Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

Quaver inserted itself into the Hollow Minion’s voicebox and ripped up and out through the Construct’s control Formation. Bunita started a bit lower and wrenched up into the other’s vocal apparatus. Both Minions shuddered and tried to cry a programmed alarm, then crumbled and fell basically in tandem.

I put my foot on the ground, and carefully used Earthpower to open a small cavity in the ground, just big enough to fit two trashed Minions.

The scarecrow-esque Constructs were smoothly dumped into the hole in the corridor floor by Lord Mick’s experienced hands, so convenient to always have stone to work with here. I smoothed the floor over and back to unbroken status as everyone else paused to listen to see if there was any alarm.

Virindi were inscrutable, and if they moved some of their guards around, who was to know?

A vertical hand went up at the edge of the light, Kris already off and in front of us, and four fingers were broadly displayed.

Guardpost. Living guards who would be missed.

Happily, there was someone here who could go around such blockades if required, and in the populated areas, the walls weren’t all that thick.

We all glided up to the edge of the zone, just able to see the place where four Gotrok were standing around one of their chest-high tables, playing one of the forty different kind of stone and board games that were popular in their society. Probably their equivalent of checkers, I noted, studying the board with magnified vision from Eagle Eyes.

Mick chopped right, I agreed, and looking back, so did all the lugians.

I put my hand on the wall, and opened it up.

The passage was low and not very wide, but that was fine. The Disks obligingly dipped down, the melees put up their feet carefully, and we quietly scooted along on a diagonal around the guard position.

The tunnel beyond opened up into the main population caverns of the city, where the wall apartments and towering multi-chambered towers held the population of the city. The Mick took everyone into the shadow of the nearest tower as I closed the passage behind us, leaving no evidence of bypassing the guardpost.

His hand gestures were to the left, up two, and two doors down, and off we went.

---

There were only a couple patrols to dodge, easily sussed out ahead of time by how loud they were clomping around, more intent on intimidation of the people than anything else. The Gotrok basically concentrated on control of the gates of the city and stomping around in rigid marches to show their strength and discipline, all of which made them extremely predictable.

The virindi and their servants weren’t much in evidence here, there being very little to investigate. Even with twenty people moving around, given they were dragged quickly and all in complete silence at this point, navigating to the meeting point with the contact we had in here wasn’t all that hard.

The ‘apartment’ turned out to have what could only be called an internal courtyard, and Kris had the complex lock up front open in seconds by dint of sticking her nail in it and a Mark III Vajra moving the tumblers and opening it up faster than a key. Lugians didn’t have sensitive fingers for that kind of work, and actually preferred complex locks to brute force solutions in polite situations.

Our line of late-night intruders were in the door zip-zip-zip, it was almost comical how fast it was.

Once inside, the Mick didn’t knock, he opened the inner door, and closed it, then opened it and closed it again, waiting patiently.

“Air pressure alarm,” Kris murmured to me, eyeing the windows of the place and the ventilation system, right through the stone. “Probably makes a water trap somewhere bubble or burble. There is someone coming down the stairs now.”

A minute later, the door cracked open, then a brawny lugian miner there opened it up, a mine-light in his hand. He found himself looking out at a bunch of Isparians and lugians standing silently in his entry hall.

“Poklio, how the stones are ye?” the Mick smiled cheerfully to the startled informer. “We’re here t’ tell ye, ye gots t’ evacuate everyone from the city now, an’ were dispatched t’ help that happen.”

The miner blinked several times, as if trying to believe what he was hearing. “Lord Mick?” he finally got out, overcoming his astonishment. “We sent word that the virindi are here, but our messenger did not return…”

“That’s because the virindi tracked his way out an’ booby-trapped it nicely. We had t’ make our own way in,” the Mick replied testily. “It’s bad, Poklio.” He stared the lugian directly in the eye. “The virindi are goin’ t’ take out the city, an’ that be no lie. Ideally, we need everyone getting out o’ here tonight, if at all possible.”

“Tonight?” The lugian’s eyes boggled at the demand. “But how? There’s no way to organize anything that fast..”

“Highness,” the Mick asked without turning around, “how long do we have?”

“There were three timing nodes active during our walk into the city. One of them has gone silent. Based on the rising amplitude of the current node and when the third one stopped, whatever the virindi are planning is going to go off at highmoon two nights hence.” Kris paused significantly. “At that time, everything in this city is going to be gone.

“I imagine they can set it off early, such as tomorrow, or right now. If that happens, the city might well still survive in some form, but there isn’t going to be anything alive in it that is not virindi.”

The miner blinked again, looking at all of us looking back at him grimly. “That… is very, very bad,” he agreed quickly. “We will have to abandon almost everything…”

“Or ye can stay here an’ die because it’s too much work,” the Mick said disparagingly, and the reluctant miner bridled at his tone.

