Chapter 73 - Fun with Elven Ruins

The room we’d ended up in seemed to be an old elven kitchen. Great glass ovens stood against one wall. Made sense, since the architecture was unmistakably pre-unsheathing elven. Built to last by the Golds several centuries ago and then buried by the orcs slightly more recently. But what had it been? Palace? School? Prison? The kitchen certainly wasn’t going to tell me. The charts had this structure going off the edge of the map, so I had little knowledge of how far it progressed on the other side. I did spot a ring of salt stain about a finger’s span above the water level going around the entire room though. I recognized it for a high-tide line, so this place must connect to the sea somewhere. I would have to move Annalisa to higher ground before it came fully back in.

Gods, I hope I didn’t run into a nest of little crusties. The fact it was blank on the map suggested two eventualities: No one had made it inside ever (unlikely), someone had made it inside and failed to describe it to a cartographer (possible), or anyone that had managed to make it inside had never left again. I decided to stop dwelling on probabilities for the sake of my mental health.

I splashed out of the kitchen into a long, dark hall that had partially fallen in. The north route being blocked, I took the south and came to the remains of an elven gaming parlor. Some of the games of skill and chance they once played still kicked around Dragonmaw, and I spotted rotted, broken tables for games like Black-card, Hawks and Wheels, and the ever-indecipherable Stakes. I swear, people who put chips down at Stakes are the bravest gamblers of all, and any who convinces you that he understands how the game works is a fantastic liar.

A bar along the back wall revealed a host of broken, dry bottles covered in Elven script. Nothing edible or potable remained, unless you count undercity lichen.

I shined my light in the next room, which proved to be a study of sorts that was half tasteful Elf-decco and half mound of fetid dirt and rock. A massive desk dominated the room. Along the walls, countless painting frames with the canvases long-since rotted away. Bookshelves held volumes that crumbled when I touched them. The only thing still in-tact was a safe set into the wall behind one of the old paintings. I tried to lever it open with my knife and managed to chip through the rust enough to tickle the lock. I wrenched the door open against centuries of rust to reveal a fortune… in the queer folding money the Golden Elves used. Worthless now, of course. For a people defined by their kinship to a precious metal, they sure didn’t seem to keep much of it around. I pulled a handful of the notes out, sighing. It could be added to our dry fuel reserves, if nothing else.

“Hello…” I said, spotting a bit of shiny behind the stacks. I swept the notes aside and dug out a signet ring of some sort. I didn’t recognize the heraldry—though it matched the ornate design on the wall behind the desk—but then I didn’t know much about the Golds. Whoever’s office this was, he had been important, and a quick peek with the four of dragons revealed that there was an enchantment present in the signet. I dropped the heavy ring in my pocket. The rest of the safe revealed little of value. There was a ledger of figures—accounts of some sort and commensurate balances, a list of names, and a wood carving of a voluptuous elf woman. I debated for a moment, and then dropped that in my pocket, too. Art was art, and there were collectors who still traded in the works of the Golds.

“Who were you?” I asked, looking at the desk and the sigil behind it. I rifled through the drawers, but half the brass fittings came off in my hand and the whole thing was full of moldy, waterlogged scraps. Salt air hadn’t been kind to anything on this level. I had to hope there was a level above with sealed off rooms that might be more intact. I left the study and went looking for stairs.

I passed what was unmistakably a lecture hall, dipping my head in briefly to look around. The wall-sized slate board at the base of rows of hard benches put me in mind of the academy, and things clicked together. This was some sort of elven college. I began to get excited. Where there were colleges, there were books. If I could find intact elven volumes, they could be even more valuable than the bags of monster scat we’d lost—though only slightly less packed with shit. Golden elves brought a great deal of knowledge with them to the Bastard and shared approximately none of it. Haughty bastards.

I jumped when my deck buzzed, and the four of knaves called out in Annalisa’s voice—in my head, that is.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Darcent? Where are you? Can I drink this?”

I slipped the four of knaves from my deck and pressed it to my temple. “The water or the wine?” I sent back.

