Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

Ravina stood gawking in the entry hall—much to the annoyance of passersby trying to get into the city. She'd traveled much and seen many wonders, but she'd never seen anything like this.

Durthangrim was a city built into the side of an enormous canyon. The entrance was down a large-but-winding stair that zig-zagged down the cliffside. Despite the comfortable size of the stair, the tremendous drop was still enough to give Ravina a dose of vertigo.

A gentle nudge from behind had her moving into the city proper.

"Come, sweetie. You'll draw attention blocking the way and gawking openly like that. Every pickpocket in the city recognizes the 'tourist' face," Sith said as she sashayed past Ravina. She wondered if Sith realized how much attention she was grabbing with that outfit and walk.

After a few weeks of travel, Ravina still didn't know what to make of her two companions. Both were bubbly and cheerful in their own ways, but they said precious little about who they are, where they're from…basically anything about themselves.

The most she had managed to infer was that they weren't blood-related…though that might be obvious just from their appearances. Sith's body was still a puzzle that Ravina hadn't figured out even after weeks. The constants were her shiny, obsidian skin and glowing purple eyes, but everything else seemed…fluid.

The horns she'd first seen way back at the clearing in the jungle were sometimes there, sometimes not. Sometimes a pair of black, leathery wings like a bat's would appear on her back just to disappear in the next blink. Other times a tail the same color as her skin and with a tip resembling an arrowhead would be swishing behind her, just to disappear the instant it was out of sight.

She always had fangs, but there were times Ravina could swear they were down to her chin, while other times they'd barely extended past her lips. Her hair, which was usually slicked back off her head and ran all the way down to her waist, would sometimes be short enough to not reach her neck.

Other times it would mysteriously be piled atop her head in a bun, and even others it would be braided and wrapped around her neck like a scarf, despite Sith clearly not having enough time to make such an elaborate adjustment since the last time Ravina had looked at her.

Truly an enigma, this one. What even was she? Her pointed ears suggest some flavor of elf, but Ravina had been all over this side of the world and never once heard of anyone like Sith.

"Whoa! Ravin, look!" Gala exclaimed as she yanked Ravina's arm hard enough to threaten a dislocation. This girl was much stronger than she looked!

"Easy! You're gonna yank my damn arm clean off!" Ravina groused, trying to find whatever had gotten Gala so worked up.

Her eyes caught the edge of the balcony of this level. The city was built in a tiered structure, with each tier being roughly two or three jogs from cliff face to edge. The tiers could be considered large balconies overlooking the canyon.

Gala seemed to be pointing to a large statue that speared out from the side of the cliff face and hung over the canyon's gaping maw. The statue appeared to be a large hand jutting out from the tier below theirs, but as Gala dragged her toward the balcony's railing, Ravina saw that it was actually a statue of a dwarf.

The dwarf was enormous—probably a climb in height, unless her eyes were deceiving her. The dwarf had its feet planted on the tier below, while its body stretched up at around a 60 degree angle to the bottom of their tier. Its left hand held up the tier, while the right extended out horizontally into the canyon.

"Mighty fine workmanship, but seems a waste for a support," Ravina mused to herself. She'd been accused of not having an eye for "the arts" before, but no arts had ever helped her survive as an adventurer.

"It's not just a support, dear. That's an intake for their ventilation and climate control systems," Sith said, suddenly appearing behind them.

"Climate control? How do they control the climate in a city of stone?" Gala asked, clearly smitten with the new information. Actually, she was curious and inquisitive about pretty much every location they'd ventured to.

"Ingenious engineering. The dwarves here are leagues ahead of other city-states in many ways," she said as she turned around away from the canyon and pointed to the cliff face.

"Look there. See the striations in the rock? The dwarves left them for decorative purposes, just giving them a nice polish. See the holes in the wall with water pouring out? Those all empty into pipes to continue down to the canyon floor or basins where they collect into fountains and baths."

She turned to her right and pointed farther down the row of buildings to a cloud of steam rising about a jog away.

"See the cloud of steam? Hot springs. All this tells a grand story of this city's origins. The dwarves truly are poetic in their own ways," Sith said with a small smile.

"Tell us, Auntie! Quit dangling it in front of us like baiting a fish!" Gala said, practically drooling at the story she was anticipating.

Sith smiled wider, showing fangs which were now halfway down her chin.

"Well, this whole region is a gigantic supervolcano," she said matter-of-factly, as though that explained everything.

"...what the fuck's a 'supervolcano?' That just a regular volcano but bigger?" Ravina said, unamused. She'd seen volcanoes before, as well as the destruction they can bring. She was not pleased to learn she was standing on top of one.