“Let me alert my wife, and then I must talk to my neighbors quickly!” the stout lugian snarled quickly.

“Do you have a secondary tunnel system in place for communication, Master Poklio?”

I’m sure he reddened at my words, as he didn’t have the tats or air of any kind of Stone Master. “We’ve slowly dug out tunnels here and there between key areas,” he admitted. “Nobody knows where all of them are, and the Gotrok have only stumbled across a couple of them.”

“I can connect them all very, very quickly if you need them to get people out of there. What was the proper location of our entry point, Axemaster?” I asked Kopf quietly.

Kopf reeled off a string of coordinates in the lugian tongue quickly, startling the miner more with the placement than anything. “An evacuation tunnel they know nothing of?” he asked eagerly. It was a given that any of the secret tunnels to the outside they had made were probably just traps by now.

“The Lady Magos made it herself, we all took it. It is a long and unbroken journey, but it leads to safety on the other side of Linvak Kom-Kommon, below and beyond where the Gotrok can reach,” Kopf replied stoically.

The miner gave me a sharp once-over. “And you can make another tunnel like that, leading to a safe way out?” he clarified.

“I can and will,” I replied firmly.

“Then you will be coming with me.” He looked around at the rest of the team, assessing them and reading them properly as being very dangerous. “Can you beat the Gotrok?” he asked firmly.

“Any o’ them? Yes. ALL o’ them? No. The big danger be the virindi, now, aye? All that magic flying around. Ye need to get the word out, an’ the people need t’ move now, the sooner, the better.”

“I will spread the word quickly!” Poklio agreed hastily.

“Tell us where we need to be to protect them, and we will be there,” Kopf ground out in his deep voice, his Shield currently at merely half its normal size so as not to be so bulky.

“That we will, my lord!” the miner agreed, recognizing a noble by his bearing. “I have no room for all of you, but make yourselves at home… for as long as I will call this place a home.”

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Sound carries a long way through stone. Lugians had used hammer tapping and drummings through the stone to carry messages in the past, and the practice never really stopped for the convenience of it. Different codes beat back and forth, from everything from children signaling to one another between the walls of their abodes, to marking the time and shift changes, to entire messages that could be conveyed with the proper melodies.

The first of those tapping melodies went out, and then Poklio led me into the lower storage area of his apartment, a place crammed with old worn things of stone that had likely seen generations of use, along with some preserved food reserves and rough tools and clothing appropriate for miners.

The door was appropriately hidden behind a heap of clothing, counterweighted marvelously, and it slid open smoothly to reveal a narrow (for lugians) passage beyond. The miner had to squeeze into it, it really wasn’t going to fit the armored lugians in our own band or any Gotrok soldiers, so the Scouts followed after, Kris staying behind with Kopf’s Vanguards for an emergency contact as needed.

Tellingly, Poklio’s wife and two kids had already grabbed up ready packs, stuffed them with extra food, and were with us as we wound through the carefully-chiseled passages, the stone from excavating them carried with the miners to their working areas and tossed into the carts so there would be no sign of the tailings.

I smoothed it out and widened it around them calmly, the miner swearing softly as he watched the strenuously-chiseled stone Shape itself smoothly around him. Still, he only led us to the next house, tapping a careful beat upon the stone as he did so.

Soon enough, other lugians were coming down into the tunnel network, waiting for Poklio. He exchanged urgent words with them, and then we were moving on and down and around, while behind us the city was waking up at night.

I was keeping track of our placement, and he did indeed lead us out of the residential section, artfully skirting with masterful skill any corridors or tunnels used by primary traffic. Soon enough we came to the end of the tunnels they’d been working on, and pointed at the wall of stone ahead of me.

He was absolutely silent as he watched it all melt away ahead of us, but simply pointed in the proper direction to go as I charted it all in my Visual File, matched it up with the map of the city I knew… and made any sudden alterations to the course that were needed as the webwork of shifted ley lines got in the way.

The hum here was actually subdued. I gathered it was because the ley lines were pumping the magic into something here, and so the Formation was actually being filled here under the city, while the magic was all flowing together into the narrow channels as we were arriving.

Soon enough, we came to a storage chamber almost adjacent to the tunnel I’d made coming in. We stepped out of the wall into a room filled with racks of old suits, helmets, and wagon parts, things that had to be moved out of the way quickly. I expedited matters by dropping the floor down with all the stuff and then filling it in on top, opening the way to the door.

“Okay, the only thing we need to worry about is virindi flying by through the center of the cavern, or a wandering patrol deciding this area needs to be tromped through,” I told them all. “If we can let a patrol pass without killing them, that is ideal. If not… it has to be really fast and clean,” I warned them all.