No dream had captured reality. No vision had shown him truth. That much, at least, became plain.

Descending through clouds of poison into the underbelly of this untouched forest, Durgil might have expected to find the way difficult, even for a dwarf. He brandished Glaimborn at the ground beneath his feet as he led the way, and the holy blade shed its starry illumination, cutting through the fog and darkness alike. But as the minutes passed he found no particularly treacherous footing. They left the smoky fissures behind, and soon the passage was almost pleasant. Several of the initiates bore coils of rope in their packs or slung across their shoulders, hooked from pauldron to sword-sheath. None of it proved necessary. This chasm – it was inviting. Where the slope was precipitous, shallow stairs had been cut into the rock on either side, as if to better facilitate the transit of large groups. If he hadn’t known better, Durgil would’ve said this was the site of an ancient mine, the signs on the surface long eroded, tracks and the foundations of surface buildings buried beneath tons of foliage. Yet this was no ancient mine. There were no such tracks, no cellars to excavate. The steps were recently-cut – he could tell just from the smell. This was no matter of millennia, centuries, even decades. There was dust in the air that could’ve lasted days, weeks at most, especially given the moisture in the space.

This place was prepared for their arrival.

Each step brought him closer to the understanding: as much as the church prophets had seen, their enemy had seen more. The cunning of a dragon could not be underestimated, especially one endowed with the sorcerer’s powers. Could it have been that, somehow, their prey desired the same conflict? That it thought it could prevail? Against Knights of Kultemeren, experts in combating all forms of nethernal and infernal creatures?

There could be only one solution. Kultemeren had somehow lulled it into a false sense of security. It had provided them with an illusory obstacle, with Kanthyre and Phanar, thinking it was drawing them in with such a pathetic opposition. It had employed its servants in shaping this place for their access…

But the voice? Where did the voice come from?

Then Durgil rounded the final bend, clambering across a slick boulder and through a natural archway in the rock. He saw it, and froze, the breath catching painfully in his breast.

Iridescent blueworm covered the ceilings of the galleries. Azure brilliance painted the smooth-carved walls, but the bands of turquoise and teal were split by layers of vivid tangerine where Glaimborn’s radiance touched it. Shafts of shadow seemed to ripple like curtains as the blueworm flickered on and off in waves, momentarily dimming, darkening, until the next wave caught them and they slowly brightened once more, lighting upon the pale walls and turrets of this enormous, sunken sepulchre.

His footsteps didn’t falter – there was just the one moment of hesitation as he beheld the necromantic fortress which represented the climax of their quest. Then he continued on his way, hearing the thuds of his fellows’ boots behind him, and found himself wondering if they too paused at the sight. It was impossible for even Durgil to tell from the sounds – they were too many.

Was I the only one who failed to see the… beauty of this place in the dream?

He couldn’t have been. A quick glance over his shoulder as he was flanked let him catch a look at Lord Rael’s harrowed visage. The elf’s lips were pursed, the almond-shaped eyes wide and watery.

Fear.

Durgil turned back around to face the open doors of the deathly city, and set his jaw. Even Lord Rael could fear – Durgil knew that now. It didn’t matter one jot. The long-legged chapter-master might’ve been afraid, but that didn’t stop him from overtaking the dwarven knight as the way broadened and the ground evened.

The elf provided an example to them all.

Pain is a teacher; fear is a guide. Through you shall we learn to put lesson into context. Through you shall we learn when not to follow, but lead.

It was a catechism of the Church, one that he had long since come to believe he’d surpassed. His vow of silence was part of that. Spiritually-speaking, he was pure. He had no longer any need for teachers and guides, those agonies and horrors which afflicted less-fortunate souls. He was ascended. Consecrated in every parcel of flesh, every wordless action.

So it was that he railed internally for almost a minute, as they drew closer across the turquoise-lit floor. He couldn’t deny it. He’d faced dozens of hell’s denizens in life-or-death situations, been blasted and clawed and scorched and bitten. But now – here, in this serene blue silence – he was frightened.

He didn’t stop, but, ever so slightly, he slowed. He slowed.

His brothers surrounded him as they passed him by, and he was a few ranks behind Lord Rael as they passed beneath the great archway of the bone-built city – as they placed the boots that did not thud, but crunched instead. Beyond the pale walls were pale courtyards connected by winding streets, and row after row of pale, empty houses. Looming over the landscape, leaning strangely against each other or the far wall of the cavern, were nests of taller structures. The domes he’d seen in the vision. Towers and halls and twisted churches.

What is this place?

He watched along with the others when Lord Ghelliot tried one of the houses. The chapter-master hadn’t deigned to sully his gauntlet by touching it to the mesh of ribs serving as a door, instead smashing through the necrotic barrier with the heel of his heavy boot. It fell apart under the force of the blow, shrapnel impacting against the far wall of the building, and the lord stepped without hesitation into the dust cloud clogging the entrance. Durgil’s heart had been hammering so loudly that he heard it ringing inside his helmet, and, for a moment, he’d thought the chapter-master would never return – then Lord Ghelliot emerged once more, scowling and appearing entirely unperturbed.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Durgil peered in the doorway as the leader stalked away up the street. A perfect, putrid replica of any mortal dwelling-place, complete with bone furniture, webs of dry skin hanging in place of curtains over the misty glass windows.

It was right then that the dwarf realised just how close he was to the shattered door frame, ancient marrow leaking like paste from the ripped-open substance. The door’s hinges, the jutting remnants of jawbones…

He’d turned away, sickened, the feeling of doom settling over him like a wet cloak. The awful emptiness of the place preyed on his mind. Why had the architect of this cursed town seen fit to outfit each home with furnishings? Why even create these houses, this whole city, in the first place? It was all something of a sickening joke, Durgil was sure. A way to while away the hours as the sorcerous dragon awaited the paladins.

