by Ian Rodgers
Unlike there, however, this lava wasn’t being put to any use. There were no modified water wheels or heating units to capture it. But there was a settlement, perched on a lump of ash blackened stone that our group could only reach by crossing a natural bridge of basalt over the surging lava.
“Yeah, this is the exact same village as last time,” Dora confirmed, peering down from atop her Witch’s Staff. “Though that thing over there is new.”
She pointed at a bizarre metal fish that was partially submerged in the lava and resting next to the settlement. It appeared to be a vessel of some kind, because dwarves and goblins with horns were coming and going from it, loading boxes into its insides.
“Looks like a ship of some sort,” Gaelin mused, peering down. “Seems that it’s designed to sail through lava.”
“I think they’re abandoning this place,” I said, seeing how many buildings were in a state of severe damage, as well as the sheer number of crates and containers being loaded up.
“That’s not my fault,” Dora said defensively. “We barely did any damage to the village itself. They must have been attacked at some point. Possibly by a rival faction.”
“Well, that’s bad luck for them. And us, too, if they manage to escape with the Goldrift Spider silk,” I reminded them. I generated a dozen tendrils, pointing them downwards towards the bandit camp.
To the raiders down below, it must have seemed like Divine Retribution as dozens of Magic Arrow spells fell upon them. They pierced the buildings, riddling them with more holes, and treated flesh just as cruelly. The unusually pale skinned dwarves and the odd horned goblins started to run around in a panic as I bombarded them with volleys of spells.
Magic Arrow was merely a Level One spell, being just a compressed mass of mana shaped like an arrowhead. But just like with ordinary arrows, enough of them in a concentrated space could deal heavy damage to any group.
At one point, a spell must have struck something volatile, as an explosion ripped apart a building in a fiery detonation. Charred bits and pieces from several bandits who’d tried hiding inside it scattered across the battlefield. Oddly, a rather sweet and pleasant scent wafted up from the blazing ruin along with the smoke.
‘Must have been alchemical ingredients, or some kind of alcohol that I blew up,’ I mused as I effortlessly deflected a crossbow bolt with a flick of one of my tendrils. ‘Smells great, though. I wonder if Princess Liliana would be able to use whatever it was in her new perfumes?’
As I pelted the village, Gaelin swooped down, halberd blazing, to cut off the retreat of the bandits. With a swish of his blade, a shockwave of energy tore apart the gangplank leading to the metal fish ship.
Those on board decided to cut their losses and the open hatch clanged shut, to the cries of anger and shock from the Dark Dwarves who hadn’t gotten onto the vessel. The vehicle rumbled and with a howl of steam, started to sink into the lava!
Gaelin wasn’t going to let them escape that easily, though. He dove down, dodging spells and crossbow bolts from a few foolishly brave individuals, and struck the side of the vessel, his halberd wrapped in a potent Magic Edge. With a grinding screech a massive rent appeared in the metal of the vessel, and cries of terror erupted from within as lava began to seep inside.
He swung his halberd again, widening the tear even more. The force of his attack was so great that the lava sailing vessel tipped over, capsizing and admitting more molten rock into its interior. Muffled screams and pounding could be heard from it for a few agonizing seconds before it slipped completely into the Ignis Lava Flow.
As for Dora, she refused to be a helpless maiden, and despite possessing no weapon of her own, save a dagger, she dove down and used the exhaust from the end of her Witch’s Staff to scatter any projectiles aimed at me or Gaelin.
It was an interesting tactic. She’d swoop down low, and get close enough to touch her targets, before swerving violently to the side, letting the magical wind emitted from her broom-like artifact buffet her foes and disrupt their attacks.
‘Resourceful. No weapons, but Dora still found a way to help us out in the fight,’ I thought to myself.
I slowed down on my barrage of spells, not wanting to hit the half-orc by accident. Instead, I began to perform more accurate attacks, using precision to target my foes. Piercing rays of energy, bolts of lightning and showers of acid were concentrated onto the few remaining bandits. My spells tore apart their cover and their bodies in short order.
