"In the name of the son, you have been well! We were in a bit of trouble," declared the tall, dark-haired warrior, at the same time making the Sign of the cult of the triumvirate on his chest. He was a handsome man despite his rough appearance. His armor, though dented, was of the highest quality, and the intensity of his gaze made Elysia uncomfortable.
"Apparently, gentlemen, we owe you our lives" added the sorcerer, who was also richly dressed. His brocade robe was edged with gold thread, and scrolls covered in mystic symbols were attached to rings that adorned it. His long blond hair was cut in a peculiar way, since from the center of the wavy strands rose a crest although it was somewhat short. Elysia wondered if it was the badge of some mystical order. The armored man's laugh rang out like thunder.
"It is the prophecy, Johann. Didn't the priestess say that one of our brothers from Lothal would help us? Praise be to the father! It's a good sign, no doubt."
Elysia looked over at the hunter, who held out his hands in front of him and shrugged. There was a certain skeptical humor in the way he raised an eyebrow.
"I am Elysia, an adventurer, and this is my fellow Frey, we are the Platinum rank group Ragnarök" he explained as she bowed to the knight.
"I am Aldred Keppler, known as Cruel Sword, Paladin of the Order of the Flaming Heart." The man in armor appeared.
Elysia suppressed a shudder, the order was famous for the zeal with which they carried out their crusade against the races of betia men…, and against the humans whom they considered heretics. The knight then made a gesture towards the sorcerer.
"This is my adviser on magical matters: Dr. Johann Zauber."
"At your service," Zauber greeted, bowing.
"I am Jules Gascoigne, once an adventurer from the Kingdom of Lothal, though that was many years ago," the fur-clad man declared.
"Mr. Gascoigne is a ranger, and I hired him to guide us through the mountains," Aldred explained. "I have a great job to carry out on an ancient dwarf fortress hidden in these mountains.
Elysia and Frey exchanged glances. Frey knew that his mate preferred to travel alone in search of the lost treasure of the ancient city of the dwarves. However, parting with this company they had found by chance would only raise suspicions.
"Maybe we could join forces," Frey proposed, hoping that Elysia would humor him. "We, too, are headed for the old dwarf fortress, and this path is far from safe."
"Excellent suggestion," agreed the sorcerer.
"Without a doubt, you are someone who could easily intimidate anyone," Jules commented, unaware of the death glare Elysia gave her. "There is still a small dwarven outpost there."
"We'd better bury your companions," Elysia said, trying to fill the silence that followed. Luckily when she got out of the water she quickly covered her peculiar features, as her sixth sense told her that she should.
♦ ♦ ♦
"Why are you so restless, Elysia? Isn't it a beautiful night?" Jules Gascoigne asked sarcastically as he breathed into his hands to warm them in the biting cold of the air.
Elysia pulled her spare cloak up above her knees, reached toward the small fire Zauber had lit with muttering words of magic, and she looked up at the ranger, whose face, in the firelight, resembled a demonic mask.
"These mountains are cold and frightening," Elysia replied, making sure his feline features were not visible. "Who knows what dangers they hide?"
"Indeed, who knows? We are close to the wastelans, and some say that they are the territory where greenskins, beastmen and other monsters enemies of humanity proliferate. Also, I have heard stories that these mountains are haunted."
Elysia gestured toward the fire.
"Do you think it's wise to have lit a fire?"
From somewhere nearby came Frey's reassuring snoring and the regular breathing of the others. Jules laughed softly.
"It's a choice between two evils, isn't it? I've seen men freeze to death on nights like this, and if something attacks us, we better have light to see. Greenskins and beastmen can pick out humans in the dark, but we can't, can we? No, the truth is that I don't think fire changes things much. Anyway, I think you're not nervous about it."
He stared at Elysia expectantly, and she, not really knowing what to say, decided to stay silent. Talking to people made her nervous.
Jules mistook Elysia's nervousness for melancholy. "It's a tough world we live in, isn't it?"
"It is, indeed." I leave her with a broken voice.
"Don't cling to the past. You can't change it. With time, all wounds heal."
"I do not think so."
Both of them were silent, and the cat girl turned her eyes towards Frey who was asleep while he remained seated, what kind of monster was her companion who was capable of doing that? Frey sat like a gargoyle, motionless, fully armored, eyes closed, but his hand did not release the greatsword Lævateinn.
Elysia wondered how Frey would have taken that advice from Jules, since, as he had mentioned to Elysia, he constantly pondered the lessons of the past. His awareness of his history propelled him inexorably into the future, and he claimed that human beings had imperfect memories and that his was better.
"Is that why you are not afraid of meeting death?" Elysia wondered. "Does the determination burn within him as strongly as it did the moment he decided he would take this path?" She pondered what it must be like to live with the past intruding on the present so strongly that he couldn't be forgotten. "I would go crazy." Elysia concluded.
She inspected her own grief and tried to evoke it in all its fullness, but it seemed to her that it had diminished an iota, that time had already eroded it and that she would continue that process. She didn't feel any better knowing that she was doomed to forget, for memories of her to fade to pale shadows. "Maybe a perfect memory like Frey's isn't so bad," she thought. Even the time she had spent with her mother had lost the color of her, she now remembered everything in grayscale.
