Through the Sewers

Except for me everybody was using magic boots to speed up their running. Even my mentor. Merlon, Verenice’s brother, was behind me. Protecting our backs. Sheva was leading the way through the sewers with our Arcane-Knight by her side, one step behind. I had to keep up with the extra speed and vigour earned by training the Path of Cold-Iron. My mentor could have done the same, and better, of course.

She was saving her stamina for the fights we could not avoid. I didn’t have that luxury due to my allergy to magic. So to speak.

Was not hard to keep pace, we did a really great time through the sewers, but that was the easy prologue.

Took Verenice almost one hour to find the entrance to the first gallery, and then another hour and a half to figure out the right key to open a passage for us.

Nothing tried to block our way up to the next passage, and that one our healer mage managed to open much faster. We moved from a clean corridor of smooth marble walls where a calm white light was constant coming from the intersection between the walls and the ceiling, to something that smelled and looked like the interior of living intestines.

“That was dwarven, about five centuries after the Demon Wars. This is older, pre-Demon Wars. Blood Elves architecture. Their motifs change, but always revolve around the same inspiration. Living flesh, blood, bones and organs.” Said our guide and lock-picking expert for the mission.”

“Shame we lost the house just now! I was looking for ideas to redecorate the dining room”

“You only think it’s funny because you never visited the winter palace of our mother’s grandmother. Most of its internal area was grow in that style, and in a far more flamboyant tone of it. I had to stay there every year during a considerable portion of my childhood. Was where I decided that I wanted to be a Healer”

The moved down to a large room, Verenice pointed the door in the opposite side, which was ratter some sort of sphincter than a ‘door’ in literal sense.

We had two healer mages with us, Ventlana and Verenice, both caring staffs that glow gentle light blue or light grey light without significant cost in energy. The light can be intensified or entirely suppressed. Here we had been using it in our favour, since those corridors where entirely dark. Unlike those of the dwarves. Ventlana is the elven who was friendly with us in the Royal Palace. Gaslow, her cousin, is an Arcane-Knight and was the first to give the alarm. With a telepathic spell.

“Kill the lights!”

Courtesy of that arcane-helmet of him. Arcane Armours can hold a limited number of spells, I found interesting his choice of something that is very elaborated and not exactly intended for offensive actions. Silent communication is very useful for furtive operations, and being able to do that any time without extra spells is great. However, each Arcane-Knight only can manifest one armour, and change any detail in it is not trivial matter.

The two elves are Varrak-Nashar elves. Elves from the Land of Eternal Tempest, a place where dark clouds cover a vast territory of sky over peninsula, sea, and some islands. Only natural light available up there are lightening bolts. Merciless winds and heavy rain that never stops. Few branches of Elven Tree can see better than them with almost no light.

Sheva can see better in low light than humans, albeit not as well as they can. I will not speculate about the fae and half fae. Whatever the case may be, every spell caster in the group had some magic tool to improve their senses. Or some magic tool to do that. I was in disadvantage in this department. I had to trust them, while sounds of something heavy and wet falling on the ground ahead us started, and repeated many times. Too many to keep count.

“No, unfortunately we cannot look for another path.” Whispered Verenice, answering a question probably made telepathically in her head. “No point in being discreet here anymore, we are not likely to sneak our way between those things. They already know we are here.”

Saying that, she raised her staff, and intensified the light. To cover as far away in the room as possible.

Sheva and I jumped forward, attacking the 3 meters tall humanoid forms. They had two legs, no head or face that could be distinguished, and any number of arms between 3 and 30. Some mixed tentacles with arms, others some sort of limb that could not decide which category they wanted to apply for.

The less deformed ones looked like morbidly obese orcs, except that their guts had being signed to play the role of skin and flesh.

We realized fast that those things were covert in some strongly corrosive material. Their blood, a transparent and nauseating slime, was even worse. They didn’t seemed to feel pain or lose any strength when cut. Despite that, we insisted. Eventually forcing them to step back and open a path for the rest of the group.

The room started dropping those things from the ceiling, trying to stop us. The passage behind us was already closed, and the room was losing size every second, walls coming in our direction. The spellcasters had to expend some mana to protect themselves from those falling masses of meat. We did our best to help them save their magic.

