Chapter 15 - down into the underground

The guard stands before the bulletin board in the adventurer’s guild and runs his finger over the makeshift city map as he delivers his report. Nara sits at the counter, her notebook open, pen in hand, and writes along. Cerena leans against the wall beside the door and listens, her arms crossed in front of her chest.
“We’ve thoroughly searched the entire northeast section by now, Your Highness. We found three more usable buildings, two of them with intact upper floors.” He points to the corresponding locations on the map and Nara sees the charcoal circles he has already drawn there. “One has a cellar that is dry and would serve as storage. The ceiling is stable, no cracks, and the access is wide enough to carry barrels and crates downward.”
Nara notes the position and the details. “And the streets?”
“Mostly passable. But from the third intersection westward the rubble is so dense that one cannot move safely. The rest of the district is inaccessible from this side.” He shrugs. “Perhaps there’s a way from the south or over the wall to the north, but that’s next time.”
“Good, what else?”
“Toward the southwest we continued. Two more residences, one of them with a usable workshop on the ground floor, though the workbenches are scrap and there’s a small courtyard.” He moves his finger on the map toward the castle ruins. “Then toward the castle ruins it gets progressively more destroyed, there’s not much left to salvage there. The closer you get, the worse it looks, as if everything that stood near the castle burned along with it.”
Nara nods and writes.
“Oh yes, one more thing.” He scratches the back of his head as if trying to remember where to file this information. “Near the inner city center, perhaps a hundred meters north of it, I found an access point. Half hidden under brush, the bushes have laid over it so that you only see it if you stand right in front of it. Looks like access to the sewers or something similar. It’s a stone staircase leading down. I couldn’t tell any more from the outside.”
Nara’s pen pauses. Only for a heartbeat, hardly enough for anyone to notice. Then she continues writing. She notes the position and description just as she has noted everything else, the cellars and the workshops and the rubble on the streets. A line among the others.
“How large is the access?” she asks, and her voice sounds as even as when discussing the houses and cellars and workbenches.
“Large enough for a person to fit through. Maybe a bit tight with full equipment, but doable.”
“Thank you, good work.”
The guard nods satisfied and leaves the guild. Nara closes her notebook and sets down her pen. She sits still at the counter and looks at the bulletin board. The city map with its circles and crosses, the open tasks. Everything is there, everything is ordered, everything has its place.
But everything else suddenly becomes background noise.
North of the castle ruins lies an access leading downward. Underground, where the dragons, or rather wyverns as she now knows, did not rage and where the fire perhaps did not reach. Underground, where in her dream a library lies, with shelves full of books with knowledge about Arthengard.
Nara stands and walks around the guild. Cerena stands still and watches her. She knows this behavior and knows exactly that Nara is cooking up something.
“I need a small reconnaissance squad,” she says. “You and perhaps four guards? There’s an access to the sewers near the castle ruins. It would be useful to know what lies beneath the city.”
Cerena looks at her. Nara notices how Cerena puts two and two together. The castle ruins, which Nara has not been able to stop thinking about for days. The buried entrances, where Nara dug with bare hands until Aldric placed his hand on her shoulder. And now sewers that happen to be in the same area.
But she does not ask. She looks at Nara, one second longer than necessary, and then nods.
“Good, I’ll assemble a team,” she says. “When?”
“As soon as possible.”
Cerena raises an eyebrow, but she knows the moment for discussion has long since passed. Then she goes.
An hour later the group stands at the access. Aldric is there along with three other guards. Each carries a torch, weapons, and a bag of charcoal pieces for marking. Nara has additionally brought the rune stone in her pocket, the curiosity too great not to want to get started right away.
The guard had been right. You only see the entrance when you stand directly in front of it. They are in a narrow strip of green separating the castle ruins from the rest of the city. Decades of tangled overgrowth have settled over the opening and formed a natural hollow where you might suspect a cavity in the ground but no staircase. Aldric pushes the branches aside and the stone steps become visible, gray and worn, leading down into darkness.
Cerena lights her torch and goes first. The light dances over the walls of the narrow shaft and casts her shadow long and distorted downward. Nara follows directly behind her. The steps are narrow and in some places covered with fine dust that crunches under their soles. With each step down the air changes. It becomes heavier and staler, like in a room that has not been opened for generations. No water, no moisture, everything dry. Only dust and old stone.
At the foot of the stairs a corridor opens up, just wide enough for two people side by side. The ceiling is low and Aldric has to duck his head. The stones on the walls are roughly hewn and between the joints the mortar has decayed to fine sand.
