Immovable Object

I looked around me as I emerged from the ground. I was in a small tunnel. An old one that had some how managed to weather the tests of time. I nodded in approval. That was good. I had made this tunnel and thousands of others like it. I would have been rather upset to see my work undone.

Well, more than upset really. These tunnels took a long time to make.

But I shook off the small bit of pride at my handiwork and moved down the long tunnel, using the vibrations in the ground to give me a clear image of my pitch black surroundings. There would be time later for self-congratulations. For now, I had to make sure that what I hoped was at the end of this tunnel was still there. For even if my tunnels had survived, what I sought was far from being guaranteed the same fate.

It took an hour of walking at my slow and steady pace to reach the end of the tunnel. I could have arrived faster but, even if the tunnels had survived, they had still suffered some damage from age, damage which I fixed with but a few waves of the hand and simply sliding my feet over cracks in the floor. Before me now lay a disk-door made of highly dense stone, once more made by me, that rolled to the side with a small flick of my chin. Green tinged white light poured into the tunnel and my goal was finally revealed to me.

The capitol city of my once great empire, hidden under half a mile of earth. It stretched for miles in every direction in the circular dome-like cavern, great thick pillars of earth as thick in diameter as thirty men standing side by side holding up the roof. The cavern was lined with green luminescent crystals and several waterfalls fed the lake and rivers of the underground water supply. But most impressive to me, the thing that I was most proud of, was the city itself. The skeletons of tens of thousands of stone buildings stood proud, bare of the wood and painted that had rotted away after so long and yet still radiating an unrelenting strength like the very earth they were made from.

And directly in the center of it all, surrounding a pillar three times as thick as the rest, was a great palace surrounded by a mile of fertile ground where exotic gardens use to call home. But like all the other buildings, it was bare of all wood and paint. The gardens still held life though but the exotic flowers and trees and bushes had fallen to sickly weeds and the like.

Despite all this, I looked across it all with a proud, if slightly detached, expression. The whole city had been built by my hands, my apprentice, and thousands upon thousands of proud and determined people that called this place home so long ago. I cocked my head in wonder as I gazed at the palace. Speaking of my apprentice, I couldn't help but wonder if he still called this place home.

Only one way to find out.

With a strong punch to the air, my arm parallel with the winding stairs on the cavern's wall that led to the main streets, every step smoothed into each other to create a perfectly smooth ramp. With speed impossible for most creatures, I rocketed down the ramp with a great trail of dust, my earth shoes keeping me firmly attached to the ground.

As I traveled deeper into the city, I began to notice something was amiss. I could feel movement in the ground that was not my own, yet it was too light for me to make out what was making it and moved too much like something of my size to be mere rodents that had taken up residence.

After several more instances of this, becoming more and more frequent as I got closer to the palace grounds, I stopped and was immediately engulfed by the dust cloud that had followed me. I could feel them much more clearly now, the strange creatures that had apparently been setting up an ambush for me. I closed my eyes and extended my senses even further, slamming my foot into the ground to 'ping' my surrounding area.

Oh yes, they were much clearer now that I wasn't moving. There was more than a few dozen of them, about forty-two if I was correct, and they were positioning themselves into a circle around me, using the dust cloud as cover. Smart but still useless.

From what I could tell, they seemed to be some kind of bulky, bipedal mole people. That would explain why they would want to live underground in a dilapidated city and how they were moving about the dust so easily. They probably relied less on sight then they did their other senses.

As the dust began to settle, I opened my eyes, only to see a single one of the mole persons. It was an ugly thing, completely fur-less with taut, pale skin clinging to every nook and cranny of its skull. Were it not for the beady pupils flitting about examining me through nearly closed eyes, I would have thought that its eyes were completely covered in skin. Its mouth was a horrific cavern of raw pink flesh with four huge rabbit-like teeth on its lower and upper jaw and its nose looked as if it had been made flat by sandpaper. And to top it all off, it was hunched over with bulging muscles, clawed hands and feet, and wore a pitiful excuse for clothing. In its hands was a shield made of what looked like a broken panel of metal and a rectangular sword that looked equally scavenged.

