A few nights after the feast, Faro lay tossing and turning in the bed they had provided for him. He hadn’t ever been fully comfortable in Mireholm, despite the cozy room with the roaring fireplace and comfortable canopy bed. It was a room fit for royalty and likely housed royalty when they visited. Of course Faro thought that Mireholm itself probably had few visitors, and the actual visitors stayed in the sister kingdom of Zelira.
On this night, Faro had gotten to sleep late. After the promise from Umbra that he would seek answers for them, there was another frustrating gap of no response. The last few days had left them waiting in angst. Now he was tossing and turning. He needed rest, but his dreams didn’t seem to want to let him get any quality sleep.
In his dream he was in a dark stone room. The walls seemed to be made of solid rock, hewn from the earth that had already been there. He could hear the sound of dripping water, and a musty smell filled the air. It was just him inside the large chamber. A feeling of loneliness and foreboding crept over him. He held his war hammer aloft, waiting for something to jump out at him in the darkness and attack.
Then there was a bright flash of light. The empty room was replaced with torch light, and Faro was no longer alone. In front of him was a dais atop of which sat a throne. The throne was impossibly large for a normal human to sit on. So large he would barely be able to hoist himself onto the seat if he tried. Surrounding the throne were a dozen specters, ghostly wisps that floated in lines on either side.
Floating above the throne was a full-bodied specter. A long, gnarled, transparent finger raised through the air and pointed directly at Faro. The figure opened its mouth and let out a ghastly noise before it spoke.
“Heir of Evania!” It called out in a loud voice.
Faro shook his head in denial. “No! I barely even know who I am,” he said in a panic.
The specter swooped down through the air from the throne and brought its ghostly face right in front of Faro's.
“You were chosen,” it wheezed.
He took a step back away from the terrible form, but it pressed even closer.
“My father was chosen. I’m not the heir!” Faro roared back.
The specter backed off, and its face fell in disappointment. “Then you doom the fate of Evania to darkness.” The ghost faded away to nothing, and the other specters went with it. He now stood alone in the dark room again.
Faro felt something tug at his arm. He looked, but there was nothing there. Something was clearly pulling on his arm, but his sleeve wasn’t moving. Something…something somewhere else? A dream. This was a dream. Something kept pulling.
With a jolt, Faro sat up out of bed and opened his eyes. It didn’t do much good because the fire and gone out in his room and he was greeted with pressing darkness. And then a voice spoke out from the darkness, smooth and coaxing.
“Welcome to Mireholm. Such a lovely place to be!” said the voice.
Faro swiped his paw through the darkness, and connected with something solid.
“Gah!” the voice called as its owner flew backwards onto the stone floor. Faro lunged out of bed towards the intruder.
“Stop!” it yelled at him. “It’s just me! Jarl!”
The confirmation of the intruder didn’t make him feel any better.
“Why are you here?” Faro roared, trying to get his bearings in the darkness. “Think you can kill me in the middle of the night?”
A dark purple light emanated near the floor in the darkness and shot across the room. Faro braced himself for the worst, but then saw the ball of fire hit the fireplace and the room lit up. The purple fire lit the room, and then slowly turned into normal yellow and orange flame. Jarl stood up from the floor and moved over to the fireplace, tossing on a few more logs that were kept nearby to make sure it stayed lit.
“Don’t be crazy, you fool,” Jarl hissed at him. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.” Faro nodded slightly, realizing that the wolverine wouldn’t have broken his element of surprise if he had the intention to kill him in his sleep. “I was just mocking that tall oaf, Umbra. He’s pretty smitten on what he’s built here, eh?”
Faro still wasn’t sure what to make of Umbra. He was nice and hospitable enough, but he also seemed like he was stalling to keep them here. Something about the elf didn’t sit right with Faro.
“So what are you doing here, waking me up?” Faro asked.
Jarl turned away from the fire to face Faro, the backlighting from the fireplace giving him an eerie, silhouetted look. “I’m tired of waiting around for High King Happy to give us any answers we need. He’s stonewalling you on the visions, and I’m not getting anywhere with him on the location of any dark magic secrets I can take back to my masters,” Jarl seemed to balk at this last word. “Plus, that annoying girl still seems to be missing. Should have kept her on the rope,” he finished, smiling.
It was true. Veronica still hadn’t been seen since the day they arrived. “So you want me to go with you to steal Umbra’s secrets?” he asked, raising a big eyebrow at the short creature.
Jarl just shrugged. “Seems we could be on the same side here. We both need to go around and look for answers. I don’t trust old Umbra to not have another bog troll or something protecting his secrets.” Jarl looked up at his old friend, and his face softened a bit. “We made a pretty good team, not so long ago. Not really our fault we were betrayed.”
