Level One God

We made our slow way across the crowded bridge as the sunlight faded. The strange blue planet above was tinged pink.

I stood on the bridge and watched the crush of strange races, suddenly struck by how strange this all was.

Strange, maybe, but there was an odd feeling in my chest.

I was excited. I wanted to see the city. I wanted to do so much it practically hurt.

Deep blue water rushed fast enough beneath the bridge that I was certain a fall would be deadly. A little ways off, I saw what was causing the water to move so quickly.

The entire river flowed straight toward a massive, circular hole. The hole was at least half a mile across, gaping wide and swallowing what must have been tens of thousands of gallons by the minute.

I remembered what Minara had told me about a palace behind a waterfall. Suddenly, it clicked. This river was forming the underground waterfall that Minara had described.

We inched closer to the main gate of the fortress on the island. The bridge was stone and wide enough for a wagon to squeeze through, but barely.

The fortress was topped by white flags that whipped in the wind. Each displayed what I assumed was the city’s sigil: a gray gemstone with a yellow spark at one corner. The guards all wore yellow tunics cinched at the waist over their armor. The tunics bore the same shining gemstone sigil.

Some of the guards were human. They made the three-foot-tall tomte look comically short, but every guard I inspected appeared to be Iron rank. Small or not, I’d seen enough of Bloody Steve to know even a small Iron was still an Iron.

Once we passed a drawbridge-style gate leading to the island, we were divided into two groups. A tomte official in small spectacles and a button-up shirt looked through the bundles of chitin weapons we were carrying. After a brief inspection, he pointed us to the right. It looked like all the trading caravans had to go to the left, where they were being thoroughly searched.

I wondered what the point was, considering slip spaces existed. Then again, I guessed they had a limit in size. Maybe they were just trying to keep too much of certain types of contraband from entering the city.

A lone figure near the back of the fortress caught my attention. I inspected her.

[Kiergard, Level 40 (Silver)] “The Kiergard claim to be the original inhabitants of Eros. While debated, their grasp of power across cities worldwide is a firm fact. They pride themselves on their secret training methods and several powerful paved paths.”

The woman’s skin was so pale it was almost pure white. Her eyes were black-ringed, white pools like milk. Her features were ageless, making her too strange to be called beautiful.

She wore a sleeveless robe woven with iridescent scales. The collar rose high behind her head and circled in front, covering the bottom half of her face so I could only see her unsettling eyes and smooth, shaved scalp.

Everybody seemed to give her plenty of room to stand and look terrifying. I didn’t blame them. She looked like something straight out of a nightmare.

Her eyes flicked to me, and I immediately looked away, suppressing a chill. I told myself it was just the helmet, though. Even among this many people, nobody else wore anything that commanded as much attention as my helmet. I needed to find an illusionist in the city and disguise this as soon as possible.

The kiergard’s attention was elsewhere when I risked another glance. She was the only Silver I’d seen so far in this area. Even the adventurers passing in and out of the gates were either Wood or Iron.

There were more geonites, tomte, and humans. I even saw a naidu trailed by a floating treasure chest connected to his waist by a golden chain.

Slowly but surely, we made it deeper inside the keep. We were stopped at several points for more city officials to stare at us through various magical lenses that reminded me of the ones I’d seen the naidu use. There was a brief discussion when they scanned me, but I was ultimately waved through.

We formed a line behind a pair of well-dressed tomte I assumed were nobility. I was surprised to see they were both Silvers, even though they looked like civilians.

One had his dark red hair slicked back and greased. His beard was styled into a sharp icicle-like point with a mustache flared so wide I could see it even from behind. He wore some kind of pleated doublet, wide, baggy pants like the naidu I’d seen in Riverwell and the geonites.

The tomte woman beside him had her beard styled into a rounded poof that stuck out like a full belly. Her eyebrows were spiked upward and curled like a second pair of eyelashes. She held a large golden spoon in one hand and wore a dress that looked like a fancy nightgown.

I wanted to ask Lyria about everything I saw, but we were under such close scrutiny that I didn’t want to draw any more attention than I already had.

I wondered if the well-dressed tomte were the noble types who bought their way to advancement, like Circa mentioned. If so, I was curious to know how they held up in a fight. If everything worked the way I understood, Circa would’ve certainly had an edge over people like that. But how much of an edge?

There was still so much I wanted to know. Maybe my time in Thrask would finally allow me to take a deep breath and learn about some of the things eating at my curiosity. I wanted to keep pushing to grow stronger, but if games had taught me anything, preparation could be a force multiplier of its own.

If I made the best use of my time in the city, I would be set up to make rapid leaps forward as soon as I was done. Then again, I was fairly sure my huge collection of reward tokens would cause a huge power spike on their own.

Our progress through all the checkpoints and lines was relatively smooth until Bloody Steve started complaining loudly because he had to take a piss.

