[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]

[prose-only 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]

[game-notes version here]

XXI.

Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.

Vessa hated—absolutely loathed—feeling helpless. Her bow work, her knife drills, her stealth, even the smoke bombs she brewed by hand, every skill she’d learned was meant for one purpose: to keep helplessness at bay. So too, she admitted in the darkest recesses of her mind, lotus leaf, drink, and whores were also tools, ways of distracting her from her thoughts when nothing threatened her. Vessa Velthorn had trained a lifetime to either act or numb, but never, ever, to feel helpless and do nothing.

The skinless, frenzied thing that launched itself upon Maelen had moved faster than she could nock an arrow and fire. Once upon her friend, it bit and clawed and bore Maelen to the ground like a rabid dog, moving so quickly that her friend could do nothing but scream. Vessa already had an arrow drawn, but no clear shot. She swore and panicked, a tear forming in one eye as she watched her friend being killed. Helpless.

Then Alric—brave, stupid Alric—charged forward with his torch before she could scream for him to stop. He was too unskilled to hit the thing, but waving the flames near the many-mouthed aberration was enough. It paused in its frenzy, its grotesque head clacking a wide maw of sharp teeth at him. He stepped back, realizing his peril.

Vessa should have shot it then, but terror had filled her, helplessness paralyzing her limbs. Before she could loose her arrow, it had leapt upon Alric with just as much mindless, frantic hunger as it had Maelen. Something dark sprayed wide, pattering across Vessa’s cheek as the mage went down in a gurgling scream, a mere three strides in front of her. Alric’s staff and torch clattered to the stone, and Vessa’s eyes widened in horror. The creature atop him continued attacking in a mindless rage.

What happened next would haunt Vessa’s nightmares. As Maelen and Alric lay dying, the skinless thing spasmed, split, and tore itself open. Vessa stepped back in horror as something climbed free from within the monstrosity. What crawled out was a smaller copy of the first: red-slicked muscle, exposed organs, an eyeless head, and that impossible mouth of teeth. The first aberration slumped atop Alric, gore and viscera spilling everywhere as if… unspooling. The new monster snuffled and sniffed the air, teeth clacking.

Vessa’s arrow punched into its torso, sinking to the fletching. A teakettle shriek and it turned towards her, crouching and ready to pounce. She fumbled for a second arrow but knew it wouldn’t be in time.

A blood-soaked Maelen loomed from the darkness, eyes wild and spiked mace raised overhead. With a furious shout, she brought the weapon down upon the smaller creature with a sickening, squelching crunch. It struggled to rise and she kicked it from the pile of organs that was its mother, then swung again. This time the blow landed with a wet, collapsing crunch, and the thing came apart, losing all shape. Red, pink, and purple tissue, all seemingly disconnected, flopped to either side of the black mace, unrecognizable as anything humanoid. Then Maelen staggered and fell to one knee, groaning.

Vessa dropped her bow and rushed to Alric. Without conscious thought, she pushed the viscera from him, staining her arms to the elbow in dark ichor. Her eyes searched for some sign of life from the young man. There was so much blood. How much was his and how much from the skinless terror?

Alric coughed weakly, froth on his lips. She saw a wicked bite in his neck, a huge chunk of meat gone, then another on his chest, the robes ripped away as if the thing had bitten through cloth and meat all in one gulp. Vomit rose in her throat. These were mortal wounds. She listened at his chest: No heartbeat.

“Get up!” she yelled into his face, tears blurring her vision. “Alric, damn you! Get up!”

The mage groaned. His eyes fluttered open, unable to focus.

“GET UP!” she screamed, a finger’s width from his bloody face.

“Vessa?” he whispered weakly, then coughed more blood.

“Use your magic, Alric!” she pleaded. “You’re dying! Heal yourself!” she’d grabbed him by what remained of his robe and was shaking him as she spoke. “You hear me?”

His eyes rolled. “Can’t…” he groaned. “Can’t… use…”

“Your magic!” she yelled. His eyes focused again on her face. “You have to use your magic!”

He seemed to sigh then, going limp. In a flash of panic, she thought he’d given up and died in that moment, but she saw his lips moving, whispering something she couldn’t quite make out.

Weakly, his lips continued to move. Vessa sat back, giving him some space, tears now fully wetting her cheeks. She clasped her hands together in what could have been prayer if she had thought Oakton’s gods could hear her in this cursed place.

Alric’s wounds closed before her eyes. Only then did Vessa realize she’d been holding her breath. With a hiccupping cry of joy, she leaned forward, her face again near his.

“Alric? Alric!”

“I’m here,” he croaked, eyes still closed. “I’m here, Vessa. Thank you.”

Then he fell unconscious.

Vessa looked him over, swiping more viscera and clinging filth off him where she found it. He wasn’t fully healed. Far from it. His gaping wounds had become serious abrasions, and many of his smaller cuts remained. But he was breathing steadily, his chest rising and falling in even rhythm. She wiped a last tear from one eye, sniffed, and looked for Maelen.

Her friend was sitting against a column of rock, wrapping her own wounds in torn strips of cloth. When she saw Vessa peering at her she asked, her voice low, “How is he?”

“I think…” she sniffed, composing herself. “Fine. He used his magic at the end to heal himself. How– how are you?”

Maelen grunted. “I’ll live. That thing went for my torso, and the chain shirt stopped most of it.” She grimaced, tying off one strip. Vessa moved lightly to help her. Maelen relaxed against the stone and closed her eyes gratefully.

“Your shoulder’s bad,” she said. This cut is bleeding, and gods, you’re bruised everywhere.”

Maelen chuckled. “Must look like a losing pit fighter, eh? Maybe… maybe I need to take up the bow. Stop getting eaten by all these Orthuun lackeys.”

Vessa grinned briefly, and then her face became serious. “What were those things, Mae? Are there more of them, you think? I’ve never seen—” she swallowed, bile again threatening to rise. “I want to leave this place.”

Maelen opened her eyes and looked at her a long moment before she answered. “We need to find where they buried the artifacts. Then we leave anything Alric says is cursed, take the good stuff, and go home. Okay?”

She rubbed her bent nose and bit her lip. Her friend must have seen the despair in her face, because she placed a broad, calloused hand on her arm. Vessa met her gaze, her eyes again blurring with tears. Damn it all but she hated her tears.

“I don’t want to stay either, lass. And I don’t want to leave Oakton again for a long while once we’re home. Let the Prince’s knights and heroes fight Orthuun. I just want the coin and the chance to spend it. But we’re close, Vess! We get the loot here and we’re done.”

Vessa pursed her lips. She wanted to believe her friend, but there was part of her that didn’t think Maelen Marroson could leave a juicy score alone. She could almost picture the conversation, weeks from now, where Maelen pulls her into some new, dangerous adventure. It won’t be like last time, she could see future-Maelen’s mouth say, This is easy money, lass, and then we’re set for life. Would she get pulled into it all again? Probably, though she didn’t fully understand why. Vessa sighed.

“Okay,” she nodded. “But we need to leave this place and get home, Mae. We’re going to die here if we stay. Let’s find the treasure. But if there are more of those… things. We run, okay?”

“Fair enough,” Maelen grunted. With a pat on the arm, she groaned, struggling to rise. “For now, let’s leave the lad to rest and see what’s in this chamber. Maybe the loot’s right under our noses, eh?”

Cautiously—and with no small amount of terror—Vessa and Maelen crept through the large cavern and its irregular, natural columns of stone. What they found was simply rock and rubble, unlit and cold, with no sign of human occupation. Perhaps Alric had been wrong in his theory, that the same people who’d created Thornmere Hold had created this place, to house instruments of Orthuun’s power and those used to defeat him. It seemed as if the Starless Rift was merely a barren cavern complex, opened by magic and occupied by monstrosities.

“Here,” Maelen hissed, snapping Vessa’s attention to focus. The warrior held her torch out in front of her and, at the edge of the wavering light, she saw the unmistakable shape of a boot. Two boots, in fact. It looked as if someone were lying on their back, feet outstretched, behind a boulder. Or at least it would have looked that way if there weren’t a wide, dark stain all around the legs and boots.

As quiet as a cat, Vessa prowled forward, Maelen behind with torch aloft. Her ears strained but heard nothing. She held her breath as she peered around the stone to find…

Carnage. The legs connected to a waist, but above that was ragged bone and gore. Nearby, another body lay on its side, missing head and one arm. A third corpse still had its head and limbs, but its armored chest lay open like a hollowed-out apple, chest plate gone and ribs splayed wide with the body’s once-torso empty. It was perhaps the grisliest scene Vessa had ever witnessed, including the massacre at Vastren Hollow days before or Hadren Kelthorn’s shocking ritual circle. Something—presumably the skinless horror they’d fought—had feasted on these bodies. No, not feasted… it had simply torn them asunder, without reason or pattern.

This time Vessa didn’t hold back her bile. She leaned over and vomited, bits of turkey and berries splashing the rocky floor.

She gagged until her stomach was empty. When she’d wiped her mouth and stood shakily, she found Maelen crouching over the bodies with her torch, rummaging through something. She glanced over her shoulder at Vessa.

“Priests of some kind,” Maelen said gruffly. “And killed not long ago. What does that mean? We should wake the lad. He might puzzle out something. But I did find this,” she hefted a coin purse that jangled in the silence. “There’s more to find. Go fetch the lad.”

She left, hurriedly and still coughing.

Vessa found Alric still unconscious, eyes closed and breathing evenly. She leaned down, ear to chest, listening for his heartbeat. Then, squinting, pressed her ear closer. Nothing.

No thump. No flutter. Nothing.

