystal.
If I had a few minutes or could get away but it's just so BIG. I can...what can I-
Something hit him hard from the side, swinging him through the air and away from the shockwave of the tons of rock hitting the ground.
“I've saved your life. Now you have to come back to see Mr. Weatherworn with me if you have any sense of payback.”
The elf from before carried him, his arm extended up, some length of rope wrapped around his wrist. Alouella clung to his other side so that Wormwood looked like a mother possum.
“Hold on tight, I need two hands for this.”
Clarke wrapped his arms around and watched as Wormwood alternated hands, firing the rope from one wrist then the other, the metal grapple on the end catching so they swung up and up from rocky outcropping to the next, swinging up to the exit until they clambered up the side. They ran, the creatures rampage fading as they made for daylight. Everyone else already stood outside, waiting and then cheering as Clarke emerged.
Wade hovered over Alouella, fussing while Gwen tossed a blanket for Clarke to mop himself up with. The water he'd fallen in had stained him a nasty black that he could almost taste.
“Are you alright?”
“I'm fine Wade. Clarke was the one who fell to the bottom of the city.”
Wade breathed a sigh of relief and slapped Wormwood on the back which broke the smiling exterior into a icy grimace. It melted quickly back to the constant smile.
“We're lucky this string bean needed us for something. Just like Mr. Weatherworn to take care of his workers.”
He adjusted his sleeves and took out a notepad from his pocket, marking down some names and tallies.
“Since I did go out of my way, at great risk to myself, to climb you all out, I believe I'm owed favors. I'd greatly appreciate it if you co-operated and returned with me.”
Clarke didn't like to admit it but he had a certain respect for the favor system. One of the many shady things Twinty had imbued in him.
He made a non-committal noise, the kind the listener interprets and uses in an argument against the maker later as a point of agreement when it's more like a monotone hum.
Now out in the fresh air, the adrenaline draining away he was already imagining how he might find more out from the letter. There were many other ways besides visual. Wormwood nodded and motioned them to the wagon.
“Then we'll rest in town and head back tomorrow.”
No one could argue with a soft bed and some food. The trail back was quiet.