5
The further from Hypoxia’s realm, the more the mountains spoke of their ancient past. Whole peaks were carved into spires and battlements, riddled with passages and hallways where the long-dead dwarves had once held court. Other mountaintops were now towering sculptures of eagles and griffons, the patron beasts of the dead civilisation. Cliffsides were covered in carved dwarven heroes battling hosts of orcs and demons. The faces of ancestors, bearded and stern, stared down from high above as if admonishing anyone not of dwarven blood to avoid the Devilfrosts entirely.
Fodrish lost track of time and place. Even surrounded by the bleak splendour of the Devilfrost Mountains, he was too exhausted to contemplate anything but the endless rhythmic step of the soldiers as he tried to keep up with them.
He entered a state where he did not really see the world around him at all, but watched himself as if from outside his body, dislocated from his senses. Maybe his brain was showing him a mercy by sparing him the pain from aching limbs and blistered feet. But the small part of him that observed wondered if it was something more, the same blockage he had felt inside himself when he had curled up around the piece of Biolium ore. A wall within him, a dam with an ocean behind it, that he dared not breach.
The party followed paths downwards through the shattered ruins of a dwarven city. The once sturdy stone buildings were now stumps of fallen walls, like broken teeth in jaws of stone. Here and there pieces of ancestor-statues still stood, guarding doors that no longer existed, heads and limbs broken off by violence or time. The coniferous forests, cleared by dwarven axes, encroached again across the shadows of fallen temples.
‘You sure?’ Fodrish heard Ghorborosh saying from up ahead. The soldiers halted, and Fodrish with them. He was suddenly very aware of the pain in his feet. His Commoner’s boots gave little protection for such a long hike.
Reynard took a roll of parchment from inside his cloak and unrolled it grandly. The ink sparkled and glowed as it described an intricate map on the parchment. Reynard traced some of the pathways with a finger. ‘Yep, it’s here. Just past the Temple of Darrnagar.’
‘Darrnagar?’
‘There. Big horns, beard, one eye. Dwarf god of digging or beer or something. There’s a path behind the ruins, leads to a doorway in the mountain.’
‘Last chance to skip all this nonsense,’ said Bartholomeo. ‘We could be feasting at the Eyrie instead of ankle-deep in dungeon filth.’
‘You could be feasting,’ retorted Reynard. ‘You can conjure fairy gold and buy whatever you want from the NPCs. We have to use actual coin and in case you didn’t notice, we went through a hell of a lot of valuable stuff fighting that dead bitch.’
‘We're doing this, Bart,’ said Severina, with no room in her tone for a response.
‘We going in, or setting camp?’ asked Ghorborosh.
‘How does it look, Ash?’ asked Severina.
The Ranger was perched on top of a half-fallen wall, peering ahead across the ruins. ‘It’s safe enough,’ she said. ‘The wind’ll come howling down here at night. If we make camp in shelter, we’ll be fine.’
‘I want to go in rested,’ said Severina. ‘We stop for the night.’
The adventurers began making camp in the shadow of a wall of the Temple of Darrnagar. The soldiers stood at attention a respectful distance away, and Fodrish took the opportunity to find a corner out of sight of the camp where he could hunker down.
The throb of his painful feet demanded his attention. He took off his Commoner’s boots and winced at the blisters raised on his soles. He sat back and sighed to feel the aching pulse slowly dissipating as his body caught up with the fact he wasn't trudging down a mountain any more.
He had no distractions now, save the whine of the wind overhead.
Inside him, the dam was breaking.
He saw the face of the prisoner he had freed from the gibbet, and heard her voice. He saw her collar bones poking out through her skin, sharp as daggers. He felt her lightness in his arms.
His chest and stomach felt tight. Fodrish felt a pressure building up inside him, a weight of feeling and memory that would not be held back any longer.
He felt the fear of what would lie behind the dam his mind had built to protect him. Like pulling a bandage off a wound, like poking the socket of a lost tooth or testing the tenderness of a bruise, he feared the pain but knew he could not resist. He could not keep it dammed up any more. Whatever had loosened the bricks of the barrier, he had to let it fall.
Fodrish’s body was as rigid as if he was paralysed by the fear of some aberrant horror in front of him. His teeth clenched and he gasped down a breath.
