Chapter 48: Chapter 43 – City of the Mountains

"Knallgant held the distinction of being the oldest dwarven citadel left in existence, as its founding outdated even the Hassid Caliphate, and the original capital of the Kingdom Down Under was lost forever when first the king drew the ire of Igunacio, and then again when archmagus Stonewell lost control of his spell and disintegrated both the remnants of the capital and the mountain it was built under during the attempt to recover it." - An excerpt from "History of Dwarven Citadels".

 

The first word that came to Cal's mind when she saw Knallgant in the distance was Grand. The ancient dwarven citadel was built much like the other smaller citadel she saw in the nation, definitely a military fortification first and foremost. Except the scale was a whole different one. Knallgant's citadel filled the entire foot of the Baelorn mountain range on both sides, and many structures were also but directly on top of the mountains themselves. The entire mountain range was turned into dwarven fortifications.

 

The fortifications themselves were far more colorful than Cal had expected, as they were mostly made with great blocks of granite and quartz, fitted together into building blocks with earth magic. If the rumors she had heard were true, then the entirety of the mountain range had been hollowed out, as the dwarves carved the insides of the mountains into grand cities, all under the protection of their grand citadel.

Cal walked under the massive gatehouse - there were eight of them in the citadel, four to each side of the mountain range, and she entered from the westernmost gate on the south side - with awe at the scale of the construction. It was a work that took millenia to complete, as generations after generations of dwarves continued their ancestor's work. Even now, the construction still went on unimpeded, as she saw dwarves at work on two of the still-unfortified mountain peaks.

 

As Cal went through the fortified part of the citadel and into the city underneath, she caught wind of rumors aplenty. Of particular note was the rumor that eastern Ezram had risen in rebellion, as they rallied under the banner of the sons of Theodinaz, and that the kingdom had ran into difficulties when they tried to put down the rebellion. When the King ordered all the nobles to gather in the capital with their armies, he found that the vast majority of the northern nobles had refused the summons. They chose to disobey, their priorities focused on the defense of their lands.

 

It was not an unexpected development to Cal, as Guilbert had often complained to her how the older nobles always looked down upon newly landed nobles like him, who only rose to nobility a scant century ago after his ancestor pioneered the then unclaimed lands. Unless they wanted something out of them. This time, when the king called for them to fight for his sake, the nobles of the north collectively balked, and fortified their lands for defence instead.

 

Which left the king and the old nobility of Ezram stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, they had no confidence that they would be able to successfully subjugate the rebels to the east on their own. On the other hand, they also dared not attempt to punish the northern nobles, for to move their forces that way would leave them wide open to the actual rebels.

 

As far as Cal was concerned, the Ezram kingdom had merely reaped the harvest they had sown themselves.

 

She brought her mind off such unpleasant matters with a hope that Guilbert would be fine after the mess to come, for she was quite fond of that man's honesty. A rare good man in a country that had long rotted in its own prosperity and refused to excise its own gangrenous growths even if it might have meant a painful demise to come.

 

When Cal went inside the mountains, she truly boggled at the scale of the construction. The ceiling was a good five meters high on the level she entered, and in the distance, she saw stairs that led to other levels of the massive city complex built literally within the mountain. As the dwarves were the experts in subterranean construction, she noticed that most of the buildings extended all the way to the ceiling, and they doubled as support structures for the whole complex.

 

The dwarven buildings themselves were built with more emphasis on function over form, with most of them simply created as plain, rectangular flats. Where the dwarves decorated and showcased their passion for arts were on the insides of the buildings instead, which Cal found out as she entered a local tavern - it amused her how the sign of a tavern were always similar regardless of which race the city belonged to - and was greeted by walls covered with murals. Murals that were painstakingly chiseled into the walls by hand.

 

She helped herself to a mug of strong dwarven ale before she teased the bartender and asked if he had any stronger stuff in hand. The bald dwarf eyed her for a long moment before he shrugged - and Cal was quite sure this time that he was a male, as she hadn't seen any females that chose to go bald - and fetched a tall glass bottle filled with brown liquor from a cabinet.

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"Pay first." Demanded the dwarf. "Ain't gonna be mah responsibility if ye kill yerself with this stuff, lassie."

 

"Keep the change." Cal said as she dropped several gold coins on the table. She then opened the cork that sealed the bottle and took a good sniff. "Ooh. Strong. What do you call this?"

 

"Feuersaft." Said the dwarf. "That'd be something like… fire-juice in common methinks."

 

"Let's see if it's as strong as you claim then." Cal poured a measure of the drink - it did smell very strong - into her empty mug, then tossed it back in one go, to the shock of the bartender. She shivered a little as she felt the harsh liquor burn its way down her gullet, before it settled down in her stomach, its palpable heat she could feel spread through her body.

 

"Whew." She said with a sigh that stunk of alcohol. "Pretty damned strong all right. Could use something to cut the taste though."

 

"Me dad be a bearded goblin." Cursed the dwarven bartender. "Ain't seen a non-dwarf chug that down and not drop dead drunk before. I like ye, lass! Ye drink like a dwarf!"

 

"We got the hard stuff too where I'm from." Cal said. Now that she thought about it, the Alcidean mainlands did have a much greater preference for lighter drinks like ale and mead, whereas back at the Empire, most liquor were hard liquors, to be drank in moderation. "Got any suggestion to cut the taste?"

 

"Oh, sure, gimme a moment!"

 

What the dwarf bartender presented to Cal was a drink mixed with several different types of liquors made from fruits, with some honey to cut the bitterness, then stirred together with ice until it cooled. She gave a sip of the results and was pleasantly surprised at its flavor, which tasted closer to fruit juice than hard liquor. Cal drained the glass quickly and motioned for another, a gesture that did not escape the attention of several older dwarfs in the tavern.

 

By the time Cal went to bed that night - she rented a room at the same tavern, since it doubled as an inn like most taverns do -, she had several new dwarven drinking buddies that she had left strewn all over the tavern's floor where she had drank them under the table.

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