The History Beneath Alderat

The History Beneath Alderat

The last of Drue’s riders circled twice before descending towards the shelf of black stone.

From the air, it had looked barely large enough for one griffon. Upon landing, Kaelen discovered it was barely large enough for three, provided no one objected to a wing in the face or a talon resting on their belongings.

The griffons were nervous to land and the riders could feel their hesitation. They yelled for Drue to clear the landing area and then even with more space they had to coax them down.

Dasher snapped at a younger mount crowding his tail. The younger griffon answered with a screech that echoed from the cliffs and sent loose stones skittering into the valley below.

“A graceful arrival,” Tajan said as Drue slid from Dasher’s saddle.

“They are tired.”

“So are we. None of us has tried to eat Anderix.”

Blena lowered her pack. “Not today, but if we get stuck up here?.”

Anderix looked from one woman to the other. “I assume that was intended as humour.”

“Mostly,” said Blena.

The landing shelf lay high on the southern slopes of the Emberwild range, above the last twisted line of trees. Tough yellow grass clung to cracks in the volcanic rock. Beyond it rose successive ridges of ash-grey granite, their upper reaches stained red and gold by minerals. Farther north, a plume of smoke leaned from a broken summit and stretched across the sky like a dark banner.

Drue spoke briefly with the five riders who had brought them. Two would return to the settlement with news of their safe arrival. The others would take the griffons to a broader valley west of the ridge, where there was water, shelter and enough game to keep the creatures from reconsidering Anderix.

“You are certain this is the closest landing place?” Kaelen asked.

One of the riders, a broad-faced woman named Ressa, pointed between two ridges. “The place you marked lies beyond that rise and another past it. The winds turn against the cliffs there. Griffons land against the mountain but riders would not be able to dismount , there is nowhere safe to put them down.”

“How long on foot?”

“A day, if the mountain likes you.”

“And if it does not?” Alster asked.

Ressa smiled. “Longer.”

The riders departed soon after. Great wings beat dust and dry grass across the shelf, then lifted griffons and riders into the pale morning sky. Dasher remained only long enough to shove his beak against Drue’s chest with enough force to move him backwards. Drue whispered something beneath the wind, rubbed the feathered ridge above Dasher’s eye and sent him after the others.

The crew watched until the griffons vanished beyond the western ridge.

“Well,” said Alster, adjusting his pack. “Now we merely walk into an uncharted volcanic range in search of a tower that may have stopped existing several thousand years ago.”

Kaelen pulled his hood forward against the glare. “You make it sound unpleasant.”

“I was trying to make it sound achievable.”

They followed a narrow game trail climbing north-east. Before midday the shelf had disappeared behind them, and the mountains closed around their path. The wind smelled of stone, sulphur and sun-warmed grass. In sheltered hollows, clumps of low purple flowers grew from black soil so fine it stained their boots.

Blena stopped beside the first hoofprint.

It was split and rounded, no larger than her palm.

“Mountain Gulather?” Kaelen asked.

“A small one.” She crouched and traced the edge without touching it. “It is young, less than 2 years old.”

They found the herd on the far side of the ridge.

Nearly thirty mountain gulathers grazed across the slope, moving easily where the crew had needed hands as often as feet. They resembled the great six-legged animals of the Solaryn plains, but these stood scarcely higher than Tajan’s waist. Their bodies were compact, their coats thick and ash-brown, and their outer pair of legs were set wider for balance on the steep ground. Curved horns swept back close to their skulls.

Tajan’s face softened. “I have never seen this kind.”

“They stay above the trees,” Drue said. “Smaller bodies. Less food needed. Better feet for stone.”

Anderix watched one cross a broken ledge. “Six points of contact would provide exceptional stability.”

“They are animals,” Blena said. “You are allowed to admire them without calculating them.”

“I can do both”

“I calculate that they would be great over and open fire.” Blena said, reminding them that they would soon be thinking of a meal.

