Realm at the Edge of the multiverse

by B G Mitchell

  After a quick thought, she replied, “We are not too sure he appeared, the only thing we know for sure is he came from the Damned Plains but that is it. I doubt a human could live on the Damned Plains for very long.”

  Ulwerth sighed to himself. He could still not trust the human fully yet, but so far he had shown no reason to be dangerous, except to any competitors in the steel making industry as that special tome he had. It had information that helped the dwarves to make tons of the stuff, but he was still someone to keep an eye on, and it did not help he still did not know where the human came from.

  Gary had talked about his realm occasionally but it sounded like no realm he had ever heard of, and his stories where outlandish at times. I mean, whoever heard of carts without horses and entire structures made of glass, but then again there was that tome.

  Sylvania spoke up again, startling the king out of his reprieve. “How are trade between you and your other elven neighbours?”

  He read between the lines. Everyone knew the dark elves did not get along at all with their cousins, the grey or green elves, and the exit from Blindstone just so happened to led into the woods of Lerwyn, an area full of elves. Which included the large grey elf city of Ellerwyn. He did keep in contact with the elves and had let them know of the situation with the dark elf city, something he suspected they knew already, but so far their response had been a wait and see attitude.

  “Well, it is going okay, but we have only seen traders about recently.” Ulwerth expected a brief flash of relief, but her expression did not change at all. He continued, “I think they should take another hour or so to load the goods. Now if you excuse me, I need to speak to my advisors.”

  “Of course.” She then bowed, letting the dwarf king walk towards the entrance of the dwarvern city, followed by a group of advisors and a couple of guards.

  One of the advisors got closer to him, and spoke as they walked. “Giving out those weapons. Was that wise, sire?”

  The king smiled and nodded. “Yes, they can hardly build an army with twenty swords, and if we manage to get dwarves in to mine their nice ore seams for seventy percent of the ore, then so much the better.” The king did not trust many things, but one of the things he did trust was ore. It had yet to let him down.

  About ten hours into their return trip, Sylvania turned to her second in command of this expedition, Mayli, the captain of the guard. “Well, that went well.”

  Mayli nodded. “Indeed, mistress, I think the sovereign will be happy.” It was an odd thing, thought Sylvania to herself, but Lucinda had adopted the title of sovereign, instead of the usual queen or Matron, but that seemed to be part of her form of government. She had also set up a council of the city made up of about fifteen people, and ten were even elected from the districts of the city. A democratic city was the most unheard of system of government, and it was almost grey elf in thinking, the rest consisted of her sister from the priesthood and officials who spoke on what remained of the noble houses.

  She seemed to have the support of the people though, and this trade deal would only shore up her position, not that she need it shoring up as Lucinda had managed to overthrow the cult of Zateria and let the free worship of the elven god Mikiria reign. After another ten minutes of silence as they marched, she turned to Mayli. “We shall camp here, I think.”

  Mayli had a quick look at the terrain before replying, “It seems like a good spot, but we are still very close to Blindstone.”

  “I know, but I don’t think the dwarves meant us any harm.”

  Mayli simply nodded and called the wagon train to a halt.

  A little while later, Mayli awoke from her sleeping sack, half asleep, but she felt something was wrong. She opened her eyes and waited for them to come awake. It took a couple of seconds for her to notice that her leader’s sleep sack was empty. She stood up and looked around for Sylvania only to find the camp Sylvania-less. She then went back to her sleeping bag and found that her personal bag was missing. There was a note on her pillow. She picked it up and read the contents.

  Mayli, I am sorry to do this to you, but I have decided that I must see the Elven realm. This is a chance I cannot miss. Do not worry about me. I have taken as many supplies as I need, and I have a map of this part of the realm. Please wish my sister and the sovereign well. I shall return in about two weeks.

  Mayli dropped the note and rushed to the guard on watch.

  When she reached him, she was impressed out how fast he managed to stand up given the speed she was going at. She understood his worry as it looked like she was about to chew him out for some infraction, but that was not on her mind at all. “What time did Sylvania leave the camp?”

  The guard cleared his throat before replying, “About four hours ago. She said that I was to inform no one of her leaving.”

  Mayli sighed. It was hard for a male to refuse any order from a female, especially one which was a noble. She would have loved to blame the male but could see that he was only following orders. Part of her wanted to set up a search party, but given her cargo and the fact she had a four hour head start as well as a map of the area, decided against it. She called over two male guards that had awoken. She knew one of them was a good tracker known as Rohan. He had belonged to another house and had proven his skill against her troop before. In fact she had at one stage managed to capture him and thanked the goddess that she had ignored all standing house orders and let him go rather than put him to death.

  She nodded to Rohan and then spoke. “Rohan see if you can track down Sylvania, but only to keep an eye on her, and take another soldier. Report back to me as soon as she is in trouble.” Rohan simply nodded and gathered his stuff. She then looked over the rest of the troops who had started to wake up and quickly thought on her feet. She then spoke in a loud voice, “Right, let’s pack up. We are heading back to the city.” She made sure the note was safely in her pocket as they departed.

