Silence reigned again at the gorge. The battle noises had faded away and the demons and their spawn had left the place, carrying away the soldiers and Aaron, each spun into his individual cocoon.

Dawn had waited several minutes after the demons were out of sight, before she started to follow them.

She wanted to see where the demons entered the mountain. Maybe it wouldn’t be of any use to her. But she couldn’t just ignore the situation. If it had been only Aaron captured by the demons, in all probability she would have said good riddance. But his men had only followed his orders in coming here. So she would take the chance to follow them and see where it led her. Hopefully not into a cocoon of her own.

Ankou had been very doubtful of her decision, Dawn suspected the lynx thought her suicidal. Even so, he accompanied her. She was very glad, and lucky, to have him as a friend and companion.

The trail led downwards as the gorge deepened more and more. The sun didn’t reach the ground this far down, and their surroundings had a dim and gloomy atmosphere. Further on, they faced a laborious climb over a big rock fall that barred their way and afterwards turned a corner. Here, suddenly the ground they trod on wasn’t made of rock, pebbles and debris anymore. Regular stones built a road beneath them, withered, cracked and partly grown over with moss and grass, but clearly recognizable. Dawn took in her surroundings, careful to look up the rocky walls. This time she didn’t want to be surprised by a demon from above. But nothing and no one lurked on the walls reaching far up into the sky.

Instead, Dawn was greeted with a monumental sight. Hewn into the rock face around them were ornamental designs, flowers and animals, and in between, sculptures of people. Farther ahead of them, intermittent huge stone pillars framed the road. It was an amazing testimony to the capacity of the ancient city’s stone masons. They followed the road for several minutes and Dawn kept admiring the extraordinary art sculpted into the rock face.

At last, they arrived at an enormous portal, framed by several black stone pillars to both sides. The portal itself showed no ornamentations, it was made of a smooth and glossy silvery grey stone, both doors firmly closed.

Dawn stood in front of the entrance, gazing at it in wonder, feeling tiny in comparison and wondering if she would be able to open the doors.

Even if she could, the opening of a giant portal didn’t exactly make for a stealthy entrance. She might as well announce her arrival at the top of her voice.

‘That has to be the main entrance to the city,’ she thought. Of course, it absolutely made sense that a great city like Raknavor would have a properly ostentatious entrance. Maybe the other exit from the caves had been used for delivery in former times.

But how to get in without alerting the demons? Tentatively, she approached the portal further. Suddenly the huge doors started to open silently. Dawn speedily made her way to the side, in between the stone pillars. Out of the doorway streamed spiderlings, obviously on their way to new adventures. It was only a part of the number Dawn had seen before, still they were too many to fight for Dawn and Ankou. What the demon spawn lacked in bulk and reach, compared to their adult brethren, they made up in numbers and sheer agility. Not to forget they had a venomous bite.

Maybe two weeks had passed since Dawn had seen the Queen practice her blood magic ritual with the eggs. Obviously the demons reproduced fast. For the first time Dawn got an inkling how the demons had managed to defeat the stoneblood folk. Raknavor had been a big city, the stoneblood folk obviously practiced advanced magic and alchemy and their stone masons were masters of their craft. But even if they had been as advanced in warfare, they could never have matched the reproduction of the demons.

The demons had passed Dawn now and were distancing themselves down the ancient road. The great doors still stood open, beginning to close slowly just now .

Dawn took the opportunity and ducked through the doorway followed by Ankou, immediately turning aside and pressing herself to the wall next to the door, nervously examining her surroundings. Contrary to her expectations, there wasn’t a demon in sight.

She was standing inside of a vast portico with a vaulted ceiling. The pillars leading further inside the great hall were richly decorated with ornaments and inlaid with coloured stones. On the sides of the huge chamber she saw open worked stone walls, appearing like a lattice of stone lace, broken by arched entryways leading into side rooms. At the end of the hall, monumental statues were sitting on high pedestals. It was an incredible sight.

Unfortunately, the great hall with several exits to side chambers also meant Dawn didn’t know where the spiders had gone with their captives. She could make out no traces of them on the smooth stone floor and the huge chamber was completely silent. Curiosity got the better of Dawn, and she started down the hall following the pillars and approaching the stone statues.

Were these depictions of the kings of Raknavor, she wondered. But as she came closer to them, she saw that there were three figures, one of them a woman, standing in the center between the two men. Her robes and the hair ornament in the form of a crescent moon reminded Dawn of the statue of the moon maiden she had seen in the temple of Greenriver village. Maybe these were statues of their deities. But why only three of them?

The other two statues were both male and didn’t appear familiar to Dawn. The one on the left depicted an older man holding a book, his robes inscribed with runes. Dawn recognized the symbols for Haya and Ruh from her book. The other one held a kind of crucible and a flask in his hands. Gods of magic and alchemy perhaps? It would fit what she had learned of the stoneblood folk before. But where were the Allfather, the Warrior and the Trickster? Were their statues perhaps in one of the side rooms? Or had the stoneblood folk not worshiped these gods?

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Well, she would probably never learn the answer to these questions. Time to remember her original purpose here. She had almost forgotten it. But how could she find out where the demons had gone?

