Eventually we left the more market-like side of the Business District and began seeing buildings for land-deed registration, adventuring permit makers, and other such official things.
That's when I noticed one of the largest structures around: a grand edifice with architecture that was disjointed from the rest of the neighborhood: large glass bubbles for windows, twisting spires, large metal pipes affixed firmly around the edges of the roof. It stuck out like a sore thumb. "Hey Kael, what's that?"
He glanced over. "I forgot you have no memories. That's the Grand Database, or at least the main center for it. It's where all of our Skill Arrays are registered."
Registered? How did that work?
Apparently the look on my face said enough for Kael, and he continued. "If you're magical, or possess abilities that go beyond what training alone can explain, the Empire expects you to join a Guild. Then they give you a console: it's a spell that codifies your innate abilities into Skills that can be recorded. A lot of adventurers and Janitors and such get the same skill names, but sometimes people have such unique magic that a new skill is invented to describe it. All of it gets logged in the Database."
Tessa looked slighted. "We get all the skills with boring names, like 'Hex Removal Proficiency', or 'Scrubbing Proficiency'. Adventurers get all the cool skills, like 'God Cleave' or 'Shadow Step'. It's not fair."
That did sound pretty cool. I recalled the clerk in the equipment room showing me how to access my console. I hadn't used it since. Why not take a look?
"Console."
Just like last time, the magical display appeared from seemingly nowhere.
NAME: LORNE CALLISTER AGE: 19
GENDER: MALE
PLACE OF ORIGIN: UNKNOWN
CUSTODIAL DESIGNATION: FRONTLINER
SKILLS: MOP PROFICIENCY I
Hask glanced over and looked at my array. "That looks about right. After we get you some more experience, that'll change."
I was still confused. "So…that building is where every person is registered?"
"Not every person. High-ranking government officials and Guild Masters usually aren't registered in the Grand Database. They have their own private registry."
I frowned. "That doesn't sound shady at all."
Hask grunted amusedly. "You're not wrong. The idea is that the people shouldn't know everything about those in power."
That sounded right. "What skills do you all have?"
Kael shrugged and opened his own console:
NAME: KAEL LITHWELL
AGE: 18 PLACE OF ORIGIN: MOORHAVEN
CUSTODIAL DESIGNATION: TRAP SPECIALIST
SKILLS: MECHANICAL TINKERING II, MAGIC DETECTION II, ADVANCED PERCEPTION II
Kael was certainly more skilled than I was. Maybe he saw that on my face. "You'll get there pretty quickly. I got my skills within my first year. The fact that you have a predisposition for the Mop Proficiency skill is kind of impressive."
Tessa got excited at this. "That just raises more questions! What does an international spy need with mop proficiency?!"
"I'm not a spy, Tessa."
"We don't know that. Heck, you don't know that. My money's on spy. Or master pickpocket. Maybe you don't have amnesia at all! This could all be an elaborate grift and you're actually an assassin! OOOOOOH! What if you're actually an assassin and you have a forged console. Who are you here to assassinate?! Is it ME?! What did I do to you?!"
I found myself grinning at her. "I think you're overestimating how interesting I am."
She shook her head emphatically, walking backwards in front of me to make eye contact. "Oh no, I'm not doing it justice. I have SOOOO many questions."
"I can tell. I'm sorry I don't have answers."
She winked. "It's fine. I'm sure I'll find out eventually…Agent Callister…"
I laughed. Tessa really knew how to light up a room, even outdoors.
I glanced behind me at the bundle of angst and frustration that was Alara, who was purposely lagging behind the rest of us. She shot me a "what are you looking at?" glance before turning her nose up at me. I looked away quickly.
The conversation continued through more of the city, and my companions continued to explain the workings of their society and the history of the city. I found myself wildly distracted by the hustle and bustle around me.
"Callister."
"CALLISTER."
My attention snapped to the Foreman, who was staring right at me. "Eyes up, kid. We're at the Gate."
