A Brief Transition

Some time had passed. Then a thud, and loud creaking from the cart. The path before him was now broken stone. A piercing headache shot through Anumia’s skull as he winced. Bouncing back and forth, he looked to the horse, who was still unbothered. He realized he could see into the stretch, despite the thick canopy of leaves. There were large boulders, some black, looming, shaped like heads. Birds chirped, and a cool breeze flew over Anumia. The trees were larger here, older. Entire fields were covered by canopies of trees hundreds of meters tall.

The forest stretched on, and Anumia looked as hard as he could. The cobbled road rolled with the swaying hills and boulders; the thick canopy reached ever onward. A frigid chill went over the elder man as a distinct clicking could be heard. Then it stopped before it started again. In the distance, Anumia looked but saw nothing. Trees, boulders, shadows.

The road climbed toward a colossal shelf of natural bedrock—a massive plateau of pale stone that jutted out over the churning ocean beyond. To the west, a wide, rushing river carved a jagged path along the shelf’s edge, out from the forest, its waters roaring over the cliffside in a rapid spray of silver mist that led to the sea. Perched precariously atop this high stone terrace sat a city Anumia could not name.

A massive, ever-reaching outer wall girdled the lower city, where soot-stained houses and grain silos huddled together. From their chimneys, pillars of dark smoke stretched upward like funnels, casting long shadows across the crowded roofs. Beyond this bustling lower ring loomed a second, far more ominous inner wall, separating the common folk from the heights above. And there, crowning the highest crest of the stone shelf, sat the palace of black stone. Its towers peaked in gleaming white and gold, rising high above tangled, overgrown gardens and the derelict, time-worn statues of ancient Gnome kings who silently watched the sea. The cobbled road dissolved into the maw of the city gates. Then, a voice cut through the cold air.

“Oi, you! Who goes there?”

The shout came from high up in a black stone tower, Anumia’s horse rearing back with a sharp whine. He scanned the battlements but found only shadows.

“I’m looking for Airin!” Anumia called out, his throat tight. “The village! I’m trying to get home.”

“You’re about a hundred miles to the north; this is Gniagom.” The voice seemed to echo coldly, and silence slowly followed.

Anumia looked pale as his gaze turned away, the blood drained from his face, and cold seeped in. The voice started again, with a stark shift in tone.

“Why don’t you come inside? It’s getting dark.”

The great iron-strapped gates groaned inward, the screech of black metal clanking against stone like a war cry. Without a command, the horse stepped forward into the shadow of the archway. Anumia’s old heart seemed too weary to recognize the danger.

He had read of Gniagom in the histories—the crown jewel of the Gnome Partition. But ink on parchment hadn’t prepared him for the scale of it. The legendary intersection of Gnomish innovation and Dwarven labor materialized before him. Clockwork streetlamps hissed with gaslight, their copper gears clicking in rhythmic symmetry. Massive stone aqueducts, chiseled by dwarven hands, towered overhead, feeding water into roaring brass turbines. This wasn’t just a city; it was a roaring, smoke-belching machine, a volatile melting pot of coin, iron, and competing ambitions.

The guard descended the stairs, his black armor clicking in a tight, rhythmic cadence. Tiny puffs of pale blue steam hissed from the seams of his gauntlets, and as he approached the cart, the air around him smelled faintly of ozone and old parchment.

“I’m sorry, traveler, but we’ll have to take that sword. No weapons in the city. I’ll let the buckler pass, however.”

The guard stood stone-still under the stone archway, his gauntleted hand extended. Beyond him, lining the top of the wooden stairs, stood a row of small, cloaked figures. They were unnervingly motionless—not a single coat flipped in the wind, and their eyes caught the torchlight with a flat, glass-like sheen. Anumia felt the heavy weight of their collective stare, leaving him no time to question the strange rigidity of their posture. He could only comply.

“A-Alright.”

The cobbled path gave way entirely, dissolving into a thick, oily brown mire that sucked at the cart wheels. A sulfurous stench hung over the streets, thickening into a greasy haze that blurred the city’s silhouette. Anumia let the horse trudge forward through the gloom, utterly lost. He squeezed past tight throngs of humans and soot-stained dwarves. A ragged beggar lunged toward him, shouting frantic, unintelligible words, but the heavy clank of clockwork machinery from the walls drowned the man out.

“The value dropped by half since yesterday!” a dwarven laborer roared nearby, his jaw tight with rage.