Looking through the great hall she decided that the stone archways leading to the side chambers were a bit on the small side for the adult spiders. Frowning, Dawn rounded the statues of the gods and beheld a broad doorway on the other side, an entryway leading deeper into the city. She entered the passage on silent feet, her gaze roaming the surrounding area, pricking her ears for any noises in front of her. Nothing moved.

Dawn ran swiftly through the passageway, abandoning a part of her caution in favor of getting out of the passage and into a larger room as fast as she could. At last, she entered into another hall, smaller than the first and simpler by far in decoration and style. Once again she got out of the entryway and to the side turning her back to the wall. Here, too everything was silent, the chamber lay abandoned. Several doorways to the left and right of her led to side rooms. She chose her way by simple elimination of the doorways that were too small for the grown spiders. But before she entered the next passageway she ducked into one of the side chambers, to rest for a few minutes and to recover her stamina. She huddled in the empty room next to Ankou and listened. The eerie silence of the city grated on her.

Soldiering on, they followed the next passage downwards. It wound its way in a circle and she came out on a high platform looking over the living area of the city, the huge cavern where she had entered Raknavor for the first time. That seemed far away and a long time ago now. But in truth it had only been a few weeks earlier.

Here, she noticed the first signs of the demons. Long threads of webbing led down from the platform to the stone floor. A latticework of crossed strands connected the threads to a kind of web fastened to the wall. Dawn grimaced. That seemed like an easy way down for the spiders, but she didn’t care to climb down to the floor along the sticky webbing. But after a moment, she perked up. On the side of the platform a winding stairway led down to the highest floor of the city. Though not exactly narrow, it was a bit on the small side for the spiders seemingly, so they had chosen to fabricate their own way downstairs. Dawn and Ankou went down the stairs but stopped when the stairway ended abruptly quite a way from the ground. Apparently, it had been broken a long time ago. Dawn inspected the distance to the ground carefully. If she let herself down from the last stair, it was not too great a distance to the floor to jump. But how in earth would she ever get up to the platform again, if she wanted to get out of here? She didn’t fancy another escape from the underground waterways.

Then she remembered her storage ring. She had brought some rope along when she had planned to rig traps for the demons, together with Kharma. The traps had never materialized, but the rope was still stuck in her storage. She took it out and fastened it to the guard railing. Of course it was a sign of her presence, if the demons should care to look, but at least they had another way out if they needed it.

They came out on the ground beside the entrance to the great library. She hadn’t noticed the broken stairway above during her last visit. In front of the library, a grand staircase led them down all the way to the ground floor.

They entered the familiar passageway down to the second level with the crafting area, and were already following the next passage that led to the barracks and armory, when Dawn suddenly remembered that she herself had barred the way down there when she had lowered the portcullis. But when they arrived at the entryway to the third level, they saw the portcullis had been destroyed. It almost looked as if it had been melted away, only the outer frame still standing. The same was true for the portcullis that had barred the entry to the passageway down.

“So, the Queen found a way to open the passage again,” Dawn murmured. They entered the cemetery level now and Dawn moved with increased caution. Only one level down to the demon caves now. They crossed the open ground in the middle and were just about to enter the passage down when Dawn heard a noise in front of her. Hastily she sprang back and moved to the side. And truly, clicking noises approached from below. Several grown spiders and more than a dozen spiderlings streamed out of the passage. Dawn pressed herself to the wall and held her breath. But the demons were clearly occupied with more important things than watching for intruders. They continued on their way upwards without pausing and vanished into the passage to the third level.

When their noise died away, the companions hazarded the last passage down and came out in the demon caves. Dawn and Ankou looked out on empty paths and the water in front of them. The spiders seemed to have withdrawn themselves to the back area. They turned to the left and followed the path to the cave with the empty animal pens and further down to the cave where Dawn had found Kharma and the demon eggs during her first visit.

This time, no demon eggs were lying on the floor. But again, several cocoons were hanging down from the ceiling. Aaron and some of his men at arms, Dawn suspected. Wrinkling her nose in disgust, she took out her knife and started the work to get their heads free from the sticky webbing. What she would do if she found Aaron, Dawn didn’t know. She didn’t want to get close to him and she didn’t really want to free him, not fancying another encounter with his insidious charm skill.

But when the first face emerged from the cocoons, it didn’t belong to any human. The captive inside was a Kharlin and it was still breathing. Without hesitation, Dawn decided to take the Kharlin still webbed into the cocoon and flee to the neighbouring cave with it. Better to free one captive at first and bring him or her to consciousness and then come back for the rest.

She heaved the Kharlin onto her shoulder, and brought it into the adjacent cave as fast as she could. Ankou stayed at the entrance and watched out for any approaching spiders.

She put the captive on the ground, cast Nurture on the cocooned figure and occupied herself with removing the rest of the webbing. Once she was done with that task, she cast Nurture on the Kharlin woman again. She had to be very old, her fur was grey all over and her face was wizened. Several minutes later, the woman’s eyes started to open. For a long moment she stared at Dawn silently, before she finally tried to sit up. She sighed and shook her head slightly.

“I have to admit, I didn’t expect to wake up again. And I certainly didn’t expect to be freed by a human.” Her voice was hoarse and breathy.

Dawn shrugged, abashed. “Well, I actually was surprised you were not human, when I started to open the cocoon. I saw the demons abduct some humans and was on their trail. My name is Dawn, by the way.”

The Kharlin woman smiled weakly. “In any case, thank you for freeing me. I am called Nuala.”