It welled up inside him. He could not name it, but it had been bottled up behind his eyes since the devastation at the cathedral square. He saw the prisoner’s face glancing back at him as she vanished between the trees. And he saw Melagorn: not just his dying, bloodied face, but his smile as he clapped Fodrish on the back and congratulated him for his haul of a single rat’s tooth.
It was the grief and the shock, the loss, the anger, the pain at the suddenness and unfairness of Melagorn’s death. It was the first thing he had truly felt since that time, the first thing that broke through the dusty caul of shock covering Fodrish’s senses.
He was sobbing. He bent and contorted with the force of it. The grief flooded through him, the loss not only of Melagorn but of everything he meant. Knowing even in the tangle of unknown people in the Tavern, there would be one face Fodrish could trust to welcome him in. The encouragement, even when Fodrish fell so far behind the XP curve. The concern, as unwelcome as it had been in the moment, that Fodrish was seeking a hollow solution to the isolation.
All that was gone. It would never come back. The vastness of that loss hit Fodrish all at once, and his face was hot from the tears he could not hold back. He bent over double with the effort of the sobbing, arms wrapped around himself as if he had been kicked in the gut. He fell to the pitted stone floor, letting out mewling sounds he did not know he could make.
He felt it all at once, and for a time he could not measure it coursed through him like the floodwaters.
When the torrent died down and he had ridden out its storm, Fodrish came back to himself curled up in the rubble dust. His stomach ached and his throat was raw. He was exhausted even beyond the bone-tiredness of the hike down the mountain. His breath was back to normal now and he felt it cold in his mouth, and the grit of the gravelly flagstones against the side of his face. His face felt stiff with the dried tears. He felt as if he was waking up from a dream, which he had seen through the veil of uncertainty that all dreams wore.
His hiding-place was part of the Temple of Darrnagar, and the face of the dwarven ancestor-god loomed from a carved totem that had survived the ages of destruction. The bearded stone face looked down at him more with curiosity than disapproval, as if the dwarven god was suddenly less stern and admonishing than moments before.
The colours of the night-blue sky and the silver-edged cliffsides were more vivid, even though the only light was the pale sliver of moon and the glow of the adventurers’ campfire. He could smell wood smoke and cooking food, which though it must have been there before he only noticed now for the first time. Even the pain of his feet felt new and raw.
His mind, too, was clearer. The confusion had been blown away by the rush of grief. Loss, pure and uncomplicated. Terrible, but understandable. A rock he could cling to. A truth that stood out in the tangle of half-realities of the XP ladder and the other systems imposed by the Core Manual.
Fodrish lay back against the wall and felt the tiredness overcome him. The uncertain murk of his mind gone, the dammed lake of feeling now filling him level and still, he fell into a far deeper sleep than he ever had before.
‘Did you take notes?’ asked Gorborosh as the party approached the entrance. The stone gateway set into the mountainside gave way to a dark passage into the living rock of the Devilfrosts.
‘Hang on,’ said Reynard. ‘I think so.’ He rummaged through the many pouches and weapon sheaths under his cloak, and dug out a small tattered book. He leafed through its pages. ‘Umm, not really. There’s a puzzle, something to do with skulls? I can’t read my writing.’
‘For the gods’ sake, Reynard, you’re supposed to be the Rogue!’ snarled Ghorborosh. ‘What are you even here for?’
‘What’s the problem? We’ve been through here once before, we’ll be fine!’
‘I remember most of it,’ said Asphodel. ‘The traps are pretty obvious.’
‘See?’ said Reynard. ‘We’ll be-’
‘That’s not an excuse,’ snapped Asphodel. ‘Someone has to be the note-taker and that’s you.’
‘Why is it always the Rogue?’ said Reynard, tucking the book away again.
‘Because you’re supposed to scout ahead,’ said Ghorborosh. ‘You see everything first.’
‘When you’re not kicking in the door and charging in,’ said Reynard. ‘Half the time you’re stuck in before I even get there.’
‘Shut up, all of you,’ said Severina. ‘We’re going to do this properly. I don’t want you getting sloppy. If one of you idiots falls into an acid pit we’ll blow everything we earn in here on bringing you back. We’ve spent enough ressing one of you already.’
Asphodel sighed at the mention of her resurrection, but Severina ignored her.
