Finna lifts a rusted cog from the floor, and it crumbles in her hand. She wrinkles her nose and dusts her hand on her shirt. "So, I guess the machinery is pretty disabled already."
Seems like it. Whatever has been in the room, it's just a random assortment of scrap. "It doesn't make sense," I say. "Time might run fast here, but the door was petrified. If there was a device here, it wouldn't have just fallen apart like that by itself, no matter how long it has been."
"Maybe the mana broke it," Rworg says. His ponytail is stark red in the light shining down on him from above.
"That might be. Does it erode things?" I suggest.
"The headache and you two are eroding my brain," Finna says. "Someone obviously broke it. There are pieces all over the room. Machines don't just explode because they get old."
Actually, they might. If there were springs that broke loose... I stop myself and focus, clenching my fist. "Perhaps," I say. "Who or what would have broken it, though? We haven't seen anything in here in addition to the whitelings."
Rworg shifts the scrap around with her foot. "They loved the light. If they could get here, they would be here."
"So much time has passed that we can't..." I stop as I hear something. A soft scrape. A step? I hold a hand out, signaling Rworg and Finna to be quiet.
Both tense up. Rworg starts to lift his hand toward the hilt of his sword. Finna moves her arms in a weird way, squirming slowly. She must be readying to pull out her daggers from her sleeves. If I paid attention, maybe I could finally see where they appear from.
The steps come closer, and I clench my teeth to focus. It's obvious now that they are steps. The sound of feet on stone. They echo in from the corridor leading even further in.
"Steps," I hiss.
Finna rolls her eyes at me. She steps to the side of the corridor so as not to be seen by anyone arriving from there. She makes no noise as she does it and presses her back to the wall, daggers in hand. Missed it again, oh well.
A voice calls out from the corridor. It's hoarse and dry, an old man's voice. "Hello? Is someone there? I'm coming. Don't be alarmed."
I don't recognize the accent. Some words are stretched out, and the intonation is all wrong. I once met a deaf person who could still talk, and he had sounded the same.
Rworg grips his sword but doesn't pull it loose. He steps to stand in the middle of the room, facing the corridor head-on. Finna is a statue, almost as still as she was when Lictor froze her.
A white, old man steps into view. He's a whiteling, a jonungaard. White skin, long white hair. He shines in the bright light, but unlike the earlier whitelings, he is wearing clothes. They look to be made mostly of leather and woven plants instead of cloth. All the clothes are brown and dark, contrasting with this skin.
"Peace, strangers," he says, holding both hands up, palms toward himself, presenting the backs of his hands to us.
Rworg lets go of his sword and makes the gesture back at him. "Peace, elder."
I bow slightly at the man. Keeping my ears open, I decide to wait and observe.
There's an awkward silence, as neither Rworg nor the old man say anything. I have no idea what to say either. What do you say to an old white man that you run into in a black Monolith, deep underground?
"Oh, come on," Finna asks, stepping away from the wall. "Who is this guy, and what is he doing here? Did you break the machine here?"
The old jonungaard twitches and steps away from her when she starts speaking. At least Finna had hidden the daggers.
"I'm terribly sorry," the man says in his weird accent.
The pitch goes up and down in a way that makes no sense. It's completely flat for a whole sentence, then drops for a single syllable before rising a fraction higher and staying there for the rest of the sentence. Weird.
"We keep an eye on this place, and I heard sounds. We haven't seen anyone from the surface for a very long time."
"What are a bunch of jonungaard doing down here?" Finna asks. She has both hands in her pockets, and she leans her shoulder on a wall.
If she's that relaxed, maybe I can relax too. She still squints in a way that makes me think her head hurts, but she at least seems to know what the jonungaard are. Maybe they have them in the city. The light bathes everything in the room. My eyes are getting used to it, meaning the tunnels will look pitch black to me again once we leave.
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"I will explain, but not here. We are in a hurry, here," the jonungaard says. "Please, you must follow me."
"Why?" Rworg asks.
The man looks at the walls and runs his hand through the air, like testing it out. "This place is slow. Everything might have changed back in the city. Please, hurry, hurry."
Rworg glances at Finna and me. I start to think about how much faster time can still move, but Finna shrugs her shoulders.
"Let's go," she says. "Anything beats being alone with these two dummies."
The jonungaard introduces himself as Hearn. He leads us through a maze of corridors. Earlier, we followed Finna's hunches on the flow of mana, but she says that she can't feel it anymore. The mana is spread out, thin. She breathes easier and doesn't squint or groan as much, and she stops rubbing her temples. Slowly, I feel my mind clearing up too. I breathe out, and my breath smells like ozone.
Rworg seems to be in high spirits. He's speaking with the old man as we walk, asking him about the jonungaard and how long they have lived down here.