The Main Gate was massive and old and completely indifferent to everyone passing through it, which I appreciated. Two guards were working the outbound queue with practiced disinterest, stamping papers and waving people through. One of them glanced at our provisional license, then at our gear, then back at the license. He stamped it without a word. I couldn't tell if that was professional courtesy or pity.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I wasn't sure I had paid too much attention to the landscape around me when I had journeyed from the House of Healing to Moorhaven. Perhaps it was due to the head injury, or maybe I just wasn't interested.
This time was different, however.
The path to the Ebon Mountains was a well-trod dirt road wide enough for several carts traveling abreast. At first there had been a smattering of travelers heading to the city, but it was not long before we were on our own.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
On either side of us were lush green fields spreading out as far as the eye could see. Everything seemed so vivid and bright. I could almost count each blade of grass as we passed it. Every mile or so we'd pass a stone cairn marking the distance we'd travelled.
I noticed animals too: small rodents darting through low-lying brush, birds soaring overhead, even a small herd of wild horses grazing in the distance. I felt something I didn't have a word for as the world went by.
The Ebon mountains rose up far in the distance, jutting up like teeth looking to devour the sky. Even from this far away, it was clear where the range got its name: against the clear blue, they seemed made almost entirely of shadow. It was very intimidating.
I looked over at Hask. "So…you said the Ebon Maw is the only place the Empire can get…elginarium?"
The foreman glanced over at me. "Yep. The fact that they're reopening the dungeon means the government is in dire straits."
"What makes elginarium so important?"
I remembered during the briefing, the foreman had mentioned the ore being used for powering flying ships. I was a little miffed that such an interesting detail had been glossed over.
Kael interjected, raising a finger in the air as if literally pointing to his answer. "It's actually quite fascinating. It's a very magical ore: its crystalline structure naturally holds mana better than any other. When imbued with the right magic, it can be used for all kinds of things."
Hask grunted. "Of course, when it was discovered, the military immediately commandeered all industry surrounding it. It powers the engines that keep their airships in the sky. Nothing else comes close. Short-sighted to rely on it, considering that it's only found in one place in the whole world."
"Why is it only in the Ebon Maw?"
"Weird mana."
I waited for him to continue, and when he didn't, I looked at Kael again, who seemed happy to keep talking. "The Maw has an unusually dense and stable mana field at its lowest levels — deeper and more concentrated than any other known dungeon. Elginarium forms over centuries when raw mineral deposits are exposed to that sustained mana saturation. The crystalline lattice essentially grows around the magical energy rather than simply absorbing it after the fact. That's what makes it unique — it doesn't store mana like a battery; it's structured by mana from the molecular level up. Try to synthesize it artificially, and you get something that looks right but shatters under load."
I understood most of that, I thought. But what I was most focused on was the way Kael lit up again, like he did the day before when explaining the trap mechanism he had been working on. He really loved this stuff. I felt a twinge of something akin to jealousy.
Why?
"The crystalline structure grows around the mana rather than absorbing it afterward — that's the key difference. Everything else we've tried to use as a conductor has a flux threshold. Push too much through it, and it fails. Elginarium doesn't seem to have one, or if it does, nobody's found it yet. For an engine that needs to run continuously for weeks at altitude, that's— well, there's nothing else."
He paused, tapping his finger against his chin. "The extraction is the tricky part though. Raw elginarium is volatile until it's refined. Unstable mana field, unstable ore. The refinery workers don't love that."
I let his words hang for a moment, mulling them over. "So…elginarium is super dangerous, but it holds magic better than anything else and doesn't break."
Kael grinned broadly, clearly delighted to be understood, even a little. "Exactly!"
I nodded. "You're really smart."
I watched his face go through about six shades of red. He set his eyes back on the road ahead and did not move them away.
I looked behind me: Alara was walking with a measured and composed gait, but I could tell she did not like this conversation one bit. I didn't let my gaze linger. I felt bad, but I still had more questions. "So…Kael…since this stuff is so…explodey…that's what caused the dungeon to close?"
Kael made a non-committal hand gesture, as though weighing different ideas with them. "Partially. There were the big explosions, and that triggered the closure itself, but the mana started making the monsters bigger and stronger after a while. They started killing every adventuring party and mining team to go in there."
