The indigo light followed him, illuminating the magical stone. Furrows crisscrossed the face of the cave walls. The man ran his skeletal hand along the wall. His fingers fit precisely into the scars.
“My magiolith, godling. It is my prison, not my home. For a million years I have resided here, give or take a millennium. I find that I lose track of how many times the stars have wheeled around the center of the world and the math is too pointless to figure after that stretch of years. I count my age by the races that find their way here. Each time they come they bear this star. At the end of days for each civilization, how they found me, how they conquered Xan and how they discovered you dictated the manner of their destruction. But you are something else this time. There has never before been a time when you were aware before the star has risen above the desert.”
The man walked through the finger dug passages as he spoke. His heel bones matched the divots on the floor. Walls of iron and olivine glittered with the indigo light that followed him, illuminating runes that drank in the light. They remained lit when the light passed. The man would stop at random points to deactivate a trap in his way or to light a sconce recessed into the wall. Soon, Iron and olivine gave way to quartz and obsidian, chert and sandstone, and then to coal and shale.
In the final chamber, every fixture amplified the indigo light that followed him. It illuminated stone walls carved and painted with ancient writing, reliefs and spells. It glittered in the facets of every jewel and reflected off one bent electrum star that jutted out of a wall of natural glass. The floor of the cavern, as worn with the man's feet as the passage, twinkled with a mosaic of gemstones and precious metals.
A single unworked stalactite hung over a clear, shallow pool. No streams flowed to or from it but the steady drip from the single stalactite replenished it. Five bodies lay at the edge of the pool, a goatskin wet with spilled water between them: a therapsid, two elves and two humans. The elves wore tattered rags and the therapsid had its scales branded and scarred with slave marks just like the other corpses on the surface. Metal rings decorated the spines of its frill and sail. Its eye sockets contained plugs of gold stamped with the eight pointed star in place of eyes.
The dessicated man sighed and poked at a human with his staff. The human groaned as air escaped her dead lungs. He fingered the legion brand on her arm.
“A soldier. A woman. And would you look at the fairness of her skin? She must have come from a far northern race. What an interesting addition to the deathless watchers. We do not get many human females here.”
Movement distracted him from going through her pockets. The therapsid got to her feet and shook herself, sending a shower of metal bits clattering to the cave floor.
“Ah, how fortuitous,” said the man. “How interesting that among the five of you, it is the rogha that proves the strongest of will. What is your name, rogha?”
The rogha licked her lips and felt her body. She reached up to her face and tore out the plugs in her eye sockets, dropping them at her feet. Her blunt claws then tore at any metal that remained in her body.
“Am I speaking to the lord of the Gedhanwisk?” She asked, standing naked with rivulets of blood oozing from her wounds.
“Yes and no. I am the steward of the pool, not its master.”
“Then the legends are true and I breathe no longer?”
“Not unless you wish to,” said the man. The rogha’s lips parted, revealing primitive, carnivorous teeth.
“And the others, will they also rise?”
“It is inevitable. What is your name?”
“Waterfinder six-aught-ninety-nine-five-twenty-three.”
“Oh. Such a shame. But what are you called?”
“The Gedhoren Roghaki who owned me called me Boots.”
“By the Gedhoren, you mean these fair skinned humans?”
“Yes, Gedhaki. I am told that they are so named because they have hides like the dead bleached in the sun and hair that hangs limp from the head.”
“I see. And you are a waterfinder? That is not a Rogha concept. The Rogha I know would have killed a blind whelp.”
“It is a mark of enslavement, Gedhaki. I was not hatched free. My creche was a damp warehouse in port Xan. We learn to navigate the world by sensing the water magic that is in nearly all things and so we are waterfinders. It is a skill unknown to the wild tribes.”
“Can you still use your watersense?”
“It would seem so. But I also sense the magic of the pool—this power which animates me, and anything its waters have afflicted. I do not sense you though.”
“I am not of the pool because I was here before it.”
“That this is real is beyond all hope. How may I serve you?”
“You don’t. I am a master of nothing here. You are a child of the waters and you are free to do as you please, though you will never again pass beyond the rim. Leave behind the magic of the Aryn and your body will become magical stone within a half-turn of the sky. Other than that, you are your own monster.”
“I would wait here to see what will become of my sorors.”
