Chapter 7
Seven
There were seven gates upon the Great Machine, one for each day of the week, and four corresponding gates inside each realm, scattered across various distant kingdoms. That meant the Nexus connected to twenty-eight different locations a month, thirteen months a year.
I’d seen a grand total of two of those realms, Fogo for nineteen years, and Acheron for a few hours.
Around the Great Machine had been built a grand market where all the realms could trade their vital supplies. A thousand kingdoms’ worth of merchants, coming and going, selling the products of their kingdoms, then taking home goods which came from whole other worlds.
Each realm produced one distinct magical element. By themselves, each of the seven were potent. Combined together, they could create miracles.
The Core City around the Great Machine had grown ever larger over those centuries.
They’d filled the available land, terraced the mountains, and even built out over the sea.
They erected great towers and castles so vast, they were like entire towns housed in a single building.
As spell craft advanced, powerful wizards began building artificial islands suspended in the sky.
There were dozens of these feats of magical engineering levitating above us today, housing tens of thousands, or maybe even hundreds of thousands.
I wasn’t sure how crowded they were. I’d never been to any of those because the City Watch wouldn’t let someone of my impoverished nature past the checkpoints on those golden bridges.
Regardless, everyone knew the Core was the biggest, most populated, and most impressive city there’d ever been.
Without the flow of trade through the market, many kingdoms—like my home of Fogo—would perish, because they simply couldn’t survive on what they produced on their own.
Trade was the only thing keeping those kingdoms alive.
The city’s majesty was reflective of its importance.
Sadly, after losing access to one of those seven realms—Time—and its corresponding element—Permeance—five hundred years ago, all that growth had slowed, and a creeping decay had set in.
That was why the floating Upper Aventine was incrementally losing altitude—and accordingly been renamed the Slump—and was now threatening to flatten the Lower Aventine beneath—which was why that once prosperous district was now called the Under Slump.
This was likely also what caused the mile-tall, gravity-defying, Tower of Primopolus to suddenly fall over one day, crushing whole neighborhoods beneath…
Where I now lived in a section of that sideways ruin and had to pay the rent.
That pressing debt was why, that afternoon, I’d travelled to the Core City’s southern bay.
The long walk through several districts, past all that stately and historic architecture, was what brought to mind this history lesson.
Nothing drove home just how large and old this city was quite like walking through part of it.
Once I reached the rocky cliffs overlooking the water, I got my first view of Korthican’s Warning. I’d been told the island was a small tan lump of sand, only a few acres in total, with some crumbling structures and handful of trees atop it, about half a mile out… and that description was accurate.
The Core had been around for over four thousand five hundred and some odd years—I had no idea how long it took them to actually build the massive Great Machine before they turned it on—but those twenty-eight mighty wizards built this place upon a civilization that had already been old when they’d gotten here.
According to Carcalla, this island was once home to a lighthouse even back then.
And like most of those structures, it was ruins now.
I’d been in part of that ancient undercity once, though only briefly.
I’d been trying my best to not get murdered by Linus Adderlane and a bunch of Tempus cultists the entire time, so I’d not been able to do much sightseeing.
But, whoever built those structures had been advanced, capable of making things just as nice as the upper-class districts I’d strolled through.
The dungeons beneath Korthican’s Warning had been dug by that same mysterious civilization.
They were also cursed as fuck, which was why most sensible people left the place alone.
I’d come here to gather information about an island, but paused at the overlook to marvel for a while, because I had never actually seen an ocean before.
That was a lot of water.
Coming from the Elemental Plane of Fire, the vista before me was downright inconceivable.
When a body of water formed in Fogo, it would boil away in no time.
I’d nearly drowned in one of the city’s canals, the water proving swift and overwhelming, and from here, five of those canals were visible, dumping into this bay.
They were but a trickle compared to the big blue mass that seemed to go on forever.
