Vol 8, Chapter 15

◆ Reikland, Scout Lariel POV ◆

Walking through the deep snow was hard. Not only did the snow reach her waist, but on top of that her legs kept stumbling over stones that, judging by the feel of it, littered the entire field.

"Oh, Moon, why are there so many stones here?" she squeaked indignantly when her foot slipped into a crevice between rocks hidden under the snow.

The stone responded to her complaints with true stone-like indifference. No matter how the elf girl tugged, her ankle was stuck fast.

After a couple of minutes it dawned on her that these were fragments of the mountain, hurled several kilometers away by the explosion. What a devious human trap!

"Oh no, oh no," she muttered, realizing that from such a high wall, her figure clad in a brown hide on the snow was visible like an open target.

If she were caught just a dozen steps from home, it would be a terrible disgrace.

Fortunately, even her sharp elven eyes saw no humans on the wall… but they could appear at any moment! Which meant she had to act…

Pressing her lips together, she called upon magic and lightly tapped the stone. With a dull crack it crumbled into dust, letting her pull her foot free. The elf thoughtfully looked back, skeptically eyeing the deep trail in the snow she had left—then looked ahead, where the snowy field stretched for hundreds more meters, and sighed.

The elders had warned her not to use magic, but since she had already done so…

A few magical passes and a touch of power.

The bear hide flapped in the sudden wind. A snowstorm rose out of nowhere, sweeping snow skyward, instantly covering her tracks and hiding the elf from view. The blizzard lifted her off the ground and in a few seconds carried her to the base of the fortress wall.

Thud! She slammed into the concrete, misjudging the speed. Snow driven by the storm caught up behind her, instantly turning the figure hugging the wall into an unremarkable snowdrift.

Above, worried voices sounded.

"A strange gust of wind. Look, it swept the whole field clean! And in a cone, no less."

"Yeah. And it stopped so suddenly. We should report it."

"We should. Are you going?"

"In this cold? Let's just use that thing."

"Maybe the old way? Hey, what if it shocks us again? Wait…"

A door slammed, the voices faded, and even to her sharp elven ears they dissolved into noise. At least not into snowy noise…

Spitting out snow, Lariel struggled out of the drift and began searching for a passage in the wall.

There wasn't one. No gate. No doors. No hidden passage. Nothing. Solid and monolithic, as if shaped by an earth mage.

All the knowledge they had tried to cram into her head in a few days said nothing of this.

With no better idea, she simply walked along the wall. Or rather waded, since the snow nearly covered her head. One hand brushed the wall so as not to miss a gate, while she trudged through the snow, the bear-head hood sometimes sinking into the drifts up to her ears.

From above, it must have looked rather comical.

Suddenly her hand slipped into emptiness. Shaking off snow in the hope of seeing an archway… she saw only that the wall had ended.

Like a raven, she peeked behind the stone monolith several times, as if unable to believe that such a tall wall could simply be walked around, but her eyes did not lie.

There were no shepherds, no dogs, no campfires, not even the primitive dugouts so beloved by humans—nothing in sight. A snow-covered path led between two strange houses toward the main settlement.

"Hm. Strange." Casting a furtive glance around, she slipped toward the first house, built of the same monolithic stone as the wall.

Both houses were tall, about three times a man's height, their many windows glowing with firelight, and smoke pouring from not one but two chimneys.

There was a great deal of smoke, even here on the outskirts. It crawled across the ground, scattering in the morning light, filling her sensitive nose. The elf could easily tell what these barbarians were burning—coal.

"So… if ordinary humans can only afford brushwood, does this mean this is the castle itself? But why are there two of them?" she wondered aloud.

The wooden door of the nearest house, padded with felt on the inside, creaked open, letting out a man with a shovel, dressed in a quilted jacket.

The elf instantly hid behind the house, leaving the man to grumble about the sudden snowstorm as he set to clearing snow.

It didn't seem like this was the lord. Surely a lord wouldn't clear snow himself, would he?

Yet his clothing was rather good. At least it smelled far less than her crudely stitched costume. Perhaps this was one of the lord's privileged servants. Only one question remained… which of these two identical stone buildings was the castle? Could it be that there were two castles?

Something about this felt suspicious, but the only way to be sure was to sneak inside. Every lord had to have a throne, and a throne was something she could never mistake!

Going through the door seemed too dangerous to her. And why bother, when the building had so many windows?

Flying up and casting a silence spell, she rammed her body through one of them, choosing the darkest room so as not to be noticed.

The shards of glass scattered in absolute silence, showering a wolf hide that lay on the floor. Oddly, there were far more shards than she expected. Rising to her knees, she examined the frame.