A shadow passed over them.

The herd reacted before the crew looked up. Gulathers scattered across the slope as two wild griffons swept over the ridge. One folded its wings and dropped towards the fleeing animals. It struck a young gulather behind the shoulders, missed its grip and tumbled with it through the grass. The gulather kicked free. The griffon rose in a storm of dust while its companion pursued another of the herd that was fleeing between the rocks.

Alster grimaced. “I preferred them when they were carrying us.”

“They prefer this,” Drue said.

The hunt moved away, and the herd slowly re-formed higher on the slope. The crew continued until a thin, frantic cry stopped Tajan.

She found the young mountain gulather in a narrow cut between two boulders. One of its middle legs had slipped deep into the gap. It pulled against the stone, scraping its hide raw, then thrashed harder when Tajan approached.

“Easy,” she murmured. “You are making an impressive mess of this.”

“Its herd has moved on,” Drue warned.

“Then we should stop discussing it.”

She took dried fruit from her pack and held it below the mountain gulather’s nose. The animal ceased struggling long enough to sniff. Tajan fed it one piece, then another while Kaelen and Blena shifted the smaller rock trapping its leg. With a final pull, the mountain gulather came free and collapsed against Tajan.

“There,” she said, examining the scrape. “Nothing broken. You are welcome.”

The mountain gulather licked fruit from her palm.

Tajan smiled. “You see? Perfectly sensible creature.”

“You gave it food,” Alster said. “I also become sensible when given food.”

She tore another piece in half. “This one complains less.”

The shadow returned so quickly that Kaelen had time only to look up.

Wings struck the air. Talons closed around the young gulather’s back, and the animal vanished from beside Tajan in a blur of brown feathers and dangling legs. The griffon laboured upwards, crossed the ravine and landed on a distant outcrop.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Tajan stared at the empty place beside her.

Across the ravine, the griffon lowered its head.

“Do not,” Tajan said.

There was a faint crack.

“I told it not to.”

Drue glanced at the griffon. “It can’t hear you from here.”

Tajan turned on him. “That is what you think is wrong with this?”

Blena put an arm around her shoulders and steered her back towards the trail. “Come. If it helps, the little one had three excellent pieces of fruit before it died.”

“It does not.”

“I was going to tell you that I think we should be the ones eating it but I went with the “last meal” idea.”

They climbed in silence for some time. Late in the afternoon the trail narrowed above a valley cut with long, unnatural ridges of black stone. Ancient lava, Anderix explained, though, even he could not say how long ago it had flowed. In places it had cooled in folded waves; elsewhere it had split into columns as straight as constructed walls.

Alster fell into step beside Kaelen.

“Where is the crystal field?” he asked.

Kaelen looked at him. “Which one?”

“The one where you saw the Veylborn. When all of this is done, could you take me there?”

Kaelen slowed. The others continued several paces before noticing.

“Why?” he asked, though something in Alster’s face had already answered.

Alster looked down into the valley. “If Alfer is gone, perhaps he could appear there.”

No one pressed for clarification of his meaning.

“Not forever,” Alster continued. “I know that. I thought perhaps only long enough to tell us what happened. Or tell me he is gone and crossed over.”

Anderix shifted his pack. “There is no evidence that Veylborn are the spirits of deceased people.”

Kaelen’s mouth tightened. “Thank you. That was almost gentle.”

“Gentleness would not make it accurate. They possess measurable photonic and physical presence. They interact with crystal fields, produce detectable energy and have demonstrated knowledge unrelated to the memories of any known dead person. Their appearances may resemble spiritual manifestations, but resemblance is not equivalence.”

“You can’t explain what they are,” Blena said.

“Not yet.”

“Then you can’t explain what they aren't."

Anderix considered this. “I can explain that current evidence does not support Alster’s conclusion.”

“That is a very long way to say you do not know.”

“No. It is the correct distance.”

