[game-notes version here]

XXII.

Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.

“By the Rootmother’s teat,” Maelen swore, looking out over the black pool.

Alric sidled up at her shoulder, holding his guttering torch out over the water and straining to see as far as possible. “If we swim,” he said cautiously. “We’ll have no light. And we’ll freeze.”

“I know, lad,” she spat curtly. “But my rope is currently dangling at the cliff’s edge. You see a way to climb these walls? Or move the rubble from the other passage?” She ground her teeth, rage bubbling behind her eyes. This cursed Starless Rift!

“We could return to where we started,” Vessa said in a low voice. She stood on the other side of the mage, the three of them atop a stone dais only wide enough for them to stand abreast. Beyond the lip of the dais… water, smooth and black and seemingly endless. “Weren’t there other passages from there?”

“There were,” Alric said absently, his eyes still searching. “But I feel… we’re close to something. Beyond the water.”

Again, anger flooded her mind, and she almost swatted the lad. His vague proclamations… look where they’d gotten them: deep underground with skinless terrors stalking every shadow. Her hands shook, and she clenched her grips around the mace and torch. Maelen wanted very much to fight, to hurt something.

With a growl, she cocked her arm sideways and hurled her torch out over the water, like skipping a stone across Lake Miren. The torch swung end over end into the darkness, illuminating the cavern in chaotic, dancing shadow as it flew. Then it disappeared into the water with a brief hiss, the pool rippling out from its impact.

“What did you do that for?!” Vessa asked incredulously. With only Alric’s low torch, the cavern felt very dark.

“It was almost done anyway,” she grunted. “Wanted to see how far it went.”

“Oh,” she nodded. “Okay. I saw the shore, which makes the pool… what? Maybe thirty strides across?”

“And nothing from the water stirred,” Alric said in a low voice. “So perhaps there aren’t predators awaiting us below the surface. Good idea, Maelen.”

Maelen grunted again. She hadn’t even thought about there being nasties in the water, and seeing the opposite shore was a boon. Truth be told, she’d thrown the torch in anger, not strategy. With effort, she reigned in her inner tumult. Maelen still wanted to fight something—to batter it with her mace until it stopped moving—but there was no use butting heads with her companions in the meantime. She exhaled loudly.

“We swim,” she said decisively. “I’m listening if you have ideas how to keep our gear dry, particularly the torches and tinderboxes. Assume it’s too deep to stand.”

While Alric’s light died, they debated ways of crossing the water. None of them could come up with an alternative to swimming, not without Maelen’s rope and pitons. The most pressing issue, they decided, was how to keep their most important gear—torches, tinderboxes, Vessa’s bow, rations—dry. Assuming they survived the crossing, the next question was how they’d warm themselves, as the water felt icy chill and their body heat was already low.

Only Vessa possessed an oiled cloak, and it became the basis of their plan. They wrapped their vital items in it, tied with belts and full of air. Alric insisted the Tome of Unlit Paths be at the center of the bundle, because he said its demonic powers may help keep the other items dry. Maelen thought that all sounded like bunk, that what he truly cared about was the safety of the book, but she held her tongue. Vessa, the strongest swimmer, would hold her bow above the water as she moved, so it would be up to Maelen and Alric to guide the floating bundle.

While they organized, Maelen lit another torch. It was a waste, as she’d just need to leave it on this side of the pool, but Alric’s flame had all but guttered out by the time she’d sparked hers to life. They finished adding items to the mass, including boots and scrolls, Malen’s chain shirt, Vessa’s quiver of arrows and smoke bombs. Maelen groused that it would be too heavy to float, but Alric disagreed.

Still, the mage decided he could not struggle with his staff the same way Vessa would her bow, so begrudgingly agreed to leave it on this side of the pool. Vessa did the same with her shortsword, saying it would drag her down while swimming.  They both looked at Maelen’s hip, where the mace thrummed to her ears alone. She scoffed when she saw their worried glances.

