Humanity appeared and humanity was immediately beset by a foe wishing to slaughter it. First, it was the wilds themselves. Ravenous flora would steal humans whole, and then be protected by zealous forest spirits. Forest would collude with itself to house all manner of creature from man’s retribution.
Humanity asked for compromise, Humanity was ignored.
So Humanity prayed for salvation and so Divinity answered the call. So they received fire and flame, smithing and mining, so the jungles burned and so the trees were chopped and so the First Predator was defeated.
Humanity grew, humanity swarmed the world, and humanity was immediately beset by titans and beasts and beasts rabid and unintelligible. Monsters that shifted mountains and monsters that lived under beds. Creatures that trained man to fear the almost-man. Creatures that stalked and smiled and stole.
Humanity asked for compromise, Humanity was ignored.
So Humanity prayed for salvation and so Divinity answered the call. So they received love and hatred to fill their minds with, so the monsters were unable to compete with organised tribalism, and so the creatures of chaos were defeated.
Humanity grew and formed groups. And from the ashes of the instinctual creatures of chaos rose the modern monsters. With sense and legibility and wisdom, and yet that wisdom forced humanity into nomadic tribes that teetered on the knife’s edge of extinction. They became little more than cattle.
Humanity asked for compromise, Humanity was ignored.
So Humanity prayed for salvation and so Divinity answered the call. So they received representatives, so they received organisation, so they got Holy Orders, so a dragon was slain, so the Concordats were signed.
Humanity grew and flourished and humanity was conquered. By their own ideas this time, the Divines that had come to save them suddenly instituted such tyrannies that the very core of human essence was killed. Man ascended from cattle and into programmable automaton made of flesh and bone and powered by blood.
Humanity asked for compromise, Humanity was ignored.
So Humanity prayed for salvation and so Divinity answered the call. So they received spirit, so they received power, so finally the strength they were handing off to others was finally claimed for themselves.
Humanity grew and humanity learned and humanity copied. Copied ravenous flora and mindless creature and tyranny of beast and tyranny of Divine. Mortal regimes cut the fat and grew efficient yet it failed to remove the human spirit that had been given.
Humanity asked for compromise, Humanity was ignored.
So Humanity prayed for salvation and so Divinity answered the call. So there was nothing left to give and nothing to receive. So Divine killed Divine, so the world was broken.
And now Humanity grows again. It grows tired of this delicate balance between peace and warfare. It grows bored of this stability that has been imposed. It senses that its lives in a theatre play, it understands that it is a mere puppet on strings. Humanity is a child cradled in a colosseum, every issue that is has ever faced was solved by fire and steel and blood, right from the beginning when they needed to cut down a tree. Some say humanity cannot learn and that it is doomed to this cycle.
They are wrong for humanity has already learned. This time, there is no asking for compromise.
Humanity now prays for salvation. Divinity will answer the call.
- “So and So”. Written by Goddess Nenera, of Death. Dated to centuries before the Great War.
Arascus walked through the final, seventh gate of Klavdiv. They were all different and yet all fundamentally the same; at the end of the day, there were an infinite different ways in which to decorate a wall the size of a cliff but no amount of flag and glowstone and decorative engravement or statue or parapet or crenulation would ever make it anything but a wall the size of a cliff.
The first gate, that massive block of bronze, was the only that had been closed. There, outside of the gate stood a single dwarven carved surrounded by animated skeletons with pike and block armour. He had been curious at first, and then his eyes looked as if they wanted to jump out of his head when he saw the two Divine. That half-man had blown a horn, it had been answered from a balcony near the ceiling. Then, he ran to guide the oncoming army to one of the smaller auxiliary gates.
Smaller it was than the main entrance, but smaller at this scale still meant enough room for a massive cargo plane to comfortably fit through. The dwarf had stared in silence. So the convoy snaked with Arascus and Iniri at its head. The rest of the gates had been opened pre-emptively, or maybe they had never been shut in the first place. Each one was just slightly slid open although, just as with the auxiliary shaft, just slightly at this scale meant it had enough room for the entire convoy to fit through with room to spare. The winding snake of vehicles, headed by the pair of Divines, passed through massive airlocks fashioned out of rock and stone and reinforced by steel and bronze.
Through one, through the other. The third, the fifth. And now the seventh. In total, a dozen solitary dwarves sat perched on those grand walls. A dozen solitary dwarves, maybe a thousand skeletons animated by rune and memory, and then countless statues. Iniri fell silent and Arascus said nothing. Walking through these almost life-less gates, talking felt out of place. Humour here would be like talking in a graveyard.
