[game-notes version here]

XVIII.

Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.

Hadren Kelthorn stood in the rain, arms outstretched, his gap-toothed grin fixed in eerie welcome. From the hilltop, the three companions stared down, stunned by the scene below. Vessa had the keenest eyesight of the three of them, and yet her gaze kept skittering off the dismembered, robed bodies assembled into patterns in a wide circle around the man. Behind it all, a black crevice arced across the earth like an empty maw.

“Hadren, what have you done?” Alric called out, his voice rich and desperate.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Hadren cackled with undisguised glee. “I’ve paved the way! The Starless Rift is open because of what I’ve done!”

“He’s mad,” Maelen murmured for the two of them to hear.

“Very,” Vessa confirmed in a low voice. “How did he kill all these people?”

“Come!” Hadren called out jovially. “Join me, Alric! Let’s have a chat.”

The scribe—mage, Vessa reminded herself sharply—took a halting step forward but Maelen stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Careful lad,” she growled. “Let us join you.”

He paused to look at her, hesitating. Then he glanced over at the grisly scene and nodded once. “We’re all coming!” he announced, and the three of them trudged through the rain, boots squelching.

Vessa clenched her jaw painfully as they drew near and the details of the massacre before them grew clearer. Men and women of all ages, all wearing plain, black robes spattered in gore. Many of the corpses were intact, but just as many had been hacked to pieces to form whatever symbols Hadren had used to… what? Cast a spell? Open the very earth into the jagged, yawning opening behind him? Most of the faces, she noted with disgust, were missing their eyes—black pits as if they’d been gouged with a hot iron. The rain could not wash away the stench; it only spread it: iron, rot, and bile. Vessa fought the urge to retch. She wanted to flee this place, to scrub it from memory.

They paused outside of Hadren’s circle, between two piles of bodies. Maelen seemed to appraise the dead with a calculating eye, but Vessa avoided doing so and instead studied the living man before them. He looked noticeably older than in the tavern, oddly, his hair thinner and whiter, his skin more sunken. Even still, Hadren was remarkably unremarkable to be standing at the center of such an impossible landscape of death and sorcery. He looked like nothing more than a laborer, one of countless populating Oakton’s streets. His hands were calloused and rough, bent by hard work as surely as his curved back. His face was sun-spotted and balding, and neither handsome nor distinguishingly ugly. Vessa would have passed him without remembering a single detail. Indeed, she had done just that two months before as the trio exited the Root Gate towards Thornmere Hold.

Hadren seemed amused by them not stepping into his gruesome circle. He grinned, eyes roving over Alric’s entire frame.

“Why?” Alric asked. “I don’t understand any of this, Mr. Kelthorn.”

“Mister, is it? Well, I suppose you’re recognizin’ my power, as is right. You see what I’ve done? Do you understand the implications, son?” He grinned proudly. “You’re looking at the man who’s gonna bring one of the Blind Sovereign’s generals back to this world.”

He turned, rain running off his sleeves. “Saelith the Vanished, The Touch of Orthuun, is buried there! He’ll be the herald of Orthuun’s return! By my hand! Soon the Blind Sovereign’ll blot out the sun, mark my words.” When Hadren turned back, he was beaming. “And I, Hadren Kelthorn, am proud to be one of the masons to make it so.”

Alric looked stricken. “Why would you want that? You’ve seen what his touch brings! Orthuun is a demon, of nothingness itself! He’ll destroy everything, shroud it in darkness! There will be no rewards for you aiding him, you must see that!”

Hadren scoffed. “That’s your problem, boy. You’re still trying to see. Faith is blind. That’s Orthuun’s gift. Look what faith can bring into the world!” he again gestured wide, taking in the bodies and crevice behind him.

“Besides,” he said, scowling. He seemed to be working hard to stay focused on his words, talking deliberately to Alric. “What have my peers done for me in this life? What have they done for you, Alric Mistsong? An apprentice scribe, toiling away and told what you can and can’t read? Do those ink stains on your fingers ever come off? Pah!” He waved dismissively. “You have that black bookbecause you want to know more than your guild is willing to teach you, eh? Erase it all and start fresh, son. Oakton has mistreated you as much as me.” His eyes studied Alric, roving over how he was taking in the nonsensical rant.

“You’re talking about the destruction of everything,” Alric pleaded.

Hadren sighed, a touch of sadness softening his madness for a heartbeat. He spit into the mud at his feet. “Well, you’re a disappointment, I admit. You’ve read the Tome, but not understood it. That’s clear to me.” Another sigh, and his eyes shone again. “I wanted you to see our greater purpose here, but I don’t have the time to educate you.” He held out a hand impatiently. “Give me the book and you can be on your way.”

“What about our treasure?” Maelen butted in. “You promised gold.”

Hadren looked surprised at the interruption, then winked at her. “So I did, so I did. Rest assured that I collected any remaining coins from all the followers and faithful before they sacrificed themselves to the Starless Ritual, Maelen Marrowson. You’ll have your coin, though… I’d spend it quickly.” He cackled suddenly, slapping his knee. “Oakton’s petty gods won’t be able to–”

Hadren’s voice cut off abruptly and he looked at Maelen’s waist sharply, squinting in the weather. “What’s that?” he pointed a gnarled finger at the warrior’s mace, nestled at her hip. “That… that… profanity cannot be allowed here! The Tome and that… abomination! Give them to me!” His voice cracked to a shriek. “Now!”

Hadren’s fervor and sudden venom was shocking, but not nearly as shocking as Alric. Something in him must have snapped. With a raw shout, he hurled himself at the black-robed man, trying to drive him into the mud. It might have worked, too, if Hadren had been as surprised as Vessa. Instead, Hadren snarled and knocked Alric aside with a push. The young man stumbled but kept his feet.

Maelen took the cue. With her signature roar, she drew the black mace from her belt and swept Hadren’s legs from beneath him. He went down awkwardly into the mud at Maelen’s feet, the breath whooshing out of him. Hadren looked up at her with a hateful look.

“You won’t be getting my mace,” Maelen snarled. “Take your book and be happy with it.”

“No!” Alric reacted. “We can’t! Kill him, Maelen!”

As Mae glanced at him, confused, Vessa saw Hadren begin a gasping chant, much like Alric when he’d healed Maelen. She didn’t know what spell the man intended to cast, but she supposed they wouldn’t like it, so she notched an arrow and let fly in one smooth motion. Vessa intended the arrow to pierce Hadren’s arm to the ground, but the rain and Maelen standing over him made it a difficult shot. The shaft sunk into his shoulder instead. Hadren hissed in pain and he cursed.

She hadn’t been fast enough. Even as the arrow struck and Hadren ceased his chanting, one of the corpses near Alric began to twitch. Vessa blinked as a black-robed woman pulled herself from one of the piles, her eyes burned out and black, her throat slashed.

“Alric! Look out!” she shouted in warning.

The dead, eyeless woman took a fumbling swing at the startled Alric, and he stumbled away. Vessa drew another arrow. Indecision stabbed through her—Hadren or the zombie? Then she saw Maelen bat Hadren aside with the head of her spiked mace. Her friend would be fine, she decided. Alric wouldn’t.

She let loose an arrow, but it thunked into the woman’s back without her slowing or even seeming to notice. Instead, the corpse lunged with surprising speed, wrapping her pale fingers around Alric’s throat. The dead cultist, mutilated face utterly impassive, squeezed, and Alric began sputtering and choking.

Maelen barked a harsh cry of surprise and Vessa glanced in her direction. Hadren, blood running down an arm that now hung limp at his side, was stumbling away, chanting again and with his other hand raised towards her. As she watched in horror, Hadren’s eyes turned utterly black. Dark oil began running down his chin from his chanting mouth, and then… his shadow loomed up behind him, like a thing alive.

Vessa expected the shadow to attack Maelen, but like Alric had said at the campfire—these men were playing with forces they apparently could not control. Perhaps Hadren Kelthorn had offended his demon god in some way, or perhaps the thing he summoned was fundamentally uncontrollable. Either way, the looming shadow fell upon the old man like a cat upon a mouse, black fingers outstretched like jagged claws. Hadren screamed, first in surprise and then in pain, and as he did so the shadow’s body expanded and consumed him. The darkness swelled, bulging outward like a living cloak. Hadren’s screams dwindled fast, falling away like a stone dropped down a well before the black shroud snapped shut around him.

Vessa was so horrified by the scene that she didn’t register that Maelen had moved to help Alric. The warrior brought her mace down again and again, crushing the animated corpse even as it wrung the life out of their companion. A particularly forceful backswing caught the zombie in the side and sent it flying away from Alric.

“Vess!” Maelen shouted in command. “Help, dammit!”

She shook her head and took aim. A single arrow pierced the woman’s skull, directly at the base where head met neck. Whether it was her shot, or Maelen’s continued battering, or perhaps Hadren releasing his hold upon the woman as he fought the darkness all around him, the dead cultist collapsed, again lifeless.

Alric sucked in deep breaths, looked wild-eyed at the growing, pulsing darkness, and yelled. “Run!”

They ran.

Maelen hooked an arm under Alric and hauled him up, half-carrying and half-dragging him as her boots tore through the mud. Vessa rushed to his other side and helped. The two women, pulling Alric between them, stumped through the rain, over the low hill they’d just crested. Vessa spared a brief look over her shoulder at the hill. The darkness was like a living thing—a pulsing, silent mass of blackness in the constant rain, and growing wider to consume the grotesque piles of cultists. She shuddered and pushed her legs harder to get away.

“How…” she panted as they stumbled over the hill. “Far… do we… go?”

“Farther,” Maelen growled, her thickly muscled legs pumping.

Alric regained his wits enough to move his legs, and though they could hear and see nothing behind them, they kept running until they’d crested a second low hill and dropped to the other side of it. There they collapsed, gasping, as the rain continued unceasingly.

“What… what was that?” she asked Alric. “What happened?”

Alric shook his head, still too out of breath to speak. After several attempts he managed to sputter. “Don’t know. He… the magic consumed him.”

“Quiet,” Maelen barked, and the three of them fell silent. Vessa and Maelen strained to hear anything but the rainfall and Alric’s labored breathing. They failed.

The warrior swore. “Vess, go look. But be careful.”

She nodded once and stood. Without a backward glance, she was moving as silently as her countless days of practice could enable. Stealth in the rain was theoretically easier than fair weather, except that the landscape was as blurred to her as anyone looking for her. It made judging places to take cover and hide trickier. Still, with the hills and scrubby trees, she moved wide, taking a less direct route than their retreat to come at the Starless Rift from a different direction. She found a low, rocky shelf of a hill and ducked behind it. Stilling her breathing and adjusting her hood to keep the water from her eyes, she peered around the rock.

Hadren was gone, along with the piles of cultist bodies in arcane symbols. She rubbed at her eyes, scanning. The ground where the bodies had lain was bare, scrub grass flattened by nothing. No blood. No limbs. No symbols. The rain fell upon an empty field, as if the massacre had never existed at all.

The Starless Rift was there, however, an ominous black scar on the plain between hills.

Next: Don’t Jump [with game notes]