by Ian Rodgers
“Chasm Hall is where Kazuum resides. It’s his palace that he lives in when he’s not in the Ever Mountain of the Heavenly Lands,” the dwarf explained.
“Oh, wow! A city built up around a god’s summer home!” I said excitedly, imagining all the interesting things I could see there.
“I’m heading there myself. If you want, feel free to catch a ride on my wagon,” the dwarf said, waving us over.
“Are you sure?” Dora asked cautiously.
“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m not transporting much. It’s all in a Chest of Holding, anyways. The trip back is going to be packed, though,” the wagon riding dwarf explained.
“Well, it’s better than wandering blindly through Gaeum. Sure, we accept,” I declared after thinking it over. I bounced over to the wagon and hopped up into it. Dora and Gaelin followed my lead, clambering into the back of the bizarre, oval vehicle.
“Soooo,” Dora drawled, leaning over the driver’s seat to pet the furry hide of the giant mole. “Who’s this pretty girl?”
“You could tell Jewel was female with just a glance?” the driver asked, impressed.
“I used to work for a trading caravan that dealt in monsters and exotic animals. I was always better dealing with them than I was dealing with regular people,” the half-orc said with a faint smile. The giant mole let out a rumble of contentment as Dora continued to pet it.
“Jewel here is a genuine Mega Mole! She can tunnel through any sort of solid matter! She’s been with me for a number of years, helping me with my deliveries,” the dwarf said. “Oh, and you can call me Jor, if you like. It is my name, after all.”
“Jellik, and it’s a pleasure,” I said, introducing myself.
“Gaelin,” the armored halberdier said with a polite nod.
“My name’s Dora,” the Healer said, still playing with the massive mole’s fur.
Jor nodded once, acknowledging us and our greetings, and he then poked the Mega Mole with a long stick, urging her forward. So began our trip out of the rest stop Celbrem had tossed us to, and towards the center of faith for dwarves across Erafore!
Kazuum was their chief god, the patron deity of miners and craftsmen. When the Great Calamity occurred three thousand years ago, it was Kazuum who shielded the dwarves, protecting them from the collapse of their own mines and tunnels that had made up the lifeblood of their old empire.
Only a handful of dwarven Clan-Holds survived the collapse of civilization all those centuries ago. The ones that did were those built around old mining outposts in the Heart Mountains, a cluster of tall, mineral rich mountains in Par-Orria. All the other cities were either destroyed by the Void, or by the strife that erupted in the wake of the Great Calamity.
And so, I regaled my companions with this knowledge! I spoke of the history of the dwarves and the significance of Kazuum. But instead of applause though all I got was a tilted head from Dora.
“Um, you realize Mr. Jor could have told us all of this as well, right?” she asked me. She jabbed a thumb at the wagon driver who waved back merrily. “And, not that it wasn’t interesting, but it’s delivery was kind of dry. Five out of ten.”
“Five out of ten for me as well,” Gaelin stated. “While interesting, you went off on a few tangents that didn’t have any point and sort of brought the pace of it all down.”
“Everyone’s a critic!” I cried, throwing my tendrils into the air in exasperation. Jor chuckled in amusement at us.
“Hey, if you want to know about Chasm Hall, feel free to ask me,” he said after finishing up his laughter.
“Hmm, alright,” Dora said slowly. “Though we have only one question, and it’s not about gods or their houses…”
“Well, lay it on me. Maybe I’ve heard something,” the bald dwarf replied.
“We’re looking for Grandor the Hollow Stone,” Gaelin said. “It’s urgent.”
“Urgent, huh? Must be if you’re trying to find a living legend,” Jor muttered, scratching his chin. “But you’re in luck; Grandor’s forge isn’t too far from Chasm Hall. In fact, I can probably drop you off near there. But you’d better have a good reason to visit. From what I’ve heard, he doesn’t like solicitors, door-to-door salesmen, or people who show up without an appointment.”
“Who does?” Gaelin joked, and Dora reached over and slapped the back of his head. She regretted it instantly as she clutched her hand that was throbbing in pain from impacting several inches of unyielding adamantium. Gaelin continued to chuckle, but at the half-orc’s expense.
