Arc 11. "Vildorial, City in Vertical."
Corvis Eralith
As Finn Warend I walked the Grand Nectary, headed toward Stonebound Tomes. The autumn air was cool, carrying the scent of roasting chestnuts and the distant hum of commerce that always filled this bustling Bough.
Merchants called out their wares, dwarves and elves mingled in a dance of trade that had become increasingly common over the past years.
The dwarven ethnical shop, built at the base of the trunk of a Watchful Willow, welcomed me once more. Its familiar facade, weathered by years of Zestier's mist and rain, felt like an old friend.
The door creaked as I pushed it open, and the scent of old paper and dwarven craftsmanship enveloped me like a warm embrace. Danna Roksson, Stonebound Tomes's manager, bowed her head at my entrance, a knowing smirk playing on her lips.
"Finn," she said, her voice carrying a warmth that belied her gruff exterior. "I did not expect to see you until tomorrow. Damien isn't here yet."
I was meant to meet with Olfred—as usual in his Damien Malaisson guise for whenever he left the territory of Darv—the next day, when the Darffest week began.
But after so many loops, I had learned to manage my time before the Darffest very, very well. Servo-Limbs, the setting of my Awareroom and future laboratory, practice with Fiorwato, and checking on Chul from time to time—all of that I had done with a whole day to spare.
A day I wanted to spend learning more about the Darffest.
"I know that," I replied, walking inside Stonebound Tomes. It didn't matter how much time passed; this place was the same as always. "I am here to study."
The dwarven elder smiled softly, taking a footstool of elven manufacture, suited for dwarven size, and placing it near the counter of the shop.
"Take a seat," Danna said. "I am always glad to help."
"You are very kind, Elder," I said, settling onto the stool. "But what about the clients?"
"Stonebound Tomes was always meant to be a cover for Elder Rahdeas's operations," Danna said, her voice amused. "Fewer clients, the better."
I frowned, still accepting the offer to sit down. "You are revealing this to the Prince of Elenoir, I remind you. I could interpret it as an admission of being a spy in the Royal Capital."
"The Prince of Elenoir, yes," Danna said, nodding her head slowly. "But also a candidate for the Throneholder. You are of both kingdoms, Finn."
"I am of Dicathen," I told her, the words coming out more firmly than I intended. "As we all are."
The silence that followed was heavy, charged with meaning.
"What did you want to study, boy?" the dwarven woman eventually asked, her voice softer now.
"About the Darffest and Darff's figure," I said. "I would like to know more about the mythological founder of Darv and first dwarf."
"Well, well, well," Elder Danna said, turning toward the dusty shelves of Stonebound Tomes. Her fingers trailed over the spines of countless volumes, each one a repository of forgotten knowledge. "Let me see."
She moved a couple of volumes from a shelf to the counter, searching for the books that hid behind. She retrieved a large, dusty tome and placed it before me, the book making a dull sound once it landed on the table.
The book was nothing less than enormous, a true giant of paper. Its cover was rough leather, what I could only guess was a Darvish Highcolt, and the size of the page was larger than my forearm.
I ran my fingers over the worn surface, feeling the texture of history beneath my touch. It was titled: "The Legend of Darff, All About Mother Earth's Firstborn."
I opened the cover, and the scent of ages rose to meet me—dust, ink, and the faint, earthy smell of stone. The pages were yellowed, fragile, filled with illustrations that depicted a world I had only glimpsed through the lens of Elder Rahdeas's ambitions.
Rahdeas Warend
The hammerfalls resounding all around me were the heartbeat of our oppression, a relentless, echoing rhythm that thrummed through the very stone beneath my threadbare boots.
Each metallic clang was a nail in the coffin of our hopes, each one driving home the wealth we would never touch.
The air in these low tunnels behind the Goldminers Guild's barracks was a thick, hot soup of scorched metal, dust, and the sour tang of dwarf-sweat—not the honest sweat of labor for one's own, but the exhausted, resigned sweat of those working to fill another's vault.
Furnaces roared like volcanoes, their orange light licking the rough-hewn walls and casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to twist into grasping hands ready to garrote.
Voices, sharp with command or dull with fatigue, cut through the din, orders barked by supervisors who saw not dwarves, not people, but tools possessing some Dwarven features.