She sat up with alarm. “Alric!” she said sharply.

He gasped, eyes wide and confused. “What!?”

Vessa exhaled. “By the gods! I thought you were dead, Alric.”

“I’m okay,” he said blearily. “Just… give me a moment.”

She did, then prepared him for their discovery within the chamber. He swallowed, clearly uneasy, but nodded and said he’d follow her. Vessa helped him stand, and her hand lingered on his waist after he’d risen.

He looked from her hand to her face—haunted, hopeful.

She jerked away, heat flaring across her cheeks. By the Rootmother, she actually thought about kissing him then. What was wrong with her?

“This way,” she said hoarsely, and began walking.

They found Maelen standing over the shredded corpses. Alric gagged, but Vessa’s preparation had steeled him from the worst of it. He cleared his throat.

Maelen didn’t look at Alric as he approached. “Tell us what we’re looking at, lad. Who were these people?”

Vessa watched Alric rather than the mutilated corpses. He looked impossibly weary, pale, with dark shadows beneath each eye. Yet he also seemed… powerful, which was the best word Vessa could find. He radiated a confidence that simply hadn’t existed when she’d first met him. Then he’d presented as a naïve, young scribe with no understanding of how the world really worked. Now, with his dark robes, rune-carved staff, and the faint glow in his eyes, he looked almost like the storybooks’ mages …if the storybooks bothered to show the blood and torn robes too. Even still, Alric was becoming someone to be taken seriously, and perhaps feared. She wondered if that was where her urge to kiss him had assaulted her so suddenly.

“Hmmm,” he said eventually, the sound deep in his throat. “It’s peculiar. That one’s robes there,” he pointed with his torch. “Looks like perhaps he was a member of the Inkbinders Lodge. The cut isn’t dissimilar to mine, see? But that one,” he frowned. “Those garments look as if they’re from the the Order of the High Listener… The Watcher’s priests, from Skywarden Tower. That third one has armor, but from no knighthood I recognize. None of them have any insignia to their orders displayed. Why would that be? Different priesthoods, all down here together, bound to this place for the same reason. But why?” His frown deepened, and he gripped his staff harder.

“I found these,” Maelen said, raising her hand in the torchlight. Dangling from three leather cords were wooden whistles. “Each one had one around their neck, best I can tell.”

Alric closed his eyes, lips moving almost imperceptibly. “Not magical implements,” he sighed, opening his eyes again. “Just whistles. Perhaps to sound a warning? Well, whatever the case, it seems that Hadren’s ritual to open the Rift unleashed those…” he swallowed hard. “Things we fought. I suspect if there are more wardens here, they’re also dead. Blast it all! I would have liked to speak to one of them. I have so many questions…” Alric’s voice trailed off, his gaze drifting. He shook his head. “Well. The only thing to do is find the answers here if we can. Are there other caverns you’ve found?”

Vessa blinked, wholly impressed. Not long ago, Alric had barely survived grievous wounds. He was still injured, using his staff to hold himself upright. Yet he showed more interest in pressing forward into the unknown horrors of the Starless Rift than Vessa, who hadn’t taken a single wound. She glanced at Maelen, who was studying Alric with an expression that showed she felt similarly.

“There’s a way blocked off by rubble, and another clear this direction,” Maelen said finally. “Follow me.”

Alric nodded and limped to follow. Vessa glanced at the corpses one last time as she stepped over them, grimacing.

The torchlight glinted off something near a severed arm in the shadows.

“Wait!” she hissed. Maelen and Alric stopped, turning to her.

Vessa knelt. The hand wore a fine leather glove, too fine for a place like this. Something gold glimmered from a hidden slit at the wrist. A secret pocket. Clever.

She eased out the object: a small golden key. She held it up in the torchlight for her companions to see.

Maelen grunted. “Huh. Good work, lass. Tucked into the glove, eh? Find the other arm. Maybe the bastard carried two.”

It took some searching, but they found the other hand. It also wore a fine leather glove, but seemingly no hidden pocket. “Just the one key,” she concluded, speaking her thought aloud.

“Now let’s find the lock it opens,” Maelen grinned, patting Vessa hard on the shoulder.

Maelen led them, winding around natural stone columns to a corridor too narrow for two of them to walk abreast. This place had turned her around, and she couldn’t puzzle out which direction they moved, but ultimately decided that it didn’t matter. She felt confident she could find their rope by retracing their steps, which was enough.

Both Alric and Maelen’s torches were burning low, guttering and smoking, shedding less light than they’d done before. Vessa opened her mouth to ask about it but heard something.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

Her companions froze, listening. Ahead, down the shadowed corridor, was the unmistakable sound of water dripping. Maelen jerked her chin in a gesture for them to follow, then moved forward. Alric went next, with Vessa in the rear. Shadows and stone pressed close, tightening around her chest like a fist. Her breath came too fast; she forced herself to swallow it down. She wanted badly to leave this place and never return.

Ahead, Maelen cursed.

“What is it?” Vessa whispered. No one answered, so she pressed forward, her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.

Once again, Vessa found herself on a small dais of rock, just wide enough for the three of them to stand uncrowded.

Beyond the lip of the rocky shelf, as far as the wavering torchlight could reach, was a smooth, black pool of water, so still it reflected their torchlight like a sheet of obsidian.

Two distant drips fell in uneven rhythm, loud in the cavern’s vast silence.

“Tell me you two can swim,” Maelen growled.

Her voice was not reassuring.

Next: Black Waters [with game notes]

[prose-only version here]

XXI.

Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.

Vessa hated—absolutely loathed—feeling helpless. Her bow work, her knife drills, her stealth, even the smoke bombs she brewed by hand, every skill she’d learned was meant for one purpose: to keep helplessness at bay. So too, she admitted in the darkest recesses of her mind, lotus leaf, drink, and whores were also tools, ways of distracting her from her thoughts when nothing threatened her. Vessa Velthorn had trained a lifetime to either act or numb, but never, ever, to feel helpless and do nothing.

The skinless, frenzied thing that launched itself upon Maelen had moved faster than she could nock an arrow and fire. Once upon her friend, it bit and clawed and bore Maelen to the ground like a rabid dog, moving so quickly that her friend could do nothing but scream. Vessa already had an arrow drawn, but no clear shot. She swore and panicked, a tear forming in one eye as she watched her friend being killed. Helpless.

Then Alric—brave, stupid Alric—charged forward with his torch before she could scream for him to stop. He was too unskilled to hit the thing, but waving the flames near the many-mouthed aberration was enough. It paused in its frenzy, its grotesque head clacking a wide maw of sharp teeth at him. He stepped back, realizing his peril.

Vessa should have shot it then, but terror had filled her, helplessness paralyzing her limbs. Before she could loose her arrow, it had leapt upon Alric with just as much mindless, frantic hunger as it had Maelen. Something dark sprayed wide, pattering across Vessa’s cheek as the mage went down in a gurgling scream, a mere three strides in front of her. Alric’s staff and torch clattered to the stone, and Vessa’s eyes widened in horror. The creature atop him continued attacking in a mindless rage.

What happened next would haunt Vessa’s nightmares. As Maelen and Alric lay dying, the skinless thing spasmed, split, and tore itself open. Vessa stepped back in horror as something climbed free from within the monstrosity. What crawled out was a smaller copy of the first: red-slicked muscle, exposed organs, an eyeless head, and that impossible mouth of teeth. The first aberration slumped atop Alric, gore and viscera spilling everywhere as if… unspooling. The new monster snuffled and sniffed the air, teeth clacking.

Vessa’s arrow punched into its torso, sinking to the fletching. A teakettle shriek and it turned towards her, crouching and ready to pounce. She fumbled for a second arrow but knew it wouldn’t be in time.

A blood-soaked Maelen loomed from the darkness, eyes wild and spiked mace raised overhead. With a furious shout, she brought the weapon down upon the smaller creature with a sickening, squelching crunch. It struggled to rise and she kicked it from the pile of organs that was its mother, then swung again. This time the blow landed with a wet, collapsing crunch, and the thing came apart, losing all shape. Red, pink, and purple tissue, all seemingly disconnected, flopped to either side of the black mace, unrecognizable as anything humanoid. Then Maelen staggered and fell to one knee, groaning.

Vessa dropped her bow and rushed to Alric. Without conscious thought, she pushed the viscera from him, staining her arms to the elbow in dark ichor. Her eyes searched for some sign of life from the young man. There was so much blood. How much was his and how much from the skinless terror?

Alric coughed weakly, froth on his lips. She saw a wicked bite in his neck, a huge chunk of meat gone, then another on his chest, the robes ripped away as if the thing had bitten through cloth and meat all in one gulp. Vomit rose in her throat. These were mortal wounds. She listened at his chest: No heartbeat.

“Get up!” she yelled into his face, tears blurring her vision. “Alric, damn you! Get up!”

The mage groaned. His eyes fluttered open, unable to focus.

“GET UP!” she screamed, a finger’s width from his bloody face.

“Vessa?” he whispered weakly, then coughed more blood.

“Use your magic, Alric!” she pleaded. “You’re dying! Heal yourself!” she’d grabbed him by what remained of his robe and was shaking him as she spoke. “You hear me?”

His eyes rolled. “Can’t…” he groaned. “Can’t… use…”

“Your magic!” she yelled. His eyes focused again on her face. “You have to use your magic!”

He seemed to sigh then, going limp. In a flash of panic, she thought he’d given up and died in that moment, but she saw his lips moving, whispering something she couldn’t quite make out.

