Chapter 112: Last hurdle (Second part)

Sometimes honesty is more useful than hope, especially if this hope is misplaced.

After understanding just how desperate the situation had become near the wall, a wave of panic started to spread among the population of non-combatants on the plaza. Several hundred people gathered together were slowly being deprived of any hope of survival with each new explosion and earthquake announcing the impending fall of the wall and their inevitable doom.

Desperate people couldn’t help but do desperate things.

They created their own fantasized hope and took absurd risks leading often to disaster for themselves and everyone around.

There was no hope to have anymore so it was just a matter of time before some of them started to look for one, no matter how absurd and dangerous it may be.

Fortunately, Zinovitz — the wounded dwarf commander — was brutally honest. With a few words, he extinguished all of their potential plans.

Even if the fiercest fighting was happening on the western part of the wall, the entire city was surrounded.

If the wall fell, there would be no escape possible for anyone; not a single chance to hide and survive.

Expecting any kind of reinforcement was also a fantasy.

After his harsh words devoid of any kind of possible salvation, many people started to shed tears while others simply fell to their knees.

Such was the power of true despair.

I had already realized before the arrival of this dwarf that any escape attempt would have been almost impossible to pull off even on my own. However, I also understood that there was a reason for this commander to be standing here before us instead of receiving treatment, just like there was a reason for using the giant bell of this city to gather us together.

And it was certainly not so we could all die together without resisting.

So I listened with rapt attention to the words that followed.

“None of you can fight, none of you can help with the defense of the wall, but that doesn’t mean that there is nothing you can do!”

“How?” muttered several persons among the crowd of people who all had their eyes fixed on Zinovitz’s imposing figure despite his short stature as a Dwarf, commanding respect even when covered with blood.

“The elemental stones powering the Lost magic of the wall are used up too quickly because of the continuous attacks. Our stocks are almost depleted so we need all of you to help with their extraction inside the mine!”

Such was his simple answer.

Hard labor instead of direct fighting and sweat instead of blood.

More than half of the gathered crowd showed determined expressions after his words. They were ready to help in any way possible if it meant having a chance of survival. Paul, Alianelle, and I were among them. However, many others didn’t show the same determination. They exchanged worried gazes between themselves, apparently dubious that they could truly accomplish this task.

A chance to actively help the city was plainly presented to them, but they didn’t immediately react.

Such a reaction was difficult for many to understand, me included until I remembered that for these sheltered people, working in the mine had always been a dangerous work done by disposable slaves and robust dwarves.

“Women, elderly, children, it doesn’t matter! As long as you have two hands, you can help save this city!” Zinovitz screamed with authority and barely contained anger after realizing that some people were still hesitating.

This time, his words were enough and, in less than half an hour we were all gathered at the northern part of the city, where the mines were located. The paved road of the city had already led to a rutted path where various carts passed daily to transport the various extracted minerals before distributing them to warehouses. These carts were currently desperately empty and if not for the constant noise coming from inside the mines a few hundred meters in front of us, I would have thought that the entire place had been deserted.

Zinovitz had already left us, replaced by the inexperienced dwarves — previously in charge of monitoring the entire plaza — probably to finally get some much-needed treatment before returning to the battlefield. With him gone, the anxiousness of the crowd guided by these few inexperienced people was starting to come back.

However, we weren’t powerlessly waiting for our death anymore.

We had work to do; a task to accomplish.

So, when we finally reached the dark and narrow entrance to the mine, the people at the forefront of the crowd didn’t hesitate.

With careful but determined steps, they entered the elemental stone mine.

Followed by Paul and Alianelle, I imitated them and entered without hesitation when my turn came.

An almost absolute darkness and a strong odor of sulfur were the first things to greet me. I ignored these inconveniences and concentrated on my steps to avoid falling on the uneven rocky ground.

I hesitated to summon a small flame to brighten the way when, after turning a corner, a dim light finally replaced the heavy darkness. Distant and weak, it was still enough to slightly illuminate our surroundings and make our steps more secure. Not secure enough apparently as many of the inexperienced people entering this mine regularly stumbled and even fell while sometimes dragging other people with them to the ground in a chorus of complaints amplified by the echo of the tunnel.