And beneath it all, a symphony of strain: the grunts of workers shifting impossible weights, the shuddering gasp of bellows, the groan of overloaded carts on stone rails.
It was a cacophony of creation that only deepened our deprivation, a cruel reminder that from the fruits of this brutal symphony, we were granted only the rinds.
I moved through this chaos like a ghost, a shadow with a purpose, my back pressed against the cool, damp tunnel wall. The echoes of industry were my cover, but they were also a torment.
Behind me, I felt more than saw the presence of my friends.
Our breathing was a synchronized prayer, shallow and tight. If we succeeded, the stolen grain, the pilfered tools, the lump of unprocessed ore we aimed for, would be a lifeline.
Not just a day's bread, but weeks, months, of quieted stomachs, of sleep not haunted by the hungry whimpers of siblings or the hollow silence of a parent who had given their portion away.
But that future was a fragile crystal bridge spanning a chasm of potential disaster. On the other side stood the augmenters.
Dwarves touched by a power we could only curse or covet. Hired blades, their bodies hardened and senses sharpened by mana, their loyalty purchased by the benefactors of the Goldminers Guild: the avaricious Monolithic House Earthborn.
Just speaking their name in the dark felt like inviting a curse. Second only to the Greysunders in influence, they were a monolith of greed, their wealth dug from the earth by hands like ours, hands that would never feel the cool slide of a silver coin, only the rough grain of a loaf with rock-dust added to it.
To be caught by their enhanced enforcers would mean being made examples, our broken bodies displayed as a warning to other "Powders" who dared to question the order of things.
My own heart was a frantic drum against my ribs, a traitorous noise in the darkness. I was achingly aware of our vulnerability. Not one of us was a mage. That thought was a constant, bitter companion.
Awakening was a lottery drawn by the capricious gods, a door that remained forever shut to ninety-nine out of a hundred.
And even if that miraculous door cracked open, what then? Only one in a hundred of those could walk the path far enough to be remarkable, to become an augmenter or a conjurer whose name might one day be known.
But even the most pathetic augmenter, one who could barely strengthen their own grip, or the lowliest conjurer who might summon a sputter of flame to light a noble's pipe, lived in a different world.
They had a stipend, a cramped room, a dignity we could scarcely dream of. Their families did not starve. Their children were not considered expendable.
Magic, in any trace amount, was a free ticket out of the pit. It was a currency more valuable than gold, because it purchased hope.
But for Rahdeas Warend, hope was a different beast. It was sharp, desperate, and stole through tunnels in the dead of night.
I was an orphan of the Pits, a child of the deepest, most light-starved cave of Vildorial. The Pits were the digestive tract of the Tall City, where everything it could not use was discarded to fester.
We were the wretched, the peasants from failed surface holdings, the crippled, the magicless, the unwanted.
We were the sediment of the sediment that settled at the very bottom of dwarf society.
And from that pit, we could still look up. That was the final, exquisite cruelty. The great cavern of Vildorial soared above, a seemingly infinite blackness punctuated by the soft, false glow of phosphorescent mushrooms and the embedded mana crystals that illuminated the upper tiers.
Their light was a taunt, a faint, shimmering veil that revealed the impossible, distant jewel of Lodenhold, the palace of the Greysunders.
It hung in the upper darkness like a frozen constellation, all gleaming silver towers and bridges that looked as delicate as spider silk from here. I knew they were made of fortified stone and steel, but distance and desire softened them into a dream.
And on his balcony, a speck of gilded arrogance, would stand Boris Greysunders.
I had seen him during his speeches. Even from the abyss, you could make out the obscene opulence.
Silks that drank what little light there was and shimmered it back, imported from the plentiful lands of Sapin or the mystical forests of Elenoir, places we would only know from tattered storybooks.
His cloak was a map of avarice, sewn with gems that represented a month's labor for an entire mining crew.
But it was his beard… his beard was a masterpiece of insult.
Braided and festooned with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires and strands of pure platinum, it was a treasure hoard worn on the face. A single jewel from it, sold on whatever market, could keep a family in the Pits fed, clothed, and vaguely secure for a year.
Yet there it swung, as he addressed "the people of Darv."
His voice, magically amplified, would boom down through the cavernous city, a distorted, godlike sound.