Weakly, his lips continued to move. Vessa sat back, giving him some space, tears now fully wetting her cheeks. She clasped her hands together in what could have been prayer if she had thought Oakton’s gods could hear her in this cursed place.

Alric’s wounds closed before her eyes. Only then did Vessa realize she’d been holding her breath. With a hiccupping cry of joy, she leaned forward, her face again near his.

“Alric? Alric!”

“I’m here,” he croaked, eyes still closed. “I’m here, Vessa. Thank you.”

Then he fell unconscious.

Vessa looked him over, swiping more viscera and clinging filth off him where she found it. He wasn’t fully healed. Far from it. His gaping wounds had become serious abrasions, and many of his smaller cuts remained. But he was breathing steadily, his chest rising and falling in even rhythm. She wiped a last tear from one eye, sniffed, and looked for Maelen.

Her friend was sitting against a column of rock, wrapping her own wounds in torn strips of cloth. When she saw Vessa peering at her she asked, her voice low, “How is he?”

“I think…” she sniffed, composing herself. “Fine. He used his magic at the end to heal himself. How– how are you?”

Maelen grunted. “I’ll live. That thing went for my torso, and the chain shirt stopped most of it.” She grimaced, tying off one strip. Vessa moved lightly to help her. Maelen relaxed against the stone and closed her eyes gratefully.

“Your shoulder’s bad,” she said. This cut is bleeding, and gods, you’re bruised everywhere.”

Maelen chuckled. “Must look like a losing pit fighter, eh? Maybe… maybe I need to take up the bow. Stop getting eaten by all these Orthuun lackeys.”

Vessa grinned briefly, and then her face became serious. “What were those things, Mae? Are there more of them, you think? I’ve never seen—” she swallowed, bile again threatening to rise. “I want to leave this place.”

Maelen opened her eyes and looked at her a long moment before she answered. “We need to find where they buried the artifacts. Then we leave anything Alric says is cursed, take the good stuff, and go home. Okay?”

She rubbed her bent nose and bit her lip. Her friend must have seen the despair in her face, because she placed a broad, calloused hand on her arm. Vessa met her gaze, her eyes again blurring with tears. Damn it all but she hated her tears.

“I don’t want to stay either, lass. And I don’t want to leave Oakton again for a long while once we’re home. Let the Prince’s knights and heroes fight Orthuun. I just want the coin and the chance to spend it. But we’re close, Vess! We get the loot here and we’re done.”

Vessa pursed her lips. She wanted to believe her friend, but there was part of her that didn’t think Maelen Marroson could leave a juicy score alone. She could almost picture the conversation, weeks from now, where Maelen pulls her into some new, dangerous adventure. It won’t be like last time, she could see future-Maelen’s mouth say, This is easy money, lass, and then we’re set for life. Would she get pulled into it all again? Probably, though she didn’t fully understand why. Vessa sighed.

“Okay,” she nodded. “But we need to leave this place and get home, Mae. We’re going to die here if we stay. Let’s find the treasure. But if there are more of those… things. We run, okay?”

“Fair enough,” Maelen grunted. With a pat on the arm, she groaned, struggling to rise. “For now, let’s leave the lad to rest and see what’s in this chamber. Maybe the loot’s right under our noses, eh?”

Cautiously—and with no small amount of terror—Vessa and Maelen crept through the large cavern and its irregular, natural columns of stone. What they found was simply rock and rubble, unlit and cold, with no sign of human occupation. Perhaps Alric had been wrong in his theory, that the same people who’d created Thornmere Hold had created this place, to house instruments of Orthuun’s power and those used to defeat him. It seemed as if the Starless Rift was merely a barren cavern complex, opened by magic and occupied by monstrosities.

“Here,” Maelen hissed, snapping Vessa’s attention to focus. The warrior held her torch out in front of her and, at the edge of the wavering light, she saw the unmistakable shape of a boot. Two boots, in fact. It looked as if someone were lying on their back, feet outstretched, behind a boulder. Or at least it would have looked that way if there weren’t a wide, dark stain all around the legs and boots.

As quiet as a cat, Vessa prowled forward, Maelen behind with torch aloft. Her ears strained but heard nothing. She held her breath as she peered around the stone to find…

Carnage. The legs connected to a waist, but above that was ragged bone and gore. Nearby, another body lay on its side, missing head and one arm. A third corpse still had its head and limbs, but its armored chest lay open like a hollowed-out apple, chest plate gone and ribs splayed wide with the body’s once-torso empty. It was perhaps the grisliest scene Vessa had ever witnessed, including the massacre at Vastren Hollow days before or Hadren Kelthorn’s shocking ritual circle. Something—presumably the skinless horror they’d fought—had feasted on these bodies. No, not feasted… it had simply torn them asunder, without reason or pattern.

This time Vessa didn’t hold back her bile. She leaned over and vomited, bits of turkey and berries splashing the rocky floor.

She gagged until her stomach was empty. When she’d wiped her mouth and stood shakily, she found Maelen crouching over the bodies with her torch, rummaging through something. She glanced over her shoulder at Vessa.

“Priests of some kind,” Maelen said gruffly. “And killed not long ago. What does that mean? We should wake the lad. He might puzzle out something. But I did find this,” she hefted a coin purse that jangled in the silence. “There’s more to find. Go fetch the lad.”

She left, hurriedly and still coughing.

Vessa found Alric still unconscious, eyes closed and breathing evenly. She leaned down, ear to chest, listening for his heartbeat. Then, squinting, pressed her ear closer. Nothing.

No thump. No flutter. Nothing.

She sat up with alarm. “Alric!” she said sharply.

He gasped, eyes wide and confused. “What!?”

Vessa exhaled. “By the gods! I thought you were dead, Alric.”

“I’m okay,” he said blearily. “Just… give me a moment.”

She did, then prepared him for their discovery within the chamber. He swallowed, clearly uneasy, but nodded and said he’d follow her. Vessa helped him stand, and her hand lingered on his waist after he’d risen.

He looked from her hand to her face—haunted, hopeful.

She jerked away, heat flaring across her cheeks. By the Rootmother, she actually thought about kissing him then. What was wrong with her?

“This way,” she said hoarsely, and began walking.

They found Maelen standing over the shredded corpses. Alric gagged, but Vessa’s preparation had steeled him from the worst of it. He cleared his throat.

Maelen didn’t look at Alric as he approached. “Tell us what we’re looking at, lad. Who were these people?”

Vessa watched Alric rather than the mutilated corpses. He looked impossibly weary, pale, with dark shadows beneath each eye. Yet he also seemed… powerful, which was the best word Vessa could find. He radiated a confidence that simply hadn’t existed when she’d first met him. Then he’d presented as a naïve, young scribe with no understanding of how the world really worked. Now, with his dark robes, rune-carved staff, and the faint glow in his eyes, he looked almost like the storybooks’ mages …if the storybooks bothered to show the blood and torn robes too. Even still, Alric was becoming someone to be taken seriously, and perhaps feared. She wondered if that was where her urge to kiss him had assaulted her so suddenly.

“Hmmm,” he said eventually, the sound deep in his throat. “It’s peculiar. That one’s robes there,” he pointed with his torch. “Looks like perhaps he was a member of the Inkbinders Lodge. The cut isn’t dissimilar to mine, see? But that one,” he frowned. “Those garments look as if they’re from the the Order of the High Listener… The Watcher’s priests, from Skywarden Tower. That third one has armor, but from no knighthood I recognize. None of them have any insignia to their orders displayed. Why would that be? Different priesthoods, all down here together, bound to this place for the same reason. But why?” His frown deepened, and he gripped his staff harder.

“I found these,” Maelen said, raising her hand in the torchlight. Dangling from three leather cords were wooden whistles. “Each one had one around their neck, best I can tell.”

Alric closed his eyes, lips moving almost imperceptibly. “Not magical implements,” he sighed, opening his eyes again. “Just whistles. Perhaps to sound a warning? Well, whatever the case, it seems that Hadren’s ritual to open the Rift unleashed those…” he swallowed hard. “Things we fought. I suspect if there are more wardens here, they’re also dead. Blast it all! I would have liked to speak to one of them. I have so many questions…” Alric’s voice trailed off, his gaze drifting. He shook his head. “Well. The only thing to do is find the answers here if we can. Are there other caverns you’ve found?”

Vessa blinked, wholly impressed. Not long ago, Alric had barely survived grievous wounds. He was still injured, using his staff to hold himself upright. Yet he showed more interest in pressing forward into the unknown horrors of the Starless Rift than Vessa, who hadn’t taken a single wound. She glanced at Maelen, who was studying Alric with an expression that showed she felt similarly.

“There’s a way blocked off by rubble, and another clear this direction,” Maelen said finally. “Follow me.”

Alric nodded and limped to follow. Vessa glanced at the corpses one last time as she stepped over them, grimacing.

The torchlight glinted off something near a severed arm in the shadows.

“Wait!” she hissed. Maelen and Alric stopped, turning to her.

Vessa knelt. The hand wore a fine leather glove, too fine for a place like this. Something gold glimmered from a hidden slit at the wrist. A secret pocket. Clever.

She eased out the object: a small golden key. She held it up in the torchlight for her companions to see.

Maelen grunted. “Huh. Good work, lass. Tucked into the glove, eh? Find the other arm. Maybe the bastard carried two.”

It took some searching, but they found the other hand. It also wore a fine leather glove, but seemingly no hidden pocket. “Just the one key,” she concluded, speaking her thought aloud.

“Now let’s find the lock it opens,” Maelen grinned, patting Vessa hard on the shoulder.