  Gary ducked again, missing another beam. He had gotten used to the layout of the foundry by now, and he even started to enjoy it a bit. His job was mostly to help Bloodhammer interpret the tome, but every now and then he would be involved in forging the steel when they needed all hands on deck, mostly on the bellows. As his experience grew, he even helped the smithy and had a chance to use one of the heavy drop hammers. It was hot, sweaty work and an excellent work out as well.

  He had been in the dwarvern city for about a month now and felt like a tall member of the community. He had gotten to know the dwarves he worked with and could call some of them friends, and he even went out drinking with them at the end of the shift. Although they easily drunk him under the table (which given the height of dwarf tables, is twice as hard as normal tables).

  As a human, he had been allowed to shave something which some dwarves did if only to keep their beards orderly. The problems he had was finding a girlfriend, It was not like the legends he heard about and dwarf females. For one, they did not grow beards but were short, and he could see why dwarf males would fall in love with them, but they were not his type.

  He personally preferred a woman when he knelt in front of her did not mean that he was just trying to talk face to face. The other problem was being constantly underground. He got used to the rhythm of the city but couldn’t help but feel a little claustrophobic underneath all this rock. He had not been to the surface in all the time he had been in this realm. Despite a few requests to the king, he had not been allowed above ground for the moment, apparently for his own safety.

  He had of course asked questions about the human realms in this land and had been told by his new friend Bloodhammer that there were two in close proximity. One was the realm of Morkangin just across from the Elven Empire of Leywryn, the other was on the other side of the Blindstone Mountains. A good four days trek across the Garian dessert to the city state of Gar and their high priestess, it was apparently a city of thousands, given life by a large oasis.

  He had heard many stories from Bloodhammer about the city
state of Gar as the dwarves had traded in the city many times, mostly to get salt and exotic spices for the dwarvern city. It sounded to him like the city itself was like a city from the iron age or the classical Greek period, the dwarves themselves seemed to be a lot more advanced in metallurgy at least as well as clothing and even had a working printing press they could use.

  If a historian had been available (and managed not to get murdered by a knight) and he had been asked, he would have said the dwarves had reached the early renaissance period. When he asked about Morkangin, he found that there was not much information there except that it was ruled by powerful Sorcerers and had a fraught relationship with their neighbours, including the elves. The Elven realm itself seemed to be good trading partners to the dwarves and one of their more trustworthy allies. It made sense with a hostile human realm on one end and a formally hostile dark elf realm on the other.

  He ducked down, avoiding another beam and walked up the stairs into Bloodhammer’s office, performing a knock on the door before looking in. Bloodhammer was at his desk, looking over a couple of parchments, he had taken the time to copy some of the information in the so-called tome for easier study. As he saw Bloodhammer work, one thing did pop into his mind and that was why the language referred to as common and used by the elves and dwarves so matched his own native English, both in writing and speech. It was odd that a culture in another dimension (he assumed as the universe is a large place, so large in fact that it can hold several extremely large egos at once) maybe there was some sort of parallel dimensional development going on here. The odd thing to him was that he once fell asleep in front of a dwarvern history book. Dwarvern history books are perfect for those who regard history as dates. The only problem is that they occasionally include the phrase Day 404th in the rule of Orgween the unshaven (calling a dwarf unshaven is like calling them dwarves. It was dwarvern code for there is no other titles we can give him). Nothing of note happened and they are a perfectly good cure for insomnia). When he awoke, he noticed that the symbols seemed to have been different for a couple of seconds, which was odd as he still understood them.

  He looked over the parchments and noticed the diagrams included in them, as well as Bloodhammer’s own notes, most of which related to the exciting process of metallurgy. A topic which Gary’s advanced 21st century brain knew very little about, but nevertheless had started to learn. He had also started experimenting with copper and magnets, using his limited knowledge of electricity that comes with IT work (it helped that there was no Angry Birds to keep him occupied).

  Bloodhammer stopped his writing and looked up at him and smiled. “Good news, Gary, you are going to accompany me on a trading mission, as we will need to show off that magical tablet down in the Elven city of Ellerwyn.”

  Gary felt a sense of joy and excitement as he was at last going to have a chance to see the sky. “Great,” he replied enthusiastically. “When do you need me to go?”

  Bloodhammer looked back down at his parchment as he corrected another note, before replying, “Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, so the lads and I will only have one barrel tonight as we plan for it to be an early start.” Despite the threat of an early start, it still made Gary feel happy, and how often had he gotten to see an Elven city, he just wish he had brought along his camera as well as a bright Hawaiian shirt.

  Degraos did not notice much change personally. He had been a minor noble in the house of Etria and now, he had been put in charge of a group of soldiers and been given the job of patrolling the outer caverns. A job he was familiar with as that had been his previous job under the previous administration. Using his underground wilderness knowledge, he could tell that there had been a group of about ten orcs that had camped in this area, but moved on an hour ago. It unnerved him as orc activity had been increasing near the city limits. He had a plan. He pointed his men towards the path he suspect the orcs had traversed, he then quietly proceeded down the tunnel followed by the rest of his patrol.

