“Soo, slow down,” Ranthall called.
Soo grumbled under his breath. “We have hardly begun this expedition, Ranthall. How do you expect us to complete it if every five minutes, you expect us to stop and have tea?”
The Raigen family retainer bristled at his words. “Master Raigen, I only have your best interests in mind. You are far too reckless and need to be reminded that not everyone is as strong or capable as you.”
“Fine,” he grumbled and slid down the face of the hill into a short run. “You’re not just afraid of what lay beyond the range, are you?” he smirked.
The older man sniffed. “Old wives tales and superstitions. Have you ever met an undead or necromancer? I know I haven’t.”
Soo shrugged and sat at the table that popped out of the retainer's storage ring. The tea was still piping hot, as well as the small cakes that appeared a moment later on a silver serving dish.
He took a sip of the tea and sighed contentedly. He may complain about the man stopping him so often, but he did enjoy the tea.
The little spur of rock they had stopped on overlooked a rather picturesque valley below. He could see the rest of the expedition down there. His uncle and cousins were down there, digging through the remains of a small village. He just rolled his eyes at that. Who cared about some dumpy little outskirt village? It had likely been picked over centuries ago. The real history was beyond the mountain range, he just knew it. There had to be a way over the mountains. A pass or cave.
That was what he was doing when Ranthall stopped him. A small game trail led up the mountain and he wanted to see how far it went. How he wished the old tales were true. Men and women capable of flight, or the ability to move mountains with just a thought instead of relying on enchantments. But like the tales of the cursed lands, those were but a fantasy. If there were any truth to them knowledge would have spread.
Still… he mulled. If even a small fraction of those tales turned out to be true, maybe some of those other stories held some truth as well.
Soo always felt like something was missing from the world. He was born stronger than most people. Not anything like the legends of old, but stronger. And faster. He was labeled special, and gifted by his family. But there was always a hollow pit inside him that felt like something important was missing.
He didn’t put much stock in the stories of this area, but if it helped him uncover what was missing in his own life, he would certainly take a look. It had always been odd to him that all of the surrounding kingdoms simply ignored this massive chunk of land. Although he supposed the stigma surrounding the place kept most people away.
All knowledge of who or what people had lived here had been erased from history. It's one of the reasons his uncle had put together this expedition. Which had taken three long years because people kept abandoning it when they heard where it was heading.
Soo chuckled at that, earning a frown from Ranthall. “Enough with the tea, time to find this pass.”
***
It took just over three weeks to find a thin cleft that wove its way through the tall snow-covered peaks.
It wasn’t wide enough for horses or wagons, but it was for a man with a pack.
With his uncle’s blessing, Soo set out with twelve porters, three guards, and Ranthall.
The retainer was always looking around like he expected something was going to jump out and eat them, despite the fact they were safe from every direction except up. But like the land outside the mountain, it was quiet and devoid of any animals.
After hours of traversing the tight canyon, he stepped out to a view he had seen for only the second time. Below the mountain stretched into beautifully rolling grasslands covered in small forests.
Ranthall and the other men seemed just as shocked by the vista below.
“See, what did I tell you,” Soo slapped Renthall on the back before picking his way down the shallow incline.
Scouts were sent out after the base camp was established. It took a few days, but they eventually returned. There were reports of quite a few ruins. Some small, others less so. The scouts also reported signs of large battlefields strewn with rusted weapons and plenty of bones.
A few men were sent back to report to his uncle and a few days later, more than half the expedition came through the pass. His uncle greeted him with a hug. “Good work, Soo.”
The cousins gave him withering looks but otherwise remained silent. He couldn’t help it that he was allowed to go off on his own when they weren’t.
His uncle chose to move toward the closest city to search it for artifacts, but Soo wanted to go view this battlefield. It was said to lay outside the ruins of a massive city.
Their small group, consisting of the same initial party to cross the mountain, took two days to reach the site. If it wasn’t for the occasional rotten spear, still sticking up from the ground, it would have been easy to miss.
After establishing a small camp on a nearby hill, they carefully picked their way through the bodies.
“How long ago do you think this happened?” Soo asked.
“Long enough that there isn’t a scrap of flesh left,” Ranthall huffed through the cloth covering his face.
Soo just rolled his eyes at the retainer's antics. He never believed in those tinctures to ward off evil. But Ranthall had heavily doused his handkerchief in the substance and Soo could smell the cloying fragrance from ten feet away.
The battlefield was massive, much as the scouts had reported. There certainly wasn’t anything of value in it either. Everything was either completely rusted or so far gone there was no point trying to pick it up. The first time he inspected an intact breastplate, the thing crumbled at a touch.
It was odd though. While Soo wasn’t a warrior, he had studied military campaigns as part of his schooling. And something felt off about his battle, he just wasn’t sure what.
Eventually, they came to the outskirts of the town. And it was massive.
The buildings outside the first wall were nothing more than small piles of burned and rusted metal. If there had been wood, it had all been burned or rotted away long ago.
