Book 7, Chapter 35 - Connections to G.o.ds and Demons

Cloudhawk led Dawn to an octagonal building where their targets were hiding . They were understandably shocked to see him, at first thinking it was some new monster .

“Clodhawk? It’s you!”

When they saw who it was, the prisoners stared with strange expressions .  

He smirked back at them . “Hey there Dumont . Here you are . Tough man to find . ”

There were nine people holed up in total . One of them was Dumont Cenhelm, captured and sent here by Cloudhawk like all the others .

In days pa.s.sed he was an instructor for h.e.l.l’s Valley with Eckard Skinner and Natessa Windham . Instructor Skinner was no more, but Natessa had been sequestered here along with him . She was nowhere to be seen now, however . Neither were the two Masters .

Dumont looked his former student over . There was no sign of animosity in his stare . “Ah, this young troublemaker . It’s been quite a while indeed . This here must be your girlfriend, young Miss Dawn Polaris, yes? Wearing my armor, no less . It makes you look quite fetching, young lady!”

Indeed the armor she wore used to belong to this old wretch . She never had a good sense of the man, but when he called her Cloudhawk’s girlfriend she found herself warming up to him a bit .

Of course that was lip service, a way to ingratiate himself .

“You sure can talk can’t you, old man . Don’t think I won’t cut your a.s.s down right here!” Dawn stomped up to him, her enormous armor clanging noisily like a walking fortress . “Now what the h.e.l.l are you all up to down here? Spill it, and maybe I’ll go easy on you . Resist and you’ll learn the meaning of pain!”

Dawn glared at the others then looked around at their surroundings . It was a large area, maybe two hundred square meters, with all kinds of slates piled up . Some were murals or other remnants and all looked like they’d been moved here . By the look of them, they didn’t seem to have come from this city .

“Dawn, don’t be rude . ” Cloudhawk didn’t pay the group any mind . He asked a simple question . “Where are Phoenix and Bruno? And why isn’t Natessa with you?”

A handful of the people here were members of the Cloude family . They, unlike Dumont, surely had a bone to pick with him . However as they moved in they were stopped by the old instructor . It was a laughable thought that this handful was strong enough to threaten Cloudhawk . He could slap their heads right off their shoulders .

“The two Masters led the rest of the party deeper underground to see what they could find . I don’t know what they might have run into . ” Dumont was honest and forthcoming . “Now that I think about it, they’ve been gone for several days . We haven’t heard a thing since they left . I imagine if there’s anyone with the skills and strength to bring them back it’s you, Cloudhawk . ”

He scowled . “A deeper level, huh?”

“Heh, did you bring us here so we would explore these areas?”

Cloudhawk’s scowl deepened . That had never been his intention .

“Well judging by that look on your face, it seems you had no idea all of this was here . This whole city is just the beginning . It wasn’t built all that long ago, in the grand scheme of things . We’ve been exploring the underground city for a month or so already . Besides the strange beasts everywhere, this is a perfect home . ”

“How is it perfect?”

“The buildings are all in excellent condition . We don’t need to worry about water and food can all be grown on the overworld . We also discovered from these murals that the underworld city has some connection to G.o.ds and demons . ”

Anything connected to G.o.ds and demons was certain to be more complicated than it looked .

Cloudhawk pressed him further . “What have you discovered?”

“Everything here is what we’ve found so far . ” Dumont indicated the tablets and murals . “These appear to show the origins of the divine . It is possible that the original denizens of this place left them behind to help outsiders understand the truth . ”

Cloudhawk took a closer look at the artifacts . Because they were incomplete their message was ambiguous . It was hard to piece together any revelation without a few key pieces .

“Where’s the entrance to the deeper levels?”

Dumont and the others exchanged looks . In the end, the old man elected to lead Cloudhawk there . Together they crept toward an underground volcano whose caldera served as the entrance to the deeper parts of the ruins .

As they neared the volcano, Cloudhawk noted several semi-petrified trees . It had to have taken tens of thousands of years for them to get to this point . But what were they doing here underground?

Dumont explained . “We suspect that all of this used to be the surface ten thousand years ago . Around the volcano’s edge we’ve found many petrified plants . Old, and origins of their creation are quite striking…”

Dawn interjected . “So the land collapsed? Is that how this underground world was created?”

“No, madam . I don’t believe so . Rather, I believe someone created a new surface to conceal the original . The result is this city of perpetual darkness you see around you . ”

“How is that possible?” Dawn hardly believed what he was saying . Who had that sort of power?

Dumont claimed that someone built a whole new outer layer all across the planet like a new coat . Hundreds of meters below, the original crust was hidden . It was a task unfathomably more difficult than creating an Elysian land .  

Cloudhawk was silent, thoughtful . His senses told him this was very possible . The great forests overhead were energy collectors . Tools for collection, detection and concealment . Whatever civilization chose to conceal themselves this way was clever .

They had covered the whole planet in this false sh.e.l.l . Key areas were carpeted in false vegetation that gave vast underground cities needed energy . At the same time they served to keep any trace well hidden . If a powerful foe from outside the planet came they would be fooled by this disguise . They might think this world was a wild, uninhabited place, home to unintelligent beasts . With nothing worth their attention, they would move on .

No doubt creating this masterpiece – this ma.s.sive defensive structure – proved that some important secret was buried here . It was one of the planets he was able to s.h.i.+ft to naturally, like the spore planet and Stoney Fields . Because he hadn’t taken the time to explore this place more closely, he never discovered what the former Demon King thought was so important here that he would leave a marker . What was it he wanted Cloudhawk to see?

“Are you sure you can get down there from here?”

Cloudhawk and Dawn stood on the lip of the caldera . It had long since grown dormant and no light or heat emerged . A cold, dark maw greeted them with no bottom .

Dumont had no reason to lie to him, or the means to do it .  

With a wave of his hand Cloudhawk left a teleportation marker . If they encountered trouble he could bring them right back out . With that, the darkness of the caldera swallowed them up .

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