Soon, much of the settlement was in ruins. The few survivors were badly wounded, groaning in pain and pleading for mercy. Gaelin and Dora showed none. They went among the survivors, delivering merciful final blows.
“That’s the last of them,” Dora said as she wiped arterial blood from her cheek. She hadn’t dodged the spurt in time after slicing open the neck of the final Dark Dwarf.
“They didn’t put up much of a fight,” Gaelin noted, sounding a tad disappointed.
“We had the aerial advantage, and we caught them by surprise. It’s clear that they weren’t expecting company,” I said, gesturing towards a cluster of corpses that had been grouped around one of the many boxes in the area. The Dark Dwarves and their goblin allies had cracked it open and pulled from it nasty looking arbalests, the very same ones that they’d tried to use to bring us down. The fact that they’d packed up their weapons reinforced the idea this camp had been planning on moving.
“At least the portal is still intact,” Dora said, slapping the artifact that would take us to Down.
It was a fifteen-foot-tall ring made entirely of fine green jade. Numerous runes and arcane sigils were etched into the surface, some of which I recognized. I was coming to learn that Planeswalking artifacts used quite a few similar symbols regardless of which world or stretch of the Aether it originated from. It was a rare example of a unified magical language.
“Let’s hold off on using it for now,” I said. “Let’s scour their base for any signs of the silk. Hopefully it wasn’t already loaded up.”
“Sorry, my bad,” Gaelin replied apologetically, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. It was bizarre, seeing such a tall and imposing armored figure act like a scolded child.
“Eh, no problem. If all else fails, we can find some in Down. If it’s anything like Up, we’ll be able to find anything,” I assured him.
“You’ve been there before?” Dora asked, surprised.
“Only for a short while. That place is not for people who have a fear of heights, I tell you,” I told her, thinking back to the short trip Joris and I had taken to the place. We’d dropped off Rosa and Tara there, in order for them to train and grow stronger.
‘I hope they’re doing alright,’ I wondered to myself, a tinge of longing filling my soul at the thought of my two closest friends and traveling companions.
‘Nope! No time for sad thoughts!’ I scolded myself immediately afterwards. ‘I have things to do before I can see them again. And I will. I have no doubt of that.’
I put myself to good use, ripping open crate after crate. Most were full of weapons, which at first I thought was odd, but after seeing the numerous forges and large amount of blacksmithing equipment I realized this wasn’t just a bandit camp, but an illegal weapon production site!
“Be careful!” I shouted at my friends as they rooted through the piles of metal and wood, “There are a lot of cursed items lying around here! I’ve already found over twenty swords that have been enchanted with outlawed Bleeding curses, half as many maces and warhammers with ridiculously illegal Bone Breaker curses, as well as dozens of weapons that appear to have had toxic materials forged right into the metal!”
“You’re telling me!” Dora called back from the warehouse she was exploring. “It’s not only weapons, but they were making slave collars and magical traps here along with everything else! Sweet Cynthia, they even have an Iron Maiden back here!”
“I think I found something!” Gaelin suddenly exclaimed. He was searching through a war
drobe and held up a fancy shirt made of shimmering golden silk. “Is this what we’re looking for?”
“It might be,” I said, approaching him and casting analysis spells on the material. “Hmm. Yes, this is indeed Goldrift Spider silk. But it’s already been woven into clothing.”
“So? We can just unravel it,” Gaelin replied, and I thought it over before shrugging, Ooze style.
“You know, that is entirely true. See if you can find any more of the stuff!” I told him. He nodded and went back to looting the clothing the bandits had had.
“Oof!” With a grunt, Dora set a large box down beside me and I looked at her, intrigued.
“That is a lot of crossbow bolts,” I commented, before wincing. “And very nasty ones, too. Poisoned bolt heads, barbed tips and shafts, Pain hexes… what’s up with this?”
“I want them,” Dora said firmly. “I need to arm myself properly, and when Lord Grandor has finished my crossbow, I want to be able to fight off anything the Void throws at us. Sure, these are cruel weapons, but out of all of us, I need an edge the most.”