The wagon continued on down the cobblestone road, all of us rather quiet as we spent the time relaxing and meditating. The tunnel towards Chasm Hall was lit by glowing lanterns spaced evenly along the sides of the road, granting pale but serviceable illumination.
But an hour into the trip, the lanterns started appearing less frequently, until they ceased altogether a full two hours in. But rather than panic about the darkness, Jor reached into a pack at his side and removed two glass jars. One was filled with a glowing orange moss, the other buzzing with several dozen fat fly-like creatures.
Taking a pinch of orange moss and adding it to the flies’ jar, Jor then shook the latter, flinging around the bugs and the moss.
“Um, what are you doing?” Dora asked, perplexed.
“Just getting some light ready, little lady,” the dwarf said. After he stopped shaking the jar, the flies began to glow orange as well, mimicking the hue of the luminous moss he’d added to their container.
“These beauts are Glittering Mossflies. They hang around patches of Lamp Moss, like the stuff here,” Jor said, holding up the two jars for the group to see. “Give ‘em a good shake like I just did, and the Mossflies will not only start to shine like the Lamp Moss, but won’t try to fly off and find any other patches of the stuff. Then, let ‘em out like so…”
He released the bugs, and rather than zoom away, the collection of insects hovered around the cart, providing a decent bubble of light.
“And voila, you’ve got yerself natural light!” he chuckled.
“…Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to buy a magic lantern? Or an Ever-Burn Torch? Or anything other than relying on plants and bugs?” Gaelin questioned, confused by the dwarf’s choice in magical lighting.
“Well, sure, I could. But then it wouldn’t be as safe,” Jor explained. “Glittering Mossflies are pretty common in Gaeum. They’re also incredibly foul tasting, so most monsters leave ‘em alone, giving their territory wide berths. Keeping a colony of Mossflies with me means a lot of problems I might encounter while traveling stay away. Plus, there are places in Gaeum where magic and enchanted objects act finicky. A magic lantern might work outside those troubled spots, but inside? Well, at best they wouldn’t work. At worst, they might attract monsters who can ‘see’ magic and don’t need to rely on regular eyesight. Then I’d be stuck between a rock and a hard place!”
“Huh, never thought of that before,” Dora mumbled to herself. “But then again, I didn’t encounter anything like that when I was here last.”
“Oh, yeah, you mentioned something like that,” I mused. “What was it like when you came around? I only fought a bunch of smugglers and freed a lot of trapped animals and monsters when I went to Gaeum my first time. It’s how I met my Familiar, Rosa! She’s a cute and adorable Ruby Carbuncle!”
“Am I the only one who hasn’t been here before? And lacks a cool story?” Gaelin wondered despondently.
Dora simply shrugged at my question and Gaelin’s. “I’m not sure ‘cool’ is the word I’d use for it, Gaelin. First time I stumbled into this place, I had to fight off huge, horse sized rats and ants, killed some lesser demons on behalf of a mushroom dryad, and wiped out an illegal weapon-forging ring that also dabbled in slavery being run by a group of goblins and dwarves.”
“Sounds like an adventure to me,” I piped up. “Also, wow, all this and ending up in Down afterwards? Crazy.”
“Yup,” Dora agreed, popping the ‘p’ at the end of her word
loudly. “It was certainly an adventure. Not sure I’d want to go through it again.”
“So… I punched a World Rebellion Apostle in the face,” Gaelin said, breaking the silence that had settled on the group after Dora’s stopped talking.
“Whoa!” Dora and I exclaimed, turning our attention to him. Even Jor glanced back at the halberdier in surprise.
“Yeah, it was… definitely a thing,” Gaelin sighed. “Freak showed up right in the middle of when my party and I were getting betrayed by a guide we’d hired. See, me and my friends, Vala, an Earth Elf Druid and Bigg Guy, were adventuring down in Val’Narash. We’d just found the City of Golems and discovered this nifty crown when matters went pear shaped.”
Gaelin reached up to his helmet, removing it and running a finger along the golden crown that had fused to it. “This tiny little thing caused so much trouble… apparently it’s a relic called the Dawn Crown, and it’s got a bunch of fancy functions, like healing the wearer, curing poison, negating curses, and so on. The guide we’d hired to get us through Val’Narash tricked us, though. And then this black robed figure wearing a silver mask appeared.”
