the other way, all the way to the far wall, where they found an opening that turned back into the second corridor. All the way back to the other end, they found the entrance to the third.
Entering that third corridor, Brynn jumped up, caught the top of the wall, and pulled herself into a sitting position atop it. ?My feet ache from the walking," she explained, reaching back toward Cazzira. The Doc'alfar took her hand, and Brynn easily pulled her over the wall, while Juraviel flut-tered up and over to join them.
And so they crossed, wall by wall, gradually working their way back toward the center of the room, and finally they came over the last of the thirty barriers, to find a series of carved steps leading between four fabu-lously decorated columns, and with a great iron door set in the chamber's back wall.
The carvings on those columns told them much.
"Powries," Juraviel said breathlessly as he inspected the worn reliefs. He looked to Cazzira, who seemed not to understand. ?Bloody caps. Dwarves." The Doc'alfar shrugged and shook her head, even after moving beside Juraviel to see the fairly accurate depiction of one of the fierce powries sculpted into the column.
Fittingly, that relief showed the powrie in threat-ening pose, hooked sword at the ready and in full battle gear.
If we go through that door to find a city of powries awaiting us, then we are surely doomed," Juraviel remarked.
Cazzira looked up at him, a knowing grin on her face. ?Yet you wish to open it as much as I do."
A strange feeling washed over Brynn as she watched the two elves exchange smiles, a sudden intuition that some deeper connection was forming between them. She didn't say anything about it, just followed, her bow ' hand and ready, as Juraviel and Cazzira walked up to the large iron , studied it for a few moments, then pushed it open, its rusted hinges creaking.
A thin, glowing fog awaited them.
"Fazl pods," Cazzira noted, moving forward. Just inside the doors \va landing, a balcony overlooking a wide chamber with a series of platea stepping down into the bowels of the mountains. Hundreds of structur houses and larger communal buildings, sat on those various plateaus nected level to level by stone-worked stairways, all of it illuminated in d n white. They saw the pockets of fazl pod colonies, dozens and dozens great living lamps and each containing pods numbering in the millions K Cazzira's guess. So many were there, that few corners of the various plateau were hidden in shadows, and this city spreading beneath them was surely huge, level upon level upon level.
But, they learned as they descended the stairway from the balcony to the nearest plateau, it was a city long in decay. Upon closer inspection, the trio noted that the stones of the various buildings were crumbling, their mortar gone. What few items they found in the many houses, pots and clay vessels utensils and stone furniture, were broken and dusty, with no sign of any continuing society.
They moved along, down another stairway, then across a narrow stone bridge to a small section of what seemed to be more lavish houses.
"Back!" Cazzira warned as soon as they had stepped off the bridge, and the other two froze in place.
Following her gaze, they saw the threat, first one gigantic subterranean lizard and then another, slithering across an area of tumbled stones. The creatures went on their way, bodies swaying in a fluid, mesmerizing manner, forked tongues flicking out before them.
"The new inhabitants," Cazzira. whispered.
"But what happened to the old ones?" Brynn asked; and intending to find out exactly that, the three went down again to another level, then down from there, and down again.
On what seemed to be the bottommost section of the city, in a chamber similar to the first they had crossed, full of defensible walls, and even with the rotted wooden remains of what seemed to be a ballista, they found their answers.
The room was full of skeletons, piled at every portal.
"Short and thick," Juraviel remarked, holding up one broken femur. ?Powrie bones." He shook his head in disbelief as he searched on, for the bones were devastated, smashed and clawed. ?What could have done this to a colony of hardy powries?" he asked, and the other two, having no ex-perience with the powerful dwarves, didn't truly understand the weight ot that statement.
They made their way from pile to pile, coming to a wide-open anteroom, where they found