“The other Rogha on the surface?”
“And the Faryn.”
“If that is your wish, please take a seat just there. Listen to my story and help me unravel the mystery while we wait for these others. These four that drank along with you must rise first. It is a duty of mine to see the seekers of the pool onward to their eternal tasks. I stabilized the dead above, but I have not decided what to do with them just yet.”
“Let them rise up, Gedhaki. It is not their fault that they were forced to break your law over this place. It is the greatest honor my people have that they should touch these stones and drink these waters. The Faryn also honor this place and it was a great trial to come here. Leaving them to the sands would dishonor their suffering,” said Boots. She sat like a quadruped, with her hands on the ground and her legs stretched out straight in front of her.
“The culture that enslaved you allows you to contact your undead?”
“No. But we whisper the lost ways of the Aryn anyway. We are Rogha. Even enslaved, we are still people of freedom. Donem cannot take everything. Among the slaves, this state of being is a legend of freedom because Gedhoren despise it.”
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“Yes, men universally despise the undead. To be undead is to become part of the magic of this world. Humans are an alien species. Their souls recoil at the idea of leaving behind their origin. Even as long as they have been here, their souls’ citizenship still belongs elsewhere.”
“Were you human?”
“No. What I was is gone now. I don’t even inhabit the body I died wearing. This is a human husk, yes, but it is not what I am.”
“Gedhaki, I will serve the Aryn.”
“Yes. I am glad you are taking this well. Even enthralled, your people still do honor to this place. You are an unliving archive now. That is the purpose to what you are. Those who drink from this pool are the keepers and witnesses of what transpires on the sands. When rock crumbles and artifacts disappear, the undead remain locked into our eternal stasis. Only we can keep the scroll of ages.”
“You can save us from the Gedhoren.”
“Not I, but the Aryn itself deals with the bearers of the star. I am just the guardian and prisoner over this magiolith. I will do what I can but my domain ends at the edge of the stone. You will likely do more. You became undead during the time of trial. I am one of the judges of this game. you are either a witness or a prosecutor. You have the privilege of choice.”
The man picked up the star marked orb.
“I understand. Why are these taking so long?”
“Some souls resist and some do not. It is not my place to mess with them until they start moving again.”
“I will stay. My sorors must rise. I will wait for you to do this for them.”
“Then if you can stay I will do it for you. Just know that they will be nearer to the Faryn undead than what you have become.”
“Lord Gedhaki, anything is better than dying a slave. The Rohga are people of the Aryn. This place is the place of our afterlife. We have no gods to send away messengers for our souls. Our forbidden lore teaches that our souls wander the sands until we find this place.”
“That I know. And I know what becomes of souls that die on the sands. But your sisters died on the stone. I will let them choose what they want to do.”
“That is all I ask.”
“Good. Now while we wait for the others, let me tell you about my ancestors and about this star, the star that Donem brings back to the Aryn where it belongs. You will be one of many to assure it and so you must know why. There is another new being in here and it has also never heard the tale.”
“What being?”
“Ah, young servant, it is your master, if ever you care to acknowledge such things. The ego of the Aryn, meet one of the stewards of your land.”
The indigo light flared in the room. The rogha called Boots sniffed the air and tilted her head. The old man shrugged.
“Can you not sense it?”
“No, sire. Is it here?”
“Yes, and very bright.”
“Is it an indigo color?”
“Yes.”
“We know this light. It is whispered in the stables that such a thing has helped many find their way in sandstorm and blizzard. I am told that it likes to play tricks and it thieves from the unwary, it lingers at campsites where stories are told, and it moves the sands to bury the dead.”
“That is what I have also heard. It has become a very helpful god, hasn’t it. I was just telling it how it came to be.”
“I would like to know as well, why this pool made me as I now am.”
“It is all part of the Way. Now listen and I will continue.
In the age of Dungeons the things of the titans were long buried. Conn, last of all titans, retreated into a fugue, unable to die and alone.
“Now, I began this tale about a man. This man belonged to 144 wives and he was the father of my fathers. He lived at a time of hardship in the world, and he was one of the few males of my species. That was the way of my kind. Only one in a hundred births were male and tribes of women would marry a single man and then send him out to compete against other men. But being the only tribe on the Aryn, there was no male competition save for his few sons and so his wives tested him constantly. One day, they tasked him with finding each of them a gift so precious that no other tribe would dare question the fitness of their tribe.