♦ ♦ ♦
During guard duty, Elysia thought she saw an unearthly green light high on the mountain above them. As she watched, her dread washed over her, as the light shifted as if she were searching for something. She had heard stories about the demons that populated the mountains, and she averted her eyes towards Frey wondering if she should wake him up.
But the light faded, and though she watched for a long time, she saw no other sign. Perhaps it had been a residual image that her retina kept from the fire, or an optical illusion produced by her mental exhaustion, although she, for some reason, doubted it.
♦ ♦ ♦
When morning came, he brushed suspicion aside. The group followed the path around the mountain, and suddenly a new land stretched out before them under the steel gray of the stormy sky. From above they saw a long valley lodged in the basin that formed between five mountains. The peaks rose like the claws of a gigantic claw, and the city spread out in the background.
Huge walls closed off the entrance to the valley; they had been built with blocks of stone taller than a man. Inside the valley, by a silvery lake, was a huge tower, and the city huddled beneath it. Long streets ran from the forest to smaller towers, located at the foot of each mountain. The valley was criss-crossed by unmortared stone channels, creating a checkerboard of overgrown fields. Frey poked Elysia in the ribs with an elbow and pointed towards the spikes.
"Look Elysia." declared Frey in a confident voice. "She told you that there was a fortress between the mountains"
"That's a fortress-city embedded inside a mountain," Aldred interjected.
Frey looked at the paladin with respect.
"You are right paladin. Ever since I found out about their possible existence, these mountains have populated my dreams."
Elysia looked down at the city, which had a sense of enduring. The fortress city had been built from the bones of the mountains to last until the end of the world.
"It's truly beautiful," she said, and Frey looked at her intently.
"I was told that in ancient times, this city was known as the Queen of Fortresses. According to some the most beautiful of those times, it is said that the dwarves bitterly mourned her fall.
Jules stared at the massive walls.
"How could he fall? In these mountains all the armies of all the kings of men could be resisted, and these fields could feed the entire population of a metropolis."
Frey shook his head and fixed his eyes on the city with the same intensity as if he was looking at the past.
"With pride, the dwarves built the fortress at the height of their ancient power. Surely this place is a wonder to the world. Symbol of his wealth and power, a strength that was beyond elves, humans, and dragons. They thought that it would never fall and that the mines it guarded would last forever."
Frey spoke with a bitter and imposing passion, which Elysia had never heard in her voice before.
"How stupid they were!" Frey went on. "How stupid they were! They built their fortress-city with pride; they were sure that they dominated the stone and the Darkness under the World. And yet, at the same time that the city was being built, the seeds of its end were being sown.
"What happened?" Elysia wanted to know.
"As far as I know, the Dark Lords emerged about five hundred years ago; the dwarves were harassed until they came out of this mountain and expelled from these lands. The best warriors of that generation fell in that bitter struggle, sacrificing themselves to make their brothers flee until they reached the Gray Mountains where they entrenched themselves to this day.
"However, the dwarven people still control some strongholds to the west of the theocracy," Zauber interjected with pedantic presumption. "So says a book called 'The Shadow of the Ancient Warriors.'
Frey's caustic laugh could have corroded steel.
"Oh yeah? I doubt it, the dwarf who told me about this place told me what really happened back then. As they battled the hordes of Dark Lords, the darkness gained strength. They were exhausted from war when the black mountains spewed their ash clouds. The sky was covered and the sun hid his face, so his crops died and his cattle got sick. The dwarves had returned to the safety of their mountains, and from the very heart of their kingdom, from the place where we imagined we were strongest, new enemies arose.
Frey fell silent, and in the resulting silence Elysia imagined that she heard the distant cawing of some bird.
"Through tunnels far deeper than any the dwarves themselves had ever dug, the enemies attacked the core of their fortress. Through the mines that had been the source of their wealth came armies of Goblins, Rafolks, Kobolds, Fetchlings, Drows, and much, much worse."
"And what did the dwarfs do?" Elysia asked.
Frey spread his arms to the sides and looked at those present in the face.
"What could we do? We took up arms and most fought to the bitter end to allow their brothers a chance to hold the fortress. And that was a terrible war. It was fought in tight, dark spaces, with hideous weapons and a ferocity greater than you can imagine. Wells collapsed, corridors were burned with flamethrowers, mines were flooded. The enemies responded with poison gas, vile incantations, and summoned demons. Beneath the place where we now stand, the dwarves fought with every means they could lay their hands on, with all their weapons, and with all the courage that despair can breed. They fought and lost. Step by step, they were expelled from their homes.
Elysia looked down at the placid city. It seemed impossible that what Frey had just described had ever taken place, and yet there was something in the dark hero's voice that compelled her claims to be believed. The cat girl imagined the desperate struggle of those dwarfs from the distant past, their fear and bewilderment when they were expelled from the place they had believed to be theirs. She imagined them fighting that losing battle with superhuman tenacity.
"In the end it became clear that they could not hold the city, so the tombs of its kings and the treasury vaults were sealed; then he hid them from them by cunning devices, and they left the city into the hands of their enemies." Frey gave them a fierce look. "Since then, the dwarves have not been foolish enough to believe that there is a place that is safe from the Dark."