Maelen led them, winding around natural stone columns to a corridor too narrow for two of them to walk abreast. This place had turned her around, and she couldn’t puzzle out which direction they moved, but ultimately decided that it didn’t matter. She felt confident she could find their rope by retracing their steps, which was enough.

Both Alric and Maelen’s torches were burning low, guttering and smoking, shedding less light than they’d done before. Vessa opened her mouth to ask about it but heard something.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

Her companions froze, listening. Ahead, down the shadowed corridor, was the unmistakable sound of water dripping. Maelen jerked her chin in a gesture for them to follow, then moved forward. Alric went next, with Vessa in the rear. Shadows and stone pressed close, tightening around her chest like a fist. Her breath came too fast; she forced herself to swallow it down. She wanted badly to leave this place and never return.

Ahead, Maelen cursed.

“What is it?” Vessa whispered. No one answered, so she pressed forward, her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.

Once again, Vessa found herself on a small dais of rock, just wide enough for the three of them to stand uncrowded.

Beyond the lip of the rocky shelf, as far as the wavering torchlight could reach, was a smooth, black pool of water, so still it reflected their torchlight like a sheet of obsidian.

Two distant drips fell in uneven rhythm, loud in the cavern’s vast silence.

“Tell me you two can swim,” Maelen growled.

Her voice was not reassuring.

Next: Black Waters [with game notes]

[game-notes version here]

XX.

Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.

When you get to the cliff’s edge, little mouse: Don’t jump.

The words of the blind seer Wink had been echoing in Alric’s mind since he’d approached the Starless Rift. Surely this moment is what she’d foretold. Did lowering himself precariously on a rope through the rain into the chasm constitute “jumping?”

Then her other words flooded in: Run or fight, but don’t jump into the darkness!  Run or fight? There was nothing to run from or fight on that barren ledge. So perhaps she had prophesied a different moment. Or perhaps she possessed no gift at all, and was simply mad, like Hadren Kelthorn. Alric ground his teeth and shook his head, frustrated by all he didn’t yet know. If he survived this trek, he vowed to spend his time better understanding the forces shaping the Redwood Marches. His lack of knowledge infuriated him. For the hundredth time, he wondered whether Hadren had discovered a second book of Orthuun, a hollow yearning within his seemingly empty chest.

Frustrated, he turned his attention to the present, terrifying moment. As soon as he’d built the courage to step out and into the crevice, it was as if his senses dulled. The rain became a distant patter on his hood, as if further away. The cold seeping into him ebbed. The damp, earthen smell of the Rift faded. It was quiet, but not a peaceful quiet. Instead, it felt as if someone had led him into a dark room, head covered and bound by gauze. Tension pulsed through Alric as he waited for some unseen horror to burst out of the shadows.

After a long, breathless journey, however, his feet touched the rocky floor and his shaking arms released the rope. Maelen was there, nodding grimly at him with torch held aloft. Vessa, meanwhile, moved to help him disentangle from the harness below his thighs and buttocks. He pulled his staff from where he’d secured it across his back. His lamed leg pricked with familiar pain, and he shifted his weight to the staff.

“Thank you,” he panted, looking around wide-eyed. His attention snapped to what looked like a pile of gore near Maelen’s feet. “What– what is that?!”

“Keep your voice down,” Vessa urged, then spat, “It seems our reckless leader may have been wrong about this place not having guardians.”

With horrified wonder, Alric approached the mess upon the cavern floor. It looked like someone had skinned an animal, taken out its bones, scattered the muscles and organs into a pile, and then charred it in several places. The smell—sharp and rotten—assaulted his nose and he covered his face with a wet sleeve.

“That’s enough from you,” Maelen hissed at Vessa. “It was no trouble.”

“Are you hurt?” he asked. When she shook her head once, Alric whispered, “What was it?”

She let out a sharp breath and shook her head once again, the gray lock of hair bobbing across her brow. “Don’t know. Smaller than a human, with no skin and full of sharp teeth. No eyes,” she looked at him meaningfully.

“More of Orthuun’s corruption,” Alric breathed weakly.

“Seems so,” Maelen confirmed in a low whisper. “Let’s hope it was the only thing down here.” From several paces away, Vessa scoffed and Maelen shot her a dark look. “Anyway, when I burned it, the thing just sort of… unraveled into that,” she jerked a chin at the grotesque pile.

“Fire then,” Alric nodded, rubbing his chin with his free hand. “Same as Sarin. Orthuun’s minions don’t like objects that shed light.”

Maelen looked at him for a moment, then grunted. He guessed she’d thought it was the heat of the flame that had killed whatever she’d fought.

While she processed this new insight, his own mind whirled. The zombies in Thornmere Hold had been ageless human guardians twisted by the presence of, she guessed, The Tome of Unlit Paths, and the chitinous monster likely had been a common spider trapped in the vault with it. What had this skinless thing been before its corruption? And what had corrupted it? Could there be another book down here, or was it something else? Perhaps some of the answers he craved existed somewhere in these deep caverns.

The thought caused him to look around for the first time and truly scan their surroundings. They stood upon a rocky dais littered with debris that he guessed had fallen when the Starless Rift opened from Hadren’s ritual. Maelen’s torch made dancing light that showed the dais dropped off to a larger cavern, but it was impossible to tell how large. He glanced up at the gray strip of clouded sky far above them and swallowed.

“Lad, light a torch,” Maelen whispered. “I’ll keep mine too. Vess, have your bow ready.”

Alric unshouldered his pack to gain access to his tinderbox and a dry torch. His numb fingers took far too long, but eventually the resin-soaked cloth wrapping ignited with a faint whoosh. A smell like smoke and tallow banished some of the stink of the thing Maelen had killed. He asked Vessa to hold the torch while he carefully repacked his travel gear, stood, and settled the pack upon his back. She handed it back without a word and smoothly pulled an arrow from her quiver.

“Let’s go,” Maelen urged.

With help from his companions, Alric half-stepped, half-slid off the edge of the dais and to the rocky cavern floor. He held his torch aloft, turning to examine the space. Ten paces above them, the crevice widened, creating a rough dome of black rock overhead. He felt as if he should be able to hear the storm overhead, feel the rain on his face when he stood beneath the gray line of sky above. Instead, the Starless Rift was almost silent beyond a steady sigh, like a breeze through alleyways in Oakton. Alric stayed close to Maelen as she stepped carefully around the perimeter, torch and mace in hand. Vessa crept behind them, bow ready and closer than usual to stay within the halo of light.

They discovered a cavern roughly the shape of a three-quarters moon, perhaps thirty strides from the wall they’d descended in each direction. Unlike Thornmere Hold, the space didn’t seem crafted; it was a natural cave system, quiet and cool, with shards of rock strewn about its hard floor. Alric’s ears strained, but he could hear nothing beyond that steady sigh and their own footfalls. Well, his and Maelen’s… he found himself glancing back at Vessa to make sure she still followed them and was somewhat startled each time that she was there, quiet as a thief.

“Do you hear anything?” he whispered at Maelen’s shoulder.

“Just the damned mace,” she growled.

He blinked. “What does it sound like?” he asked, unable to hear anything from the black metal weapon.

“Like it wants to fight,” she said grimly. He was about to ask what that could possibly sound like when she added, “Three passages. One’s as good as another,” and pushed past him with a hurried step. Grateful for the leadership, he followed without question. Dimly, he worried once again that his heart was not hammering with fear in his chest. It had been three days since the emptiness had stilled his heartbeat, and still no change or sign that it would return.

A short passageway through the stone led them to another cavern. Irregularly shaped columns of stone in its central chamber made the space feel at first labyrinthine. They moved around the right side of the first column slowly until it opened into a space larger than Oakton’s town hall. It was beautiful, in its way, the rock untouched and natural—a gray, earthen cathedral.

Just then, something squeaked shrilly, the voice echoing. Maelen grunted in surprise and took a step back, as if a spider had fallen on her. Before he could react, a small furred creature smaller than his palm scampered with tiny feet past him and back the way they’d come.

“Tatter!” Maelen swore quietly. “By the Rootmother, she just panicked. Vess, do you see her?”

“She left,” Vessa whispered back from the edge of light. “Ran right past me.”

“Never seen her do that,” Maelen grumbled, and looked with grim concern at her weapon. “Dammit. I’ll find her later. Mace is practically screaming, too. Everyone stay–”

She cut off as something shuffled unseen just beyond the column of stone ahead of them. Alric froze, holding his torch up towards the direction of the noise.

A snuffling sound, like someone with a congested illness, echoed softly in the chamber, followed by a sound like slapping pieces of wood together. Alric’s senses quested into the flickering torchlight, looking for some sign of movement. He heard a sliding, shuffling step much like his own, then more of that awful snuffling and clacking. He tensed, fingers going white on his staff and torch.

The creature that stepped into the dancing light was worse than any horror his nightmares could manifest. It moved like something in wracking pain, hands curled protectively inwards and back hunched, each step reluctant. Roughly the size and shape of Maelen, humanoid and broad-shouldered, yet composed of a mass of skinless muscle and organs, a riot of red, pink, and gray tissue with seemingly no organization other than legs, torso, arms, and head. The head, though, had no eyes, and only two long slits in the tissue for a nose. Its mouth was as wide as its head, hinged like a snake’s, with irregular rows of sharp teeth. Then Alric spied a second mouth, on one side of where its neck met shoulder. Both mouths clacked open and shut like doors left open in a windstorm, clack-clack, clack-clack. The holes in its head flared, making that mucus-laden snuffling. The… wrongness of the creature filled him, and in that moment he knew that he was witnessing something from another world, an aberration never meant for the Redwood Marches. This was not a creature twisted by Orthuun’s hand. It was a demon itself, spawned from forces he could never comprehend.

