by Rosie Scott
“I have,” Azazel agreed, before glancing over to the rest of us. One by one, he introduced the others Corvina had not yet met. Afterward, he asked, “Has word made it here of Quellden's liberation?”
“It has,” Corvina nodded, her braided dreadlocks brushing by her shoulders. “A few weeks ago.” Her eyes found mine, and she asked curiously, “You did not stay in Quellden to lead it?”
“No. I was not taking the underground for me,” I explained. “Calder Cerberius is now in power. His name while he lived here in Hazarmaveth was Alastor. Have you heard of him?”
“I had not while he was a slave,” Corvina admitted, “Though I have heard his name since you were here last. Word is spreading.” She crossed her dark arms over her chest. “Do you believe he will make a good leader?”
“Yes,” I answered honestly. “Calder cares about the Alderi and believes in freedom for all. I helped him build up a court of both men and women in Quellden to help him with politics and diplomacy while I was there.”
“Diplomacy? For the underground?” Corvina chuckled lightly. “That will be a first. Do you think the surface will take us seriously?”
“I have done my best to start the ball rolling for negotiations between the underground and Nahara,” I informed her. “We are allied with Nahara—as well as the underground, now. Nahara is isolated on its continent. I think they will seriously consider a relationship with you here. The prince there is like a brother to me, and he trusts my judgment. Calder sent diplomats there back in Red Moon.”
Corvina stared at me a moment, in thought. I wondered if she doubted me, though when she spoke next, her voice was laced with admiration. “Thank you, Kai.” Her black eyes moved to the others. “And all of you. What is it that you go by?”
“We are the Seran Renegades,” I replied, before jerking a thumb back to Anto. “His idea, mostly.”
Corvina chuckled softly. “I will spread your name here. If we ever hear that you are nearby and in need of aid, perhaps we can send some people your way.”
“I appreciate that. Thank you.” I hesitated. “Though, I'd appreciate it if any assassination contracts sent through on my life were quickly pitched as well.”
Corvina laughed heartily at that. “I'll see what I can do.” She glanced over to Azazel. “After all, you've brought him back safely. Do you need a place to stay, Azazel?”
The archer shook his head lightly. “I appreciate the offer, Corvina, but I am not here to stay. I will be leaving with Kai.”
Corvina tilted her head. “Truly? Have you learned death magic?”
“No. I have learned of friendship, and I would like to learn of freedom.”
Corvina nodded, though her eyes were moist with unshed tears. “I am happy for you, Azazel. You will love the surface. Arrayis is vast. It is unlike anything you have ever seen before.” She appeared to want to tell him more, but she held back. “I will let you discover that for yourself.”
Azazel smiled softly at her. “It is hard for me to imagine it being much different than here.”
“Oh, it is,” she assured him, before reaching out and holding his arm with a friendly hand. “I wish the best for you.”
“Thank you, Corvina,” the archer replied. “Not just for your good wishes, but...if it weren't for your assistance, I would have stayed in that brothel and wouldn't have had the chance to learn the things I did. It was all part of a chain of events that led to this.” He motioned toward the group of us.
“I would do it all again in a heartbeat, brother.” She patted his arm, before finally pulling back. It seemed as though even the most sympathetic of the Alderi were not ones for physical affection.
“Take care of Hazarmaveth for us,” I told her.
“I will,” Corvina promised. “I never expected a surface-dweller to care so much about the injustices of the underground like you have, Kai. I had been waiting almost five hundred years for something to change. Now that it has, I won't let it go easily.”
We left Hazarmaveth for the last time after saying our final goodbyes to Corvina. Over the night we'd stayed there, we had learned more of the city's progress. Hazarmaveth had received an influx of Alderi beastmen from the wildlands over the past moon. Many of them had wanted to move back home to the underground now that it was safe, and were encouraged by the letter Vallen had written to Silvi long ago while we stayed in Thanati. I was sure more beastmen would move here over time as word spread over the wildlands of the takeover. Over the next few years, Calder's growing army could diversify. Already, both men and women were allowed to fight outside of slavery, which doubled the potential soldiers from their numbers of just last year. And now, they could learn elemental magic and blood mixing.
