The Knights stood, staring in horror as two of their most-senior members came to blows. Lord Ghelliot seemed to be the more aggressive of the pair, pushing Lord Rael back with a deliberate series of blade-loops. When Lord Rael caught the rhythm of the strikes and side-stepped, keeping a high-guard and lashing out at Lord Ghelliot’s face, his assailant confidently took the blow on the helm, and used the surprise caused by the unexpected manoeuvre to close the distance once more. The elf was forced to twist about in a manner few could’ve hoped to achieve whilst keeping their head on their shoulders – Lord Rael barely parried the back-swing aimed at his throat, almost tumbling to the ground as the bitterly-sharp, bright-glowing sword’s edge passed mere finger-widths from his face.
There was no explanatory power to the swings of their swords. Even Lord Shebril glared, dumbfounded, looking between his two equals as if trying to decide between them.
No decision came down from Celestium to enlighten their minds this time.
The human seemed to have the advantage in strength – Lord Ghelliot was built like a bull beneath his hauberk, and many times Durgil had witnessed him wrestling unclad during the exercises. But he’d also seen Lord Rael wrestling, and the slender sinews possessed by elf-kind were not to be underestimated on the basis of outward appearance. The fibres of their muscles were woven of steel, and the responsiveness of their limbs in action and reaction was startling.
Lord Rael had recovered his footing, and was pressing his own attack now upon Lord Ghelliot. The elf wielded his weapon two-handed for greater cutting-precision, gauntlets clasped about the grips and held just off his brow as his feet wove left and right, left and right, leveraging his nimbleness against his brutish opponent. Again and again, the human turned aside Lord Rael’s flashing blade at just the last instant as a never-ending series of lofty lunges drilled in at his face.
Then the elf’s sword-tip suddenly circled down, striking the shin of Lord Ghelliot’s fore-leg. The diversion carried its risks – the grim-faced elf was forced to pivot, retract his upper body – and it was a fruitless action. The shins of the knights were protected at the front by a plate of battle-standard steel, inscribed like all Church relics with the name of Kultemeren in various alphabets and blessed twice each moon to maintain its holy defences; the straps holding the greaves in place were themselves almost impossible to strike –
The duel continued, but Durgil’s fascination now fell upon the thin line in Lord Ghelliot’s lower-leg plate.
So close to the spot in which he felt the burning in his own leg.
But unless the Judge’s hand were behind it, no glancing strike from a sword would mar such well-tempered steel, break the holy names that were the relic’s seals of consecration. That itself was a sign of the weakness of Lord Ghelliot’s will.
But Lord Ghelliot would never… never…
The thoughts were slow to form in Durgil’s mind, as he alone of all his brethren stared at the damaged shin-plate. There were many different stresses upon his spirit in this time and place, the cauldron of his mind filled not with boiling water but molten metal, and the ideas were slow to surface.
Lord Ghelliot… entered the house…
His attentive dwarven mind registered the screech of the human’s sword being notched, the ping as a shard of sanctified steel went ricocheting off the putrid ground.
Lord Ghelliot… emerged again…
The worst thing about realising the truth was knowing it wasn’t an insight from the god. It was just him. He’d been abandoned – they had all been abandoned. The others, they weren’t looking, couldn’t perceive the truth.
Durgil drew in a hissing breath, then brought the crystal pommel of Glaimborn crashing down into the gold, lion-sculpted face of Dwimmerfoe.
Cloooooong!
White light speared forth from the impact, shining upon Lord Ghelliot.
It was Durgil’s way of challenge. He could give no battle-cry, but it was dishonourable to go into combat against an unaware opponent, even a creature born of evil.
Rael danced aside, disengaging, as Durgil rushed to the elf-lord’s aid.
It was only three great strides. The knee held, and when Glaimborn sheared Lord Ghelliot’s sword in two at the first strike, it happened all over again.
The illusion was made plain – a black cloud with the chapter-master’s shape stood there on the bony ground, crackling away.
