Evolution of a Healer

Henry Smith. Cyn looked over at Hex to find him with his head in both hands, covering what little of his face the mask did not. That was all the confirmation she needed, and Cyn intended to keep that nugget of information in her back pocket until his ego needed pruning. Well she did, anyway, until Dana burst into laughter.

“Henry Smith? The third ? No wonder you felt the need to give yourself such an edgelord new name. That one makes you sound older than Scott.” She doubled over, laughing harder, as Hex just shook his head without removing his hands from his face. Scott and Sam both were barely able to contain their own chuckles, and even Cyn could not help smirking. Not that she had much room to talk about having an edgy nickname, but at least she had the excuse that it was a shortening of her real name. The Archer tried to compose herself as the small, armored figure got close to them, but was still chuckling.

The elderly man too was quickly making his way over, waving his arms in the air and calling out before the armored person could speak, “No, no, no! Asri, you are not ruining the welcoming ceremony for our first guests in a century. Absolutely not! Go back to your duties!” Cyn noticed one of the old man's arms was not an arm at all, but a mechanical limb ending in a four pronged claw instead of a hand. It looked just like the ones you sometimes saw at grocery stores inside of toy machines. The kind that promised stuffed animals but instead stole your money because said claw had practically no hydraulics.

The armored one, Asri, rolled her eyes. “The safety of all gnomes and guests inside the city is my duty, elder. I was only going to introduce myself.” Her voice must have been distorted when using the hologram, because when she spoke now it sounded distinctly feminine rather than the nondescript tone the party had heard when on the other side of the gate. The gate now closing behind them, Cyn noticed. Not that she blamed the natives for wanting to keep it closed, the Illuminant’s were as big as the gnomes themselves. Bigger if you counted the legs.

Asri spoke again while looking at each of the party members in turn, just as she had done as a hologram, while the elderly gnome tugged on her arm as if he could physically remove her. “I am Asri, keeper of the gate and captain of the watch. Please refrain from violence and thievery while within Cogtopia so I do not have to expel you.” For as formal as the woman's words sounded, the twinkle in her eyes and the twitch of her lips made Cyn think she was antagonizing the elder gnome on purpose.

“Shoo!” Asri allowed herself to be pulled, then pushed, away from the party to return to one of the machine monitors. With a sigh of relief the elder gnome turned his attention to Cyn and her party, his wrinkled face lighting up with sheer joy as he looked them over quickly. “Welcome, welcome! We are so excited to be receiving guests again. I was beginning to think I might have to smuggle you inside myself when councilor Heb started to make a fuss about that silly skill. Now, we used to have kitchen staff ready with food for arrivals but the kitchen was removed from this building…perhaps…forty years ago? Not long before they also took down my welcome sign to be used elsewhere. I told them we would need it again, and now I’ve had to make do with paint! Blasted artificers never think about the long term. Heb has been…”

The party just stared as the animated elder continued to babble about how much trouble councilor Heb was, and how silly it was to assume no one would visit them again. They hadn’t even gotten the gnome's name. The dozen others now just lingered near the archway, looking them over curiously. The three who were previously stacked atop one another had finished hanging Cyn’s still wet name sign, and were now trying to stop the dripping paint from ruining the polished floor. No one was as happy as the old gnome, but they also did not seem overly cautious or upset either. When it was clear the elder was not going to stop talking, one of the waiting gnomes coughed lightly into its hand and spoke tentatively, but loudly enough to be heard. “Perhaps our guests would like to start the tour, Kreeble?”

Kreeble, the elder gnome, cut himself off mid-sentence before sputtering. “Oh, yes. Of course. Follow me, please.” Being interrupted did not seem to have much of an effect on his joy, and Kreeble was still grinning as he turned, walking towards the archway. “Much of our city will not be accessible to you, being so large, but the lowest level was built to accommodate our guests from the other dimensions. Since our previous batch of guests became more permanent residents here, the trend of keeping larger buildings at ground level has continued.”

He seemed to want to continue talking as Cyn, Scott, Dana, Sam, and Hex followed the elder into the short hallway, lined with gnome sized doors and a set of almost human-sized doors on the other end, but Cyn quickly interrupted him to ask, “You know we are from another dimension?” She had thought they might be from the same dimension, since they could understand one another, but if the gnomes knew about dimensions already she was pretty sure they were not.

Kreeble did not stop walking, but looked back at them with visible confusion. “Yes? Dimension 78 is far too old to still have root humans wandering around. We figured you were probably from dimension 155. Unless 156 was able to clean up its act in the last hundred years?” The old gnome raised an eyebrow, as if he actually expected them to have an answer to that.

