Unbound

The vortex resolved quickly into a dark and somewhat damp cave. Felix stepped out of it just as it closed with a wet gurgle, like water down a drain filled with electricity.

Not a great comparison, but apt. Felix shook himself a bit and flared his Perception to gather his bearings. The cave was filled with luminescent mushrooms, hanging vines, and a lumpy sort of terrain. The floors, walls, and ceiling were all covered in bulbous stone outcroppings, as if hundreds of stalactites and stalagmites had been worn by years of running water. The craggy stone itself was riddled with holes, large and small, like pumice or some other volcanic rock.

His team was spread out a bit, filling a sizable depression between lumpy stone hills. Mushrooms dotted the floor around them, wide, dinner plate sized things that looked oddly moist. Felix stepped across the rock, avoiding the mushrooms and vines as best he could in order to get a better vantage.

“There,” he said, pointing to a point of light through one of the many porous paths. “We need to move fast, but stay on your guard. We don’t know what to expect here. Vess?”

“Yin, scout ahead, if you please.”

“Hm. Yes. Wise, little Dragoon.” The golden Wyrmling flew ahead, entering the tunnel ahead of them all.

“The lizard? Alone?” Evie scoffed. “He’ll miss six outta a half dozen. I’m goin’ too.” She vanished into the tunnel, seconds behind Yintarion. Vess and Harn both sighed.

“Where are we?” Beef asked as they stood there, waiting. He looked up at the uneven ceiling and glowing vegetation like it was going to fall on top of him. “Deeper in the mountain?”

“The Undermount,” Pit said.

Pit paused, head cocked. “I dunno.”

“The Undermount is a place between Realms. Much like the Kingsrock,” Tzfell explained. “We are beyond the world. Beside it.”

“Like a soap bubble clinging to the edge of a much larger soap bubble,” Felix added. “Hopefully we don’t go pop.”

Beef’s eyes widened. “Is that a thing that could happen?”

“No,” Felix admitted. “Probably not.”

“It is highly unlikely,” Vess said, shooting Felix a glance. “The Dwarves built this place at least an Age ago and store their most precious treasures here. Even disregarding that, the Dwarves make structures that last. We are in no danger.”

“Not from monsters, anyway,” Harn added.

Beef tightened his hands around the haft of Bedlam, and stared into the many dark tunnels around them.

Felix frowned, turning back toward the lit tunnel. Evie had returned, and her heart was racing. When she appeared, her face was flushed and eyes were wide. “No monsters or nothin’ but…you gotta see this.”

Without a word, they all followed her into the tunnel.

The slightly-brighter tunnel was filled with more of the same mushrooms and moss, though less of the latter. Felix and Beef had to duck on some of the larger protrusions on the ceiling, but it wasn’t terrible. Even the footing wasn’t bad, as the porous rock was wet yet heavily textured; it practically gripped the soles of their boots.

The path kept descending over that lumpy ground, until it felt like they’d walked a half mile beneath the earth. Passages zig-zagged across their tunnel, many of them dead-ends that Felix’s Perception quickly mapped out, while others extended far enough that he lost track of them. Evie hustled ahead, footsteps light as only she could make them, moving with a peculiar eagerness.

Finally, they reached the end to find Yintarion swimming in an anxious circle. “You are here. Good. Perhaps you can make sense of this oddity.”

He nodded toward the side of the tunnel. Like a weird set of windows, the porous stone had expanded the holes into dozens of fist-sized windows into seemingly empty air. Through them, Felix spotted a strange and dizzying sight, and every single person in the party sucked in a sharp, surprised breath.

A mountain rose in the distance…or rather, it descended. Their tunnel just barely emerged from the roof of an incomprehensibly vast cavern, a thousand times bigger than the Clan Hold—ten thousand times bigger—and the mountain was suspended from the ceiling. It was remarkably similar to Nightfall Palace, in shape and general composition if not scale. The mountain-stalactite before them was incredibly large, on par with the mountain that housed Red Shield Hold, and it was filled with an eclectic mix of structures, forests, and distant waterfalls. Far stranger, however, was that those waterfalls fell the wrong way.

“The Undermount,” Tzfell whispered. “It is as they say. A mirror to the greatest of Holds.”

Below the impossible mountain was a swirling storm. Clouds and atmosphere swirled below them like an inverted sky, broken only by a howling wind that revealed a deep darkness.

Felix’s Hunger rumbled at the sight, and he felt a certain connection to what lingered behind the clouds. “The Void. It’s a whole mountain hanging above the Void.”

“How do we get there?” Laur asked.

“Walk,” Harn grunted, starting down the tunnel. “These tunnels gotta lead there at some point.”

“Hey, no bargain’ ahead. I’m scoutin’, old man.”

Evie and Yintarion took off while the rest followed at a more sedate pace. At the front of the group, he missed Tzfall’s first beckoning motion, but definitely noticed when the Chanter grasped his arm.