“Kind of your fault that you tried to kill me. Plus you burnt down my friend’s tavern,” Faro said, matter-of-factly.
Jarl raised a finger in objection. “The Virmorphia was controlling me. Umbra removed it,” said Jarl, defending himself. “You saw how I changed when he worked his magic.”
Right. So,” said Faro, throwing on his tunic and grabbing his war hammer, “at the feast, Lena said your information is likely down by the dungeons. If I help you find the library, are you going to go into the dungeons with me and help search for Veronica?”
Jarl looked like he didn’t like the idea, but said, “I really doubt there is information on the type of dark magic Eli and Eldryn are looking for just sitting in the library. I’m thinking I’ll have to venture down into the dungeons with you. That’s why I need backup.”
“Because you’re afraid of bog trolls?” Faro laughed.
“That Mathias guy told me it was really really big!” exclaimed Jarl, looking only half like he was joking.
At that the two beasts set off from Faro’s room. Being on the third floor of the keep, they had several flights of stairs to get down without being seen by Umbra or any of his castle staff. The halls were mostly dark, only lit by a torch on the wall every ten feet. The carpets under their feet were gold colored like much of the rest of the Mireholm keep, and Faro was getting a little tired of the lavish feel.
Both beasts quickly ran down the staircase at the end of the hall. It was tall and twisting, but they found themselves on the second floor in short order. They slowed down and implemented more caution here, as the stairs down to the first floor were the lavish arched stairs that led down to the entry room in front of the throne room. It was here that Faro was afraid they would run into the king or his helpers, but he heaved a sigh of relief as the area was empty. Apparently it was late enough in the night that everyone had gone to sleep.
Even though it was deserted, Faro still felt a bit exposed. All of the subfluore chandelier lighting overhead made this the brightest lit room they had encountered so far. Not only that, but they didn’t know their way down to any lower levels from here, and without someone like Lena who would know, they’d have to do a bit of poking around to find more stairs leading downwards.
“You think we have to go into the throne room to find the next stairs?” Jarl asked, looking at the different route options. “Maybe through the great hall?”
Faro thought for a moment. It didn’t make much sense for the stairs to the lower levels to be off any other room than this one. Then again, he couldn’t remember being in a castle before, so he could be way off base. Maybe off the kitchens? Where were those even located? He knew if he’d designed the keep it would make the most sense for them to be…
“There!” he said in a loud whisper, pointing under the stairs they had just come down. Tucked away underneath the left set of stairs was a big, wooden door. The shadow of the stairs above obscured it, but Faro had a good feeling it was what they were looking for.
They both made their way over and Jarl reached for the handle. He gave it a hard pull, but the door didn’t budge. “Locked!” he said angrily, and Faro had to shush him.
“Well, it’s definitely what we’re looking for then. Why else would it be locked?” Faro sized up the door, wondering if he could break it down. It looked to be solid oak, and likely wouldn't budge. Besides that, it would make a large noise if he knocked it down.
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“We can take care of this, easy,” said Jarl. He lifted his hand and purple flames ignited. Arching his fingers he controlled it to a small area and burnt a hole around the door handle and locking mechanism. The wood around it burned clean through, and Faro reached in and broke the mechanism from the door. It easily swung inward and they slipped through.
“What does the magic feel like?” Faro asked him.
Jarl thought for a moment as they walked down a hallway that was on the other side of the door. “It’s weird, for sure. You just think about what you want to do, and just kind of command it. Sometimes you have to mutter incantations. Other times it just comes to you. Depends on how strong you need it to be I think. I’m honestly surprised I still have it. When Umbra ripped the voice out of my head, I assumed the magic would go with it.”
They reached the stairwell they were hoping to find, and started heading downwards. The decor and luxury of the main hall ended abruptly, and they were left with plain stone walls and stairs. They were whispering as they were talking now, as they didn’t want to draw any unwanted attention.
“Did we all get magic?” Faro asked, not really thinking about it before.
Jarl shrugged. “All the other disciples had varying forms of magic after the transformation.” He looked up at Faro and saw his curious face. “You probably can do something with it. Unless your tumble down the mountain knocked it out of you.”
Faro’s jaw fell open. “You were there when I was injured?” he asked.
“Yup,” said Jarl. “It happened within a few minutes of Cosimir being murdered. We had no idea Eli was going to do that. The plan was to capture him and send him to trial before the Dungeon Lords. Instead what we got was a murdered Cosimir and Eli taking the dais as the new ruler.”
“And we all got transformed into animals how?” Faro asked, trying to piece everything together.