“My Awakening gift says we’re from 242…” Cyn winced as Sam spoke. She had a feeling that something was off here based on Kreeble’s assumptions, but had wanted to get more information before they dropped that kind of bombshell.

And bombshell it was. Kreeble stumbled, barely able to catch himself before falling flat, then whipped around to stare at the party with wide eyes. “Gift…you’re…that’s not…” The gnome sputtered a few more senseless syllables before his face turned more somber. Kreeble took a deep breath and, after peeking around the party to glance at their entourage, gave the Warrior a stern look. “Don’t repeat that. To anyone.” Kreeble peeked another look at the group of gnomes behind them, who were chattering amongst themselves and did not seem to notice the odd conversation, before shaking his head and walking the last few steps to an electronic panel to one side of the doors that they had been heading towards. Now sounding far less joyful, the gnome spoke again, “Behold, our home.” He pressed a few buttons, and the doors swung open to reveal Cogtopia.

Cyn had expected an underground city to be a series of tunnels and chambers. Instead, she found herself staring into an impossibly massive cavern. In the distance, seemingly miles away, she could make out what she thought might be waterfalls cascading down the walls of what she thought might be the far side of the cavern. High above, a craggy roof of gray rock was visible, featuring sparse, multicolored, glowing patches and hanging flora. Cyn also saw some kind of flying creatures flitting between the glowing spots, although from this distance she was not able to make out what they were. Scattered across the landscape were gigantic stalagmites and stalactites, in some places meeting to form columns of rippled rock.

Near what she approximated to be the center of the area there was a huge green crystal column that looked to have veins of crystal twisting out from it where it met the ceiling and, Cyn guessed, the floor. The green veins glowed brighter than the webs outside had, and created an almost mesh pattern everywhere along all of the natural cavern surfaces, even reaching where the party stood now. Combined with the installed lamps along the cobble road, and scattered everywhere else in the city, Cyn didn’t think she would need to use the diadem to see while they stayed here.

Where they stood now was a small hill, and directly in front of them was a cobblestone path that sloped down into the city proper. If there was only the ground level, she would have called it a town, but the gnomes had made use of the regularly jutting rock to build vertically at every opportunity, creating stacked clusters of buildings on both stalagmites and stalactites. Between these clusters stretched a labyrinth of bridges to connect it all together.

The buildings seemed to be mostly made from the same rock as the walls, and commonly throughout Cyn could see masses of the same kind of machinery they had seen in the previous room. On the ground floor the buildings and machines were larger and more spread out, with the cobble paths running between. How to access the vertical structures and bridges from the ground was not clear from what she could see. Across the entire area were large patches of what seemed to be a kind of fluffy moss, and she was pretty sure there was some kind of animal being kept in pens. The contrast of nature and machine was an impressive sight.

The whole place smelled, felt, and tasted damp but drawing in a full breath of fresher air felt wonderful. She had not even really noticed the air in the abandoned mine had been kind of thin, but it was obvious now. The party had been silent for nearly a minute, just taking in the unexpected landscape. Scott then ruined the effect a bit by descending into a fit of sneezes. Kreeble had just been letting the party observe, the gnome’s smile slowly returning as he watched their awe. “Magnificent, isn’t it?”

They all agreed it was, though Scott continued to have sneezing fits as Kreeble led them down the path towards the stone buildings at ground level. As they got close the party found themselves to be the center of everyone's attention, not at all shy about openly staring at the strangers from the windows of buildings or down from the rope bridges above. Nearly everyone Cyn saw was a gnome, all sharing the same short stature and pale features. It also appeared that mechanical limbs like the one Kreeble had were extremely common, with more than half of the gnomes Cyn saw having at least one.

There were a few people who were not gnomes though, and it was not only their height that made them noticeable. While the gnomes were curious, the other inhabitants' stares felt far more intense. Most of them were about human-sized, if a little bit taller on average, and lithe. They were not pale like the gnomes either, instead being various shades of brown in both skin and hair. The addition of long, pointed ears made Cyn internally classify them as elves for the moment.

The other inhabitants she could see as the party was led towards the green crystal looked like a horrifying cross between a spider and a person. There were fewer of them than the elves, but they stood close to ten feet tall, with the general body shape of a humanoid. They stood on two legs and had two primary arms ending in clawed fingers. In addition to the more normal looking appendages, four more limbs were visible, reminiscent of the Illuminant Harvesters legs, with one set rising from their back to curve over the shoulders and the other set near their waist. Their skin was a smooth black, looking more like an exoskeleton than soft skin to Cyn, and most had softly glowing silver hair they kept tied back.