Yes, her eyes hadn't deceived her: the window had held two panes of glass, one behind the other. Which meant she was on the right track. Only an absurdly wealthy man would place not one but two precious panes of glass in a window, as if he had no other use for them!

Her excitement faded the moment she looked around. Stone ceilings so low she could reach them with her hand by just jumping, a tiny room where one couldn't even run properly—it all reminded her of caves. Ugh. This seemed to be a servant's chamber.

Peering into the next opening, she noticed a table and upon it an iron knife. Doubtfully, she drew her bronze dagger and compared the green-patinated blade with the shiny iron one.

"Knew it!" she said silently, thanks to the silence spell. "I don't think they'll mind… I need this for my disguise."

The timeworn bronze was left on the kitchen table, while the knife took its place at her belt. She ran her hand over skillfully painted clay cups. She picked one up, studying the patterns for several minutes before realizing she was getting distracted. Though the pottery fascinated her, she had to finish checking the rooms and move on. She had already spotted the door leading deeper into the building—only one more room to check.

The sound of snoring from inside made her tense.

Peeking in, she saw a human couple sleeping peacefully. Flushing and flustered, she hurried to the door, unwilling to linger any longer.

She tugged at the handle for a whole minute before realizing she had to lift a metal bar to open it.

Beyond lay a stone corridor. And many more doors like the first. She wandered a while, even glancing into a few, but found nothing resembling a throne. When footsteps echoed from the stairwell, she left the building the same way she had entered—through the nearest window.

Brushing off her hide, shards of glass falling out, she tried to draw a conclusion.

"All right, this definitely isn't the castle. Which means the other building isn't either. I'll have to keep searching."

The furnishings inside the house had seemed very strange to her, but how many human homes had she actually seen? Perhaps this was all perfectly normal… Even those rooms that disgustingly resembled dwarf caves, ugh. She shook her head to drive the thought away. Those were just stories. Nothing to fear, no dwarves here.

Fine. She only needed to find the castle. A tall, stone building. Tall. Stone.

Repeating the description to herself several times, she followed the cleared road toward the settlement…

Only to fall into despair an hour later.

Every single building was tall and stone! Even the broad roads, where not covered with snow, turned out to be stone. Nothing but stone! Where were the trees, the grass? Where was nature?

It felt as if she were walking through a gigantic cave—stone everywhere, and even the black smog of smoke overhead seemed to form a colossal cavernous vault, looming above and pressing down on her mind.

Her head spun, and more and more people filled the streets. At first she tried to hide, but realizing they were busy with their own affairs, she stopped. Even so, their glances grew more suspicious. People opened shops in stone houses, cleared snow from stone streets, entire crews hauled spools of some kind of wire and climbed stone poles.

Lariel pulled the bear hide tighter around herself, trying to conceal her face, but it did little good. She drew far too much attention—no city dweller dressed as primitively as she did.

The elf wandered among the identical buildings, feeling as if she were slowly going mad. If not for the mountains and the great chimneys in the northern part of the city, she would have thought she was standing still. No matter where she went, everything looked the same. As though trapped in an endless, gray stone labyrinth. She even had to stop and check if she had been ensnared by an illusion. By the time she began checking herself a second time, one of the passersby had pointed her out to a guard in a greatcoat, carrying an iron spear of strange shape.

She tried to slip into an alley, but the guard followed. She quickened her pace, yet the guard did not fall behind. Only her spell of averted gaze caused him to lose sight of her.

Enchanted, he turned his head in confusion, unable to perceive the girl standing barely ten steps away. Just as she was about to breathe in relief, he pulled a small iron trinket from his pocket and pressed it to his lips…

A piercing whistle echoed down the street, stabbing painfully at her ears. More and more guards hurried toward the sound, forcing the girl to flee again.

She had no time to simply sit and think everything over. Why did the buildings look so strange? Why, in all this time, had she not seen a single peasant? Why did even the workers wear clothes nearly equal in quality to elven garments?

These questions gnawed at her soul, but she pushed them aside, trying to focus on finding the castle. Alas, the only things towering over the city were the strange massive buildings with gigantic chimneys belching smoke into the sky. From them came a burning stench and terrible thunder. She had no desire at all to go there, but it seemed Lariel had no choice.

Carefully averting eyes to avoid pursuit, she crept closer and closer to her goal, which proved to be simply cyclopean. The roof, curved like a sheet, was made of metal, and the building's frame seemed to be metal as well. She had never heard of such a thing, but felt a surge of excitement. This whole city was strange, so perhaps the castle was not stone at all, but metal!