If there was any proof of there being a face that only a mother could love, this was it. And I was being generous.

"What you do here, surface monkey?" it, for I would not go through the effort of trying to discern its gender, demanded in an aggressive, scratchy, and all around nails-on-a-chalk-board like manner. I raised an eyebrow at its speech, not that it could even see the top half of my face, thoroughly surprised it could even speak basic, well, basic.

"I am here to reclaim my city after several thousand years of absence," I stated, straight to the point. I would not waste my time on these creatures.

The thing snarled at me, spittle flying like some disgusting mist. "Bah! You surface monkey not take Dredge city! Is ours now and there only one of you! You not have!" It slammed its weapon against its shield, apparently signalling the attack.

I would have none of it.

With a quick spin to gather the necessary energy, I landed in a squat and threw my arms out to my sides, palms facing out. In an instant, the walls of the buildings with the mole people in them along the streets slammed into their opposites, crushing everyone of them with little resistance. Before the one in front of me could react, I took a step forward and throw my hands forward, my rock gloves flying off my hands in response to punch it in the gut and teeth, shattering them. The thing flew back a few feet before landing in a crumpled mess.

I slowly walked towards its fallen form as my gloves reassembled around my hands. Once I was standing over it, I looked down disinterestedly. "It's not very smart to attack a king in his own home, you know. He tends to build it to his advantage." It was a bad habit, really, but I couldn't help but taunt those I defeated, like this weakling. There was often a look in their eyes that became so much more than could be described with the application of but a few simple words. It would probably come back to bite me some day but I didn't see it happening any time soon.

The Dredge gargled and spat out the shattered pieces of its teeth, looking at me with obvious fear. "You monster! What you want? I give!"

I shook my head at its attempt to bribe me to spare its life. Really, it would be better to just end the thing's suffering. But then a thought occurred to me. I crouched down so that I could look at its beady eyes easier. "There is something I want. How many of you have infested my city?" I asked. It gargled again and spat a wad of blood onto the ground.

"Me no know. Just that many tribes be here, like my. Me no know how many in other tribes but my have maybe hundred. We small though," it wheezed out. My glove had apparently broken a rib or two.

I nodded and stood. "Thank you for your information. Now, unless you want me to hunt your tribe down, I suggest you get your people to leave. Tell the other tribes the same. If they don't wish to, tell them that I will wait for them to take up their grievances with me at the palace over there." I pointed down the main street, where the large palace could be seen.

"Yes, yes, I do that! We go leave surface monkey's city! We not bother you!" With that, the thing scrambled away in some random direction, stumbling all the while from fear. When it was out of site, I resumed my journey down the road.

Finally, the little interruption now far behind me, I arrived at the base of the several hundred steps that would lead up to palace's main floor and hopefully the person I was looking for too. As I began the long climb up the stairs, I let a part of my mind wander to the past.

I looked around at the cavern that I had spent nearly five months to make. I couldn't help but sigh in irritation though for, despite the miles of area now filled with the basic stone skeletons of buildings being filled and finished even further by thousands of citizens pouring through the tunnels I had spent several months prior to now making, I was still nowhere near done. In fact, as I turned to the project before me with grim determination, I couldn't help but wonder just how long it would take before the city I envisioned would be finished.

Considering the palace in front of me that was almost one-fifth finished after a month, I guessed it would be a long time. I shook my head though and raised my hands resolutely, ready to continue giving my vision form one highly dense, extremely heavy block at a time.

"Hey, Wu Lee," a voice behind me greeted excitedly. "How's the palace coming?"