‘What’s at the end?’ asked Bartholomeo, who was using his magical staff like a walking stick for the final steep approach. ‘Is it the carnage golem, or am I getting it mixed up?’
‘That was the Fortress of Durnathin,’ said Asphodel. ‘This is the Halls of Darrnagar.’
‘They all sound the same,’ said Bartholomeo. He looked archly at Reynard. ‘If only someone had written all this down.’
‘Why don’t you conjure a pair of lips to magically kiss my arse?’ said Reynard.
‘We still have some of Ghor’s soldiers,’ said Severina, ignoring them. ‘We can send them ahead to set off traps. Everyone else, don’t get distracted. The quest events won’t happen but the bad guys have still respawned. Just because we did this a couple of levels ago doesn’t mean you’re arrowproof.’ The party reached the threshold of the dungeon, and a chill wind with the scent of death blew out of the dark doorway. ‘Reynard, darksight!’
Reynard took out a tiny bottle of brownish liquid, took out the stopper and downed it with a grimace. ‘This stuff tastes like ballsack,’ he said.
‘You’re a ballsack connoisseur, then?’ asked Asphodel.
Reynard’s eyes glowed a mystical blue. ‘Darksight up,’ he said.
‘Forward, brethren!’ ordered Ghorborosh. The soldiers marched past the party and into the doorway, Reynard following them a few paces behind.
The soldiers had one fewer in their number, but none of the Player Characters seemed to notice it.
Fodrish watched the entrance from the shelter of the ruined temple as the rest of the party entered the dungeon, Ghorborosh first, then Severina, Bartholomeo and Asphodel.
Fodrish shivered as a chill wind whined through the ruins. The Halls of Darrnagar looked less than inviting, but now he was alone the ruins looked little better. Spots of rain touched his face and the smell of wet rock rose. A rumble passed overhead and a flash silhouetted one of the far mountain peaks.
Fodrish crouched under the lintel of a doorway for shelter as the rain fell more heavily. Another roll of thunder passed between the mountains and this time the flash of lightning stayed alive, a stuttering glare that stitched a path of blue-white energy across the sky. The lightning formed a suggestion of a head with massive jaws, a ridge of spines along a sinuous back, and four clawed limbs along the snakelike body. A long, whipping tail lashed and threw lightning bolts behind it.
With the storm, came the embodiment of the storm. An elemental, formed from the raw energies of the world given shape and intelligence by the magic that suffused it. Fodrish had never seen one, for the extremes of the natural world rarely touched Noblehearth, and the only ones he had heard of troubling the city were flame elementals created from the occasional forest blaze. But here, at the wild edges of the Known Realms, such things could appear spontaneously at any time.
The storm elemental coiled over the ruins, and bolts of lightning spilled off it to earth through broken walls and headless statues. Trees in the middle distance were hit and blown to splinters. The draconic form circled lower and alighted on the mountainside just above the main swathe of ruins, accompanied by a hammering thunder that might have been its roar.
Its eyes glowed blue and red in sockets made from lightning. They swivelled across the ruins, looking for prey.
The Halls of Darrnagar no longer looked like the worse option.
Fodrish ran from the temple and ducked into the dungeon, letting the darkness overcome him. A short distance from the entrance, around a bend, and the darkness was total. The sound of the thunder and rain was muffled by the stone. Fodrish could see nothing, and reached out blindly to find a wall. His hand touched stone that was cut and dressed, not like the rough wall of a mine but the result of dwarven labours centuries ago.
‘Keep left!’ came Asphodel’s voice from deeper in the dungeon. ‘There’s a pressure switch. Whirling blades, remember? Took off half your HP.’
Fodrish crept along the passageway, his hand still against the wall. He turned another corner and a glimmer of light shone up ahead. It was on the tip of Bartholomeo’s staff, casting strange leaping shadows against the walls as the Player Characters carefully sidestepped down a passageway lined with pillars and sculpted friezes of dwarven faces.
A slumped, deflated figure caught Fodrish’s eye. It was one of the NPC soldiers, impaled by a wooden stake that had evidently fired from a hole in the wall opposite. He must have tripped one of the dungeon’s traps and taken the consequences instead of the Player Characters, just as the party intended.
An NPC, like him.