“We ask for your patience,” a haggard-looking human woman said. She had bags under her eyes, and her hair was sweaty beneath the plate helm she wore. “We’ve had numerous reports of… strange things. This is for the safety of everyone in Thrask, Sir. So if you wouldn’t mind…” She reached her arm forward, motioning for Bloody Steve to continue with the group.

“If I wouldn’t mind?” Bloody Steve asked, eyes bulging out of his head. “How would you mind if I pulled out my hog and got to greasing the wheels of this slow, janky feckin’ machine myself? How would you like that?”

“Sir,” she said, sounding a little dead inside. “I will kindly ask you not to relieve yourself in line.”

“You mentioned strange things?” I asked. Mostly, I was curious, but I was also hoping to stop Bloody Steve before he got himself too riled up.

She sighed, mopping a hand across her sweaty face. “A few days ago, we had an infestation go ripe after only a week. A week,” she said, voice low with emphasis. “Godsdamn mess. The Forsaken from inside got loose and tried to get himself into the city. Killed four good Irons before a squad of kiergard arrived and cleared the problem. Can you imagine if they hadn’t come in time? A Forsaken in the city…”

I felt a chill at her words and shook my head. Circa made it seem like what we ran into was highly uncommon. What did it mean if something similar happened here, too?

“So you’re checking these caravans for Forsaken?” I asked.

“Among other things,” she said. “There have already been reports that a Forsaken had been spotted within the dungeon that just awakened down the river. We’re under strict orders to control the damage. Once things calm down, we’ll be able to reduce security again.”

I nodded thoughtfully. A dungeon down the river? Even if there was a Forsaken lurking within, I had to admit my interest was ignited.

We finally moved to the end of the line.

A large platform, suspended by a pulley system taller than the fortress itself, held a huge coil of rope wound through metal contraptions. I didn’t need to be an engineer to guess this was how people got down to the actual city.

Lowered on a giant, wobbling platform by a rope as thick as my leg. Wonderful.

On the other side, another heavier-duty platform was used for wagons and larger groups. This one, it seemed, was for people only.

Bloody Steve was distracted from his piss-induced rage by a female geonite back in the line, so it was easy enough to drag him toward the lift without further incident.

A single tomte guard waited on the lift with his hands on the controls of a crank system. He pulled a lever, and we began our somewhat concerningly swaying descent. There were guardrails on the platform to keep people from tipping over the edge, but they were tomte-sized. They’d hardly do anything but trip me if I lost my balance.

I planted my feet a little wider, determined not to die by slipping over the edge and getting crushed between the platform and the cave wall or falling however far down this shaft went to my doom.

I noticed Lyria had taken a handful of my cloak in her fist. I thought about making a smartass remark about her being overprotective, then decided I wasn’t about to complain.

As soon as we dipped below the surface, the temperature dropped from a muggy heat to a damp cold.

For an unpleasant minute, there was only darkness, the clicking gears of the crank, and the sway of the platform beneath us. I didn’t appreciate how the rope kept creaking under the strain of our combined weight, either.

Click. Click. Click.

The sound seemed to go on for ages. The chill in the air deepened.

And then we were through the rock and in the middle of a vast, wide-open cave system. We were hundreds of feet above the city, still slowly drifting downward.

The ceiling arched and curved out in every direction, occasionally cut through by huge pillars of natural stone rising dozens of stories like massive support beams.

The most impressive sight was the circular hole in the cave’s ceiling. It was the hole I’d seen from above, but it was even more incredible down here.

Light from the setting sun beamed down through the opening in thick shafts. The shafts cut through a thick wall of mist being kicked up by the falling rush of water. Half the hole was covered by an unfathomable torrent of water pouring over the edge to form a waterfall hundreds of feet tall.

The falling water, shafts of light, and pink-tinged mist from the sunset above cast the whole city in a golden haze, like something straight out of a dream.

“See?” Minara said, pointing. “The water forms a wall around the palace. Tomte magicians charge it with mana so it forms an impenetrable barrier.”

I saw thick sheets of water obscuring a huge building at the very top of the city. The falling water shimmered like an oil spill near the surface. Behind the shifting wall, I could make out the fuzzy impression of a palace with towers, buttresses, and gardens.

I imagined how incredible it must look on the inside. If you looked up, there would be only sky and falling water. I quietly made a goal of finding my way in there someday. I wanted to see that for myself.

The city was built on a three-tiered natural stone structure of progressively smaller platforms. The falling water forming the walls around the palace turned into a river that ran straight through the top tier of the town, cascaded past the second and third, and then eventually joined a deep blue river that curved out of view to somewhere deeper in the cave system.

