Went for the BBQ and didn't plan to stay for the fireworks, but did. Just got back and finished the last 400 words on this chapter. Need to add in a little more character interaction...

Chapter 590:

I exited the dungeon to the sound of crickets and the cool air of twilight settling. The shadow of the hearth tree made it even darker, forcing me to keep aether sight active. The insects were a good sign that life was returning to the city, and I caught two mice scurrying in the crevice of the wall. Nature would quickly reclaim this city now that the specters were no longer guarding and repairing it.

I wasn’t surprised that no one was waiting for me, so I crossed the street and entered the house Maveith and I had used years ago. Part of the ceiling had collapsed, and one of the walls creaked threateningly as I crossed the room to reach the stairs.

Taking the stone steps to the undercity felt odd. I could see Maveith and my footprints in the dust. There were also tiny goblin tracks inside of Maveith’s, causing me to shake my head at the memory. The undercity felt so much different now that I had aether sight and earth speak. With earth speak, I could see the complex network of drains going to the sewers below the undercity.

We had never found an access point to the sewer network, and I suspected that was because the elves had blocked them all in the siege, fearing the Telhians would use them to enter the city. With the range of my earth speak, there appeared to be another network of larger passages under the sewers, but the range was too far to get a complete picture. Knowing that the Shimmering Labyrinth was one of the first aether engines, I suspected Caelora could be built on a Titan ruin. Maybe that is where the lost riches of the Caelorian Kingdom were secreted away. The city obviously held many mysteries still to be uncovered.

Maybe if Alhur had talked to me and asked for my help, he wouldn’t be heading to certain death. I sighed and started walking. Even though it was so long ago, I still remembered the way. My earth speak found some disturbing sealed and hidden rooms with dozens of skeletons. We had found one large room with hundreds of skeletons of elven children, and now I could see others we had not discovered. In many rooms we had explored, there were dozens of skeletons. It was a terrible fate, and while I did not have sympathy for King Ninleyn, I did for his people.

It wasn’t long before I encountered a pair of elven specters racing through the underground network. The translucent pair were young and holding hands and laughing in silence. I stepped into a side passage to let them pass. They didn’t even glance my way as the apparitions joyfully ran together. They reminded me of teenagers going off to hide from adults' prying eyes.

The next specter I encountered was an old human woman with braided hair and a circlet for a crown. I guessed she was royalty from one of the human kingdoms, maybe an ambassador. Fifteen hundred years was a long time for humans, and I doubted anyone would know why she was here. Or perhaps she had perished in the city after the genocide and fell under the curse. I made to give way, but her face twisted into rage on seeing me and she attacked me. One slash from magebane and the body was dissipated. With the artifact powering the curse broken, I wasn’t sure if she would reform in time. I didn’t wait around to find out though.

When I reached the wine vault, I turned and entered, as this was my purpose in taking this route. I wasn’t certain, but it looked the same as when Maveith and I left it. It surprised me Castile hadn’t come down here, but maybe she was a little afraid of revealing its existence to the Telhian legionnaires above. They would eventually find it, but for now I could take what I pleased. There were still hundreds of bottles left, and thanks to Elaro, I came armed with more knowledge than before.

The maker’s mark for blowing and sculpting the reliefs on the bottles was on the bottom. The artificer’s mark for preserving the wine was pressed into the wax. On most bottles, it would have cracked over the centuries, but for elves who lived for a millennium, high standards prevailed.

The final identification was interpreting the scenes on the bottle to identify where the grapes were sourced and which master winemaker prepared the vintage. I suspected some of the grapes came from the Shimmering Labyrinth, but I had not come across a room with grape vines. While I couldn’t identify any of the masters who participated in each bottle’s creation, I recalled which wines I liked by the color of the bottle and darkness of the wine. I tightly lined up bottles on the floor, forming a twenty-by-twenty block, then repeated this three more times. Taking 1600 bottles put a satisfactory dent in the stores. I knew that once the Telhians started pillaging the undercity, this room would be emptied in short order.

Ascending to the library, I found it picked clean. Even the books we had deemed damaged and some that we had partially burned were gone. My footfalls echoed hollowly in the once majestic room. I didn’t need to check the two towers to know they were similarly stripped. Maybe Renna would let me page through them after we were free of the war—although probably not. I don’t think Renna would ever forgive me.

It was dark when I stepped out of the library, but Neptune’s tear was in ascent, given some light. I used a teleport to appear on top of the wall near the gate. My earth speak told me the wall was unstable and could collapse at any time. In fact, I heard a crash in the city and turned to see a small dust cloud bloom in the southern part of the city. I turned back, focusing on the camp lights in the distance and teleported again.

Glowstone poles were positioned throughout the camp, illuminating the tents. Six legionnaires stood guard on the camp and leveled spears at me. The leader recognized me and ordered my return, announcing it with a short whistle, alerting the entire camp. Evie came flying out of the large tent, her hair trailing like a streamer. I waited till she crashed into me in an embrace as others exited tents. “Did you get me a staff too?” Evie asked seriously after her squeeze.

“Something better,” I said, producing two major essences and three minor essences. She should recognize them as three rare displacement essences, and two minor dexterity essences. “Store them and consume them steadily.” I didn’t see her face to tell if she was disappointed, but a magus staff was useless to her as it would only amplify her necromancy affinity, and that affinity was blocked with her cranial inscriptions. Baelira, Castile, Benito, Lesna, Blaze, and Lexi reached us. Lexi proudly carried her staff, the stone atop aglow. I didn’t see Konstantin but suspected he was keeping busy.

