Chapter 10

The Island of Rauros, if looked at without its protective covering of jungle-thick foliage – like a kind of disk that bulged upwards in the middle – a volcanic island that had spiked up and up and up before the Chanti civilization had settled it then capped the immense amounts of magical energies that flowed through the volcano for their own. Buried deep in the island were impossibly vast magical machines that transformed heat to mana to heat once again – using it all to power whatever it was the Chanti had wished to run off the volcano. This much, Sari knew quite well from her reading. What she hadn’t expected...

“Whoa,” Charlotte whispered.

... was just how big the space underneath the volcanic mountain would be. She, Charlotte and their native guide, Zarua, stood at the edge of a curving pathway that snaked out from the Chanti bathhouse. In ages past, this would have gone past chambers of delicate stone and crystal constructed beneath the mountain. In the modern age, those stone chambers had crumbled away and fallen aside from the passageway, which cut across a vast space that seemed to go down and down forever, until it reached glittering blue water that spread to either side of the walkway which, Sari perceived, was merely the very top of a kind of vast dam or sluice-gate. There were no railings, but there were a few scant, broken off stairs that led off into yawning emptiness.

There was more light than Sari had expected, as well. The water came from a curving harbor-like cut out in the eastern side of the room, letting the sunlight shine in from beyond the belly of the mountain. The smell of sea salt tingled on her nose, and the crashing of waves against the sides of the walkway was loud enough to be heard even all the way up here.

“What was this room?” Charlotte asked, looking around herself.

“I dunno,” Zarua said, shrugging her broad shoulders. “I know that the end of the walkway leads into the tunnel system itself. The roof...” She pointed upwards. “Was once a lava caldera that the Chanti drained away. That’s why there’s this empty space. Don’t fall off the sides. From here, the water’s harder than diamond if you hit it.”

She started to walk forward, bare feet slapping on stone.

“Well, at least the walkway is big enough,” Sari said. Ten feet seemed large enough when you had walls. Without either, it felt painfully thin. She started forward, Charlotte walking behind her.

“There are some serious cracks up ahead,” Rana called out ahead, floating to the side of the walkway with her casual disregard for gravity and Sari’s newfound fear of heights – though to be fair, anyone would be afraid of these heights, Sari thought.

“I-Is this quite stable?” Sari called ahead to Zarua.

“Well, there are some jumps. Explorers have gone past them, so they can’t be that bad,” Zarua said – before coming to a stop. Charlotte and Sari peeked past her shoulders and Charlotte let out a most unladly like yelp and curse.

“Well fuck that,” she exclaimed.

Sari measured the distance between the lip of the walkway and when the walkway continued – for there was a massive triangular chunk of the walk that had simply fallen into the sea below, vanishing forever beneath the waves. “That’s a fifteen foot clear jump,” she said, softly. “Or we climb down into the dip...” She winced at that idea – the chunk that had been broken off had left a seriously treacherous climb down, with plenty of chances to slip out of the crack and down into the waves below.

“Explorers have come back too!” Zarua said, sounding defensive. “They wouldn’t have lied about that. And besides. It can’t be that hard to climb down and...”

“Uh, Sari?” Rana said.

“Or maybe you can use a pole to ... to like ... jump across?”

“Sari!”

Sari jerked her head around and saw that Rana was peering down into the waters. Sari steeled herself, stepped to the edge of the walkway, and then peered down into the blue waters that swirled to the inner side of the walkway. It looked like the water was just doing its normal thing down there, sloshing and bobbing in time with whatever was let through the lower levels of the walkways structure – for all Sari knew there were vast underwater gates built into the thing that let fish and sharks swim between the inner harbor and the outer harbor.

“I saw something,” Rana said.

“Well, I-” Sari stopped.

The water surged. Broke. And something started to move up and out of it, something vast and dark. Sari stepped backwards as a column of flesh and muscle and gleaming scales lifted from the waters with a kind of majestic, glacial slowness. Enough water to drown a dozen men cascaded off every part of the long, blunt snout, while huge, trailing, bio-luminescent whiskers throbbed and pulsed with an eerie attentiveness as the vast, slitted eyes of the beast narrowed upon Sari. The creature ... was ... was...

“That’s a big sea serpent,” Sari whispered.

“It looks mad,” Rana said.

Sari wracked her mind, trying to remember everything she knew about the aquatic relations to all other draconic creatures. Like Drakkons, they were debased and corrupted repetitions of the celestial Nine Dragons, but ... well, since sea serpents only troubled sailors and even then only rarely, not a great deal had been written down about their intelligence or their temperament. Sari lifted her hands, slowly, while Charlotte and Zarua stepped to her sides, both of them standing behind her.

“We’re just passing through,” Sari said, her voice sounding echoingly loud in the strange, eerie silence of the moment.