“Did it have a stylized tree with roots on it?” I inquired, at the same time Dora asked, “Did it have a weird spiral pattern on it?”
The brunet shook his head. “Nah, none of those. It was a sword on this one’s mask. And he was strong. We barely managed to fend him off. Only reason I suspect we succeeded was because he’d been in a fight recently. His clothes were tattered, his mask was cracked, and he was limping when he encountered us. But his power…”
Gaelin clenched his fist angrily. “He had the ability to destroy any weapon or piece of armor we had. He cracked my Berserker armor and smashed Bigg Guy’s – he’s an Ursine – club. He couldn’t break my halberd though. Not sure why. Maybe because it was a divinely forged artifact?”
“Well, that’s unpleasant,” I groaned. “A person who can break anything as long as it’s not divinely made. Add in his companion, an Arboralnecromancer, and we’ve got a real problem. Without a doubt, they were Apostles, high-ranked members of the World Rebellion. They match the descriptions from when the cultists appeared during the War of Fallen Gods.”
“Don’t forget the one I faced,” Dora chimed in, expression grim. “The Apostle I encountered seemed to be able to make monsters out of solid matter.”
“How do you mean?” I asked, curious.
“He would put his hands on the wall or floor, and then weird creatures would form out of them,” Dora said after thinking back to her encounter with the World Rebellion cultist back in Targua. “They looked like living things, but were made of whatever surface he’d touched.”
“Sounds like Simulacra,” I replied after wracking my mind for any sort of similar magic. “It’s a magical creature made from inanimate objects or inorganic materials, similar to Golems. The main difference is they have an animalistic mind, and only follow the summoner’s orders. Golems on the other hand are handcrafted and programmed with spells to perform certain tasks. Another difference is that Simulacra will eventually die if they run out of magic. Golems will just keep going until they physically break down.”
“Well, this guy was able to summon dozens of them at a time,” Dora said bitterly. “He first used them to attack my caravan. Tried to capture me, but I got away. Then he held my family hostage and I had to rescue them from him. It was an unpleasant time.”
“You mentioned something about Arboral-something-or-other?” Gaelin asked me, recalling what I’d said about my own run in with a World Rebellion Apostle.
“Yeah, he was a necromancer who specialized in reanimating plants,” I replied and that got looks of confusion from everyone.
“Is there really such an art?” Gaelin asked incredulously.
“It’s an incredibly rare magical ability, apparently. Arboralnecromancy deals with controlling dead plants, fungi, insects, and even bacteria. Only two people alive can use it; some chuckle-fudge named Baloron the Dark Druid, who’s part of the Shadowspell Alliance, and this cultist for the World Rebellion named Root. He’s called that because of the tree design on his mask. Highly unimaginative,” I explained.
“I encountered Root shortly after venturing off on my own as an adventurer. He would constantly try and attack me whenever I was on the road. Tried piercing me with rotten roots, cursed branches, leaves as sharp as blades… Gods, it was awful!” I whimpered. “And he had the gall to follow me across the sea to Drakon! He then tried to start a war between us and the lizardfolk, and nearly succeeded! If Joris Cowl and the Dragon Queen hadn’t stepped in and proved that it was the World Rebellion who’d set everything up, Orria and Drakon would be at war.”
“Sweet Cynthia!” Dora gasped, and Gaelin shivered at the thought of going to war against a civilization that worshipped dragons and could call upon them in times of conflict. Fighting armies of humanoids was easier than trying to slay an S-ranked threat while it was tearing apart your own forces.
“We won’t end up in a battle as soon as we return, right?” the half-orc asked, her head turning from me to Gaelin.
“There wasn’t any grumblings of that sort back when I was on Erafore,” Gaelin said after thinking it over. “But to be fair, I’d been in a jungle for over a month, and on a boat sailing to Val’Narash before that. I don’t think I’m all that up to date with the news from back home.”
“Curses,” Dora muttered angrily. “What in the hells are we going to find when we finally return?”
