Arc 9: Chapter 11: Echoes of a Dark Kingdom |
Gargoyles are cunning, intelligent creatures, but not impossible to fool.
It is more difficult with a group, but a lone sentinel has its limits. For example, the stories that they sleep during the daytime are not wholly without merit — while they are capable of being conscious at any hour, they are more sluggish under daylight, and if they are not given the chance to rest then full torpor can be forced upon them.
I press-ganged some of the city’s lesser fiends for the task. Imps are as stubborn as they are insidious, and despite their show at vulgarity they are not stupid. They are, after all, fallen angels. I did not use them, instead pulling from the scavengers of the undercity and the Deadstreets, mostly scadudemons and other remnants of the countless evils which had left their stain on Rot Voraag.
They resisted me — even the lowest of the dregs of demon-kind are rebellious to the point of self destruction — but I bent my will on them and set them to their task. They are wretched things, the Scadu, little more than the ghosts of ghosts. They are what is left when a demon leaves its mark on the world, an echo of a greater spirit given malicious sentience. With time they can even become self-aware, but ultimately remain mere extensions of their progenitor.
It took three days to wear down the gargoyle who guarded the Nails. At every hour it was hounded and taunted by malicious shadows, but that ceaseless tide wasn’t what ultimately did it in. It is peace that can break a strong will, that time when lashing waters calm and leave all still and quiet.
So on the fourth day, I called my shadows off and the gargoyle fell into sleep. I slipped past it and into the domicile it guarded.
Narahn was in his room, or so I assumed it to be by the cot lying by one wall. It also seemed to be a study, covered in books and scrolls, even the clay tablets still widely used in the Exalted’s city. He leapt from his desk when I manifested behind him — I was in my demon shape, and the hissing of the serpent alerted the physik to my presence.
“You!” Already he was rolling up the sleeves of his tunic to reveal his warding tattoos.
“Me,” I said dryly. “Put your gold away, alchemist, I am not here to fight.”
“You threatened me,” I reminded him. “Fair is fair. If you do not cover your arms, I will assume you mean to attack and respond in kind.”
His right sleeve was already rolled past his elbow. He paused, glowering. “Did you kill my gargoyle?”
“He is only sleeping,” I said, and indulged in a smirk. “He is very tired.”
“What do you want?” Narahn demanded. He took a single step towards the door, and did not cover his tattoos. Neither did he unveil the other arm, so I decided to remain cordial.
“I know who’s been responsible for the recent murders,” I said. Then, in a voice devoid of all pretense added, “I need your help.”
He tilted his head to stare at me sidelong. “Why would you need my help? Don’t you have your gang of cutthroats to back you?”
“…Not anymore.” I glanced to the window. It was late in the day, nearly sundown, and already a brooding twilight had fallen over the street outside. “While it is hardly official, I think the Lodge of the Wurm is effectively disbanded.”
Narahn sneered. “Turned on each other, did you?”
I still remembered the taste of Didikas’s eye on my tongue. Tracing my bottom lip with a thumbnail, I said, “There are powers moving in this city, Narahn of the Nails, and before this storm has passed many will die. You seem like a soft heart, one who cares for the downtrodden and the helpless, so I give you an opportunity to do something about it.”
He considered that a moment. “And what do you get out of it?”
My turn to ponder. A week past, I would have said it was to remove an obstacle and avenge intrusion on my territory. All part of the ultimate goal of that clay throne atop the mesa. Now, though…
Karvessa’s ploy had been half personal, and half the sign of a larger movement. She was a member of the Ophidian Sisterhood, a small but powerful Lodge and one of the city’s most dangerous. They would not have authorized the execution of one of their own without being in accord on the matter.
She’d said something in that studio, words I’d heard but not pondered in the throws of my fit.
The old one said you would help us.
The same old one, I wondered? Yet Didikas had insisted that she would not walk the streets without it being obvious. In any case, Karvessa had been there to recruit me. Unfortunate for her that she’d caught me in a mood.
