STEEL ON STEEL. PARRY. BLOCK. Thrust. Dodge.
Khavi and I had been fighting side by side most of our lives. I could read him and he could read me. We were not master swordsmen, nor were we strong or graceful or empowered by magic, but we knew each other more intimately then anyone could. I’d been to his lessons, sparred against him time and time again; I knew his tricks.
I readied the Feyeater to block a thrust Khavi didn’t even know he was going to make. I retaliated, a stab right at his throat, but he was guarding before the dagger began to move. I used my shield to block my side, knowing he would strike there. I didn’t even have to hear the clank of steel on steel to know I was successful.
I stepped into his space, leaning in with my shoulder, aiming my shield at his chest. He stepped out of the way, stabbing at my exposed flank. The Feyeater was there, parrying the blow.
We stood off, panting softly in the thin air. Khavi stared me down, my rapier in his hands, readied against me.
“Are you going to burn me?” he said. “I’ve always wondered what your fire feels like.”
“Don’t tempt me,” I said.
“Why wouldn’t you? Why would you hold back? Don’t you know that I’m going to kill you if I win?”
“That’s the difference between me and you,” I said. “I don’t want to kill you.”
His lips curled back, revealing the row of his sharp, draconic teeth. “Then you’re as foolish AS YOU LOOK!”
Khavi’s deep voice boomed as he leapt forward. Rapier met shield with a loud clang, denting the round disk of my buckler. It almost penetrated, the force numbing my arm. I jabbed with the Feyeater, slicing open Khavi’s jerkin but failing to penetrate his thick scales.
“I don’t want to hurt you!” I shouted, trying to get through to the kobold beneath the rage. “I’m not your enemy!”
His reply was a mindless shriek. I jabbed forward again but overbalanced; my thrust went low, and he stepped out of the way. Instinctively I brought my buckler in close to my chest, a move that paid off as the rapier thunked into it once more. If I hadn’t positioned it just so, I would have been skewered.
He dropped the rapier, leaping forwards, claws outstretched for my throat. With my weapon low and my shield tucked into my body, I had no way of keeping him back. I dipped my head down, tucking my chin against my chest to protect my vital airway, closing my eyes to stop myself from being blinded.
Khavi crashed into me, knocking me over onto my back. The Feyeater skipped across the stone, well out of my grasp, and anger took over. We fell at each other in a screaming, biting, clawing frenzy, rolling around on the ground, our tails entangling and our teeth chomping at whatever exposed scales we could find. The bandage on my forearm tore off, the gold-splattered cloth sticking to the ground as we thrashed around on the stone.
Khavi’s great strength won out, though. He rolled on top of me, his snout an inch away from mine, baring his teeth. I snarled back at him, kicking and jerking underneath him, but couldn’t get free.
“Damn you, Khavi. Damn you!”
“You’re in trouble,” he hissed in my face, gripping my arms and keeping them pinned. “I could kill you right now.”
“Could you?” I snarled right back at him. “Kill me just like No-Kill, kneeling and pleading for death?” It wasn’t wise to taunt him, but I was angry. “You barely had the courage to kill a gnome, let alone me.”
“Liar!”
“You hesitated right before you did it. I saw it. You didn’t want to kill her either.”
“I did not hesitate.”
“You did.”
“Did not.”
“Did too!”
“Did not!”
I burst out laughing. The absurdity of the situation was just too much for me. Then Khavi started laughing too. That made me laugh more. Soon we were both helpless on the floor, our fight forgotten and our anger evaporated.
“Fine, fine,” I said between bouts of gasping for breath, “you didn’t hesitate.”
“Maybe I did,” replied Khavi, his chest heaving for air, “just a little.”
“Just a little.”
“But not too much,” I said. “Just the right amount.”
“Just the right amount.”
I used my tail to push back onto my feet. Weak from laughter, I could hardly breathe, but I still helped Khavi stand.
“I’m sorry,” he said between gasps for breath. “I didn’t mean what I said. You’re not a gnome.”
I couldn’t help but not feel angry anymore. “Don’t worry about it. This trip has been quite taxing on both of us.”
“And I’m sorry about burning the map.” Khavi extended his arms and I hugged him, squeezing him gently.
We stood there for a time, then I let Khavi go and patted him on the snout. “We’ll find a way there. It’s close anyway.”
“What about the gnome?”
Pewdt would be a long way ahead of us by now, although we didn't know. He might have even been close enough to hear the laughter and the fighting.
“What you said before was right—tears can’t bring back the dead, but he has a live egg. One of us. We owe it to Faala and Jedra to get that egg back, we owe it to Atikala.” I closed my eyes, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. “But we can’t do it today. Pewdt is fleeing to familiar terrain, to allies perhaps. We need allies too if we’re to track him down. We need to get to Ssarsdale.”
Khavi mulled it over. “I agree. If Pewdt was going to kill the egg, he would have done it already. Revenge can come later. It’s best left to simmer for a while anyway, like a good stew.”
“Like a good stew,” I said.