Disintegrating, as the reversed upswing of Glaimborn tore cleanly through the illusion’s skull.
Lord Rael was panting lightly as he came and clapped the chapter champion on the shoulder. The elf wasn’t looking particularly relieved, all things concerned, despite their defeat of the strange entity.
The other paladins of the company had come around at last, but it had taken too long. Their enemy was toying with them, using phantasms against those to whom such hallucinations were usually child’s play. That in itself was cause for disconcert, but now it was apparent that Lord Ghelliot had – what?
Gone missing?
Indeed, as Durgil cast about he saw his fellows peering back the way they’d come. The same thoughts now filled their mind as had come to Durgil in his despair.
He was taken. When he went in the house.
Lord Shebril made the forked gesture for splitting the group, but there was an inquisitive look on his face, and Lord Rael shook his head solemnly. The elf turned on his heel and stalked through the assembled paladins, leading them back out of the necrotic city.
Once more boots crunched on bone. The cold wind whistled again. The blueworm flickered and faded, lights flaring to life and dying as the shadows surged across the surroundings.
The air was so moist… the ground underfoot so unutterably dry…
The dwarf knew that they were ostensibly only seeking out Lord Ghelliot, but the moment he was walking the other way, heading out, heading up, home, Durgil felt a wave of relief flood through him. His knee still ailed him, and he was forced to set his jaw against the incessant grinding he could feel with every step – somehow the sensation still wasn’t being cleansed by his disbelief.
It didn’t matter now. The fact he could walk at all was proof there was no actual damage to his body, whatever his nerves were screaming at him, and once they found Lord Ghelliot they were done here. They would return to this cavern with all nine chapters. Perhaps the lords would even contrive to pass messages to the Magisterium, the champions, the other priesthoods. Such a thing was not unheard of. They would purge this nightmare from the earth…
At a later date.
The quest – it had therefore been one of reconnaissance, of recognising the true scope of the threat. But in bringing support – might they not be playing into the Hierarch’s hands? Vardae Rolaine, ‘Everseer’, as the mad witch called herself in a vain effort to blacken the name of a dead heroine… Someone like this Vardae could take advantage of any weak point. What if she were involved somehow – what if this bore upon her insane ‘Crucible’? And if Kultemeren intended for them to deal with this upstart dragon without further support, who were they to judge in the Judge’s place?
We can’t leave. Can’t go home.
Out of nowhere a new sensation settled upon him. Eyes. Eyes investigating him.
There was something back there. The words were born in his mind, spoken in his own mute voice, and yet he didn’t understand them. There was something back there and I’ve forgotten it.
He turned back to look, but it was too late. The street curved out of view behind a bumpy, spinal-column tower. It had slipped away from him.
They came upon the house Lord Ghelliot had entered… or so it seemed.
The rest of the local environment matched with Durgil’s recollections, the sense of perspective when the grim house was viewed against the equally-grim surrounding buildings. The knights were not used to making errors. Everything screamed that this was the house.
Yet the door was there once more, as though their leader had never smashed his way in. There was no detritus, no sign, no discernible footprints about the threshold.
Durgil looked at his brothers. Sir Vanfrad was shivering. The initiates were like a gaggle of blenching maidens. Even Lord Rael was paralysed, staring at the reconstituted door with horror-filled eyes.
No spirit of courage filled him, but something in his dwarven soul let Durgil take a step forwards – then another.
Can’t wait here forever. Have to go. Leave. Can’t leave without him. Without… whatever’s left of him.
He was afraid his leg would give out under him if he attempted a kick, and he would be left lying on the awful ground, weeping in front of everyone. Drawing a quivering breath, he raised Glaimborn and brought its pommel down in an overhead blow.
He’d half-expected it to repel him, but the ‘door’ was as much a dry crust of bone as it had always been. With the single blow he’d hammered his gauntlet halfway through the surface, so he quickly ripped it free, struck again…
When it was shorn in two, he hurriedly stepped back, far from the nethernal dust-cloud. He was immune to poison, to disease… but this was something far more malign.
