Year 221. Drõm - Tahrir
JIRA ne'JIRAL
Under the midday sun, no more than a few hours from the location of the cave system that the manticore devoured scouting teams of the Dioúksis and Vasileús had discovered, Misandros Tateas led the train with more enthusiasm than he had the Akaios Opos during the war’s height. Jira noted this as understandable. Logical even. She had no doubts as to why. The man had been resurrected from the dead. What other man save a select handful could say that?
Of those remaining after the attack from the mutated creatures, which the company had continued calling demons, nearly all of them had fallen into sycophantic worship of Misandros and the man who brought him back from death. Jira’s warriors, Jira herself, Alden, and Goscelin, held reservations for what had been brought into existence, evident by their hanging back in the train, officially passed off as them defending their flank from the beasts that slaughtered the scouts of the Vasileús and the Dioúksis. What surprised them was that Loukas Tamasos had joined them with a small selection of his men.
Alden had utilized what bravery had grown in the face of the first manticore fight to question the Bulldog’s motives in the dead of the seventeenth night since discovering the journals and maps.
Loukas was a man of unshakeable faith in God Almighty, yet even he knew that death was death, Alden had said while retelling his experience with the Bulldog. War had broken his hopes of life being reborn in the mortal coil once a blade or hammer had ended it. It was his understanding that the soul should only continue on in His Grace. Alden could see in his eyes that Misandros Tateas’ return, in a form somehow more exuberant than it had been already, bothered him to some degree. Misandros’ revival had splintered the edges of the Bulldog’s beliefs of death. He could not tell if the Bulldog saw it as unnatural, demonic, or alien, but he could see that sliver of doubt poking out of his eyes—a sense of trepidation in the Bulldog who knew no fear.
Like her companions, Jira was in the vein of disliking it entirely, though she wisely kept such opinions to herself for the time being. Crius was a powerful man, that much she knew, especially in the art of diplomacy. What she did not know, seemingly the same as everyone else, was that he had sensitivity to mystharin . How else would any of this have been accomplished in the first place? To see him harness the potential of reviving a life after death was a revelation that kept her gaze frozen on the older man. It further disturbed her that the company charged to escort him was so easily swayed despite the secrecy. It more than disturbed her, truth be told.
It made her doubt the reasons they were here. It made her think more like Goscelin.
“You have the stare again,” Prokos commented, pulling Jira’s attention to the man on the destrier. His armor was crusted with remains of the third scorpion-thing they had combated on this journey. It lined the outermost layers in zig-zag splatters and discordant patterns. “The stare you always have when you’re thinking. You are doing it again. You got something in mind?”
Jira sighed and took a swig from her wine bag. She smacked her lips rather annoyingly at the delicious fruity taste. “We are nearing the supposed entrance to this cave system,” she said, wiping a dribble of the wine from her lips. “We have been traveling for months, and I am...tired and relieved that it will all be over soon.”
Prokos made no motion to indicate understanding, disagreement, or suspicion beyond keeping his eyes set on the woman. As he had the nights leading up to this one, Prokos had held his focus primarily on Jira when it was not stolen by that trepidation for Misandros’ revival. She could not say why he did this; she could only assume. Was it in part of her saving him from that Tower? Was it because he suffered changes to his body from the Forge that she was unaware of? Was it her cold demeanor when he questioned her about it in the days after they had escaped the Tower? Or maybe it was her utter savagery against the manticore as it died?
She could not say. She could only be aggravated by it, her choler so intense at times that she desired to reach up with her hand and slap him across his cheek.
That damned place had changed him in any case. What would happen to him when they reached the cave?
“Lady ne’Jiral!” Loukas Tamasos called back, his voice cascading like a howl across the winds. “I require you up here.”
The Silver Knight made a noise and spurred her great stallion of a horse to ride up. “Yes, Tumathios?” she asked formally of the Bulldog.
His eyes remained fixed on the leaders of the train. They were almost shapeless in the glaze of the sun. “How much further would you estimate our arrival at the cave?”
Jira did not need to pull out her copy of the maps to know the distance. “Two hours at most. The entrance is said to be marked by a great pit in the ground, and if the years have been kind, there will be stones there to mark it.”
“Well, let us hope the years have been kind. This trek has already faced enough issues. I don’t want to add ‘being lost’ to the list.”