The great stone wall that fenced the buildings off from the people confirmed her suspicion.  Lords despised it when ordinary people loitered nearby... it all made sense! Everything fit!

Overjoyed, she leapt the two-meter fence in a single bound and soon stood inside the foundry grounds.

Stifling heat. Torrents of molten metal. Crowds of filthy, sweaty creatures. At first she recoiled in fear, for with the cyclopean devices and mechanisms around her, it seemed to her they must be dwarves—but they appeared to be humans. Or perhaps not humans… Either way, the atmosphere suggested that their short masters were nearby. The roar of flames, showers of sparks. A steel mountain spewed rivers of lava, colossal ladles swung on chains from the ceiling… After wandering about and nearly falling into a molten channel, she had to admit the lord was unlikely to be here.

What was more, she could no longer push away the thought that dwarves were in charge of everything. The short folk adored stone, gems, and metal!

According to the engravings, their dwellings differed little from what she had seen in the past hour.

Only the short folk themselves were nowhere to be found. Perhaps they were hiding, unseen? The only small ones she had met on the streets wore funny knitted hats and threw snowballs. But those were probably children, not dwarves. Lariel had even gone so far as to sniff them—there was no smell of beer! She had even lingered by a tavern to compare! (She hadn't dared to peek inside, fearing she might actually find dwarves there.)

Still, a brilliant thought struck her. Perhaps she hadn't seen them because they lived underground? Surely someone hadn't blown up an entire mountain for nothing. What if it had been preparation? She had to visit that place. Without hesitation, she set off toward the gaping chasm between two ridges.

The foundries faded behind her, but the din only grew unbearable. It seemed as though everything around her thundered. Tracks that moved on their own, hauling stones. Drums the size of huts. Iron carts as large as an ent-warrior.

One of those iron carts suddenly lurched and charged straight at her.

Clutching her ears and shrieking in panic, she bolted, stumbling over iron rods scattered on the ground and dodging steel pincers. The air was thick with dust, making her eyes water. Stones rustled beneath her feet, and only then did she realize that the very floor was moving, trying to toss her into something like a gigantic mortar.

A magical gust of wind carried her out of the building along with a heap of stones, but it didn't make things any easier. Before her yawned a vast chasm, its rim traced with countless dirt roads. The mountain… If one looked closely, one could see the seashore on the horizon.

But there were no dwarves, no buildings. Worse still: at the bottom of the pit sat a one-armed, iron demon. It hissed, belched smoke, and with its massive claw lifted piles of rock to drop them onto smaller demons. Clattering furiously, these absurd little fiends hauled carts heaped with stone.

And they were all moving toward her.

Letting out a sharp squeak, she darted for the stone wall, preparing a shattering spell. Strike!

A pillar of dust shot up as she slammed into it instead of passing through. Rubbing her forehead, she blew the dust away with a gust of wind.

The spell had worked as intended, breaking the stone into fragments, but behind it were iron bars. Who would hide valuable iron behind stone? Was this someone's secret stash?

The elf pried the bars apart with her hands and squeezed through, leaving scraps of brown fur behind.

"Madness… madness…" she muttered, catching her breath.

The sensible thing would be to return to the Council and report the abyssal horrors she had seen, but… that would mean failure. She had to find the lord at any cost and return with him!

But where could he be? Surely he wouldn't live amid all this thunderous chaos… At least, that was the excuse she gave herself not to return to those monstrous, dangerous metal buildings.

So she had to search the city again and look for structures that differed from the rest. Only that could take forever… It would be best to do it from above.

Without hesitation, she flew onto the nearest building, with a flat roof so absurd it seemed made for her.

Her view improved instantly. What's more, the city looked smaller from above; it seemed she really had been walking in circles below.

…Well, she had never been good at orienting herself in caves…

Amid the dreary rectangles, a few buildings stood out with different facades. They weren't taller than the others; on the contrary, they hid in their shadows, yet they somehow looked more imposing. Take, for example, the long row of steps and several columns—surely set there for decoration.

All that remained was to figure out how to reach it.

Lariel had just started counting turns on her fingers when a gigantic shadow fell over her. A great, ungainly sack, waving blades, drifted through the sky, blocking out the sun.

With a squeak, she reflexively stepped back. Instead of solid stone, her boot found emptiness. Flailing desperately for something to grab, her hand caught a metal wire. It bit her in return, forcing her grip tighter.

Flight. Impact.

The elf lay on her back in a snowdrift. High above, the elongated sack drifted by, with tiny figures like ants seated in the basket beneath. Her hand spasmed, scorched by burns.