At my insistence we buried Jedra, Faala, and the remains of the egg. Khavi didn’t understand why, and I tried to explain it, but I don’t think I got through to him. Fortunately, though, he seemed to be in a good mood.
He helped dig the graves, said some words, and then we left. Our path was clear, upwards and ever upwards. We climbed where we could, backtracking occasionally when the limestone passages turned around and began to descend again, but after a time we ran into a significant stumbling block.
The blue crystals that had lit our passage the entire way began to disappear.
Fresh air came from the darkness. Khavi could smell it too. There was no way around, or at least, no way we could determine without a map.
So we stood at the threshold of the gloom, straining to see, but there was nothing but inky blackness ahead.
It was the Veil of Atikala all over again. A visual but incorporeal barrier that halted our progress, but teased us with the victory ahead. All we had to do was walk through it, and we would be closer to the surface than we ever realistically thought possible. We were within half a mile.
Half a mile on level ground was an easy jaunt. Somewhat more difficult travelling upward, but achievable. We had come this far.
Half a mile in the dark? Terrifying.
The scent of clear air wafting in from the darkness mocked our cowardice.
“Can’t you magic us up some light?” moaned Khavi.
“I could,” I said. That had been my very first spell…light, a common magic. Yellow was my colour, naturally, as was most of my magic when it manifested.
“So do it already.”
I flexed my left hand, my spellcasting hand, at my side, keeping my shield close to my body. “Tzala warned me against it. Spellcasting is loud, and the light is hard to extinguish if we need to hide.”
“Harder than glowbug juice?”
“About the same. But it won’t burn us.”
“So it’s better then.” Khavi ground his teeth. “Just use your magic already, if someone hears you, I’ll deal with it.”
It was a good suggestion. I inhaled, focusing my concentration, arranging my hands into the arcane symbols required to evoke the spell, then spoke the draconic words of power that would banish the darkness.
Light!
A ball of yellow light appeared a
t the very end of my claw. I held it aloft, the fiery light illuminating the passage ahead, which sloped upwards.
“I didn’t realise Khavi, the proud kobold warrior, slayer of gnomes and bringer of dragon indigestion, was afraid of the dark.”
He shot me an angry glare. “I am not afraid of the dark.”
Our recent quarrel was still fresh in my memory, so I let the subject drop. I stepped forward into the tunnel, Khavi right beside me.
Despite my magic illuminating the way, I was distinctly ill at ease with our passage. Atikala had always been lit by the light of a million glowbugs and the passages above it by the strange blue crystals, but this darkness seemed complete and unyielding. The surface world was shutting us out, preventing those entombed below from travelling to witness its beauties and its horrors.
The dark stoked my fears, stories of the surface pushing their way into my mind, kicking at my instincts incessantly. This was a bad plan. The surface was repugnant, unwelcoming. Much better to live within Drathari’s warm embrace. The surface was cold. Unforgiving.
A shadow moved at the edge of my vision. I almost shouted a warning, but it was just a reflection off a pool of water.
More water. Was the surface a world of liquid?
Khavi’s apprehension was palpable. He gripped his spear with claws of iron, eyes darting around, seeking invisible enemies.
“It’s not far,” I said, trying to comfort him.
“Just shut up and walk.”
So I did. I put a foot forward, and my spell expired, plunging us into darkness.
“Don’t panic,” I said, but it was too late.
“RUN!” shouted Khavi, the terror in his voice genuine.
So much for not being heard. I went to shout something else, to try to reason with him, but he slammed into me, knocking me onto my back.
“There’s something here!” he shrieked. “A monster! I felt it!”
His spear thrashed above me, slicing through the air, jabbing and stabbing uncomfortably close to my prone body. I rolled onto my chest, trying to squirm away, but the straps of my haversack lurched, pulling me violently into the air.
“I got it! I got it!”
“Shut up!” I shouted, “That’s me!”
“Ren?”
He dropped me snout first, right onto the hard stone.
“Are you okay? I smell blood!”
“That’s my nose,” I said, my voice muffled. “You speared my backpack.” I pinched my snout to stop the bleeding.
“Where’s the monster?”
“There is no monster, you brainless idiot! It was me all along!”
He grabbed my shoulders, dragging me to my feet. “Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Wait, let me recast the spell!”
“There’s no time! There’s no time!”
He began dragging me along. I couldn’t cast being jerked and jostled around, so we ran together, stumbling blindly in the dark. I ran straight into a wall, but Khavi continued to drag and pull me along.
Light came from the passage up ahead. I ran towards it, Khavi running beside me, and the light grew brighter and brighter.
And brighter.
We stumbled out into the most fierce burning light that I had ever experienced. It was as though I had conjured my magical ball directly inside my eye; I could see nothing but a bright white sheet that turned to red as I snapped my eyes closed.
“I’m blind!” cried Khavi. I could hear him kicking around, stumbling, then he fell over.
“Wait,” I said, “just stand still! Your eyes will adjust!”