“I feel that that would still be at the bottom of problems.”
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The entrance to the cave was nothing like the book described, nothing like what the journals had related. A pit in the ground it was, but far more elaborate than a simple round or jagged hole descending into a vast subterranean system. As Jira stared at it in awe, she growingly understood that if not for the sheer seclusion of the place, so far from any identifying landmarks that caravans and armies would use to keep on the path toward civilization, she would not have been surprised had this place been cordoned off for heretical, or religious, inspection by the Tahririans.
Why would it not?
When the company came into view of the spires by reaching the crest of a rather large dune, the Argent Harbingers reacted appropriately for their individual levels of faith. The Harbingers became loud and musing, asking His Holy Bishop innumerable questions about it, much to the man’s visible chagrin. The warriors of the former Contemptors, alternatively, remained silent and apprehensive.
The edge of the pit, which itself was closed off by a stone disk engraved with the same lettering as the obelisk as well a depiction of people being engulfed in flame, was comprised of four ten-foot-tall blue-white crystalline spires speckled with onyx that shone with a red twinkle in the sunlight. At certain angles, it looked as though the onyx was writhing within the spires, squirming just underneath the surface of the hard diamond. The humming that could be faintly detected when at arm’s length from them was even more discomforting. It was a low, droning sound in the base of the skull, a crackling of energies that spoke of the ancient eternity of these constructs.
“This is terrible,” the Hamfist whispered to the Silver Knight. “I don’t like any of this.”
“Tumathios ne’Jiral, we should keep our distance. I don’t like the movement it has,” Sodon the Unbreakable suggested, to which Prokos, the Twins, the Hamfist, and Thania the Spearmaiden agreed.
“God Almighty...is this the place, Your Excellency?” Misandros asked as he approached one of the spires. “Is this the wellspring of those demons you were looking for?”
“It must be,” Crius said with a glee that permeated the entire company. “Nara, my books. Grab them from the back of the cart.”
Loukas Tamasos began handing out orders. “Men, take up positions around the perimeter. Shields up, archers at the ready. If you have the ability to wield God’s Gift, then be prepared to use it. I will not have us caught unawares like we were with that first horror.”
Jira turned to her warriors and dismounted her horse. “Twins, Thania, Naulan, Nirian, take contingents and join the Harbingers at the perimeter. Keep your eyes on the sand. No more scorpions sneaking up on us. The rest of you, stay here for further orders.”
“Yes, Tumathios,” the five said in unison before rushing off with their warriors.
“It’s the entrance to it, at least,” Alden audibly guessed. “That disk moves somehow.”
“Ideas?” the Hamfist asked, keeping his voice low.
“The spires,” Jira said after a moment. “Likely something to do with them. The humming and that onyx.”
Her eyes trailed down to the sands as a gust of wind crept between the dispersed lines of the company. Something yellow-white bore itself in her vision as layers were displaced by the current, prompting the Silver Knight to kneel and brush away the grains. Her chest tightened when she beheld the ginning features of a skull. She looked up and acknowledged at that moment that at least twenty were visible above the sands, strewn about the vicinity discordantly. Hiding in plain sight.
“Corpses!” she informed the company. She dug at the natural grave. Tattered gear clung to the bones. “Poor souls,” she remarked, pulling into the air an empty scabbard that had loosely hung around the skeleton’s waist.
The Hamfist took the scabbard as she offered it to him to hold onto. “Treasure seekers?”
“Or people caught by the manticores,” Sodon said.
“No, the bones are too intact,” Jira said as she uncovered more of the skeleton. She dug further and found that underneath the skeleton she had uncovered, another lay in the sand. “Hamfist, how are your limbs?”
“I’m moving around just fine, as weird as it is,” he grinned.
“Good. Take Markos and Sodon and start digging up others. Take some of our men with you. Prokos, go talk to Tumathios Tamasos. Pass on my request that he has anyone he has available to dig as well. And stay away from the spires.”
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“Charlatans,” Misandros huffed as he jumped to his feet, brushing the sand off his fine armor. “Seeking to rob this place for treasure, I presume.”
“Or seeking shelter,” Jira considered.
“Killed by the manticores?” Nara-ward asked.
Loukas Tamasos shook his head. “None of them are injured. No signs of battle. No damage to the remains.”