The wall was in better shape, but not by much. Only small stumps of stone and the remains of a rusted-out portcullis showed where an exterior gate had once been. Large sections of the wall were simply gone. When he glanced through those openings, he could see small chunks of rock littering the immediate area inside the wall.
“Looks to have been broken open by siege weapons,” Ranthall stated.
Soo might have agreed if it wasn’t for the devastation on the far side. In his head, he pictured what could have caused the rock to be sent flying that far into the city. Some ancient enchanted weapon perhaps.
This thought and the fact that this place looked untouched only made him more eager to find something of note in these ruins.
The outer city as he was calling it, ran for miles and miles. There had to have been close to a million people living here during its peak.
Eventually, they reached the next wall. This one looked much like the first, only the streets were clogged with broken rock from crushed houses. It took a bit to navigate through the area, but they made it to the third wall without much hassle.
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Soo paused and looked back, scratching his head.
“Something on your mind, Master Raigen?” Ranthall asked.
“I’m just thinking. If the attacking force used siege weapons, where are they? Surely we should have spotted a few broken remnants on our way inside.”
Ranthall shrugged. “Burned in the fire that seems to have claimed the city?”
“Hmm, maybe.” They continued through the third wall, the thought percolating in the back of his mind.
That thought was quickly forgotten when he spotted the hill in the distance. It was overgrown with weeds and trees, but he could see the remains of a wall poking through the growth.
He pointed, “That’s our destination.”
As they made their way past the last two walls, they passed many more corpses. Some were buried in the rock of the houses, others lay atop the rubble. There were oddities that picked at the back of his mind, but he was so focused on the structure on the hill that he missed them. Soo even overlooked the obvious trail worn in the path that wound up the hill.
Eventually, he stood in front of the ravaged exterior of a castle. It had to be.
Ranthall was the first to notice something off. “Do you hear something?”
Everyone fell quiet. At first, there was no sound, then he thought he heard an echo. Voices?
The guards pulled out their swords as they looked around warily.
Soo had a sword as well, but it was mainly to defend himself against wildlife. He was not a fighter.
The group circled the forlorn ruin until they found a backdoor. The rubble had been cleared away, and there were clear signs someone had been coming and going. The voices were also clearer from here. Although, he still couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Ranthall pushed him back and sent in the guards first.
Soo wanted to argue, but he wasn’t stupid. If someone was willing to live way out here in this cursed land, they probably didn’t want visitors.
After a few minutes, everything went quiet. He strained his ears but couldn’t hear anything. He looked at Ranthall, but the man shook his head and pointed back toward camp.
They had left the porters back at camp to set up, and only the guards had come with them. He didn’t want to abandon the guards to whatever fate waited below. But if they failed to deal with it, what chance did he have? He nodded to Ranthall.
He began to turn back the way they had come, but both he and Ranthall froze. Two things were blocking the path. They were motionless so he had almost missed them, but Soo knew they hadn’t been there a moment before.
How had they snuck up on them without a sound? The first thought that came to his mind was that they were enchanted somehow. And that was bad.
Most of the things’ bodies were obscured by the overgrown foliage, but he saw the sharp tips of weapons hanging close to the ground. He swallowed hard. It seemed they had no choice but to head into the building.
The two slowly backed through the doorway, never taking their eyes off the eerily still things.
Soo turned to look through the room and saw a basement on the far side. The other doorway was blocked by rock so his guards had to have gone down.
He hoped whoever was down there would forgive them for trespassing.
Their footsteps echoed loudly on the stone steps despite his best effort to be quiet. Ranthall kept an eye out behind them, but the creatures from outside remained outside.
Soon they reached the bottom of the stairs. There was a doorway at the far end of the hall that must have once held a grand set of double doors. Now it only yawned wide into a massive room beyond.
A voice whispered out from the room. “Come now, don’t be shy,” it cackled.
Soo and Ranthall shared a look. It was clear both were thinking the same thing. Did they try their luck with the things outside or hope for the best against the less-than-sane-sounding person in the room ahead?
Considering the person was willing to talk, they both chose to step into the room. It was a large cavernous space filled with vials of red stacked along every wall and most of the floor along the edges. The guards were all still alive. But Soo’s eyes bugged out when he saw what was holding them. It was a crackling lavender shield of some sort.
It had to be magic. But everyone knew magic was only capable through enchantments and he didn’t see anything that could be powering this shield.
Ranthall saw this too, and it was too much for the retainer. He screamed and ran.
He didn’t get far. There was an “urk” sound and Soo risked a glance back. His face went pale when he saw a short man in dark grey armor standing there. When had he arrived?
The man lifted Ranthall like he was a child and threw him back into the room where he skittered across the floor and nearly knocked another hunched man over.
Then he stomped past Soo without sparing him a glance. “Stop fucking about you deranged idiot. Is the spell ready or not?”
The wizard, because it had to be a wizard if he was working a spell, cackled as he shrank back from the shorter man.
“It is nearly ready. Our last ingredient has just arrived.”
