Drake didn’t often sit still. Part of being the Headmaster’s left hand and an all but certified Captain in his own right was not having much in the way of free time.
He remembered a time, however, when waking dreams were like butter on his proverbial steak. Though it wasn’t a time he usually liked to remember, he found it forced upon him now as he sat in much the same spot as then. Lost in more ways than one on a branch of umbral wood, bracketed by sinister red thorns the length of a cutlass blade and just as lethal.
There were many reasons why his father had forbidden his sons from entering the Gnarled Wood. The “Black Vineyard” as some sourced knew it. Which, in Drake’s book, was fitting. Although a very different kind of bounty grew in this thicket. The kind that grew fangs, claws and occasionally hooves and had a wanton thirst all its own.
As far as their martial and aerobic prowess went they all paid exquisite homage to the FPA’s reputation for high training standards that day. Being beset as they had been nonstop by creatures straight out of Bram Allen Lothcratt’s bullied imagination from the moment they’d touched planted ground, the several hours since had been a thoroughly arduous assessment of the reach of their physical and mental viability.
He shifted his weight both from discomfort and impatience. All this hunting and being hunted had made the already daunting task of navigating the necronomicolocial labyrinth into a blindfolded quest for the lost city of Salamandra.
Judging by the auburn light and preeminent shadows, they deduced that cardinal dusk had already come and gone. Now, being forced to just sit and wait for his return was like waiting for a pot to boil over a candle whilst trying to ignore a spreading fire in the attic.
If they didn't reach the Black Tower by dark they would be forced to make camp out in the Gnarled Wood. A situation no beast wished to avoid more than he.
“You’d think a dead island would be less inclined to rearrange the furniture,” he muttered. “But you would be wrong.”
He had been persuaded to send Crow out in search of a safe path to the island’s dominant feature. The place of his birth and site of his early training in the mystic arts. That place known to all but its inhabitants simply as the “Black Tower”, but which Sir Francis had lovingly dubbed Castle Drohmsviire.
The name having been derived by the Sire Drake from a curated mixture of Equestrian, Salamandran and Dram’ Kulin.
Altogether meaning something to the effect of ‘The Root of All Wisdom is Pain’. A sentiment which, in the youngest Drake’s estimation, neatly summarized everything that ever needed be known or said of the “Mad Dog”.
Apart from that piece of fecund trivia, despite the lean fortress’s prominent and, for want of a better term, formative, role in his primitive development, Drake knew as much about the spire as the next literate beast. Which was that on the sizable list of places he didn’t want to be caught dead in it ranked nearly tied with the hot side of the island, and on the much longer list of places he wouldn’t be caught alive in if his own volition had any sway on the matter it stood directly on par with the chairs in any tax or accounting office on Aevon.
That had all been an excerpt from one of Nikodontus’s more longwinded lectures on the lore of eldritch cyphers. But it was still encyclopedic compared to what insights he had into his father’s open air laboratory, in which he et all were turned tail-end-over-snout in. No beast who had entered the Gnarled Wood had ever emerged, at least not with their sanity or spirit intact.
Drake was getting anxious. Even though his confidence in Crow's abilities was beyond question, he would have much rather risked his own life and spared one of his herd.
“Captain, Crow’s fastest on his own,” Hemlock had said with an unhidden note of grudging respect. “If he can't make it through this … mess we might as well all get back on the boat.”
Drake had never understood Hemlock’s deep-set aversion to cursing while on a job. Was it superstition? Reverence? Or just good old fashioned professionalism? Whatever the reason, he knew her heart well enough not to stick his nose where it wasn’t warranted. And he knew her mind well enough to know she would not say such things unless she thought it the best way to make her point. Which undoubtedly was this: “you know our options Captain. Now get your head out of your ass and give the saarding order.”
Crow had nodded his acquiescence to go. Upon getting the muttered “all right” affirmative from Drake, Crow took off into the twisted mass of dark flora as swiftly and softly as a departing shadow.