The silence down here is different from the silence of the city above, as if the world above them had ceased to exist. The torchlight reaches barely a few meters and beyond it waits darkness so dense that it seems almost tangible.
The group moves slowly. Cerena in front, Nara directly behind her, two guards on the flanks, Aldric securing the rear. Sounds difficult to place echo through the corridors and bounce off the walls until you can no longer tell what comes from the front and what from the back. The echo of their own footsteps, the crackling of the torches, and sometimes a distant scraping that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, and at which every member of the group instinctively tightens their grip on the sword.
Then they come to an intersection. The group chooses the first branch, leading left. The torchlight falls on walls that look wetter than they are, dust has deposited here in layers. After thirty meters there is a dead end. The corridor ends in a wall of collapsed stone, chunks as large as flour sacks, wedged tightly together. Aldric marks the dead end with a charcoal line on the wall before they choose the next branch.
The second branch leads to the right. The corridor is narrower and the ceiling even lower. Aldric mutters something unfriendly about the body size of the original builders. After fifty meters the same result. Collapsed stone, no way through.
Back at the main intersection, only the third corridor remains, straight ahead. Cerena goes forward and Nara notices the temperature dropping. Not evenly but in waves, as if they were approaching layer by layer a place that draws heat from the air. Her breath becomes visible, thin clouds that light up in the torchlight and dissolve immediately.
Nara says nothing. The cold creeps into her fingers, but the rune stone in her pocket radiates a slight warmth.
Then something changes. The corridor becomes wider. The stones on the walls are smoother and more evenly placed than anything they have seen so far. The joints are clean, the mortar has withstood the centuries, and the surface of the stones is so even that the torchlight glides over it like over polished marble. The ceiling rises and for the first time since the stairs Aldric can walk upright. The floor beneath their feet is laid from individual paving stones, precisely and without gaps.
“This is no sewer anymore,” Cerena says quietly. Her voice echoes differently here, more muffled, as if the smooth walls absorb sound rather than reflect it.
This corridor was not built for sewage. It was built for people. Nara thinks of the castle above them, the towers and walls from her dream, and wonders who descended from there and why.
The corridor leads straight ahead without branches, and with each step the cold intensifies. The torches flicker more strongly, as if someone were slowly draining their life. One of the guards replaces his torch and the fresh flame wavers and struggles against an invisible current.
Then the corridor ends.
Before them stands a door. Massive, made of dark stone, smooth and without seams, as though hewn from a single block. No visible handle, no lock, no hinges. The surface is flawless, as if the centuries have not dared to touch it. In the middle, at chest height, is a single depression. Round, smooth, with sharp edges.
The cold here is almost physical. Nara’s breath comes in thin clouds from her mouth and the torchlight trembles as if afraid of what lies beyond the door.
Nara steps closer. She raises her hand and runs her finger over the smooth edge of the depression. The stone is ice-cold beneath her fingertip, so cold that it almost burns. Behind her stand Cerena and the guards, waiting. No one says anything. The silence is so complete that Nara hears the blood rushing in her own ears.
Aldric in the back ranks dares to speak first. “And now, Your Highness? Should we turn back?” An uneasy feeling has been growing in him for some time, so strong that it triggers his flight instinct.
Then the voice. Quiet, direct, near, as if someone stood directly behind her.
“Your sword.”
Nara reaches to her hip and draws the sword from its sheath. The runes on the blade glow blue, brighter than usual, brighter than at any slime or goblin, as if reacting to something nearby. She turns the sword around and holds the pommel before the depression. It fits perfectly, as if the indentation was made for it. She presses.
A quiet click, barely audible, like a lock finally finding the right key after centuries. The door moves slowly and heavily, millimeter by millimeter, as if struggling against centuries of stillness. Cold air pours through the growing gap, colder still than the corridor, and with it comes a smell of old parchment and dry dust.
Nara withdraws the sword from the depression and returns it to its sheath.
The torchlight falls into the chamber beyond and Nara sees outlines. Shelves on the walls, vague in the flickering light. Books and scrolls waiting in the darkness. A table in the middle with open tomes.
On the floor lie six figures. Motionless bones and decayed clothing, collapsed at the places where they died long ago. Some lean against the shelves, some lie flat, one still has his hand on the sword beside him on the floor, as if he tried to draw it at the last moment.
Then, as slowly as the door opened, they begin to move.
Fingers that claw into the dust. Heads that jerk upward as if someone were pulling on strings. Torsos that straighten, one after another, with creaking and cracking. Then six skeletons stand in the torchlight, their empty eye sockets fixed on the group.
Cerena draws her sword. The four guards do the same.