He gripped Glaimborn and Dwimmerfoe tight, waiting, waiting for the cloud to abate, for the dust to settle.
When it did, he warily shuffled about and took a shallow angle, peering into the main room.
And saw that Lord Ghelliot sat with his back to the door, in one of the chairs ringing the repulsive table.
Durgil had spent many hours in the saddle right behind his lord. He knew him anywhere. This was the feigning of no random knight. It was Ghelliot, or another double of him – of that the dwarf held no doubts whatsoever.
So Durgil slowly retreated.
The notion, that the chapter-master might willingly sit in such a putrid creation…
It is not him. It is not. Just something in his armour. Or…
He felt the release of tension as Lord Rael flanked him – felt the surge of comfort as the elf’s hand fell on his shoulder-plate with a reassuring clank.
He’d done it. He’d broken down the door. They would all remember this, and he’d be made the chapter’s junior master. The first dwarf in almost thirty years. One of only four dwarven chapter-masters in the whole Church.
It would forever haunt him. To gain position, at the expense of such a leader. It would be a constant reminder of this: the time the Knights of Kultemeren were forced to turn tail and flee.
There was no running right now. Durgil watched the elf again in admiration as he made his way into the doorway, bringing his sword up to better-illuminate the form of Lord Ghelliot sitting motionless in the shadows.
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When he turns around, Durgil said to himself against his will, he will be something else. Something ghastly, and just the sight will stop our hearts, and… and…
Lord Ghelliot swivelled suddenly in the chair, peering over his shoulder at them.
He was unchanged. But he was grinning. An expression of manic delight Durgil had never witnessed on the face of a sane man.
Lord Rael swung back his weapon, as if preparing to charge in and slay the apparition; Durgil adjusted his grip on Glaimborn, preparing to back the elf up if necessary –
It was not necessary. Lord Rael had lost his patience. When he swung the sword, he did so without moving, without aiming, an incandescent nimbus suddenly swelling about him.
The blade-arm swept down with a sound like thunder, and when the brightness had faded and Durgil could see once more, he found nothing where the house had stood but a smoking, shallow crater in the bony firmament.
Lord Rael sheathed his sword and turned on his heel, his eyes shining with tears as he strode away at once. The message was clear. Lord Ghelliot, his chapter-master brother, was truly gone. They had to abandon the quest, for now at least.
Vengeance would be theirs, in the end.
However, as they approached the city’s gateway, Durgil spotted a black-clad figure awaiting them on the right-hand side of the road. It was leaning back stiffly against the nauseating, wide-thrown door of the fortress itself, right beneath the arch. Its hands were clasped upon the cross-piece of a heavy sword, the tip planted in the ground. From that sword an amethyst steam billowed, like a goblet of hot wine carried out into a winter wind, the individual wisps of vapour changing hue softly to violet or magenta or pink as they vanished away on the air.
Lord Shebril halted when it came into view, and some of those younger brothers closest to him followed suit, but Lord Rael quickened his pace. Durgil didn’t like the disarray in the ranks implied by Lord Shebril’s cowardice and that of the initiates. The pain in his knee now just a dark memory, he followed the elf eagerly. Whatever the creature before them was, it was just one man. It would fall before them, and they would be out of this accursed imitation of the shadowland. The tramp of his boots would once more be given the quality of leather on solid stone, the reassuring thud that told him he was safe, rather than this overwhelming feeling that he was walking on the frozen surface of a lake, a lake of undeath, just waiting to fall through the surface and be swallowed, dragged by immortal currents into the dry darkness.
He quickened his pace yet further, as even more of his companions fell behind. Soon it was just Lord Rael, Sir Vanfrad, Sir Seliot, and himself.
Throwing caution and care to the winds, he ran at the enemy, charging ahead of the others.
