Books fell from shelves by the force of the sudden earthquake. Queen Adalene of Norfolm channeled ether to her feet for balance. The forecaster’s ball trembled on its holster, its details going dark. Samira, the young girl behind the seat, knelt down under the table and filled her aura. The chains of the chandelier swung and jerked as the candles flickered.

The quake calmed, and the palace stabilized. One of the blackwood chairs had fallen, and some of the books had fallen with their covers open, on their pages. The chandelier regained connection with the surgeways, and the candles lit up, revealing a black and red interior. The dark furniture was made of a mix of black aspen and black hardwood, lacquered to make them shine, with red adamantite engravings, following Norfolm’s black and red theme of impeccable strength.

“Are you alright?” Adalene asked.

Before Samira could answer, the door burst open, and Frodin rushed in, wearing asmite runic armor with a swiftness rune in the middle. “Are you alright, my queen?”

“Perfectly alright and unstartled,” Adalene said. “Go fetch my scribes, immediately.”

“Yes!” her knight said and closed the door.

“Samira?” Adalene asked. “Did you get hit?”

Samira grunted under the table. The young forecaster wore a silk dress, though lacked the classy manners to back up the outfit. She climbed to her seat, then onto the table, where she grabbed her ball right away. She pushed ether into it, shook it. Nothing happened, and disappointment lit her face. “A crack. It broke! My ball broke! No!”

Adalene bit the inside of her cheek, and for a while, she stood still, wondering what just happened. She had experienced an earthquake once in Slithir’s castle on the seventh level. Down in Norfolm, in the abyss city of the tenth level, however… The levelstone here was known to be stable enough to never tremble. The lava levels frequently rose, sure, but the levelstone never quaked.

Even more concerning was what Samira had said before the quakes began. “What did you see?” Adalene asked.

“Monsters, ether, typhoons, and storms,” Samira said. “The storm season will continue. It will get worse.”

“And you are absolutely certain?” Adalene asked.

“Yes,” the young woman said. She didn’t bow or offer any respect, barely acknowledging that Adalene was the queen of the strongest military force in the world. Adalene could nearly see under her dress from the way the girl sat. “The storms will continue. I think it’s another age of typhoons. The answer seems obvious. Five thousand years ago was when the first age ended. Exactly five thousand. Now the storms are back. It’s another age of typhoons.”

Blunt little girl, Adalene thought. She usually despised the uncertainty of forecasters, with their vague promises, the words of which could have been twisted to mean anything and everything. Yet now that she had a forecaster telling her exactly what would happen, she suddenly didn’t want to trust the girl’s word.

Even if the things Samira saw in her ball had never been wrong so far.

“Five thousand years ago was also when the gods disappeared,” Samira said. “Noxbryn quoted this very thing. ‘When the typhoon age comes back, and uh, something like that, meet me in the gauntlet place.’ You need to find him.”

Samira continued tapping at her ball. She shook it and hit it against her forehead, then tried scratching the cracks, as if hoping they would disappear. Nothing worked.

“Thank you, Samira,” Adalene said. “Your insight is invaluable once again. Your ball will be replaced. We’ll provide you an even shinier one. You are free to go.”

Samira pouted at her cracked forecaster’s ball, but hopped off of her table and moved to the door. “Thank you, Queen Adalene.”

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She exited on her own, not at all concerned about the fact that she was inside a palace. “Mom!” her voice echoed outside. “My ball broke!”

Adalene sighed, and she found herself staring out of her window. Her palace stood firmly atop a hill, overlooking her city. Sturdy black brick buildings—large and tall—spanned the volcano-like landscape well into the distance, until they were so small Adalene couldn’t make out their shapes anymore. Puddles of lava poked out from openings in the dark levelstone, and more dripped from the sky, five hundred feet above.

Ballistic towers rose to the air, shooting runic missiles. Her ballistas were, without a doubt, the best in the world. The giant aspen weapon, with missiles the size of logs, was designed to shoot down any giant.