Soo’s mind blanked at that and he was frozen in place with fear. Did the man just say they were the last ingredient?”
“Well, fucking get it done!” The small man roared, setting the glass vials to tinkling.
“Not until you promise me he will release me.”
The shorter man crossed his arms and Soo could feel the glare, even though it was directed at this wizard. “Like I told you before, Donovan. That’s for him to decide.”
The man hissed and started babbling to himself, then he switched to crying and screaming along with alternating laughter.
Soo decided the laughing was the worst.
“Fine. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine….” The man cackled madly as he just repeated the same word over and over again.
Then the man gripped the air, and Soo felt himself yanked bodily forward. He tried to arrest his motion, but it was impossible. Soon his feet dangled in the air and Soo rotated, unable to control his body.
As his body tilted downward, he saw he was suspended over an intricate circle with lines and squiggles. It certainly wasn’t any sort of enchantment he had ever seen before. The insane wizard approached and ran a cold age-gnarled hand across Soo’s face making him feel sick to his stomach.
He was still repeating the word fine, only quieter now. The wizard reached into his foul-smelling robe and faster than should be possible for anyone, let alone a man his age, poked him with a needle. Soo tried to strike the hunched-over man, but the crazy man only cackled and moved outside the circle.
The wound was tiny, but Soo could hear blood dripping from it as it splattered against the floor below. He could also feel a pounding in his head.
The wizard seemed to regain a bit of his sanity for a moment. He straightened and started speaking words that made Soo’s head pulse uncomfortably.
The pulse increased as the man’s words sped up, and soon the strange circle underneath him began to pulse in time with his throbbing head. He tried to struggle free but there wasn’t anything to struggle against.
There was a single loud pulse that thrummed through the room, setting the glass vials to tinkling again. And then the floor in the center of the circle split open, revealing a sucking maw of black that made his mind reel as he looked at it.
The wizard increased his tempo, but Soo didn’t notice. He was transfixed and terrified by the hole or the thing coming out of the hole.
Was he about to be a sacrifice for some demonic summoning?
The thing that crawled out of the nothingness was bone white and looked sort of like melted wax in the shape of a human. It clawed and crawled its way out of the depthless pit, and soon the hole closed.
The room went silent as the thing stood. Then it looked at him. Soo would have fainted but he was too afraid to look away.
Then the thing looked at the shorter man, giving it a nod before focusing its attention on the wizard.
“I have done as you asked. You will free me now! I need to be free!” It howled.
Then the bone white retracted off the man’s head, and Soo saw it was only a man. A man with black hair. The shorter man also retracted his helmet. And in the flickering light of the room, Soo saw it was a gron. But they had died out centuries ago.
The wizard spoke again. “I have all of your people here,” the man rushed around gesturing at the vials. For some reason, he even gestured at the trapped guards, the still-unconscious Ranthall, and him.
The man in what was obviously white armor, slowly walked over to a set of vials. He ran his hand over them gently before turning back toward the mage.
“I don’t know…”
The crazy wizard made a choking sound and threw himself at the man’s feet where he began kissing them in frenzied suplication. At least until the man in white armor kicked him away.
“Ew, gross. Get off of me. Fine. A deal is a deal.”
The wizard started laughing hysterically from his kneeling position. “Finally, peace!”
The man in white armor tapped him on the forehead before backing away. “This has been a long time coming. Honestly, you don’t deserve this clemency but I need a bit of power for what comes next.”
For a moment, Soo saw clarity appear in the ancient man’s eyes before horror clouded his face. “Nooooo!”
Soo’s eyes bugged out as the kneeling man’s skin peeled apart like a jacket and fell to the floor, leaving only a small glowing orb of white in its place. There was no blood, no bones, just an empty skin suit. Soo shivered at this.
The man in white armor touched this orb and it too burst like a ripe melon. There was a scream that Soo felt inside his soul as the thing dissipated into the air.
Then the room fell into silence once again.
The man in white cracked his back, did a few twists, and then rubbed his hands. “Fuck it feels good to be back. How long has it been?”
“Two thousand six hundred and twelve years,” The shorter man replied.
The man in white turned to him. “Fuck, really? Kalia is gonna be pissed at me.”
The man nodded.
The man in white shrugged. “Guess not much we could have done about it. Ready to rebuild?” he asked with a smile.
“Do I have a choice?”
The white armored man laughed. “Sure, but you know it's much more fun by my side. By the way, who are they?” He pointed to Soo and the others.
“The one floating in the spell is a descendant. I’ve no clue who the others are.”
“A descendant you say?” The man rubbed his chin as he walked over to look Soo up and down.
Soo slowly rotated until he was standing back on the ground, facing the incomprehensible man. The white armored man stood a good six inches taller than him and had a presence about him that shook him to his very core.
Then the man clapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, nice to meet ya. Wanna see something cool?”
Before Soo could reply, the man clapped his hands together, and a wave of energy shot out in all directions. That empty feeling Soo had always felt, was washed away, replaced by a warm tingle.
“Wha-,”
“Magic, my dear boy! Magic!”