We both looked down the hole as the others descended. I bowed for her to lead, and she did so with a smile.
The descent was a broken spiral stairway not more than twenty feet deep. It circled along the walls of the cylindrical natural cave, opening to the floor of the basement. The basement was a horizontal plateau-shaped like an incomplete circle. Where the circle should have been completed was instead a steep drop to the mine.
Everything ended at that edge with only darkness beyond. It must have been the biggest mine I had ever seen, and I had seen many. When we lit our torches and looked down, we saw that it ran as deep and far as our eyes could see, even with the goggles on. Nothing echoed back from the deep abyss, yet we felt like it stared back at us and even whispered to us, warning us.
Hints of the rare ore and other metals glinted on the walls all the way from the top of the mine somewhere above us to what seemed to be the end of the world below. It resembled the same starlit sky as the city outside, yet it reflected the lights of our torches. Many black holes interrupted the glimmering patterns. Those were the mining shafts; the lower entrance to the Forge should be through one of those tunnels. The majority of the scaffolds and ladders were still there, and the veins of precious metal looked back at us provocatively.
“The Octi.” Sertas said barely able to contain his excitement. “Friends, we have reached the mining ground of the Eternus City. We are the only outsiders who have seen the sacred Eternus veins other than the miners of Mergal.”
Joy and victory flared from the eyes of the group, which I didn’t welcome. We were far from victory and certainly joy was the last thing on the minds of those who created that place or those who prepared.
Sertas walked to the edge, where Taria and the Genn sitting beside her were trying to decipher a crude drawing of a map. We weren’t going to get any further if I let them guide us, relying on that useless piece of paper.
Suddenly, Sherako hissed at something behind me. I turned, unsheathing my two daggers, only to see Trom looking back at me with guilt creasing his forehead.
“Put it back!” I commanded. “Whatever you took, put it back.”
“I take no orders from you, Sever. I took nothing.” He said clenching his fist into his pocket.
Suddenly something else attracted my attention beneath him—a dried waterway coming from some hole in the eastern wall of the cavern. I ignored him for the time being, giving him one last look. I headed to the waterway and examined it. They watched me as I focused, trying to figure out its source. Then I deemed that the dried canal we’d seen on our way through the city must have found its way here. It occurred to me that smiths need a water source if they are going to forge something.
“Follow this trench; it will lead to the Gray Forge.”
Sertas followed the dried waterway until it reached the edge of the cliff. Then it plunged for some fifty feet, disappearing into one of the mining shafts in the wall of the abyss beneath us. That shaft must be the one leading to the Gray Forge.
The group descended, using the scaffolds aligned down the dangerous fall. As I followed, I glanced at Trom, who was appraising his loot—a crude bulk of the sacred Eternus ore. Then I caught another Genntay doing the same as he grabbed a piece of rock filled with Eternus fragments.
I turned to Sertas. “This loot will not leave Mergal. Do you understand me, Sertas?” He gave a quick nod without looking at me. I leaned toward Taria and whispered, “Be alert and stay even closer to me.”
She looked around at the two Genn. Sherako jumped from my shadow and raced down. Whatever he’d marked for me must have been getting close.
The shaft which the waterway led to wasn’t as deep as we expected. It ended with a formidable stone wall dipped in a resilient Eternus alloy. The dried waterway sliced through a marble brick and then disappeared beneath a barricaded entrance.
Sertas turned to me. “How long?”
“An hour.”
He looked back to the wall. “Any bright ideas? Anyone?”
The only answer was silence. Then, after a few heavy minutes, Taria said, “The poem; it said something about healing the wound after we follow the tear,” She pointed to the dried waterway we followed saying, “Here is the tear, so where is the wound?”
I smiled, as her way of putting it helped me reach the answer: “The trench is the wound; it grazed on the rocks through the city, shredding its skin. Hurry, let us refill it with rocks and soil.”
As we poured earth into the waterway, the marble brick became increasingly burdened by the rapidly-filling trench. It seemed to us that it was digging deeper into the ground it was buried in with each pile of soil and dirt it received. For each inch it went deeper, we heard a tick. Gradually, my contribution started to fade as I focused my senses on our surroundings.
My intense scanning of the small cave did not go undetected by my comrades. One of them watched me as I stared intently at the edge of the twenty-foot wide hole we were in. I tried to shake my interest to ease the Genn, but he was sure I detected something.
“We need to move,” I said in a commanding manner. The marble brick produced a click that drew the attention from my warning.
Holding our breath, we turned to the massive, reinforced door. We heard a scratch coming from beneath it, then another. A rumble declared the undeniable: the entryway was opening.
The pitch-black beyond the door compelled us to light more torches. Deep in there, in the centuries-old darkness where no one delved but them, the Mergals had forged their legend. Sertas bravely entered and we followed. Taria stayed close to me as I’d advised.