“…Fair enough,” I said after thinking it over. I swallowed up the ammunition box, putting it in my Dimensional Pocket. “Anything else?”
“No, I think that’s it. And I believe Gaelin has also found the rest of the Goldrift silk,” Dora said, pointing over at him and trying not to laugh.
I glanced over and groaned, wobbling despondently. In Gaelin’s hands were several pairs of underwear, all made entirely of Goldrift Spider silk.
~(o)~
In the end, I took the underwear, as well as the shirt. Grandor would be able to unravel the substance if he needed to use it. And after looting everything of value from the base, we activated the portal and stepped through it.
“So, this is Down, huh?” I mused, looking over the surroundings that were on the other side of the Dark Dwarves portal. It was dark, as expected of Gaeum, but the number of boxes around us surprised me.
“No, Jellik, this is a warehouse,” Dora said, rolling her eyes as she appeared beside me. “But yes, technically, it’s in Down.”
“That was a surprisingly decent trip through a portal,” Gaelin grunted, feeling his queasy stomach stop grumbling mere seconds after leaving the vortex of green they’d just taken.
“Well, it’s more of an advanced teleportation array instead of a true trans-dimensional portal. We were just moving around a plane, instead of going to a whole different one,” I explained.
“Where to now?” I then asked Dora, turning to her.
“Outside,” she said. “After that, no real idea. My friends and I just wandered around aimlessly, I didn’t try to keep track of where we were. But it shouldn’t be too hard to find a shop selling alchemical ingredients.”
“Ah, well. Exploring new places is half the fun!” Gaelin said, clapping Dora on the shoulder. “Now, let’s see this infamous city!”
We carefully exited the warehouse, wanting to avoid any unwanted attention. Judging from the contents of boxes that I had discreetly checked, the place did in fact belong to the Dark Dwarves we’d just eliminated. However, we didn’t know if they had allies who’d avenge them, or enemies who’d happily take over. To that end, we wanted to look as if we had nothing to do with the bandits’ sudden demise.
After slinking and sneaking through the almost pitch-black alleyway alongside the warehouse, we emerged into a dazzling, glittering cityscape that was built as much vertically as it was horizontally.
I could feel the lifeforce of countless millions of souls pressing down upon, like an invisible anchor. There was so much life here! Far, far more than in Sanc Aldet back in Varia, and even the Ruby Fortress and the Pearl Palace, two vast, city-sized settlements in the Elemental Plane of Fire and Water, respectively, could not match the amount of sapient living creatures that dwelled within this place.
Down was built in layers, called Floors. Buildings stood in neat rows, with other buildings constructed atop and beneath them. Often times different styles clashed, resulting in strange, abstract towers that had elements of several cultures all mashed together. Everything was connected by bridges and streets that were suspended above the ground. Though there were spells to catch people who fell off, and the occasional net in places where the enchantments had faded, falling was still a risk, so many flight capable species took advantage of this by offering rides in rickshaws and one-person carriages – for a fee of course!
According to Dora, we were on the Fourth Floor out of who knew how many, but even so we couldn’t even catch a glimpse of the bottom of the city, save for the lights from the lamps and lanterns below that seemed to rise up like tiny stars in an upside-down sky. The richest and most important people all had homes and stores down on the First and Second Floors, leaving the upper levels to the middle-class and the low-income riffraff.
Since Down was ever expanding, the lowest level was constantly under construction at all times. The distant sound of clanking, grinding, and rumbling of large-scale construction floated up from below, mixing in with the cacophony of the bustling city-scape.
“Incredible,” Gaelin breathed in awe, and Dora snorted, but there was a glimmer in her eyes that spoke of a similar feeling, though one tempered by experience in this place.
‘She’s seen beneath the gilded exterior,’ I thought as I did a quick sidelong glance at the Healer, making sure she was fine. She must have sensed my gaze because she turned to me and smiled reassuringly.
“Don’t worry, Jellik. I might be wanted for murder, theft, and civil unrest here, but as long as we don’t venture up to any of the upper floors, I should be fine.”