“I’ve got it,” she grinned. “The mace comes with me.”

With the bundle secured, Maelen propped the torch upright with two rocks, as close to the water’s edge as she could manage. Then she frowned, staring at the still, black pool for several heartbeats. Was anything waiting for them below the surface, ready to pull them under? She didn’t see any movement. Dammit all and this place! With an unhappy grunt, she plunged into the water.

The cold of it constricted her chest and stole her breath, and immediately the weight of her mace and clothes pulled her down. She used one hand and foot to steady herself on the rocky wall, and said, as confidently as she could manage.

“Day’s not getting shorter. H-hand me the bundle and let’s go.”

Alric had stripped his tattered robes, and he looked pale, thin, and cold in his smallclothes, with angry-looking wounds everywhere on his shoulders and neck. He eased himself into the pool feet first, grimacing at the cold. When he slid all the way in, he gasped and sputtered. It was no surprise to Maelen that the lad wasn’t much of a swimmer. Still, he struggled his way forward in the open water, holding one side of the bobbing mass of Vessa’s cloak, while Maelen continued pushing her way along the wall. While they worked out their rhythm, Vessa glided past them easily, swimming with long, lithe strokes of her legs past the lad and holding her bow aloft.

Now that she was fully immersed, she realized the subtly rank smell of the water. Disease and parasites weren’t something she’d even considered, but now it felt as if somehow filth slid along her skin, black oily fingers caressing her. She spit any wetness from her lips.

“C-careful of not getting the water in your m-mouth!” she gasped at her companions. They didn’t say anything back, but she felt confident they’d heard her.

It was slow going, and the cold threatened to rob her of her strength even as the weight of the mace pulled at her. In a sudden flash of emotion, she missed her mouse Tatter. The little thing had been with her for the past two years, a constant source of companionship without asking for anything but scraps of food in return. Yet the Starless Rift had swallowed little Tatter, as surely as it had snuffed the lives of those unknown priests. Maelen wondered if the mouse had scurried out of the cavern system or was huddling, cold and fearful, in a small crevice somewhere. It was a gloomy train of thought.

At some point her teeth began chattering, and she clenched her jaw shut painfully. The lad moved methodically but never fell back or went under. She could see him in the flickering, fading orange light as a rippling shape beyond the bulk of the cloak, which bobbed like a bulbous sea creature between them.

Once they’d neared the opposite shore, the light from the torch was only a vague, dancing glimmer behind them, doing little to illuminate the way. Maelen pulled with her hand and pushed with her bare foot along the rough rock, her other hand guiding their gear. Her own breath filled her ears, panting in quick, short puffs now. She lost sight of the mage, and her teeth chattered too much for her to risk speaking. All the while, she imagined more of those skinless monstrosities clutching at her legs from below, pulling her into the inky blackness of the befouled water. She visualized withering from whatever plague awaited her, then rising as a mindless zombie. Tatter’s small corpse, curled in a ball somewhere nearby and forgotten, swam in her thoughts. Maelen would never admit it to anyone, but real fear gripped her in those moments, replaced by a seething, roiling anger.

Ahead, something splashed and her heart nearly stopped.

“V-Vess?” she said, her voice much weaker than she’d expected, her lips trembling with cold.

“H-here,” she stuttered back. “Made it. Oh!”

Maelen wanted to ask what that meant, but all her willpower was used to keep pulling herself forward with numb limbs. Vessa’s voice wasn’t that far ahead, she thought desperately, so the shore must be…

Her knee struck rock and she stumbled, her face momentarily dipping into the oily water. She spat and sputtered, and with a flailing, flopping effort she was glad no one could see, pushed herself up the rocky shelf to the other side of the pool. With straining muscles, she pulled the cloak and its contents after her, reaching for Alric as she did so. They clasped cold hands, and the lad gasped and stumbled forward towards her.

