PRIESTS OF WHAT cult, I did not know. Nor did Bloodfang. I sensed only a simmering fury across our strange, intangible link. I felt it like my own lip curling back in a murderous snarl as it glared down at the nearest of the ghoul-priests.

“We can’t linger here,” I said, thinking not only of my own skin, but of the children I’d left outside the Tomb of Romulor. It would not do to leave them in such a pitiful, awful place for any longer than I had to. Yet, Father Iainov believed there was something of value here–something I could strengthen me in my fight against the Wolf. Something to help me rescue Param.

The black wolf vanished into the shadow, cutting ahead of me and down the low tunnel. I retrieved my greatsword, set it to my shoulder, and went after the beast in an uncomfortable hunch. The deeper into the tomb we went, the warmer it grew. And the lighter the darkness weighed on me.

So subtly I didn’t even notice at first, a bloody gloaming filled the air. I caught it first on the curve of the dog’s head pommel, where it traced a scarlet, devilish line against the black. I crouched low, probing the shadow ahead, listening for any sound.

And, I found, I could hear it. It was a dull, slow thud, like a giant’s laboring heartbeat.

Dum-thum, dum-thum it went, a bone-deep, almost inaudible pulse that shivered through the ancient, sagging stone. A drum, I thought, hypnotic in its slow, monotonous crush. I squeezed Bloodfang’s hilt, letting the nerves fluttering deep in my gut pass. That was no welcoming sound.

Ahead, I saw a cut in the rock. The air grew lighter, diffuse with the redness, as if the tomb were remembering acts of murder and bloodshed with livid glee. I started down the hall slowly, but froze when two black-robed figures pass by. They did not notice me, for their hoods were drawn up over their heads and they walked with eyes lowered to the ground.

Of the shadow wolf, I had no sign, but I knew that it lay ahead somewhere.

I crept forward, pressing my back to the wall. At the corner, the whisper of slippers on stone betrayed the passage of another cultist. Only one, I marked by the sound of its feet. I clenched my eyes shut, balancing my timing on my hearing alone—and whirled, bringing my elbow up to catch the priest by surprise, crushing his windpipe and smashing his head to the wall.

With a sick, wed thud, his legs went out from under him. I glanced up and down the hall, but saw no sign that I’d revealed my own presence. I dragged the priest around the corner and sat him up against the wall.

He was wheezing, gasping for a breath that would not come. His thin, shriveled legs thrashed weakly.

“What is this place?” I demanded, pushing his head up to look him in the eye. The flesh around the eyesockets was loose, almost runny like wax. His nose was long and sharp, ending in a heavy ball that hung low over swollen lips. His teeth were little more than black fangs, and a darting, wormlike tongue lashed in his mouth as he tried to form words.

“...will… I am…” he managed.

“I don’t care what you are,” I said. “What is that drumming?”

He glared at me, and then made a sound like a choking laugh. “...thin… opening.” I frowned, unable to make sense of it. He struck then, clawing at me with his pale fingers. He got one hand on my shoulder and tore at the flesh, but not before I drove Bloodfang down into his chest. The ghoul squirmed, but only briefly. I knew he was dead when I felt the thin thread of warmth enter my blood, for I’d already turned my back to him.

I pulled the black robes from him, bloodstained as they were, and slung the garment over my shoulders. It would mask the light of my Cindermark anyway, and the radiance that constantly leaked from it.

Then I hurried forward, for the drumming was growing louder, and faster, as if it were beginning to work toward a culmination of some sort.

I followed down the corridor after the others. There, a narrow stair led down into the belly of the tomb. It spit out into a broader chamber with an arched ceiling. It struck me as almost sewer-like, for the floor was split into two levels: raised sides, with a channel running down the center. Except, the channel held no water.

It was filled with bones.

At the center of the channel was a platform of sorts, a rudely constructed altar of cut logs held together by corded lashings and wrought iron fittings. It was heavy with the white runny candles I’d seen before, but the glimmering lights weren’t what held my eyes: it was the figure kneeling in the middle of the platform.