Jira hummed and looked at the mass grave uncovered by the company and then the spires arrayed in standing patterns around the pit. Hundreds of skeletons piled atop each other in a ring around the pit. He was right, just as she was. No injuries could be seen in the skeletal framework of any of them. No snapped bones, no fractures from impact, no puncture from claws. It was, ultimately, as if they had just fallen over once they reached the pit and died on the spot.
Nara-ward pointed to the crystalline structures. “The spires, then? Could they serve as a line of defense against the unwanted?”
Crius smiled and patted the young man on his shoulder. “Now, that is some critical thought from my apprentice.”
“A-apprentice?” Nara-ward stammered.
Jira looked at the empty travel pouch in her hand for a moment’s consideration. A relic of the dead in the sand. When she threw it at the nearest spire and it touched the diamond surface, the blaze of flaming light was incredible for such a small thing. The Silver Knight had to cover her eyes lest she went blind from the immense radiance. When the light dissipated, nothing remained of the pouch.
“Hell Below!” Misandros screeched. “What devilry is this?”
“Calm yourself, Tumathios Tateas,” His Holy Bishop commanded. “Simply defenses against the unwanted, as my apprentice suggested.”
The Bulldog cleared his throat. “Or the unworthy.”
“Is that not the same thing?” Nara-ward asked.
The Bulldog half-shrugged.
“Lady ne’Jiral, what do you think?” Crius asked.
Jira considered the situation and chose the most straightforward answer. “We have no idea until we get inside. The issue is figuring out how to get inside.”
“Perhaps it is a test, should my apprentice be correct,” Crius said, approaching Jira to stare at the nearest spire. “A test to see who is strongest of heart and body to break the wellspring of these abominations.”
“Speaking of, if this is the wellspring of their creation, where the hell are they?” the Bulldog inquired with a rare tone of worry.
Jira nodded. “Good thing we have a perimeter, eh?” she looked to Crius and hesitantly spoke. “What do you want us to do, Your Excellency?”
Crius considered the question. “We shall make camp for the night and think on it. I would prefer to make it through the rest of this quest without any more needless deaths.”
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“Make sure they are tied up!” Misandros shouted as the survivors of the assailants, a total of four, were dropped in the sand. “I want them in full view at all times, is that understood?”
“Yes, Tumathios!”
Prokos rubbed a salve on his wound. “Damn them. How did they find us? Were they following us?
“I have no idea,” Jira grumbled, rubbing a tiny bit of her own salve on her shin where an arrow had nicked her. “I should have heard them before if they were, but the trip has been...tedious.”
Goscelin cleaned the viscera off his blade. “We should kill them and be done with it and this fruitless quest. What can be done about those bloody spires?”
“Calm yourself, Gos,” Jira tried to soothe. “We will be done soon enough.”
“Will we?”
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“Yes, I am sure.”
“The only way you even can be is if we kill them and be done with it,” Goscelin repeated.
“That’s your answer to everything lately,” Prokos mused. “You should consider alternatives.”
Goscelin stuck the tip of his sword into the sand and huffed. “What alternatives do we have besides moving away from this bloody place and returning to the real war? Hell, are we certain we won’t get back too late? The journey home will already take far too long for us to make any difference in an ongoing battle. I don’t understand why the Dioúksis would approve of this mission.”
Prokos smacked his lips. “The Dioúksis cannot deny the request of His Holy Bishop. Nor can the Vasileús, if he is of his right mind.”
“Then why hasn’t he requested a parlay?” Goscelin asked, standing up and rubbing the sand off his hands. “Why have we heard nothing of the sort from the man until, suddenly, something popped up in Tahrir that piqued his interest? Manticores? Mystharin , which he can use? I am telling you, this entire ordeal is wrong and wasting time.”
Jira could not shake the feeling that Goscelin was right in his own way. Why had they heard nothing from Crius until this point in the war? Why had Crius done nothing of note to propose peace between the two sides? She rose to her feet and began walking toward the other tumathioss, who were locked in a heated argument.
“—then we would be dead, Tamasos!” thundered Misandros as he turned away toward His Holy Bishop, who knelt in prayer.
“Would you be dead, tumathios? Or would you defy the laws of life and God again?” Loukas countered, his voice laced with venom. He sent a sharp look to the Silver Knight.
