To the bottom! The Deepcombers are professional dungeon crawlers in a print-crazed medieval society where reckless teenagers reign supreme above ground and blood thirsty creatures dwell below. Lonastasius is a 17 year old mutant slave who breaks his...
Lon couldn't go much lower and continue to keep air around his head. Yet, he just had to take a closer look. He exhaled and emptied his lungs and shrank his bubble as small as possible. He kept his right hand under his chin and maintained a thin mask that barely covered his face..
Just below the somgor stick-tavern was a cave opening with a protruding front porch, its streamlined design looked very First Age.
The somgors followed Lon. They climbed down the vines that lined the chasm and entered the cave below with many claps and chirps. Lon heard these happy pings through the water and he saw joy on their faces as they trailed beneath his bare feet. Other somgors climbed up from below; their underwater world was deeper yet and there was a white castle made of cubes that glowed at the bottom.
Lon entered the dark cave in the side of the aquifer. He used his left arm to push himself lower and the cavity opened-up before his eyes. He about lost his mind when he saw the sign and read the writing on the wall. Here were two different metal plaques, enormously large, one on either side of the chamber. They glowed with their own light and he could see their metal surfaces were pockmarked with age and the corners were covered in algae, but the words were still visible. The first said Kluth, and the second said Samardina.
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The metal signs were the size of the Annabelle and they were cracked and barely readable. Both had the same Varget symbol, a circle inside a diamond. Seeing the words and these icons together shocked Lon to his core. He let his air bubble slip away as he processed the revelation. Instead of making another air-sphere he simply kept the pattern active in his head and stuck his fingers up his nose. He made the symbol glow as he inhaled and that worked too. He'd just hold his breath and make what he needed. He wanted to think this through.
Lon exhaled and a hundred bubbles hurried up around his head. The circle inside the diamond sign fascinated him because he knew without applying his mind that it was the Varget construct for 'life form'. The circle implied a power source and the diamond signaled a consciousness. Together they made life. This was the Samardina. He was here. This was the place that Clyde of Barobell had sought and the place which he'd first spoken-of as being a missing section from the Book of Kluth. Did he know the truth? The lost book wasn't a dusty tome at all. The Samardina was a place and its nameplate carried a symbol that looked very much like the flag of Crol.