“A soul that belonged to me was stolen by another,” I said. “I cannot let that go unanswered.”
“Personal, then?” Narahn asked.
“I am a demon,” I reminded him. “It is always personal. Will you aid me?”
“I will not aid you,” Narahn snapped. “How do I know you’re not trying to trick me into doing some misdeed?”
He did look very tired. The aftereffects of my venom, no doubt. He would be having recurring nightmares, and seeing my face in all of them, and in every reflective surface during his waking hours as well. Once marked by my fangs, my prey did not escape unless I meant for them to.
He interested me. I had not expected him to survive all these years, much less make something of himself.
“I am using you,” I told him honestly. “Just as I am permitting you to use me. As I told you before, this enemy will come back for Dedo, and perhaps take you and all your charges along with him. Tell me, have his nightmares gotten worse?”
Narahn’s expression darkened. “If you’ve done anything more to him than what you’ve already—”
“I have not touched him,” I said. “Not since that day. But he has gotten worse, yes?”
I knew the answer just by looking at his face. Instead of confirming, Narahn said, “What is it?”
My gaze drifted to the window. “I believe that all of this is the work of the Old Woman in the Well.”
Narahn scoffed. “She is a story. An old legend used to frighten children.”
I gave the physik a withering look. “You sit upon the tombs of gods, and you doubt the existence of a rumor? She is real, Narahn. The witch is probably one of the most ancient and potent powers in Rot Voraag.” So old and dangerous that no one in the city willingly spoke her name aloud. “If she is not the mightiest, then she is almost certainly one of the oldest, and that age makes her dangerous.”
“More dangerous than you?” Narahn asked.
I didn’t answer, mainly because I was not certain. It is not the mark of a demon to admit to being weaker than anything, even in their hidden thoughts, but I was not that conceited.
The young alchemist considered a while as I waited with my wings curled in around my shoulders and my tail flicking its tongue in pensive silence. Despite my outward demeanor, I was not patient. That yawning sense of dissatisfaction still waited to swallow me and send me into either animal age or nihilistic apathy. I would fight it off as long as I could, but once I’d seen this course through…
No. I could not think of after, or it would all be pointless.
The air tasted of old sweat and strange medicines. Narahn was not living well, and I guessed this place had fallen into decline with the death of its master. I wondered what it must be like, having others to care for every waking moment of the day, never needing to dwell in your own mind or on your own health, the endless research and practice to improve your craft.
It sounded nice. Constant distraction.
“What must we do?” Narahn finally asked in a begrudging voice.
I gave him an approving nod. “I will need you to be the dashing hero of this play. Your knowledge and wards are potent weapons, and should allow you to invade the hag’s sanctum. She and her creations will abhor the touch of gold as much as I, but they will not fear you overmuch. Should she sense me, however, then she will hide herself or flee and we will never find her again. So I will use your light to veil my darkness.”
Narahn shook his head. “I am not a warrior.”
“All can be warriors in need. Do not fear, goldhand, you will not be alone.” I revealed Didikas’s puzzle box, holding it up in the palm of my hand. “You shall have the aid of more than onemonster in this quest.”
Rot Voraag was a city of layers. As high as the Akropolis and the secret sanctums of the Exalted might rise, it was but an island above the depths of a very deep lake.
The cracked plains beyond the mesa’s cliffs were riddled with valleys and chasms, rifts left over from when this region had lain beneath the waters of a sea. Many contained old ruins and catacombs, the remnants of the true city which Rot Voraag’s king was still trying to unearth.
And beneath even these winding quarries lay a deeper, older place, known in furtive whispers and old stories as the Well.
“This is scratched,” Tej complained for the hundredth time since the brooding desert sun had vanished beyond the underworld’s ceiling. “This isn’t worth any amount of coin.”
“Then why are you still here?” Pazé asked her brother with the dry indulgence of one who was long used to his complaining.
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“Well, it is a lot of coin.”
Much of that payment was from the treasury I’d accumulated over a decade of varied schemes. I could not abide the touch of most metals, but I had many proxies and third parties who kept coin and other currencies stored for me on loan. Officially, the Candrian funded our small party’s expedition into the darkness beneath Rot Voraag.