They passed through the seventh gate and Arascus gave his men no rest. Iniri actually fell out of march as she looked around. So did almost every driver in the convoy. They had brought more than a hundred vehicles in total. All huge trucks pulling a trailer, if not two, or treaded tanks that rumbled across the stone, or personnel carriers designed to carry a dozen men each and serve as a bunker in the field.
And yet the grandest part of the display were the headlights of the vehicles that illuminated the first bridge. Scale wise, they were not even ants crawling up a person’s leg. A silent person’s leg that was broken only by the rumbling of the distance. They were invisible bacteria, so tiny as to be imperceptible, that had entered the body. “You know which way we’re going?” Iniri asked, her voice filled with awe. In the distance and from below, echoes of industry drummed. A hammer hitting metal. A pick striking stone. And yet the sounds were dull and barely perceptible. And rare. In the past, there was a saying that a man could enter Klavdiv to exchange his hearing for riches. And now? There it was. Another hammer strike, a half-minute inbetween.
“Of course.” Arascus led the convoy. All around them, glowstone glimmered through windows in dwarves appeared. Families came out onto balconies to see the commotion and the intruders, silhouetted by flimsy orange light. On either side of them, the hold gave way to tunnel which seemed to stretch on infinitely, framed on either side by more glowstone. Massive statues were carved onto every building, either of dwarves holding up the ceiling or wielding axe or smashing pick down below them. The men started to light up their torches as they looked around. The gigantic bridge they walked on had enough space for more than a hundred men to march side-by-side. On either side were the ancient golems that had fallen asleep in the Great War. They stood as statues of dwarves, or as men without faces, they stood taller than Divines and they stood the size of the half-men that made them. The shapes had been up to the craftsmen back then.
“What are those?” Iniri asked so quietly her voice was barely audible above the rumbling of engines and the crunching of tread from behind them.
“Those are the moving statues.” Arascus replied, also making sure to keep his voice silent. When the light of torches caught the statues in just the right way, Arascus could see the glint of ancient runes, time would have not taken them, especially not down here where rain and wind were not present to wash such things away.
“There’s…” Iniri took a pause for a moment. “There’s thousands.”
Iniri was wrong. Thousands was much too low a number. Klavdiv alone possibly contained more than a hundred million golems by itself. The other Core Holds of the Underkingdoms would have similar amounts. “When the World-Core was sealed and they fell asleep, I ordered them moved deeper.”
“They had this many still?”
Arascus did not want to talk, he gave her an answer that would shut her up. “They had as many as a forest has leaves.” Iniri did indeed fall silent as Arascus continued the mournful funeral procession to Empire. In the past, he had always enjoyed walking to the edge of this bridge and looking down at the web of stone that existed below. If one expected to see chaos, they were wrong. Klavdiv would bring any architect or urban planner to their knees. One could see entire leagues through these grand boring shafts. But now, he simply did not even want to see what he knew would be a well of infinite darkness. There were barely enough souls here to light up the first level. The second level would not have a tenth of the population here, the third could be empty of all life, the fourth and every floor below it would be.
Yet it was not the grandiosity and the scale that threatened to bring him to his knees. It was the thought that once, there had been so much life sprawling here that wardens had to stand on these bridges to direct traffic. A step further and Arascus took a deep breath as he kept eyes on the shimmering glowstone ahead of him.
It was that thought of what was lost, and it was the answer as to why. Why were the architects of these wonders, where every brick was a work of patterned art, where every bridges were built to last forever, where the gates would stand the test of time, where life itself could be annihilated and yet Arda would forever carry the scars of such works, why were these builders struggling on the edge of extinction?
But the answer was obvious, was it not?
They were gone because they swore to him. Because he had come down here, because he had introduced ideas of humanity into these dwarves. Those were ideas they were simply never meant to have. The one time they thought of such greatness in the past, Divinity had come to smite them. Kassandora had ordered the ocean drains opened, the Goddess of Magic had ripped the oceans apart, the Goddess by Arascus’ side right now had dug the holes. A war that was setting itself up to take centuries, where the surface kingdoms could simply not compete had been ended in less than a week.
It had shamed them to no end, it had forced their legions back underground. Kassandora had even managed to get concessions back then. The surface had cheered at its survival. Yet time came and went and the cheering stopped. Fer’s incursions proved more dreadful, the Black & White War between Irinika and Allasaria was worse, a hundred other conflicts eventually overshadowed the one month that the endless legions of stone had been undefeatable. And when Arascus realised that the floodings still haunted them, he could not handle such a noble people hanging their heads in shame.
