Chapter I

The Tunnel between Worlds

In the depth of a long dark set of caves and tunnels, beyond what Athalera even knew there was, a single torch revealed two yellow eyes on a large muscular figure, struggling up along a steep passage.

He was a large man, and would easily overpower those with larger muscles than most had seen. On his back he carried a long and thick rope. In the light of the flickering flames of the torches the ones that followed him carried, his hair and inch-long beard seemed like copper, perhaps even more so than copper usually did.

On his back, he had his weapons, a sword, and another one, something he normally wore on his arm: a swordlike claw of metal, projecting out of an armored gauntlet. It was too long and too heavy for most to wield, some would complain already by carrying it, but it did not weigh Marrack Wolveneye down, not the slightest. After all, he was strong almost beyond humanly possible, so he, at least, seemed to most.

He was one of the Halfmen, the clans on the other side of the tunnel. The king of Athalera had sent him back to his lands, accompanied by a number of royal soldiers. It was dangerous times, and Marrack had been one of the witnesses of this. The Banished were ready to go to war against all living peoples. That included Athalera, as well as the Halfmen.

The Halfmen was once the army of the greatest enemy of Athalera, and so, Athalera feared the Halfmen even though the Halfmen's rebellion against this enemy was what led Athalera to victory. They were thought to be once magical creatures that had blended with humans, taking some traits of their old hosts, animals, with them; or humans, that had blended with these magical creatures.

The Halfmen, however, had learned that their old masters had made them, taken humans and given them these traits. While they didn't know or understand how, they trusted their old masters to have been, although cruel, honest. They had been too proud to lie.

Whether from humans or other beings, Marrack Wolveneye obviously posessed some wolven traits. His yellow eyes were the most prominent sign of this, although his muscular build was also magical in origin. His clan was the Wolveneye, one of the more influential clans of the Halfman Reign. Of the western regions, at least.

The tunnel cut the travelling time by half, but only if one knew where to go. The mountain range above was wide, and it would take weeks to pass it on the surface, and legends spoke of winged beasts and such that resided there, and those that had dared jounrey as far, and managed to return, witnessed of humongous birds that lived in a cloud of stone, resting over a distant valley in the mountains. The tunnel was the only way to get from one side to the other, without having to attempt to pass through both the harsh weather and terrain, and the domain of the birds.

The Halfman Reign laid beyond the tunnel. No Athaleran had ever ventured there and come back. None had ventured there in a long time, because of this. A few had ventured some way in the tunnel and returned, and occational journeymen had travelled through. That the journeymen didn't return could just as well mean they continued in that direction, journeymen were obviously journeying, hence the name.

The relations between the pure-blood humans and the Halfmen had always been tense. The humans feared the Halfmen, who betrayed their old masters and sided with the humans in the last war. This war ended with the old magi being banished. Becoming the Banished. Generally, the Halfmen envied the humans, and the humans envied the Halfmen. Despise was just as common as envy. Both sides had this human weakness.

Still, no wars had been fought. The Halfmen stayed on their side of the tunnel, and the Athalerans on theirs. Marrack Wolveneye was the exception. He hadn't come through this particular tunnel, it was guarded on Athalera's side, and no guards had been knocked down, yet he had come. There were other paths in the tunnel. As for that matter, the way he had taken was a one-way trip.

Having crawled onto the plateu waiting at the end of the climb, he threw the rope around a stalagmite, tied it together, then called to the soldiers accompanying him to climb. Those soldiers were among the roughest, toughest, yet most agile the king would send.

The first to climb the rope was Solo, one of the king's royal guard, the guardians. Solo was the guardian from Beilgath, a mid-Athaleran town on the edge of a dark forest.

The somewhat young Solo was a quick and skinny man, with short blonde hair and two dark eyes. He wasn't very tall, so he was dwarfed by Marrack. The king had picked him for his interest in the Halfman Reign, as well as for his quick learning and fast reflexes. If something would go wrong, Solo would likely be able to sneak back and report. More likely than anyone else, at least.

"Wolveneye, this is further than anyone's been," he told Marrack. "Any Athaleran who's returned, that is. Have we gotten half way yet?"

"I have no idea," Marrack replied, looking around.

"You have no idea," Solo repeated in a sigh.

When the rest of the party had arrived at their location, Marrack pulled up the rope, then returned to walk around, scanning the caveside for passages into other caves.

"Do you even know where we're going?" Solo asked, following Marrack.

"I can smell the way to my home," Marrack replied, examining a narrow passage. "This is the way. But I don't trust these walls." He looked around for any other way. On occation, the tunnel forked, and it wasn't hard to imagine people getting lost long before even reaching half way through.

The rest of the troupe had now joined Marrack and Solo on the platform by the narrow passage. "Wolveneye, what's the problem?" Eagath, the captain of the royal soldiers asked.