But it was their faces that ultimately bothered her the most. Each had eight, small, solid blue eyes, no ears or nose she could see, and a nightmarish mouth. The mouth was lipless, and when one seemed to try and smile at her she saw that they had a single row of pointed teeth. Teeth that existed in addition to two sets of fangs so large they jutted out from both their top and bottom jaw, clearly visible even when the creatures mouths were closed. She tried to smile back, wanting to be polite because no one had been threatening so far, but Cyn was not a fan of spiders. The giant Illuminants they had faced so far were bad enough, but these creatures were pushing her limits.

The party entered what looked like a town square set up around the central crystal, the area immediately surrounding it clear of buildings and bridges. Around the edges of the clear area, she could make out scattered combinations of free hanging ropes and what looked like pulley elevators, and her suspicions that these were used by the gnomes to ascend and descend from above was quickly confirmed. The only structure other than the crystal itself was a raised platform, and standing on it was a pair of gnomes.

The first one looked like a near carbon copy of Kreeble, clearly another elder. They wore unremarkable clothes like most of the gnomes did, and only stood out due to additionally wearing an odd hat. It had a stiff looking, wide brim, a chin strap, and from the center rose a long pole, topped with a brightly glowing object Cyn could not make out. The pole on the hat nearly doubled the gnome's height, and looked ridiculous.

The second gnome was younger than its counterpart, face wrinkle free, and peered at the approaching party with suspicion. They wore a leather apron and toolbelt, both filled with an assortment of tools, and had a mechanical arm with what looked like just a metal tube on the end. As Kreeble gestured for them to follow him up to the platform, their longer human legs taking the steps multiple at a time, the second gnome spoke.

“Well, not as impressive as I expected for a party that managed to survive getting themselves lost down here.” Her tone was condescending, and before any of Cyn’s party could reply the first gnome, who was another woman based on her voice, chided back gently.

“Now Heb, you agreed it was a good idea to let in our guests. Don’t be rude.” Turning to the party, the first gnome gave them a bright smile. “Welcome, guests. I am councilwoman Torith. Please don’t take offense to councilwoman Heb’s words. She may be intelligent, but is too young to remember when we had guests flowing in and out of Cogtopia like water. Councilman Kreeble and I do remember, though. It is good to know our little backwater moon has not been completely forgotten about.”

The party was uncomfortable with the implications of her words, because none of them knew what she was talking about, and it was showing on Sam and Cyn’s expressions. Hex was thankfully covered by his mask, while Dana and Scott both had impressive poker faces. The insinuation seemed to be that they were sent here by someone. And while that might be technically true, if you thought of the System as a ‘someone’, it probably was not who Torith was talking about. Kreeble supplied an answer that probably was not much better than the truth. “They are here by accident. Interdimensional teleport gone awry from dimension 156.”

There were audible gasps of shock from the surrounding crowd. The platform did not seem to amplify their voices, but the closest of the observing population had been standing quietly enough to overhear. Torith’s face fell too at Kreeble’s words. It was clear that the gnome had hoped their arrival would mean good tidings for their future. Scott spoke up then, clearly speaking to the council but loud enough to probably still be heard by the crowd over the rising sounds of voices around them. “We appreciate your welcome, council. I hope you can forgive our intrusion. We were told someone here might have knowledge of how to get out of these caves? We are hoping to move on as soon as possible.”

“You are forgiven, though I am surprised 156 has progressed to interdimensional teleports. You were doing…not well when we last received news.”

Dana stepped in to respond to that as Scott hesitated. “Things can change quickly.”

Torith seemed to wait a moment, expecting more, but when Dana did not elaborate she moved on. “I suppose they do. Young dimensions are unstable. As for a way out, I think the old mine foreman, Ander, will know more.”

“No one has been able to leave in a hundred years because of the Illuminants. And, no offense, you are not equipped to try,” Heb chimed in.

“Then maybe we could stay here for a time to get ourselves more equipped? I am sure there is a lot we could learn from the inhabitants of a well established dimension.”

Torith smiled at Scott’s words before offering, “We have plenty of empty housing for large guests, but you’ll have to work to earn your keep outside of that. There is always more work to be done, and I am sure you can quickly figure out what profession you want to invest your effort in.”

“Torith! They are still root humans. We don’t want to hinder their evolutions by forcing them into our ways of doing things.”

Heb rolled her eyes at Kreeble’s interjection. “Is helping them survive through tomorrow really ‘forcing’ them?”

Both Kreeble and Torith seemed to ignore Heb as Torith replied, “If they end up staying long enough for the root profession to get specialized, they probably aren’t going home.” Her next words were aimed at the party. “Think of it as motivation, if you are serious about leaving. The faster you can get out of here, the less our ways will ultimately affect you.”

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