Norfolm had no walls. Her city was the ancient city of strength, after all, once known as The Stormkeep. Her military was her walls. She had the largest supply of runic arrows in the world. The most three-runed swords. The most third elevation demons, with dozens having reached the fourth.

But the storm season was tougher, and trade routes were impossible to keep. Resources were slowly draining. Storms reanimated lava, surges constantly erupting all over the city, with hellspawn attacking everywhere. Where the storms didn’t cause havoc, monsters rose straight from the lava from within the city.

And storm season was only starting?

Samira is only a child, Adalene told herself. She doesn’t understand.

And if Samira was right, the Stormkeep itself could be destroyed.

A knock came on her door. “Your Majesty?”

“Come in,” she said.

Frodin was back, now with another person. Ramo, her scribe, wearing a brown and green coat that extended below his knees. The tall man with a lightly scorched brown face lowered his head.

“Have you any reports on the earthquake?” Adalene asked.

“It did not seem to be caused by a build-up of ether,” Ramo said. “That is all we have deduced so far. It is being investigated. I cannot give a more concise answer yet.”

Adalene nodded. “If storms aren’t breaking under the city, that’s all we need for our survival. How is the ninth level surviving?”

Ramo wore a difficult expression. “Nobody can offer a single troop of assistance. Hazards reap the upper levels as well. Ingfried has requested assistance from us to Dirmire and Arthvar. Storm season is overwhelming all but the fifth level.”

“The fifth level?” Adalene asked. “So that is where the storms are finally mild?”

“The report I hear claims that over twenty storms have broken in the Shivell mountains,” Ramo said. “Shivenar is said to have invented a new method of runesmithing, along with advancements in ballistic technology. The upper levels are being cleared.”

“Shivenar?” Adalene asked, raising her eyebrows. “That weak trade city?”

“Just rumors, my Queen,” Ramo said. “Shivenar’s military is said to be making it to Fenlor’s fortress to assist Ingfried on the upper levels. I do not know how much of that is hopemongering.”

“Either way, Shivenar will not reach us from the fifth level in time,” Adalene said. “Storm season will continue. The Stormkeep must hold.”

A deep twang echoed through the city, vaguely audible to the palace, as one of the ballistas fired. A trail of ether was left in the air by the giant missile, until it collided with a magma mound rising from the Devil’s Cesspool—the largest lava pool within the middle of the city. The magma mound took the missile to the face, and archers began barraging it with firepower.

The Devil’s Cesspool was just a name, but an accurate one. A constant line of defence had to be stationed inside the city on that very pool to stop monsters from climbing out into the city. Despite that, a line of buildings to the east was crushed, as three magma mounds had broken out of the pool and picked a direction to crush anything in its way, until it finally fell.

“‘When the ether returns,’” Adalene found herself saying, “‘find me in the Gauntlet Of The Gods, at the bottom of the world…’ Is this his prophecy? Has Noxbryn’s warning finally arrived?”

“If that is the case, we might be in trouble, my Queen.”

She sighed. “That’s a funny way of saying we’re completely, utterly screwed, Ramo.”

He bit his lip. “Yes.”

Adalene stared out of the window at the ongoing battle. Another ballista fired, hitting the magma mound straight in the eye. It finally collapsed, falling back into the pool. Only a single magma mound wouldn’t be breaking free. There didn’t seem to be many casualties.

The arrows and missiles, however, fell into the lava alongside the magma mound. A few were retrieved with levitation skills, but the mound’s corpse could not be saved. Its host bones would fall back to the lava, where it would reanimate once again as ether built up. All the while dozens of storms were breaking all around the tenth level—far too many to clear as they spawned. Even venturing out to lay ether sticks was too dangerous.

And with storm season acting the way it did, the magma mound would take less than a day to rise back up.

“Is seeking God truly our last saving grace?” Adalene asked. “To defeat nature, are we to contact those who created it?”

“The Gauntlet Of The Gods has been sealed for thousands of years. Dearest Adalene.”

She snorted. “Bring me the texts again, and see that Samira is happy with her new ball. With her insight, maybe the seal of the gauntlet can be cracked.”

And if not, who else is there to call for a savior?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep