Friends, I have been thinking that, in order to be sure to attend to your interest and, certainly, to better understand the situation Finna, Mim and Beleg have gotten themselves into, it would be convenient that, from time to time, we visit the library.


    And although I, unlike Mim, have no knowledge of how to build a strong and sturdy home, I do know that the layers do not start with the roof, but with the foundations. Therefore, we will begin by visiting the works of a relevant author, who will enlighten us about a world that, like many others, turns out to be counter-intuitive in its real nature.


    Here I leave you the excerpt that attends us, written by Shalmanasar II, king of kings among the cousins of a forgotten age, who liked to abandon the affairs of court and country in favor of scholarship on the truth of existence:


    “I ''ll gather here knowledge about the physical foundation of our world, thanks in part to the donations and teachings of my friend, the elf of the peaks Sílbirin, who knows more than anyone else about the strata above our heads.


    In truth our world neither begins nor ends where reason and the senses seem to tell us, and we lead our lives, from cradle to grave, experiencing just one or two of the many strands of existence. For in truth our existence goes much lower than the fortresses of the dwarves and much higher than the peaks of the elves, we men being right in the middle.


    It was inscribed in some celestial law that reigns over us all, that each people would lead its life in one of the layers of the world, but would have another, secondary layer, which it could also call home partially, for a time, always longing to return to its own.


    Thus, men live in the first, the surface, 0, which contains us all in its soil, which sustains us and is where we live most at ease. But also, with the dwarves many coexisted and coexist, because, although their darkness is not suitable for us and their food even less, among them we can lead a tolerable life.


    With them, the dwarves calling each other brothers, the matter is reversed, because their home is underground, the subsoil, the -1, where their masses accumulate under the mountain. And, at the same time, their presence is common and tolerated in our cities, where the sun dazzles them, but money calls them all the same.


    Finally, the elves, who as it is known make their life on the peaks, above the clouds, layer 1, where large craters welcome them; they are therefore far fewer in number than dwarves and men, because they have little soil to tread and cultivate. Many tame birds and other beings to cross the skies and for them the distance between their cities, hidden in the peaks, is not so much, because the riders reach them in a short time. They have their second home on the surface as well, where they do a great teaching work for the less fortunate people by the stars.


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    Thus, these three strata contain the part of the world that is familiar to these three great and laborious races, as close as cousins, to use the dwarf jargon. But existence, as we were saying, does not end here. The men are the most ignorant of this reality, being centered in the middle stratum, but the elves are very studious of the layers that surpass them in height and the dwarves of the layers that are under their soil.


    Even so, I have been informed by both peoples that neither of them knows much of the true nature of the strata that precede and succeed -1, 0 and 1. I have also been told that for us, the peoples at the center of this scenario, life would not be tolerable away from our layers either above or below, just as it is when humans try to coexist in the elven stratum, or worse, when dwarves try, for it is said that they barely make it alive from lack of air.


    Even with this fact over our heads, our curiosity for the lives of others does not cease, nor do the ailments of the body restrain us.


    Before going into more detail about the known layers, it is worth mentioning the presence of immense barriers that make the passage between some of them very difficult, perhaps impossible. Although, both dwarves and elves have written about natural or artificial openings of which rather little is known, since I have never found neither authors nor witnesses who have written or spoken of having crossed these barriers.


    Surely these were arranged by God to divide nature in the corresponding lines and not to allow unnatural crossings that would be detrimental to the established order.


    The only testimony that has come to my hands is one legend that represents an alternative history of the Father of All, deity of the dwarf brothers, in which the ancestor god descended to the underworld on a crucial mission for his race and the world. The details of the same are collected in several works, the most complete being the one published by Nimoth the Elder, in another past era.


    Now I will only say that the legendary dwarf must have used all his strength, will and cunning to break through the barrier that lay before him, nothing more nor less than the Quartz Wall, which according to the same story embraces the whole world underneath.


    At last, I leave here compiled everything I know about those layers that surpass us in both directions, starting with those that descend, the first being below the subsoil and known as Avernus, or stratum -2, place of lost civilizations, demons and hopes of wealth...”.


    For now, friends, I think it will be better to rest from so much lost knowledge, which sometimes is better lost. It is best to return to the plot of two naive individuals as much in love as lost under the rock and, thus, discover the truth first hand.