Now Drake looked up hopelessly at the rapidly reddening sky. Hindsight being what it was, it would have been wiser for them to have waited on the Maiden until dawn.
He had since rationalized his decision as being in the best interests of their captive friends. But still, in some sequestered corner of a vault held deep in the shaded warrens of his mind, he knew better.
Time, he knew, meant as little as hope in the realm of the here, now, then and soon-to-be thereafter.
In truth he fought the clock because he dreaded that the coming of night also meant the coming of sleep. Sleep, he knew, brought dreams, and dreams here had powers unheard of elsewhere. They carried on their black wings the kinds of carrion truths and lies that pecked at the soul and gouged out the mind. Leaving only a morbidly beguiling husk for the soul farmers to till and the impious ground to gnaw on.
Now they all were paying for his cowardice. In their haste to make headway into the Gnarled Wood, they had neglected to do even the most basic reconnaissance or cartography work. As a result, they had lost nearly two hours of precious daylight wandering aimlessly around in the tangled mess of prickly branches, thorny roots and poisonous blooms.
If they didn't at least make it to higher ground soon they would all be in for a very long night.
Drake considered asking Hemlock for her opinion, since, next to Ellie, she was the most likely of the bunch to offer him reasonable, grounded insight, regardless of how she thought he might react to it.
This train of thought got derailed when, in his peripheral vision, a swift black dart motion in the thorny canopy caught his attention.
Without ever moving more than his head, Drake caught his friends’ concordant looks and gave them a morse code variant of the Pyrates’ “take positions” hand signal.
They both independently interpreted this to mean “get behind those roots and be ready to kill anything that jumps out at me”.
They did this. And in their flanking lairs they hunkered in near breathless anticipation of violence as a dark, lanky shape slipped silently and easily towards their lure through the undergrowth.
Never once did they hear it make a sound or see it move in any way that would suggest it was anything less than supernatural.
Contrary to what common sense would lead one to intuit, this in fact stirred in them a sense of relief. But, true to their lessons, they held their poise until they saw the distinctive scarlet slash between pointy ears. And they didn’t break from cover until Drake blew out a breath and unhanded his weapon.
Dismounting his root lap perch and rounding on the returned Wolf, the beleaguered Captain asked in what only came across as a stern but compassionate drawl by luck of sheer repetition, “any luck?”
To his admirable credit, only the hunter and huntress noticed the tightness about his vocal edges and neither were in a place or of a mind respectively to care, much less bring it up.
Although, for reasons known only to himself, Crow was physically incapable of speech, in no sense of the word was he dumb. Cracking a thorn from a nearby branch he took a knee before the group and began tracing shapes in the soil.
At first the silent consensus was that they resembled archaic runes and letters wrapped around and conglomerated in cloud pictures. But as more details were added, subtracted, divided, subdivided and multiplied, a loosely descript picture began to take shape. Although Drake was the first and only one to recognize it for what it was intended to be. And that only per the same basic circuit with which a newborn recognizes its mother’s face.
Crow was a beast of many talents, as his Captain would be the first and foremost to attest. Regrettably, art was the sole area the gods had apparently seen fit to utterly bar him from.
When he was done Crow pointed to a blank spot at the leftmost edge with a thorn. He then pointed this same finger first at Drake then back at himself. Drake affirmed his understanding with a nod.
“We're here,” he translated, indicating the marked spot. Crow nodded once.
He drew another line from that first point to a concentric target shape which, from its prominent position, Drake assumed to represent Drohmsviire.
Here, as though to confirm this, Crow made another mark. Then he stood up, spun about on a heel and stuck an arm out Penirward. With a downturned palm he made a setting motion then followed through a hundred and eighty degrees to point back the way they’d just come from.
Drake pondered all this then he postulated, “we go that way until we see the suns, then spin back towards the ship?”
Crow nodded more vigorously, tracing a halo with a forefinger.
