[b]Eraus of Southmine[/b]

When the roof of her world was secured, Sarsanelesa went south. Her northern hemisphere was not complete but she still wished to know the entire world. Much of that hemisphere was rocky and  she found what towns occupied it derived their living from beneath the ground.

Beneath the ground, a place she had mastered long ago.

They dug and they hammered with chisels and picks and collected anything valuable from the mundane stone, but often the stone fought back. This was what happened to the town of Eraus. They had all but lost their mines, and with no way to reclaim them they were certain they were all going to die.

A beast of some alien description had taken refuge in their caves. It called the passages home and devoured any who encroached. Several mines had been collapsed some with people still inside.

Sarsanelesa heard them when shey pleaded. “Help us, you are legendary upon this world. Save us, and —”

Sarsanelesa held up a hand to silence the pleading man.

He looked up at her, his pleading mixed with anxiety. She stared back at him, regarding him and studying him and studying everyone else around him.

“I know what you are asking for.” She said at last.

The man’s eyesstayed wide.

“But first I would have your name.”

He seemed taken aback, pleasantries or some such when all is dire? “Jons, uh just Jons.”

Sarsanelesa lowered her gaze to him. She did not, after all that, speak his name.

“Point in the direction of this, beast.”
Jons did so, with a trembling hand he pointed beyond the western border of Eraus, even with their naked eyes the mine could still be seen. A single entry that would lead to a winding network of caves, and it was clear the people here were too fearful to go near it.

Sarsanelesa turned without a further word and strode towards the cave. AS she got closer she saw the remnants of battle, or slaughter, upon its outside. Bones littered clean about the entrance and blood dried upon the soil. She stepped over the long dead and went inside a twisting network of tools and ore and even more dead.

As she wound through the network of mines she felt herself going lower and lower until the light stopped shining from outside, but still she kept going until she heard the deep pitted growl from its lowest reaches. She stored further towards it and the growl became louder, a warning to turn back.

A warning she ignored. This was her world, this was her mine. A growl was a threat and Sarsanelesa did not like to be threatened.

Then she saw it, something scaly and wiry and wet uncoiled from what had to be its nest. Something no mortal could hope to fight against. But then, she was no mortal she had learned that long ago.

The creature lunged a long wyrmlike neck, its jaws agape, at her. But a wall of rock erupted between them and it squealed in pain as it struck the wall instead and recoiled. The wall of rock melted back into the ground.

“You are, unwelcome.” Sarsaenelesa said at last. The creature did not seem to take kindly to that, or maybe it was just mindlessly territorial. She didn’t know and it did not concern her.

The creatures coiled and writhed its tail, whipping it across the chamber, but Sarsenelesa casually ducked beneath it. The ceiling began to rumble, and small stoned began to crack and crumble then fall.

The creature flinched when they got larger,, and the room began crumbling in greater and greater chunks.
“This will be your tomb.”

Sarsanelesa said at last, and the rom caved in on top of the creature, al but its head, that came to rest poking out from under th rocks. It was dead.

Sarsenelesa returned to Jons, but she did not leave the mines so in disarray. She carved walls and towers outside its entrance, and commanded Jons to always keep watch, for whatever had taken its residence did not come from underground. It came from without, and she had found a taste of whatever new enemy inhabited the south of Ealos Vershaa.

Something mindless and bestial that only had a mind to feed.

Eraus of Southmine was secure, and it belonged to her. But the southern hmeishpere was still wild and untamed to her.