Just a short one today. I've had about four hours sleep in the last 36, due to work and other matters, and can't summon up the energy to do more. But at the same time being tired makes one's imagination go to some odd places... So you get this 
Never fear, though, more will come along soon enough. And other stories will sprout chapters, like little mushrooms that spring forth after a rainstorm.
...I need to get some sleep.
London is an old city.
Generally considered by most to have been essentially founded by the Roman invaders in AD 47, at the time the settlement that would some eighteen hundred years later become the largest city in the world. The capital of the greatest empire the world had ever seen, long after the Romans had passed into history, and their various successors. In modern times it is no longer the largest city, although it still ranks well up the list. Growing from its roots and absorbing everything around it one village or town at a time, it steadily increased in power and prominence through those near two thousand years from the point an invading force looked at the location and thought it was a good place to build a trading post and strategic center. They could have had no idea how much things would change in time.
Nor could they have realized the truth, that they were not the first to build there.
London is an
old city.
It wasn't called London then, of course. Nor Londinium, nor any of the names given to the other local enclaves that would ultimately be subsumed under the relentless expansion of that initial township. Names that in many cases live on in street names or boroughs of the capital city. Entire river systems still flow under the surface, giving names to other streets, even though few realize that many feet below, trickles and torrents of water run towards the Thames, and ultimately the sea.
There is much more down there than ancient culverts and long covered streams, of course.
London is an
old city.
Long before the Romans marched from the beaches, slowly conquering the native inhabitants town by town, village by village, others had built on that very site. More than twice as far back from that point as the founding of Londinium is from the current age, constructions were created, made of massive oaken timbers deeply buried in much the same place as the Romans would eventually pick for their own first efforts. Partly for much the same reason, of course, it being a natural crossing point of the river, but partly for… other reasons.
Reasons long lost to history. Millennia before Rome was founded, people moved throughout what would become known as the British Isles, creating huge structures the function of which can only be guessed at by modern humanity. Records, if they ever existed in such a culture as other than verbal myth, have long since been lost to history. The Romans would have only heard at best fragmented tales of what came before. Even the early Britons who lived there at the time knew very little about the deep past of their own culture. Even two thousand years ago, Stonehenge was ancient, Amesbury was far back in the mists of time, Boscawen-Un and Castlerigg built millennia before the ships came out of the east to disgorge the legions. Over thirteen hundred stone circles and innumerable related sites dot the island of Britain, all built, used, and abandoned long before.
But the structures lying buried by silt and meadows and time on the site that would become Londinium predate them all. Even by the time of the building of the most famous megalithic structure of them all, Stonehenge itself, those structures were ancient and long forgotten.
Because London is an
old city.
Layers and layers of construction echo back through the ages to those far gone days. Even today, in the high technology world that has come about after centuries of development and learning, the true extent of what lies underneath the busy streets of one of the largest cities on the planet, the highest population density in the whole of the UK, is unrealized to all. A few have some inkling, driven by events throughout the last millennia and more which have been documented and mulled over by those dedicated to the task. More have slight suspicions that all is not what it seems, scientific rigor and chance archaeological discoveries during one or other of the innumerable construction projects the city is awash with informing them of aspects of history they seize upon with fascination.
But neither group knows the
full truth. The public at large is entirely ignorant of what they walk over every day on their way to work, or pass by in the dark far under the streets, rumbling through tunnels built over the last two hundred years. They have no idea that more tunnels lie below them, and more below
those. Down and down, far below what is commonly believed to be plausible due to the geology of the area. The Victorians dug deeper than most, and found
aspects of the Deep layers which they hurriedly covered over again and denied all knowledge of, history silent on what they discovered, aside from a small number of people who make it their business to remember, so they will not be taken unawares...
The Romans, long before them, also found they sometimes opened something they wished they hadn't, and went to great effort to ensure that those openings were properly closed once again. No records were kept, all involved were sworn to silence, if not rendered unable to ever divulge what was found. Yet even so, certain individuals ensured that enough knowledge was preserved to warn future generations. And the city steadily grew over the top of the Deep, covering it in layer after layer of London, trapping it safely far out of reach of the curious and the unwise.
And with luck, preventing it escaping.
Even so, on occasion there were accidental incursions past the capping layers into what lies below, stirring into activity that which should best be left to sleep. Dwellers in the Deep would rise, sometimes being pushed back at great cost, sometimes escaping into the upper world and vanishing, only to be later found to be thriving. Mostly the smaller denizens, the ones that could avoid notice for long enough that by the time they were finally noticed, it was much too late to do anything other than live with it. Luckily for life on the surface, the larger things in the Deep generally prefer to stay there, unless provoked. And once they have dealt with the provocation, they return from whence they came, leaving ruin and terror behind them.