The recalcitrance of the weak-willed would be punished by Kultemeren in their dreams, while Lord Rael’s cohort would be rewarded with the knowledge that they upheld their oaths. They stood firm, surged forward, when everything was cast into doubt.
Yet the figure ahead came into sharper relief, and, too late, Durgil realised that, had he been less hot-headed, he might’ve observed in advance the signs which had eluded his notice. The dwarven eyes didn’t lie, piercing gloom more easily than most.
The charred armour was covered in Kultemeren’s names, but every character was twisted, each letter melted, all meaning lost.
Meaning lost.
It was a symbol of unutterable despair that struck his heart like a dagger.
Struck his knee like a trio of fangs.
He hit the ground face-first not thirty yards from the solid stone of safety. He went flat on his front, the bone-cobbles rubbing against his beard, his lips, the full grisly scent of the stuff drowning his nostrils. When he tipped his head back, raising his jaw off the floor, little specks of dust streamed from his face.
Still – he did not lose his grip on his weapon, did not cry out in disgust or pain, did not break his vows. Just stared, jaw clenched and eyes wide, as the black-clad Lord Ghelliot seemed to suddenly come to life, stepping out into the centre of the archway and hefting his dark sword in one hand.
The burning amethyst orbs in his sunken face swept up to fix themselves on the three onrushing knights who had retained their composure. As they neared him, the same purple fire spread in renewed gobbets down either edge of his weapon, the sickly light beading and pooling on the ground almost like burning oil.
An illusion, Durgil gasped silently. Another illusion. Lord Ghelliot’s soul belongs to the Judge. There’s no way that –
Lord Rael evidently felt the same way and, filled with righteous confidence as he neared his foe, he swung his broadsword down at the deathknight’s blasphemous helm, using his full strength, ignoring the nethernal weapon that was upraised to parry the blow.
Durgil expected the false deathknight’s blade to rip in two under the force of the stroke, so he wasn’t surprised at the metallic screech –
When the top half of Lord Rael’s sword fell smoking to the bony cobbles, its light extinguished – it wasn’t surprise that filled Durgil’s mind. It wasn’t shock.
The despair sank its claws into his spirit. He closed his eyes. Half-unconsciously, he rolled on the bones and wrapped a gauntlet about his screaming knee.
He left Glaimborn there on the bones, and knew that, bereft of his touch, the sword’s light would soon falter. He could no longer care.
O Kultemeren, why? – why have you deserted us?
He heard the hiss of nethernal power, the grate of metal punching into metal, the unsteady steps of knights trying to stay afoot despite grievous wounds. Durgil could no longer grasp at any divine insights his god may have been offering him, but his mortal brain was more than capable of processing what had happened.
It was with acceptance of the inevitable, not rage or resistance, that he heard three bodies topple without so much as a murmur, crashing in full battle-armour to the ground. He could even pick out the glug, glug of blood gushing from an opened throat.
Blood. Dust. Decay. It was in his nostrils. It was in his mind. All was lost.
“Halt.”
The word seemed to come from everywhere, resounding from the blueworm roof and cavern walls, echoing out of the mouths of alleyways. A noxious wind followed the voice, shrieking down the street, culminating in a titanic grinding sound behind him.
Yet it was not directed at them. Durgil noted that the deathknight’s clanking came to a sudden stop, the former Lord Ghelliot stilling at his new master’s bidding.
The dwarf tried to screw his eyes shut as tightly as possible, tried to fight his curiosity, but when it spoke a second time he couldn’t hold back any longer. He had to see it. He had to know. He rolled again, opened his eyes just to slits –
And beheld the titanic monstrosity which was their enemy, watched the vast undead jaw gnash out the words.
“You have been tried, sir knights, tried and tested – and have been found wanting. Go. I will not trouble you further. I expected more of you.”