“Mother of Roots…” Vessa gasped behind him.

The thing snuffled and clacked again, then crouched as if a spasm of pain had overtaken it. Alric felt no pity, however, only revulsion. He took a halting step backwards, bile rising in his throat.

Then, like a rabid dog, the thing charged at them and naked terror threatened to paralyze his limbs.

When faced with the skratt horde, Alric felt as if he fought a dizzying, endless mass of claws and teeth. Yet those scores of creatures were nothing like the thing that launched itself at Maelen. He thought perhaps the horrifying creature was trying to scream, but instead a hiccupping, whistling sound filled the cavern, along with the clack-clack of its twin mouths. Maelen shouted a charge and stepped forward to meet it, and her first blow cracked the side of its head with a wet thunk so forcefully that it looked as if she’d broken its neck.

The aberration hit the cavern floor and, without a pause, launched itself again at Maelen. She had been ready for the first leap but not the second, and it was upon her. It moved at frenzied speeds, grabbing and flailing its limbs to position its body for bite after bite with those wide, sharpened maws. In a blink, it was impossible to tell where the warrior and creature began and ended, they were in such a tangle. Maelen’s blood flew in a wide spray, which only seemed to fuel the monstrosity’s madness. Again and again it ripped and tore at her, almost too fast to comprehend.

“I—I can’t get a clean shot!” Vessa’s voice pleaded from the shadows.

Setting his mouth in a grim line, Alric rushed towards the writhing, bloody mass that was Maelen and the creature. It was a creature of darkness, a minion of the Void… light should hurt it. He swung his torch back and forth in a warding gesture. But the speed and violence of its rage was such that he hesitated to get close. The flames flickered past, illuminating the fleshy, shining mass of the creature, but his torch never touched it. Maelen grunted and whimpered as it continued to tear into her.

All at once, the creature froze, its eyeless head whipping towards Alric. Maelen moaned in pain within the silence. Bloodstained teeth clacked.

He stepped backwards, holding his torch up like a ward.

“Don’t!” he yelled.

It leapt upon him. He felt a sharp series of ripping pains, smelled the rotting meat of the thing, heard its snuffling, panting whistle, and then…

Nothing.

Next: Carnage and Keys [with game notes]

[prose-only version here]

XX.

Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.

When you get to the cliff’s edge, little mouse: Don’t jump.

The words of the blind seer Wink had been echoing in Alric’s mind since he’d approached the Starless Rift. Surely this moment is what she’d foretold. Did lowering himself precariously on a rope through the rain into the chasm constitute “jumping?”

Then her other words flooded in: Run or fight, but don’t jump into the darkness!  Run or fight? There was nothing to run from or fight on that barren ledge. So perhaps she had prophesied a different moment. Or perhaps she possessed no gift at all, and was simply mad, like Hadren Kelthorn. Alric ground his teeth and shook his head, frustrated by all he didn’t yet know. If he survived this trek, he vowed to spend his time better understanding the forces shaping the Redwood Marches. His lack of knowledge infuriated him. For the hundredth time, he wondered whether Hadren had discovered a second book of Orthuun, a hollow yearning within his seemingly empty chest.

Frustrated, he turned his attention to the present, terrifying moment. As soon as he’d built the courage to step out and into the crevice, it was as if his senses dulled. The rain became a distant patter on his hood, as if further away. The cold seeping into him ebbed. The damp, earthen smell of the Rift faded. It was quiet, but not a peaceful quiet. Instead, it felt as if someone had led him into a dark room, head covered and bound by gauze. Tension pulsed through Alric as he waited for some unseen horror to burst out of the shadows.

After a long, breathless journey, however, his feet touched the rocky floor and his shaking arms released the rope. Maelen was there, nodding grimly at him with torch held aloft. Vessa, meanwhile, moved to help him disentangle from the harness below his thighs and buttocks. He pulled his staff from where he’d secured it across his back. His lamed leg pricked with familiar pain, and he shifted his weight to the staff.

“Thank you,” he panted, looking around wide-eyed. His attention snapped to what looked like a pile of gore near Maelen’s feet. “What– what is that?!”

“Keep your voice down,” Vessa urged, then spat, “It seems our reckless leader may have been wrong about this place not having guardians.”

With horrified wonder, Alric approached the mess upon the cavern floor. It looked like someone had skinned an animal, taken out its bones, scattered the muscles and organs into a pile, and then charred it in several places. The smell—sharp and rotten—assaulted his nose and he covered his face with a wet sleeve.

“That’s enough from you,” Maelen hissed at Vessa. “It was no trouble.”

“Are you hurt?” he asked. When she shook her head once, Alric whispered, “What was it?”

She let out a sharp breath and shook her head once again, the gray lock of hair bobbing across her brow. “Don’t know. Smaller than a human, with no skin and full of sharp teeth. No eyes,” she looked at him meaningfully.

“More of Orthuun’s corruption,” Alric breathed weakly.

“Seems so,” Maelen confirmed in a low whisper. “Let’s hope it was the only thing down here.” From several paces away, Vessa scoffed and Maelen shot her a dark look. “Anyway, when I burned it, the thing just sort of… unraveled into that,” she jerked a chin at the grotesque pile.

“Fire then,” Alric nodded, rubbing his chin with his free hand. “Same as Sarin. Orthuun’s minions don’t like objects that shed light.”

Maelen looked at him for a moment, then grunted. He guessed she’d thought it was the heat of the flame that had killed whatever she’d fought.

While she processed this new insight, his own mind whirled. The zombies in Thornmere Hold had been ageless human guardians twisted by the presence of, she guessed, The Tome of Unlit Paths, and the chitinous monster likely had been a common spider trapped in the vault with it. What had this skinless thing been before its corruption? And what had corrupted it? Could there be another book down here, or was it something else? Perhaps some of the answers he craved existed somewhere in these deep caverns.

The thought caused him to look around for the first time and truly scan their surroundings. They stood upon a rocky dais littered with debris that he guessed had fallen when the Starless Rift opened from Hadren’s ritual. Maelen’s torch made dancing light that showed the dais dropped off to a larger cavern, but it was impossible to tell how large. He glanced up at the gray strip of clouded sky far above them and swallowed.

“Lad, light a torch,” Maelen whispered. “I’ll keep mine too. Vess, have your bow ready.”

Alric unshouldered his pack to gain access to his tinderbox and a dry torch. His numb fingers took far too long, but eventually the resin-soaked cloth wrapping ignited with a faint whoosh. A smell like smoke and tallow banished some of the stink of the thing Maelen had killed. He asked Vessa to hold the torch while he carefully repacked his travel gear, stood, and settled the pack upon his back. She handed it back without a word and smoothly pulled an arrow from her quiver.

“Let’s go,” Maelen urged.

With help from his companions, Alric half-stepped, half-slid off the edge of the dais and to the rocky cavern floor. He held his torch aloft, turning to examine the space. Ten paces above them, the crevice widened, creating a rough dome of black rock overhead. He felt as if he should be able to hear the storm overhead, feel the rain on his face when he stood beneath the gray line of sky above. Instead, the Starless Rift was almost silent beyond a steady sigh, like a breeze through alleyways in Oakton. Alric stayed close to Maelen as she stepped carefully around the perimeter, torch and mace in hand. Vessa crept behind them, bow ready and closer than usual to stay within the halo of light.

They discovered a cavern roughly the shape of a three-quarters moon, perhaps thirty strides from the wall they’d descended in each direction. Unlike Thornmere Hold, the space didn’t seem crafted; it was a natural cave system, quiet and cool, with shards of rock strewn about its hard floor. Alric’s ears strained, but he could hear nothing beyond that steady sigh and their own footfalls. Well, his and Maelen’s… he found himself glancing back at Vessa to make sure she still followed them and was somewhat startled each time that she was there, quiet as a thief.

“Do you hear anything?” he whispered at Maelen’s shoulder.

“Just the damned mace,” she growled.

He blinked. “What does it sound like?” he asked, unable to hear anything from the black metal weapon.

“Like it wants to fight,” she said grimly. He was about to ask what that could possibly sound like when she added, “Three passages. One’s as good as another,” and pushed past him with a hurried step. Grateful for the leadership, he followed without question. Dimly, he worried once again that his heart was not hammering with fear in his chest. It had been three days since the emptiness had stilled his heartbeat, and still no change or sign that it would return.

A short passageway through the stone led them to another cavern. Irregularly shaped columns of stone in its central chamber made the space feel at first labyrinthine. They moved around the right side of the first column slowly until it opened into a space larger than Oakton’s town hall. It was beautiful, in its way, the rock untouched and natural—a gray, earthen cathedral.

Just then, something squeaked shrilly, the voice echoing. Maelen grunted in surprise and took a step back, as if a spider had fallen on her. Before he could react, a small furred creature smaller than his palm scampered with tiny feet past him and back the way they’d come.

“Tatter!” Maelen swore quietly. “By the Rootmother, she just panicked. Vess, do you see her?”

“She left,” Vessa whispered back from the edge of light. “Ran right past me.”

“Never seen her do that,” Maelen grumbled, and looked with grim concern at her weapon. “Dammit. I’ll find her later. Mace is practically screaming, too. Everyone stay–”

She cut off as something shuffled unseen just beyond the column of stone ahead of them. Alric froze, holding his torch up towards the direction of the noise.

A snuffling sound, like someone with a congested illness, echoed softly in the chamber, followed by a sound like slapping pieces of wood together. Alric’s senses quested into the flickering torchlight, looking for some sign of movement. He heard a sliding, shuffling step much like his own, then more of that awful snuffling and clacking. He tensed, fingers going white on his staff and torch.