“Lord Autarch. A word, before we enter the Undermount.”

With enough Agility and Perception, finding their way through the porous tunnels was a simple matter. In less than five minutes they had navigated all the way to the base of the Undermount…but had then encountered a problem.

“We just…step out?” Felix asked. He stood before a wide opening where in a normal world, the tunnel would have opened up to the surface. Here, however, it was simply a wide breach along the ceiling. If he were to step out, Felix was convinced he would fall into the storm and the Void beyond.

“Yes. The mountain will take care of the rest.”

That’s what I’m afraid of. Felix leaned out, looking down. “Alright, let me test it first.”

Not giving himself any further time to think about it, Felix jumped out through the hole…and was sent into a barreling roll as gravity switched direction. No longer falling down into the Void, Felix instead fell back onto the cavern ceiling, and managed to just barely rotate his feet under his body.

“Whoa.”

“Is it safe?” Beef asked.

“Yeah. Come on out. Just be careful, landing—” Before Felix could get the words out, Beef had shot up out of the tunnel and face-planted onto the rocky ground. “Landing is tricky.”

“Eurgh.”

The others came after, some like Laur and Harn having a bit of trouble, but the rest navigated the strange gravity with ease. Pit even executed a double somersault, while Yintarion simply flew out.

“I feel like you’re just rubbing it in now,” Beef muttered.

Felix helped the teen to his feet and patted him on the back. “Come on. That’s not likely to be the weirdest part of all this.”

They walked onward, Yintarion and Evie acting as scouts, and discovered how true Felix’s words were. A sourceless light covered everything, as if the midday sun shone upon them constantly. The cavern ceiling—now the ground—stretched onward as normal for perhaps five hundred feet. After that, grasses and plants sprouted, thick enough to carpet the area before trees appeared. A forest, verdant and lush, spread out ahead of them, rolling over two low hills before descending into a valley filled with a dark lake.

“A lake. On the ceiling,” Vess said, perplexed. She looked up, where storm clouds rolled across the sky yet dropped not a single bit of rain.

“Looks like another palace too,” Harn pointed out.

On the edge of the dark lake, just as Harn had said, there was a palace. Unlike the Hinterlord’s home it was a sprawling piece of architecture, extending for miles. Just beyond it, so large that it dominated the horizon, was the Undermount itself.

“The Havenhold,” Tzfell said. “Once the proud seat of the Dwarven kings, now a debauched pleasure palace to the Hinterlords and the Highblood Clans. It is well guarded and fully staffed at all times. It represents our first barrier. We must move through it in order to reach the steps of the Undermount.”

“Won’t some of the guards be missing? Due to the whole attack?”

“No, Beef. The Havenhold is manned by the guards of all the Dwarven Holds. All of them have access to the Undermount, and it is likely the Hinterlord himself retreated here when they heard the attack.”

“So we cut our way through?” Evie asked.

“We’re not killing people when we don’t have to,” Felix sait, cutting her off.“I’m not keen on hurting folks myself, scaleboy, but how else are we gettin’ through?”

Vess put her hands on both of their shoulders. “Can we not circumvent the palace entirely? Why not go over it?”

Beef pointed at her. “Ooh! Yeah! Where’s the main vault thingy? Why not just fly all the way to the top?”

Laur cleared his throat. “The storm. Threads of it are woven into the mountain itself, sealing off the air across the entire Undermount. Leaping several strides from the earth now would do little to agitate those threads…but too high and you would call down the fury of whatever lies within that darkness. And it grows the higher one climbs.” He shuddered. “I cannot parse the fullness of it, but it is a danger to even you, Lord Autarch.”

“Right. Couldn’t be that easy,” Felix muttered. Then his expression brightened. “How bad would,” he quickly counted the rows of windows. “Six stories be?”

“It would doubtlessly hurt, and likely do far more. There is a reason Havenhold wraps around the entire base of the Undermount, a reason why it stretches no higher than it must.” Tzfell considered the squat but ornate architecture in the valley below. “You could cross, perhaps. But I fear for the lives of the rest of us.”

“Can we like, test it?” Beef asked.

“Test?” Evie raised her eyebrows. “You gonna jump into the storm yourself?”

“No, I just mean—I saw Felix take hits from the sandstorm round Ahkestria, full on. He didn’t even flinch. If he can handle that, then he can handle this. But we won’t know how until he tries. So…test. You’ve got that Abyssal Skim thing right?”

“Skein. Yeah.”

“Sure. Just use that and slip over the top. The roofs shouldn’t be deadly territory, right?”

Tzfell furrowed her brow. “The roofs should be well warded against intrusion…but no, the danger to the Highbloods would be too great if the very tops of the palace were affected.”

“From this distance I cannot be certain, but if there is a gap, it is a narrow one. Lord Autarch, if you attempt this, you must be ready to bail out as soon as possible.”

Felix smiled. “Of course.”

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