Drake frowned, studying his woefully outdated mental map of the island. He knew of one subversive route around the island’s Aphelern flank.
But he’d never explored that sector before. His father and Nik had said it was too dangerous. That the ground there was violently unstable.
“Prone to spontaneous upheavals,” in fact had been Noah’s exact reiteration of Nik’s words.
With his powers of perfect hindsight taking the reins of his thought, he said, “we … circle around … behind the tower?”
Crow nodded sharply once then snapped to his characteristic form of attention. With one arm and fist slung behind his back just above his tail, the other folded across his heart.
With what was supposed to be a resounding clap but actually turned out a wooden thud through his padded gauntlets, Drake said with exactly the opposite pitch of finality he was going for, “right. Time to get the lead out. Let's move!”
Silently, they picked up their gear and set out with Crow on point.
After little more than an hour of hiking, as the second sun was just starting to disappear, they came to a cliff which Sir Francis had liked to call “Execution Point”.
In the dozen-odd years he’d spent as unwitting accessory to this manifest rap novella against nature, Drake had never been able to figure out whether his father had meant that as a jest, or even if the beast indeed had a sense of humor at all for that matter.
He took one look over the edge into the oblivion beyond and immediately wished he had a bucket on hand. Beyond the narrow spit of ground there was nothing but the thick gray fog of the Abyss.
What terrified him more than the drop into sheer nothingness was that, for reasons he did not understand, he suddenly felt a powerful urge to throw himself to the whims of gravitational curiosity.
Had it not been for his even more powerful will, set in high self-preservation mode by the tide of bad old memories, tying down his feet and Hemlock’s preserving hand at his collar, he might have followed in his father’s footsteps more closely than in his most exaggerated nightmares.
****
A half hour of trooping, tracking and trudging later, everyone’s feet were blistered and bleeding.
This was not because they were unused to long marches. It was because this island had been designed to wear on every part of a beast. From their very souls outward, even the seemingly benign sand on this part of Naarfynder burned like hot coals. Stinging, scraping and singeing their living flesh while leaving the inanimate matter of their boots untouched.
The nearer they closed on the spire, the more hostile and insidious the environment became.
Wicked crimson thorns the size of steak knives and serrated leaves like the hands of claret goblins seemed to deliberately thrust themselves into the Pyrates’ path.
Clandestine barbs of incendiary rock cut through cloth, maille and leather like as much rice paper, yet somehow leaving never a mark on any.
The Pyrates soldiered on. Both for the sake of their marooned comrades and because they had no other choice.
Another full sector motion of the clock’s stoutest arm saw their march lead finally out of the torturous brambles, past the umbral glass flat of the island’s Aphelern beach and into the steep, canyon confines of a narrow ledge. Bounded on the one side by the masked and endless Abyss and by a sheer vertical obsidian wall on the other.
The snaggled teeth and tangled arms of the cadaverous forest leered at them from above over the precipice, and wicked winds whipped at loose cloth and lashed exposed flesh with shrapnel dust as they traversed the harrowing corridor in single file.
All the while the Cresting sun, the “Queen Mother”, the “World’s Bosom”, bled more molten maternal fire into the affective horizon.
Drake knew that, if forced to make a choice between being stranded in Drachyn’s Garden overnight or being trapped in a maleficent tower known to every literate child of his generation as “the Palace of Nightmares”, the more sensible, tactical option would be to set up camp where they could at least see any attack coming.
But an essential detail always critically neglected by combat instructors is that no level of accrued adult reason, experience or education ever fully erases the child who learns at bedtime to fear the dark woods.
Following the craned spinal ledge inward, the Abyss below them gradually gave way to a sloping field of strangulating vines and neatly arrayed ranks of black razor teeth.
As they climbed, the Megalodontid maw grew in tandem. Eventually widening so far as to swallow whole wandering sectors of the Gnarled Wood.
When at last they came upon the sight they sought but that for which not one of their hearts held any semblance of relief or gratitude, the sky above had been bled bone dry of the day.
