Chapter 213

◈ Chapter 213:

Cleaned and made proper after the disastrous bedroom cataclysm, Rain, Opal, and Lyra trooped back out into the cavern town.

The cathedral sized crystal radiated a soft light from above, naturally illuminating the multi story town houses that lined the square, the cream-white stone pleasing to look upon, a cleaner and newer version of the leveler city above.

Rain caught sight of a few monsters peering from windows at him as he looked around. They jerked back from view when he turned his head toward them.

The statue was still there, unfortunately, in the middle of the square. It was a depiction of him at his most brutal, a relentless killer tearing into and devouring prey. An unsettling thing to look upon with how life-like the thing was. The sculptor who had made it would know better than most how to make such a depiction of himself he supposed, she had faced those teeth down herself, and seen them in the arena.

With such a thing It was no wonder then that the town square was deserted. He doubted that this part of the town was ever going to be particularly busy with such an unsettling statue dominating it.

He noticed Opal and Lyra wandering toward a nearby town house and after a moment he followed. They stopped at the ground floor window and he ducked down to look through along with them, peering over their heads.

There was a monster lying on a couch inside, her bird-like feet dangling casually over the arm of the sofa, the cloud of pink tipped white feathers that were her six wings framing her upper body.

It was the harpy, the other monster aside from the fanged goblin who had been caged in the abattoir next to Rain. He hadn't seen her in some time, not since she had shuffled from the arena with her wings broken. He was almost surprised to see her alive.

She had her eyes closed as she lazily kicked her feet, but she cracked one eye as the fanged goblin entered, passing by a second couch that was partially merged inside of the wall.

The fanged goblin rolled her eyes at the harpy, grumbling about her leaving feathers everywhere. Another voice came from the side and the goblin turned, her gaze casually sweeping across the room as she spun, until she just happened to look by the window.

The goblin looked like she had suddenly swallowed a lemon and nearly tripped over her own feet she startled so hard. Seeing Rain looking through the window directly at her, out of nowhere, was apparently not something she had been expecting, especially judging by the choking sounds she made as she tried not to swallow her tongue.

"What? What is it?" said the harpy, sitting up on the couch.

"The-The-" she gabbled.

Before she could get the words out however, Rain pulled back, turning and ducking down through the front door as Opal and Lyra pushed through ahead.

He stepped into the hallway, ears brushing against the ceiling as he hunched down and found himself looking at a blue scaled tail as the owner leaned against the door frame and looked into the room beyond.

"What are you two freaking out about?" said Beryl, oblivious to Rain standing behind her.

"He- He's- here!" came the choked reply.

"Hmm?" said Beryl tilting her head in puzzlement.

Opal took hold of her tail tip and gently tugged.

Beryl turned with a frown to find Opal, and a strange wall of black that hadn't been there a moment before. Her eyes rose up and up and up and quickly became round.

"O-Oh." she quavered.

"Hey Blueberry," grinned Opal.

Beryl nervously licked her lip and quickly looked back down at Opal, trying her best to pretend that a ten foot plus monster wasn't looming over her.

"Uh, H-hey? Wha-What do you want?"

"Well I made you three part of my council, and I have a councily problem to solve, so you're all coming with us."

"I resign!" cried the fanged goblin from inside the room.

"It's too late for that, those who resign from the council get eaten, it's part of the rules."

"The council didn't decide on those rules!"

"Yes, it did, because before you joined the council was just me, and I made the rules as I was the council."

There was a moment where the three monsters took this in, and then the fanged goblin let out a groan. She appeared at the doorway, the harpy just behind.

"What then? What are we going to do that you need us for?"

Opal rubbed her chin. "We're going to get food, so we're going to the surface."

The three stared at her.

In the end, it took quite a bit of convincing to get the three monsters to come along, but eventually, and with a little intimidating encouragement from Rain, they moved out.

Their next destination was across the square from the trio of monsters, a similar building, but noticeably different, mostly because Ravoure had apparently been washing clothes and had left them dangling from a window to dry.

Quistis was waiting for them by the door. The black scaled Lamia giving the gathering of monsters a displeased look.

There was no persuasion this time however. Opal simply beckoned her hand at her, and the lamia followed with a defeated sigh.

This time they came back the way they had come, returning to the mansion, and then stepping around it. They rounded the last corner and emerged out by the back of the building.

Here there was a stable and what looked like a half hearted attempt at a garden, small piles of rocks scattered across gravel. Opal had not been exaggerating about the Lamia's difficulty with organics, making something alive was beyond her, but even dead grass was a problem at the scale of the town, and she had taken the easy path of… making a rock garden?

Probably for best that she hadn't stretched her Class even further as Rain noted that the back of the mansion looked more than a little unfinished. He frowned as he noticed that one of the rooms was missing an entire wall, the room open to the air at its back end, the furniture within exposed to the cavern air.

…All these small mistakes were admittedly starting to get a little concerning, it was like a drunken architect had gotten loose and the builders had built the place exactly to their scrawled plan, or rather in this case, a lamia with a worrying amount of brain damage.

He couldn't exactly say he liked the idea of living in a building that might collapse because the creator had accidentally left out any kind of supporting walls. He might be okay, but everyone else?

He had little time to think on that however as Quistis raised her hands and the courtyard stirred, the cobblestone before the stable slipping and spiralling into smoke, twisting inwards like a whirlpool until from the centre of this whirlpool stone blockwork began to rise. Slowly at first, but then accelerating, a slender white stone tower rose before them, passing the roof of the mansion, then rising up and up into the air.

The tower was a simple cylindrical shape in appearance, a spear thrusting up toward the suspended crystal cathedral far above, until with a rush of smoke it pierced through and continued on, going directly through the crystal itself.