Verenice had to cut her own hand with her dagger and draw a fae spell in blood to open that door fast. We pushed forward and repeated the same situation in a room with even denser crowd trying to stop our advance. In the corridor after that second room the fae healer found a lateral passage to another net of tunnels.

Naked, grey stone. Rough but clean.

“Lizard-Folk!” said my mentor. “I recognise the alcoves and the empty oil lamps in them. Also the draws of their writing on the walls. Their smell is gone. This was the access tunnel to a eggs chamber. Not much different from those the lizard-folk in the Demon Continent still build today.

If we move up we will be moving away from the eggs chamber. Without any living lizard here we should face no obstacle. It we move down, that is the direction all magic and mechanic traps are build to protect.”

“Go back through that living tunnels again will be twice harder! They will be in high alert, prepared to stop us, for the next couple centuries. This is how blood elf passive defences work” said Ventlana.

“You call THAT ‘passive’?” meditated Lord Merlon.

“That’s how they call it. The blood elves.” answer the elf healer. “By the way, your friend may have suffered torture and will likely be traumatized by the imminent death of her entire family. We may need to carry her unconscious. This would be hard to do in those tunnels.”

Verenice picked the actual point.

“We have better alternative for our retreat. We don’t necessarily need to enter the sewer system in the same point, and there is a chance that we may avoid the city sewers completely and reach surface outside the capital. However, I cannot guarantee we will not find worse challenges in our way out, whatever path we choose”

Fortunately, for once, we where lucky and didn’t have to go very far down before enter a lateral tunnel where Verenice asked us a lift. Since the next passage was through the ceiling.

There was a magic barrier there.

“Before I open it, one word of advice. This is no ordinary maze of corridors abandoned and forgotten. I feel something alive and active here, something from the Void. Possibly Fae, possibly draconic. If it is elvish must be some particularly ominous branch of your Tree! Whatever it is, we must do our best to avoid a fight here. Move calmly, do not touch anything, assume every one of our moves is being watched and judged by the lord or lords of this realm.”

Even knowing that is a medieval fantasy world, I was not prepared for what we saw after move through the glowing circle on the ceiling of stone.

This was a forest. Or, ratter, an orchard in a larger garden. There was tall buildings visible around us, and a clean sky full of stars and colourful moons.

“Do you recognize this, Ventlana?” Asked her coisin Gaslow.

“Of course!”

“This entire place is a physical manifestation of the magical body of its creator. Just like a Arcane-Armour is the physical manifestation of the physical body of the arcane-knight. We are far above our heads here! This is Holly Ground.”

“Why here?” asked Verenice’s brother.

“Why not?” answered the elf. “The anchor that connects my armour to its physical manifestation fits in my pocket. The anchor connecting this realm to ours do not need to be larger.”

“By Law of Necessity places like that need to be connected to a place that belongs to the owner of the Realm, obtained by contract not conquest. Or they cannot manifest solid existence. However, the place can vanish by the will of its owner and be summoned again somewhere else, just like you armour” observed the faery noble. “My parent’s people build places like that, albeit in smaller scale.”

“Do we know anything about who owns this place?” I asked for curiosity sake. Not motivated by fear, you understand.

Albeit, my voice sounded like as if I was, indeed, about to urinate in my pants. Life is full of small mysteries, as you know.

“A Deity” answered Gaslow, the arcane-knight elf.

“Technically, demi-god.” Corrected Verenice.

“Do you know which one?” asked lord Merlon, her half-brother by fae side.

“Chronos Pandemia” Ventlana answered, before the fae noble was able to.

“It that is Chronos, then the closest large building must be a library, and we shall find her sitting in an armchair in a circular room in the centre of the first floor.” declared her brother. “There is two things you must know” he continued, now speaking directly to me and to Sheva. He presumed the others would already know that, but I think he was overestimating our battle-mage. The half-fae seemed as lost, about as much as I was.

“In a Fae Realm you cannot accept anything your host offer if you intend to be able to leave the place freely at your earliest convenience. Here, we cannot refuse anything our host offer. No matter what it is, whatever she offers, you must accept, take it, and be polite about. This is the first rule”. Continued the arcane-knight.

“What is the second rule?” I had to ask.