There had also been gossip of a deranged Vhiri woman who had rushed through the city not long before we'd gotten there. With a heavy heart, I knew it had been Jayce. She was lost and directionless without the brother she'd shared her life with for three centuries because he had taken care of her and kept her grounded. All signs pointed to her retreating back to the wildlands. After all, she'd been kicked out of Quellden for being a risk to its people, and Eteri would not have her. I could only hope that returning to Tenesea would allow her peace. Vallen's apartment would be just as he left it, and perhaps she would find comfort in that. I doubted we would ever see her again, but I hoped in my heart that she would eventually recover.
None of us had ever utilized the tunnel leading to Eteri from Hazarmaveth, of course, so we didn't know when we could expect to finally emerge from its depths. The entrance tunnel to the split between Thanati and Hazarmaveth had only taken us about a day to traverse, but this one was much longer. We walked up a slight incline for a few days, and the longer we traveled, the darker it became. Over time, the bioluminescent fungi became sporadic and then disappeared altogether, its growth no longer fueled by humidity. The blackish-gray stone that once surrounded us near the city lightened into a dark brown. The food here was non-existent, for the rats did not scurry nearer the surface, and the edible mushrooms no longer sprouted from the brown stone. We had stocked up on food from the merchants of Hazarmaveth, but we had to keep it hidden from Nyx because she could have eaten our reserves by herself.
The closer we traveled to the surface of Eteri, the more we talked about it. Despite the fatigue of travel, Jakan became bubbly and excited to see his homeland again, filling the tunnel with energy as he spoke of it.
“On the northernmost points of the highlands, it can be very sunny and warm, but when you're in the grasslands, it tends to be windy,” Jakan rambled, as Anto chuckled softly at his excitement. “It's like a perfect mix. Cerin, you'll love the plains. The winds there keep it cool, and the surrounding cliffs tend to cast most of it in shadow. Your snow elf skin will love it! I know how much you hated the dry heat of Nahara.”
The necromancer chuckled. “I'm sure I'll love it, Jakan.”
“Snow elf?” Azazel pondered aloud. “What is that? I haven't heard of it.”
“Have you heard of the Icilic?” Cerin replied.
“It sounds familiar, but distantly,” the archer admitted.
“The Icilic are the snow elves,” Cerin explained. “They live isolated in Glacia to the north.”
“You are from Glacia?” Azazel asked. I found his ignorance of the surface world oddly endearing.
“No...” Cerin trailed off, before a huff. “It's hard to explain. My Icilic mother was from Glacia. My father was a human from Chairel. I was born and raised there. I have never seen Glacia, myself. The Icilic want me dead. They don't believe in diluting their bloodline.”
“Like the gods,” Azazel said, remembering what I'd told him of my own blood.
“Right.”
“I am so used to the evils of the underground that sometimes I overlook how the surface must have its problems as well,” the archer admitted. “We never had problems with half-breeds in the underground. I don't see why it is an issue at all. I would think that mixing the bloodlines w
ould bring people together. After all, to get a half-breed...” Azazel trailed off, before shrugging.
“Two people have to be together,” Nyx finished, making a crude gesture with both hands.
“It's not always consensual,” Anto pointed out, thinking of the circumstances behind his conception.
“I would assume not,” Azazel acknowledged softly. “I apologize if my ignorance to this all irks you. I feel like leaving the underground is like being reborn completely.”
The archer's words reminded me of Calder's to me long ago in Silvi. “I was born here, just sixty or so years ago,” he had said at the time, talking about his escape to the surface. It made more sense to me now.
“How much did you know of the surface as a slave?” I asked Azazel, curious.
“Very little,” he replied. “Anything I did know was told to me by the sympathizers. The surface was always kept mysterious to us males. Perhaps to limit our knowledge to keep us from running to it. Perhaps to instill fear. I always viewed the surface as being a dangerous place. After all, many assassins would leave Hazarmaveth and never come back after failing at their missions. It was as if the surface simply claimed them.”
“Did you ever look up through the ventilation shafts to see the sky?” I questioned, next.