The night’s awakening eyes painted the nocturnal sanctum in pale silver. And the great galactic field tore a nexel fire gash across the firmament’s equatorial belt.
About twenty yards away, stood a magnificent arched, black door. It was so perfectly camouflaged that, if he hadn’t been actively looking for it, Drake would have assumed it was just part of the ominous spire.
If ever for a moment they’d expected their problems to start and stop with finding the entrance they were in for a devastating shock.
Well, technically two.
First there was the minor issue that the only key to the Castle had been lost with its original owner.
Secondly, and preeminently, were the shimmering spectral sentinels patrolling the clearing just ahead of the black gatehouse like a pair of mirage puddles.
The Pyrates instinctively dove for cover and drew their pistols. Loaded with Tim’s new, untested, unproven, theoretically necrophobic ammunition.
Stolen story; please report.
‘Here’s to your brilliance Tim,’ Drake thought, thumbing off his Clevette’s hammer safety.
Under the autonomous authority of hundreds of hardening drill hours, their eyes meticulously combed the area for every possible spot of cover, choke point, escape route and stable elevated platform.
Their minds played through every conceivable scenario in as many heartbeats, exactly as they had been trained.
“First assess. Then address. Then conquer.” So saith the great war sage, Old Iron Hide.
The first thing they all recognized was the unusual density of the growth cordoning the way forward. More of a trench than a path, with scarcely enough room between the branches to slide a rifle barrel, let alone a living body. And that was even before factoring in the abnormally abundant phalanx of saber thorns.
Drake had to admit his father had designed his fortress smartly. The only clear path led straight into the arms of the unkillable guards. And even getting a clear shot at them from here was all but impossible without standing out in the clear wide open.
That was, of course, unless you were Crow.
The other Canids watched with what might be classified as reverent glee, the common emotional grandchild of prospective imminent vengeance on a playground nemesis vis a vis an older sibling, as the Wolf lay prone and crept into position to take his shots. Seamlessly melding with the horticultural necropolis like a snake within a nest of jungle vines.
Drake didn’t need to look at Hemlock to know that she bristled, mind, body and heart, with sinful levels of competitive current.
Indeed, even if he had looked he would have seen nothing but the familiar cold steel jacket. But in the aural plane a hot draft akin to the excess heat bleeding off of a fresh broth bowl would have been impossible to miss. Were it only that he had the extra perception apparati necessary to sense it.
Noiselessly, without disturbing so much as a pebble of the crimson walk, Crow shouldered his custom duplex rifle and fired a single shot.
The Null crystal cracked as it shattered the very molecules of the air it passed through. A bone-chilling crack like an ax splitting wood rattled the cove as a shimmering trail of pure violet energy split the concave darkness like a scissor.
The projectile found its unwitting mark like a sizzling bolt seeking a lightning rod. Striking the closest specter center mass as it floated across the canyon mouth. Showering his companion with a flurry of angry blue and yellow sparks. Flaring for an instant like a star’s nuclear death before collapsing into a veil of misty sky silver.
A casual spectator might be forgiven for chocking this accuracy up to pure happenstance, or for thinking that Crow might not have calculated his attack quite as thoroughly as he ought to.
His weapon nested on his right side. A closer inspection revealed that it was clearly designed for a right handed shooter. This wouldn’t appear to make any kind of sense given that this same side of his was missing its crucial aiming device.
Like many things in the Pyrate world this was true. But also not.
The sure quantity of it, as far as any of those whose needs be were concerned, was that Crow could shoot a needle through a thread at two hundred yards without the use of a scope and sometimes seemed to be able to see right out the back of his head.
The singular fact was these things, paired with a body seemingly made out of steel and smoke, made him extremely useful as a covert agent and spotter. And a useful thing, however enigmatic, is never to be squandered, especially when your enemies might pay him more.