That gave me pause. If it was that dangerous, that begged two questions - firstly, why would the Empire not at least continue to try to find an alternative to the elginarium…and secondly…why would they send in a low-ranking janitor team with a complete greenhorn in to clean the dungeon?
Tessa seemed to see my concern. "Uncle Hask. What adventuring party got sent to clear the dungeon?"
Hask shot Tessa a look that seemed reproachful at her informality, but I could see the corner of his mouth curl into a small smile. He pondered her question for a moment. "Thunder Hawk, I think."
Thunder Hawk? That was a cool name. I was willing to bet our group was called Janitor Group Forty-seven or something. There really was a disparity in wow-factor between the two guilds.
Tessa reached out and took my hand - I guessed she thought I was more nervous than I actually was. I didn't reject the gesture, though. It gave me a nice feeling, if unfamiliar. "Thunder Hawk is one of the three S-Rank adventuring Parties in the Empire. They've been around a long time. Tons of lineup changes over the years, but always incredible. If they're clearing that place out, we're gonna have no trouble!"
The foreman clicked his tongue. "In theory. We still need to be ready for anything."
His matter-of-fact tone made clear that the conversation had come to a close.
After an hour or so, full of small talk and jokes, we came to a ridge that descended down into a large expanse of foothills. It looked treacherous. The rocks were every shade of grey imaginable, with large splashes of black every so often.
The mountain was closer than ever. While still a good distance away, it now loomed over us like a curious giant, waiting to notice us.
Hask waved to catch our attention. "Grey Piedmont. Foothills are deceptive — we'll likely split up. Signal flares if you need them. If you encounter anything while we're separated, fire the red flare. We'll converge on you. Clear?"
We all gave enthusiastic agreement and descended as a group.
As promised, what started as slightly hilly terrain became ridges and valleys that stood well above our heads. Those would then roll back into low rises, and again into ridges. Kael explained that several rivers had once converged here – long, long ago, shifted by the newly forming mountains, and many of the deep gouges in the earth were from those.
We did indeed eventually get split into separate groups, Hask and Kael having to divert into a valley on our right-hand side. Tessa, in her never-ending eagerness, decided she was going to scale the rocks to see what the paths looked like up there. She waited until her uncle was out of sight so he wouldn't admonish her. I simply warned her to be careful. She grinned and bounded up and out of sight.
I found myself alone with Alara. She seemed intent on ignoring me, but we walked carefully beside each other, avoiding both rocks and eye contact. After a long while, I decided I would break the silence. "First time in the Ebon Maw?"
The silence stretched long enough that I almost repeated myself.
Her jaw tightened — just slightly, just enough — and her eyes stayed fixed on the road ahead. Somewhere in the pause her hands, which had been loose at her sides, closed into fists. Not tight. Just closed. Like something needed containing.
When the answer finally came, it felt less like a response and more like something she'd had to physically release. "No."
Her answer and the tense quiet that followed felt heavy enough to knock me to the ground. I scrambled for something to say, and couldn't. But I didn't want to leave it like that either. "Okay…good talk."
Stupid. That was the wrong thing to say.
I filed that away and did not take it back out.
We continued to walk in icy silence for a long while before we rounded a bend and found our companions waiting for us.
Hask gestured vaguely. "No sign of danger. Fortunate, but stay on guard.”
Eventually we began the ascent, the terrain becoming even more treacherous, and much more vertical. The lack of conversation here was less about awkwardness and more about concentrating all of our effort on not dying.
I did notice that Alara had moved far ahead of me. There was something in her posture and gait that spoke to more than just climbing rocks.
I don't know if we were climbing for five minutes or five hours. It was just one foot in front of the other.
Then I saw the foreman throw up a hand to stop our progress, and I realized I was on somewhat even ground.
I smelled it before I saw it. Something underneath the mountain air — cold and metallic and faintly wrong, like the smell before a storm but heavier. The entrance itself was unremarkable in the way that genuinely dangerous things sometimes are: a wide dark mouth in the rock face, tall enough to walk through without ducking, framed by stone the color of a bruise. No markings. No warnings. Just the dark, and the smell, and the feeling that whatever was inside had been waiting a very long time.
"We're here."