Sith nodded to her. "Yes, functionally. Though this one is…well, let's just say you don't need to worry about it erupting. Not now, anyway.

"This canyon formed from a cataclysmic eruption a very long time ago. See the dark stone in that layer there?" she asked while pointing to a striation that was darker than all the others.

"That's basalt. The dwarves call it 'blackstone,' but it's the same thing regardless: a remnant of volcanic activity and lava flows. All those outlets you see in the wall gushing out water are lava tubes. After the eruption, when this specific location discharged its store of molten rock, the empty tubes began to collect and channel groundwater.

"These aquifers are from mountains and hills and plains and geography many journeys away. They gather deep below the ground of this desert. You wouldn't even know the water was there if not for this gigantic split in the earth.

"Regardless, the dwarves that built this place originally used the natural formations in their architecture. These lava tubes are utilized both as aqueducts for the city's drinking water as well as cooling for the ventilation.

"You can't see it from so far away, but if you were to get close enough, you would see that those statues have slits in them that the wind from the canyon flows into and gets channeled throughout the entire city. There are snaking tunnels that run for journeys and journeys in, around, and under it.

"The wind captured through the statues is cooled by the ambient rock in the tunnels, but it also runs across underground cooling chambers and reservoirs that both further cool and moisten the air. You should notice your lips get less chapped the farther into the city we get—especially underground. These balconies out in the open mostly cater to 'surfacers,' as the dwarves would call us. Most dwarves like to stay nestled in the underground portions of the city," Sith finished.

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"That's amazing! Do you think the dwarves would let us look around? I really want to see these tunnels!" Gala exclaimed as they walked through the city parallel to the cliff face. Ravina had no idea where they were going, but Sith seemed sure of herself, so she simply followed behind.

"Ha, not likely, hon. Those tunnels, as well as most of the architecture and engineering in this city, is firmly under the control of the Society of Deep Design.

"The SoDD is both a society of engineers that works on and maintains all the engineering in the city, and is also its governing body. Representatives from each sect of the Society sit on a council that governs, while the other members of the Society do the work needed to keep the city functioning.

"And they do not like outsiders meddling in their affairs—especially non-dwarven outsiders. The Society teaches that their knowledge was passed down from their God, the 'Emberfather,' that helped build the city so long ago that its memory has passed into myth.

"The Society has a sort of hybrid role between functionality and spirituality. Asking to view their tunnels, created by their ancestors alongside their God, would be deeply insulting to them, I imagine," Sith said while shaking her head.

"You say that like you've got insider-knowledge. You explained all this very thoroughly, but from what you're sayin,' it sounds like even the dwarves don't know all of it. They attribute it to their God or whatever, so how's it possible for you to know things about their city and its founding that even they don't?" Ravina questioned suspiciously.

She wasn't suspicious of Sith as a threat. She'd had plenty of chances to attack, and she hadn't—she'd even been rather friendly. Her motives and goals, though, were unknown. This made her dubious in Ravina's mind.

"I don't recall saying that the dwarven version of events was untrue," Sith said with a wink as she turned off the beaten path toward a large gate in the cliff face. There was a large room with a fenced hole in the floor as well as a line waiting before the hole.

Just as Ravina was about to ask what they were doing, a rope that was dangling down the center of the hole began moving as it was pulled up toward the ceiling. Following the rope with her eyes, she could see that it was wrapped around a wheel like a pulley—though, now that she was looking at it, she realized the "rope" was actually a bundle of coiled metal strings—and it disappeared into a hole in the wall.

A large platform that began rising out of the hole in the floor nearly had Ravina's jaw on the floor, but that was before she saw the people riding it. There must've been hundreds of people all riding the platform in its ascent. They didn't look excited or concerned or anything. Actually, they looked rather mundane, as though this were just any other day.

"It's a lift—an elevator," Sith said, looking at Gala, who had clearly been on the verge of exploding with questions. "Remember all that water that's running underground? They've built water wheels at various points in the waterways to siphon some of the underground rivers' motion. With it, they can operate lifts like these completely mechanically—no magic involved."

As they loaded onto the platform and began their descent, Ravina was making note of everything she saw. She wasn't mechanically-minded, but this felt like something she should remember to tell to…someone. Surely someone back in Striton would know how to make use of a device like this.

The platform they stood on was mostly wood, with engraved metal around the edges. The supports that rose from each corner were metal as well. It seemed that the structure that was lifted and lowered by the coiled metal rope was mostly just the metal frame, while the wood platform was along for the ride—probably made of wood so that it'd be lighter than metal or stone?