  It was a well-known fact that elves could, when they wanted to, move silently in their native environment they had been born into, and he was using this fact to his advantage, since he was a dark elf and they were underground. As they rounded another tunnel, they were rewarded by a large cavern, in which he could hear the noise of a group of orcs. He snuck in to the side and motioned his men to flank the suspected orc position. Once he had them in view, he then hid behind a rock and checked his targets. There were, in fact, ten orcs. No match for his patrol of five.

  It did not help the orcs’ life insurance premiums that he was also planning to ambush them. The only problem was that he wanted to take one alive. He looked over the group. The underground orcs where somewhat different from their cousins. Instead of the grey green skin, they had pale, white, hairless skin and most of the time had red, pale eyes. They also wore their hair shorter and were sometimes completely bald except for a small, tightly bound pony tail.

  The rest of the orc’s features where normal, with them looking like an overly strong humanoid with a strong jaw that contained a mouthful of fangs with either the top or bottom fangs poking out. Fortunately, this was a small patrol and the one he wanted was the leader which was easy enough to spot. He was the larger, muscular orc with pale skin. He had a solid leather armour with a chainmail shirt which was covering most of his body. His head had no helmet. He also noticed the orc had a nicer looking steel sword which was shinier and newer looking then the others, no doubt a war prize.

  The rest of the war band just simply wore tattered trousers and the odd leather breast plate, carrying a bow and arrow or the odd chipped sword. He checked, and the rest of his men were slowly taking up positions behind rocks and any large stalagmites. Once they were all in position, he aimed his crossbow carefully, making sure to target the leader’s sword arm.

  He took a deep breath and pulled the trigger, feeling the bowstring snap and the dart fly out. He was rewarded with the sound of a thud and a yelp of pain. His crossbow arrow had pierced the leather armour and gone into the arm, causing a ring of red to appear. The orc leader looked confused as the rest of his men took the loud yelp as a sign to begin their attack. They unleashed a small storm of twenty or so crossbow bolts, most hitting their target with a fair degree of accuracy. By the time the darts had hit their target, there were just six orcs standing.

  Their leader was trying to grab his sword with his damaged arm. The rest of the orcs grabbed what weapons they could and charged straight at their attackers, yelling out a battle cry or curse, but two more were cut down by another flight of crossbow bolts. That just left four standing. Degraos had not even bothered to load another bolt, instead grabbing his short sword and rushing towards the leader, who by this point had gotten his sword in his other hand and had turned towards him.

  Degraos ducked as the leader swung his sword clumsily towards him, not used to wielding it in his non-dominate hand. Degraos slashed at the base of his leg, releasing a stream of red blood and an angry whelp from the now wounded orc as he rushed past behind the leader, before he turned around and kicked the orc in the small of his back, sending the orc tumbling forward, allowing Degraos to put his foot on the orc’s back and the point of his sword at the back of the orc’s neck.

  Once he confirmed the orc was not going to struggle, he looked up and checked the status of the rest of his troops in the field of battle to find that most of the orcs were now down on the ground with a couple of bloody holes. All that was left was one who already had turned around and started heading towards an exit. Another one of his men reloaded his crossbow, took a second to aim it, then fired the bolt straight into the back of the fleeing orc’s skull, dropping the orc instantly. Another dark elf approached him to help him restrain the leader as the rest of his men checked the orcs on the floor, making sure that they were now with their gods.

  The captured orc protested loudly when Degraos bound his wrists behind his back with a strap of leather but was swiftly silenced when he kicked the orc�
�s leg wound, reminding him who had the advantage. He then got out a piece of old cloth, knelt down, and grabbed a hold of his noise, forcing the orc’s mouth open to show his fangs. He then stuffed the rag into the orc’s mouth, gagging him, and tied a piece of leather around his head to keep the gag in place. He dragged the orc up and turned to the second in command. “Don’t worry about hiding the bodies. We will leave them for the scavengers.”

  The second in commanded nodded as another solder helped him march the captured orc back towards the city.

  Deep in the forest of Lewyrn, Sylvania looked out of her cave she had manage to arrive at night, and being used to the dark, had taken a couple of steps out to admire the stars in the sky. She had heard about it in stories but had never actually seen it for herself and was rather fascinated by the twinkling lights in the night sky. She also heard the strange sounds of the forest and decided to stay close to her cave on the ledge which was about twenty feet above the forest floor on the side of a mountain. She made herself comfortable and then fell into a restless sleep.

  A little while later, she felt a strange warmth on the side of her face and slowly opened her eyes and closed them again, finding her eyes unable to take the sudden brightness. Putting her hands up to protect her, she slowly peeled them open again where she was rewarded with the brightest light she had ever seen. Looking up into the sky, she had to quickly cover her eyes, surprised at just how bright the rising sun was. It was something she had just heard stories of when she had been growing up.

  She waited in her cave for a little while, allowing her eyes to get use to the overwhelming bright light, then she put her sandals back on and checked that she had everything.

  It was not that much, just a change of clothes and a light grey cloak, her short sword and one of her most precious possession, her journal, as well as some pieces of large mushroom based bread.