Crowned in Black: Chapter 44

The first time I'd approached Fort Palewing was by land. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with no clue as to the sheer amount of shit I was about to get myself into, I’d ridden Cutthroat all the way from Lyrensgrove into the mountains of Ilia. The terrain and my inexperience had made it a seven-day trek, in which the charred farmlands and Stranged battlefields left over from Ilia’s civil war gave way to the primordial mountain tundra of the High Reaches. It had taken another full day of riding that steep, rutted road before we'd reached the fort itself.

It used to be that Reaches Pass was surrounded by lush alpine forest, all black spruce and trembling aspen. Ruins from an ancient civilization - likely dropped from Cham Garai as it plummeted to its doom on the other side of the range - littered the sides of the path. Over hundreds or thousands of years, travelers had dug them out into shelters for unwitting pilgrims, like yours truly, to rest in on their way to meet the dragons. The road ended in a great gateway that was built into a cliffside - the entry to Fort Palewing. But now, that forest was gone: charred into a grim legion of blackened, leafless trunks. Dragonfire and lightning had ripped apart the old Aesari ruins, too, leaving their shattered remains blasted across the road. The fortress gate itself was broken: one half lay flat on the road, still crushing the unburied bodies of soldiers from the rebellion. The other half hung on its hinges, partly melted like black glass.

We stopped there to rest the birds. It was a four-hour flight from Lyrensgrove, and they were exhausted. As Blackwin’s bird stumbled to his winghands, panting and croaking, I unbuckled myself and slid to the ground. Kira did the same thing, and we both pulled out stamina potions, uncorking them to try and refuel our mounts.

“Captain, Nethres, do you think you’ll be able to take us over the fort and into the swamp? I know a way into Cham Garai from when I was undergoing the Trials." I looked over to Nethres as I fed the potion to Blackwin’s quazi. The bird-like dinosaur quorked in its throat, guzzling the brew down.

"I can do you one better. The path you took on the maps we gave Grigorian aspirants isn't the main route into the ruins," Blackwin replied, holding the quazi’s head steady with the reins so it didn’t bite. "There's a direct entry to the ruins you can only get into by air. Its right in the middle of what we call the Ripples. The land around that entry is really damned dangerous, though, crawling with giant crocodiles and these black eels that'll eat a man alive. You have to fly right into the thick of things, but it's faster. A lot of people have been in there to investigate, because the bulk of the fallen city is found that way... but there's fierce monsters and doors that won’t open down there. Magic, fire, nothing even scratches the ruins inside."

"We can open it," I said confidently. "And if Karalti and I can't alone, she can go back to my castle and pick up the other people who-"

Brrp brrp. My HUD leapt up with a holographic window, showing me that I had an incoming voice call. It was Suri.

"Hang on a minute. Karalti, you saddle up." I held up a hand and turned away to answer it. "What's up, sweet cheeks?"

"Janos just began his assault," Suri answered grimly. "Szonja used some kind of magic telemetry to contact Rutha and Simeon, and they just reported to me. Looks like he's going all in this time. We're on Gae Bolg, steaming straight for Vastil. The fleet garrisoned at Fort Temeri is taking positions, but there's too many of them and not enough of us. Soma says we have about six hours of ammo before we start having to ration. They're producing new ordnance in Litvy as fast as they can."

A bead of sweat crawled down the back of my neck despite the night-time chill. "Hold them as long as you're able. We're at Fort Palewing, about to head into Cham Garai. Good luck. And... I love you."

"I love you too. We'll do what we can." Suri's voice softened slightly before hardening again. I cut the line so as not to waste a second of her time - she needed it all.

I looked over Blackwin's quazi. He was back to thirty percent stamina, and rising. Karalti was still mounted on and strapped to Vedrfonir behind Nethres, who had the visor of her winged helmet down and ready for flight.

"Take us to the big entry," I said. "We're out of time in Myszno. Janos is hitting us, hard. We need those dragons."

"Yah!" Without another word, save for the call to urge her mount into the sky, Blackwin bent over the saddle and squeezed with her knees. The big black screeched defiantly to the sky as it lumbered forward and threw itself into the air, followed by Nethres and Kira.

Fort Palewing had once backed out into dense marsh and forest lined with narrow trails, but all of the foliage here was gone, too – burnt down into black mud, where Stranged, voracious monster plants now thrived. Blackwin took a different course to where I'd ridden Cutthroat, climbing her mount over the steep jagged spires that rose up out of the marshy woods like miniature mountains. As we gained height over the swamp, I realized that the marsh - and the 'hills' - were actually part of a gigantic impact crater, the heights formed out of earth driven up into walls by the violent impact of the colossal city with the soft earth. On my map, they were marked as [The Ripples].

Blackwin flew us through a narrow crack that split the tallest of these thin frozen walls - rows and rows of them, which got higher and thicker near Ground Zero. A weird warbling rushing sound filled our ears as we passed each one, until suddenly, we broke out over a small, crater-like swamp. Long, flat stone platforms rested on their sides here, broken off from the city and overgrown with vines. The trees here were still alive, mangrove-like plants that clustered tightly around the edges of the crater. There was no solid ground, just water - water writhing with the backs of massive dolphin-sized eels as they swum over and around each other.