The creature that stepped into the dancing light was worse than any horror his nightmares could manifest. It moved like something in wracking pain, hands curled protectively inwards and back hunched, each step reluctant. Roughly the size and shape of Maelen, humanoid and broad-shouldered, yet composed of a mass of skinless muscle and organs, a riot of red, pink, and gray tissue with seemingly no organization other than legs, torso, arms, and head. The head, though, had no eyes, and only two long slits in the tissue for a nose. Its mouth was as wide as its head, hinged like a snake’s, with irregular rows of sharp teeth. Then Alric spied a second mouth, on one side of where its neck met shoulder. Both mouths clacked open and shut like doors left open in a windstorm, clack-clack, clack-clack. The holes in its head flared, making that mucus-laden snuffling. The… wrongness of the creature filled him, and in that moment he knew that he was witnessing something from another world, an aberration never meant for the Redwood Marches. This was not a creature twisted by Orthuun’s hand. It was a demon itself, spawned from forces he could never comprehend.

“Mother of Roots…” Vessa gasped behind him.

The thing snuffled and clacked again, then crouched as if a spasm of pain had overtaken it. Alric felt no pity, however, only revulsion. He took a halting step backwards, bile rising in his throat.

Then, like a rabid dog, the thing charged at them and naked terror threatened to paralyze his limbs.

When faced with the skratt horde, Alric felt as if he fought a dizzying, endless mass of claws and teeth. Yet those scores of creatures were nothing like the thing that launched itself at Maelen. He thought perhaps the horrifying creature was trying to scream, but instead a hiccupping, whistling sound filled the cavern, along with the clack-clack of its twin mouths. Maelen shouted a charge and stepped forward to meet it, and her first blow cracked the side of its head with a wet thunk so forcefully that it looked as if she’d broken its neck.

The aberration hit the cavern floor and, without a pause, launched itself again at Maelen. She had been ready for the first leap but not the second, and it was upon her. It moved at frenzied speeds, grabbing and flailing its limbs to position its body for bite after bite with those wide, sharpened maws. In a blink, it was impossible to tell where the warrior and creature began and ended, they were in such a tangle. Maelen’s blood flew in a wide spray, which only seemed to fuel the monstrosity’s madness. Again and again it ripped and tore at her, almost too fast to comprehend.

“I—I can’t get a clean shot!” Vessa’s voice pleaded from the shadows.

Setting his mouth in a grim line, Alric rushed towards the writhing, bloody mass that was Maelen and the creature. It was a creature of darkness, a minion of the Void… light should hurt it. He swung his torch back and forth in a warding gesture. But the speed and violence of its rage was such that he hesitated to get close. The flames flickered past, illuminating the fleshy, shining mass of the creature, but his torch never touched it. Maelen grunted and whimpered as it continued to tear into her.

All at once, the creature froze, its eyeless head whipping towards Alric. Maelen moaned in pain within the silence. Bloodstained teeth clacked.

He stepped backwards, holding his torch up like a ward.

“Don’t!” he yelled.

It leapt upon him. He felt a sharp series of ripping pains, smelled the rotting meat of the thing, heard its snuffling, panting whistle, and then…

Nothing.

Next: Carnage and Keys [with game notes]

[game-notes version here]

XIX.

Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.

Maelen rubbed at her jaw, scowling. The rain continued in steady sheets, but she hardly noticed it anymore. She was soaked from crown to toe, past the point where a person could get any wetter. Instead, her attention was focused on the muddy ground where, less than a bell ago, a madman had butchered and arrayed dozens of corpses into a wide, arcane circle.

Except now, the ground was empty. No madman. No corpses. Not even blood remained, though the ground still showed the churned activity of boots and combat, the indentation of the bodies clearly visible until the rain soon washed it all away.

She voiced her thoughts aloud. “How is this possible, lad? What happened to them?”

Alric looked up at her, the top half of his face shadowed by the hood of his cloak. Something had been eating at the boy since their encounter with those damned wisps of gray light in the forest. He’d been more withdrawn, brooding.

He lifted one shoulder in a weary shrug. “Hadren cast something,” Alric said quietly. “Or, tried to. I don’t think the shadowed creature that you and Vessa described was his intent, or that globe of darkness. It’s like I told you, Maelen: The magic isn’t safe. It’s inviting a demon into you, every time. The ritual he and his followers used to open the Starless Rift must have made the forces even wilder, less predictable. Hadren paid his price for that.”

“Did he disappear, like in the Heart & Dagger? Or is he dead?” she asked.

The lad leaned onto his walking staff, sighing with a great cloud of mist in the cold rain. “I don’t know. What am I missing? Dammit all, I wish I understood any of this!” he burst out.

She saw the fingers on his hands turn white as he gripped the staff. Maelen approached, the churned mud sucking at her boots, and stood before him. She pitched her voice lower. “And the damned thing’s got its claws in you now, doesn’t it?”

Alric started, and this close she could see his haunted eyes within the cloak. He nodded jerkily.

“What happened to Hadren,” he said hoarsely. “It’s like a warning, Maelen.” The lad seemed like he was going to say more and then stopped himself with a shake of his head.

“You can’t destroy it? Leave it out here in the rain? Burn it?”

He swallowed. “I… I’ve tried. It’s demon-made.”

“Forget it, then,” she said with a swift nod. “Push those dark thoughts away, lad. Let’s go talk to Vessa and see about this crack in the ground, eh?” She clapped him on the shoulder. He stumbled, and she strode with purpose to Vessa. Her back was to them a bowshot away, standing at the edge of this Starless Rift that Hadren had opened.

As she approached, it was as if the sound of the rain noticeably lessened. More than that, actually… It was as if something pressed against her senses, muting smell, numbing her skin, smudging her vision. The rain became distant, like she’d stepped half out of the world. It was an uncanny feeling and reminded her of the moments before she succumbed to blackness with Sarin the Night Captain’s hand atop her skull. Maelen shuddered at the memory, gritting her teeth.

She checked over her shoulder to make sure Alric had joined them, and then said, “Well, that bastard Hadren took the bag of coin with him to the afterlife, if there ever was a bag. There’s nothing left from those cultists, and the lad doesn’t know where they went. What have you spied, lass?”

Vessa looked at them, her concerned eyes lingering on Alric beneath her own hood. “Not much to see, Mae. Just darkness. No telling how deep it goes.”

She examined the crevice’s edge. The earth around the deep crack was gone, exposing a black stone that shone wetly in the rain. Beyond the stone, there was simply… nothing. A yawning empty gash in the world. She could see no stairs or obvious way to descend the sides.

“Did you understand what he said, Alric?” Vessa asked. “About Saelith the Vanished?”

Maelen grinned. Vessa wasn’t the sharpest mind, but damned if she didn’t hear everything and never missed a detail. Her ability to recall those bits after hearing them, too, never failed to amaze.

Alric paused before he answered, tilting his head to consider it. “There is frustratingly little information about demons in the Inkbinders Lodge, at least the parts I can access. But the Tome mentioned them,” his fingers drifted to the closed satchel at his waist. “Orthuun’s generals. There are ten of them, it says, and they spread the Blind Sovereign’s will across the land. This Saelith must be one of them. Hm. Give me a moment,” he said, considering.

Maelen tried to catch Vessa’s eye, but the girl kept her attention on Alric tensely, like she was willing his brain to make the connections. So, Maelen waited quietly in the rain, looking out and over the broad gap in the earth. She wiped water from her face several times, trying to be patient.

Eventually, after enough time that Maelen became aware of her numb, cold feet, he cleared his throat. Hadren’s zombie had made his voice huskier with its strangling of him. “I’ll need to do some research back home to be sure, but I think the Lodge must have done battle with these followers of Orthuun many years ago. Thornmere Hold wasn’t built as a prison. It was a vault, for the Tome and your mace.”

“What does the mace have to do with it?” she asked, though she couldn’t deny the steady thrum of the weapon, growing as they neared this place. It had practically sung in her hands when she’d fought Hadren and his zombie. She could still feel it on her hip and hear its humming like a heartbeat in her ears, as steady at the patter of rain.

“You saw Hadren’s reaction. I think it must have been a weapon specifically used to defeat Orthuun and his minions the last time he plagued the Redwood Marches. Perhaps… Hm. Perhaps they were the ones who buried this Saelith the Vanished here. Perhaps there are more vaults, spread throughout the region, and more tombs. If that’s true…” his voice trailed off.

“Go on,” she prodded him.

“Can you imagine the implications? The Lodge spreading both the instruments of Orthuun’s return and defeat in hidden vaults? It… it boggles the mind.” It was the most animated Maelen had seen the boy in days, though it didn’t last. As soon as his enthusiasm had crested, it disappeared. He slumped his shoulders. “But again… I’m just speculating.”

Maelen was about to say something, but then he added. “I only wish… The blind seer, Wink… she said there were five books of Orthuun. Hadren must have possessed one of them, and that information was enough to locate this place and perform his ritual, but not enough to awaken the demon’s general. But what’s in the Tome that he needed? I wish we’d had his body… With a second book…”

“You’d be twice as cursed, lad,” Maelen said firmly. Alric straightened at her words but nodded slowly.

“You’re right, of course.”

“What now?” Vessa asked. “Why not throw the damned thing into the Rift and end this?”

“What?!” Alric choked, stepping back as if she’d struck him. “No– no, that would be catastrophic. We can’t bring Orthuun’s tools closer together.”

