“That doesn’t fill me with confidence,” Lynch said as he stood at the top of a stairwell descending into darkness. A dull red glow could be seen far at the bottom, far deeper than any stairwell associated with a building the size of the manor had a right to be.
“Buck up,” Blake said, clapping him on the back. “This is the end of it.”
Other worldly chanting could be heard, harsh syllables and guttural shouts floated up with rhythmic blasts of air. The breath of a monstrous beast, full of the scent of rotten meat. Blake felt a shiver try to make its way down his spine but stopped it by force of will.
“It is not going to be pleasant.”
After the last of the Revenant had been turned to ash and scattered across the property, a search of the first floor had revealed nothing of interest. No demons, no bodies. Several books Blake would like to peruse at a later time, but nothing to help with the matter at hand. The end of that search had led them here, to the top of the stairs to hell. A specific hell, but a hell still.
A hell Blake found himself descending into. He wondered what he would find at the bottom. If the upper floor of the manor was any indication, a great deal of death. For all the bodies discarded there, they had only been a part of the missing people Granny Esmer searched for. The rotten air pulsed in his face again, and Blake narrowed his eyes against the eye-watering stench.
Despite the slick sheen of the black stone under their feet, Blake’s boots gripped the stone like rough wood as they stepped further below the surface of the Earth. For their size and precision, Blake could tell the steps had been carved elsewhere and carried to the manor. The walls were of plain gray rock, roughly chiseled. The only care for appearance was given to the black stones underfoot.
The stairway grew wider the further they went, from the width of Blake’s outstretched elbows to the width of Lynch’s outstretched hands. The color of the surrounding stone changed as well, becoming darker with every step. Finally, at what should have been the end of four flights of stairs into the depths, the stone changed from a natural dull rock to the shining shimmering black green. The edge of the transition was marked with a solid line, precise enough to have been cut with a razor.
The stairs ended thirteen steps from the transition mark, revealing a long dark tunnel carved through the oil slick stone. The floor was as glossy as the walls, despite the countless feet that must have walked here. The walls hurt the eyes in the light of the elymis, inducing a lesser effect like the idol Blake had discovered upstairs.
The red light visible from the top of the stairs grew more evident at the far end of the tunnel, spilling out from an empty space. The chanting grew louder, the harsh syllables almost on the edge of intelligible. He could not see details from this distance and poor lighting, but the echoing of the chanting and flickering of the light gave the impression of cavernous depth.
“Did you know this was here? Did the Mayor build this?” Blake asked as the group travelled down the tunnel, keeping a watchful eye for any threats. There had been none, magical or otherwise since the Revenant. The manor had been empty of magical threats once they crossed through the threshold. A detail of significance.
A dwelling needed to be a true home to defend through magical means. Without the safety of Home, there was no Meaning to anchor the rituals, the Intent. The Ward on the threshold had only been so strong through the blood magic forced through it, giving an artificial framework to support the working.
“Too old for the Mayor to have done it,” Granny Esmer replied, hand brushing the slick rock wall. “This is… old, older than Jaimetyne. No Old World settlers built this.”
“Shit, really?” Lynch asked. “How’d you figure?”
“These engravings.” She tapped the wall. What Blake had assumed to be empty chiseled space was in fact densely carved with symbols and pictographs. The pain inducing reflection from the elymis came from the engravings.
“What do they say?” Blake asked. As hard as he tried, he could not look close enough to distinguish meaning from the symbols without a spike of pain between his eyes.
“They’re difficult to read,” the Granny Woman, closing her eyes and running her hands along the wall.
Anything written down here was of interest. It was doubtful there was anything mundane written in a tunnel leading to a chamber dedicated to the Other. Blake needed to transcribe this. “What-”
“Not to be a bother, but shouldn’t we be worried about the blood sacrificing demon?” Lynch hissed. “Not sure if you noticed, but there is some bad shit happening a hundred feet over there.”
As if to highlight his point, a scream cut through the monotone chanting like a blade, high and full of pain. It cut off, the chanting filling the void like blood filling a wound.