Each tier of the city held what seemed to be a different sector. The lowest level was riddled with docks and small boats in the fast-moving underground river. The middle level was full of brightly colored tents and roofs. The level above was partially hidden as if it had been carved deep into the area beneath the highest level, like a cave within the cave. I could only see hints of neon-colored lights and people moving around within. The top held the palace within the water and an outer, walled-in housing section. I assumed it was where the nobility lived. I grinned when I noticed a section of miniature, tomte-sized housing as well.

“Wow,” I said, barely able to take it all in at once. I was itching to get down there and explore. I suspected I would need to be careful. Cities on Earth were dangerous enough. I wondered what kind of trouble I could get myself into if I wasn’t careful in a place like this.

“First time?” the tomte manning the winch asked. He wore a smug grin beneath a sparkly white beard. He was missing several teeth.

“Yeah,” I said. Several of the townspeople from Riverwell mirrored my amazement. Minara was pointing and explaining things to the people from Riverwell, leaning low to include the little girls.

“...would be the wisest place to start searching for work,” Minara said. “The third tier is not a place for your children.”

There was more conversation from the group, but I barely heard them as I tried to take in every detail of the city.

It was hard not to be awed. It was an entire, sprawling city completely underground. The giant hole at the top of the cave was the only source of natural light, and there was no clear way up to the surface from where I could see, aside from the lift.

I imagined a city like this would be almost impossible to siege. Maybe a determined enemy could sail in to attack, even though it looked like that would force them to work against a strong current.

Then again, I remembered the tooltip I’d read about palefiends. Suddenly, I imagined thousands of blue eyes winking open from every dark corner of the huge cavern city. Supposedly, tomte had been dealing with that threat for centuries. I’d just have to hope they had it handled.

I was struck again by how little I knew. I’d heard Circa talk of the military and wars and rifts. I had still only scratched the surface here. Maybe the thought should’ve overwhelmed me, but it only excited me more.

I smiled freely under my helmet as the platform finally landed with a soft click. We were ushered out of the way, and the guard began cranking his way back up to the top.

Hawkers and merchants were waiting at the platform base. We were on the second tier I’d seen from above—the one with the brightly colored tents. From the ground level, I could see that this was some kind of market district. I guessed it made sense to drop visitors to your city off in the market. It was the Eros equivalent of funneling people through the gift shop after a ride.

“Protective charms?” A greasy tomte in tattered clothing asked me. His beard was so far from a wash that it had become something like dreadlocks.

Lyria put a hand on my shoulder and led me past the tomte. “Probably fake,” she advised.

I looked back over my shoulder. The tomte was holding the necklace up to the two little girls from Riverwell, and their father was dragging them away. I inspected the necklace.

[Common Necklace (Wood)]

Fake indeed.

We moved through crowds of all races and sizes, trying to peddle what looked like overpriced junk. Some were aggressive, but then Bloody Steve started snarling and giving jump-scares to the people who spoke to us. After that, we were mostly left alone as we made our way through the city.

I saw more of the pale-skinned, imposing kiergards. Every kiergard I saw was Iron or Silver rank, and they seemed to be in positions of some importance. They were looming outside shops, casting judgmental glares on everyone who passed. A few kiergards were walking quickly with bunches of books tucked under their arms, serious expressions on their faces. Others were fully armored and armed, seeming to lord over guards they passed.

In all, I was shocked at the variety of races. I inspected all the tooltips, but it was too much to absorb at once. It seemed like humans and tomte were represented in roughly equal measure here. But one out of every twenty or so people we passed was… different. There were humans with slight variations, geonites, kiergards, and even a few races I caught glimpses of that looked more like creatures than people.

Almost everybody stared at my helmet. We passed several adventurer types with exotic-looking items. There was a man with a hammer that glowed from the inside, like it was made of glass, and flickered as if a magical candle was lit within. We saw a woman with one arm entirely encased in something metallic and silver, shifting and moving as if alive. We even passed a huge woman almost twice as wide as me and a head taller. She was encased head-to-toe in thick, rune-carved armor that made her look like she could crush my head with one hand.

She was drawing even more looks than me.

Bloody Steve seemed to know where he was going, so we all followed, struggling to stay as a group through the crush of people all around.

It was only when we stopped in front of a potion and herbs store that it clicked for me. He wanted to sell the nectar. I’d forgotten about it for the moment, but I wasn’t surprised they wanted to do this immediately. Nobody was going to split up until they got their cut.

Bloody Steve turned to face me, thumbs hooked in the waistband of his pants. “Well?” he said. “You ready to hand over that nectar so we can sell it and get rich?”

I nodded my head. He had no idea how ready I was. Collecting this money was step one.

Next? I wanted to get my ass to a furnisher as quickly as possible to finally upgrade my bed fully. After that, it was a personal space to claim my reward tokens. The other half-dozen things I wanted to investigate could come next.

“Let’s get paid,” I said.