“Back to Oakton, then,” Maelen said with a shrug. “Damned waste of—”

“No,” Alric snapped, louder than she would have expected. “No. Thornmere Hold… there’s more there I didn’t read. And the forbidden stacks in the Lodge… I need access.” He thumped his staff into the mud for emphasis. His hood turned to the Starless Rift, staring down into its inky depths for several heartbeats.

For a moment, no one said anything. Over the rain and humming of her mace, though, she thought the lad was mumbling something. She took a quiet step closer, straining to hear.

“Don’t jump…” she could have sworn he whispered. It sounded familiar. Was it something the blind seer had said?

“Alric,” Maelen said slowly. “Lad? You’re not thinking of going down there?”

“It’s only…” he said, looking up at them. “If the sect of the Inkbinders Lodge truly banished Orthuun before and created these hidden vaults, wouldn’t it stand to reason that there’s more than just the tomb down there? Like Thornmere Hold, maybe there’s an instrument for defeating Orthuun. The Lodge may have spread these artifacts throughout the land.”

“Go down there?” Vessa half laughed. “I don’t think so.”

“Wait, lass,” Maelen held up a hand. “You think there might be more weapons? Chests of coin like the last vault?”

Alric spread his hands, another puff of mist as he exhaled. “I don’t know, really. It’s all just guesswork.”

“Mae…” Vessa said warningly.

“We may not walk back empty handed, is all I’m saying,” she said, rubbing her chin in thought. “Imagine the coin without our debts, lass.”

“Into the tomb of a… a… demon gang leader, or whatever?!” she pleaded in exasperation.

“Oh, Saelith is entombed,” Alric said hastily. “Saelith the Vanished should be no threat.”

“There, see?” Maelen grinned and began unshouldering her pack.

“It’s whatever’s guarding the tomb that’s the threat,” he added simply.

“This place was sealed in the earth, lad,” Maelen scoffed. “There wouldn’t have been any reason to post guardians too.”

Alric and Vessa exchanged a dubious look, but she ignored them. Instead, she began pulling gear from her travel pack. When she’d heard the name Starless Rift, she’d guessed they might be doing some climbing and had used the last of her coins for supplies. With calloused hands, unpacked coils of rope, rough iron pitons, a small hammer, and a grapnel hook—all cheap tools, but sturdy. She checked the rope for frays. “Good enough,” she mumbled.

Without further comment, she found a stable rock lip of the crevice and began driving pitons into the unnaturally smooth black stone, each hammer strike ringing strangely hollow. She winced at the noise. If there were guardians down below, they surely wouldn’t be surprised by their arrival.

“You don’t think there are stairs?” Alric said weakly as she began looping the rope through the pitons and tying a series of firm knots.

“Vess, see any stairs?” she answered without looking up.

“No,” she clipped back. Vessa was clearly unhappy about the decision to explore this place, but Maelen knew she’d accompany them. The thief was a mess in a lot of ways, but damned if she wasn’t loyal.

“There you go,” Maelen offered.

“But… what if there isn’t enough rope to reach the bottom?” he asked.

“Then we’ll climb back up and say we tried. Now shut up and let me work.”

She lost herself in her tasks, looping the rope into a harness that would bear her weight evenly on the descent, checking her knots and the pitons twice, and, eventually, lowering herself over the edge of the Starless Rift into the empty blackness below.

Maelen braced herself with boots against the wet stone and nodded at her companions. Vessa’s face had gone pale; she kept swallowing like she might be sick. Alric’s face was mask-still, drained of anything human, like he’d been painted into the scene.

“If you hear me yell, pull like the gods are whipping you,” she barked. “Once I’m down, Vess comes next.”

Without waiting for confirmation, Maelen began letting the rope out hand over hand, keeping her boots against the sheer stone wall, until the two companions had disappeared from view and the darkness swallowed her.

As she descended, the sound of rainfall ebbed quickly, replaced by the thrumming of her mace. The mysterious black metal practically vibrated at her hip, pulling her deeper into the crevice. The gray light of day shone from above, then that too was gone. Maelen paused, shifted her weight to pull out the torch she had waiting. Two strikes from her flint and the oiled end lit.

A few heartbeats later, orange light shivered across the black walls like something alive. How had Hadren planned to reach this place? Maelen snorted. He hadn’t been thinking clearly at the end. Faith made fools of men. In her experience, trust came in the form of a reliable weapon, of iron pitons struck into rock, and sturdy rope. What had the gods ever done for her?

Grimly, she continued down, moving more slowly now.

For a long while, Maelen lost herself in the rhythm of climbing. Step down, step down, let out rope and drop, look around, continue. No thoughts entered her mind other than ensuring her boots didn’t slip, her rope wasn’t snagging, her torch was held out and away from her. Eventually, however, she began to worry that perhaps she hadn’t bought enough rope, that her descent would end, dangling in emptiness, and they would all leave this place with nothing. Just as the worry began to build, however, her torchlight revealed a cavern floor below her. She grinned and eyed the remaining loops of rope, nodding to herself.

Her boots settled to the rocky floor. She untangled herself from the makeshift harness and tugged sharply on the rope. After several heartbeats, it began jerkily rising. Good.

The air was cool, and Maelen shivered. She was still soaked through from the rain, and though she wasn’t in danger of freezing to death, she had to clamp her jaw shut to keep her teeth from chattering. Would there be any wood down here, fallen from above, to build a fire?

Maelen slowly turned with her torch, getting her bearings. She’d set down upon a raised dais in the rock, not carved but a natural step, probably as wide as twice her height. There was a short, sharp drop off the dais to a wider cavern chamber beyond, and it was large enough that her torchlight didn’t show her its full size. The sheer, black stone wall she’d climbed down rose behind her. Maelen looked up, seeing a gray slice far above that was the clouded sky. It would be foolish to explore the cavern until Vessa and Alric had joined her, so she placed her back against the wall and waited.

Something moved in the darkness beyond, a faint snuffling, chittering noise. She froze and lifted her torch, her free hand pulling the mace from her belt as quietly as possible. Something was scampering around the base of the dais, quiet and searching. Slowly, slowly, she padded forward, mace in one hand and flickering torch in the other, towards the lip of the dais. The thing beyond had paused its movement. She heard the huff huff of what sounded like labored breathing. Perhaps it was a wounded animal that had fallen from the ledge above? But no, nothing could survive that drop. What could it be?

Her left boot slid slowly towards the edge. She leaned carefully forward.

With a high-pitched hiss like a teakettle, the thing below leapt at her.

Next: Frenzied Terror [with game notes]

[prose-only version here]

XIX.

Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.

Maelen rubbed at her jaw, scowling. The rain continued in steady sheets, but she hardly noticed it anymore. She was soaked from crown to toe, past the point where a person could get any wetter. Instead, her attention was focused on the muddy ground where, less than a bell ago, a madman had butchered and arrayed dozens of corpses into a wide, arcane circle.

Except now, the ground was empty. No madman. No corpses. Not even blood remained, though the ground still showed the churned activity of boots and combat, the indentation of the bodies clearly visible until the rain soon washed it all away.

She voiced her thoughts aloud. “How is this possible, lad? What happened to them?”

Alric looked up at her, the top half of his face shadowed by the hood of his cloak. Something had been eating at the boy since their encounter with those damned wisps of gray light in the forest. He’d been more withdrawn, brooding.

He lifted one shoulder in a weary shrug. “Hadren cast something,” Alric said quietly. “Or, tried to. I don’t think the shadowed creature that you and Vessa described was his intent, or that globe of darkness. It’s like I told you, Maelen: The magic isn’t safe. It’s inviting a demon into you, every time. The ritual he and his followers used to open the Starless Rift must have made the forces even wilder, less predictable. Hadren paid his price for that.”

“Did he disappear, like in the Heart & Dagger? Or is he dead?” she asked.

The lad leaned onto his walking staff, sighing with a great cloud of mist in the cold rain. “I don’t know. What am I missing? Dammit all, I wish I understood any of this!” he burst out.

She saw the fingers on his hands turn white as he gripped the staff. Maelen approached, the churned mud sucking at her boots, and stood before him. She pitched her voice lower. “And the damned thing’s got its claws in you now, doesn’t it?”

Alric started, and this close she could see his haunted eyes within the cloak. He nodded jerkily.

“What happened to Hadren,” he said hoarsely. “It’s like a warning, Maelen.” The lad seemed like he was going to say more and then stopped himself with a shake of his head.

“You can’t destroy it? Leave it out here in the rain? Burn it?”

He swallowed. “I… I’ve tried. It’s demon-made.”

“Forget it, then,” she said with a swift nod. “Push those dark thoughts away, lad. Let’s go talk to Vessa and see about this crack in the ground, eh?” She clapped him on the shoulder. He stumbled, and she strode with purpose to Vessa. Her back was to them a bowshot away, standing at the edge of this Starless Rift that Hadren had opened.

As she approached, it was as if the sound of the rain noticeably lessened. More than that, actually… It was as if something pressed against her senses, muting smell, numbing her skin, smudging her vision. The rain became distant, like she’d stepped half out of the world. It was an uncanny feeling and reminded her of the moments before she succumbed to blackness with Sarin the Night Captain’s hand atop her skull. Maelen shuddered at the memory, gritting her teeth.

She checked over her shoulder to make sure Alric had joined them, and then said, “Well, that bastard Hadren took the bag of coin with him to the afterlife, if there ever was a bag. There’s nothing left from those cultists, and the lad doesn’t know where they went. What have you spied, lass?”

Vessa looked at them, her concerned eyes lingering on Alric beneath her own hood. “Not much to see, Mae. Just darkness. No telling how deep it goes.”