Slowly, reluctantly, I forced open my eyelids.
There was no ceiling above me, save for a sheet of brightness. From on high, far higher than I had ever looked, I could see a white-hot crescent of light. A sea of other lights, far too many to count, surrounded the glowing curve high above. Everything around me was bathed in such illumination, such brilliance, that the world seemed to sparkle with energy. Everything was shown to me in such amazing detail and with such raw and vivid colour that I could only stare at it in wonder, drinking in everything even though the light pained me.
Columns of a strange material grew out of the ground, brown and covered in some kind of green moss. The ground underneath my feet was a similar moss, thick and swirling around my knees, the brightest and most vivid green I had ever seen. In the far distance, impossibly far, were enormous mounds of earth, each topped with a white point. Teeth? Were we inside the mouth of the world?
I remembered seeing things that looked like teeth on Tyermumtican’s map. The entrance to Ssarsdale was that way. We had a direction.
I exhaled. To my shock, I could see my own breath, a thin white fog, just like those of the humans and Pewdt. Was this the curse of the surface? Would we breathe poison air for all our lives? I tried not to breathe in where I had exhaled, waving away the mist.
That’s when I caught the scent of the air and forgot all about my poisoned breath. It was the breath of the Gods, as fresh and clear as any I’d ever experienced. There was something about the it, something rich and so full of life that I couldn’t help but breathe it in by the lungful as my eyes tried to see everywhere at once.
This was a place of beauty and wonder, not of terror.
“Khavi,” I whispered, “open your eyes.”
He was clinging to the ground. He seemed to fear he would fall off and be flung upwards into the void. “It hurts! It hurts to live!”
“First you’re afraid of the dark; now you’re afraid of the light?”
He hissed at me, then cracked open his watery eyes. “It’s too bright!”
“You’ll get used to it,” I said. “Just keep your eyes open; it doesn’t matter if they water.”
I caught motion in the corner of my eye. A small creature, white and brown, covered in a brown fuzz. It was like hair but not. It had two long ears that twisted around, catching every sound.
“Hail and well met!” I called. “I am Ren, and this is Khavi. We’ve come from the underworld.”
The creature didn’t reply, but it looked straight at me.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Khavi, struggling to see.
I pointed. “There. Don’t you see it? Wait—there’s another one.”
Was it reinforcements? Another one of the creatures, then another, joined the first. They all watched me.
“We mean you no harm. We wish to journey to Ssarsdale.”
The creatures watched me for a moment longer, then began to eat the strange green mold that grew everywhere.
“I don’t think they speak draconic,” said Khavi, his eyes finally open, squinting heavily in the glare.
“I don’t think they speak anything. I think they’re some kind of carapaceless insect.”
“Maybe this world is different,” said Khavi, “maybe it’s bright unless some kind of un-glowbugs create darkness to prevent your eyes from burning.”
“I don’t think these are anything like glowbugs or un-glowbugs, whatever they are. They only have four legs. Look, see, they eat the mold then hop away.”
“Hop?” Khavi hissed faintly. “What kind of creature moves by hopping?”
“It doesn’t matter. Come on, on your feet. We need to get going to Ssarsdale. It’s this way.”
We set off for the distant teeth, our pace slowed by the thick moss and the strange stones that thrust up to the sky. As we travelled I found one that had been tipped over, the inside of it more like bone than anything I had ever seen, the outer ring a thick hide.
Worldbones, I called them. They reminded me of the spines on our heads. Was the surface of Drathari a giant kobold’s head, and had we crawled out of its gullet?
I kept a watchful eye on the impossibly high ceiling of this place, expecting it to fall down on top of us at any moment, and Khavi did the same. We walked with our heads high, squinting against the bright light coming from the burning sliver high above us, so we did not notice the presence
of buildings and structures until we were quite close.
They were similar to our own but much bigger. Everything seemed oversized, the windows twice as big, the doors huge and imposing, the ceilings extravagantly high.
Sticks with flame on them, versions of the ones we had seen the tall monsters carrying underground, lit the area with even more light than the brilliant light sources above. We could see the faint outlines of figures moving around in the brightness, casting faint shadows across the ground. They would carry their own light, nearly blind creatures stumbling around in a world too bright to comfortably see in. Occasionally I would hear voices, boisterous laughing and chuckling.
The entire village was a beacon of light drawing us in.
“Is it Ssarsdale?” asked Khavi.
“I don’t think so. It’s so…bright. No kobold city would be like this. Besides, Ssarsdale’s underground.”
“It’s strange.” He shook his head. “I don’t like it. Let’s go around.”
“No, we should investigate,” I said. “They might be able to help us.”
“Look how big they are,” said Khavi. “Look how tall their buildings are. Nothing that big could ever be good.”
“Just come with me and try not to act threatening.” I steeled myself, took a deep breath of the impossibly sweet and rich air, and then strode forward towards the brightly lit village, my claws at my sides, and my posture relaxed and comfortable.
I should not have been so careless.
ACT III
A Distant World of Wonder and Terror