“Of course, of course.” The soldier was right. Blake would have to return and continue research later. If there was documented contact with a being from the Other, the Order might devise a method of reaction and deterrence for future events. The Mage Council had promised the Other would never be breached again, but Blake knew the thoughts of men in power.
Soon enough, some crisis would be ‘equal to Kindale’ and so the circles would be drawn again, the lives sacrificed, the fabric of reality ruptured. Because men, in their infinite wisdom, wished those who opposed them to be turned to dust. Blake would not, could not, allow such things to become possible. And he would ensure the Order did as well.
Granny Esmer leaned close to Blake as they neared the end of the tunnel. “Says some’at 'bout stars, an' war. Betrayal. A depiction o' history o' the People, an' their bond with the Raven.”
“Ah,” Blake hissed. It was important. If only such a record had been in the graveyard, where the black wall stood. The foreknowledge alone would be invaluable before confronting the Servant of the Other god. They could only go forward with what they knew, but the thought of such information literally at his fingertips made Blake’s teeth itch.
The tunnel came to an end and the space beyond came into view.
The far side of the rough oval cavern was dominated by a torturous feathered thing of claws, wings, and beaks, merging and flowing together, a horrid, spinning mass of wrong. As Blake, Lynch, and Granny Esmer all entered the cavern, the sight of the twenty foot tall feathered abomination brought them to a halt. The image seared itself into Blake’s eyes, burning itself alongside the Eye Above Kindale. So horrible was the image, he did not understand it was a thing of stone for several moments.
Rather than be a living creature, or what might pass as life for the denizens of the Other, this was a sculptured image, formed of the black stone of the cavern wall. So realistic, impossibly fine, the sculpture pressed out of the stone looking to take a breath and unleash a sound of death upon the world. The carving seemed almost to move with the light flickering about the cavern, undulating beneath the solid exterior of the bones of the Earth.
“Ah'f'nah bthnknahh yog yogagl, l' yogagl ahmgep n'ghft.”
The words boomed through the air, impacting as a near physical force. Blake did not know what the words could mean, but he could recognize them to be the same language as the Name of the Raven. A language not meant for the throats or minds of Man, a language of foul thought and dark intent.
Lynch clapped his hands over his ears and asked, “Fuck was that?”
Granny Esmer stared ahead, jaw set. Before the image of the Raven, stood a figure clad in a black feathered cloak, blood red hair floating in the air as if underwater. The feathers and strands of hair shifted through the air through unseen means, a hazy afterimage left behind. Even at this distance, the figure was recognizable as Akisoromokevheje, arms spread in supplication to the Raven.
“Is that…?”
“Aye,” Granny Esmer nodded, her face colored crimson by the blazing pillars of molten blood spaced around the room. “Sacrificial altar, sacrificial knife. Blood sacrifice.”
Akisoromokevheje was not the only one beneath the Raven, but she was the only one unchained. Formed of the ground, rising seamlessly from the black rock was an altar, precise in its angle, wicked in its purpose. Blood streamed through the channels set into the surface, pouring from the body splayed upon it.
The source of the earlier scream was made evident, as was the jagged chest wound in the body of a young man, hair cut short to the scalp, built like one who had worked the land for his entire life. His face was frozen in a rictus of pain at the moment of death. Akisoromokevheje stood over him, his lifeblood dripping from the edge of the knife in her hand, glaring sharp in the hollow light cast from the fountains of fire.
“I am assuming she did not do this last time,” Blake said. The Granny Woman would have mentioned if there had been ritual sacrifice in the name of an alien god.
The voice boomed out again, alien twisted words filling the air, clawing at the edges of Blake’s mind. Lynch scowled and rubbed the side of his head at the assault, but the Granny Woman narrowed her eyes at the scene set out in front of them and looked on.
“That’s a lot of blood,” Lynch said. “It shouldn’t be doing that.”
Blake looked closer. There was more blood coming from the body than there should have been. It was as if the blood was being drawn from the body, every last drop pulled from the veins and gathered in the channels. From where they stood, Blake could not see where the channels led, but they looked to be spilling over the front of the altar, towards the dark image of a forgotten god.