Castile had a serious expression. “Alhur is missing,” Castile said without preamble. “Konstantin is looking for him.”

“He won’t find him. Alhur stayed in the dungeon,” I replied.

“I saw him leave…” Castile started to say.

I shook my head, recalling his spell form. “He tricked your mind with his spell form. He was in the fire bear room when I checked on it,” I confirmed. Alhur’s fate was of his own choosing. “How is Hephaestus coming with the device?” I asked.

“The titan needs the void essence,” Castile said accusingly.

“He shouldn’t have needed it to purify the mithril ore,” I said, confused. I figured I had plenty of time.

“I am just telling you what he said,” Castile shrugged. I sighed in frustration as I had both void essences from Venere’s dungeon in my space. I figured he would need to smelt the ore before using the void essence.

“Your titan also went into the city alone and knocked down half the buildings in the crafters’ district,” Baelira added, as if it were my fault.

“What? Why would he go into the city? Is he not here?” I started looking at the tents, getting worried.

“Oh, he is here. He returned after his rampage. That tent,” she pointed. “Ask him yourself.” The tent she had indicated was the largest tent in the camp but not big enough to hold a titan. I left the group and headed to the tent.

Pulling the flap aside, I found Hephaestus in his human-sized body working at a craftsman's table. The sacks of mithril ore were tossed in a stack at his side. “He looked up, his thick beard coated in soot. “Why haven’t you touched the mithril?” I said accusingly.

“I told you I need a void essence to purify it,” he said and returned to his task.

I walked over to the table and slammed the void essence on the table. He knew I carried it. I covered it as he reached for it. “Why did you go into the city?”

The ancient being’s eyes looked at me. Even with all his life experience and power, his eyes looked hollow to me. “I picked up these,” he indicated the worktable, anvil and other tools of a smithy. “I figured you would want the device as small as possible and all my tools are for a storm giant.”

I calmed some at that explanation. “Okay. How long to build it? And I am watching,” I said authoritatively.

He didn’t even flinch. “Two days if you don’t interrupt me,” the titan’s large human hand reaching for the essence. I released it and let him take it.

The titan promptly ignored me as he took the void essence to something that looked like a runic crucible. It clanked into the bowl, and in the blink of an eye, a hammer came down on the essence, shattering it. He turned over the hammer and with the rounded other side, he started grinding the fragments into dust.

“Did you find the bowl and hammer in the city?” I asked, hoping to lay claim to them after he finished.

He didn’t look at me as he talked, making a twisting, circular motion over and over again. “The elven artificers have come a long way in the time I have been away. The implements are crude, but serviceable.”

“Please tell me what you are doing,” I requested instead of commanded.

The titan paused for a second with my change in tone, but spoke. “I am grinding up the essence. Void essence is a very useful powder. With an apex essence like this, you can make excellent dark mithril. It can also be used to purge raw mithril of all affinities.” He pulverized the essence for a good hour before he was satisfied with a fine black powder. Then he put all the mithril into a bucket-sized crucible. The crucible was also artificed as it greedily took the titan’s aether and turned a brilliant red. I could feel the heat even twenty feet away.

“Mithril is lighter than the slag and will float on the surface. But if I didn’t treat it with the void powder before it cooled down, it would be useless for my artificing,” the master smith explained.

“How do you make dark mithril then?” I asked.

“Different process. You need a binding agent to fuse the void essence into the mithril. You know if you are successful if the mithril turns black,” Hephaestus said, still not looking up.

I watched as the mithril ore and rock were rapidly melted, and the surface of the molten pot developed a white, floating sheen that continued to thicken. At a certain point, Hephaestus nodded to himself and poured the powdered void essence evenly across the white layer. With my aether sight, I could see him infusing the mithril with large amounts of aether. It was a lot more aether than I had. It quickly went from white to opaque, and the titan nodded satisfactorily.

Hephaestus stepped back, waiting for the cauldron to cool. I could still feel the heat, but he pried the plate of mithril from the slag. The slag was still glowing red, but the mithril was a silvery-white. “And that is how you make pure mithril,” he said proudly. “Once I recover my aether, I draw it into a thread for the artificing work.” He sat heavily in the chair and looked tired from expending aether, or maybe something else drained him that I didn’t catch.

“Two days?” I asked for confirmation.

“I have already prepared the matrix to suspend spell forms. Two days as long as I don’t make any errors,” he nodded.

I sat, not planning to let the titan out of my sight until he finished the device. He slept for two hours before starting work on the mithril plate. The plate fit neatly into an odd spinning wheel. I was familiar with the process of making thread, but this device was vastly different than the one I used on Sanctuary. The disc spun rapidly, but the thread was so fine, it was going to take him hours to wind the mithril wire on the spool. It was still enthralling to watch him work.

It was early morning when the flap was ripped aside. The disc was halfway depleted, and Hephaestus hadn’t looked up once. Baelira stood there with a worried expression as she looked from me to Hephaestus and back. “What has happened?” I asked before she spoke.

“Atlantium has been attacked by three storm giants,” she said, causing Hephaestus to stop his work.

In a whisper and without looking up, Hephaestus said, “Khrusos is coming.”

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