Misandros stopped but did not look back. “Question them, find out what they want. I will talk to His Holy Bishop.”
Loukas said nothing once more.
“What was that about?” Jira asked.
“Nothing,” Loukas growled. “Come, let us question these pissants.”
Jira followed her fellow tumathios, staring momentarily through the darkness toward Goscelin, who sat with his arms crossed over his knees. Alden was doing his best to distract him with incessant chattering. “Methods of questioning?” she asked the Bulldog.
“Have you ever interrogated someone before?”
“Occasionally. A man I used to fancy was a Curator, and he taught me a few tricks, but I lost contact with him some years ago.”
“Well, we’re short on time, so just get the answers out of them. They threatened His Holy Bishop. Not a good thing for them.”
“-ʻũ pyiw! It le è po drå̃m!” one of them screamed. A female, Jira noted, with a thick Tahririan accent. Her brown hair was short on the top and shorn to the scalp on her sides.
“Drå̃m tẽsh,” another seethed, blood dripping from split swollen lips. He was a handsome man underneath the layers of sand and exhaustion, and his hair bore numerous baubles that indicated some level of prestige in this land. What was he doing here? “Drå̃m i riw bing tyà drå̃m kad’. Drå̃m myõsmå̃ yæ shẽ pye.”
Jira knelt before them. Two looked at her, the woman and the seething one, while the others still struggled in their bindings.
“Who are you?” she asked the woman in perfect Tahririan, surprising the woman and drawing stares from the warriors around her. “Why did you attack us?”
The woman responded with a glob of bloody spit in Jira’s face. One of the guards kicked her to the ground, prompting roars of protest from the other three. Jira held up her hand to stop further retaliation and, against the frantic storm the woman’s compatriots tried to unleash, she gripped the woman’s hair and lifted her face out of the sand.
“Tahririans choosing violence to solve their problems,” Loukas chuckled. “The world truly is mad.”
Jira snarled and shook the woman’s head in her grasp like a dog held by its scruff. “Why. Did. You. Attack. Us?”
“Nrõl drå̃m biʻ,” the woman cursed. Her voice was razor-sharp and raspy, a string of black-speckled blood connecting her bottom lip to the ground.
Jira frowned and dropped the woman’s face back to the sand. With methodical purpose, she dragged the woman’s face across the desert until blood began to form in trails, each second that passed marked by screams from the other three prisoners.
“Stop!” the woman grimaced as the fifth second passed.
Jira pulled her face out of the sand once more. Her flesh was scratched and embedded by grains of sand, many falling off as red chunks as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Why did you attack us?”
“To stop you,” she coughed.
“Stop us from what?”
“From causing it lekog, you witless miscreant,” the seething man snapped.
A beat passed for Jira to comprehend what the Tahririan had just accused her of. “I seek to cause no such thing. I aim to save the world, not destroy it.”
“You are no savior,” the seething man accused. “You are just another fool, like the rest.”
Jira turned to the seething one. “I am what I am, sir. What are you?”
The man did not reply.
“Do you know what lies within that pit?” the woman in Jira’s grasp asked. “Do you know the horrors that will be unleashed if you go in there?”
“Enlighten me,” Jira hissed.
The Tahrirain woman breathed hard and let several minutes pass before speaking again. “A million years of darkness awaits those who enter that pit and meddle with the ancients. If you were truly saviors, as you claim, you would know that. You would know that only death sleeps in that accursed place. As all of these rotten bones discovered.”
Loukas knelt beside Jira. “So what are you doing here then? Guarding it?”
“Keeping fools like you from opening the way,” the woman said. “From causing it lekog.”
“What is that, Jira?” Loukas asked.
“The end of the world in the Tahririan Codices,” she answered. “Or rather, an archaic form of it. Nara-ward might have a more complete answer. Maybe he can get some clarity out of them.”
“I’ll bring him over.”
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The prisoners had been sat on the ground with their backs facing each other, one guard facing each of them with swords drawn and pointed. Nara-ward was escorted over, his braces slipping occasionally on the sand and needing Jira to hold him steady.
When they finally reached the four survivors of the Tahririan attack party, Nara-ward smiled weakly, his teeth chattering with nerves. “Hello. I’m Nara-ward. A pleasure to meet you despite the circumstances.”