She examined the crevice’s edge. The earth around the deep crack was gone, exposing a black stone that shone wetly in the rain. Beyond the stone, there was simply… nothing. A yawning empty gash in the world. She could see no stairs or obvious way to descend the sides.

“Did you understand what he said, Alric?” Vessa asked. “About Saelith the Vanished?”

Maelen grinned. Vessa wasn’t the sharpest mind, but damned if she didn’t hear everything and never missed a detail. Her ability to recall those bits after hearing them, too, never failed to amaze.

Alric paused before he answered, tilting his head to consider it. “There is frustratingly little information about demons in the Inkbinders Lodge, at least the parts I can access. But the Tome mentioned them,” his fingers drifted to the closed satchel at his waist. “Orthuun’s generals. There are ten of them, it says, and they spread the Blind Sovereign’s will across the land. This Saelith must be one of them. Hm. Give me a moment,” he said, considering.

Maelen tried to catch Vessa’s eye, but the girl kept her attention on Alric tensely, like she was willing his brain to make the connections. So, Maelen waited quietly in the rain, looking out and over the broad gap in the earth. She wiped water from her face several times, trying to be patient.

Eventually, after enough time that Maelen became aware of her numb, cold feet, he cleared his throat. Hadren’s zombie had made his voice huskier with its strangling of him. “I’ll need to do some research back home to be sure, but I think the Lodge must have done battle with these followers of Orthuun many years ago. Thornmere Hold wasn’t built as a prison. It was a vault, for the Tome and your mace.”

“What does the mace have to do with it?” she asked, though she couldn’t deny the steady thrum of the weapon, growing as they neared this place. It had practically sung in her hands when she’d fought Hadren and his zombie. She could still feel it on her hip and hear its humming like a heartbeat in her ears, as steady at the patter of rain.

“You saw Hadren’s reaction. I think it must have been a weapon specifically used to defeat Orthuun and his minions the last time he plagued the Redwood Marches. Perhaps… Hm. Perhaps they were the ones who buried this Saelith the Vanished here. Perhaps there are more vaults, spread throughout the region, and more tombs. If that’s true…” his voice trailed off.

“Go on,” she prodded him.

“Can you imagine the implications? The Lodge spreading both the instruments of Orthuun’s return and defeat in hidden vaults? It… it boggles the mind.” It was the most animated Maelen had seen the boy in days, though it didn’t last. As soon as his enthusiasm had crested, it disappeared. He slumped his shoulders. “But again… I’m just speculating.”

Maelen was about to say something, but then he added. “I only wish… The blind seer, Wink… she said there were five books of Orthuun. Hadren must have possessed one of them, and that information was enough to locate this place and perform his ritual, but not enough to awaken the demon’s general. But what’s in the Tome that he needed? I wish we’d had his body… With a second book…”

“You’d be twice as cursed, lad,” Maelen said firmly. Alric straightened at her words but nodded slowly.

“You’re right, of course.”

“What now?” Vessa asked. “Why not throw the damned thing into the Rift and end this?”

“What?!” Alric choked, stepping back as if she’d struck him. “No– no, that would be catastrophic. We can’t bring Orthuun’s tools closer together.”

“Back to Oakton, then,” Maelen said with a shrug. “Damned waste of—”

“No,” Alric snapped, louder than she would have expected. “No. Thornmere Hold… there’s more there I didn’t read. And the forbidden stacks in the Lodge… I need access.” He thumped his staff into the mud for emphasis. His hood turned to the Starless Rift, staring down into its inky depths for several heartbeats.

For a moment, no one said anything. Over the rain and humming of her mace, though, she thought the lad was mumbling something. She took a quiet step closer, straining to hear.

“Don’t jump…” she could have sworn he whispered. It sounded familiar. Was it something the blind seer had said?

“Alric,” Maelen said slowly. “Lad? You’re not thinking of going down there?”

“It’s only…” he said, looking up at them. “If the sect of the Inkbinders Lodge truly banished Orthuun before and created these hidden vaults, wouldn’t it stand to reason that there’s more than just the tomb down there? Like Thornmere Hold, maybe there’s an instrument for defeating Orthuun. The Lodge may have spread these artifacts throughout the land.”

“Go down there?” Vessa half laughed. “I don’t think so.”

“Wait, lass,” Maelen held up a hand. “You think there might be more weapons? Chests of coin like the last vault?”

Alric spread his hands, another puff of mist as he exhaled. “I don’t know, really. It’s all just guesswork.”

“Mae…” Vessa said warningly.

“We may not walk back empty handed, is all I’m saying,” she said, rubbing her chin in thought. “Imagine the coin without our debts, lass.”

“Into the tomb of a… a… demon gang leader, or whatever?!” she pleaded in exasperation.

“Oh, Saelith is entombed,” Alric said hastily. “Saelith the Vanished should be no threat.”

“There, see?” Maelen grinned and began unshouldering her pack.

“It’s whatever’s guarding the tomb that’s the threat,” he added simply.

“This place was sealed in the earth, lad,” Maelen scoffed. “There wouldn’t have been any reason to post guardians too.”

Alric and Vessa exchanged a dubious look, but she ignored them. Instead, she began pulling gear from her travel pack. When she’d heard the name Starless Rift, she’d guessed they might be doing some climbing and had used the last of her coins for supplies. With calloused hands, unpacked coils of rope, rough iron pitons, a small hammer, and a grapnel hook—all cheap tools, but sturdy. She checked the rope for frays. “Good enough,” she mumbled.

Without further comment, she found a stable rock lip of the crevice and began driving pitons into the unnaturally smooth black stone, each hammer strike ringing strangely hollow. She winced at the noise. If there were guardians down below, they surely wouldn’t be surprised by their arrival.

“You don’t think there are stairs?” Alric said weakly as she began looping the rope through the pitons and tying a series of firm knots.

“Vess, see any stairs?” she answered without looking up.

“No,” she clipped back. Vessa was clearly unhappy about the decision to explore this place, but Maelen knew she’d accompany them. The thief was a mess in a lot of ways, but damned if she wasn’t loyal.

“There you go,” Maelen offered.

“But… what if there isn’t enough rope to reach the bottom?” he asked.

“Then we’ll climb back up and say we tried. Now shut up and let me work.”

She lost herself in her tasks, looping the rope into a harness that would bear her weight evenly on the descent, checking her knots and the pitons twice, and, eventually, lowering herself over the edge of the Starless Rift into the empty blackness below.

Maelen braced herself with boots against the wet stone and nodded at her companions. Vessa’s face had gone pale; she kept swallowing like she might be sick. Alric’s face was mask-still, drained of anything human, like he’d been painted into the scene.

“If you hear me yell, pull like the gods are whipping you,” she barked. “Once I’m down, Vess comes next.”

Without waiting for confirmation, Maelen began letting the rope out hand over hand, keeping her boots against the sheer stone wall, until the two companions had disappeared from view and the darkness swallowed her.

As she descended, the sound of rainfall ebbed quickly, replaced by the thrumming of her mace. The mysterious black metal practically vibrated at her hip, pulling her deeper into the crevice. The gray light of day shone from above, then that too was gone. Maelen paused, shifted her weight to pull out the torch she had waiting. Two strikes from her flint and the oiled end lit.

A few heartbeats later, orange light shivered across the black walls like something alive. How had Hadren planned to reach this place? Maelen snorted. He hadn’t been thinking clearly at the end. Faith made fools of men. In her experience, trust came in the form of a reliable weapon, of iron pitons struck into rock, and sturdy rope. What had the gods ever done for her?

Grimly, she continued down, moving more slowly now.

For a long while, Maelen lost herself in the rhythm of climbing. Step down, step down, let out rope and drop, look around, continue. No thoughts entered her mind other than ensuring her boots didn’t slip, her rope wasn’t snagging, her torch was held out and away from her. Eventually, however, she began to worry that perhaps she hadn’t bought enough rope, that her descent would end, dangling in emptiness, and they would all leave this place with nothing. Just as the worry began to build, however, her torchlight revealed a cavern floor below her. She grinned and eyed the remaining loops of rope, nodding to herself.

Her boots settled to the rocky floor. She untangled herself from the makeshift harness and tugged sharply on the rope. After several heartbeats, it began jerkily rising. Good.

The air was cool, and Maelen shivered. She was still soaked through from the rain, and though she wasn’t in danger of freezing to death, she had to clamp her jaw shut to keep her teeth from chattering. Would there be any wood down here, fallen from above, to build a fire?

Maelen slowly turned with her torch, getting her bearings. She’d set down upon a raised dais in the rock, not carved but a natural step, probably as wide as twice her height. There was a short, sharp drop off the dais to a wider cavern chamber beyond, and it was large enough that her torchlight didn’t show her its full size. The sheer, black stone wall she’d climbed down rose behind her. Maelen looked up, seeing a gray slice far above that was the clouded sky. It would be foolish to explore the cavern until Vessa and Alric had joined her, so she placed her back against the wall and waited.

Something moved in the darkness beyond, a faint snuffling, chittering noise. She froze and lifted her torch, her free hand pulling the mace from her belt as quietly as possible. Something was scampering around the base of the dais, quiet and searching. Slowly, slowly, she padded forward, mace in one hand and flickering torch in the other, towards the lip of the dais. The thing beyond had paused its movement. She heard the huff huff of what sounded like labored breathing. Perhaps it was a wounded animal that had fallen from the ledge above? But no, nothing could survive that drop. What could it be?

Her left boot slid slowly towards the edge. She leaned carefully forward.

With a high-pitched hiss like a teakettle, the thing below leapt at her.

Next: Frenzied Terror [with game notes]

[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]