“No idea,” Jarl shot back. “That dark mage Eldryn put some kind of spell on the spear Eli had, I think. As soon as it dropped Cosimir, the room turned purple. We were all knocked down and stood up as animals.”
“And that knocked me down the mountain?” Faro asked.
Jarl laughed at him. “No. We all stood up in shock. Being the do-gooder you are you roared a loud lion roar and charged at Eli. Next thing we all know Eldryn lowered his staff and blasted you. We all thought you’d died. There’s no way a normal person could have survived that fall. Eli sent a few assassins after you to make sure you were dead. When they failed, they sent me.”
More pieces were falling into place for Faro, but it was still frustratingly not enough. Why had Eli betrayed the plan? What was he planning now? It also hurt Faro a little that his friend had send killers after him. It hurt, even though his only memory of being friends with Eli was the vision he’d had in the apple grove.
They reached the bottom of the staircase and came out into big, dark room. Long, wooden bookcases lined the walls and stood running down the middle of the room. The library held an uncountable number of tomes. They picked a row and started walking down it. Faro’s sensitive nose picked up the scent of dust and old leather.
“You sure what you’re looking for won’t be in here? There’s thousands upon thousands of books and scrolls here,” Faro said.
“Yeah, we have to keep going. We need to look for the girl anyways. If we don’t find what I’m looking for down in the dungeons, I’ll come back and scope out the library,” said Jarl, not even glancing at the shelves around them.
Faro was surprised that Jarl was willing to go further with him, but he was thankful for the help none-the-less. They continued to make their way through the library until they came to another flight of stairs downwards. This flight was much shorter than the rest had been, and led them down into a stone room with metal bars. They had reached the original dungeons of Mireholm, but this wasn’t the extended dungeons that had likely been built during the scourge.
Sure enough, towards the back of the passageway, a hole that was roughly as tall as a man had been blasted into the stone. Jarl reached out a paw and felt the rough edges of the perimeter. “Blast magic,” he said. “Everyone had to dig underground. The only life we ever knew, underground, was blasted and hewn by sorcerers and stonesmiths. Desperate, quick work to escape the death that took so many above.”
Sure that he had known this at some point, Faro just nodded in agreement. So many kingdoms living underground. So many mighty kings turned into Dungeon Lords, forced to hide and pay tribute to Cosimir the Eternal. A beloved family, rulers of Evania, wiped from the face of the land. Unless the rumors of a continued lineage proved to be true.
Walking through the blast hole, they found themselves in a rough, narrow tunnel. Any fineries that had existed in the upper levels, and even the basic roughness of the library, was totally and completely gone from this place. Instead it was replaced with a hurriedly blasted tunnel that led them steeply downwards into the ground. The worst part was that it was completely pitch black, and they carefully felt their way through, hoping they didn’t fall into a dark abyss.
After moving this way for several minutes, Faro getting extremely uncomfortable with the increasingly tight space, they saw a yellow light ahead. Faro urged Jarl along as fast as he could. When they finally reached the light, they stepped out into a wider corridor, and Faro breather a deep sigh of relief.
“Woo!” he said, hunched over with this paws on his knees. “Being a big fella doesn’t work so well in tight spaces.”
“Seemed like plenty of room to me!” Jarl shot back with a grin.
Faro just rolled his eyes and started walking down the new corridor they had found. The walls were lined with brackets that held subfluore crystals. The rock appeared to be a bit more finely hewn out, as if whoever made this room had gotten to safety and taken a little more time to put craftsmanship into this new space.
They weren’t really sure what they were looking for, so they simply crept along the abandoned corridor until they heard something up ahead.
“That’s breathing,” said Jarl, his tiny ears twitching.
“Heavy breathing,” Faro added, his animal hearing picking up the sound as well. They saw a brighter light up ahead coming from the wall, and Faro assumed they were coming up on the first room. As they got closer, they saw that the room was more of a giant archway covered in metal bars.
They approached with caution, not sure what they would find. Faro was hoping it was Veronica so they could bust her out and get out of here before they were found. Instead what he saw shocked him.
“The bog troll,” he said, approaching the bars. Sure enough, on the other side of the bars sat the bog troll they had faced off against. He sat slumped against the wall, arms resting on his knees, staring intently at Faro and Jarl as they approached. Behind the troll Faro saw a small room with hay and what looked like the remains of several raccoon carcasses. Beyond the room was a smooth, curved ramp that spiraled upwards around a corner to where they couldn’t see.
“This must be the bottom part of his cage, said Faro. “Easy feeding and care down here, and then they release it for fighting up there in the training arena.” So wherever they were, they must be right under the arena where they had fought the beast a few days prior.