More light shone down the trapped corridor, where the dungeon had its own light source. Fodrish reasoned he would be a lot safer there than outside with the elemental, or in a place of utter darkness where gods knew what dungeon denizens might come hunting. He held back from the party as far as he dared, and followed their footsteps exactly down the pillared corridor at the edge of Bartholomeo’s conjured light.
‘Have it, you big metal bastard!’ came Ghorborosh’s voice, followed by the sound of ringing steel and raised voices. Fodrish peered around the corner of the pillared corridor to see the party and three remaining NPC soldiers facing a metal construction in the shape of a barrel-chested armoured man, with the faceplate of its helmet shaped like a moustachioed and glowering face. Its arms ended in huge curved blades instead of hands. Its head scraped the ceiling, which was easily ten feet high.
A golem. Made of inert materials but magically animated, still performing the duty it had been given by the dwarven smiths who forged it.
Ghorborosh roared and charged right at the golem, tower shield held in front. He slammed into it hard enough to force it back a few steps and deal a decent handful of damage. A glittering arrow spiralled from Asphodel’s bow to explode in a spray of hissing green acid that pitted the golem’s chest as it swung its blades down at the Fighter.
Reynard backflipped in a whirl of darkness, flitting past the golem’s feet to jump up behind it. He thrust a dagger into the joint between the golem’s hips and torso, sinking it up to the hilt.
A paltry red ‘8’ appeared above the golem.
‘What the hells? Sneak attack didn’t work!’ exclaimed Reynard, dodging back from the golem’s retaliatory swing.
‘It’s got no organs, you idiot,’ said Bartholomeo, who was conjuring a virulent green glob of energy between his hands. ‘It’s immune. Heads up, acid orb!’
The blob of magical acid hurtled across the chamber and slammed into the golem’s chest. Gobbets of acid sprayed everywhere. Ghorborosh took a torrent of it on his tower shield, crouching so the slab of engraved steel covered his whole body.
Reynard stumbled as he ducked a swinging bronze foot, and was caught in the acidic shower. He yelled and sprinted out from behind the golem, his black cloak smoking and full of holes as a stream of low red numbers spiralled behind him.
The golem’s chest was eaten through, revealing whirling gears and sparking crystal power sources. Ghorborosh lunged forward with his greatsword and rammed the wide blade through the golem’s innards. The golem emitted a metallic screech of slipping gears and bending metal as components pinged and whickered across the room.
‘Ghor, hold it in place! I’m going for that glowing thing!’ Asphodel nocked an arrow with a whispered word that made the arrowhead glow a dangerous violet. Ghorborosh slammed the lower edge of the shield into the golem’s front foot, preventing it from stepping away for the moment it took Asphodel to fire.
The arrow shrieked into the golem’s open chest, impacting on a brightly-glowing chunk of crystal. The crystal shattered with a sound as loud as the thunderclaps of the storm elemental outside, and the golem’s shoulders slumped. Forks of crimson power arced off it and it let out a deep sonorous moan before and toppling backwards to the floor. Its body came apart, its head rolling one way and its broken torso the other, spilling gears and shards of broken crystal everywhere.
‘I thought you were the agile one,’ said Bartholomeo as Reynard brushed the smoking scraps of acid-burned fabric off his cloak.
‘Unearthly Dodge is a ninety-five percent success,’ replied Reynard. ‘Sometimes I hit that five. Especially if someone is throwing acid around.’
‘I gave you a warning. I find luck is on the side of those who pay attention.’
‘Don’t start,’ said Severina. She was surveying the chamber they had just secured. It was a finely-built room of stone, with blocky dwarven decorative sculpture along the walls and intricately tessellating tiles on the floor. Burning torches in sconces on the walls provided a flickering orange-red glow, removing the need for Bartholomeo’s magical light. A huge set of double bronze doors stood beyond the golem, with a small archway leading off to one side. ‘That way’s the temple nave,’ she said, pointing to the double doors. ‘Then the barracks, the Path of Penitence and the Woeful Caverns beneath it. To the side is the Sage’s Retreat.’
‘Anything in the Retreat?’ asked Asphodel, who was picking up her intact arrows from the floor.
‘It’s the quest NPC,’ said Severina. ‘But we’ve done that. He won’t be any use.’