It took several seconds to adjust to the near-darkness. Few torches went out, so we waited for the air to pour inside after long years of denial. In front of us was a narrow path filled with debris and dust. Its right side was just a deep dark fall to what lay further below, and the echoes of our movements helped us detect a huge cavern in that direction. We walked a short distance on debris and dust littered with scraps and filings of metal, emitting a grinding sound as we paced. A hundred feet or so farther, another path appeared to our right, a bridge cutting through the middle of the huge cavern over the pit. The echo of our movements on the mixture of metal and stone became even more peculiar. Fewer of the echoes came back to us, and the most of them did not echo at all. Something kept stealing our sounds.
Before we proceeded right, to the elevated path, one of the Genn asked, “What lies at the end of the path there?” He pointed to a gloomy black hole a dozen feet to our left. The hole was naturally carved, resembling a deep and eerie eye, staring dauntingly at its observers.
The Eyes of Gosh. It was at these points that Talor brushed against a dark and obscured world of mystery.
“The end of your world,” I answered, trying to make it very clear that it was beyond our mission and our league.
Sertas agreed. He said addressing his team, “Don’t ever get close to holes fashioned like this”. He turned right and started ascending the wall-less walkway that inclined upward.
The passage ended on a huge platform surrounded by the bottomless fall. There we saw it: The Gray Forge.
We stood awestruck. Dusty and ambiguous, it stared back at us with its wide metallic complex and inscrutable history. It was there that the Mergalians, silently and away from the eyes of men, forged the secret that we had come to finally unfold and claim. Far atop the iron monstrosity stood a gigantic hammer, vertically erect. It looked like it was waiting for some titan to pound it on the equally huge anvil. The Gray Hammer, it was called.
“Now where is it?” Sertas asked Taria, and all of us turned to her.
“In the core,” she replied.
It seemed that we needed to find out first where the core of the Forge was, the womb, the place where ideas came to fruition. Sertas looked to the path in the middle of the forge, which divided the platform into two huge halves of levers, rods, and other complex intimidating parts. He walked in.
As we walked around, few
er and fewer echoes returned despite the metallic surroundings.
I held Taria’s hand. It wasn’t passion that drove me to hold her hand; it was what walked behind us.
The colossal machine’s cold, rough mechanisms surrounded us. Our silence persisted as we dared to enter its various parts. In the middle of the Forge, the path ended in eleven metal stairs, leading to nothing.
“DAMN IT!” Sertas screamed, losing his sternness for the first time. “This is taking forever. Another riddle!” He ended the sentence looking at Taria questioningly who, embarrassed, tried to let go of my hand, but I didn’t let go as I focused on that... thing. She whispered to me that it was okay, letting go of her hand. I reluctantly let go but was fully alert.
“Well,” she said, smile from ear to ear, evidently in a different psychological state than the rest of the group. I was feeling terrible, but I really had started to get interested in the girl beyond just following Makista’s orders. Or was it my commitment to the role I played? She was a rare thing indeed, innocent and pure.
“We need to spend a year after healing the wound,” she added.
“And what does that mean? I am sure you are not suggesting spending a full year here?” asked Sertas.
I heard the faint rhythmic sound again, and this time, I started to get a clearer picture of its nature. It appeared to be a pounding of some sort.
I hushed the group and followed the sound; it came from across the walls.
I glimpsed at Trom and saw him nervously examining my features and gestures.
“How many steps are there?” Taria asked.
“Eleven,” Sertas replied after counting.
She looked at me and said, “Climb them and take the twelfth step. This should end the twelve months of the year”
I followed her instructions. When I reached the top of the stairs I took another step.
I disappeared.
***
Though I didn’t remember most of it, the time I was inside seemed to me too long, while only a few minutes passed in the real world. When I returned, the group was standing at the mouth of the secondary path leading to the Forge.
“How do we know he’s going to come back?” one of the Genntay asked.
“It’s been only a few minutes,” Sertas said. “We must have patience.”
“But for how long are we supposed to stay here?”
“Maybe someone should have followed him,” another suggested. “He’s been up to something this whole time. And now that he disappeared –”
“Here he is,” cried Trom.
They turned to me, still on the stairs, and then their eyes quickly went to the bag I was holding.
“Nimtha, did you get it?” Sertas asked with fearful excitement.
“Yes,” I replied as I descended, smiling. They approached hastily.
When I reached the lowest step, Sertas reached out to me. Two of the Genn exchanged looks. How interesting it would be to prove them right and flee now, in the direst of times.
But I handed the bag to Sertas, which he took promptly. The moment he opened the bag, a wave of mixed sounds issued from within. It seemed to me like some hushed whispers followed by a horse neigh and then some metal clashing. A low thunder followed. The Genn stared at each other, then their leader mustered his courage and looked inside.
“What is this?” He pulled out three murky, metallic shards embedded with glittering dust, and examined them. One resembled a broken tree twig, another resembled a bolt of lightning, and the third looked like a crescent.
“From what they look like, these must be Rushk , the Shards of Mergal. The details match the description written in history books. They are legendary blades imbued in the Gray Forge. They are the very reason behind the destruction of Mergal. The purpose of your mission.” I explained calmly.
“And how is the significance of some unfinished metal scraps so great that they are worth taking up this perilous journey?” Sertas asked.
“They were meant to be given to Helgar, the dwarf king. He asked the Mergals to forge it with their Eternus.”
“And we risked our lives for THIS?” cried Trom.