Narahn, who followed the twins at a near distance with the reluctant air of a hound uncertain about its master’s course, furrowed his brow. “I was told you’re both experts on navigating the undercity.”
“Aye,” Pazé said while keeping her attention firmly forward. Her brother held the torch. As an ordinary human he had need of it, though his undead sister kept well clear of its light. “We made our name spelunking down here in the tombs. Tej might whinge, but he’s an expert.”
“And you?” Narahn asked. He had said little to the twins after recruiting them for our quest, but the winding tunnels and rotted stairways, inexorably taking us ever deeper down into what was unmistakably a dizzying depth, had started to unnerve him. “What are you an expert on?”
Pazé turned so her eyes fixed on the physik. With irises nearly so dark as the pupils and burst blood vessels, the ghoul’s eyes were visibly inhuman and caught the torchlight so they glowed in the dark like a nocturnal animal’s. “I’m better acquainted with these tunnels than most, doctor. I was born in them.”
“We got separated during a cave-in,” Tej said blithely, completely unfazed by the preternatural threat his twin exuded. “I managed to find my way out, but Pazé got stuck down here for six months. Came out like this.” He waved a hand at her pale and masked visage. “Says odd things sometimes and got a bloody disgusting appetite, but I was glad to have my little sis’ back.”
Narahn glanced back with an uncertain expression, and I knew he was instinctively looking for me, who had brought him into this dark place and dark company. But I moved in phantom shape, my physical form discorporated and my spirit tethered to the alchemist’s shadow. He could not see me, though I knew he felt my presence. I did not know if Didikas had poisoned the twins against me, and had not yet revealed my involvement to them. They believed that this scheme belonged to Narahn and the Candrian, an effort to root out the demon that had caused them both trouble. Just a job to them, and one they were well compensated for.
The twins wore their business gear, Tej in mismatched but functional leathers with various tools and instruments for navigating the depths, including an unadorned shield and short stabbing blade. His sister wore her typical black garments and carried a pair of curved daggers and a short, dramatically curved bow suited to the close confines of the tunnels. Narahn himself wore a thick brown tunic and pale, loose leggings, his only armament a heavier sword I suspected he’d bought or bartered for just before we’d embarked. He wore it awkwardly, with the air of one who was not used to carrying steel.
And yet his true weapon was engraved into his very flesh, and would prove far more valuable than any meager tool of iron.
We went on some time in silence. The winding tunnels and ever-descending corridors were mostly old crypts and mine shafts, unearthed through generations of digging by the city’s populace. There were ancient treasures down here that enticed many reckless souls, and veins of precious minerals that helped expand Rot Voraag’s position as a center of trade despite the surrounding wasteland.
And they were far from empty. Many ancient horrors had been unearthed along with veins of mineral, and in this sunless realm the dead did not rest easy. It was what gave the undercity its name — the Tombs.
We found evidence of this soon enough, as featureless tunnels mined out by picks and shovels began to shift into what was unmistakably architecture. The stone had a dusty, brown tint to it at first, but soon began to edge gray as we passed through layers of buried rock, literally traveling through time to see the evidence of different eras and techniques in masonry.
But it was not all clean hallways. Eventually the ropes and pitons the twins had brought needed to be used. One corridor ended in a large cavern, the floor dropping down into a narrow ravine, and these the group had to descend with tense caution. Some chambers were buried in rubble they had to pick through, and once the trio even crawled through a shaft for nearly eighty feet of claustrophobic shuffling and grunting.
“How deep down do we need to go?” Narahn asked after they’d emerged, panting and sweating from exertion.
Tej was distracted inspecting the way forward, as we’d come into a larger space with several branching paths. It was Pazé who answered. “All the way to the bottom, some say. You haven’t heard about the Well, physik?”
“Just stories,” Narahn said. “I wasn’t born in the city, I just came here with my old master when I was young.”