Rain approached. The tower was nondescript, cream white stone blockwork scattered with small arched windows, but the scale of it was awe inspiring alone, a tower that could no doubt be seen from anywhere inside the cavern.

"It would be bad if this thing suddenly collapses while we are half way up because she mistakenly made it out of cheese or something like that." said Rain, peering at the stone, trying to work out if it could be trusted.

Quistis snorted in annoyance. "My work is excellent thank you very much. I do not make mistakes."

Rain didn't reply but gestured at the room missing a wall at the back of the mansion. Quistis glanced over at it and her mouth twitched.

"Every artist makes artistic flaws, it is part of the craft, and not the same as a mistake."

"I don't fancy the idea of this tower collapsing because of artistic flaws, uhm, can you check it again please? Just in case," said Lyra.

Quistis glared at her, but looked up at the tower, frowning with concentration.

After a moment she muttered, "What…" but then she shook her head slightly "The tower is fine."

"No, wait, what was that? you definitely looked worried for a second there!" said Lyra, alarm increasing in real time.

"It was nothing, I did no such thing."

"I thought he was joking! you didn't really partially make the tower out of cheese did you?!"

"I cannot make such a material so easily, so no."

"That's not a denial! That's not a denial that you used the wrong material!"

Opal rolled her eyes. "She fixed it so it's fine sheepy. My building maker snake does good enough work."

Rain looked between the goblin girl and Quistis.

"She will come with us. If the tower is flawed then she shall fall with it."

Like that they began to ascend, entering through the grand arched opening at the bottom and emerging onto a broad spiral staircase. The tower was slender from afar, but inside it was spacious enough that Rain only needed to duck a little, and was wide enough that a carriage could have driven down the stair were it not spiralled.

Rain crouched down and peered from a window after many minutes of climbing, curious to see how far up they were.

The view was astonishing and his eyes widened in surprise. He really hadn't quite grasped just what Opal had commanded the lamia to make. The cavern was enormous! Bigger than the Abattoir, and it was filled from end to end with buildings, buildings constructed from bright cream white stone, resplendent in the crystal light. The wash of stone buildings spilled up against the distant cave walls, literally, the buildings haphazardly climbed up against the rock, some merged into it, some of them at strange angles, many of them with details missing, no windows, or no roof, or missing walls. It seemed Quistis's control had become even more sketchy with sheer distance of the town's creation, some of those especially far buildings looked like a child's drawing with how disproportionate they were!

But even with the crude mistakes at the edges, this wasn't just a vague idea of a town, this was a TOWN. Everything had been thought of, from markets, to gardens, to avenues and alleys, shops, and a brewery, a building for the council, store houses and grain houses, and more.

The mistakes that Quistis had made now made a lot more sense because the lamia had just produced so goddamn much it was unavoidable. He was looking over a town that would take decades and decades to build ordinarily.

It was a wonder that this lamia wasn't some kind of highly respected and powerful member of Florens' elite, her abilities were truly invaluable. Even if the town turned back to dirt given enough time, or even if there were a lot of mistakes.

It made him wonder what she had really been doing down here beneath the city…

The town almost felt familiar, now that he was looking, and he felt a strange sense of deja-vu. He recognised that street's shape, and that brewery's position at a crossroad, he had sat at that corner and begged for food in his past life.

It was based on Lynthia he realised, except merged with the features of Florens. A merging of what Opal knew as a town. Just how long had she been dreaming of such a place for monsters…?

When he heard 'I want a monster town!" from her, he had imagined something small, a few dozen small buildings, something quaint, not something the size of friggin Lynthia with the  density of Florens!!

He noticed Lyra recovering nearby, her hands on her knees as she caught her breath, but even she was staring out the windows, a muttered "...What the fuck…" escaping her lips as she took in the view.

They continued upwards as soon as they were rested, the breaks becoming more frequent as Lyra and the other monsters, and even Opal became exhausted by the climb.

Eventually Opal and Lyra threw in the towel and had Rain carry them. They left the other monsters behind after that, Rain and Quistis being far faster than they could keep up with.

They soon entered the part of the tower that cut through the cathedral like crystal that hung from the cavern's ceiling. The windows hadn't been removed here, and the luminous crystal spilled light onto the spiral stair, a scattering prism split of rainbows, light refracted over and over across the cream stone.

The chromatic dappling slipped to dark as black as they passed beyond the crystal and the tower tunnelled through the earth. Here the windows were filled with stone and dirt, small trickles of soil pouring down onto the steps in many places.

Quistis began flicking out her hand every so often, growing small crystals from the wall and ceiling to illuminate their passage as they ascended.

Up and up they went, until finally they found the stair ended in a flat block of stone, a trap door in the middle of it.

Opal stuck out her hand from Rain's fur.

"Wait wait." She seemed to concentrate for a second in thought. "Okay make it a little higher."

Quistis, seemingly getting used to the goblin's requests, raised a hand without complaint, and the roof above them started to rise, more steps materialising from the smoke, which Rain followed after.

"STOP!" cried Opal, and Rain halted just as the tower finished its growth upward.

"Okay, this should be it, we should be at Warwick's."

Rain nodded and reached up, taking hold of the stone trap door. With a grunt he heaved up.

The trapdoor lifted.

Bright morning light spilled down, so bright that it hurt his eyes as he poked his head free.

He blinked in the light a few times. Were they in the alley?

He turned slowly as his vision cleared, and was met with a table set out on the grass with a family of five sitting at it, frozen in the middle of eating breakfast, cutlery stuck mid motion, staring down at the giant wolf head that had suddenly popped out of the ground beside their table.

"FLUFF!" cried Pickle.