I didn’t have an answer for her. Even I had no idea what to expect. Anything could have happened to Erafore in the time we’d been gone. Liliana could have opened up her store already. Partaevia could have crushed the rebellious Katlamar province and moved on to attacking Brune or Tashel. The Void could have already begun its invasion!
Wobbling back and forth, I shook those possibilities from my mind. ‘No good will come of worrying over things I cannot change,’ I thought to myself. ‘I have to live in the now. And that means meeting up with Grandor, Shyla, and Barron, completing their tasks, and saving Erafore!’
All other thoughts suddenly screeched to a halt when my senses picked up something moving around at the edge of my detection.
I bounced up and landed on the seat next to Jor, who flinched when I plopped down next to him.
“Err, can I help you?” he asked me nervously. I pitied the poor, bald dwarf. He probably never expected to hear us talk about the Void’s infamous cult when he offered to give us a ride. Or learn we’d fought them.
I pointed my tendril to a point up ahead of us. “Something is up there. I can sense movement in that area.”
Jor tensed up and he reached down to a mace at his side. Before he could draw it, I patted his shoulder.
“No need, we’ll take care of it,” I promised him, before bouncing back to Dora and Gaelin. “Hey guys, we might have monsters up ahead.”
“How can you be sure they’re hostile?” Gaelin asked, craning his neck to try and see what I had spotted in the dim glow around the wagon.
“They’re keeping away from the light being made by the Mossflies, but they are also following us,” I replied. “Plus, I can sense emotions. These creatures feel… hungry. There’s no negativity in them, just animalistic hunger.”
“Can’t we just feed them? Or ignore them?” Dora asked. Unlike Gaelin, though, she placed a hand on her dagger, just in case.
“I don’t think so,” I replied. At the same time, out of the gloom eight bizarre monsters stumbled forth, charging at the Mega Mole pulling the wagon. They resembled four-foot-tall bipedal mushrooms, but with huge, fang filled maws on the tops of their caps.
“See? They want to eat our ride!” I shouted. That said, I darted forward and lashed out at the monster in the front of the pack. A tendril lathered in acid split one of the walking fungal monsters in half.
Gaelin didn’t wait another second. As soon as he saw me leaping into action he was right there beside me, h
is halberd stretching and lashing out, the blade slicing the cap off of two of the strange mushroom creatures.
Noxious green goo began to spill from their wounds, as well as a cloud of spores that rose from their dead bodies.
“Watch out!” Dora shouted, eyes glowing with magic. “Their blood is toxic, same as those spores!”
“Got it!” Gaelin replied, and he hopped back a bit.
“I’ll engage them at range!” I called out, and began to weave a potent fire spell into existence. I used my ‘lessons’ from Celbrem and did it all silently. It took longer, but I had time. The charge had been stalled by me and Gaelin dicing up their vanguard.
“Fireball!” I called out, and a sphere of flames rushed out at the remaining five walking mushrooms. It exploded in their midst, two of them instantly incinerated. The other three were wounded by the splash damage of the explosive spell, but were still alive. Charred and injured, green goo leaking from their bodies, but alive all the same.
Sensing defeat, they tried to run, but Gaelin leapt into the air, magic seething along the edge of his blade.
“Bladewave!” Gaelin called out, and three arcing shockwaves tore them apart, slaying them in their tracks.
“Jellik, can you burn the corpses? We don’t want those spores to spread!” Dora called out. I bobbed up and down in understanding and conjured up some white hot flames that I spread over the remains of the mushroom monsters. Luckily there was only stone all around us, so there was little else that could accidentally catch fire.
Once I was done disposing of the bodies, I rolled back to the wagon and hopped in, Gaelin landing next to me as I did so.
“Any idea what those were?” I asked Jor as he coaxed Jewel the Mega Mole into moving on.
“Not really. Identifying monsters isn’t something I’m good at,” Jor replied. “Could have been Fungal Slaves, or Mycoid Warriors, or Sporemen, or any other number of freaky fungus-based creature. They’re little more than pests down here.”
The bald dwarf frowned. “But I rarely have to deal with more than one or two at a time. And a mace to the face is usually enough deterrent. I’d have been overrun and made into fertilizer if you hadn’t been here to help.”