"Amazin'…" Ravina sighed, not even realizing she'd said it aloud.

"Indeed, the city is a feat of engineering you can't find anywhere else in the world. Such a shame," Sith said with slight mourning.

"A shame? What's the shame? All seems great to me. Might be I can convince someone from Striton to come here and learn all this shit," Ravina said, partially lost in thought.

"Unlikely. The dwarves do not share knowledge. Again, they consider it to be a gift bestowed on them by a deity. They will not part with it voluntarily, and there are no records that you could get your hands on outside of the Society.

"The Society only takes in native-born dwarves, as well. That means even being a dwarf wouldn't be enough to get in. You'd have to be born in this city to two dwarven citizens.

"The shame is that this society is extremely fragile. They've consolidated power so thoroughly that they've also cultivated a tremendous weakness," Sith sighed.

"Weakness? This city has a large weakness? It might as well be a fortress!" Gala said, clearly not picking up on the conversation's sudden tonal shift.

"The weakness is not of this city, my dear, but this society. They have their SoDD, with engineers that can operate and maintain this city, but they hold that knowledge internally—in this one, single city.

"One great earthquake, one foul disease, one great flood…any single catastrophe that strikes this city could easily wipe out everyone that knows how to maintain it. This city is fragile; it's a city of stone resting on a foundation of sand. If it shakes just a little, the entire foundation could collapse.

"Remember this, ladies. When you consolidate power, you consolidate vulnerability. To hoard power is to become as brittle as glass, for a titan—while powerful—stands alone," Sith lectured with seriousness that Ravina seldom saw. She was usually so light and cheerful—always joking and getting swept up by Gala's mood.

What she saw in Sith's eyes now, though, spoke of countless years of experience. She could see both victories and defeats, triumphs and tragedies in Sith's eyes—the purple glow having deepened such that Ravina couldn't plumb their full depth. She was shocked when she glanced over to see a similar look in Gala's deep, green eyes.

"Who are you two? What are we doing here?" Ravina asked, picking up from the mood that something big was happening. She did not like being in the middle of something big with no information.

Sith smiled, but it was not a warm, comforting smile. It was the smile of a predator stalking its prey.

"What you and Gala are doing here is gathering reinforcements," Sith said.

"Reinforcements for what?" Ravina asked. Was there an army coming to attack the city? If so, why did they just walk right into the middle of it?!

"Your student is in danger, Ravina, and she's only just beginning to grasp the scope of that danger. She's going to need help before the end. We're here because this is the closest city that we can gather adventurers from, but there's a problem with that, too.

"This city is…different. Something foul lurks in these tunnels—can you taste it in the air? A pestilence festers here," Sith said as she ran a long, forked tongue over her fangs, now down to her chin.

"You will have trouble mobilizing the adventurers, but you must regardless. Julia's life—and an entire people's existence—is at stake," she finished, shifting her eyes back to meet Ravina's. There was now determination in those purple eyes, tinged with a hint of sadness.

"Saving how you know Julia at all—or my connection to her—for later, what are you going to do?" Ravina said skeptically. This was quite a bit to drop on someone you've only known a few weeks.

"Why, I'm going to investigate, obviously. This city is…my Lord does not watch it. It grieves him to look, so he lets his grief blind him. My job, however, is to look where he will not.

"Blind spots breed threats, and I'll suffer no threats to my Lord," Sith said with ice that felt like it lowered the temperature around them.

"Don't worry. I will reconvene with you before you leave for the marsh. It's about a thousand journeys from here, so you better get busy finding adventurers to join you. You have a week, at most. Then, we must leave with whoever has joined us, no matter how many or few.

"The Guild in this city has forgotten its purpose. It languishes in greed, and that greed breeds corruption," she said as she started backing up into the crowd on the elevator. Curiously, the crowd seemed to ignore her, as though she didn't even exist.

"The Founder has hopes for your future. I must admit that I'm also curious to see how you perform.

"Consider this your Adamantine-Rank exam, Ravina. A Mithril Rank is a powerful warrior, but an Adamantine Rank must be a powerful leader.

"This is not standard protocol, but the greatest never fit that label anyway. Good luck," Sith said with a wicked smile as she backed further into the crowd. In a blink, she seemed to completely disappear, as though she melted into the crowd, which was still somehow completely oblivious to her presence.

Ravina stood there dumbstruck, trying to process everything that had just been dumped on her.

"This is going to be so much fun!" Gala said, once again failing to read the room. As the lift ground to a halt at the tier that (presumably) held the Guild hall, all Ravina could do was sigh and roll her eyes. What had she been dragged into? And, more importantly, what had Julia been dragged into?