Mystery boxes could be smashed open, burial caves explored, hidden secrets investigated, if and when they became relevant. Until then they were just more petty noise. Fostering unnecessary drama was for those whose minds were too shallow to dip a pen in.
The second specter was left dazed and stunned, but only for half a heartbeat. His partner’s killer took just as long to adjust his aim, then a second report like an engine’s battle cry drove an entropic seed into his chest, consigning both spirit and dart to stark oblivion.
“Beautiful,” Drake growled through a grin. As usual, Tim’s genius didn’t disappoint.
To his crew, he said, “Crow, scout around. Make sure they don’t have any friends. Hem, you and Bon Bon come with me.”
Crow nodded and like a momentary shot of moonlight peeking through a storm cloud, he vanished in a puff of memory.
Safely settled in the knowledge of their secured flanks and rear, Drake set his mind to the task of breaching the tower’s actual defenses.
The door was shut fast. Like he’d expected anything else. Inset about three paces into a shallow archway, the black stone reflected the black tile of the hemisphere mosaic underfoot. Casting the whole veneer in an umbrella of sheer necrotic void.
The frustrating, though not altogether surprising, thing was that there were no visible locks, fasteners, bolts, keyholes or even handles.
Given that who it was who’d put this door here was probably the same being who’d locked it, some elementary reasoning on Drake’s part put forward that the door had most probably been sealed magickally and could only be unsealed via some mystic, mysterious rhyme, rhythm or formula known only to the one who’d woven the spell.
A thought streaked into Drake’s mind in that instant. Startling him, not so much for its subject, but for the fact that he hadn’t thought it before.
‘I wonder if his ghost’s around here somewhere.’
He thought on this, then shook it off. If any of his family’s astral shades were hanging around they would undoubtedly be of greater harm than help.
‘As above, so below.’
Unburdened by her Captain’s head for leisurely forays into the lands of ‘if’ and ‘perhaps’, Hemlock tapped his arm and pointed up.
Drake followed her finger to a patch of deeper darkness within the umbral arch overhead. His eyes interpreted this as a squarish hole about the width of a cannon mount. Though what purpose this device had he couldn’t be sure.
‘Too big to be a cistern,’ his brain mused behind his back. ‘Just one, so unlikely to be a murder hole.’
Meanwhile his conscious sector had him pace the width of the anti-reception chamber. Using this, along with his thumb and foot as reference markers, he calculated the drop was roughly eighteen and a half yards.
A quick gear check revealed they had just enough rope between them to reach the opening. The only hurdle left was the delivery. Not even Crow’s arm was good enough to make that kind of shot from this angle. And talented though he was, Drake very much doubted the Wolf’s tool kit included telepathic knot tying.
No. This required a hands’ on approach. And without Crow, their next best candidate was …
“Think you can make that?” Drake asked. Knowing full well the one thing Bon Bon dreaded more than introspection was heights.
True to her form, the Vixen appeared unperturbed. “Just say the word Captain,” she trilled brightly.
Hemlock stepped in. “You’re not strong enough to pull us up. And you couldn’t pick a lock to save your own skin.”
Bon Bon’s eyes narrowed. An objection had just about reached her throat when Drake shut it down with the sharp, deliberate clearance of his own vocal tract.
“We just need her to poke her head in and see if it’s anything worth trying for. If so I’ll call Crow back for the heavy lifting.”
He resisted the impulse to add “she’ll be easier for us to catch if she falls”, remembering their rapidly dwindling time allowance.
Hemlock huffed, but held her tongue. She may have shared a paleolithic branch with the Oreamnos’ Mountain variety, but her species nowadays had about as much upward mobility as an industrial servitor.
Drake glowered up at the sky, as though trying to will the planet to spin backwards.
The hour was fast darkening. Already he could hear the distant groans and rousing snarls of the hungry night terrors. What was hidden behind those sounds in the depths of that infernal sea weighed on him like a mining sub’s steel trolling net.
Once more, Hemlock was his anchor. Breaking into his parochial monologue with an oddly lucid query. “Who brought the pitons?”