No, this city would surely kill her.

After lying there for ten minutes and whispering several healing spells, she staggered to her feet and limped toward the building. She didn't even want to think about what had just happened; she wasn't going to tell anyone anyway. How could she possibly explain to the council that she fell from a height of eight human bodies because she was bitten by an iron cord while staring at a flying sack fencing with the clouds?

If she heard such a story, she would advise her kin to see a mental healer. And to keep going back to the healer for about the next hundred years.

To her surprise, the way to the building was etched in her memory, as if burned there by lightning. Without once straying or taking a wrong turn, she reached it in barely ten minutes.

Around the stone mansion stood several human guards with iron spears.

Guards! At last! Surely now this was it… No, wait.

She had already sworn off rejoicing too soon, lest she jinx herself.

Averting the eyes of all around her, she slipped through a massive, imposing door.

Only to see another guard inside, seated at a desk.

She was certain she had clouded his vision too, yet for some reason he frowned and pulled a shaped piece of metal from his belt.

A lead-spitter—she immediately recognized it. Further proof that dwarves had a hand in all this. This must be their lair.

The guard rose from his seat and started toward her. Could it be that he actually saw her?

She hastily cloaked herself in every charm she knew and shrank back to the side—yet the man walked right past her.

Ah, of course. The door had opened. To him, it must have seemed as though a draft had blown it wide. But then why had he grown so tense? Wasn't that perfectly ordinary?

Taking advantage of his distraction, the elf darted swiftly up the great staircase that dominated the hall. Yes, she hated to tempt fate, but this was exactly the kind of thing she imagined when she thought of a castle: a colossal stairway broad enough for five humans to ascend shoulder to shoulder, ceilings so high that even she could not leap up and touch them without magic. Surely this was the dwelling of a lord…

But when she reached the top, her hopes fell. No throne. Only a corridor—spacious, yes, but lined with doors. So many doors. Again.

"Abyss and Moon… Fine," she muttered. She tugged at the nearest handle. Locked.

Rather than smash it, she decided to test the one farthest away. After all, a shattered door standing directly opposite the stairs would be far too conspicuous.

Swelling with pride at her own cleverness, she made her way to the door at the end of the corridor. A window beside it poured light across its surface, revealing lacquered wood carved with intricate designs. It looked every bit the kind of door that guarded something important. For a moment, she even regretted the necessity of breaking it.

Impact!

The door burst into splinters.

The elf whispered a rueful apology to the wood as she stepped inside.

Alas—again, no lord, no throne. Only piles upon piles of papers and strange diagrams. Numbers, cogs, parts of unfamiliar shapes. Nothing of interest to her. Crestfallen, she withdrew and smashed down the next door. And the next.

Everywhere it was the same: diagrams, notes, scraps of parchment. Sometimes the desks bore elaborate little statues wrought of metal, but no matter how she turned them, she could not decipher what they were meant to portray.

Reaching for yet another door, she suddenly found herself face to face with a short figure—no taller than a meter and a half. A fiery mane of red hair. The stench of alcohol. A dwarf. A dwarf!

With a shriek, she shoved the intruder back and bolted. A wall of flame roared up before her. Her protective wards disintegrated in mere seconds, but they held long enough for her to burst through and hurl herself at the window.

The frame cracked, the glass shattered!

She tumbled from the second floor amidst a storm of shards. Her already tattered bear hide smoked and spat sparks. She hadn't even hit the ground before part of the wall behind her erupted outward—an explosive fireball detonating against the frame.

No time to think. A spell of acceleration, a glamour of diverted sight…

A burning brown blur hurtled through the streets at breakneck speed, the gale of her passing knocking people to the ground. Behind her, the blazing building shrank rapidly into the distance.

She only stopped when she was certain she had lost her pursuers. With shaking hands she conjured a measure of water out of thin air and drank. A dwarf had attacked her. And somewhere nearby lurked a fire mage, though she hadn't glimpsed him. Did that mean they had allied themselves? The thought was dreadful.

Caution was no longer possible—it was far too dangerous. She had to finish the mission quickly and return.

There was no avoiding it now: she would have to do what she had resisted from the very beginning. Enchant a human, compel him to lead her to the lord, and then enchant the lord himself.

The problem was that her bear hide still smoldered, giving off foul smoke. If she cast it aside, she would be left in only a thin dress—and that, too, would draw eyes. Primitive humans likely had no knowledge of warming runes woven into their garments.

Still, she reasoned, a nearly summer dress in winter would attract less notice than a hide that continued to reek and smolder. With relief, she shed it and stepped back onto the street, waiting for the first suitable victim.