I sighed and lowered my arms, irritated by the interruption but relieved all the same for it. I turned and gave a small smile to the prepubescent dragon in front of me. "I told you already, as my apprentice you are part of my inner circle. You can call me Charles." The child waved it off with a grin filled with many blunted teeth. "But since you asked, it's coming along fine." I waved towards the large, trapezoidal platform that would raise the palace proper up about a hundred feet. The platform alone had taken some time to do, building it up with numerous individual slabs to provide it extra flexibility in case of an earthquake or something similar. By tomorrow I was sure that I would be able to get started on the palace itself.

The dark yellow and white scaled dragon rubbed at his chin with a claw thoughtfully, taking in every detail of the, honestly, complex structure. "Pretty impressive," he said. "Great spirit knows I don't have the control for this kind of construction. I'm having enough trouble with making the smaller buildings as specified by the architects. And I'm just making the bare minimum of the buildings. I'm not sure I could handle making all those roofs and ceilings and stairs and so on. That's what all the wood and stuff the civilians are bringing down is for."

I nodded in approval, both to my apprentice who had been working so hard to learn earthbending to the same degree as I and the citizens for their own hard work in creating a home for themselves and their families. "That is good to hear. I hope to finish the palace as soon as possible so I can get back to work finishing the other half of the cavern." My apprentice blanched at that while I turned back to the prospective palace and pulled another huge slab of dense rock from the ground and slowly floating it to its needed position.

"You're crazy," he chuckled out with a grin. "The cavern is big enough. Heck, I don't even think we have enough people to fit what we have now." He motioned an arm towards the streams of people leaving and entering the tunnels. I didn't need to look though. I knew there weren't enough people. That there was still a relatively small population that swore fealty to me.

I smirked though. "There will be more. After all, if we build it, they will come."

"I feel like you're referencing something," he said, annoyed. I just gave a quiet chuckle and slightly adjusted a slab that looked out of place.

By the time I had returned my full consciousness to the present, I had already made my way through the now completely bare palace. I did not dwell on the complete lack of regal tapestries, rugs, paintings, statues, and ornate wooden doors inlaid with expensive and beautiful metals. Like the rest of the city, everything could be fixed. And where one would consider all the culture of the city lost, I and hopefully one other still lived to rejuvenate it.

I entered the inner courtyard and found my quarry wrapped around the great central pillar of the cavern, resting. My old apprentice, the young, prepubescent yellow and white dragon, was now a monolithic elder. His yellow scales had dulled to to an almost sand-like tone and the white that had ran along his belly and chin was now a pale, glowing green. Like all stone dragons, the vestigial wings he had as a hatchling were completely gone, replaced by scales thicker than his winged brethren, the sky dragons. His neck was short and thick, his head far more geometric than the organic shaped sky dragons.

In fact, compared to any non-stone dragon, he was much larger in every aspect. Huge muscles bulged under his scales. His claws as big a large house. He was even large enough, if I included his tail, to wrap himself around the great pillar. And yet, despite how different he looked, I couldn't help but smile fondly at the silently resting titan before me. For to me, it was if the slumbering dragon had not aged a day.

I took a great breath, held it for a moment, and released. "TORQUE!" I shouted. The sound bounced off the walls of the palace and seemed to grow in volume until it sounded like a mighty storm booming overhead. For my dragon friend though, it was akin to the annoying buzz of an alarm set on vibrate.

Hot air flooded the court yard as Torque's body began to wake up from the stimulation. He groaned, the sound like two mountains grinding together. Slowly, the great elder dragon oped his eyes and immediately locked onto me. A great maw of grey, blunted teeth revealed itself as Torque grinned, each tooth nearly thrice as tall as I and twice as thick.

"Charles," he rumbled in a slow and deep, booming bass that made the earth beneath me shake. "It has been far, far too long."

I nodded solemnly. "Yes, it has." I gave him a meaningful look, to which he returned full force. One that had originally brought us together as pupil and master. One of ambition and promise. "But I have returned now and I believe we still have some unfinished business to attend to."