He spoke of prosperity, of dwarven resilience, of the glory of the Houses. He never once looked down. His words washed over the upper and middle tiers, where the guild burghers and nobles lived.
To us, they were empty echoes, the thunder of a storm that would never bring us rain. He spoke, and we heard only the clink of the jewels in his beard.
It was this mockery that heated my blood now, that turned fear into a sharp, focusing anger, that fueled us. We were here, not just out of hunger, but out of a seething, silent rebellion.
The lowest cave held only two things: our sprawling, miserable slums, and the mines and guild halls of those who owned us.
The Goldminers Guild was the pinnacle of this parasitic system. Their burghers, masters of commerce and exploitation, lived in airy halls amid the middle tiers, their wealth so vast it rivalled that of the noble Houses themselves.
They were the engine, and the Earthborn were the beneficiaries, and the Greysunders were the crowned heads that blessed it all.
And we were the fuel. The people of Darv were a simple, brutal pyramid.
At the peak, the Greysunders and the nobles, swimming in legacy and magic.
Below them, the Guilds and Companies—a bustling, calculating layer of merchants, skilled artisans, and their protected workers, who lived in constant anxiety of falling but enjoyed a semblance of stability.
And at the base, holding the crushing weight of it all, was us.
The Powders. They called us that because, when you crushed us, all you got was dust. No lineage, no magic, no coin, no education. We were the inert residue, the valueless substrate.
We were not even dirt, for dirt could grow things. We were what was left after everything of worth had been extracted.
I snapped a hand back, a quick, sharp gesture. My friends froze, melting into the uneven shadows. A miner, his face grime-streaked and eyes downcast, trudged past our crevice, speaking in a low mumble to a supervisor whose gut strained against a fine leather apron.
This was our moment. We were dust, but even dust could choke an empire, if enough of it rose.
—
The smaller tunnel was a descent into the belly of the beast. It swallowed us whole, a jagged, weeping esophagus of stone just wide enough for our malnourished frames.
The adult miners, broad-shouldered and thick-limbed from a slightly better diet, would never fit.
Every breath I took here was a bitter reminder; we were literally crawling through the exhaust of our own oppression, a river of ruin flowing perpetually over our homes.
"Rahdeas."
The voice was a scratch in the dark, but the hand on my shoulder was a brand of urgency; it was Marko Felsen.
I had been moving with a tunnel vision so absolute the world had narrowed to the patch of soot-blackened stone three feet ahead.
His grip, wiry and strong, yanked me back into my body, into the perilous now. He forced me down into a crouch, my knees grinding against sharp gravel.
A jagged hole in the tunnel wall—of course even these ventilation shafts were crumbling; why waste good masonry on ducts that only carried filth to the filth?—framed a slice of the chamber beyond.
And there, a silhouette that wasn't tired or thin, but dense, solid in a way that spoke of mana-hardened flesh. An augmenter. The casual way he stood, one hand resting on the pommel of a blade, spoke of a power so inherent he didn't need to be alert.
"Yes. Sorry," I breathed..
I glanced behind him. Danna Roksson and Oleg Gaard were pressed together, a single trembling entity. Danna's small hands were clenched into fists so tight her knuckles were white bone.
Oleg's eyes darted back the way we came, already seeing the specter of capture in every shadow.
"Come on, guys," Marko whispered, his voice a strained attempt at a melody in the dark.
"We… should head back… I, I really feel unsure about this, Rahdeas." Oleg's voice was a dry leaf rustling.
Danna, wordless, nodded against his shoulder, her trust in Oleg's caution outweighing her trust in my plan.
"Head back?" Marko hissed, not turning, his gaze welded to the tunnel ahead, to the promise, however faint, that lay beyond the augmenter's post. "We have nothing. Nothing! I don't want to starve to death!"
The last word wasn't a shout, but a raw, shredded thing that seemed to tear itself from his throat. It was the confession we all lived with.
Starvation in the Pits was a slow, dimming light, a coldness that started in the toes and crept inward, a constant, gnawing presence at your center.
Marko's whole body vibrated with the force of that confession, a tremor far deeper than Oleg and Danna's shivers of doubt.
His bravery was a performance, and I was the only one close enough to see the stage fright.
I swallowed, my own throat tight. "Guys," I said. "We have planned everything. It's all going fine. We just have to take anything and then we are off, okay?"