Blena turned to Alster. “Ironroot has places where the forest grows around stones older than any name we have for them. There are swamps where people go to remember, and paths walked by those who wish to listen. My people believe a spirit may leave a mark on the living world.”

Anderix drew breath.

Blena raised a finger without looking at him. “A mark that is not required to possess measurable photonic presence.”

Anderix closed his mouth.

“Come to Ironroot with me one day,” she told Alster. “We will walk beneath the old trees. You may speak to the spirit world directly. It is a beautiful place.”

Alster nodded, his usual quick reply failing him.

Kaelen rested a hand on his shoulder. “If you still want to see the crystal field, I will take you. But not because we know Alfer is dead. We do not.”

“No news is good in this case,” Tajan said. “For all we know, he escaped whatever happened and is currently somewhere warm, eating better than we are.”

“That is an extremely low standard, especially after giving up fresh mountain gulather” Drue added.

Alster looked at each of them. “So your united scholarly opinion is that mourning him now may prove an embarrassing waste of time.”

“Precisely,” said Anderix.

That drew a small laugh from him, which seemed to be what the others had been waiting for.

They camped that night beneath an overhang of basalt. At dawn they crossed the final ridge and found the tower.

Or what remained of it.

The ruin occupied a shallow basin surrounded by broken cliffs. No wall stood above Kaelen’s knee. No doorway, chamber or fallen staircase revealed where Alderat Tower had once risen. Only a broad circle of eroded foundation stones interrupted the grass, so thoroughly weathered that they might have been mistaken for a natural formation if it weren’t so geometrically obvious.

Blena walked its perimeter. “This was destroyed deliberately.”

“How can you tell?” Alster asked.

She pointed to the basin. “Where is the rest of it?”

Anderix crouched beside the foundation. “Removed, perhaps. Or carried downslope by an eruption.”

“A tower does not disappear easily,” Blena said.

Tajan stood near the centre, eyes half closed. “There is crystal below us.”

Kaelen felt it a moment later: a faint pressure beneath thought, like the first pull of a tide too distant to hear. He moved towards the eastern edge of the ruins. The sensation strengthened beneath a slab of dark rock almost hidden by soil.

Together, they cleared it.

The object beneath was not a door. A bar of metal emerged from a stone housing and leaned at an angle towards the mountain. It was longer than Drue was tall and thick as his leg. Corrosion had roughened its surface, yet neither rust nor age had consumed it.

Alster stared. “A handle?”

“A switch,” Anderix said.

Drue put both hands against it. It did not move.

“A switch for whom?” Blena asked. “A giant?”

“Scale does not establish the size of its operator. It may have been moved mechanically.”

“Or by a giant.”

“There is no evidence of giants.”

“There is a giant switch right there.”

Kaelen left them to the argument and followed the pull beneath the foundation. Tajan moved in the opposite direction, then stopped beside a narrow seam running through the rock.

“Here,” she said.

Small crystals lay embedded along the seam, scarcely brighter than grains of glass. Kaelen knelt opposite her. When he placed his palm against the stone, the pull sharpened into a pattern: separate points answering one another under the ground.

Tajan touched the seam. A faint amber glow spread from her fingers.

“Not force,” she said. “Follow it.”

Kaelen reached for the deeper current. His crystal pouch answered, vibrating against his waist. Light passed through the seam, from one buried crystal to the next, until a curved line appeared beneath the soil.

Stone ground against stone.

A section of the foundation sank a hand’s breadth, then slid sideways into darkness.

Warm air breathed from the opening.

Beyond it, steps descended into an ancient lava tube.

The passage widened as they went down. Crystal deposits crowded the walls: clear needles, smoky clusters and broad mineral sheets that caught their lantern light and returned it in muted colours. They soon found machinery buried beneath those deposits. Metal ribs ran along the walls. Rods entered the stone at exact intervals. Circular housings, each wider than a shield, had become fused beneath layers of white and green minerals.