“Lower your voice,” commanded Sertas. Then he turned to Taria, “You study ancient lore in Guild Furia and you are the only one trusted with the necessary information about our target. I think it is about time you inform us about this. If I am going to continue to act as the leader of this mission I need to know. Otherwise, I swear I would just leave you here and tell the Verda Luka how guild Gabana and guild Furia withheld information from guild Goremoth.”
Taria replied “There is no need for that. I was told to share everything with you only if our mission succeeds. And now since we have found what we came for I will tell you.” She walked around as she explained, “The Mergals were the greatest miners known, even greater than the dwarves. With the mystic ore of the Eternus, they decided to make Rushk, following that recipe which was given to them by Helgar and the Order of Eon. They made many prototypes of these controversial blades in a tireless effort to perfect the recipe.
“The more they worked, the more they changed. Their skin became marred with cracks and slits, revealing the molten fluid that flowed in their veins. The same fluid lurked deep in their eyes. Their failed attempts piled over the years.”
Despite her grim speech, she shot me a lovely smile which I found myself repaying with a warm one. She continued.
“It bent their souls, too. They fell in love with their own creations. They sold items made from other ores, but they wouldn’t part with even the failed attempts to forge Eternus blades. The Goshae tried to steal them, and they were not alone in these attempts. But the Mergals guarded their work jealously. “So why did Nimtha disappear?” Trom asked.
“When the Goshae attacked and the city fell, the temple leader fled to an elemental realm called Vaud. Nimtha seems to have found it. The final version of the Rushk was said to be in his possession when he fled.”
“In your hands, Sertas,” she added, “is proof that the Rushk was never finished, nor was it taken from Mergal. Till this day”
“So? If we do not know how to use the shards, what good can come of them?” Sertas asked.
Taria answered, “The secret of their purpose lies with Helgar’s successors, the high priests of Trodos. The Order of Eon has their part of the story as well. Our leaders would certainly consult them and together they can unveil the powers of the Shards of Mergal.”
Amazed by the tale, Sertas looked differently at the shards. Thoughts of great power and wealth must have been flowing through his mind. I could see his eyes sparkle with greed.
What she’d informed Sertas of was not the only secret in Vaud, and with one quick look at the new Twin Daggers I wore, she realized what my mission was.
One was a white dagger resembling the wing of a white eagle, and a dark one that looked like a bat’s wing. Avoiding her gaze, I scanned the area again. Something had changed… something was not quite right.
As I looked around, I saw bags filled with uncut Eternus and gems hidden behind some rock. I turned to Taria for an explanation. “I tried to tell them. They have made up their minds.”
Sertas noticed the conversation. “Yes, Nimtha. Do you have something to say?” As we moved around, many of our footsteps issued no sound. More sounds were getting stolen and even our torches started to flicker heavily despite the absence of air currents.
“We agreed, Sertas,” I said. “We agreed to only take what the Keepers of Verda sent us for: the Rushk. You know as well as I do that this is punishable by death. You are endangering the whole group.”
Sertas scoffed, exchanging a derisive look with Trom. “I remember you mentioning it, but I don’t remember us agreeing on anything.” Something in his voice was less calm now, less under my control. I squeezed Taria’s hand again.
“Are you so naïve as to think that Xolis will give them to the Order of Eon? The true sponsors of this mission are not the Verda Luka. It is the Cha
in of Cas.” He paused to repay my glare. He pointed to his team saying, “My team and I didn’t care what exactly they were after, but this was our agreement: the Verda Luka shall give the Chain the winnings of our mission for whatever terms they’ve agreed upon, and we shall have ours. Besides, who will share the exact details of our mission with them when we return?” he asked with a smile. “Your presence has been endured. Now we tolerate no more.”
I turned to Taria. “Listen to me,” I whispered, ignoring the threatening approach of the Genn. “I was ordered to follow you, Taria, but that wasn’t what kept me close to you. I wasn’t entirely true to you; for that I am sorry. You are just a couple of centuries too late. The nothingness in my heart will asphyxiate any passion foreign to the gray wastes it reigns over. I’ve just lived too long.”
She looked at me, clueless, and then turned to the Genn closing in on us. “I don’t understand. Gray wastes? What are you saying?” Then she turned to them, asking, “What are you doing?”
I pulled her close to me with one hand and reached for one of my new daggers with the other. The daggers glimmered for a reason when I held her.
“ Yoppa … Yarpus .” I heard that whisper coming from both my daggers in a ghastly rough voice.
“And what are those?” asked Sertas menacingly, his eyes shining.
I could vanish without a trace in a second, but I knew what was going to happen next, and she didn’t deserve it.
“…together?” Sertas said. The first half of his question had faded away.
“Do you know where Vaud is, foolish Goremoth? The place where the Mergalians live now?” I calmly asked Sertas.
“Where?” he replied with a smirk as he got behind my back, surrounding me with his companions. Their blades flashed in the light of the torches.
“In the Eternus you have taken.”
The Genn froze in their spots. A hollow expression drawn on their faces as their eyes roamed across the Eternus-filled bags.
The Dark Season Saga- the Final Harvest Page 7