The words felt hollow, a script. Anything. What a pathetic, vast word. Our entire future rested on the value of an unknown anything.
I looked at Marko. His expression was a battlefield. Conviction warred with desperation, and I couldn't tell which was winning.
Danna and Oleg, however, turned their faces to me. In the guttering light of our single, precious candle I saw that spark.
They were drowning in fear, and my threadbare blanket of a voice was the only thing they could cling to. I was not a leader; I was the least substantial among them.
But I had the plan. And so, in their eyes, I held the spark. They nodded, a silent, terrible transfer of faith.
We moved, the world reduced to a crawl. The tunnel constricted further, the ceiling dipping so low we had to press our bellies to the cold, wet stone.
The smoke, a grey, sentient fog, pooled in the upper part of the shaft, making each gasp a burning compromise. We breathed shallowly, trading oxygen for the sear of toxins. The candle flame guttered, almost surrendering, painting our crawling shadows as grotesque, struggling beasts on the walls.
"Here," Marko's voice was a gasp of triumph. He pulled me by my sleeve, and we huddled, a knot of ragged limbs, over an iron grate.
Below, through the rusted latticework, was a vision of impossible plenty: a small room stacked with crates, sacks, and barrels. It was a cave of wonders, a pocket of concentrated wealth that seemed to mock our tiny, starving forms peering down at it like gremlins from the ceiling.
"How do we do it?" Oleg whispered, the practical question slicing through the awe.
"We brought a rope for this," I said, my fingers already fumbling with the coarse, frayed length.
"Are you going down alone, Rahdeas?" Danna asked, her worry a warm touch in the chill.
"We don't have much choice…" Marko said, his voice grim, final. "Rahdeas himself will barely pass through, and he is the skinniest among us."
The statement was a fact, not an insult, but it landed heavily. I was a skeleton sheathed in papery skin.
Danna, though small, had the curves of beginning womanhood, the legacy of a slightly more forgiving early childhood.
Oleg and Marko had the hard, stringy muscle of constant, desperate activity. I was just… narrow.
In the world above, a dwarf's worth was in his breadth, his solidity. If seen from a distance, I could be mistaken for a stunted human child—the ultimate dwarven disgrace.
I secured the rope around my waist, the knot a clumsy, nervous thing. I looked at their faces, haloed by the feeble candlelight from behind.
I forced my spine straight, buried the coiled snake of anxiety in my gut under a layer of false ice, and gave a curt, decisive nod.
The grate came away with a gritty, metallic sigh. I peered into the room. The door—a simple oval opening sealed with a plank of wood—was shut.
"Go," I whispered, the words final.
They lowered me, hand over hand, a slow, jerky descent into the bounty. My feet touched the compacted earth floor with a soft thud.
For a moment, I just stood, dizzy.
The air here was different—dry, dusty, but free of immediate smoke. And the riches! Sacks of what might be flour or fine ore. Barrels that could hold pickles or nails. Crates stamped with strange symbols.
I scrambled to the nearest crate, one with a splintered lid. Inside, nestled in straw, were chunks of rock.
But what rock! They were a deep, venous green, a color that seemed to swallow the faint light and glow from within. They were crusted with dirt and other stone, unprocessed, raw.
The Goldminers Guild wasn't just mining gold. That was the official sanction. But greed, like a river, always finds cracks.
They were mining other minerals for other Guilds, flouting the ancient laws issued by the Greysunders that assigned specific rights.
The hypocrisy was breathtaking. The powerful broke the rules they made for us, and their crime was simply another form of profit.
I didn't have time for outrage. I grabbed as many of the green chunks as my arms could hold, their rough edges digging into my flesh.
I wanted to search the other crates, to find salt, or dried meat, or real medicine, but a primal fear screamed in my veins. I gave two sharp tugs on the rope.
The ascent was agony. The world narrowed to the strain in my arms, the bite of the rope at my waist, the terrifying slowness. Then hands were grabbing my tunic, hauling me back into the miasma of the tunnel. I spilled onto the stone, the green rocks clattering around me.
"You did it!" Danna gasped, her voice a burst of joy so pure it was painful.
"Silence!" Oleg whispered, frantic, even as Marko with careful haste replaced the grate, sealing away the treasure room.
"What even are those?" Oleg asked, poking one of the green stones.