And yet, he’d never heard of its like. Not outside fiction, at any rate, and he’d not read a work of fiction for decades. This was like something from a dark elf story – and, as far as he knew, even those were highly exaggerated. It was, after all, only their sea-going vessels which were known to be made from bone. All the rest of it… the undead cities putting Zadhal to shame – making Zadhal look like an amateur effort… those were just made up.

Or so he’d thought, till now. It was a bitter elixir to swallow, especially for one so used to understanding the truth of matters. The Knight of Kultemeren found himself having to reassess his assumptions. Seeing this – it suddenly made the legends seem feasible.

A cold wind came whistling down as they approached the city’s heart, emanating through fissures that were hidden beneath the blueworm coating the cavern roof. It was soothing, feeling the rush of cool air in his beard, slipping through the plates of his armour, until he realised that no air from outside should’ve been so chilled. This was something their enemy had done, some part of its plan.

His dwarf skin couldn’t shiver, not from the cold, but he shivered now. He kept his eyes down on the ground under his feet, listening to the crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch of their marching steps – wondering why the Judge didn’t just smite the necrotic landscape right now, incinerate their surroundings with white fire, using the very tread of their boots to channel the power and blast this heathen metropolis down to dust…

But the power never came. And when, at last, he raised his eyes, the company drawing to a halt in a wide court of bone, bone, bone, he cast about quickly only to find his brothers in much the same state as him.

Ghostly faces, wide eyes – that was the least of it. He saw trembling fingers. He saw rivulets of sweat running into mouths and beards. He saw pallid cheeks inflating and deflating as air was gulped at rapid pace.

And then, suddenly, Durgil winced as felt the old wound in his right knee, long-since healed, threatening to spill him to the floor.

He could not fall. He could not go down on his face, in a place like this. It would be beneath indignity, beyond humility. To place his hands upon these bones, these mortal remnants of their foe’s victims – to push down on them for support as he rose to his feet again –

No. He would not fall.

He braced his feet, set his teeth, and studied the body-language of his leaders, trying to ignore the sensation that was telling him there were three demonic teeth, each the size of a dagger-blade, buried right in the front of his knee-cap.

It is not real, he told himself. It is not here.

He refused to look down, check there wasn’t a hairy, bug-eyed head hanging off his leg.

But the pain never alleviated as it should’ve done, and the reason for their halting still hadn’t been made plain to him. Lord Rael and Lord Ghelliot had both put out an arm for the rest of the company to stop, but they weren’t studying their surroundings – the two chapter-masters were eyeing each other, staring deep into one another’s eyes, almost as though the Father had supplied them with a means of communication beyond the ken of the lesser knights, something akin to the gift enjoyed by enchanters.

As expected, Lord Rael’s narrow features were grimly drawn across his face, like a mountain eagle on the hunt. In contrast, Lord Ghelliot was almost smiling, cunning in his eyes. Each of them had lowered their swords, and here in the shadow of nearby towers they were concealed from the blueworm nestled above; as such, the pair were primarily lit by the radiance emanating from the weapons of those clustered about them.

The silence was split only by the whistling of the evil wind, the hammering of Durgil’s iron-anvil heart in his ears.

He gritted his teeth, biting down to stifle his cries of pain, and sought to distract himself, turning his attention inward.

Many times he’d seen it, and many times he’d had the same suspicions about thought-sharing amongst the chapter-masters. The ‘instinct of congress’ and ‘vision of congress’ were intertwined concepts mentioned in more than a few sacred texts, and these matters had always intrigued him. Yet, never before had witnessing such a thing filled him with so strong a sense of foreboding.

Why do we stop now? Are we near?

Again, he resisted the urge to look down at the source of the hallucinatory pain – refused to look down at his knee. He tried to distract himself again by casting about.

The chapter had ended up in a courtyard, and they would’ve been blocked in on three sides by the hideous walls of tall, broad towers, except that narrow gaps let out between them into yet farther-flung districts.

But, surely, they had to be close to the rear of the cavern by this point? This immense, morbidly-beautiful space couldn’t go on forever…

Unless we are being subjected to a strong delusion.

He couldn’t say the words; it was not given to him to describe truth. Only to be the vessel of action.

He pulled his gaze from the nearest distraction – a mockingly-dry fountain ringed with skulls, the bones of its central decoration arranged into a vaguely equine statue (though instinct alone informed Durgil that the construction materials brought to bear were not the skeletons of horses). He cast his gaze upwards instead, trying his best not to be staggered at the scope of the towers, the apparent pearly smoothness to which their surfaces had been finished. Row upon row of thin, shadowed windows looked out on the courtyard, yet there was no sense of nethernal magic, no scent of eldritch on the icy wind. The spells employed here were the subtlest he’d ever had the displeasure to encounter.

The tower to their left, upon the highest fortifications of which several dead monstrosities were displayed, carcasses glistening in the blue light…

One in particular drew his attention – it was an old wyrm, time-eaten and translucent. The other critters had surely been fearsome in life, but this… this would’ve exceeded even the Red Harlot in stature, if he understood the nature of the enchantress correctly,

It will make us fight that, he decided, and set his jaw.

The moment his gaze seized upon it, the agony in his knee flashed to the front of his mind, his knee-cap now a bubble of lava running down his leg, flesh falling open to reveal stinking, rotten insides, bones comprised of flies and locusts –

I will not look down!

The ringing of sword on sword brought him stumbling back to reality, phantom pains receding in the face of paradox.

Before he knew what was happening, it was happening.

Lord Rael and Lord Ghelliot were engaged in combat, here, on this unhallowed ground.

* * *