‘I remember,’ said Bartholomeo. ‘We had to ask him where to find the hidden path to Soulharrow Fortress. What’s-His-Name The Wise, something like that.’
‘Was there treasure?’ asked Reynard, whose sulk seemed lifted by the possibility.
‘No, just him,’ said Bartholomeo. He pointed down at the fallen golem. ‘Any of that worth spit?’
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Ghorborosh kicked a few of the larger armour pieces aside and picked up a chunk of intact crystal. ‘Dwarven power core,’ he said. ‘You can sell them at the auction house. Engineers use them.’
‘People still take Engineering?’ said Asphodel.
‘Bag it,’ said Severina. ‘We’ll dump it if we run low on space. Reynard, check the door for traps.’
‘Try not to die on the way there,’ said Bartholomeo, and received a sharp look from Severina.
Fodrish stayed hidden while Reynard poked and prodded the intricate dwarven locking mechanisms. A few minutes later and, with a metallic twang and the clunk of sliding components, the doors swung open. A gust of ancient, dusty air was emitted, heavy with the smell of books, bones and old stone.
‘Put up an All-Seeing Eye,’ said Severina. ‘I think some of the stuff in here’s invisible.’
Bartholomeo conjured a fist-sized glowing orb which drifted through the door, casting a wan light on the enormous pillars filling the spacious chamber beyond. One by one they carefully advanced through the door, weapons ready, with Asphodel going last.
Fodrish emerged from his hiding place. With just the torches for light, the shadows gathered deeply around the corners of the ornate chamber. It was the work of an ancient race, sculpted by the hands of a people who no longer existed. He shivered at the thought of just being there, though the Company of the Waning Moon seemed to think it unremarkable. Fodrish walked close to one of the torches and noticed it gave no heat. They were magical everflame torches, common, he had heard, in dungeons where they provided light without serving as potential weapons. Every race of the Known Realms, extinct or otherwise, used similar magic in providing unceasing light for portions of their dungeons, fortresses, mines, and other enemy-rich structures.
The scattered pieces of the golem seemed impossibly intricate. Fodrish picked up a gear and turned it over in his hands, wondering at the skill it would take to make something so precise. Every tooth was exact, the circumference of each cog accurate to a tiny degree to allow them to mesh and turn. His blacksmithing seemed a crude art in comparison. But then, Fodrish was not a dwarf.
This chamber would be safe enough, he guessed, though he would have to hide again quickly when the Player Characters returned. His eyes turned to the second door, leading to what the PCs had called the Sage’s Retreat. He could remain there hidden and follow the party out, minimising his chances of being spotted.
The door was sturdy carved wood. Fodrish ran his hands over it, wondering how one checked for traps. Only Rogues could do so, other than characters with particular skill specialisms or spells. Perhaps a spear would leap from the wall and impale him like the soldier further back, or an electric charge would run through his hand and earth through his feet, turning him into a smouldering reminder to always bring a Rogue. Then again, the door led to a location purely concerned with completing a quest. Traps were more likely to protect hoards of treasure or the way to boss encounters. It felt like a calculated risk.
The door handle moved without spraying Fodrish with venom or dropping him into a concealed pit. The door opened and he edged through it, without being dissolved or punctured.
The Sage’s Retreat was a comfortable circular chamber with a spiral staircase in the centre, again lit by everflame torches. Cushions and upholstered benches formed reading nooks alongside shelves holding dozens of leatherbound tomes and dwarven books made from bound metal plates. On the walls were images of dwarven gods and their myth-cycles. Armoured warriors battled dragons the size of mountains. Dwarven maidens held up the sun, surrounded by beams of light wrought in cold stone. A chariot drawn by mountain goats carried a king and queen. Polished gemstones set into the reliefs caught the torchlight and threw multicoloured glimmers across the chamber.
It was a strangely welcoming place to be found in such a hostile dungeon. Fodrish was minded to sit down in an upholstered chair to wait for the party to complete the dungeon, but wondered if he might fall asleep and wake up to find himself stranded on the mountain surrounded by high-level monsters.
‘Do come up,’ said an elderly male voice from the floor above.
Fodrish froze. It was the first time, aside from the gibbeted prisoner, that anyone had paid him any attention since he had walked dazed from the chaos of Cathedral Square.