“The Old Woman in the Well isn’t just a story,” Tej said with uncharacteristic seriousness. His shock of oiled hair had been matted to the side of his face during the descent. “She’s been in the city longer than anyone. Longer than the Clay King, longer than anything above. She got dug up during all the mining in the city’s early days.”
Despite his circumstances, I could tell this piqued Narahn’s scholarly instincts. “Who is she? What is she?”
“A monster,” Tej said. “Something bad from a bad old time. She and the Exalted fought, but he won and ever since then she’s lurked down here. Sometimes people will seek her out for some favor or another. The Ophidian Sisterhood serve her ends. Hell, she might be another gorgon for all we know.”
“She is not,” I whispered into Narahn’s ear. “She is older.”
He shivered, having not expected to feel my incorporeal breath on his skin. Goosebumps had appeared across his arms. “I see,” was all he managed to say.
“It’s a daft job,” Tej said, incorrigible in his propensity to complain. “What are you going to do, ask her nicely to stop murdering your lunatics?”
“Isn’t that why we brought swords?” Narahn asked, making an effort to jest with the pair. They both just stared at him, and after a minute he coughed and turned his attention forward.
The tunnels began to grow wider, and with jarring suddenness we passed from dusty hallways into a larger chamber of green-blue stone, with columns rising like trees to a high ceiling. Narahn gasped at it, even though he could only see part of the chamber in the torchlight.
“Impossible,” he said, and moved forward despite Tej’s protest. The alchemist began to run his light over one column of aegean-colored stonework. “This isn’t Agharran work.”
“I thought you were a fleshstitcher,” Tej said, scratching at his stubbled cheek. “I didn’t get paid to bring you down and look at old rocks.”
Narahn glanced back at the twins and blinked in surprise. “Ah… I am a polymath, I study many things. This…” He gestured excitedly at the stone. “I’ve seen this in my master’s… In the research of someone I used to know.”
Again he glanced in my general direction. I said nothing, bemused at this unexpected diversion.
Narahn took several minutes studying the chamber. It seemed an ambulatory of sorts, the columns separating an outer walkway from a depression in the center large enough to swallow some temples. There were stairways leading further down, and it was in remarkable preserve. Figures were carved into the columns, towering kings each near tall as the ceiling with crowns that resembled the branches of oak trees.
“These match descriptions translated from ancient texts of the Apocryphal City,” Narahn said in a hush that was incongruously loud in the still air of that subterranean place. “From Antriss.”
“From where?” Tej asked, but Pazé went very still and I shuddered.
“It is a mythical place,” Narahn explained. “Some say a city, others an empire, one that existed long ago and waged war with Aghar when it ruled this continent. It is speculated from old texts that it was an extraplanar place, an empire that ruled from another world and invaded this one when the Agharans breached the walls between dimensions. The translations are spotty and riddled with poetic anagram, so it can be hard to tell what… Well, it’s complicated.”
He held his torch up to a figure carved into the wall, not far from the passageway where we’d entered the ambulatory. It depicted a many limbed and two-headed creature with a single horn on each skull, its faces resembling the mammoths that wandered across the southern steppes. “There’s other speculation that Antriss was a place in the afterlives, a sort of astral realm that lay at the junction of several planes.”
“You mean it was Heaven?” Tej asked in a nervous voice. He was not exactly faithful, but was fearful of religious talk in the same way a kicked dog is shy of people.
Narahn shrugged. “Maybe. The planes are… vast. It’s hard to describe, and I’m no Magi, but my old master tried to be and studied extradimensional powers. Some of the old philosophers traveled through the afterlives, and many of them describe a city that floats through the planes like… like a ship on a vast ocean, appearing in different places yet always fixed in one.”
Tej snorted. “Then it doesn’t move at all, does it?”
Another might have scorned the rogue as a simpleton, but Narahn was patient and earnest. “It’s said to exist at all times and in all places. The Holy Dimensions are not still, you see, no more than the stars in the sky are. Everything is in constant motion.”