The sea serpent sniffed at the air with vast gulps of in-drawn air. Then it shook its head, sending water glittering in huge, hazy clouds, and then growled and bared, revealing teeth nearly as big as Sari was. It let loose a huge, loud roar and Sari yelped. “Run!” She turned back, heading towards the entrance that they had come from – but the sea serpent reacted with an almost petulant fury. Its massive tail swept out and cracked into the walkway that spanned the distance between where Sari stood and the exit – and the ancient Chanti stone exploded into a spray of black powder. Sari yelped and fell to her belly as Charlotte and Zarua dropped as well, both of them clinging with all their might to what little purchase the walkway gave them.

The whole stone structure crumbled and groaned – and Sari saw that now a yawning gulf was hanging open between her and the exit. No one could jump that. She craned her head backwards and saw that the already weakened portion of the bridge ahead of them was crumbling away, crashing down into the water with a low, grinding roar. The sea serpent drew back, mouth opening as he seemed to let out a low, grinding rumble of a laugh, echoing up from the depths of its immense body. Sari started to stand up and felt, as her weight shifted, the entire ground beneath her feet shifted as well.

“Uh, Sari, be very ... very careful,” Rana shouted to her over the din.

Sari realized the solution and knew it was going to make Rana cover her face. “Everyone, get ready to jump!”

“What!?” Zarua shouted, while Charlotte scrambled to her feet. Sari leaned forward, stepping towards the edge of the chunk of wall they stood on. The stone creaked, groaned, and then started to tip forward as the sea serpent swung its tail against the far wall of the inner chamber. The impact boomed out and stalactites, shook free, dropped. One plunged and seemed to fall directly down towards Sari’s head before instead whipping past the leaning walkway and vanishing into the water with an immense splash. But by now, her momentum had been added to the walkway chunk she stood on and it was falling forward. She leaped from the ground as it became slanted – and thanks to the movement of the chunk, she was actually closer to the far end of the walkway than she had been when she had started.

Sari landed, rolled, and came to her feet, turning around to see Charlotte landing with a heavy grunt next to her, and Zarua grabbing frantically for the edge of the broken walkway. The orcess slapped against the stone, her hands scrabbling. Sari grabbed her wrists as Rana shouted: “Leave her! You’re more important!”

“Ah don’t let me fall don’t let me fall!” Zarua shouted, her legs kicking as Sari worked her feet, dragging the other girl up and over the lip as the walkway crumbled to pieces in the center of the room – and the sea serpent drew back, divining that they were going to escape.

“Run!” Rana screamed as Sari got Zarua’s feet under her, and then they all three ran towards the exit.

A shadow fell on them – the serpent lunging forward.

They reached the door.

The sea serpent crashed home and the impact brought the ceiling down with a roar.

“Can you see anything?”

“No.”

“Okay, good. I’m not blind. Ow.”

There was a glint then a hiss of sparks and then, at last, the light caught as Charlotte held up her palm, a glowing orb of white light lifting into the air as she looked around herself. The tunnel behind had collapsed and the stone ceiling was showing dozens of cracks and riven breaks. Zarua moaned as she pushed herself to her feet, while Sari laid on her back, sighing softly, as Rana glared down at her.

“Risking yourself for anyone else right now is a bad call,” Rana said.

“I didn’t know you cared,” Sari muttered, rolling onto her belly, then pushing herself slowly upwards with a groan. She looked around the tunnel that they found themselves in – and her brows knit. She reached into her belt pouch, drawing out the Chanti crystal. “Charlotte, dim the light.” She whispered. Charlotte gulped, looking around herself in the quiet, white illumination she provided. It was clear she didn’t want to go back into the blackness. But, with a grim expression on her face, she reached out and cupped her hand around the orb of white light she had conjured. She smothered it and the corridor plunged into utter blackness again.

Save for a faint blue light that glinted along the walls. Sari stepped towards that light, holding her crystal towards it, and smiled as she saw the light growing brighter. She touched the wall with the Chanti crystal and the light flared even brighter as the complex they stood within actually came to life. Sari laughed, softly.

“I didn’t know this stuff still worked,” Zarua said, quietly.

“Well, I hoped the internal machines would,” Charlotte said. “But even these outer level systems are functioning!”

“Come on,” Sari said. She slid the gemstone back into her pouch and started to walk forward, holding in one of her hands her staff, which she extended to its full length. It clicked as she used it as a walking stick, striding forward into the corridor – and soon began to see the sense of this place. There were chambers that ran off the main corridor, full of arcane crystals and ancient machines – devices that were made to monitor and adjust the flows of the ocean water around the island. Reading some of the runes granted tantalizing hints to what they might be ... and if Sari had years, she might have figured out one tenth of what this place did.

She didn’t have years.

She struck on, having to grab onto Charlotte to drag her onward.

Finally, they came to a rectangular staircase, which circled around and around and around the interior of a column that shot straight upwards to the higher levels of this Chanti complex. Here, the light of the glowgems wasn’t needed, for there was a straight beam of brilliant white sunlight, shining down towards them like a beckoning hand. The only problem was, well ... whatever had knocked in the roof had also done a number on the stairs and the walls. Several walls had crumbled inwards, allowing roots and vines to grow in from the jungles that seeded the exterior of Rauros, while the stairs had several gaps as huge as fifteen feet, twenty in some cases – vertically if not horizontally. What meant...