Drake looked at Bon Bon, who shrugged and looked back at Hemlock, who folded her arms and blew out a derisive snort.
Drake stroked the bridge of his nose. Not for the first time considering with mixed feelings the impossibility of Flint’s original mission statement.
“From the erstwhile peat wrought of all the lands of the world I shall craft the most versatile, cunning, elite, master class of warriors the world has ever seen.
By one they shall be unmatched in strength, skills and spirit.
By en large they shall be unstoppable in force.”
If what was commonly said to be true of the proverbial sculptor was true of his clay, Flint may as well have set out to make a third sun out of burnt bread crusts.
Without a word, Drake hopped over to the thorny bracket of deadly alien creepers and hacked off a pair of bled thorn blades. Around half a cubit in length, the unnaturally dense mineralized pseudo-organic composite blades were as sharp as obsidian razors and tough like tool steel.
These things made them awesome improvised weapons in a bind. Or, as the case may be, makeshift climbing stakes when you’d somehow remembered to pack everything but.
Drake drew his signal whistle from its home pouch and through its brass innards transmuted a full lung into a long hailing note. As if spawned from within the very device itself Crow materialized by Drake's side in less than how many seconds it took him to holster the instrument.
Not a moment too soon, as would soon become evident.
Drake had scarcely completed his explanation of their plan when a cry like the howl of a deranged Chimeran cannibal tore at their ears and mortal hearts.
Primal valves unsealed. Pulses quickened. Senses sharpened. Hands flew to weapons. Someone, specifically Bon Bon, had the wherewithal to strap pocket torches to branches and set them up at the line between dirt and tower stone like a flaming sentinel wall.
Drake knew this would have the opposite of the supposed effect. But for the sake of time and morale he kept that particular jar of practical pessimism locked tight and sealed away.
On his command, with guns and swords the hunter and huntress formed a perimeter inside their radiant barricade while he and his fiery junior kin saw to piecing together their lifeline.
It would have been relatively straightforward work under normal circumstances. But this was the sort of place was normality came to die.
Drawn like ravagers to a shipwreck by the unaccustomed warmth and light, Naarfynder’s waking hordes shrieked their war cries to the stars.
Which would have been bearable, were it not for the accursed Wood. The sounds that should, by all conventional reason, have been muffled by the perverse foliage were instead horrifically distorted and amplified.
Warped by the synthephonic web, wanton screeches and bellows mutated into unreal, twisted and tortured voices and chants of the dead. As though the spirits the island regularly consumed were able to reach back into the living realm and speak through the very deconsecrated roots and unhallowed ground that had taken them thence from.
Upon accomplishing their assembly task, Drake instantly summoned Crow to come do his part.
With rope in teeth and commandeered claws in hand, the Wolf scaled the vertical incline with his usual astonishing speed.
A hand’s count of heartbeats after making first entrance into the cavernous cist he hailed back with the established “follow me” tune.
A part of Drake thought he should have felt relieved. That relative safety was within their grasp. But he knew better.
The normal nightly aurora was gone. It had never, in fact, been there at all. This Drake knew. In its never actual stead was a hideous mockery. A taunting blanket that bled rather than twinkled. Curses rained from those inverse heavens in place of light. Instead of their usual sultry pale mauve, the moons glistened with rays of gold and silken streaks of scarlet and hazel.
The whole sordid simulacrum flowed like water. Making everything beneath their gaze shimmer with the mirage quality of a hot iron plate.
Stories here were real. This was a land of discarded dreams. Hope, envy, fear, gluttony and lust. All that its makers had felt that had gone unfulfilled found sanctuary here.
Hate and despair fell upon every surface like a plague of blood-hungry parasites. Those things that too often were denied, mania and joy, surged up through the soil like maggots to feast on the rot and hopeless sorrows of the day.
Naarfynder was awake now. Nay, she was alive. And she had smelled their blood.
