Children of The Underground

Chapter 8: The Gate

"So what happened to him?" She asked quietly.

    "Some say that Koshei died below his mountain and his creations, his "Children of The Underground", are still wandering the depths. Others claim that Koshei had discovered immortality, and still continues with his experiments."

    "This is apocryphal," Vera cautioned. "I've gathered much evidence from the archives in the Vladigorsk Institute of Thaumaturgy, even went so far as to visit Medniprestol to learn about Tsar Koshei. From what I could gather, there indeed existed a thaumaturge by the name of 'Koshei', who indeed disappeared from Mednagora in the year 688. There were even records of him attending the University of Medniprestol, with a specialization in alchemy and medical thaumaturgy—together a stone's throw away from biological thaumaturgy. But what I'm telling you now has yet to be confirmed by official documents. But amongst certain circles, they say that Koshei, using various subterranean animals as test subjects, managed to substitute the iron in their blood with orichalc. This meant, that they could now act as conduits for magic."

    "So what?"

    "Eventually, he tried to apply them on himself. He'd take samples of his own blood and mix them with orichalc and vajra, along several of the other artifacts. The stories say that he tried to grow homunculi, each with blood based on orichalc, rather than on iron. Each capable of magic, each adapted to living life below the surface of the earth."

    Drazhek and Misha stared at Vera in horror. Boris and Lena exchanged uneasy glances. They then looked at Vera with the same eyes that one would look at a street-corner prophet, who rang a bell and preached death and damnation to sinners, believing every word from his crazy mouth. Vera might as well have told him that Koshei was stitching extra heads onto the animals, or sawing them in half to see if they still lived.

    Boris began to speak. "But if there's a Vyrai Gate, and if there's an underground, then nobody's found it yet. Lena, Vera, and I have been searching for three days. Been going up and down the mountain, Vera watching her Brass Compass, Lena and I fending off Chorts and Simarguls. But the compass's needle has been doing nothing but spinning around like a stopwatch.

    "Sounds rough." Misha replied. "Drazhek and I began our trip yesterday, and were about to settle down near a clearing in the woods. In The Black Forest, can you believe it? Anyway, we had just arrived there and were planning to make camp when we were attacked by vulkolaks. While we were running away, we stepped into a teleporter and landed on that hill over there," Misha pointed to the cliff that they had only just recently descended. "And that's where we met you."

    "Wow. I dunno if you were lucky or unlucky." Lena replied, her voice mixed with equal parts amazement and surprise. "On one hand, you didn't have to haul ass for three days across the forest and the lowlands. But on the other hand, you're the first person I've heard of to walk into a teleporter and come out alive."

    Misha shrugged. "It wasn't easy though. Our Brass Compass broke, so Drazhek here had to improvise." Misha jerked her thumb at Drazhek who, lost in his own thoughts, suddenly came back to Earth.

    "Well, we landed in a pile of corpses, dead vedmaks by the looks of them, and decided to make camp a little distance away from them" Drazhek shuddered at the memory of their night on the hill. "The next morning, Misha found out that our Brass Compass was broken, so I thought about scrounging for supplies in the corpse pile..." Drazhek trailed off. The faces of Boris, Lena, and Vera were etched with incredulity. Drazhek, too, realized that he just admitted to grave robbery as casually as a grocery run. He bowed his head down, a little bit ashamed, but continued.

    "Anyways, I managed to gather some orichalc, as scrap metal, you see. Then one of the corpses got up and attacked us. It was an upyr, you see. But apparently it was the only one there. Misha lopped its head off pretty easily," Drazhek turned to his partner and smiled at her. Misha looked away, embarassed but more than a little pleased at Drazhek's gratitude. This time, the other three's mouths dropped open in surprise.