Chapter 3 – Welcome to the Underworld

An iron-clad belief splits our mountain in two.

My faction, the Ashen Guard, knows the truth. We believe the Master’s divine power is a weapon meant to purge the corrupt underworld and bring it to heel by force. We have seen the darkness that festers down there; our own master, Siegfried, wears its treachery as a scar across his face. Then there is the Radiant Path. They believe the Master should be a shining hero, a beacon of hope to inspire the dregs of the world. They are naive. They are fools.

Every mission into the underworld is a test, assigned by Sakura to one faction or the other. This one, the retrieval of a sacred blade, was given to the Ashen Guard. It was given to me. The honor is immense, but the pressure is suffocating. I am a novice, barely worthy of the task. If I fail, the Radiant Path will use it as proof of our flawed ideology. I cannot allow that. This mission is everything.

The descent from the Upper World took me an entire day.

I leaped from ledge to ledge, my feet barely touching the stone as I fell down the mountainside. The wind whistled past my ears, a familiar song. Still, my movements felt clumsy, sluggish. I knew Master Siegfried could make this journey in an hour, and the Great Master himself could probably do it in the time it takes to blink. The thought settled like a stone in my gut. I was slow. I had to be better.

I finally reached the base and walked toward the nearest city, a place called Oakhaven.

It was chaos. The air, thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and burnt sugar, assaulted my nose. The noise was a constant roar of shouting merchants, crying children, and rattling wagon wheels. It was so different from the clean, ordered tranquility of the mountain. This was the underworld my master hated. I could see why.

A portly man with a brilliant red nose waved at me from a stall piled high with dried meats and strange trinkets.

“Hello there, young man! You look a bit lost.”

I approached his stall, keeping a polite distance. His smile seemed genuine enough, but Siegfried’s warnings about the people here echoed in my mind.

“Hello, sir. I am looking for information.”

The man laughed, a wheezing, rattling sound. He wiped his greasy hands on his apron.

“Aren’t we all, son? Aren’t we all. You’re not from around here, are ya? Got that clean mountain air look about you. Where’d you travel from?”

“I have come down from the mountain.”

I gestured vaguely with my thumb over my shoulder. The vendor squinted, his eyes following my gesture to the impossibly tall peak piercing the clouds miles away.

“The Spire? By the gods, son, that’s a three-month journey, and that’s with a well-guarded caravan! Your party must have been hit by bandits! You poor thing, you’re the sole survivor, aren’t you?”

He looked at me with genuine pity. I felt a pang of confusion.

“I did not have a party, sir. I traveled alone.”

“Alone? Gods above, even more dangerous! How long did it take you to get here? Four months? Five?”

I calculated the time since I’d left the training grounds. It felt like an eternity of my own slow, pathetic travel.

“No, thank you. It only took a day.”

The vendor’s pity vanished, replaced by a hearty laugh that shook his entire body.

“A day! Oh, that’s a good one, lad! A real comedian! Trying to pull a fast one on old Fitz, eh? It’s alright, a bit of bravado keeps the spirits up.”

I simply stared at him, my head tilted. I did not understand the joke. My slowness was a matter of shame, not comedy. My serious expression must have conveyed that.

Fitz’s laughter died in his throat. He looked at my simple, clean clothes, my lack of supplies, and my placid, untired face. He looked back at the impossibly distant mountain. His ruddy complexion began to pale.

“You… you’re not joking, are you?”

I offered a slight shake of my head, a fresh wave of embarrassment washing over me.

“I am afraid not. I am quite slow. My masters are much faster.”

The man’s eyes widened in terror. He took a clumsy step back, knocking over a small basket of dried herbs. He started breathing heavily, his gaze darting around as if he expected the sky to fall.

“Right. Slow. Of course. A one-day journey. Normal stuff.”

He began twisting the corner of his apon into a knot, his eyes refusing to meet mine.

“So, uh, what can I get for ya? A drink? Some salted meat? An exorcism, perhaps?”

This man was very strange. The people of the underworld were even more peculiar than Master Siegfried had described. There was no point wasting any more time with him.

I gave a short, polite bow.

“You have been very helpful. Thank you.”

I turned and walked away, leaving him frozen in a state of shock behind his stall. I could feel his terrified eyes on my back as I disappeared into the crowd.

Now, to find a sword.