“Hang on, what?” Gaelin asked, spinning around to face Dora.
“Oh, didn’t I mention this? When my friends and I were here to try and save Lady Nia’s Elemental Tail pets, we ended up trashing a slave market, killing a Marble Elemental, and freeing hundreds, if not thousands, of slaves from a flesh market a couple floors above us,” Dora explained, jabbing a thumb upwards towards the upper levels.
She scratched the back of her head sheepishly as we stared at her, stunned. “Err, I could have sworn I’d mentioned all of this.”
“You mentioned it to me. I think this is the first Gaelin has heard of it, though,” I said calmly. “Now come on, let’s find the last items on Grandor’s list. If we do it fast enough, we won’t get caught.”
“How will we get back to his forge?” Dora inquired, and I held out the emblem he’d given us.
“This isn’t just a badge to show we know him, it’s also a specialized magical tool that has teleportation coordinated etched into it,” I explained, showing them the reverse side of the adamantium token in my tendril’s grasp. It was covered in miniscule etched runes. “Just press this up against a portal, or portal-making device, and it should override the original destination of the portal and deposit us back at Grandor’s home.”
“Useful. Why haven’t I seen anything like that before in the Aether?” she asked, and I shrugged.
“So far we haven’t had to use commercial teleporters or Planeswalking stations. Mostly we’ve been using personally made ones, accidental vortexes, or premade Planeswalker Marbles. I’m sure if we looked for a place that sold vacations or travel packages, we could find a bunch of one-use-only tokens that’d take us to a preset destination.”
“Huh, good to know,” Dora said, looking impressed at the emblem. She then shook her head and pointed off towards a street from which I could smell copious amounts of alcohol, even from this distance!
“I remember going down that way. We stopped off in a bar when my friends and I met Long-Tail-Shadow. She was nice,” Dora said with a fond smile. She then frowned. “It was after meeting her that I lost track of locations and whatnot. We moved around a lot, trying to evade some thugs while getting to the slave market on Floor Seven without attracting too much attention. But, if my memory isn’t wrong, I think there was an alchemist’s shop somewhere along the route we fled.”
“Yeah, basically. What did we need again?” she asked, turning to me.
“Yeti dandruff and thousand-year-old Shadow wood planks. One and one hundred pounds of the stuff, respectively.”
“Hmm, yeah, that’s right, I remember now!” Dora replied. “Come on, let’s go!”
We walked along the streets of Down, doing our best to act like we belonged. We still attracted plenty of looks, though thankfully most of them were aimed at Gaelin’s armored form and my own squishy self, so Dora was ignored for the most part.
It took some questioning of the locals, but we did find the shop Dora had claimed to have seen the last time she was here.
In fact, the transaction for the dandruff went well, and the shopkeeper was kind enough to direct us to a lumber wholesale store on the Fifth Floor.
“Be careful, though,” the shopkeeper – a humanoid mole – warned us. “To get to that area, you’ll be passing through Iron Bristle territory. They’re a big Iron Orc gang that demands ‘tolls’ from beings coming and going from this floor to the one above.”
“That name sounds familiar…” Dora muttered to herself. I shrug-wobbled, certain we could handle a mere gang.
“Thank you for the warning, we’ll do our best to be careful,” I promised the moleman. Even if we could crush some minor criminals, it’d draw too much attention to us. And by extension, Dora.
Gaelin nodded solemnly as well, also aware of what a ruckus could cause, and who it’d alert.
Outside of the shop, I turned to the group. “Should we just fly up to bypass paying any ‘toll?’ I suggested, and they all nodded.
Dora whipped out her Witch’s Staff, Gaelin’s Shapeless Raiment fluttered excitedly, and my body soon levitated above the street.
We had to go slowly, in order to avoid slamming into the bridges and streets and other fliers, but in no time at all we ascended to the Fifth Floor without a hassle.
“Hmm, the lumber yard the merchant mentioned should be set up near a green tent,” I reminded them as I swept my gaze across the Floor.