"We don't live here," Hearn says. "The earth was disturbed, and a path opened up to this complex."
"Disturbed?" Rworg asks.
"Tremors, earthquakes, fissures cracking the walls as ambronite shifted and rose, plunging us into the gloom."
Finna is walking with her hands in her pockets, even whistling occasionally. She's listening to Rworg and Hearn but now joins the discussion. "Gloom? What does that mean?"
"We call it gloom, as that is what it is. Light from the outside gets dimmer, warmth gets colder," Hearn says.
It's time running faster again. It affects light and mana, so why not temperature as well? Gran did talk about ambronite once or twice, but I thought they were just stories to entertain the little kids. A stone that makes time run faster? But Hearn seems to be serious. "What happened then?" I ask.
"The gloom has made everything more difficult. Half of our fields grow so slowly, that we only receive a single harvest a decade. Some near the ambronite would grow faster, but the gloom makes it difficult to grow anything."
"What can you grow underground, anyway?" I ask.
"Who cares?" Finna cuts in. "You have an actual town down here? Is everyone jonungaard here?"
Hearn keeps walking. He wears no shoes, walking barefoot on the cold and hard stone. He rubs his palms together, and the sound is like scraping two rocks against each other. "Yes. Jonun, we call it."
Rworg and Finna stop to look at the man. I have heard of Jonun as well. A lost city, another myth. Even more improbably sounding than any of the rest.
"We truly walk amidst legends," Rworg says. "This mission has put us in the eye of a storm more than once."
"It's just a town," Hearn says, shrugging his shoulders.
"Jonun has been lost for a thousand years," I say. "Where we come from, it's a myth."
Hearn smiles ruefully. "The city existed long before our people. We descended into the dark centuries ago and found the city empty and abandoned. Without a way back, our ancestors decided to settle in. The records are not perfect, but that's about what happened. It's not a myth. It's a home."
"Boring," Finna says.
Rworg wraps his ponytail around his fist, over and over again. "But, but..."
I chuckle. Lille always told me that real adventuring is boring. Getting rained on, running around a forest, trying to find a kid who is already probably at home, after hiding behind the barn as a joke. Guarding a caravan, limbs going stiff from all the sitting and listening to boring stories by another bored guard.
So far, that hasn't been my experience.
Hearn leads us on. He's breathing hard, panting and wheezing, but he keeps pushing forward. Rworg asks him if he wants to rest, but he just waves his hand and keeps walking.
For us, the pace is easy. We've just spent a week running all over Kerthar, tripping on snakes, sinking in sand, and being chased by enraged Kertharians the whole way. A stroll in a corridor is nothing.
"Elder, you said you had been here for centuries?" Rworg asks.
"Well, not me personally. I'm not that old," Hearn says, stopping to catch his breath.
Finna chuckles, Rworg grunts. I have no idea how long jonungaard live, so I'm not sure how much of a joke it was.
"Anyway, yes. The tremors started a decade ago. We have been struggling ever since," he continues.
"Hmm, so it cannot be related to... no, can it?"
Hearn looks at me, waiting for me to finish.
"A... lot has happened during the last week, up there," I say, pointing a finger at the ceiling. "I was thinking that it might be the reason for the changes down here, but I'm not sure if it's possible. Time would need to pass hundreds of times faster down here for things to line up. Maybe thousands. Would that be even possible?"
Hearn rubs his chin. He has the face of an old man, but has no facial hair at all. It makes him look younger than the deep grooves on his brow or web of crow's feet around his eyes would otherwise. His hair is still thick, collected into a bun on the top of his head. "It is. I've read that there's almost no limit to how fast or slow time can flow."
Finna looks up to the ceiling. "You mean to say that it has been ten years since we staked Kerthar? But what will happen to us? Will we be 2000 years old when we get back up?"
"Up there, only a few hours would have passed," Hearn says. "You will be as old as you are."
"That is good news for everybody else. Whatever is happening here, won't have time to cause more harm," I say.
Finna groans. "I should leave you to sort out this mess, but if this is messing up the world, I'm not sure where I would go."
"And we did bring you back to life for this," Rworg says.
"Well, maybe I would have preferred to stay dead instead of being dragged right back into another stupid mission."
Hearn waves a hand forward into the tunnels. His breath has steadied, and he stands straighter again. "Please, we must continue. Up there is not the only place having problems. Jonun is in danger."
Rworg starts walking ahead, face set. "If it is in our power, we will help. You said there is someone who can help us solve both problems, elder?"
Finna makes a face and mimes strangling someone with a very thick neck at me.
"Won't we?" Rworg asks, without turning around.
"Whatever," Finna says, as she turns to follow Hearn and Rworg again.
She's not looking at me anymore, so I let the smile creep up on my face. I snicker, hopping in place twice before following the others.
Being an adventurer is the best.
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