Instantly, a shouting match erupted. A mob of angry dwarves surged forward, shoving the speaker against a stone wall before he managed to break free and duck through a heavy iron door. The crowd remained in the street, muttering angrily. Anumia watched them pass, his stomach twisting. He had no idea things in the capital had gotten this volatile. A preacher spoke of the ancients, and how they might bring power.

“They mocked the prophecies! They called the sacred warnings the whispers of senile men! But behold the harvest of their ignorance! Out of the black crucible of Safarin’s malice, the Flesh-Bound have crawled into the light of our failing world!”
Before he could turn away, two tall silhouettes cut through the brown fog. The black-armored city watch blocked his path, their halberds crossing over his horse’s chest.

“Halt,” the lead guard barked, his voice echoing from inside a dark visor. “State your business and declare what’s in the cart.”

“Nothing,” Anumia stammered, raising his hands. “I have nothing. I was robbed on the road.”

The guards exchanged a brief, silent glance. “An empty cart from the south? Let’s have a look anyway.”

The second guard tore back the canvas cover of the cart, rummaging through the leftover debris. He pulled out a stray iron needle and a spool of silver-spun thread. He held them up to the gaslight, his eyes narrowing.

“A tailor,” the guard muttered, turning back to Anumia with a sudden, predatory, sharp interest. Anumia threw his head back towards the sky, eyes rolling. “The Grand Overseer has been demanding foreign weavers all morning. Change of plans, traveler. You’re coming with us to the palace.”

The guards didn’t waste time. They shoved Anumia through the inner wall and marched him up the steep, twisting precipice of the stone shelf. The smog of the lower city fell away, replaced by the suffocating, silent opulence of the black stone palace. Here, the raw cavern rock had been sheared into flawless, interlocking hexagonal pillars. Veins of a raw, violet-hued mineral bled through the seams of the basalt, pulsing with a low, irregular thrum that Anumia could feel in his teeth. The architecture was uniquely gnomish: built at a scale that felt claustrophobic to humans, with low-slung archways and intricate brass conduits. These pipes didn’t carry steam; instead, they were filled with a swirling, crushed purple slurry that cast an unsettling, amethyst twilight across the corridors.

They dragged him into a vaulted chamber where the ceiling rose into an elaborate dome of interlocking iron gears. Fixed at the center of the largest cog was a jagged, fist-sized chunk of the purple rock. It sat suspended without brackets. Beneath this mechanical sky, a frantic gnome in gold-trimmed robes was pacing furiously, clutching a stack of parchments. This was Grand Overseer Bram.
Bram’s boots clacked a rapid, uneven rhythm against the geometric floor tiles. He was a whirlwind of nervous energy, his fingers constantly adjusting a complex, triple-lens ocular contraption strapped to his brow. He looked less like a ruler and more like an engineer trying to balance an equation that kept changing. Tucked into his vest pocket was a small, polished shard of the violet stone, wrapped in heavy lead wire. Every few steps, he would tap the pocket, as if checking if it was still cold—or perhaps, if it was getting too warm.

“Sir, we found a foreign tailor at the gates,” the lead guard announced, his voice echoing awkwardly in the low-ceilinged room.

Bram stopped dead in his tracks. He didn’t look at the guard; instead, he flicked a tiny lever on his headgear, causing a magnified violet-tinted lens to click loudly into place over his left eye. He peered at Anumia through the glass. For a fraction of a second, the purple vein in the wall behind Anumia flared into a blinding brilliance, casting a shadow that seemed to move a second slower than the tailor himself. Bram shivered, aggressively chewing on the tip of a charcoal stylus until his lower lip stained grey.

“A tailor? Idiots! Imbeciles of the highest caliber!” Bram hissed, his voice a sharp, reedy instrument. He slammed his parchments onto a nearby stone desk, cluttered with brass calipers and several lead-lined containment jars. “Not now! Do you have any concept of the load-bearing capacity of my schedule today? Zero!” The High Lord has already entered the Hall of Determination. The human knight’s trial is starting, and the resonance from the lower vaults is already making the stones… restless.”

He began pacing again, his hands fluttering over his robes to check the various pocket watches chained to his belt. One of the watches had three hands, all spinning backward at varying speeds.

“Bring the tailor along,” Bram snapped, grabbing his papers back with a sharp tug. “If there’s a riot, I want all outsiders where I can see them. At least if he’s next to me, I can ensure he doesn’t disrupt the spatial flow of the gallery.” Bram let out a strange chuckle before yelling again. “Move, move! We are exactly forty-two seconds behind my projections, and the violet is bleeding into the hour!”