Chase

  In the north, the winter fairies rule. Snow lies here all year round, and titans and horrors walk among the ice towers that scratch the sky with their sharp peaks. From this region, the fairies send snowstorms to the rest of the world that st for exactly three months."The Book of Distant Distances by Unknown Authors"

  On the way back, Splinter suddenly grabbed Gloomeye by the sleeve and pointed at a building:

  "Is that what I think it is? Baths! Oh, it's a pce where people wash themselves. Mmmm... Washing is..."

  "I know what it is. Do you think we have time? Gloomy asked. He was a little depressed that he didn't have to use his reading skill.

  "Almcatcher has been neutralised by the cat, and Alm is waiting for us anyway. So let him wait a little longer," Splinter dragged the guy to the baths.

  There they had to pay a small, wrinkled old dy four gold pieces. She led them into a room in the style of this city - an iron box with benches and some chests against the wall.

  " Clothes," the old woman said, pointing to the chests, then to two doors. "Man, woman," and having done her duty, she left.

  Splinter started to undress.

  "Hey! I'm here! And Drat," Gloomeye reminded her, a little panicked. He wasn't sure if Drat was a male, but he didn't even think to check.

  "Oh, right. The shame of being naked. There is such a thing. But everyone has it under their clothes. It's like keeping a secret that everyone knows," Splinter sounded annoyed at such a stupid dey. "Remind me, do I have to be embarrassed with girls too?"

  Gloomeye didn't answer and stepped out of the door leading to the entrance, scooping up the rat. As he waited, he realised he didn't know when to go in. Maybe leave altogether? But there are his two gold pieces.

  Understanding Gloomy's distress, Drat began slowly imitating Splinter's undressing. Then, just as slowly, he folded his clothes and walked to an imaginary door. The guy counted to ten and then went back in. Of course, the girl had already proved that she wouldn't be embarrassed (although, come to think of it, Splinter could have been waiting there for a joke). But the door was already open, and Splinter was gone.

  Gloomeye and Drat undressed (the rat's entire body was covered in fur, except for his stomach). They put their clothes in the chests and went to the men's bathroom.

  In the bathroom, most of the space was taken up by a square niche filled to the brim with water. Water flowed from the walls in a steady stream. No one else was there. The room reminded Gloomeye of the first floor of his house in Capital. Was it also a bathhouse?

  To Gloomy, such use of water seemed a terrible waste. Instead of supporting life, it was being polluted with bodies. In any case, he really wanted to believe that they wouldn't drink the water afterwards, or at least purify it.

  Splinter's muffled voice came from behind the wall:

  "Hero! Are you in there? Shall I tell you how to wash?"

  "No!"

  Drat walked into the pool and started to swim on his back. Gloomeye went into the water too. It was surprisingly pleasant.

  "Are you and Drat alone in there?"

  "Yes."

  "I have three women here. They look at me strangely."

  "Then don't talk to us through the wall."

  "Why? Let them watch," Splinter replied proudly for some reason.

  Gloomeye suddenly realised that these women might come with him to the changing room. Who would have thought of a shared undress room anyway? Maybe he's the one who's crazy and everyone else is normal? Or is it the city itself? Women aren't afraid of men because of the inevitable punishment? Or is this how equality and justice are understood here? Maybe I should be grateful for separate water rooms.

  "Call them when they want to come out. Or stop them if I call out that we're coming out," Gloomy said.

  "I'll get in their way, but remember how useless I am. I don't think I could handle even one of them, they look strong," Splinter replied.

  "You are not useless, you got us the money when I lost it. Without you, I would still be in Capital doing nothing. Actually, no, I would have been eaten by pseudo-hounds," Gloomeye defended his friend from her.

  There was silence on the other side of the wall. Gloomy caught himself:

  "No, don't attack them! Not even as a joke! Have you forgotten where we are?"

  "Have you forgotten that I'm a Mourneer spy?" Splinter's voice was unusual. Serious.

  "How can I forget when you keep reminding me? Remember I warned you too? I'm not stupid and I don't need to be protected from reality."

  ***

  Gloomy came out only after making Splinter swear that no one was in the changing room. He quickly retrieved his clothes, which were clean, warm and smelled pleasantly of the library drink. Underneath his clothes was a piece of fluffy cloth that the guy had used to wipe his body and hair. After changing, Gloomeye slipped out the door and waited for Splinter and Drat.

  The rat fluffed up his fur, and Splinter came out with wet hair, making her look even scarier. They waited in the room for a little while (until they were dry) and then headed out of city.

  Grassy sniffed warily at Gloomeye as he tied the ropes around her. No wonder, his scent had changed. He thought the pegs deserved a wash too.

  There were no gates to Truth - why would they need them if the city itself destroys any invasion? The party rode out on the pegs and immediately saw Alm. He was a powerful Mourneer, his entire visible body covered in grey-white fur, the veil protruding from what looked suspiciously like an alm snout. His bck clothes were loose at the bottom, like those of the southerners in the caravan nearby, preparing to camp. Alm was sitting on a metal structure that had been crushed and fttened by some unknown force (possibly him). He was talking to Fatron'.

  "This... um... Alm is following us, do something," Splinter said, pointing at the Mourneer to the guard at the gate.

  "I don't know if his pursuit is justified or not," the guard replied.

  "Squeak!" the rat pointed at Alm, then at the city, and smmed his fist into his palm.

  "He's waiting for us, so he's not stupid. He will follow us there until we decide to leave. I doubt he can be stopped as easily as Almcatcher," Gloomy looked at Truth. He saw letters stamped directly on the wall, listing many offences and at the end 'punishable by immediate death'.

  Alm noticed them, broke off his dialogue and jumped down from his building. It breathed a sigh of relief (metaphorically speaking) and straightened up a bit. Fatron' grabbed the Mourneer's arm, but he jerked it away without looking, knocking the caravan leader to the ground. The Mourneer threw himself down on all fours and made a great leap. Gloomeye thought so at first, but then he noticed that Alm's feet were still in the same pce. His body expanded, and the clothes on him now looked like a Babyboy's bib.

  "Up!" Gloomy commanded. The pegs straightened their legs and soared up. Alm ran after them.

  The Mourneer ran with all his limbs, throwing his massive upper body forward and then pulling the smaller lower body up with it (somewhat reminiscent of the pegs' movement on nd). At one point, he was so close that he almost caught the leg of a jumping Grassy in his jaws (which turned out to be exactly like the carved figure of the Firster).

  Then Gloomy straightened her membranes a little ter and nded right on the back (well, backed) of the intensely running Mourneer. The upward bounce threw Alm back a bit. Gloomeye began to alter the timing of his descent so that his opponent couldn't predict when they would nd. The Mourneer's overgrown torso had swallowed his neck, and he couldn't look up.

  Drat hopped ahead, and Splinter followed. The Mourneer was either trying to catch Gloomeye specifically, or just going after the st one. Scars began to appear on the ground, which had to be avoided as well.

  On the way, a huge chasm appeared, which anyone (not living at the Edge of the World) could call the Mother of All Scars. It was impossible to see where it began and where it ended. Drat jumped over it without hesitation. Even when he started gliding from the topmost point, he nded on the edge, but did not jump further, waiting for his companions.

  Splinter jumped after him and also nded safely. Gloomy didn't think and jumped off the edge of the scar. In the middle of the jump he was relieved to see that he could make it, but as soon as his pega straightened her membarenes, a strong wind began to blow from the right and she spun around on her axis, along with the rider.

  Gloomeye lost track of his position in space, the whole world spinning in front of him, until Grassy smmed sideways into the chasm wall. She barely managed to catch the edge with her front paws and began to slide slowly into the abyss. Gloomy wrapped his legs around her and grabbed the ledge just below the edge. Splinter and Drat were already running towards them.

  Grassy was sliding down much faster than Gloomeye, and his knees were already under her armpits. Looking back, he saw Alm stop at the opposite edge of the chasm, but not his mass. It was as if it had flowed into the outstretched hand that was now rushing towards them. The hand was huge (it could completely encircle the hanging guy with the peg), hairy, with outstretched cws, and more like a paw than a hand (yes, here Gloomeye was wrong).

  The cws stopped very close, the paw hung a little in the air and fell down, smming into the wall of the scar, where it quickly shrank. The wall cracked and Alm staggered, falling backwards. Gloomy was distracted by Splinter's hands clutching his arms. She dropped to the ground and dragged him along.

  "Pull the pega!" Gloomeye shouted at her, feeling his strength wane.

  "If it makes you fall, I won't jump after you," Splinter said, but grabbed Grassy's paw anyway. Drat slid forward and grabbed another. But it was only when Raven wrapped his neck around Grassy's that they were able to pull them out.

  When they were all on solid ground, Gloomy slid back into the saddle and Grassy turned her head and opened her bck eyes, looking straight into his face as if to say, "Where have you dragged me?" He patted her on the head.

  "Remember when we barely made it over the natural barrier from the pseudo-hounds, but it only slowed them down? I hate to disturb the idyll, but I think this is exactly the same thing," Splinter said impatiently, sitting down on Raven.

  "Squeak?" Drat squeaked.

  "I don't understand. You're squeaking, Drat. You realise that, don't you?" the girl didn't understand him.

  "Alm is probably just tired. His manipution of the body must take a lot of effort, judging by the fact that Mom is ten times bigger than Giggler and he eats the same amount more. And he, Alm, will easily overcome this scar, having guessed to enrge his legs," Gloomeye told the rat.

  Drat led the way, and the others followed. The dark clouds above them began to leak. Gloomy tried to stop the raindrops from disappearing by catching them with his water skin, but the speed of movement on the peg made these attempts unsuccessful. When he finally gave up, he saw a structure in the distance. It looked like a tower without walls.

  "Drat, let's go to that tower!" Gloomeye shouted.

  The tower turned out to be long, hewn standing stones forming a circle. On top of them (in addition to eyemoss) were ftter stones, with some standing stones on top of them, and others on top of them. The tower was three storeys high, the st one badly destroyed, its fragments stuck in the ground near.

  "Let's hide upstairs," said the guy. No one objected.

  The pegs easily reached the top, took off their riders and y down on the wet rock with their legs bent. The rain was already falling steadily (good thing it was warm). Thundercps could be heard and lightning could be seen in the distance. Gloomeye knew this had happened before the Break (and he had witnessed the summer storm more than once), but he didn't understand the reason. Perhaps some of the gods had survived and were now fighting in the sky, striking lightning from their weapons?

  Gloomeye knelt at the edge and looked in the direction they had come from. Splinter y on her belly next to him and, resting her chin on her hands, began to look for Alm as well. Then, when she was completely soaked, she looked at Gloomy:

  "Four gold pieces brilliantly spent. Is that your luck or mine? Drat's?"

  The rain pushed her hair out of her face. Crushy is more beautiful, of course, but how much closer Splinter is to me.

  "Maybe this is our luck together, without sarcasm. Alm has a long nose, which means he can smell well. The rain will wash away the odours."

  "So you're pretty lucky, aren't you? What about bad luck?" for some reason the girl looked serious and even frowned.

  "Alm," Gloomy whispered and crawled away from the edge, pulling Splinter by the leg.

  This time, the Mourneer distributed his weight evenly and was as big as three Moms. He ran on all fours, crouching low to the ground.

  "As soon as he's gone, we must go down. Here we are closer to the sky, and it is angry today," whispered Gloomeye. So Northman often said, fearing that the sky would crack and a piece of it would fall on him. "Drat, is there a pce to hide nearby?"