He had come down here. He had coaxed their fear out of them. He had let them shed that shame of utter defeat. He taught them how to turn away from that horror. And now? Arascus did his utmost to maintain his own dignity. This was his pain to carry. The men who had come with him were innocent, he could grieve himself.
So they walked in silence until they got to what once was the Noble’s District in the very centre. The bridge here continued forward, but two offshoots split away to bury into stone and serve as roads which long ago were used to circumvent the traffic in the very centre of the hold. Although there was no need for the convoy to enter one of those dark abysses, they continued forwards. Here, close to the palace, Klavdiv was still inhabited. Dwarves were walking out of doorways, they talked in whispers amongst themselves. A few waved at Arascus. A few burst out in tears. A child screamed. Men called out, men ran about. A crowd began to form on parapet of dwarves that wore clothes glowstone embedded into the fabric.
Arascus finally raised a hand and came to a stop before the Royal Palace of Klavdiv. It was a fortress and a cathedral and a centre of administration all in one. The building was so huge it could house a town within it, the walls, like everything else here, were adorned with parapet and small bridge and window, each of those had the faint orange shine of glowstone. And yet the entire building was clad in a veil of darkness.
“And that?” Iniri pointed up. The headlight of some truck near the end of the convoy caught the edge of a sphere so far above them. It was perfectly round and covered in veins of writing that were actually millions of runes. Runes to ignite and runes to burn and runes to temper and runes to regulate. Runes upon runes until words began to overflow onto each other.
“That’s the sun.” Arascus finally came to a stop.
“It’s huge.” Iniri said. It was huge. It was the sort of thing that did not exist even in theory. How it worked, no one even really knew. It just did.
Klavdiv had five.
“You should have seen it Iniri.” Arascus spoke slowly. “You should have seen how they built and chained stars. How they brought mountains to life. How they wielded metal and magma to create sights we do not have up there.” Arascus just about to stop himself from saying how all those things had come to an end because of him. It would not be good for his own reputation, and it would not be good for the woman at this point. She still relied too much on his judgement for weakness to be allowed.
A crowd had formed around the convoy. Dwarves were descending down towards the central platform. They walked through the organised chaos that was the web of stairs here. Everyone, from women clutching their babes to those so old that they used a cane to walk. And from the stairs that led to the palace, out of those huge bronze doors adorned with engravings picturing ancient dwarves hefting mountains into the air, walked what had to be the leadership of the entire Underkingdom.
Dwarves in thick armour and dwarves in clothes that were almost entirely decorated in glowstone. In the full-body style, heavy plate over the core that gave way to a scale and chain skirt. All of them were lean for dwarves, all of them were clean shaven, all of them carried some sort of scar. One dwarf lacked an eye. Another had a gash across his face that revealed teeth. Yet it was the one that led the party who caught Arascus’ eye. He, like the rest of them, was wounded. A cut ran from his nose to his ear just under the eye, and then his cheek had obviously been burned. He carried an axe of pure silver on his hip and on his head…
Arascus saw the crown that cursed this land. The thin band of Imperial Silver embedded with crimson ruby and white diamond. It was the Imperial Style, the glory sat in the position, there was no reason to wear gaudy gold. And it was the crown that Arascus had personally placed on the head of High King Naikav when the man had brought the Underkingdoms under the wing of his Empire. That cursed band of metal landing upon Naikav’s head had drawn the dwarves into his war. That cursed band of metal had caused this.
And yet Naikav’s descendant still wore that crown of misery upon his head. “I am High King Osonev, son of Yuriel, son of Rehal, son of Akanos.” And then, he did something Arascus would have never imagined would happen. Not in his dreams. Osonev took a knee. “My father told me this day would come. That either I would report the vigil or I would curse my own son with it. I report, on behalf of everyone, we have upheld the vigil. The Empire has taken a step back, but the Empire never fell. As long as one of us still draws breath, there”
“I am Emperor Arascus. I come as I had said a thousand years ago. You are released from your vigil High King.” Arascus took a deep breath. No. It wasn’t enough. It had to be done. The God of Pride took a knee in return. “High King Osonev, you and your kind possess such strength that Divinity may look upon you and weep for they will never even aspire to such greatness.”
The dwarves all held their breath. Arascus did not raise his head to see what they were doing. This was not a reaction for them, it was for himself. To try and absolve some of the guilt, although he the only way that guilt would be absolved would be through bringing their race to heights they could not dream of themselves. “I swear on behalf of my life and the lives of my daughters, on behalf of the lives of everyone who stands and looks with pride upon the red-white-black, the Empire does not forget its sons and daughters. And if those sons and daughters are as noble as you, then let all who stand under my flag forever be cursed if we ever forget you.”
“The suns under the surface shall shine again.”