“Kind of an ugly fellow,” said Jarl. “What’s up with his hair?” he asked, noticing it was tied up out of his face.
“It talks,” said the bog troll mockingly.
“Woah! What the fuck?” said Jarl, surprised.
“Yeah,” said Faro, tilting his head knowingly. “He told us we were going to die during the fight.”
“Three on one, no fair,” said the troll. “Want to come and do one-on-one?” he finished with a smile.
“No, no, no. All good out here on this side of the bars,” said Faro. And then he had an idea. “Have you seen a little girl come through here in the last several days? She was wearing all white last we saw her. Little blonde girl.”
The bog troll pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “Took her that way many days ago. And the rock monster. Lots of screams. Keeps me awake.”
Jarl and Faro exchanged a look. “Screams?” Faro asked, getting worried.
As if on cue, a scream echoed down the corridor. Only, it wasn’t the high-pitched scream of a little girl he was expecting. It was a deep, guttural sound that made them all shudder. The bog troll covered his ears as if the screams had been haunting his life and driving him mad.
Faro and Jarl exchanged looks, and then took off running towards the source of the sound. A short ways down the corridor was another opening, but this one opened up into what looked like a makeshift mess hall. It was nowhere near as luxurious or grand as the one up in the main keep, but it looked like it was suitable during the scourge.
All of the tables in the cavernous room were pushed to the side, and chained in the middle of the room was a beast that Faro hoped that he would never see again, the Vorath Shadruul that had kidnapped Veronica in Graeton. It wasn’t alone, either. He was surrounded by five elves, all of which looked like they were carefully studying the creature. One elf sat in the corner bent over one of the tables, taking notes.
“What are they doing to your buddy here?” Faro asked, nudging Jarl’s shin with his foot. They both pulled back to one side of the entryway and peeked around the corner so they wouldn’t be spotted.
“Pshh. Hardly my buddy,” spat Jarl. “I was assigned to travel with a group of those things to kill you, which I haven’t done by the way. You’re welcome.”
Faro silently laughed at this. “Such a great favor. Thank you. Wait. Who’s that?”
A figure emerged from a doorway on the other side of the room. It was clad in a golden robe, a hood up and covering its head. The cloak swished fluidly across the ground as the figure seems to glide forward until it stopped in front of the Shadruul. Faro’s first thought was Umbra, but the only problem was that this figure was way too short.
The person lifted their hands and threw their hood back. Faro gasped as Veronica’s face appeared before them. Jarl threw an elbow into Faro’s knee and whispered, “This must be how they're going to fix Rotung. Umbra said they were going to try and free him from his rock prison.”
Faro watched in fascination. Something good was finally going to happen. He watched as Veronica raised her hand towards Rotung. Yellow light formed in her palm, and she slowly extended it outwards towards the Shadruul. Rotung calmed down and seemed to be comforted, staring at Veronica in awe.
Then in one abrupt movement Veronica tightened her grip on the light and ripped the Shadruul’s arm off it’s body. There was a deafening roar of pain from Rotung, and blood began to poor from where the human elements of the Shadruul apparently remained.
“Oh fuck!” screamed Jarl. His voice was luckily covered by the sound of Rotung screaming.
Veronica kept moving her hands. She quickly made a duplicate of the arm, somehow an exact copy, and fused it back on to the Shadruul. Rotung’s screams turned to more of a whimper as Veronica pulled one of the elves that was studying the Shadruul towards her, bringing the arm close as well. In one swift move she brought her arms high, and then back down hard. The rock arm slammed into the unsuspecting elf, and there was another loud scream.
The entire room erupted in blinding light, and Faro and Jarl had to look away. When the light faded, they looked back in, afraid of what they might see. Standing where the elf once stood was a new creature. It was hunched over, with unusually long arms that ended in long, spindly fingers. It’s long slender body was topped with a small head that had a small mouth and long pointed face. It appeared that a fire was lit inside it, emanating from the chest and the spot where eyes should have been.
Faro’s mouth hung open. They had just made a completely new creature from the Vorath Shadruul. The long, gangly form made it look like it would be much faster and agile than its predecessor.
“Gorrik Shadruul,” said a voice from the corner of the room. Umbra appeared as if from nowhere, clapping his hands and smiling. “Our new high king can make as many Vorath as he wishes. We have a superior warrior to take him on. Do it again!” he loudly commanded Veronica. “We need a whole army!”
“No!” yelled Faro before he could help himself.
Both Veronica and Umbra turned their heads quickly to see who was speaking. Veronica looked guilty, like a child caught stealing candy. Umbra just gave them a half smile. “Welcome, friends,” he said, his face turning into the full, off-putting smile he’d been giving them the entirety of their stay.