  Drat took out a battered map and id it on a rock in the rain. He poked at a spot with his cw, but his muzzle looked uncertain. Still, he made up his mind, ducked his finger under his palm, pointed up to his waist, then caught himself and pointed higher than himself, began tapping something invisible on the stone beneath his feet, and finally lifted something on his outstretched arms and scattered it around him.

  "You know, if Drat goes mad, we won't know about it," Splinter whispered.

  "He's talking about a dwarven dungeon," Gloomy transted.

  Dungeon... Storyteller could tell the whole story in a dungeon. Heroes and heroines descended there, there were great treasures, but also hordes of enemies and traps. And considering it's a dwarven dungeon, it's probably going to be huge.

  "Are you sure we're ready for the dungeon?" the guy turned to Drat.

  The rat shook his head, but then he stuck out his index finger, made a downward arc, and now it was his thumb's turn.

  "Ah, so there is a way out, and it will bring us closer to our goal?" Gloomeye guessed.

  "How do you do that!?" Splinter couldn't help but excim, quickly gncing down.

  A clear "aha" came from below. Alm's hearing wasn't bad either. The whole tower began to shake, as if someone very strong was pushing it.

  The group rushed to their pegs. They were already jumping from the leaning tower, which colpsed completely in a few moments. Since it was able to survive the Break, the tower held firmly to the ground, which meant that Alm was no weaker than Aurgelmir.

  The chase continued. The rain did not hinder the jumps, just unpleasant and more difficult to glide, it was only possible to slow down near the ground. Fortunately, the Mourneer was also slowed down by the rain and the sodden ground. Gloomeye tried not to lose sight of Squeak, Drat's peg, but he still missed the moment when he didn't jump again. Gloomy had to go back to the pce where he had st seen the rat, even though every instinct screamed not to close the distance with the pursuing predator.

  The rat stood by the stone archway, trying to cw at the gap that cut through the gate in the middle of the archway. The arch was small, hidden by a hill at the back, and there was some kind of pattern on the rounded doors. Gloomeye only had time to make out the symbols that meant 'Sanctuary 16', but he didn't have time to notice anything else as he rushed to help Drat. Splinter joined them. It seemed to Gloomy that every heartbeat was the st before the huge, cwed body lunged at him.

  The doors slid open and the group ran into the dungeon. The pegs didn't even need to be pulled, they just came crashing in. In the darkness dispelled by a torch, they saw one of the pale creatures with rge eyes and vertical pupils - the same ones Gloomeye had noticed in a den near Capital.

  "Close up! We're being hunted!" the guy shouted, trying to pull the doors out of the hole in the wall where they had hidden.

  "The Sanctuary is open to all," the creature said. "Even to humankind."

  "Even an angry Mourneer? Although he's half-human, half-alm," Gloomeye mentioned. "Well, there he is, look."

  Sure enough, Alm burst out from behind the wall of rain, scattering raindrops. He looked terrifying, cws out, big and uncomfortably fast, his fur matted and glistening with water. The doors flew out of their hiding pces in an instant, smming shut in the middle.

  "You should have spoken Dwarferis right away, human," the creature grumbled.

  "Use your gift again? You were lucky to get it, but maybe next time you could ask for some weapons? Like that silent wench's sword, that would be nice," Splinter muttered.

  Gloomeye looked at Drat, who gave him two thumbs up. Well, at least somebody is happy. There was a heavy blow at the door.

  "The Trollfather's beards! Have no fear, the doors have withstood the World Colpse, and they will withstand a changed one. I must warn you that the Sanctuary is descending into another dimension, and your human magic won't work here, thank the First Stone!" the creature gloated.

  "Sorry, you speak Dwarferis, so..." Gloomeye began, but stopped mid-sentence, realising that the question might not be polite.

  The creature looked down at his hands and sighed.

  "So I'm a former dwarf, Foremother's sweaty cups! And now I don't know who I am, twisted by your human magic.”

  "Oh," was all the guy could say.

  "'Oh' exactly. Go get what you came for, I need to keep an eye on the monster you brought us," the former dwarf lost interest in the newcomers.