Fortunately, although the width of the path wasn’t very important — barely enough to let two people walk side by side — and although the low height forced many men, Paul included, to constantly tilt their heads and be vigilant to avoid any rock protruding from the ceiling, the entire path wasn’t too difficult to tread even for neophytes. Otherwise, all these physically weak people wouldn’t have been able to even reach the site of excavation.

We walked in such a fashion for long minutes, following this path into the heart of the mine while being only guided by the slightly reddish light at the end of a lone tunnel whose total length none of us were able to guess. We were so deep underground that the almost constant explosions — signs that the fight for the town’s survival was still furiously ongoing — were now impossible to hear. Personally, I didn’t like this fact very much as this new heavy silence gave me the disturbing impression that the fight was over and that the city had already fallen.

I didn’t know if this worry was shared, but considering the urgency of the situation, this tunnel appeared desperately long.

It’s only after around ten minutes that the slope started to become more abrupt and the height of the tunnel lower, forcing the adults to crouch and tread more carefully. Alianelle and I didn’t have as much trouble, but we soon noticed another change that children weren’t immune to.

The temperature was abruptly rising.

As if a bonfire had just been lit next to us, the already heavy atmosphere started to turn smothering and barely bearable.

Unfortunately, the feeling didn’t lessen but continued to amplify until we finally reached the end of the tunnel where it culminated.

It didn’t take me long to understand why.

The vast cave where we ended up was entirely lightened up by a vast pool of lava just a few dozen meters away from us, explaining at the same time the overwhelming odor of sulfur making it hard to breathe.

“Hurry!” shouted one of the young dwarven guards waiting at the end of the tunnel to make sure that no one was obstructing the narrow entrance for too long.

Together with Paul and Alianelle, we followed the long line of people walking carefully, most of them with their hands in front of their noses while regularly casting fearful glances at the bubbling pool of lava extending beyond sight.

A new group of guards dressed much more lightly than the ones who had accompanied us here, but with protection in front of their noses and mouths, welcomed us a dozen meters later and oriented us to different parts of the giant cave at least ten meters tall. I was no expert in mining, but I still had difficulty believing that such a vast expanse could exist underground.

I didn’t have much leisure to have any more interrogation as I was concerned with not being separated from Paul and Alianelle.

Oriented together by a guard, the three of us carefully followed a new trail much more difficult to tread and finally reached a more remote part of the cave where another guard gave us various tools to do our important task without any other explanation. Paul had been given a solid-looking pickaxe while I and Alianelle had long metal rods ill-suited for any kind of digging, but apparently the only kind of material they could spare for children.

“Go over there! And start to dig. Anything you find, bring it to me!” he finally exclaimed after seeing our confused faces.

With this lonely command that we hurriedly executed, we quickly rejoined our new workplace.

A vast expanse with dozens, if not hundreds of people, all working to the rhythm of the pickaxes and shovels, welcomed us. The absence of the lava pool to lighten this new giant cave with the same reddish light made this place much dimmer, but strangely did nothing to appease the incredible heat still bearing down on us and slowing down our steps.

The unfamiliar environment along with the massive and constant flow of people just as lost as us made finding a place to work challenging especially because I wanted a place away from prying eyes. For long minutes, the three of us wandered with our tools in hand while looking around before finding such a place.

The small cavity where we ended up was barely large enough for all of us to move comfortably and was much more obscure than the passage we used to rejoin it. Here, the heat was much more bearable, but the light was even more sparse. The only lighting was assured by a torch fixed on the left wall above our heads giving a much more feeble light to this discreet cavern.

Because of that, I didn’t immediately notice that we weren’t alone as I initially thought.