"I have no idea," I said, panting, a wild, giddy feeling rising in my chest. "But they must be worth something if they were kept in a storage!"
"Yeah, right," Oleg said, but a hesitant smile touched his lips.
We turned, a unified creature of success, and began to crawl back, the promise of the Pit's safety beckoning. The green stones, bundled in a rag, were a palpable hope between us.
Then the world ended.
It began with a deep, visceral groan, as if the bones of the earth themselves were breaking. The tunnel around us, already a fragile thing, convulsed. Stone dust rained down in thick sheets. A crack shot across the ceiling like black lightning.
"Fast! We need to exit!" Marko's shout was swallowed by the roaring, grinding cacophony.
Tunnel vision returned, but now it was a nightmare of panicked motion. We scrambled, no longer stealthy thieves but fleeing insects. The walls seemed to pulse inward, the ceiling dropping chunks of rock that exploded around us.
And then, the ground beneath our feet simply vanished.
The quake had shattered the thin shelf of stone we traversed. One moment we were running; the next, we were in a void, tumbling through choking dust and darkness.
The impact drove the air from my lungs.
I landed on a heap of rubble, pain screaming from my ankle, my shoulder. For a second, there was only the deafening roar of collapsing stone and my own ringing silence.
It was a blizzard of grey, I couldn't see my own hands. The shouts from the mine proper were now immediate, layered—roars of pain, screams of raw terror, the authoritative, panicked bellows of overseers and augmenters trying to quell the chaos.
I heard a guild manager's voice slice through: "Get back to work! It's a minor tremor! Back to your stations!"
"Marko! Danna! Oleg!" My voice was a ragged, pathetic scrap against the din. I thrashed, crawling on the debris, my hands sweeping through the dust.
But no answer came; they were gone, buried in the same avalanche of chance that had spared me, or lost in the fog. A loneliness more profound than any I'd known in the Pits hollowed me out.
But another convulsion shook the cavern. This time, the miners' discipline shattered.
The sound that followed was of stampede—a roaring tide of desperate footfalls, the clatter of dropped tools, a unified animal cry of survival.
I saw movement through the swirling dust: a flood of silhouettes rushing towards what they thought was an exit. I scrambled away from it, instinct overriding loyalty.
If I was caught in that crush, I'd be trampled.
A thunderous BOOM sounded from deep within the mine, followed by a prolonged, grinding crash that vibrated in my teeth. A tunnel, or an entire chamber, had given way.
The screams that followed were short, sharp, and then muffled, as if a great hand had closed over mouths.
I ran. I ran like the rat I was, my injured ankle shrieking with every step, fear, a taste of copper in my mouth. I ran away from the chaos, deeper into the labyrinth of catastrophe, seeking any pocket of stillness.
I stumbled into a gallery and froze.
Ahead, a mass of miners pressed against a reinforced ore-cart track that seemed to lead upward, a bottleneck of desperation.
Through the forest of their thrashing legs, I saw the source of their terror, and my mind refused to understand it.
The mine was collapsing. Sections of the ceiling were shearing away in great slabs. But this was no accident. Directly ahead, on a broad, stable ledge carved into the living rock, was a scene from another world.
Tables were set with white cloths. Upon them gleamed silver platters bearing roasted fowl, glistening fruits, wheels of cheese. Crystal decanters held dark wine.
And seated there, as casually as if watching a theatrical performance, were members of the Goldminers Guild and, by their finer silks and haughty bearing, scions of noble Houses.
They ate. They drank. They pointed and conversed, their faces illuminated by stable, clean mana-lights, utterly untouched by the dust storm that raged below.
My stomach lurched. I wanted to vomit, to scream, to melt into the stone. This was no earthquake. This was a cleansing.
"Let us escape!"
"—are going to bury us alive!"
"No! No!"
The miners' cries were the soundtrack to this grotesque banquet. A few, the strongest and luckiest, breached the bottleneck and fled up the track to safety.
The nobles watched them go with mild interest. They were allowing a few to bear witness, to spread the tale of a "tragic collapse."
Then, a dwarf in the immaculate military uniform of the royal family, the Greysunders' crest a blaze of embroidery on his chest, strode to the edge of the ledge.
He had blonde hair and a precise goatee, his hands clasped behind his back. He surveyed the scene below with the detached interest of a man studying an anthill.