The big crashy white parts must be waves. I’d never imagined water could be so loud. When the waves hit the rocks below, it threw salty mist into the air. Everything felt damp, and then I suddenly felt a whole lot colder, as the ocean breeze cut right through me.
It was too bad those old wizards hadn’t decided to place the Nexus someplace warmer, but it seemed to be only those of us from the Elemental Plane of Fire who really struggled here.
Everybody else got by fine. I was wearing a coat, cloak, scarf, and gloves, and was still freezing, but at least it’d stopped snowing.
There were many ships in the bay. Most had masts and rigging.
The ones that didn’t probably utilized magical means of propulsion.
The concept of ocean-going ships wasn’t too strange to me.
They weren’t that different in principle from the barges I’d grown up on, except these sat on top of water instead of levitating over lava.
Seeing all these docked here reminded me of where the barges landed in Fort Silver.
My attention was irresistibly dragged back toward the ocean, because it was just so damned endless.
And to think Trax came from an entire realm of this material, and his people lived far beneath its surface.
I would have brought Trax with me, and he likely would’ve enjoyed having a nice swim, but people tended to get real nervous around Squalos, and I was here hoping to make friends.
“From the gawking, that’s a man who just came through the gate and never seen the sea before.”
I looked over to see a few men trudging up from the beach, carrying baskets of fish. The baskets were really full, which probably explained their good mood.
“You’d be correct, sir. I’m from Fogo.”
“Ah, a hotlander. We don’t get many of those ’round here.”
“I had a great uncle was from Vuur,” said another of the fishermen.
“We’ve all heard that story, Ted.” Because fish are heavy, they kept walking, and I walked with them.
The first one turned his attention back to me.
“If you’re looking for work, you’re in luck.
It’s common knowledge you hotlanders love to get in fights once you’re in port, but put one of you on a crew and he’ll do the labor of any two regular men by himself. ”
It was nice to hear my people be complimented for once. Most Core dwellers focused on our reputation for fiery tempers and left out the dignified, stubborn, hard-working parts. “It’s because when you grow up mining the Red, everything else seems downright safe and restful in comparison.”
“If it’s dock labor you’re interested in, you’ll need to talk to the foreman. For working the boats, best to catch the captains when they’re in the pub and ask.”
“Thank you kindly, but I’m already employed.” Saying this next part made me want to gag. “I’m an adventurer. I’m putting together an expedition to Korthican’s Warning.”
They all had a good laugh at that, not too different a reaction from the one me and my trapper friends would’ve had in Fort Silver when someone asked us about travelling to our deadly, adventurer-consuming ruins.
“Don’t do it. Everybody around here knows to stay away from that place!”
“I’d avoid that isle if I were you, son.
” That fisherman was the oldest of the lot.
“Brave fools used to take a run at it ever so often, thinking there might still be riches within, but it got picked clean centuries ago, so they all got chewed up and spit out for no reason. It’s been a few years since anyone’s gone back. ”
“What do you mean by chewed and spit?”
“Well, gnawed-upon parts of them wash up on shore, so they didn’t get swallowed!”
I couldn’t say I was surprised the place was still infested with some manner of monster. “That’s unfortunate to hear.”
“You sure you don’t want an honest job, lad?” their chief asked. “We’re short-handed.”
That was sorely tempting right now. “Thanks, fellas, but I’ve made a commitment. You got any idea what manner of critters were doing that gnawing?”
“Something with ripping claws. At least I’m guessing claws. Hard to tell when you only get a leg or a torso stuck in your nets. I’ll tell you, it’s a bit of a surprise, thinking you’re hauling up a fish, and instead it’s an adventurer’s boot with his foot still in it.”
It was a good thing they were so forthcoming with the stories, because I didn’t even have enough coin left to buy them a round of drinks. “Being that you’re short-handed, I’ll help you unload your catch, if while we do so you keep telling me what you know about that place.”
“We’re not gonna turn down an extra pair of hands, and maybe once you hear what we have to say, we can talk you out of committing suicide.”