65 Into The Darkness (1/2)

I found myself standing in the large cavern I had excavated using my power over soil, stone, and dirt last night. Where I stood was roughly in the middle of this massive cavern, and I allowed myself a brief moment with which to admire my own handiwork.

The cavern that surrounded me was utterly gigantic. It was several times wider than all of Comillas and was perhaps a twentieth of the total length of the forest under which it was located. It wasn't shaped in any particularly unnatural way, rather I merely wanted it to be massive, to give me a wide amount of space to work with. I had succeeded in that regard.

It was eerily illuminated by my own powers, specifically by my ability to generate light. I kept the place illuminated because I wasn't comfortable in total darkness, an odd idiosyncrasy that I and the domains felt was probably due to the beginning of my life being a period I spent in darkness.

The glow that allowed sight-possessing visitors who relied on light to see was a powerful and seemingly sourceless one, but for a moment out of curiosity I looked at a corner of the cavern and willed the light to vanish. Only the area I was looking at was abruptly bathed in darkness, and after a few seconds, I allowed the light I created in this chamber to refill the darkened place. I turned my attention back to the matter at hand.

My shadow was inhabited by a strange demon, a creature known as a praereptor demon. I closed my eyes and allowed my not-so-mini-map to consume my vision.

The gigantic map had only recently stopped expanding. The ”mini-map” that my ”Tremor-sense” power had granted me was no longer a mini-map and now could be more accurately described as a sprawling thing, one that even in its miniaturized form informed me of every step taken by the several million inhabitants of Puerto Rico.

Studying either the miniaturized map or its more expansive form filled my heart with a powerful tug of ambition. I could see numerous locations filled with enough life for them to obviously be settlements of some sort that happened to be populated by sapient creatures. Only a few of those were located on the island's surface.

Of the surface settlements, there was the city of San Gerardo, Comillas, the goblin tribe, a tribe of orcs, a number of satyrs and gnomes, a tribe of creatures called hyenoids, a small group of ogres and a final group of creatures called kobolds.

The surface was also inhabited by a handful of creatures who lived alone, or in pairs. Those included things like a solitary rusalka, an aquatic elf who lived along the coast furthest from San Gerardo, a single hag who lived in a clearing in the forest, and a handful of other apparently lonely creatures.

Unlike the number of settlements above the ground, there were many settlements of creatures who lived underneath the island. Of the living creatures dwarves, dark elves, driders, grave giants, gugs, reptilefolk, and insects dwelled in massive colonies or other communities. Many kinds of deceased creatures could be found underneath the island as well, of assorted kinds of creatures.

Something that surprised me was that there were few solitary creatures who lived underneath Puerto Rico. The ancient black dragon dwelled in what appeared to be a massive underground cavity, relatively alone aside from the company of small, unintelligent creatures like worms and other bottom-feeders.

Other solitary, subterranean creatures included a creature classified as a ”Shadowfolk”, a single ”Maddened-man”, and a handful of other creatures with bizarre names. In time I'd turn my full attention to them.

For now, for the first time, I turned my full attention to one of the two cities of dark elves located underneath Puerto Rico. One was located not far from where my lair was located, and another was located further away from human civilization.

Both had a fair number of kilometers separating them, and a number of other settlements between them as well. I turned my attention to the one closest to me. I studied it, and carefully scrutinized what I could learn from my powerful ”Tremor-sense”.

And when I felt as prepared as I could I quietly teleported myself to a momentarily uninhabited tunnel that led in and out of the city, my shadow carrying my newest minion along for the ride.

I found myself inside a pitch-black tunnel. Off in the distance, much to my surprise, I could see a gentle glow that provided the strange city of dark-elves I was intent on visiting with something surprising: a source of insignificant, yet noticeable light. It drew my eyes, and so I hurled myself forward so that I could get a better look at it.

I sped through the tunnel, reveling in one of my odder abilities: the ability to move at the speed of light and found myself at the edge of a ledge overlooking the city. Thanks to that power I moved through the length of the tunnel at a speed exceeding the speed of sound.