In that moment, I forgot Marko, Danna, Oleg. I forgot the pain, the fear. I was filled with a cold, silent awe at the sheer, breathtaking scale of the evil before me.
The dwarf officer gave a slight, almost bored, nod.
Multiple explosions erupted in sequential, precise detonations. The remaining ceilings were being deliberately dropped. This was the final signature on the death warrant.
The cacophony of the blasts, the screams, the grinding stone, rose to an apex—a crescendo of annihilation.
And then, a single, sharp, definitive sound cut through it all:
Clap.
And with it, a force that was not of stone or fire, but of pure, condensed will, crashed over the world.
The very air became a solid, silencing wall. The light was pressed out, as if the concept of light itself was revoked. Sound was unmade. The shuddering ground fell still from absolute submission to a greater power.
In that instant, my senses were erased. Sight, sound, touch, smell: all were replaced by a single, overwhelming, silent pressure, a profound and terrible negation.
—
A scream tore itself from my throat, raw and ragged, as I bolted upright.
My hands flew to my chest, clawing at the memory of crushing stone, only to encounter soft, clean fabric.
My breath came in frantic, heaving gulps as my eyes darted around, refusing to understand.
I was in a room, but such a room… I had never seen its like. The walls were smooth, painted a soft, soothing color that seemed to hold the light. There was a sturdy wooden desk, a woven rug on the floor in hues of deep blue and a shelf with actual books.
My gaze was snatched, irresistibly, to the window. It was a clear, unbroken pane of glass, not a shuttered arrow-slit or a grimy hole.
And beyond it… the lights of Vildorial's upper tiers shimmered. But the perspective was all wrong. I wasn't craning my neck to look up at them from the Pits.
Now I was level with them. The sight was so profoundly disorienting it felt like a punch to the gut. Lodenhold now sat within my field of vision, not a taunting dream above me, but a part of the same world I currently occupied.
I was laying on a… bed. A real bed, with a mattress that cradled my body without a single lump or spring poking through, swathed in sheets and a thick, warm blanket.
The clothes I wore were simple but whole, a tunic and trousers of soft, undyed linen that smelled faintly of soap and sunlight, a scent so alien it was almost offensive. My mind, still screaming in the dark of the mine, scrabbled for purchase.
What happened? Where is this? Is this the afterlife? A cruel trick?
My mouth hung agape, my eyes wide and stinging with shock and unspent tears. The peace of the room felt like a violence against my memory.
Then, a knock. Before I could even think to respond, the door opened.
The man who entered was not a dwarf. He was human, tall and slender as a stick, moving with a quiet grace that filled the space without dominating it.
His hair was long and black as a raven's wing and his eyes were a strange, warm grey.
He wore a tailored black uniform of a style I'd never seen, a beret sitting at a slight angle on his head, and a shoulder-length mantle that flowed with his movements.
"You are finally awake." His voice was as reassuring as his presence, melodic and calm, a balm against the frantic echoes in my skull.
He took the chair from behind the desk and brought it to sit a respectful distance to my right, lowering himself into it as if we were about to have a conversation, not as if he owned me and the space I trembled in.
"My name is Hythlodaeus," he said, and the name was strange, flowing. "It is nice to meet you, little Rahdeas. Your friends have talked much about you."
"M-my friends?" I croaked, the words scraping my dry throat.
"Yes," he confirmed, his tone gentle. "Marko, Danna, and Oleg. They have been quite worried about you. You have been asleep for a week."
He sighed then, a soft exhalation of what seemed like genuine regret.
"That was my mistake, I fear. But I find I have little patience for tyrants who do as they please with the lives of others."
His words swirled around me, making no sense. A week? Mistake? Tyrants?
"I don't understand," I whispered, the confession feeble. "How am I here?"
Hythlodaeus's expression softened further, into something akin to sorrow. "I would have preferred to simply bring all of you back to your families, of course. But… I learned you are orphans. All of you."
He stated it as a simple, sad fact, without pity that stung. "So, seeing as I must remain here in Darv for some time, I thought to myself: why not look after some children who need it?"
He spread his hands slightly, a gesture that encompassed the warm, safe room, the view of the city, the profound, terrifying peace.
"Welcome to my orphanage, Rahdeas."