Anderix moved slowly, holding a small instrument over every exposed surface.

“Persistent magnetic alignment,” he said. “Weak, but extraordinarily consistent.”

“Meaning?” Kaelen asked.

“Meaning the metal retains a field after an amount of time in which it should retain nothing.”

“So it was powerful.”

“Or continuously powered.”

The tube opened into a cavern, and the broken ring emerged from the darkness.

Half of it remained upright. The rest lay shattered across the cavern floor. Even broken, it towered above them, a semicircle of black metal threaded with crystal and mounted on a platform carved directly from the rock. Mineral curtains hung from its upper curve. Behind them, Anderix uncovered grooves packed with fine metallic dust.

Alster stood within the ring’s empty centre. “Receiver-transmitter.”

Anderix looked sharply at him. “Why did you say that?”

“Because I have heard it before.” Alster pressed his fingertips against his temple. “At Ruodoon. Or in the tomb. I cannot tell anymore. The words arrive without the courtesy of bringing their explanation.”

Anderix examined the ring again. “It was part of a machine. That much is certain. We have some machines that are able to receive and transmit a charge of power along metal lines but it is still being developed into something we can all use.”

“For receiving or transmitting?” Tajan asked.

“Possibly both. Possibly neither.”

“You realise for a Mechanum that answer was incredibly imprecise.”

“What can I say the lesser crestrealms are rubbing off on me.”

Blena peered through the empty centre. “Well, us lower forms of life have come to the conclusion that you can.......”

“This is not a wall,” he said. “It is an edge.” Drue had interrupted from behind the platform. He had found a perfectly curved wall that disappeared beneath mineral growth. He brushed one section clean and found no joints in the stone.

They followed its curve until the cavern floor ended.

The shaft beneath Alderat was perfectly round and approximately thirty metres across. Their lanterns revealed smooth walls descending beyond sight. Warm air rose from below in slow pulses, carrying sulphur and a deep vibration that Drue felt through his boots before the others noticed it.

He whistled once. The note fell and did not return off the walls or depths below. “I can take Kaelen down,” he said.

Kaelen thought for a moment. “Anderix should go. If there is another structure, he will be able to understand it.”

“All right, you both go!” Drue had decided it more eyes might be useful in such an uncertain place.

Anderix looked pleased on behalf of competence itself. They secured a climbing line to a metal rib near the shaft. Drue wrapped one arm a rope and said to Kaelen “Just do what I do, slide and jump out from the wall,” and he descended first. When Kaelen was part way down he called to Anderix to begin his descent, who then spent the entire descent staring at the wall instead of the abyss below.

A full .05 time in descent before they were finally at the bottom. Once there they could see six enormous tunnels that radiated from the shaft with perfect geometric precision.

Each entrance was high enough for a house. Broken frames stood within them, their shapes resembling the remnants of stone gates. Beside every tunnel rose another massive metal switch. Machinery made of metal and stone filled chambers cut into the rock, built on a scale that made the three explorers feel less like investigators than insects crawling through the abandoned works of giants.

Kaelen lifted his power crystal. Its glow travelled only a short distance before the passages swallowed it.

“They align around the shaft,” Anderix said. He paced between two entrances, counting under his breath. “Equal separation. Identical dimensions. This is distribution.”

“Of what?” Drue asked.

A tremor passed through the floor.

Heat rolled from the northern tunnel.

Anderix approached it until sweat shone across his forehead. Beyond the broken gate, the passage sloped down into reddish darkness. A narrow channel ran along its base, lined with black glass.

“Not water,” Kaelen said.

“No.” Anderix crouched, then withdrew when another wave of heat struck them. “Magma.”

They investigated only two of the six passages. In the second, Drue found metal shutters embedded within the walls. In the third, the heat became painful before they reached the first chamber. Kaelen’s crystal was being interrupted by the heat. The air scorched his throat, and the soles of his boots softened against the rock.