A Velkyrim. She was contorted low, hunched as if in agony, one stone hand thrust out in a frozen plea for mercy. Her face was twisted with anguish, and her wings—I remembered Zeniel’s magnificent, graceful wings. This creature had only stumps where there should have been glorious eagle’s wings.

Black-robed figures shifted in silent mass on either side of the channel. They faced inward, raising their hands and shaking shriveled fingers at the ceiling. A low tone rose, one that seemed to weave in and out of the thudding, constant drumbeat that reverberated through the chamber.

“The blood is life,” they chanted, “and life is blood.” I listened from the deep shadow at the foot of the stair to a rising, blasphemous hymn. “Romulor sleeps on the edge of death,” cried one voice to the thunderous procession of the drum, which I gathered was somewhere behind the damaged Velkyrim, “and life is blood.”

I probed the edges of my own awareness, searching for Bloodfang. The shadow wolf had somehow crossed the chamber, and was on the other side.

The walls are thinning, it said. They will penetrate the veil!

I didn’t know what that meant, but I did not like the next verse of their song any more: “By Romulor’s flesh, we enter the dream.”

“Bring forth the knife!” The chanting stopped suddenly.

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One figure emerged from the crowd of black hoods. This one was perhaps a little taller, and its hood was lined with a red lace fringe that looked, to me, like the tattered flesh of a mortal wound. I saw the ugly curve of a pale jaw jutting from the darkness of the hood. This one drew back a black sleeve and held up a curving golden knife.

I knew what that was.

“Bring forth the bowl!”

Another with the red fringe pushed their way to the front on the other side of the channel.

Stop them! Snarled Bloodfang. I sensed that its patience was held back by the thinnest thread: me. It would not act without me. It was right, of course, but I had no way of knowing at that point. Indeed, perhaps I’ll never understand what transpired in those scant few moments.

The knife-wielder and the bowl-bearer stepped onto the platform at the center of the channel, beside the frozen Velkyrim. With ritual sobriety they knelt, placing the bowl on the timbers. The other held the knife up, and with one sick slash, drew the knife across the other’s throat.

“We give of our blood, and receive thy strength, master!”

There was a horrid gurgle, and blood splashed down into the bowl, filling the golden vessel, yet never overfilling it. I sensed the tug there, the gathering radiance. The bloody light played up over the ceiling casting dancing, wicked shadows. The black-robed priests swayed and moaned like a herd of fear-stricken beasts, and I clamped my hands over my ears against the awful sound.

Now! raged Bloodfang, but it was too late. The Velkyrim began to shift and move as the radiance warmed her frozen flesh. She came alive in fits and spurts, crawling forward, clawing toward the shadow. Clawing for me.

“Help me,” she begged, and it took all the steel in my spine not to go to her. Not yet. I needed to know what they were doing. A misstep, and a dozen cult priests might fall on me. I could not afford a careless death here.

The one who had borne the bowl toppled off the platform and into the bones below. The knife-wielder shifted and planted the knife into the angel’s back, drawing a scream out of her. That scream was a high, pure note, like a song of starlight. The walls fluttered, shifting around us, as the note carried on and on. The room was filled with a silver, graceful light.

I gasped. Starlight. Above the vaulted ceiling was a great hole, out of which I could see the stars themselves. I saw the Bear, and the Elk. I saw the Son and the Father, and the Mother and the Bride all picked out in their delicate constellations. And other, stranger stars, patterns beyond my memory, gods beyond my own.

“Beor’s breath,” I swore quietly. The starlight was like water to a dying man’s lips, cool and serene.

Now a new chanting picked up, and I saw beyond the Velkyrim, whose head was hauled cruelly back by the knife-wielding cultist’s fist, a dark hill rising as if from a distance. It slid closer impossibly, rolling like a dark wave, until I could pick out torchlights on the crown of that unholy place. Closer it came with the speed of a sickening vision, and the black-robed priests threw themselves to the ground in supplication of the revelation by starlight.