Drake ordered Bon Bon to quickly extinguish and gather up the torches under the assumption that they would most certainly need them where they were going.
As she did this, without breaking frame he fell in swiftly towards the rope and gave Hemlock the signal to start her ascent.
This she did with no complaints.
By no coincidence it was remarked in those sectors of the Pyrate Academy sphere which Hemlock least frequented that she may have some Feline in her gene pool somewhere.
This speculation owed itself to the popular misapprehension that while the lower strata of Iradylian were widely renowned for their near preternatural acumen when it came to precarious posts and prodigious heights, they tended to experience severe difficulty with the concept of down.
Naturally, whether said in jest or otherwise, no beast foolish enough to flout the erroneous connection in Hemlock’s vicinity, much less to her directly, had yet managed to retain both their courage and their full original tooth count.
Upon reaching the chute’s edge, with the aid of Crow’s strong arms and no small amount of wriggling and cursing, she squeezed her armored, gear-laden, amply maternal form up and through the disobliging space.
The stubs of what once had been an iron grate caught on straps and cloth, which were all too eagerly parted with after.
The hunter and huntress knelt panting at the lip of the hostile portal. Or rather, Hemlock did. Crow sat in studious silence, absently rummaging in his satchel.
In the time it took Hemlock to restore her breath he’d produced a small black thumb candle in a brass holder. With a thwick of the tiny flintstone apparatus beside the finger hold he set the thermaturgically argent fuse ablaze.
The space around them was cold, damp, impenetrably dark apart from the candle and portal’s waning ambience, and totally barren aside from its new occupants.
Indeed, not so much as a scrap of textile, fleck of décor or splinter of woodwork lingered anywhere to cite that this place had ever been inhabited by anything that required mortal accommodations. Though at the moment this was Crow’s truth alone.
Meanwhile, a handful of yards below, a dramatic scene of a wildly different sort was unfolding.
A minor misadventure in her early years had seen Bon Bon stranded on the topmost spire of her mother’s flagship, the ‘William’, for nearly three straight days during the brunt of an Abyssal tempest.
Since then she had actively dodged scaling anything higher or more precipitous than a flight of stairs.
This event was no exception. For a minute it had looked as though horror-brewed adrenaline would override her ingrained phobia, but now it seemed the hard stone ground of realization had come up to meet her at the least opportune instant. As was its so odious wont.
Drake urged her on from behind as best he could without shouting or cursing, but her fingers were like steel vice grips. She clasped the rope with such force that even over the rapidly encroaching rage of the wild hunt Drake could hear the fibers creaking like burning lumber.
He didn’t dare look down. The air was growing thick and heavy with the foul odors of unkempt fur, fresh blood and necrotic flesh.
He didn’t dare entertain the idea that any of his father’s misbegotten spawn had caught their scent. Even though every instinct he had was plummeting into that well like as many doomed ships into a vortex.
He momentarily considered prodding his reluctant crewmate with the point of his sword. But he dared not risk the shock costing her grip.
Crow had to physically pry the whimpering Bon Bon from the rope. Whereupon she promptly latched herself onto his arm instead.
When Drake finally crawled through the hole, cursing all the while at the stone’s uncooperative texture, or rather lack thereof, he arrived a bit stunned to find Bon Bon restored to a state of mostly-matured calm.
He passed a quizzical glance to Crow, who just shrugged.
A piercing wail like the syren hallmark a murder in progress reminded him and Hemlock to steal back the line before they had a whole mess of very unwanted company.
A minute later, with their lines securely back in hand and separated back into their resident packs, Drake gave Crow the thorns for safekeeping, spared a moment to curse himself for not thinking to grab a few more thorns, then he resigned himself to the present. Wherein he looked around and revealed to the rest that they had arrived in Drohmsviire’s disused prison sector.
“Disused,” he clarified like a wayward husband explaining a mysterious perfume scent on his collar, “because once the Miasma was released nobody ever made it this far again.”