"Ooh. Those look tasty." Karalti leaned out from her saddle a little. Her eyes were big and shiny.

"Yeah. They're thinking the same about us, and our quazi." Blackwin called back aloud.

Ahead of us was a crooked frame that looked like two enormous archways, smashed together in a way that made it look like a mouth of gnashing teeth. Ornate, heavily carved and heavily overgrown, we were no bigger than ants as we flew toward it. There was a sinkhole on the other side, water trickling down into a cavern formed out of ruined marble and aurum.

[You have discovered The Great Gate of Cham Garai]

[A new entry has been added to your ArchemiPedia]

Curious, I brought it up to see what the wiki had to say about the place.

Cham Garai

The ruins known as Cham Garai were actually two separate cities in Archemi's distant past. The Solonkratsu city of Cham, built into the mountain of the same name, was conquered by the Aesari following the decimation of the Solonkratsu by the Drachan. Garai was an Aesari flying city, created when Aesari archmagi used the power of the Gate of Glorious Dawn to shear the top of the mountain off and turn it around before raising it into the sky. Garai orbited Cham, which served as the flying city's center of terrestrial trade. It was famous for its slave training centers and markets.

When the Fifth Triad restored the integrity of Solnetsi’s Dragon Gate and Garai fell at the end of the Aesari wars, the devastation was indescribable. The flying city flipped as it descended, crushing its terrestrial sister into the mud of the marshes. Over thousands of years, the ever-burning ruins finally extinguished and merged into Cham’s watery grave - upside down.

[Warning: This dungeon is still in beta. Player experience cannot be guaranteed and the area may be incomplete. Enemies may spawn erratically or be of erroneous levels. Please make sure to verify your spawnpoint before proceeding.]

“Huh. Never seen a warning like that before.” I muttered to myself as we flew between the gates, and down into the cavern. There was an artificial lake down here, too, with plenty of baby eels in it. Blackwin and the other quazi glided in a short way, and alighted on a crooked, moss-covered marble floor. It was flat and crumbly for a little while, then tipped crazily to the right. The path forward was a rushing, ankle-deep brook, slick with algae.

“Here we are,” Blackwin said. “You have to follow the stream in. It leads to the Guardian Ward, the first ring of the city. The path you newbies took way back when never even went near that ward. You were all on the outside of the city. Only way into the ruins proper is through here.”

“Thanks. And thanks, Nethres. We wouldn’t be here without your help, and the help of the Kingsmen.” I slid to the slippery floor and stretched. Karalti joined me, padded over to rub around my back like a cat before she peered into the gloom ahead.

“No worries. Your missions have made ours easier. Get those dragons out of Lovi for us, and we can win back Revala.” Nethres inclined her winged and visored head to me. “Queen Aslan was an important ally of our Prince. And a personal friend.”

I saluted her, then banged the top of my head and closed my visor. “Come on, Karalti. Time to go shine some dark on light places.”

Neither of us needed torches as we paced into the gloom. There was no magical suppression of my darkvision here as we made our way down into the caverns formed by the violent collision of the floating city with its terrestrial twin. The Aesari's magically-fortified alloys had barely corroded with the passing of time, and the tall, slender towers, the aeries and minarets and grand halls had formed a crazed network of jutting shrapnel not unlike the inside of a crystal geode. We had to pick our way over huge shattered walkways, climb upside-down towers to the right-side up ones. Things skittered, croaked, and rumbled in the dark. But the weirdest part? Nothing attacked us.

“Something about this place feels really off.” We broke out of the caverns onto a crumbling, twisted bridge that jutted out into a void of empty space. “I can hear monsters. But I don’t see monsters.”

“I’ve seen a few things, but they were moving away from us,” Karalti said.

“What? Where?”

She pointed up. “On the roof, mostly. Dunno why they ran away. They all had like… triple black skulls.”

I actually felt my face turn pale. “WHAT.”

“Yeah. Just little rats and things.” Karalti shrugged, unfazed.

“Triple black skull rats. Well… fuck. At least I have a new band name.” Gripping the Spear, I climbed up the steep arc of the broken bridge and peered out over the heart of Cham Garai.

Like a chandelier that had fallen from the ceiling, Garai had pancaked and shattered in concentric rings, smashing and scattering into the ruins of Cham. Ruined buildings jutted from both the floor and the sharply sloped ceiling - actually part of Garai’s top plate. In the near distance was a surreal, nightmarish structure: a great aurum, marble, and blue stone palace, upside down and still recognizable as a building, had crashed into and merged into the side of a great white cathedral-like castle. The Aesari city had fallen on an angle, and everything at the narrow end of the collision had been smashed flat into rubble. It was awe-inspiring, and also one of the most terrible things I’d ever seen.

Turning my head, I saw a flight of extremely narrow stone stairs going down the side of the cliff. “Am I crazy for thinking it’s spookier that this dungeon doesn’t seem to have anything that is trying to kill-”

I didn’t get to finish my sentence before I was nearly blown off my feet by something invisible and very, very fast that rushed up out of the abyss below.