His eye was set upon the tree. Conn sheltered it from his undead brethren who could no longer eat from it. He surrounded with true demons--entities from the realms beyond the outer planes. He encircled it within a fortress. He protected it with the last of his works.
It took this man a lifetime to enter the garden, but he at last stole in. When he at last spied it, it was at the end of its fruiting season. Conn had picked it clean but for one fruit; overripe and small. Conn left it to waste. The man took the fruit and left. He did not see one of the fallen titans observing his actions. Lorgh was his name, and he was leader of the undead titans.
Lorgh hated Conn. He hated the tree. Conn had life that Lorgh was denied. The tree had fruit that he couldn’t consume. When he saw the man take the fruit he copied the man, entered the garden, and pushed the tree over. The demons slaughtered him but it was too late for the tree.
So the man returned to his wives unaware of the evil that had befallen the world as a result of his cleverness. He split the fruit apart. Each wife consumed 1 seed. He did not take a seed for himself because it was a gift for his wives. Had he known what the fruit did, maybe he would have taken one. No, there were just as many seeds as there were wives in his tribe. And for a short time the hero loved all of his wives, and his wives all loved each other and all of them grew in power and magic as never before had been seen among mortals since the days of the middens. No other tribe could match this one and no other male could contest the hero.
His children became able to use magic. They battered him with magic and prodded him. He found to his horror that he was aging but his wives were not. This was too much for the man. When he felt himself growing weak, he slipped away from his women and resigned himself to live out his days as an old bachelor.
Imagine his surprise when his first wife followed him out of camp. She was the oldest of his wives. She was immortal, but tired of the ways of the younger ones. Magic had made them powerful, but also cruel. They left the tribe to live alone.
Meanwhile, Lorgh’s destruction snapped Conn out of his fugue. The death of the tree set every dungeon core screaming in madness. Conn despaired for his life. Without a world tree, the planet would die. He needed a substitute and fast. So to silence the madness, he gathered the cores that screamed the loudest and reformed the Goddess he killed. He cemented them together with his own flesh.
Now, the reborn goddess remembered the lessons from the last time she was alive. She did not trust Conn and sought to rebel. She alone could track down the last fruit. And finding traces of the seeds within the women, she despaired because the seeds were by this time fully part of these goddesses. She was supposed to have killed them. Instead, she dispersed the women across the world.
And the 143 women who were scattered became the mothers of vast magical nations. It is said that some even found their way to the outer planes. The children they bore passed a heritage of magic into the genetics of all mortals. The demons and angels and all the spirits of the world quaked and wept, and then set about taking sides.
And so this conflict for the attention of mortalkind tore apart the spirit planes and plunged even the kingdoms into eternal war. The primordial goddess didn't care much about this. She was focused by Conn for one task: the recovery of that last seed.
Meanwhile Magic, interbreeding between mortals and spirits and infused godly power mutated mortals, and from these mutations sprung many new branches of mortalkind.
Nations turned to gods, and gods claimed nations. Drunk with power, the Goddesses turned on each other and sent their nations against one another. They learned to summon spirits to their aid and to harness their own dead.
Apocalypse after apocalypse washed over the world. Civilizations rose and fell and people forgot how all of their circumstances came to be. In gilded ages, the gods reigned over men, and in tech ages men became gods. And the world grew older, and the world forgot. And the goddess still sought the seed.
143 seeds went out into the world and thus magic came to mortals.
And eventually the primordial goddess found what became of that last. The twelve children of the matron became a great and hidden nation. They were my people. They lived around the young tree and learned to use its magic. But even we could not last in isolation. Eventually the others breached the magic hiding the nation and in uncovering us, the Goddess finally found her prize.
Entwinned in the roots of a young tree, the skeletons of a man and a woman lay in eternal embrace. Fertilized by their souls and their love, the tree flourished and the twelve children and their families all lived and died caring for the tree. The goddess saw what had happened and was content. Without a reason to exist, the goddess could not maintain her focus any longer. She raised as undead the twelve children, all buried around the roots, and put the cores she was made of into their bodies. As deathless—holy undead creatures, they could safely carry a dungeon core to a suitable place. They were the first Dungeon Masters and so began again another age of dungeons.”