"I don't trust these walls," he echoed, still looking for another way.

Eagath, who was experienced despite being fairly young for a captain, looked around. "Well, if there's another way, it's well hidden," he stated.

"That's what secret passages are, usually, well hidden," Marrack replied.

One of the soldiers then spotted something above them. "Sir," he said, pointing at a shadowed area of rock further up. Everyone turned their eyes towards it.

"Might be it," Marrack said and grabbed the rope. He hung it over his chest and started climbing the unwelcome caveside. As he reached it, he vanished into the shadows up there. A short while later, the rope rolled down to it's full length, still not quite having reached the plateu the other were at.

Solo was as usual the first to climb it. He jumped up to grab it, then pulled himself up until he could twirl it around his feet for a better grip.

"We better not climb with our full equipment, sir," another of Eagath's soldiers stated.

"No, you're right," Eagath replied. "Bag whatever you can in your cloaks, leave it tied to the rope, and we'll just have to pull it up. Well, he'll have to."

"To the halfman's great joy," a third soldier said.

Solo, who had been waiting, tied a shorter, second rope to the first one. He was agiled, and hung upside down as he tied the ropes together and then dropped the second to Eagath and his soldiers.

Once the obstacle had been overcome, they continued. Solo, noticing a strange sound behind them, alerted Marrack: "Wolveneye, there's a noise behind us."

"I can't hear for all your noise, Athalerans. Quiet," the halfman commanded. After a moment of silence, far more silent that Solo would have expected him to hear anything in, he stated: "Light creatures, cavesters or noisefrogs, maybe white lizards, but I doubt they'd be this far up. They don't smell like anything I've smelled before, though."

"But they're behind us, right? And afraid of us?" Solo asked in reply. The sounds echoed from every direction, even in the narrow passage they were walking through.

"They're behind us, yes," Marrack said. "And they're avoiding us..."

"Good," Eagath said.

"...For now," Marrack finished, and continued walking.

Soon enough, they arrived at a large intersection of many minor tunnels. Although man-made would hardly be the word that came to mind, it was clearly not a natural cave. However, it was more like the rock had been melted and poured away, rather than having been hacked or blown out of the cave walls. From somewhere deep below them, they heard a strange noise.

"All tunnels, as far as I know, come here," Marrack explained.

"And that sound...?" Solo started.

"What is it?" the royal captain asked.

"The King of Caves is what he's called in our tales."

"Heard of him," Solo said.

"He's said to have more arms than an army, the breath of burned tar and sulphur, and his face is a map of the earth's most inner chambers. The sound we're hearing is his snoring. He supposedly dreams of bridges, that's what we're standing on."

"I've heard he's a giant spider with the face of a man. Breathing fire."

"Keep asking questions, and we'll see for ourselves."

"Shut up?" Solo sugegsted.

"Yes please." Marrack headed on.

"Shutting up," he replied. Marrack froze, only for a moment, and only to roll his eyes. Then he headed on, again.

They continued, slowly along the passages along the walls of the shaft. Sometimes, there were stairs. Sometimes, there were sloping walkways. Sometimes, there were ladders in the cliffside. Sometimes, there was naught but the edge of the road, as if it ended.

There were occational bridges, but most passages went along the sides of the shaft. Having gotten half way down to where Marrack knew he had come from, both Marrack and Solo stopped, having heard something. Solo motioned at the soldiers to stop and be quiet, while Marrack looked around the shaft for whatever was making that noise. It was the same noise that they had heard in the narrow passage before.

"That's a sound of no ordinary cave dwelling creatures," Marrack stated. "We have a problem."

"What problem?" Solo asked.

Then, it was as if someone had hit a large clashing cymbal, and the noise was reverberating through the shaft, further and further down, stronger and stronger.

"Oh, that problem," Solo said, looking to Marrack after some solution.

"We gotta get out of here, right now," Eagath said.

"No!" Marrack called in reply. "Sit down, stay away from the walls and the edges, curl down and shut up! Don't move! Keep all your stuff on the ground under you! And hold your breath!" Naturally, he was the first to do so.

The air turned full of smoke, and it was moving, whirling around, as if a twister had formed within the shaft. They could all hear the sound of thousands of arms, or what was said to be arms, pulling something large and heavy up through the shaft.

The walls were as if they came ablaze, and the wind got far hotter and stronger. In a single moment, it was as if every fire in the world was but a hair away from them. Two of the soldiers apparently hadn't followed his advice, as their screams were heard in a brief moment before they apparently were swallowed by flames.

Whatever had come up the shaft now descended back into the depths of the world. They all felt how less damp and far cooler and fresher air came flowing from above. Somewhere above, there had to be an opening, a passage, a natural vent, however natural it would be.