“Yes, out of curiosity when I could,” Azazel confessed. “But I have to say it only confused me. Sometimes the shafts led to pitch blackness, and sometimes I could see a smidgen of blue light.”
Blue light. I supposed that would be how I would see the daytime sky if I'd lived my whole life underground. Perhaps Azazel thought the surface world would be covered in fungi like his home, and that was what created the light.
“Eteri is the perfect place to emerge onto the surface,” Jakan told the archer. “The land is open and vast. It's like the opposite of the underground. It feels like you can see forever in each direction.”
“That's...hard to imagine,” Azazel murmured.
“What city is Eteri's capital?” I asked Jakan.
“Mistral,” the thief replied. “If you want to go there first to try to petition Queen Tilda, we'll have to head south once we exit the tunnel. Mistral is located on the inner side of the Orna Cliffs of southwest Eteri. If we head around the cliffs, we'll eventually come to Ternion Trail, which leads to all three major cities, so we can take the road from there.”
“Where is Welkin?” I inquired next, remembering it to be Jakan's hometown.
“Oh, much farther north,” he said.
“Will you be okay if we travel to Mistral first, then?” We'd already had to put off our visit to Eteri, and Jakan had been immensely patient. The war would not rest, but I wanted him to be happy.
“Kai, I'll just be happy to see Eteri again. Don't worry about going to Welkin right away,” Jakan encouraged, skipping happily over to grab me into a side hug as we walked. “After all, I'll be making it there alive, so I won't have to haunt you like I said I would back in the wildlands.”
Cerin chuckled before he said, “As a random arrow flies through the tunnel and kills you where you stand.”
Jakan laughed. “That'd be just our luck, wouldn't it? Hopefully, Eteri will be better to us than the wildlands were.”
“You had trouble before you came underground?” Azazel questioned.
“Nothing but trouble,” I replied, before I started to tell the archer the story, from our departure in Al Nazir to traveling with Calder through the wildlands. Just as I began to wrap up the story by telling him of meeting Ricco in Silvi, the first remnants of sunlight began to brighten the tunnel ahead.
Jakan and Anto talked amongst themselves in excitement and relief. I quieted, letting Azazel experience his first taste of freedom in peace. The archer was silent with his black eyes stuck to the light at the end of the tunnel, and he blinked only sparingly. All of us picked up our pace, eager to feel the warmth of sunlight for the first time in over a year.
The distant lapping of ocean waves met my ears, vibrating off of the cavern walls around us. When we finally could see above the incline and out into Eteri, I felt weak with relief and happiness.
The tunnel exit opened up to a view of the expansive ocean between the western coast of Eteri and Hammerton, miles and miles of blue water stretching off into infinity. Because we'd been in the underground's darkness for so long, we hadn't been able to keep track of time, and our sleep schedules were all messed up. Even though we'd only woken up a few hours before, the sun was visible overhead and just slightly to the west, where it prepared to finish its trek of the day. As we walked out of the tunnel, we found it was carved straight into the side of rocky cliffs which stretched to the skies above our heads in sharp vertical slabs of stone, dirt, and clay. Beneath our feet, the grit of sand and dirt led to a nearby shore, where blue waters lapped over the ground in strings of foam. There was a small squeak that caused me to glance down the shoreline, where a cast of tiny red crabs scuttled along the beach, picking up pieces of debris out of the sands with pincers and eating their finds.
To the right of the tunnel exit, Eteri's cliffs rose far above the ocean, keeping most of the country defensively hidden away from view or attack. The mouth of a river flowing inland was located a while down the shoreline here, where it cut between a break in the cliffs. To our left, nothing but miles upon miles of grasslands were before our eyes, somehow appearing even more massive than the prairies of Sera. Though the land was somewhat bumpy nearest the highlands, it stretched out flat beyond that, leaving room for nothing but the low howling of winds.
“Home!” Jakan exclaimed, before hugging Anto as the orc kept his eyes on the land, impressed by it. My heart warmed, for the two men loved each other so much that I could tell being here meant as much to Anto as it did to Jakan. The two kissed with glee, as Jakan laughed happily between his messy shows of affection.