When he only got nonplussed stares, the scholar reached for explanation. After a moment’s thought he said, “Did you know that the world beneath us isn’t actually solid?”
Tej glanced around at the miles of stone within which we’d penetrated and lifted his eyebrows. “You sure about that, doc?”
Narahn laughed without mockery, surprising me. This was usually when Didikas would have thrown a withering glare or some cold comment that would cow his intellectual lesser. “I know it seems hard to believe, but why do you think earthquakes happen? The learned have been crafting tools to study both the heavens and the earth for millennia, and many believe that the world beneath us is just a bunch of… well, think of it like a broken plate, all cracked and divided but still fit together, like a child tried to fix it. Now imagine setting all of this on water in a small bowl, so it still fits together but moves around a bit. Except instead of water, it’s fire… You know how volcanos will bleed fire? It’s speculated that it all comes from very deep underground, from the pressures of the land’s upper surface, or its pieces, grinding together. There are oceans beneath us, my friend, perhaps whole worlds.”
Tej suddenly looked deeply uncomfortable. “I’m not sure I like hearing all this, doc, especially where we are.”
Narahn did not seem deterred. “Well, the astral realms are like that… continental plates shifting together and apart. Just like human souls will pass into the afterlives, so do places and even whole periods of time. It all builds and layers atop one another, like sediment. Nothing is lost, only pushed deeper. Where the edges of two dimensions meet, they’ll form pressures that can cascade throughout the whole.”
“Our world has depths,” Pazé agreed. “That is true enough.”
Narahn nodded. “Antriss is said to be a timeless city of great power and secret knowledge. Both alchemists and Magi across history have tried to find it just as fervently as they’ve tried to find the Star-Made City, Onsolem, and the God who’s said to rule it.”
He winced as my incorporeal claws dug into his skin. “Don’t say that name,” I told him. “It hurts.”
Tej glanced around with dubious curiosity. “And you’re saying this all reminds you of those fairy tales?”
Narahn followed the rogue’s gaze, and seemed for a moment lost in his own thoughts. Then, surprising all of us even more, he began to recite a poem in a melodic voice that made even my twisted spirit harken.
“The Dark Lord reigns in Antriss
Land of shadow and obscuring mist
Where mountains lie under umbral sky
And a strange sea meets the shore.
In this land there is no bliss,
Unless one longs for winter’s kiss
Where armies vie and heroes die
And dreadful things are born.
Here roam souls long amiss
Children of the black Abyss
Where forests wind on tangled lines
And dead men guard the door.
Here it’s best to not remiss
Of the fairer days you miss
Where nightmares bind the strongest mind
And the Night you will abhor.
The wise are those who know this
The Dark Lord reigns in Antriss
Where the bravest cry and hope goes awry
And the end came long before.
His rough tenor seemed to fill the chasm of gloom that hung about the group. Tej looked even more disconcerted, but Pazé studied the scholar with an almost predatory interest that I did not fail to recognize.
“Damn, Narahn.” Tej shook his head. “Sounds like a cursed place. I don’t want to be anywhere near that.”
Narahn looked embarrassed. “Well, it might be just a coincidental resemblance. I’m only talking about old translations. Very old.”
Again he looked up and some of his excited confidence left him. “Perhaps we should move on.”
They did, but I lingered a moment in that place. Narahn had not been the only one to recognize those ghostly stones, or the images engraved into them. My eyes lingered on one image carved into rock that held a color reminiscent of a dead and lightless moon. It showed a horned figure with four wings not unlike those of a moth in arrangement, if not quite in shape.
I caught up to Narahn and whispered into his ear. “We are getting close to the Well. Are you ready?”
He shivered at my nearness just as he had before. “I almost want to thank you. This place… There’s so much here I could learn.”
I hesitated, then decided to do this foolish mortal a favor. “You do not want to know this place, Narahn. That poem you recited earlier is not a memory, but a prophecy.”
“A prophecy?”
Had I been corporeal then, I would have nodded. “About a dark lord that will rise and lead my kind to take all Creation for its own. Antriss lies in the Abyss.”