‘You are quite welcome to join me,’ continued the voice, as if sensing his fear. ‘I so rarely get visitors. Would you care for some tea?’
The idea of a cup of tea was suddenly rather more powerful than the fear of whoever possessed the creaking, genial voice. Fodrish walked carefully up the spiral staircase, which wound tightly and was evidently built for someone a head shorter than the average person. He reached the level of the floor above and quickly took in the room, still wary of an ambush.
The smaller circular room at the top of the staircase was entirely ringed with bookcases reaching from the floor to ceiling, and was lit by eight everflame torches in sconces. A low stone table was covered in the trappings of a scholar with an inkwell, a jar of quills, a stack of books and another of parchment.
On a stone bench beside the table, sitting on a heap of cushions, was the translucent blue-grey image of an exceptionally ancient dwarf. His bald head was spotted and wrinkled, and his voluminous beard was snow white. He wore a pair of tiny lenses over his eyes, held there by a metal frame perched on the bridge of his nose. He wore long robes rendered colourless by his spectral state.
‘I shall be with you in a moment,’ said the ghostly dwarf. ‘I must finish this last sentence. Translation from ancient lizardtongue. If I lose my train of thought I shall have to start again.’
Fodrish ascended the last few steps and found the ceiling was lower than he expected. He had to stoop to avoid bumping into the hanging sconces. He sat on a stone bench which was built too low for his limbs.
The dwarf ended a line of writing with a flourish and a satisfied sigh. He blotted his page of parchment and put the quill back in its holder before finally looking up at Fodrish. ‘So, my young friend, what can I help you with? You don’t mind my calling you young, I hope. Chronologically speaking I am three and a half thousand years old. Even going by my fleshly age I doubt very much you are my senior.’
‘No, that’s… that’s fine,’ said Fodrish. ‘You said something about tea?’
‘Oh, yes! Tea!’ The dwarf clapped his hands briskly and picked a small metal pot up off the floor. With a snap of his fingers, a flame sprang into existence beneath the pot and he put it on the desk to boil. ‘They say Khozolum the Glum voyaged across the Sea of Many Serpents to the distant shores of an exotic land to bring back its riches. And when he finally returned to our mountain home he was known as Khozolum the Jolly, for he had discovered tea!’
The pot emitted a thin whistle and the dwarf poured some of the contents into a tiny bronze cup. ‘Do you take it with honey?’ he asked. ‘We have quite the sweet tooth here.’
‘Yes, please,’ replied Fodrish.
‘Good! Good. The best way. Was there ever a potion or poultice with the mind-fortifying power of tea? Dare we entreat the heavens for a miracle as wondrous as tea? Life-giving, empire-building tea!’ The ghostly dwarf slid a cup towards Fodrish. ‘Bottoms up!’
Fodrish picked up the cup and took a sip. It was hot, sweet and very strong. He blinked and shivered with the thrill it put through him.
‘Good?’ asked the dwarf.
‘Yes.’ Fodrish took another sip and prepared for it this time, he could appreciate the taste. ‘I, um, I don’t know who you are.’
‘Now, where are my manners?’ exclaimed the dwarf. ‘Grumcrag the Wise, sage to the lords of this hold. Or at least, I was. You have been too polite to point it out, of course, but I am rather dead.’
‘I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject.’
‘But thank the gods, the dead can still drink tea!’ Grumcrag luxuriated in a long sip of tea, closing his eyes as if receiving a religious vision. ‘Ah, without its blessing, an eternity of undeath might almost become tedious!’ He looked Fodrish up and down. ‘And who might you be?’
‘Fodrish Ablewright.’
‘And you have come to the Halls of Darrnagar to seek the legendary wisdom of Grumcrag.’
‘Is that what people do?’
‘Generally.’
The two sipped their tea in silence, which the dwarf seemed to have no interest in breaking.
‘You’re a ghost,’ said Fodrish finally.
‘Very perceptive. The dwarves of the Devilspine Holds have long turned to dust. All of us who remain do so in a spiritual form.’
Though Fodrish had known ghosts existed, along with all manner of undead, he had never met one. The tales told of screeching phantasms that possessed unwary souls or wielded spectral weapons, and required magic weapons or divine spells to vanquish. Grumcrag, conversely, was an NPC, not a monster to be slain but an artificial soul to be interacted with. The Company of the Waning Moon had mentioned a quest to be completed, one they had presumably finished on their previous visit to the Halls of Darrnagar. That quest must have involved speaking with Grumcrag the Wise.