“S-so c-c-cold,” he stuttered, barely audible.

“G-get the gear with me,” she puffed, barely recognizing her own voice. “N-need to light a t-t-torch.”

Blindness and cold combined to make her hands clumsy and stupid. It took forever for the two of them to wrestle the cloak up onto the rocky ground, near Vessa’s voice. As they drew closer, the thief joined in pulling the bundle.

“I’ve got it,” she whispered. “Go get warm, keep going past me.”

Warm? Maelen’s mind worked as sluggishly as her feet, but she let the lass fumble with the belts and knots while she stumbled away from the water’s edge. There, as she’d said, warm air touched her face. She moved towards it like a bee to a flower, her hands outstretched. Somewhere nearby, she heard Alric fall and curse in pain as he did likewise.

By the time she’d found the heat’s source, she was no less confused. It wasn’t a fire and shed no light, but there was simply… hot air, blowing up from the earth like some sort of summer wind. Whatever the source, she dropped next to it and let the air wash over her. Maelen closed her eyes with pleasure, her teeth eventually stopping their chatter and feeling returning to her limbs like needle pricks.

Behind her, flickers of light signaled Vessa lighting a torch, which meant both the tinderboxes and torches had survived the journey. She turned to see the lass padding over to them with a wide grin on her face. With the light, Maelen could see the cloak opened wide, their possessions lying in a wide, scattered clump on the rocky floor. Beyond, the black water shimmered, still recovering from their passing.

“Amazing,” Alric sighed. She turned back to see that they both huddled over a hole in the rock, perhaps a full stride across. It was from the hole that the hot air blew. “Is it a natural phenomenon, or some enchantment?” he asked, seemingly to himself. She looked up, seeing that the ceiling overhead also had a hole in it, pulling the air upwards.  

“It’s the first good thing we’ve found in this awful place,” Vessa said, still whispering, joining them around the hole. “Let’s not worry why or how it’s here. Just enjoy it.”

“Aye,” Maelen agreed. She thought Vessa was right to keep her voice low. “When you’re warmed enough, help me get any damp gear from the rain over here, and some rations. We won’t leave until we’re dry and fed.”

“Thank the Rootmother,” Vessa saluted, and closed her eyes in the warmth.

They used a full torch’s light to stay by the hole and its pocket of warm air, their spirits rising. The respite wasn’t enough to banish the images of the skinless, eyeless horrors that prowled the Starless Rift, or the ghastly ritual circle of Hadren Kelthorn, or even the terrifying, freezing trek across the black pool. But, at least for a brief while, the nightmares of this place faded into the background.

Vessa even found a small, flat wall of rock where someone—presumably the poor souls who’d been torn apart—had hammered pegs and hung hooded cloaks even better oiled and resistant to water than Vessa’s, each an identical dark gray. Alric and Vessa debated why the three garments were here and how they’d been used, adding even more speculation as to the Rift’s former occupants. In the end, though, they left the mystery unsolved and agreed that the cloaks would aid them all. One even fit Alric’s tall, lanky frame, and proved to be a passable replacement for his shredded robes.

Maelen and Alric lit new torches from the dying flames of the last one. She judged they had more than enough light to last them through exploring the caverns and back to the surface, assuming this underground complex wasn’t sprawling. Still, no use being wasteful. Her angry throw of the torch across the water suddenly flashed in her mind, and she growled in embarrassment at the memory.

“Ready?” she said, more gruffly than she intended. Her two companions nodded back. They grimly moved towards the opening at the far end of the chamber.

She led them through a craggy, winding corridor of stone. With the odd column of air behind them, the horror of this place returned, tingling along her spine and keeping her eyes flicking at shadows warily. Every step they took sounded too loud to Maelen’s ears. Around every bend in the rock, she expected a vile monstrosity to leap at her with blind eyes and outstretched claws.