“You are Tahririan,” the woman noted. “Are you prisoner to these fools as well?”
Nara-ward raised his brows. “No, no, nothing of the sort. Many of these people are known to me. Friends. His Holy Bishop is my teacher. We are here together on a mission.”
The seething man lowered his head. “You allied yourself with these people?”
Nara-ward looked to Crius for confirmation that he could respond. The old man nodded. “I...I did. They are good to me, and they are good people. Benevolent people. They are trying to keep our lands safe.”
The seething man sighed. “Safe? They led a war against their Vasileús and brought the other nations into their mess. Send scouts into our lands looking for things that do not belong to them. You think these are the acts of benevolent people?”
“Of course, the war has taken its toll on us all, but I promise you that—”
“You have not been raised by proper Tahririan blood,” the seething man said. “If you were, you’d understand the threat posed by this place. Why there are corpses surrounding it.”
Nara-ward lowered his head apologetically. “Perhaps you could tell me what is so dangerous about it?”
The woman smirked. “Why? So you can tell your Aslofidorian masters? So you can decide whether to open that disk and descend into the pit? No.”
Nara-ward swallowed stiffly. “Please, miss. We are here to stop the creation of more abominations. We have encountered them along the way. Scorpions and manticores. This is where they come from, right?”
The woman’s silence gave him the answer he needed.
“Tell us how to stop them if you know. Tell us what the spires do. We don’t want to end the world. We are looking to save it. If these things continue to grow and spread out across the land, the madness already infecting Khirn will worsen. We are fighting for peace. We are seeking to end the war with Vasileús Aslofidor. We don’t need manticores in the mix.” He tried to laugh after this, but the cold stare from his kinsmen silenced him.
“You truly believe what you are saying?” the woman asked.
“Yes. We want to save Khirn. One step at a time. What lies within the cave? Is it where the abominations come from?”
The woman closed her eyes. “I cannot risk the world for your false beliefs, kinsman. I am sorry. You will get nothing from me.”
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The screams of the prisoners enduring their interrogation echoed in the desert air as the company ate supper. Jira sat with those she knew the most, though her comfort was so little that it was immaterial to the world.
“Perhaps it requires sacrifice,” Prokos suggested as he slurped his stew, choking down the contents as the screams grew louder and threatened to make him vomit.
“What?” the Hamfist asked with a nervous chuckle.
Sodon dipped his chunk of bread in the brown broth. “No, I think he’s right—a sacrifice. The disk, I saw it. It has an image of people being consumed in flame. Perhaps it requires four to touch the spires and be consumed in the fire to prove the worth of its visitors.”
“That seems highly unusual for something in Tahrir,” the Hamfist said.
Prokos laughed, a sound drowned out by the visceral praying of one of the Tahririans. “We just got attacked by a few dozen Tahririans. Tahririans. The pacifist religious people. Add that on top of everything else in this bloody quest. I think unusual is the word of the century.”
“How do the beasts come out of it if the disk is so locked?” Sodon asked.
“Maybe this isn’t the place,” Prokos shrugged. “Maybe His Holy Bishop is wrong. Or maybe they crawl out of the sand like the scorpions. Or maybe they just appear.”
The Hamfist guzzled his serving of broth. “Look, at this point, I’ll believe anything if it gets us out of here quicker.”
“Enough of this!” Goscelin hollered in the distance. “I can’t take their fucking screaming anymore!”
“Goscelin, stop!” Alden followed him, tripping over the dunes in his armor.
Jira shot to her feet and turned to the commotion. The blacksmith marched toward the prisoners and the men guarding them, Alden rushing after her as he recovered his balance. “Goscelin, stand down!” she ordered.
She barely reached the man to stop him from drawing his sword on the guards, wrapping her arms around his neck while Alden held his arms behind his back.
“What the bloody shit are you doing, Gos?” Alden screeched.
Goscelin’s face was nearly glowing red with rage in the moonlight. “They attacked us! They need to die!”
The Tahririan woman howled with laughter through broken teeth. “The fiend can barely hold his bloodlust at bay. This is why you cannot enter the pit, you fools.”
“Silence!” Jira commanded.
Gos was dropped to his knees, then to his stomach, held in place by Jira and Alden’s combined efforts. “Let me go! The woman is right. We cannot enter the pit. We should not. We should kill them and return home!”