The man withered as his life left him, blood drawn out to feed some monstrous working. The black shimmering Blake had seen in the small details of the Raven flexed, and grew the smallest fraction more real. Judging by the pile of more withered bodies piled in a corner, Blake could see what Akisoromokevheje had been doing with the missing townspeople. The bodies upstairs represented her victims taken for sustenance, or before she had perfected her ritual process.
“She’s makin’ a Hole,” Granny Esmer said, the words catching in her throat.
“A what?” Lynch asked.
“She is trying to bore through reality, to reach the Raven perched on Its throne.” As if in acknowledgement of his statement, the shimmering pulsed, brightening momentarily. Not darkness, not light, the shimmer was as the inverse of light, a phenomenon only possible in the Other.
Movement came from the corner of the cavern and Lynch started at the surprise. Blake followed his gaze. Unnoticed in the overpowering presence of the Breaching Ritual, a group of prisoners sat against the wall, chained to brass loops set in the wall.
The loops looked newer than the rest of the cavern, installed to hold the settlers invading millennia after the ritual chamber had been created. Standing over the prisoners were a group of gray manshapes, dried skin pulled tight over their bones.
“There are more Revenants?” Lynch hissed, twisting the rifle in his grasp. “How are we supposed to fight three?”
“They are the unthinking dead,” Blake said with a soothing motion for the Knight. He did not want the man doing something rash in fear. “Nothing more than flesh golems.”
“Golems do plenty enough,” Lynch scowled. The big man rubbed a spot on his ribs, without notice. Blake resisted the urge to rub his own scars. Golems could do plenty enough.
“Seem to be independent,” Granny Esmer said. “Look, they’re gatherin’ the next sacrifice.”
The withered undead were working to unchain a live townsperson as another set were removing the body from the altar. The withered must have been created with the remains of sacrifices as the base, given their distinctive condition.
“Why aren’t we attacking?” Lynch demanded, gesturing with his long rifle. “She’s right there.”
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“We—” Blake drew up short. Why were they not attacking? It was not as if they could gain advantage by staying back, and were losing time as they waited. With every body drained of blood upon the black altar, the Raven, or the closest physical apparition capable of existence on the planet, came nearer to entering this reality. It was not something Blake could have overlooked, or allowed himself to be… distracted… from…
Eyes wide with realization, Blake cast about him with his senses, both physical and mystical. There was a weaving on the archway, set beneath the top layer of black brick. Not a deadly or violent Ward like the one barring entrance to the manor, but one as dangerous. A misdirection weaving could trap an unaware victim in webs of ever more tangled thoughts, focused on the most mundane of details. Such as the way light highlighted the dust covering the floor at the base of the walls, untouched by the passing of shuffling withered feet.
Lynch must have been incredibly single minded to have forced his way past the misdirection weaving, one which managed to ensnare an Iron Knight and the Granny Woman of such a region as these cursed Ebbolachians. The uncharitable reason could have been he was not smart enough to have multiple thoughts at a time, but Blake had seen the man in action against the Aztlans. It was an act of willpower pushing the soldier towards his task.
For as complex as a misdirection weaving was, they were easily dispelled once discovered. It was simple as concentrated thought. A thought Granny Esmer had before Blake.
Granny Esmer stepped forward and slammed the end of her lightning struck staff into the ground. Infused with the weight of the Granny Woman’s anger, the impact chipped the black stone floor and sent a boom echoing through the chamber.
“Akis. Yer evil ends this day, by our hands.”
The feather cloaked vampire did not stop, nor did she give the slightest sign she had heard the Granny Woman. The withered servitors did not stop in their march to the altar, prisoner limp between them.
But a living prisoner stood as the withered marched away and pulled his chain from the wall. The man, wide and clean shaven, broke into a run with his chains rattling behind him.
“Help me! Help-”
Fire bloomed from the end of Lynch’s rifle and the man fell to the ground, a hole in his chest. A bare chest, with a smoking red tattoo of a stylized scavenger bird.
“What’d ye do?” Granny Esmer demanded.