A man was already there with his crouched back turned toward us. I didn’t know if he was too focused on his work or simply didn’t care, but the man didn’t grace us with a single glance. He had long grey and dirty hair reaching under his shoulders and wore tattered clothes barely enough to cover his privacy. However, it wasn’t his outward appearance, his lack of shoes, or his complete disregard for our venue that caught my interest, but the large collar around his neck glowing with a faint but ominous green light.

“Hello,” I tried.

However, the man stayed silent, with only his dirty gaunt back clearly visible. I took a few delicate steps forward but stopped when I noticed a disturbing detail.

The man was using his bare hands to dig against the wall of the cave.

Even with poor lighting, it wasn’t difficult to notice that the walls and the soil weren't made of soft dirt and were thus impossible to dig using only his hands. I exchanged a perplexed glance with Paul and Alianelle, and after a few seconds of tense silence with questions about this man’s sanity in the back of my head, we decided from a silent common accord to leave him alone for now.

Even if we couldn’t hear the noise of the battle anymore, the city was still fighting for its survival and we had a role to play to help it surmount this crisis.

Paul was apparently of the same mind as he didn’t waste any more time and started to furiously use his pickaxe in the opposite corner of the small cave while Alianelle and I looked awkwardly at the metal rods in our hands. Tentatively, I tried to use it to dig, but the metallic noise and painful rebound in my hands was the only answer I needed to know that it wouldn’t be very effective.

Alianelle also tried but didn’t have much more success. Surprisingly, weak physical abilities and wrong tools didn’t mix well. A few more pathetic tries were all I needed to understand so I wouldn’t be of much help in this important search unless I replaced this rod with something much more effective.

I threw away the metallic rod and cast an inquisitive gaze at the old slave still working in the same monotonic and disturbing fashion. Judging that his presence wouldn’t be a problem with this kind of attitude, I closed my eyes to make sure that no one else was close, especially the last guard we crossed paths with.

A few seconds was more than enough to conclude that he had indeed gone further away, but something else caught my attention.

A strange feeling, I had trouble explaining.

I didn’t notice it without closing my eyes and focusing entirely on the flux of mana around, but now it was impossible to ignore.

It was familiar and disturbing at the same time.

“Are you alright?” asked Alianelle right next to me with a voice barely strong enough to overcome the constant noise of Paul’s pickaxe furiously working without any visible success for now.

“Yeah,” I replied while relaxing my brows.

Without any explanation coming to mind, I repressed this feeling and put my hand on the closest wall to use the only thing that could help me in this situation.

Earth magic.

Children could use magic, but certainly not as well as I could. Catching the interest of the guards with magical prowess I shouldn’t be able to have was the last thing I wanted to do in our situation. Alianelle was clearly aware of this fact just as much as I was because she kept casting worried glances toward the entrance of the cave after I started using my magic.

I purposefully led our group to this remote place for this reason. However, it soon started to prove that my efforts and carefulness were in vain.

Indeed, for long seconds, I concentrated to soften the rock, but sadly without much success.

I changed tactics several times to make the wall crumble or to extract a piece of it. I also raised the amount of mana I was using for this task. However, even after several minutes of effort, the place that should have been greatly influenced by my magic barely showed any difference.

Earth was part of a cohesive whole, making it the least practical of the four elements to be directly influenced by mana.

I could easily use the water from an external source, control it and add it to my own magic to power my abilities. I did it several times across my journey. Fire was harder to dompt and I was less adept with this element, but it was also possible.

Earth was more problematic in this regard because the downside of being naturally more solid was of course that it was much less malleable. Unless the earth was already partially destroyed or softened, extracting a portion of earth from this cohesive whole was often too costly in mana compared to directly creating more earth.

In a cave, with such a wall made mostly of hard rock and minerals, I didn’t expect the work to be easy or the amount of mana to influence this earth to be negligible.

However, I was already too experienced to misinterpret my poor results.

Something was clearly wrong.

“Ah ah ah!”

A burst of raucous laughter suddenly rang out and echoed with strength in our small cavern, interrupting at the same time my train of thought.

Alianelle and I both abruptly turned around toward the owner of such a laugh.

