He took slow steps, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness he found himself in. His feet probed out in front of him as he walked. He couldn’t see anything and the light from behind him seemed to be swallowed by the perfect dark only inches from the entryway with no door he passed through only moment ago.
He felt around in the darkness with his outstretched arms. He had felt elation when he first saw the gleaming obsidian stone of the city outside. What he felt now was cold and uncertainty in the oppressive dark of his new surroundings. He walked forward until his foot gently nudged up against a solid object. He assumed it must be a wall or something, but the perfect dark that had swallowed him didn’t allow him to discern for sure. Placing his hands against the cold surface, he turned and pressed his back against the wall and allowed his body to slide down to the ground. From his new position he could see the entryway clearly, like a perfect cutout of light and life outlined in bold black that threatened to swallow that small glimmer of life outside. He found his thoughts moving backwards trying to make sense of the last two or three hours after he had first seen the city.
* * * * *
Standing atop the overlook with the city sprawling out and away from him, William couldn’t stop the smile that crept over his face. With everything he had gone through to get here, The City Under the Mountain did not disappoint.
The tunnel from which they had exited, emptied out onto a long ramp that hugged the cavern wall to his left. There were similar black buildings at the foot of the ramp at the very edge of the cavern, but they were only squat one-story affairs.
Following the ramp down to the cavern floor, William could no longer see over the buildings around him and had to content himself with looking around his immediate surrounds.
They were walking down a narrow street that cut back through the collection of one-story buildings. The winding path had so many turns and off shoots of roads around him that he was soon lost and had no sense of direction at all. Mr. Davis and the accompanying silent werewolf seemed to know where to go and led him through the streets with unwavering certainty.
Soon they were deep enough inside the city that the buildings around them rose above them four or five stories. The geometric block structures were stacked on top of each other in a very haphazard seeming fashion. The ledges and corners of the buildings were lined with ramps leading from one story to another and in some cases, ladders were leaned into various windows connecting them with lower levels.
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The city had a simple, but far from crude, construction. The structures were all made with exacting right angles. After spending so much time in the forest and all the natural forms therein, the geometric design of this place was a little jarring. He couldn’t help but wonder who had built this place. Surely the werewolves themselves wouldn’t build something that so completely went against everything natural. The architecture of this place was not human, but it looked like it could have been lived in by humans. The doorways were anywhere from eight feet high to no more than three feet. All of the windows stood black and empty though. The rows of buildings stretched out in front of them, and the end of the street blended perfectly with the buildings lining it, he couldn’t see if the street turned right or left.
He came to notice that there were faint sounds coming from somewhere. It was sullen and not enough to throw off the eerie quiet that seemed to have settled over this place. He felt cold here. There were no voices that he could hear, no lights, except that which illuminated the cavern. He couldn’t help but notice the faint smell of decay. It permeated even the large cavern. The smell of stale sweat something like mold, but not as putrid, hung in the air. It smelled like death. The streets they were walking now hadn’t entertained a living soul in a long time. The city was massive, but hollow. In fact, aside from himself, Mr. Davis, and Ares there didn’t seem to be anyone or anything alive in this place.
He turned back to Mr. Davis. “Where is everybody?”
Mr. Davis looked over at Ares who shook his head. Mr. Davis sighed and looked ahead of them. William was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get any kind of answer at all. They walked a few steps. “This is a capital of the shape shifters. We used to number in the thousands and this was a bustling epicenter for our people.” He motioned to the empty silent buildings that they passed by. “All of these buildings and houses used to be filled with shape shifters. Some of them were storage and servicing houses. Some of them were homes for families, both human born, and wolf born.”
William looked at the structures. The different sized doors were proof of what Mr. Davis was saying. The eight-foot-tall doors must have led to werewolf and human dwellings while the doors that were only three feet tall must have belonged to wolves. As Mr. Davis continued, William studied the different structures. The ground floor buildings were standing open with empty floor space. Others were filled with all manner of tools and equipment, sometimes weapons, nothing that he could readily identify, but they were packed in the rooms so tightly that one would have trouble moving around in the small enclosed spaces.
“The open buildings here were used for training. I call them dojos, but the elders simply call them ‘grounds’,” Mr. Davis said.
William studied the ‘grounds’ more closely. He could see why Mr. Davis and others would call them dojos. They were simple open bay rooms that had no furniture at all. They would be perfect for training and fighting with each other.
“What are these other buildings? The ones with all the stuff inside them?”
Mr. Davis glanced over to the equipment jammed rooms that stood open on the ground floor of the stacked buildings. “Those are various shops and repair stores. Our craftsman used to make and distribute all manner of things.”
“Like what kind of things?”