Logic was a funny thing. In the same fickle, tumultuous sense in which the gods took their amusement that is.
It was a force of nature. Apriorist. Apathetic. Agnostic. Randomly generous and cruel. Completely and utterly devoid of tact or empathy. Its course ran straight through futile sensibilities and frail social etiquette like a hot cannon slug through a parchment screen.
If what was most frequently said of the heart was true of the mind, then it was probably for the best that the two often sat at mutually exclusive ends of the table.
Independently of her will and better judgement, Hemlock’s brain connected the dots.
Smooth stone meant fluid erosion. This was obvious. Drainage system meant lots of continuous fluids. Integral meant early anticipation.
Conclusion: the most consistent reason for a dungeon to need drainage was …
“Aackk!” she gagged and wiped her hands furiously on her trousers.
It was plain that the last vestiges of moisture had evaporated some time ago, most likely around the time of the Castle owner’s sudden departure, the idea of life draining away beneath her fingers snagged on her heartstrings like the thorny end of a harpoon.
Were her eyes of the same enhanced quality as Crow’s she would have seen the Wolf actually crack a smile.
It was, by one side of the universal coin, to their mutual advantage that she hadn’t.
On the other, however, it might be argued that, against the common wisdom saying contrary, a distraction, even such a juvenile one, could have been most useful in this time and place.
As it was, lacking such a bulwark of levity, here and now were where the full brunt of her Cervidite heritage shown in its full, unabashed, natural glory.
Her species were known to be particularly prone to the prey side of the actuarial spectrum. Unfortunately, her exceptional predisposition did not exempt her from the rule.
Three ongoing years of the Pyratical lifestyle had painstakingly worked to reverse or mute the patterns that millions of years of nature’s heavily exclusive dance had beaten into her loadbearing neural lattice.
The Castle’s dermal layer was mildly preferable to its epidermis by sole virtue of there being nothing hungry in here. At least, nothing with big teeth and claws.
Were it not for Crow’s unflappable aura of strength and calm keeping her hardwired timidity in check, the Doe might very well have turned back and taken her chances with the savage denizens below.
Calling on her years of training in the art of swift and methodical death, she inhaled long and deep through her nose.
Holding the nocturn air in her core, transmuting it through cold alchemical fusion into unburdened crystal. As clear and crisp as the air atop a high mountain.
Then she exhaled.
The darkness stayed. It would always be there with her. That was what made her a Pyrate. What had been brushed off was the useless scale. All the pointless emotions, the corrosive doubts and anxieties.
What was left was a cold, stoic, steel mirror of a mind. Off of which the world outside was captured and reflected, clear and unfettered, in every harsh spit of detail.
At last she could see. She could fight. And so she had no fear. She took to her feet and defiantly brushed herself clean of nonexistent dust before turning and aiding Crow in hauling their emotionally trapped crewmembers to safety.
“So what now?” she asked once they and their enemies’ means of pursuit were secured.
“Now,” Drake answered in matching cadences, “we go find out what my father was up to.”
They say experience is the father of wisdom. They also say that wisdom is the killer of conviction.
If what was true of the mind was true of the spirit, that would go a long way towards explaining why the wise always made the worst Captains in psychological battle.
Their conceptual ballast tanks were always leaking, and they couldn’t help poking holes in their own saarding armor.
An invisibly thin, impossibly sharp needle stitched an untraceably long thread of icicle fear into his words and aura.
Nihil reverberances of which shuddered the gap between his mouth and their ears. Gaining exponential momentum upon contact with cranial causeways. Stealing warmth and vitality with every arc of their repulsive waves.
They’d come this far, they all told themselves. They knew their new ghost stoppers worked. They couldn’t just abandon their friends now. And at the root tail end of it, they really didn’t have much in the way of choice.
Armed with what little reassurance null contrivances and a healthy allowance of pocketed fire could give the intrepid band pressed deeper into the depths of the unknown, foolishly thinking themselves prepared for the worst.