The old man with the glowing collar around his neck had stopped digging with his hands; he had stopped ignoring us and was looking at me with laughter in his black eyes reflecting the flickering flame on the wall. His face was pale, emaciated, and sickly, just like the rest of his gaunt body and weak legs, with the surprising exception of his arms which were much more muscular. It was almost as if his entire body had aged and suffered while his arms had stayed strong across the years, becoming the best proof that at one point in his life, this old man ravaged by years of slavery had been impressive physically.

However, this time was certainly long past as, once he had put his laughter under control with a feeble cough, he tried to stand up, failing a few times in the process.

“Something funny?” I prudently asked, not really sure what this man thought hilarious with my previous failure.

“You, kiddo,” he answered with a smile splitting his face in two in a disturbing way.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one that his sudden intervention made uncomfortable because Paul had already taken a few steps toward Alianelle to put her behind him while being prepared to use his axe against something much more fragile than the walls of this cave.

The man didn’t seem to have noticed the sudden tension that his intervention had provoked or simply didn’t care.

“Never seen a kid use magic?” I countered.

“I haven’t seen much in a long time, and kids using magic down here is certainly one the thing I never saw, but it’s not because of that. No, I’m laughing simply because you’re spectacularly losing your time!”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you think that if it was so easy to influence the walls with earth magic then we wouldn’t need to use such crude tools?” he noted with another laugher while designing with a movement of his head the pickaxe in Paul’s tightly clenched hands.

His words made sense.

I hadn’t really tried to feel my surroundings when I entered this place, but I was pretty sure that I would have immediately sensed if any kind of magic was used. Of all the other slaves scattered around the excavation site, none of them was using magic.

“Isn’t it because the collar around your neck prevents you from using magic?” I asked dubiously.

“Collars like that exist,” he admitted, “but they are awfully expensive so the dwarves responsible for the mines had to be a little creative. Didn’t you see the green circle engraved at the entrance of the mine?”

Alianelle and Paul both shared a glance beside me, showing that I wasn’t the only one who missed such a detail.

“It’s another Lost magic. If I go beyond its area of influence with this collar on, then the consequences will be… quite a headache! Ah ah ah.”

Once more his regular, unnatural laughter echoed, appearing even more forced than before.

“So, why aren’t any of them using magic to dig or to get rid of these collars?” asked Paul with the same protective posture in front of Alianelle.

His appearance and attitude were unnerving, but so far the old slave hadn’t done anything to justify this kind of hostility from Paul. I tried to attract Paul’s gaze to tell him to relax, but his eyes stayed stubbornly fixed on him as if he was afraid to blink for a second.

“Getting rid of the collars? None of us can do something like that. Even with magic, it’s not something that just anybody can do and if any of the slaves present here had this kind of ability, we would have been given a very different kind of collar. And to answer the other part of your question, we can’t use magic to directly dig because this cave is special. I don’t expect someone like you or the missy to feel it, but I’m sure you can, can’t you?” he finished while turning his dark eyes toward me.

I didn’t answer, but the strange feeling I had when I closed my eyes finally started to make sense.

The man didn’t wait for my answer and continued as if eager to confirm my suspicion.

“Elemental stones aren’t created just anywhere. They need special conditions in an environment very rich and dense with mana. Sadly for us workers, this mana doesn’t just influence these few stones. Everything else is influenced by the density of mana. That’s why the walls are so insensitive to the use of magic and need a more brutal, and often cruder, method to be destroyed,” he concluded while pointing at Paul’s pickaxe.

“Thanks for the explanation…” I started before finally noticing something very unexpected with his hands.

They weren’t covered with blood or wounds from having dug the hard earth without any protection as I had expected. His long fingers were of a disturbing black luster, seemingly absorbing the meager light of the torch, and had sharp ends as if they weren't fingers but sharpened claws.

“You like my hands, kiddo?” he asked with a mocking laugh while putting his finger near his face under the direct light of the torch on the wall, making Paul take a step back to better cover his daughter with his own body.