“He had a gun.” Lynch gestured at the man dead on the floor, arms flung wide. Clutched in one hand was an old single shot pistol, barrel rusted at the base. “‘Course, not usually enough to justify killin’ a man, but he’s also got the flaming tattoo of a Raven on his chest, so I figured he was either a mind slave or a cultist. Too far gone to reason with.”
Blake could not see any flaw in Lynch’s reasoning, not for the situation they found themselves in. “Clean shaven as well. Cannot imagine Akisoromokevheje cared for the image of the sacrifices.”
The soldier cycled his rifle, unconcerned for the dead man. No time to bother with him, Blake knew, not unless the body rose to fight again.
Hissing filled the air and it became evident while Granny Esmer’s challenge had not been noticed, Lynch’s gunshot had. The withered dead dropped the dragging prisoner and sprinted at the intruders in the stiff jerky fashion of the lesser undead. Behind the withered, Akisoromokevheje spun to point at them, feathered cloak flowing behind her as an afterimage to her motion.
A scream tore from her throat, echoed by the face of the Raven embossed on the wall behind her. The high piercing noise sliced at the party’s ears, seeking to make them bleed. It washed over them, made ineffective by the protective charms carried by each. Guards against enchanting voices worked as well against the violent voice as the seductive. The withered, being undead and lacking the bodily functions they had once possessed, were as unaffected.
Blake fired his pistol twice, striking each undead through the head with the smaller bullets. No sense using his Big Iron shot on these weak corpselings. Lynch matched his pair of shots with a single. The withered dead fell, puppets with cut strings.
“Is that it?” Lynch asked.
“Now ye done it,” Granny Esmer sighed.
Blake did not answer, his attention on the room at large. The obvious dangers had been accounted for, Akisoromokevheje standing at the altar, the withered returned to death before them. None of the prisoners acted to accost them like the now dead thug, instead huddled against the cavern wall, arms held up to shield from whatever might come their way. No strange energies signalled a hidden threat, the room bare of massed energy but for the roiling antilight before the face of the Raven. No hidden threat there, it was malicious.
“Seems as such,” Blake agreed. He nodded towards Akisoromokevheje, who had not moved from her place at the altar. The Servant stood as still as a statue, glaring burning hatred at those who dared to intrude on her Holy Sanctum. “Now for the main issue.”
On the approach to the altar, Lynch and Granny Esmer split off to the sides, to attack Akisoromokevheje from the flanks. Blake marched forward, keeping the Servant focused on him. When Blake came within a dozen paces the demon spoke, her voice as mesmerizing as ever. And as ineffective.
“Grey One! You dare stand before the Majesty of—” Blake interrupted her with two shots from his pistol. She hissed as she flung up her hands and pushed the bullets away. The hot metal careened off the stone floor, one zipping within a foot of Lynch. The soldier did not flinch. He did drop his rifle and unsling the silver axe, seeing bullets were useless.
Undeterred by his initial failure, Blake threw an opened bottle of Blessed Water at the Servant. Indeed, knowing the first shots would fail, he had prepared this secondary assault. Water was harder to stop by hand than a bullet. Lynch and the Granny Woman were close enough now to attack as soon as the Blessed Water began its work on the demon.
The Servant responded to Blake’s attack by clapping her hands together, sending a rippling wave of force into the oncoming water. It scattered into mist under the pressure, and the wave continued unabated, outlined by a cloud of vaporized Blessed Water. Blake’s eyes widened as he realized she had been expecting his second attack and prepared a trap for him. There was little he could do to stop the cloud, and it was too late to dodge. He flung up his arms in a protective sign, left wrist touching right elbow, thumbs pressed against index and ring fingers.
The blast of magical force enveloped Blake, resonating against his own magical protections. The runes tattooed into his shoulders began to sting as they worked to hold the hostile energy at bay. When he tried to push forward through the cloud, he found he could not move, unable to assist Granny Esmer and Lynch as they struggled to slay the demon.