The goblins, much like the humans, have had their interactions with the Deep. And, like the humans, they did not enjoy the experience. Unlike the humans, they still remember what happened, and have gone to great expense and effort to ensure that it does not happen again. But then they have more recently encountered the dwellers underneath, arriving as they did in Britain over a thousand years after the founding of Londonium. Incautiously dismissing the warnings they were given by the few who knew parts of the truth, they arrogantly started burrowing as is their custom, only to eventually find out that old tales sometimes do indeed have a certain truth to them.
It took over fifty years to recover from that initial misadventure, but being persistent, they managed it. And, not being entirely foolish, they forbade such works as had nearly brought doom upon them all for all time. Of course, goblins are not unlike humans in many ways, and the mere fact that the Deep is known to exist occasionally results in someone who believes himself or herself to be up to the challenge deciding to ignore the restrictions in place of personal experience.
This experience is seldom passed down other than as a cautionary tale by the survivors.
The Deep does not like being prodded.
The long-forgotten people who first created constructions above the depths out of which bizarre creatures and phenomena come are lost to any modern knowledge. Their true motivations are unknown, their techniques vanished into prehistory. But they, possibly through trial and error and desperation, did leave a mark that has resonated through the ages, as they succeeded in mostly sealing the Deep. Those rare scholars who realize aspects of history known to almost no one suspect that they were the first users of what most call magic. How they learned, what they did, no one can now say with any degree of certainty. What
is known by that rarefied group is that magic itself quite likely arises from that very Deep that was sealed off with great effort, and has been repeatedly resealed over and over again throughout the centuries.
In modern times, technology has been used to supplement the old workings, combining into a much more potent ability to contain the dwellers below and prevent the incautious above from gaining access. It is not infallible, nothing truly is, and those in the know are constantly worried that sooner or later someone or something, from either side, will test the seals, until yet another incursion from the depths occurs. So they keep watch, making sure that the Deep is undisturbed for another day, and monitoring the situation using every tool at their disposal.
They research, very cautiously, that which underlies a large part of the city, and theorize about whether it is a dimensional breach, or a universe unto itself, or possibly some form of demonic alien. On occasion they have visitors from elsewhere who pass on hints and scraps of information which is entered into the secret documentation even the majority of the governmental organizations in charge of the country are unaware of, as they have done for centuries.
And they also watch the magicals, who are the most likely source of a provocation to the Deep, as magicals are widely known to have little sense and far too little instinct for self preservation, mixed with a breathtaking ability to ignore what they don't understand. This has led, all too many times, to significant problems. Sometimes the magical world corrects these problems on its own, sometimes the Directorate is forced to step in and deal with the situation itself.
That is their mandate, and they have carried it out successfully for a very long time indeed.
They worry about one day failing. If they do, that day will not be a good day for anyone.
And now… Now there is something
else to worry about. Something that is somehow connected to the Deep, and something that is connected to things that are
worse than the Deep.
Which is not a happy thought at all.
But they will keep watching, and do what is needed, as they have done for centuries on end.
Because, of course, London
is an old city.
And old cities have secrets, often ones you wish you never learned.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
As she leafed through a book on runic magic with interest, Taylor kept some eyes on everyone else in the store, more eyes on her new friends to make sure no one was doing anything stupid, even more eyes outside on the people wandering around Diagon Alley, yet more eyes on the goblins quietly freaking out in Gringotts, and still more eyes on the interface between this magical pocket universe and the real world, having managed to work out how to push her ability through the barrier without it being fully open.
But most of the rest of her attention was on cataloging all the neat things far below the streets, much deeper even than the vaults way under Gringotts. It was fascinating down there. Like another world, really.
And absolutely
rotten with magic. Her fyre could feel it, and she could feel her fyre and through it something much, much larger watching with great interest and a sort of happy anticipation. It was extremely pleased to have met her and the more contact she had with it the closer the bond between them grew.
Lisa, she suspected, was going to be very confused by the whole thing when she got back…
On the other hand she had a crapload of gold in a belt of holding along with a vast array of really cool toys, which would go a
long way towards making her friend stop being confused and start being very pleased, she thought to herself with an inner smile, absently using a pixie to remove a wand from someone who was attempting to carry out a mugging in the smaller alley running off the side of Diagon, then chasing him with a few teleporting spiders until he ran away screaming in horror.
His victim looked around with a puzzled and somewhat nervous expression, twitched when the pixie dropped the wand on his head, stared up at it then at the wand, before bending down and picking the thing up. Slipping it into his pocket he quickly made his way in the opposite direction mumbling to himself under his breath, and casting worried glances behind him.
Taylor chuckled slightly, turning the page.
A villain had to have standards, and muggers were very much the bottom of the barrel. Her dad had told her that many times.
Resolving to find something
really nice for him as a present, she kept reading.