Jira held her hand out to the guards, her eyes pleading with them to stay their hands from retaliation against Goscelin’s threat. “You would break the chance to learn what they know?” Her voice was strained with outrage.
“I would ensure that our company is safe,” Goscelin spat, the redness of his face slowly turning purple. “We have too many times been assailed from nowhere. First, it was monsters. Now it is men! I want to get this damned venture done, return to the army, lay siege to the Vasileús’s land, and finish this war.”
“Goscelin, enough!” Alden pleaded. “What has gotten into you?”
“What is the meaning of this?” Loukas Tamasos boomed as he stepped into view.
“An errant soldier of yours, Tumathios Tamasos,” Jira replied, pressing her forearm against the back of his neck.
“He’s just a bit out of his head, sir,” Alden grunted. Goscelin continued to thrash to break free of his restraints.
“The only people out of their heads here are the rest of you!” Goscelin declared in a fierce, choked voice. “Keeping these people prisoner, keeping us in a land we shouldn’t even be in the first place. Why are we here!?”
“That’s enough out of you,” Loukas Tamasos barked. He swatted away Jira and Alden with a single hand, knelt to grab Goscelin by his neck, and lifted him to his feet.
Jira eyed the approaching figures of Misandros Tateas, Nara-ward, and His Holy Bishop. “Grab hold of yourself, man! Before you get yourself killed.”
Goscelin breathed twice, both increasingly hoarse. “Tumathios Tamasos, you must see the insanity of this entire thing. We started this war to bring freedom to Aslofidor and put an end to a madman, not muck about in Tahrir for some hole in the ground! Wasting time and resources, letting them muster their army to attack us again.”
“Tumathios Tamasos! Is this man questioning the will of His Holy Bishop?” Misandros asked in as domineering a tone as he could muster.
The Bulldog stared long and hard at the blacksmith, his emotionless eyes allowing a squint of apprehension. “No, Tumathios Tateas,” he finally said. “Not truly. He is drained from the long march across the sands and needs rest.” He turned to Alden and snapped his fingers. “Take him to get food and water. I’ll deal with him in the morning.”
Misandros’ face soured with disgust. “Tumathios Tamasos, I find—”
“Peace, Tumathios Tateas,” Crius chuckled. “Peace. I take no offense to Goscelin’s words. He is right to question me. We have been traveling long with little fruit to show for our efforts. I am surprised more people haven’t come questioning. But we must believe we can advance and open the way into this wellspring.”
Jira rubbed her eyes. “How, Your Excellency? We have no words in the journals. No hints in the books. All we have are skeletons and four prisoners who won’t speak on how to enter, no matter what methods we use.
“She is right, Your Excellency,” the Bulldog concurred. “We have no other methods we can think of that won't put our men at risk.”
Jira would later on wish she had never seen the expression cross Crius’ face at those words. It was as if the man had come to some realization that he had very much not wanted to come to. A realization that he had been fighting to avoid coming to. What he said shook her bravery, if only because of how bored he had sounded, like the fun had just been ripped out of him. “I will make them talk.”
She wanted to question what he meant by this, but her answer was given when the world around her was filled with a blinding white light emanating from Crius. She knew enough to keep her shock at this hidden, to ensure her self-preservation was not waylaid for challenging the man.
When the light faded, and the smoke faded, and she saw all those around her—save for Sodon and Prokos—react with a dazed confusion, Jira merely waited.
When those around her—save for Sodon and Prokos—regained their composure and accepted the new reality that Crius had just made, Jira merely waited.
When Crius approached the four prisoners to question them, Sodon and Prokos approached her.
“Tumathios,” Prokos hissed to her with the purest form of fear she had ever heard in his voice.
“I know,” she said. “Keep calm. Say nothing. Act as everyone else is. Understood?”
“Tumathios, this is—”
“Prokos. We cannot win this. Act. Survive. We do what we can here. Go to Alden and Goscelin. Stay with them. Say nothing until I get there, understood?”
“Yes, Tumathios.”
Crius returned mere moments after Prokos and Sodon scampered away, his face bright with renewed joy. “Well, thanks to some persuasion on my part, I have figured out how to open the way.”
“What does it require, Your Excellency?” Misandros asked.
“As I feared...the way forward requires...a blood sacrifice.”