  The wide steps down began immediately after the entrance. As the group approached, the fire torches lit up with different colours, but never fiery, and as the party moved away, they died out. The group walked down the stairs until Splinter broke the silence:

  "Well, when are you going to yell at me? Or rather, you can yell and Drat can beat, crush and trample the air?"

  "Why? You're not going to do that again, are you?" Glommy asked in surprise.

  "I'll do something completely different next time. I have too many stupid things to do and too little time to repeat them," she looked unusual in the unusual violet light, and Gloomeye couldn't read her expression.

  "Although Drat can beat the air if he wants to," the guy looked at the rat.

  Drat shook his head. It didn't look so strange in the non-fiery coloured torchlight (or rather, it was so strange that the unusual light didn't have much effect on its perception).

  They descended deeper and deeper. Gloomeye tried to see the beginning of a new dimension, but everything was still the same as in the current one. Only once did it seem to him that the wavering shadow behind him, like a human silhouette, had two holes where the eyes should be.

  Finally they reached a statue. A man in armour was kneeling on the pedestal, his helmet pressed against the shoulder of the creature embracing him. It was a strange-looking helmet, tapering at the top of the head, with a ft front and many holes of varying sizes. Stems of small pnts grew out of the holes. In the back of the consoled one's was a sword, the tip of which protruded from the chest. The comforter had small features and a long, pointed nose that curved upwards. The nose was really long, it could easily be held with two hands, and even space would be left. She was also on her knees, wearing a robe that fred downwards and a high cone on her head.

  After admiring the statue, the group walked out to a rge square. It was in a rge cave, lit from above by a huge orange crystal. Around the edges of the square were small turreted houses, all made of grey and red bricks. There was a cliff nearby, without any fences, and on the far walls of the cave were simir ptforms, at completely different heights. There were several creatures sitting on the cliff, their legs dangling into the abyss. The crystal shed little light, and it was difficult to make out the inhabitants of the Sanctuary.

  As they walked on, they could see that all the creatures here were just sitting or lying down, not reacting to anything. Only once did a small ball of bck fur walk past them, on legs but without arms, and only the whites were somewhere in the centre of the monsterling. Gloomy noticed the former dwarves and the same long-nosed ones as the comforter from the statue. All wore unusual costumes, and some even had transparent bubbles on their heads. They passed a huge bald head, much rger than their body, hiding in a pile of rags. There were some armoured creatures, but they didn't show any activity either. All their armour was different, the proportions were never the same, and the helmets were always oddly shaped: either bloated or too narrow, or with ridiculous inserts like pnts, balloons, and even stacks of books, or engraved with calm or crying faces.

  The guy walked over to a stooped figure in a blue cloak and hood that hid their face. The figure was leaning on a staff with a shriveled old hand and looked very small, as if a normal person didn't have a lower body. Little things were scattered around the creature: spirals, boxes, circles and little things made of light.

  Gloomeye decided to buy a souvenir of his first dungeon and tried to start a dialogue:

  "Do you sell this? Do you take human money? How much does it cost?"

  The figure looked at the guy with the hood and waved their hand vaguely. Gloomy took it as 'I don't care, take what you want'. But he didn't take anything, just in case he'd made a mistake in the transtion.

  After leaving the square and climbing the steps to the exit, Gloomy finally found the right word to describe Sanctuary 16 - mencholy. Unsurprisingly, Storyteller rarely spoke it. The feeling was passed on to the guy, and judging by the fact that his companions were also silent, preferring to lead their pegs behind them, they had the same feeling. Perhaps this is how another dimension works? Though the magical folk had reason to be sad without it.

  They encountered no traps, no treasures, no hordes of enemies, not even the shabby awakened evil that had in dormant since the creation of the world, but they were dead tired as they climbed to the other exit.

  Unnecessary author's note: And Grassy is really becoming a character in her own right. I can't wait to reveal her true identity in 9th book "The Smasher of Universes" (that's a joke, if anything).

  The dungeon is inspired by the Vermis series of artbooks.