Its head was bigger than a house, the glowing, slimy orbs of its eyes alone equal in size to a full-grown horse. Its wings were like the sails of an old ship, left to rot on the seabed for centuries; yet all the same they caught at the air as the dracolich settled itself in place, perching idly atop a row of nearby structures, the gargantuan third set of limbs sweeping down about its shoulders. The fragile buildings barely murmured beneath that atrocious mass, surely steeled by his sorcerous will, and the gruesome rips in the tenebrous fabric of his wings seemed no impediment as his motions drove a rancid wind down in the paladins’ faces.
“Go! By Kultemeren, I implore you – why must you creatures insist upon –”
It was enough for Durgil. Too much. It could not speak the Judge’s name. Could not.
He put out a hand for Glaimborn, only to find the sword half-submerged, slowly being dragged down, taken into the road’s substance.
“– such abhorrent despite! You do not understand. Your hearts are those of the flock, and, though you think otherwise, you cannot recognise the meaning of the pack as the wolves’ teeth close about you! But it is too late for lessons. Now you must simply learn…“
He wasn’t looking, but Durgil felt his gauntlet’s radiance as a painless heat when he sank his fingers through the grisly material, crunching into and pulverising bones like they were the frail bodies of insects. In the instant his fingers closed about his weapon’s hilts, pulling the grip into his palm, an incandescent white fire threw stark, elongated shadows across the scene.
The old wound, bawling in complaint as though there were no kneecap, no ligament to support his weight – he could see past it now. He was no longer the dwarf, no longer the herdsman’s son. Just the champion of the god remained. Just the weapon in Kultemeren’s hand.
He rose to his feet, and saw that every Knight of Kultemeren save for him was being slowly drawn beneath the surface.
The bone-chip gravel formed into fingers, hands, arms and elbows, stretching up to grapple the paladins, pull them down to a place where only death, or deathknighthood, awaited. Their armour had dimmed, their faces wracked with pain and guilt. Sir Elbanor, Sir Yobbrox, so many of Durgil’s bravest brothers were facing their ends like puling children. Lord Shebril was weeping, unable to fight back as he was borne under. Sir Vanfrad was head-down, Durgil’s fellow dwarf half-submerged in a puddle of blood and shorn-off beard-hair, his hidden throat still pulsing, adding to the crimson pool about him.
Lord Rael’s upper body had already disappeared entirely from sight, just the corpse’s long elven legs and their decorative greaves still protruding from the hungry undead soil.
The deathknight which had been Lord Ghelliot – it stared at Durgil, at the dwarf who alone of all the chapter’s knights stood tall, waves of uncertainty emanating from it as clear as purple fire.
We stand upon the dracolich’s army, Durgil realised. I… stand upon it.
I alone.
He caught Glaimborn’s radiance out of the corner of his eye as he held tight to Dwimmerfoe’s grips.
Kultemeren! Through me deliver your blow! My life for your stroke!
Boots crunched into soil that grew fingers, grasping arms rendered to dust beneath his footfalls.
The god blessed him, imbued him with power. His pace increased beyond that of mortal-kind. He crossed the distance between himself and the dracolich in a handful of bounds. When he hurled himself into the air and swung the blade at its disbelieving reptilian face, it was like wielding a shooting star. It bore him up, up, higher than he’d ever sprang before in his life.
The light of the blueworm faded and a curtain of shadow fell across him. He reached the apex of his vault and brought his arm down.
Glaimborn passed cleanly through the dracolich’s flesh like it were as soft as wool.
He’d been expecting to die in the act, expecting to suffer a tremendous recoil from the dragon’s defences. There was nothing.
The dracolich became a vast black outline between one moment and the next, filled with swirling storms and the wings of vast moths; the laughter of the true creature rang down from the black recesses high in the cavern-walls.
Durgil passed clean through the illusion’s ethereal maw, and fell into the very corner of the bony structure upon which the fake creature perched – the building promptly sported limbs, hands to clutch at cloak and armour, pinning his shield-arm, sword-arm…
He struggled to free himself, but he couldn’t. There were too many. Individually they were weak, no match for his divinely-empowered strength, but taken together – the sheer weight of them – they would draw him into the walls –
A skeletal hand closed over his mouth, and he heard himself gently whining, the horror finally claiming him.
