Vicious Magick (10 page)

They walk along the tracks leading into the
mountains. The tops of the mountains are dusted with thick snow,
and they can see storm clouds in the distance.

“So we’re going
through
the
mountains?” Zanther asks.

“I mean, why not? Someone built these tunnels
for a reason, right? And since nobody’s using them, we might as
well. We won’t have to worry about snowstorms and ravenous
mountaintop thunderbirds.”

“Just seems kind of dark…and…gloomy.”

In the distance, they can see the tracks meet
at the vanishing point, a tiny hole in the bottom of a huge
mountain, a tunnel. Novanostrum pulls out his longpipe and fills it
with a few shakes of glowing smokeweed. He lights it and blows a
few smoke rings.

“You’re scared of a
cave?
We made it
through the Deathstretch, we’ll make it through this. I don’t know
about you, but I don’t feel
fated
to die here. Do you?”

“Dying is for cowards and zealots.”

Upon their arrival to the Universitorium,
Madra immediately goes to the first place she thinks she can find
Zanther and Novanostrum: the pub. She approaches a bald man holding
a big drink.

“Did you see a wizard and a knifesman come
through here recently?”

“Oh yeah. They were here until dawn this
morning. They were trying to get these girls to go with them to
Zweissergrund, but they wouldn’t have any part of it. I think they
already left town, though. The barkeep’s been looking for them all
day; seems one of them didn’t pay his tab.”

Madra runs back to the place where she left
Sogbottom, but both he and his wagon are gone. The bald man emerges
from the pub and walks up to her.

“Guess you’re on your way to Zweissergund,
huh?”

“Yes.”

“I grew up there. Name’s D’kassar,” he says,
shaking her hand, “until yesterday, I was teaching a class here,
but my entire department was sacked. Said they needed to expand the
Philosophy Department. So now I’m looking for a new gig. Need a
guide?”

The mouth of the tunnel is rather
unceremonious. It consists only of a a stone archway and two metal
rails denoting the path inside.

“In the old days,” Novanostrum says,
“Steam-powered locomotes, basically big boxes with wheels and
engines, would pull containers through here.”

“Forgive my skepticism, but
steam
doesn’t strike me as a very useful power source.”

“Well, it was revolutionary in its time, but
with advancements in magickal refinement, it came to be used less
and less.”

“I can see why.”

“However,” Novanostrum continued, “that was
not the reason these tunnels were abandoned.”

“Yeah? So why’d they stop using these
tunnels?”

“Things that went in had a nasty habit of not
coming out the other side.”

Madra pawns off one of her more elaborate
pinky rings and they buy fur coats, powderblasts, and
mountain-climbing gear. She and her guide set off towards the
mountains carrying their new weapons and leather backsacks full of
bread, water, rope, and other random supplies.

“What are the powderblasts for?” she asks
D’kassar.

“All kinds of nastiness living up there in
the mountains. There’s supposedly a tunnel that goes under the
mountains, but you’d have to be insane to go that way.”

Powderblasts

Powderblasts are thick metal tubes filled
with steel balls and black powder, powered by a trigger and a
flint. They were developed in the Easternlands by obese Trinese
soldiers who didn’t want to walk all the way to their enemies to
kill them. They were later refined by armies across the continent
to become the de facto non-magickal weapon of choice for the
discriminating soldier-about-town.

They carry torches to light their way. The
walls are sheets of smooth, bluish rock, pocked here and there by
veins of shiny, violet stones.

“Hey Nove, what are these shiny rocks? You
think they’re worth anything?”

“I don’t know, they seem a little familiar,
but I don’t recognize them. You’d think if they were worth any
money they’d have been stripped when the tunnels were first
dug.”

The tunnel suddenly widens into a very large
underground chamber. The walls are irregular, apparently the
natural features of a preexisting cavern.

“Hey!” Zanther shouts, his greeting echoing
through what seems like miles of tunnels and caverns. A few seconds
later, they hear a reply.

“Hey!” says an echo of Zanther’s voice as
Novanostrum gives himself a wizardly facepalm.

“You realize,” Novanostrum says, “that if
there’s anything down here, it DEFINITELY knows we’re down here
with it?”

“Good,” Zanther says, “it’d be nice to have
someone more interesting to talk to.”