"Solo, look down the shaft, carefully," Marrack told the guardian, who complied. For a split second, he saw something, but the heat of it was immense, and he drew back. As he did, he started seeing a round fiery orb, a ball of glowing rock, it seemed. He was blinded. Marrack laughed.

"Your sight will be back in a moment," Marrack explained. "This is the trial of fire, or was, once upon a time when Halfmen lived under the rule of the Old Magi. A few of us still undergo it, but it's rare. When I came through here before, I had to try. Step back."

Having brushed away the scorched dust and ash from their faces and wherever else it had whirled, they looked around. Aside from the remnants of molten metal where the two soldiers that hadn't followed Marrack's orders were, there was no sign of what had happened.

"This is your world, Wolveneye," Eagath said. "We better all do as you say."

"Thank you," Marrack said. "And just for the record, I don't live here. Not here."

The sounds returned to the caves, the king was sleeping again. The other sound, the one from the passage before also returned, now more agitated than before.

"It's language," Solo stated.

"It is?" Marrack queried.

"Yes," he replied. "I don't know it, can't make it out anyway, but it' definitely language."

"Probably bad language," Marrack joked, mumbling.

"Who's speaking it this far down the tunnel?" Eagath asked.

"Shouldn't be anyone here," Marrack stated, confused.

"Well, we're here," Solo said.

"Yes, and we shouldn't be for long, or we won't be anymore," Marrack said.

Marrack made his way towards a nearby tunnel entrance, but when he was but a mere step away, something exploded out of the tunnel. It was smoking, flying, and seemed to be armed, but it was hard to see through the smoke. It had no apparent wings, but seemed to me a creature of smoke, so it probably needed none to fly.

"Bows!" Eagath called to his soldiers the very second he saw it as more than smoke. Solo headed for the tunnel, to see what happened to Marrack. He found the halfman clinging to the cliffside with one hand, the other waving about, trying to find anything to hold on to.

The arrows fired at the creature had no effect, they only vanished into the smoke, and were a moment later heard hitting the rock walls on the other side of the wide shaft. The creature came closer to the soldiers.

Marrack, having regained his balanced and gotten a hold of a rope Solo had quickly tied around a stalagmite pillar in the tunnel and thrown to him, called to Eagath and his soldiers: "It's a nightmare! Wake the king!"

"How?" a less than calm captain called in reply.

"The king hates noise!" Solo replied. "Shields!"

Two of the soldiers had understood what he meant, and grabbed their shields. The smoking nightmare, however, foresaw as much, and attacked. Before they could do anything with the shields, it swept through them, and they fell dead to the ground. Their flesh had been scorched where it had passed through.

Solo let go of the rope he was securing, and drew his sword, running towards where the two now dead soldiers were, where the nightmare had just been. Before it had time to turn react, he had thrown the sword at one of the shields. The clash seemed to have some effect, as the nightmare started being blown away by the draft in the shaft. It refused to let go so easily, though, and now headed for Solo.

Despite not quite grasping what level of existance the being belonged to, Eagath grabbed a shield and waved at the creature. The gust of this made the nightmare swirl back. Solo now hit the shields together, and once the sound had carried down to the King of Caves, the nightmare vanished in a puff of smoke.

However, this time Marrack called to everyone to run: "If we stay here, we'll fall deeper than anyone ever has been!" He led the way into the tunnel. The air was swirling around, getting hotter and hotter. "Last time, he was just moving in his sleep. This time, he might have awoken!" Marrack explained as the others passed him, half way through that particular tunnel.

As soon as everyone else had passed him, Marrack threw something towards the shaft, and ran with the others. There was another explosion, more pressure than smoke, obviously not of the kind that the nightmare had caused.

The tunnel behind them collapsed, and the flames did not blow through. However, they felt the shaft collapsing.

"Oh, I hate disturbing the huge," Marrack muttered for himself, taking point as they continued.

"I take it you've done it before," Eagath said.

"I've seen it happen before," Marrack replied. "There's lots of huge beings under the world, and they're better left undisturbed."

"Is there another way back to the shaft?" Solo queried.

"Several, but they're probably molten away by now," Marrack said. "If what I've heard is right, which seems reasonable as that the creature is real and the nightmare was more or less so also. All tunnels lead through the shaft, and it's been destroyed."

"So we have no way to get back?" Eagath asked.

"None that I can find from here," Marrack said.

So they continued, still underground, Marrack, Solo, and Eagath and those that remained of his soldiers, until they reached what seemed to be a buried city. It was, in fact, the old home of the Halfmen, a secret site the magi of old had kept them at. As the Old Magi were defeated, the Halfmen claimed new lands, lands above the ground. Their old city was abandoned.

...Or so it was said.