She didn't wait long. A weary man in a coal-black greatcoat trudged past, an iron box cradled in his hands.

A haze of charm magic drifted over him, and he turned toward her. But there was no reverence in his eyes—only suspicion.

The elf poured more strength into the spell and spoke:

"I must meet with your lord. Take me to him!"

The man regarded her with a thoughtful gaze, then inclined his head.

"Very well, no problem. I'll arrange it… But first I must stop by the engineers and deliver this. You may come with me, if you like." With that, he strode down the street, leaving her standing.

The elf froze. Had the spell worked… or had it failed? It was impossible to tell. To be safe, she cast it again and hurried after him. After all, he had promised her an audience with the lord.

They walked the streets together, yet now the eyes of the townsfolk no longer held suspicion. Every passerby gave a short bow and followed them with looks of respect. Some even offered to help carry the load, but the man invariably refused.

Even the loathsome guards who had once driven her off with whistles, as though she were some bothersome sparrow—now they bowed before her. Yes, this was how it should be! She had known all along that she should have cast off that vile hide sooner. At last, a treatment befitting her dignity! Smugly lifting her nose, the elf girl straightened up with pride.

Her spirits lifted, she failed to notice at first that they had returned to the stone wall, beyond which stood the metallic structures. Two soldiers kept watch at the passage, but no hindrance arose.

"She is with me," the man said curtly, and the guards stepped aside.

Though they went in the opposite direction from the path she had taken before, she could not help but think that she had not been mistaken after all. Surely he would not have dared to detain her if delivering the box had not been on their way. That must mean the lord was somewhere beyond. And since the moment presented itself…

"What is it that you carry in your hands, human?"

"A reduced model of a diesel engine. Unfortunately, unlike the semi-diesel, it remains insufficiently advanced for our current level of industrial production."

"Er… understood," she replied, striving not to undermine her authority by betraying her ignorance, though she had not grasped a single word. What language was that even spoken in?

Yet she soon forgot her embarrassment, for the sound of hammers rang out ahead, making her tense and prepare spells. Where there were hammers, there were dwarves!

Bang—bang—bang! The machines thundered, striking the glowing billets. There were scarcely any humans within. Not a single smith among them. The colossal hammers rose and fell of their own accord, beating the red-hot metal into bizarre shapes.

It was not the absence of workers that astonished her, but the scale—the sheer number. Every few seconds another piece completed its journey.

Spellbound, she stared at the endless ranks of components, each changing shape again and again before being plunged into oil vats. She had already counted over a hundred, and only a handful of minutes had passed!

"This is the hot-forging hall. Will you gape forever? Come," the man urged her on.

"Y-yes…" she murmured, still reeling at the thought of how many smiths would have been required to match such output. The number was indecently vast.

The pounding of hammers gave way to a drawn-out metallic screech that made her press her hands to her ears. The next chamber teemed with people. They hurried from one mechanism to another, cutting and shaping metal. Shavings covered the floor, despite the efforts of apprentices who ceaselessly swept them away.

This time her guide did not pause. He strode quickly into yet another, more spacious hall, where even compared to the previous ones, chaos reigned supreme. Iron in the most fantastical forms lay scattered underfoot. Only one thing was familiar: suits of armor against the far wall. Yet even these were useless, pocked with holes as if gnawed through by woodworms. Opposite them, clamped in a vise upon a workbench, was a contrivance that looked like a flute fused with a box.

While the man spoke in his incomprehensible tongue with a scarred compatriot, the elf cautiously laid her hands on the strange device. Angular, bristling with sharp edges and protrusions that yielded beneath her touch.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT! The deafening clatter erupted, filling the chamber with suffocating fumes.

Lariel leapt back instantly, still with no understanding of what had transpired. Her ears rang so sharply she missed part of their exchange.

"…loaded the machine gun?" her escort demanded in irritation.

"I was adjusting the gas system—it sometimes bites the cartridges. And experimenting with different runes to cool the barrel. It overheats too quickly, glowing red-hot."

"Then just try water cooling, as I told you. And next time, at the very least, keep the safety on."

"I'll try not to forget," the scarred man answered, spreading his hands.

"See that you don't. And if you run into difficulty with the engine's operating cycle, come to me," her guide snorted, before turning sharply back to the elf.

"Now you!" His voice cut at her like a lash.

"M-me?" Lariel stammered. For some reason she suddenly felt as if she were about to be reprimanded. For an instant she even thought she stood before not some wretched human, but one of the Council themselves…

"You had questions for me, did you not? Ask them."