Azazel was still quiet. He walked toward the ocean, his black eyes staring relentlessly. When he reached the dirt and moistened sand, he fell to his knees abruptly in a clatter of gear and weapons. I followed him, wanting to share this moment with him if he would allow me to. As I neared him, the archer's shoulders began to shake with releases of emotion.
I collapsed to the ground beside him, saying nothing as my eyes burned with tears for him. Azazel cried softly beside me, embarrassed by his emotion even as he was unable to stop it from rolling forth. After a few minutes, he reached over and grabbed me into a desperate hug. Finally, my own tears fell. I knew how much this meant to him if he was willing to be the first to hug me.
“There's so much of it,” the archer breathed at my ear after we'd hugged for a while.
“This is only the beginning, Azazel,” I promised him. “You are going to travel the world with us and see it all. I promise you. There is so much more than this.”
Azazel shook against me. “How can there be more than this? Everything...everything is new to me. The plants do not glow here. The ceilings do.”
I smiled at his unfamiliarity with it all. “That is the sun, friend. It is our light and our guide. When it disappears, thousands of more lights called stars arrive.”
“Where do they come from?” He asked, his voice soft and curious.
“Beyond the skies,” I replied.
“Where do they go?” He asked, next.
I squeezed him tighter. “Around the world of Arrayis and back again. While it is daytime here, it is night halfway across the world. In a few hours, you will get to see the sunset. It makes the sky glow in many colors, much like the underground. Only sunsets tend to be in warm shades like red and orange, not cool shades like the fungi of your home.”
“I have always loved your hair, Kai,” Azazel murmured. “I love it because it is bright red, and red is such a rare color underground. To think that it appears naturally on the surface is...” he trailed off before he exhaled heavily. “...amazing.”
“There are a lot of amazing things about the surface. You will get to experience them all with us.”
>
I heard a few huffs and grunts as the others came to sit beside us on the beach. It would be an excellent place to camp for the night, after all. Cerin would be able to fish for us, and we would be able to relax and let Azazel experience the sunset.
“Where are the walls?” The archer asked next.
“The walls?” I questioned, finally pulling back from our embrace.
Azazel's black eyes were moist from emotion. He stretched an arm out to the sea, pointing along the horizon. “The walls of the surface. This lake is larger than any I've seen, so I cannot see the walls. Or are they blue, like the...” he trailed off, staring upward. “...skies?”
“That's the ocean, Azazel. Not a lake. It stretches onward for hundreds upon hundreds of miles in all directions.” I couldn't help but smile as the archer ran a hand over his face, overwhelmed by the expanses of the world he'd never been able to see. “And there are no walls. Landscapes, like these cliffs here.” I motioned to them. “But no walls.”
As Azazel shook with even more emotion, Nyx grinned wide and motioned toward the archer. “This is the cutest thing I've ever seen,” she admitted, watching him with happy eyes.
“This is the best day of my life,” Azazel finally admitted, his voice thick with sentiment. “I...” he trailed off, before looking at me with a sad smile. “I think I finally agree with Calder on something.”
“Oh, yeah?” I inquired, smiling.
“This...” Azazel pointed all around him at the expanses of land and sea. “This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I...was wrong, all those years ago, when I said there was no beauty left in the world.” He swallowed hard, and his eyes were unblinking on the calm waves of the ocean as he said, “There is.”
Three
A little red crab stood on the moist sand of the beach, with two pincers held up in the air. The left pincer was much larger than the right, and the crab was still as a statue for a few moments. Finally, it swiveled its pincers to one side, then the other, and back again.
I chuckled while watching the creature. Cerin slowly awoke beside me, his silver eyes finding the crab as he searched for what amused me. Nearby, the others were stirring. Azazel had been the first to rise, and he was watching the ocean just as he had the entire previous evening before we went to sleep on bedrolls we'd bought in Hazarmaveth. We'd been forced to buy a lot of new supplies there since the shipwreck two years ago had destroyed most of our things. Taking over the underground hadn't required some of our regular supplies, so we had waited to repurchase them until our last visit to the city. We also bought new tents, though we hadn't used them yet. The weather was so beautiful in Eteri, and there hadn't been any rain so far. Nothing could beat sleeping under the stars.