Eventually, Maelen heard noises from up ahead, her jaw clenching in fear. She stopped the others and jerked a chin at Vessa to move forward, at the edge of her torchlight.

“Careful, lass,” she whispered. Wide-eyed, Vessa nodded, and with an arrow nocked on her bow, padded ahead in a crouch.

One foot after the other, Maelen moved in a slow stalk. Whatever was making noise beyond her light, it wasn’t a single creature. Several bodies moved in the darkness with shuffled feet and labored breathing. She could hear Alric’s panting breath behind her. The lad was terrified, and rightly so. Still, she wished he was quieter.

Vessa had paused at the end of the corridor, a doorless entrance to a large chamber beyond. She beckoned them to her with a jerk of her chin. The three of them crouched, torchlight flickering across what could only have been the tomb of Saelith the Vanished.

It was the first crafted place they’d seen within the Starless Rift, a perfect square carved with exacting precision, larger than her light could reach. The walls seemed to be formed from dark basalt blocks, somehow fused together, and along each wall were carved recessed circles, some smooth and clean, others rough-edged or broken, no two identical. The ceiling above arched into a shallow dome, at the center of which was an enormous circular relief whose exact design she couldn’t make out in the dim shadows. Indeed, Maelen blinked several times to be sure, but it seemed as if the chamber itself somehow suppressed the light from the torches, keeping everything within the tomb muted and dull.

Directly below the circle in the ceiling was another circle, depressed within the smooth stone floor. She couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as if the form of a man lay within, robed all in black, on its back with arms and legs spread wide. All around the circular depression were a multitude of runes, more than on the doors of Thornmere Hold, more than had circled Hadren Kelthorn, rings and rings of symbols radiating out from the open grave.

Those sigils were breaking.

Spiderwebs of cracks ran from the depression and through the runic writing, each one glowing faintly gray in the darkness, a pale and eerie light like the eyes of Sarin the Night Captain or those floating wisps in the forest.

All these details Maelen absorbed in an instant, but it was not where her eyes lingered. Instead, her mouth went dry at the sight of a small legion of those skinless terrors, scampering and snuffling across the scene. They were not the larger versions like the one that had almost killed Alric, but instead the size of a child. Small comfort, though, because as she watched the eyeless monstrosities, their shining muscles and sinew exposed, she counted four… six… at least nine of the things. Far too many to fight, that was certain.

What were those abominations doing, though? Some capered at the walls, clawing at the recessed circles and leaving long, bloody trails as they did so. Some crouched outside the rings of runes, their heads down, like they were feasting upon or biting the stone. Finally, two of the creatures knelt at the edge of the circular depression, their arms outstretched, ropy strings of blood and gore falling into the tomb itself. Even as Maelen watched the creatures, like ants on an anthill, her eyes flicked to those spiderwebbed cracks as they lengthened and spread.

Alric spoke her realization aloud.

“They’re breaking him out,” he whispered in horror. “They’re freeing Saelith.”

“What do we do?” Vessa answered back, barely audible.

A red mist clouded Maelen’s vision. All her fear and pain roiled in her gut, expanding to her now-shaking fists. Curse this damned demon and the misery he brings! Flashes of Vastren Hollow and the massacre there swam in her mind. Death and shadows, everywhere Orthuun’s name is spoken. She heard something growling, low and deadly, and it took several heartbeats to realize the sound came from her own throat.

“Mae?” Vessa turned to her in alarm.

Maelen barely heard her. Screw this place and these otherworldly blights! She was not the victim here, not the prey! She was Marr the Merciless! She didn’t sit on her bloody hands while something gnawed her face! She could almost feel Sarin the Night Captain’s touch upon her skull, the world dimming and turning to darkness. She shook her head angrily at the memory. One hand gripped her black mace, the other a flickering torch, her knuckles turning white. Rage flooded her mind.

Screw it.

She charged, roaring defiance.

Next: Saelith’s Tomb [with game notes]