Ducking under wild swings of the silver axe and slithering around jabs from Granny Esmer’s blackwood staff, the Servant avoided all attempts to harm her. The Servant did not strike back, ignoring opportunities to wound her attackers. She did try to hold and contain, like Blake had been held by the force blast. As the Servant would not allow herself to be injured, Lynch and Granny Esmer avoided being captured.
Blake strained against the force holding him in place, the strain growing stronger on his shoulders. He would not break this through brute force, but it would not break him in return. While the force kept him from moving forward, it did not stop him from reaching into his pockets and taking out a length of coiled rope. Tied to one end was a short copper rod, marked halfway by a band of runes.
The rope was not necessary for this task, but could be useful in other situations. The copper rod was a grounding rod, for both physical and magical energy that might prove dangerous to Blake. He held the rod close to his chest and focused on drawing the innate internal forces away from the ground rod, leaving a null shell he threw into the force cloud. The cloud siphoned into the rod with enough speed to drag at Blake’s gray coat with the wind it formed. For all his effort, he was unable to dissipate the force in time to help.
Frustrated at her inability to catch one of her attackers, the Servant stepped into a swing of the silver axe and sent a devastating backhand into the soldier’s chest. Pivoting from the blow, she lunged at the Granny Woman.
“Ack!” Lynch flew away at the strike, axe and lantern tumbling from his hands. By ill chance, the axe bounced away into the dark edges of the cavern, followed by the soldier, and the lantern cracked into the corner of the altar. Already weakened by age and the strain of containing the elymis stone, the iron shell of the lantern shattered.
Thrown free of its housing, the elymis stone collided with the altar itself. A pale light bloomed where the elymis stone met eldritch, fire erupting as the antithetical substances devoured each other. The cavern rumbled as the elymis contacted the otherworldly stone, the deep bones of the earth screeching. The face of the Raven upon the wall contorted in rage as the inverse light shimmer flickered and the Breach into Reality shrank.
Blake willed the ethereal fire to burn hotter and faster. Whatever the outcome here, if they slew the Servant or not, if they lived or not, stopping the Breach was all that mattered. The Iron Order would be alerted if Blake did not make it out, and they could deal with the aftermath. He turned his attention to the altar, trusting the Granny Woman could keep the Servant occupied for even the smallest time while he sought to stop the Breach. But he kept their fight well within sight.
When the altar began to burn, Akisoromokevheje stumbled, though not a blow had hit her. The error allowed Granny Esmer to swing her lightning struck staff square at the demon’s stomach. The wood staff, harder than most metals for its unique properties and wielded by a woman with shoulders wider than most men, smashed into the smaller Servant and stopped dead. Not even a flinch escaped the demon.
In the moment it took the Granny Woman to realize her blow had done nothing, the Servant struck back, clawed hand raking Granny Esmer’s face. Blood flew, but the Granny Woman did not falter from a blow that had sent Lynch tumbling. She pulled her staff back and struck again. Akisoromokevheje showed no sign of her earlier stumble and continued to slither around blows. Her counter attacks were becoming deadlier this time, showing none of her earlier restraint. There was no sign of Lynch from where he had rolled into the darkness.
Blake studied the altar. A brutal construction, carved with scenes of slaughter, torturous glee, and the overwhelming presence of the Raven. It was meant for sacrifice and blood magic, nothing more. The precise echoes of the magic cast here were hard to read as the ethereal fire ate at the black stone from which it was formed, but they were old, older than the burial ground in the crater. This was the center of the Raven’s Domain in the mountains, perhaps the very stone It first touched when It entered Reality eons in the past.
The Servant slipped through the Granny Woman’s defenses again, and scored a hit on her upper arm. More blood flew, splattering on the altar. It hissed and skittered like water on a hot iron. The stone popped where the blood hit it, the smallest fleck cracking off the main mass. The inverse light shimmer before the Raven quivered, and the face of the Raven itself snarled in wordless anger.
The blood seemed to enrage it even more than the ethereal fire eating away at its own altar. If there was a reaction between elymis fire and blood, Blake did not know it. So much was unknown about the Other. If blood was not offered in sacrifice, it disrupted the Breach ritual? Easy enough to test.
