A Will to Leave

CHAPTER TWO

It was vast, vaster than any place I have ever been, vaster than the ever-crowded old orcs' market. It perfectly symbolised the name Condor, the elevations extended all the way above and pierced into the immensely dazzling, colourful sky. Elvish Magic. The calmness left me behind as I walked in. With bustling all around, I moved to the wall as the gate closed and opened behind me. Individuals kept flowing through it like shots from canon.

The wall looked to be formed by natural rocks. It was like a battlefield left alone after a long battle. I spotted gnomes with long-range weapons above the rocks aimlessly shooting around, creating dust. Bits of marble peeked through under the rocky dust-filled terrain.

A loud roar of excitement from behind, Ellmut Goldstitch, the four feet gnome-friend surprised me, "master Clinten!" Ellmut was the kindest of the gnomes I had ever met, an extremely talented alchemy expert, one of the few who have been here from the very scratch. "I thought you left." He gave me a warm welcoming hug and a brief look at me from top to bottom. His grey beard had completely faded into white, his face bared more wrinkles than ever.

"Couldn't afford to, Ellmut," I chuckled.

He smiled, "I'm afraid it's your first time after rebuilding!"

"That's right." I slightly managed to smile glancing around.

"It's always been on the papers, a long-lasted dream of Edwin, made possible by greedy men and their hardworking knights." He looked up and looked at me as his pride grew more. "They tried to catch us on sight, so we disappeared like air." The last time I came it was just a small arsenal, at least small compared to what it became. Crawling around like a giant spider, from one place to another, hiding from men. A smaller doorway works almost the same, like a portal that connects different places together. "It's my bad fortune that I can't show you around. I hope you don't leave with this small part." Small part? What did he mean, was there a bigger part?

"Sure," I promised.

He gestured to me in a direction and left for work. I started wandering around like a bee lost in the garden. I had no idea if this existed. I realised one thing for sure: Edwin had turned it into what the men feared it would become.

On the way, I encountered a small chunk of rock shaking with pieces of it scattered around. It was like a heap of ice melting into the water but in reverse, the chunk emerged from the marble ground to make a rock of seven feet, the exact height as mine. There were lots of similar rocks around, destroyed and reformed by magic, there were camps with gnomes and dwarfs playing with arms. I walked past all those camps until I caught him in a short-range field. He was the most recognisable, as young and charming as he had been.

Edwin Wilburt, a dwarf-elf with red hair, must be older than ten men together who still retained his young appearance. They called him the craftsman who adopted spellwork. His face overplayed the rich outfit covered by a fine silk overcoat, bright gloves covered above the fingers and a communicator as small as a brick, hanging below his waist. He held a broad elemental pistol, a Bulldog against a piece of rock. It looked bigger in his hands, it had a yellow element within the cylinder that looked more like oil. A thin line of beam emerged from the nozzle when he pulled the trigger, forming a long hard icicle when hit the target and dug deep into it. It suddenly became still and quiet until a thin line of smoke peeked through the slit. The smoke became thicker, and a saffron light broke it to start a bright flame that melted the whole rock down.

He lowered the arm and offered a pair of gloves similar to his. Its skin was rough and thick enough to protect fingers from the element, yet it felt surprisingly comfortable. I had to wiggle my fingers in, for it to completely fit my hands, "thanks," I said.

"Nothing more than what you offer," he didn't look at me until then, pulled out a communicator from the belt, adjusted the regulator and switched some levers. Weird noises struggled to get out of the communicator. He muttered under his breath surrendering the arm to a dwarf beside him and crossing me like someone in a hurry. "It isn't always like this."

We stopped at a blue metal gate in the other corner of the ground. Almost immediately I started to hear the engine roar and chains drag, scratching with one another. It all stopped with a sudden bang, raising the gate above like a mammal opening its huge mouth, disclosing an elevator behind it. The elevator was an inch below the storey and left a broad gap in between, perfect to get my foot stuck. We passed the gap and stepped in, saw the gate drop back slowly like a window shutter extended by the screaming of chains. We rapidly moved up except for two brakes in the middle, like a rail catching up with the wind. The gate opened and we reached the storey before I noticed it wasn't powered by the elements, but instead driven by some external power supply.