“Why would I ask if I could drink water?”

Fair point. “Go ahead. I’m looking around. I haven’t got very far.”

“Don’t move, I’m coming to you!”

It wasn’t long before I heard the sloshing of Annalisa pushing through the water making much more noise and fuss than was immediately reasonable. She appeared, both packs slung over her shoulder and open bottle of wine in her hand. All things considered, she didn’t look like a woman who had spent the last few hours unconscious.

“Did you try this? It’s good!”

“I had more pressing concerns, like making sure you were safe.”

“Do you have them now?”

I shrugged and held my hand out. She pressed the bottle into it and I took a sip of the Ivory Red. Then I took another. “Damn, that is good. Remind me to thank Celithia if we see him again.”

“So what now?” she asked. “Do we use the escape scroll? Get out of here and figure out what those trinkets do?”

“Well one of them I’m fairly sure is a language charm of some sort,” I said, pulling out the one with the circular mouth. “I don’t know exactly what it does, but I’m betting it explains why a dwarf was acting as a drakkyn translator. The brooch?” I pulled out the little pin with the citrine stone in the middle and shrugged. “It can wait. Anna, this place was some sort of college for the Golds. I don’t think anyone’s been in here for hundreds of years. We can use the scroll any time we want. I think we’d be fools not to look for Golden-elf secrets, first.

Annalisa scoffed. “Golds, she said. “They sailed themselves outta the west in fancy ships and started killing orcs. But who asked ‘em to?”

I quirked an eyebrow and glanced at the bottle, wondering if my partner always had such strong feelings. “You still got a soft spot for greenskins after what happened in the Matchbox?”

She waved her hands. “Well they were obviously the worst. But Stormy’s an orc, and he’s the best! Oh, and you know what orcs brew? Beer! You know what elves brew? Tea! Which of them would you rather have around? We should just get out of here.”

I took another sip. “You certainly have a way of putting things in perspective.”

“I just know what’s important.”

“Elven junk could be worth a lot of money,” I said, handing back the bottle.

Annalisa took a long swallow and then wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “Money is definitely important. Let’s look around.”

Annalisa fell in beside me as I led with my lantern. “I guess elves do make silk, too. And tacos,” she said after a while.

“And good bread.”

“Decent knives.”

We kept walking through the shin-deep water. Eventually, I did find a set of steps spiraling up to a second level and found ourselves on a balcony overlooking the remains of a flooded library. My heart sank.

“All this knowledge, lost,” I said. We walked around the second tier. Even up here, the elven scrolls and tomes hadn’t been spared the ravages of the damp salt air. Nothing destroys like seawater. Half a sailor’s day is spent simply making sure the ocean doesn’t ruin the ship sailing on it, and these books had been left unattended for hundreds of years. Even if they’d contained simple, mundane knowledge to the elves like making glass or predicting storms, it was knowledge we’d lost following their departure.

Annalisa tugged on my sleeve. “Hey Darcent, isn’t that the same symbol as the back of your cards? What’s it doing here?”

I followed her gaze to the balcony across the open atrium, to a sealed door that, sure enough, had the star-burst sigil for the Seekers Guild. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her along with me. “Golden Elves brought Soul-Seeking to the Bastard. They were the first ones to work the Deck of Wills. But they did more than that, some of their diviners could actually read possible futures like Skein’s Fateweavers. If that room has stayed well-sealed… Gods, it could be a goldmine.”

We circled around the outside perimeter of the balcony. A whole shelf was filled with waterproof scroll cases that were mostly intact, but I skipped by them. We could come back later. I had eyes only for the Soul Seeker department.

I stopped just short of opening the latch. We couldn’t take everything with us. If the contents of this room had remained proofed against the elements, did I risk destroying the lion’s share of what we couldn’t carry out?

To hell with it. I wanted everything. We’d come back as many times as it took to get it all before the sea had a chance to reclaim it. I pulled open the door and stepped through.

I stopped. I lifted my lantern. And I stared.