Kultemeren didn’t wish me to see through the illusion – he wanted me to be taken by them –
A whip of amber light seared across his face, and all his necrotic bonds were washed away, dusted at the touch of Lord Shebril’s faith.
Durgil fell, but even as he hurtled towards the ground he stared in wonder at the chapter-master who had risen to his feet, whose sword trailed the honey-coloured energies as it moved.
The dwarf landed heavily, and his knee didn’t give way, the grace of Kultemeren allowing him to keep his balance despite the undulating nature of the street beneath him.
He caught Lord Shebril’s awed gaze in return, and Durgil realised in that moment if he hadn’t acted as he had, if he hadn’t cast himself into what he thought to be a dragon’s teeth, they would’ve all been dead already. As it was, at least half of the other knights were also freeing themselves, small clouds of dust bursting about them as they started ripping loose of their skeletal bonds. The road might’ve been swelling and surging like an ocean wave, but the most stalwart of the paladins dragged themselves above the surface.
They would not be so easily defeated.
Inspiration. Being willing to fight for the truth – it brought the same drive out in others. They just needed to see someone else take that first step.
That was Kultemeren’s plan.
They were going to get out of here, and Durgil would be made chapter-master. It was as good as inevitable now. He alone of the company had stood his ground. His nobility could not be questioned.
The road fluctuated – Durgil saw Lord Ghelliot’s deathknight striding towards the recovering knights, riding the mass of body-parts as he approached implacably, no uncertainty any longer to be found in the position of his side-extended blade, his amethyst glare. The charred boots didn’t falter as they carried him over the billowing waves of the unliving road.
He would’ve brought the evil mockery of a paladin blade straight down into the front of Sir Timeron’s helm, had Durgil not leapt across, flinging up Dwimmerfoe between them.
This time it was the deathknight’s implement which was sundered at the force of that tremendous impact, the blade riven in two right up its length, and the charred gauntlet released the smoking blade, letting it fall, gushing precious energy like blood.
It might’ve been blood – on the shadowland side of the world.
A vicious upthrust of the shield’s flat face against the front of the deathknight’s helm sent the former Lord Ghelliot gliding back, sliding strangely across the undead terrain, his demeanour almost serene.
The illusory dragon might’ve vanished, but the laughter of its maker rang out again, cold and harsh and utterly devoid of mortal attachment.
The deathknight’s sword did not clatter as it fell near Durgil. A fully-formed hand of bone crested the street’s gravel-like surface, and even as the dwarf crouched there over the still partially-swallowed form of Sir Timeron, trying his best to keep his footing, riding the road as it coasted up-down, up-down – the road came alive about him.
As a vague insight at the back of his mind, he’d noticed the shapes of the city’s walls and buildings morphing in the background all around the company. By now many had melted down to basic foundation-lines of their former dimensions, their various substances borrowed, utilised with a far more militaristic outlook –
It was no humanoid skeleton which burst forth first, the shattered bits of the deathknight’s weapon in its hands, but nonetheless it was created out of humanoid parts, bones sewn together by invisible sorcerous intent. The triplicate skull was a particularly disgusting touch: one atop the spine, one within the ribcage, and one hanging from the pelvis. All three empty jaws produced sound while they were still moving into place, cackling and chattering meaninglessly. Its numerous femurs pumped away on the surface of the ground, upon the heads and shoulders of its emerging brethren, bringing it skittering closer before it even was fully-formed.
As the third skull slid into place with a sickening click, there were more taking shape on all sides, undead servitors of equally-hideous design.
Durgil looked down, dreading what would come next – and his breath left him as, once more, he plummeted.
The firmament offered by the bone-ocean beneath his feet vanished with a suddenness no amount of training or experience could’ve prepared him for.
Surrounded on all quarters, pressed from below and above – the chapter was consumed as one, pulled into the embrace of the dragon’s magic.
* * *