“I thought magic didn’t have any effect on these walls?” asked Paul, who had deduced quicker than I did that this peculiar physical feature wasn’t from a Beastman heritage, but simply from a magic.

“So you’re a mage?” Asked Alianelle from behind her father’s back before he forced her to step back once more.

“Is this not the case for everyone in this kingdom?” he asked back with a contemptuous laugh.

“Not everyone can use this kind of magic,” I remarked before turning to Paul to answer his question myself.

“He’s not using magic to directly influence the wall as I have tried to do. He’s using an aspect of the earth element that enhances his physical abilities. It hardens his flesh while conserving the natural flexibility of his fingers.”

I was able to quickly identify the specificity of his magic simply because it was similar to a magic I was trying to develop myself. As a matter of fact, our respective magic were both probably based on the same aspect of the earth element related to its peculiar hardness and resistance.

By covering my body with the densest earth I could, I was aiming to improve my defensive abilities. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the same kind of breakthrough with this aspect as I had with my wind and water magic yet. The protection I could summon was rough and temporary. More like an incomplete earthen shell while his magic appeared like a complete, almost permanent fusion offering much more advantages and a protection far more impressive judging by the deep marks in the wall he had been digging before.

“Oh, you know your piece young man! It’s surprising to see a kid your age recognize good magic. What tribe are you from?”

“Tribe? I’m Human!” I quickly answered, taken aback by his remark.

“Really? They put human children down here, now? I thought that only Beast tribe members had this privilege.”

“We’re not slaves!” exclaimed Alianelle. “Don’t you see that we don’t have collars?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. Most of the slaves, especially if they are children, or if they can’t use magic, don’t have one. It’s an unnecessary expense because even if they succeed in leaving the mine by a stroke of luck, it’s impossible to cross the wall of the city without magical abilities. If you’re not slaves, then why are you here in this forsaken place?”

It took more time than I was comfortable with to explain the situation to him. Not even Paul was using his pickaxe to work anymore. So, when the only answer we got after my detailed explanation wasn’t advice to accelerate our search, but long and uncontrolled laughter, I couldn’t help but get seriously annoyed.

I didn’t have to ask why he was laughing from all his heart this time, as he quickly spoke again between fits of crazed laughs.

“I… never thought that… this city would go down like that!”

“You find this situation funny?” asked Paul in a harsh voice that didn’t hide his disbelief in the slightest. “You’re going to die too if the deviants enter the city!”

His words of rebuke immediately ended this man’s burst of laughter. His face darkened, his expression hardened while his black eyes lost in an instant all traces of amusement in them and became cold enough to make me take the same posture as Paul.

It was as if the mask he had been wearing had suddenly fallen to reveal his true self hidden behind.

“And why wouldn’t I find it funny? I spent more than twenty years working here, without being able to see the light of the sun and I know that I will die here. I laughed and I smiled because some justice is still left in this world after all!”

His declaration was overwhelming and muffled any kind of answer I could offer.

Spending twenty years in this place.

I couldn’t even imagine it.

“We didn’t enslave you!” answered Paul. “You’re Human, aren’t you? If you’ve been here for such a long time, then it means you have committed a crime… A very serious crime…”

“So you know about that? That’s why you have been threatening me with your stick while trying to hide the young girl behind your back?”

At this mention, I became more uncomfortable, especially now that we knew that this man could use magic and was certainly not as powerless as he initially appeared to be.

However, the man had more to say.

“I’m a Human criminal, you’re right,” he confessed. “I’m not going to deny or tell you my story, it doesn’t concern any of you.”

I agreed.

I didn’t care about this man’s story.

If he couldn’t offer us any help in our search, then all I wanted was for him to go back to his work so that I could figure out a solution to our problem.

But, when I saw the same disturbing smile appear on his lips splitting his face in two, I knew that he wasn’t done.

“There is something that I can tell you, though… Even if you try to hide her behind you, I know…”

He let his words linger, deliberately letting the uncomfortable silence that followed set in before finishing his sentence which made my entire body turn cold and my mana burning stronger than ever.

“I know exactly what she is!”