Suddenly, it seemed as if we stood on the crown of the hill, and I recognized it all at once by the twisted little tree near the top: Romulus’s Tomb, but in another place, a place yet graced by starlight. And black-robed figures stood there, too, shuffling in mute and abysmal silence.

“Blood is life!” cried the ghouls. The other party answered, “And life is blood!” Together they raised their hands, fingers tracing arcane and blasphemous sigils in the air. Black rites of recognition between evil souls.

One among the star-lit cultists came forward, holding a bundled thing. It took my eyes a moment to recognize it. It was smaller than the cultist was, yet it was long and slender, and seemed to sag in his arms. Then it wriggled and kicked, and I heard the distinct, if muffled, cry of a child.

Fool! Snarled Bloodfang. You delay even as they take another soul!

Now I knew what was happening, or enough to act. I sprang forth from the stairwell with a roar, and bounded the few steps that remained between my hiding place and the closest of the cultists. He hardly had time to turn before my greatsword bit deep into his neck, flinging the miserable bastard down into the pit of bones. The next one I barreled into, pitching him after his fellow with a yelp.

Now they were all turning to me, curses on their shriveled lips. But even as they hurled stones at me, and black words I felt like frostbite on the base of my soul, enlarging that bitter void that never fully left, I killed another, and drove the blade through a fourth’s belly. Bloodfang sprang on them from behind, bursting from shadows like death incarnate, ripping and tearing.

“Infidel!” shrieked the priest with the red lace. “Drive them back!”

The ghouls rallied, but the narrow ledges that lined the bone-filled channel gave them little room to press the advantage. I slapped aside a shortsword and lopped a head off. It rolled down into the bones with a shocked expression, and the rest of the wretch followed suit as its companions tried to get at me.

I was close to the platform now, and my blood was hot with radiance. On an instinct, I sprang, burning radiance as I did. I tucked my legs up under me even as a sword swiped beneath, missing by the barest breath.

The Velkyrim’s eyes went wide as she saw me soar toward her. Despite the radiant blood that soaked her filthy smock, despite the humiliation and the hard hand that gripped her by the hair, she twisted. Her hand shone with the silver fury of the stars, blinding the vermin in the red-laced hood.

I crashed into him a moment later. He staggered back into the closest of the other party, who stood like fools in shock.

“Help me!” the ghoul snarled. “Do you serve the master?”

They hesitated. I did not.

I brought the greatsword up over my head in an executioner’s arc. There was no guard there, no defense. Only power. My blood bright with radiance, I brought hte sword down hard enough to cleave the priest nearly in two.

At that, what courage lingered in the remaining cultists broke. Those on the other side of the thin place, those who yet had starlight, fled one by one, screaming down the hill. The ghouls vanished into shadow with Bloodfang snapping at their heels.

Only the Velkyrim remained with me, and the bundle dropped by the head cultists.

“Get him!” the angel cried. “He does not belong here!”

I didn’t stop to ask what she meant. I dove toward the wrapped bundle and tore the heavy cloth aside. A boy, no older than six. He was awake, but a gag was wrapped around his mouth, and his arms and legs were bound with cords.

“Hurry!” the Velkyrim cried. She tore loose the golden knife from her own back with a cry, and tossed it to me. All around us, the starlight was growing dim. The torchlight on the strange hilltop was flickering and faded, as if seen through filthy glass.

The boy watched me with naked terror in his wide eyes. Hands shaking, I cut the cords on his hands. He snatched the gag out as I cut his legs free and hauled him to his feet.

“Go boy!” I said. “Back to your own side! And may Beor go with you!” I knew nothing of this magic, but I wasn’t stupid. Whatever strange space we inhabited was collapsing. Soon the Tomb of Romulor would return, and we’d be locked under tons of stone again.

The boy took a hopping, limping few steps. Then he half-turned back to me. “Beor?” he said as if the name were unfamiliar in his mouth. “Beor is dead.”

Then he was gone, and the arched dark ceiling, and the crushing dark returned.

And my god was dead.