“We’re stuck down here,” Charlotte groaned. “I don’t know any fly spells.”

“Maybe we can find another shaft?” Zarua suggested.

“That’s what she said,” Rana said, chuckling.

Sari, though, had dropped her gaze to the bottom of the stairs. The floor here was flooded – water must have been dribbling along the walls from that opening up at the top. That water was what had concealed the bones until she took a closer look. Her finger lifted as she worked her night vision cantrip – and saw that the bones were definitely orcish. And one of those skeletal fingers were clutching a curved chunk of wood. Sari took it from the water and lifted it up and to her shock ... rather than a rotting and warped thing, the water cascaded off a bow that looked as new as the day it had been carved.

“This is fine orcish craftsmanship,” she said, quietly. “It has to be magic.”

“Well, that’s what happened to one of the explorers all right,” Zarua said, picking the skull up. She looked up again, measuring distances. “Fell off the stairs, it looks like.”

“Looks like the Second and Fourth Dragon’s magic is woven through it,” Charlotte said. “The Earth and the Moon. What a curious combination.”

“There’s a sliver of the Ninth in there too,” Sari said, evaluating the bow with her own careful eye. “No string.” She plucked at where the string would have been then laughed as a glittering line of green light appeared. She drew the string back, as if she had an arrow knocked, and lo, an arrow of glowing silver light appeared in the bow. She let the string go slack without loosing it and the arrow vanished. “Get back!” She said and Charlotte and Zarua both sloshed through the ankle deep water to get out of the way.

Sari aimed down the corridor, knocked, then loosed. The arrow shot off, becoming a glowing bead of silver light at the end of the shadowed corridor. However, it also let behind a hissing noise and a line of green light which, once the arrow had struck with an audible tink against stone, flashed and transformed into something brown and thin. The whole assemblage dropped to the ground with a whump and Sari, frowning, grabbed it and yanked it up.

“Rope?” Charlotte asked.

“Kinky,” Rana purred, predictably, as Sari hauled on the rope. It was thin and light and as fine as an elven weave. The faint clattering of metal on stone told her, well before she had finished spooling the rope back, what it was she was bringing back – but she still grunted with appreciation as she dragged back the arrow. Which had become ... well ... a normal ass arrow. She held the arrow up, then grinned as she looked at the bow.

“Well, isn’t that neat,” she said, laughing.

“And how does it help us?” Zarua asked, frowning, while Sari knocked and loosed another silver dart. This one thudded into a wooden root at the top of the shaft. A moment later, a rope was wafting back and forth before Zarua’s nose, dangling there like an invitation. Sari grinned at her brightly as Zarua stepped from the wall, then yanked on the rope, then put her full weight on it. She bobbed above the water, her knees tucked against her chest.

“Can someone carry me?” Charlotte asked, quietly, as Zarua started to laugh.

“Orcish craftsmanship!”

Climbing was not a single shot and they were done. Instead, they had to stop every once and a while at the surviving bits of stairs – which required testing their weight before stepping onto them, and then measuring out more distance, then climbing more. Sari had to tie off harnesses by creating more ropes (she found that the rope was as long as the arrow went before it struck something, meaning that she could actually make shorter and longer lengths by adjusting her targets.)

In the end, though...

It was mostly slow and frustrating and tiring. And when they emerged from the top, Sari took a moment to just enjoy fresh sea breeze after an eternity in a hot, sun beaten shaft of stone. Here, she looked around herself and saw that the shaft had once been a way to ascend up past a curving cliff face that itself cupped the ... she did some mental math and whistled. They were on the far side of the island from the boat now, climbing up the forbidding Cliffs of Insanity (as they were marked on the maps.) It was less bad now that they were actually here though, because paths had been cut into the cliff, like the scored lines on freshly baked bread.

If she looked up, she saw more cliff. But if she looked out, she could see the endless waves of the Eastern Ocean, stretching out to the edge of the world, where journals of sailors claimed water roared off endlessly into the void in ship killing, continent smashing waterfalls. Some claimed the world was round – but no one had yet proved it one way or the other. Sari sometimes wondered what it would be like to sail off and away from the Free Cities and the shattered mainland...

“What are you thinking about?” Charlotte asked, panting softly. She was laying on her back, clearly more wrung out by the climb than the series of muscular orcs who had ravaged her body earlier.

“Just ... the horizon,” Sari said, shaking her head. “Do you ever think the Free Cities and the Silver Princes will ever get the realm back from what it was before the Shattering?”

Charlotte sat up. She sighed. “Well, I should say yes, being that I’m of the House of Falcon. Our lands were once all along the southlands. Textiles. Textiles! Textiles!” She spread her palms far and wide, her fingers stretching out.