“We can’t keep going down this way,” Drue declared.

Anderix resisted for three steps, which was two more than good sense allowed. Kaelen seized his pack and pulled him away as a dull impact sounded somewhere deep in the tunnel.

After a hard climb back to the top lasting over 1.2 time. They returned to the surface soaked in sweat and carrying more questions than equipment.

The others had cleared the ancient switch while they were below. Tajan had also uncovered six crystal-lined grooves leading away from its housing towards the buried foundation.

“Six,” she confirmed with Anderix when he explained what they had found in the passages. To which he yelled back down excitedly to Kaelen and Drue who were still climbing. “They found six grooves up here.. like the tunnels”

He stared at the grooves, then back towards the shaft. “Yes.”

Kaelen described the channels and the heat below. Anderix walked around the switch twice, muttering about gates, flow and magnetic containment.

“It still will not move,” Blena said. “We tried.”

“It may require power before it permits movement.”

Tajan knelt beside the first crystal groove. “Then we give it power.”

They took positions along the six lines. Tajan and Kaelen began the connection, following the buried crystal field rather than forcing their own energy through it. Tajan thought of a bull gulather pulling a cart, Kaelen imagined being picked up a storm and being spun around. Light spread beneath their hands. Blena felt the responding vibration through the stone and directed Drue and Alster to the points where the glow weakened. Anderix stood at the switch housing, calling corrections as one channel brightened before another.

The six lines met.

The metal bar shuddered.

“Now,” Anderix said.

All of them leaned against it.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the switch moved with agonizing slowness. Metal screamed beneath the mountain. The bar passed its highest point and slammed into the opposite housing.

An impact answered from below.

Then another.

Six vast blows travelled outward beneath the ruins, one after the next.

The basin lurched.

Kaelen fell to one knee. Cracks raced through the soil. Stones tumbled from the surrounding cliffs, and the distant plume above the volcanic summit thickened.

“We have awakened it,” Alster shouted. Then, “I wonder if we should have awakened it?”

“Or we’ve broken it,” Tajan replied hopefully, “in which case we are going to be completely safe.”

The mountain roared.

Everyone ran from the foundation except Anderix, who had to be dragged by the back of his mech pack. They crossed the basin as the ground heaved beneath them and reached the shelter of a basalt ridge.

Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the tremors weakened.

The dark plume above the summit faltered. Its lower edge thinned. A red glow visible through a split in the crater dimmed, and the rumble beneath their feet settled into a steady vibration.

“Look,” Drue said.

Heat shimmered above the open shaft.

The slow pulses had become a continuous torrent. A loose griffon feather, caught in the strap of Drue’s pack since their flight, tore free and drifted towards the opening.

It hovered for an instant.

Then it shot into the sky.

They watched it rise thirty metres before the mountain wind carried it away.

Anderix walked back towards the ruins.

“The six impact sounds we heard were gates,” he said. “The mechanism opened the channels beneath us. Magma, or heat from magma, is being redirected away from the central shaft.”

Tajan looked towards the quieter summit. “It calmed the volcano.”

“It regulated it.” Anderix’s voice had lost its usual certainty, replaced by something closer to awe. “This complex was designed to control volcanic energy on a scale far beyond a single tower.”

Kaelen looked at the ruined ring, the crystal lines and the switch built for no ordinary hand.

“Control it for what?”

The air rising from the shaft bent the light above them. Deep below, ancient machinery continued to move, one immense metallic sound following another into the mountain.

Anderix stared down into the darkness.

“That,” he said, “is the part I do not yet understand.”

Thy Quest 4: Measure the Magma Tube
The ancient magma tube beneath Alderat is 30 metres in diameter. What is its circumference? Use the formula C = πd, show your calculation and give both the exact answer in terms of π and an approximate answer rounded to the nearest tenth of a metre.