Keeping Akisoromokevheje and Granny Esmer in sight, Blake slipped a knife from his belt and pricked a finger. He flicked a drop of blood onto the unburnt end of the altar where it hissed and skittered. A larger flake popped off when Blake’s blood hit the stone, supporting his theory. Before he could do anything further, he was distracted by the fight.
“Damn ye, Dany, why did ye do this?” the Granny Woman roared as she kept battering at the Servant, once her sister, now a Herald of an otherworldly god.
Out of everything they had done here, those words seemed to have the greatest effect on the Servant. She stopped moving, frozen so suddenly Granny Esmer missed with her last staff swing.
“...Esmer? Sis-sister?” The Servant tilted her head, confusion replacing the rage in her eyes for the briefest moment. Blake did not know by what power the Granny Woman's sister had managed to wrestle control of the Servant's body, but he gave a prayer of thanks to Yehway for the chance.
“Aye, Dany it’s me,” Granny Esmer said, her hand outstretched. “I knew ye were in there.”
“But—oof!” The Servant grunted as three hundred pounds of corn fed farmer crashed into her, Lynch returned from the darkness. Whatever means had allowed the Servant to withstand the blows from the Granny Woman were no help as the soldier collided with the amalgam of evil and sent the pair careening to the floor. The big man wrapped his arms and legs around the Servant, muscles bulging through his clothes as he struggled to contain the writhing monster.
“Shoot her!” the soldier screamed, ducking his head behind the demon’s shoulder. Leaving her head clear as the perfect target.
Elymis powered fire bloomed as Blake pulled the trigger for his center barrel, the flash enough to illuminate the entire cavern. The Big Iron shot, for which the gun was named, burst from the end at speeds impossible to track with the human eye and flew through the air to strike the Servant above her right eye. The salt quenched iron, anointed in the bloodline of a God and Blessed in that God’s name, pierced the Other defenses and obliterated the head of Akisoromokevheje.
The body slumped soundlessly to the ground and was still. His task done, Lynch scrambled backwards from the body, wiping thick black blood from his face and neck as he stood, blinking in confusion. The cavern fell silent but for the ragged breathing of the three demon slayers and the weeping of the prisoners huddled in the far corner.
“Well,” Lynch said. “That—”
“Do not,” Blake said, “fucking say it.”
“Let’s get the hell out o' here,” Granny Esmer said. “We deal with—”
The cavern rumbled under their feet, shaking so violently Blake was thrown to the ground. He caught himself with his hands and winced as something sharp dug into his palm. Rolling to a sitting position, he saw it was a fragment of bone. A fragment of Akisoromokevheje’s skull. He ripped it out with a shudder, tossing it away.
The groundshake came again, knocking pebbles from the roof. Blake looked up to see the altar engulfed in ethereal flames, black oily stone crumbling to ash as he watched. The face of the Raven was contorted in a silent scream, many feathered eyes staring outrage. And some small amount of fear.
“We need to go!” Blake shouted. “Lynch, bring the body! Esmer, help me with the prisoners!”
The three living prisoners, two women and a man all dirty and dressed in filthy torn clothing, stared in hope, holding their chains out to their rescuers. Granny Esmer wasted no time in striking each lock at the base of the chains with her lightningstruck staff, bursting the mechanisms within. Freed, the prisoners dashed away in a mad scramble to escape through the dark hallway and up the stone stairway.
Blake, Granny Esmer, and Lynch followed at speed, Lynch carrying the body of their foe slung over his shoulder like a sack of grain. Blake stared wistfully at the elaborate carvings and runes covering the walls, all being consumed by the elymis fire. The wall with the face of the Raven cracked through the middle and black smoke began to fill the air as the room shook.
Granny Esmer grabbed the back of his coat and dragged Blake away before the room could claim its last victim. Smoke followed them up the staircase, and the creaking, cracking sound of stone weakening by fire. An earth shattering crash reverberated as the group reached the top of the stairs, and dust billowed out behind them. The ancient ritual cavern had collapsed, taking the Raven with it.