‘What happened to the dwarves?’ asked Fodrish. Immediately he realised the question might be in poor taste. There was no telling how touchy a subject a ghost’s death might be.
‘A sad tale,’ said Grumcrag, thankfully without evident offence. ‘We were mighty, once. The monsterfolk tribes battered against our gates! The storm giants sought to conquer our highest peaks! But we held firm. We received ambassadors from across what you call the Known Realms, and beyond! And we discovered tea. But then came the age of our folly-prone kings, although of course we did not call it that at the time. They built ever greater monuments to themselves, each seeking to raise a statue greater than his predecessor! The mountains, however, frowned on their hubris.’ Grumcrag shook his head and tutted, slurping down the remainder of his tea. ‘Ah, yes, that is good. The hours turn more quickly when one has tea. A scholar’s work becomes a pleasure, not a chore! And it does wonders for the bowels.’
‘The mountains?’ said Fodrish.
‘Ah, yes, my apologies. The mountains did not appreciate their stone being quarried for such frivolous purpose. They did not object to our halls or our mines, or the stones from which we built our fortifications and the temples to our gods. But when the colossi of our kings stared down from the mountain, those same mountains complained. Great rumblings came from below! Volcanoes shuddered and spewed forth fire and smoke! But the kings did not listen. And nor did they listen to us, the sages who advised them. We told them to show humility! But they did not.
‘And then came the great earthquakes that collapsed our mighty halls. Our mines were flooded with lava. Underground rivers tore through our cities. We were buried and washed away. Some who still had work to do remained as spectres, like myself. Most are gone forever, their bones beneath us, swallowed by the mountain.’
Fodrish waited a few moments to be sure the dwarf had finished his tale. ‘I had not heard of any of that,’ he said. ‘I would have thought it would be written down somewhere.’
Grumcrag shrugged. ‘It is no secret. Perhaps your folk have never heard of it because no one asks. Many have come here seeking wisdom, but they all ask the same question. “Oh Grumcrag the Wise,” they say, that is if they are being polite. “Pray tell me, where can I find Soulharrow Fortress?” And I tell them, of course. Is that what you are here to ask, Master Ablewright?’
‘No,’ said Fodrish. ‘The… uh, the people I’m travelling with asked it before, I think.’
‘So what do you wish to know?’
Fodrish looked into the dregs of his tea, where the remains of the dried leaves formed gritty patterns at the bottom of the cup. His first instinct was to apologise and leave the ghost of Grumcrag to his work. But he saw past that instinct in a way that felt new to him.
‘Strange things have happened,’ he said finally. ‘I lost my friend. He died.’
‘I am sorrowful to hear of such a loss,’ said Grumcrag.
‘I did not feel anything for a long while. Then… it all came at once. And before that I did a… probably a very foolish thing, which is how I came to be following these adventurers around these mountains. I just… I just don’t understand.’
‘Ah,’ said Grumcrag with a sagely nod. ‘Then that is your question. You want to understand.’
‘Wait!’ shouted Asphodel from her perch on the stump of a fallen pillar. ‘First the breath, then the head! Or it’ll just grow back!’
The hydra heaved its huge lizardlike body towards Ghorborosh, who splashed through the shin-deep water to keep his shield between him and the monster’s many snapping heads. The hydra was a scaly horror with a powerful, muscular body, more compact and pugnacious than Glacierheart’s, from which sprouted the seven snakelike necks each with a long-snouted, slavering head. Its chamber was once a great throne hall of a dwarven king, the remains of the throne still dominating the far end. The hall was now half-flooded with most of its pillars collapsed. The water churned with the skulls and rusted wargear of the dwarves who had died here long ago, and slapped in waves against the walls as the hydra wallowed and lunged.
‘Breath incoming!’ called Ghorborosh as the hydra’s wattles swelled. Then the seven mouths opened and emitted streams of green bile that sprayed in a wide arc across the chamber.
‘Turn it!’ yelled Severina as she ran from the glistening green torrent. ‘Turn the bloody thing!’
Ghorborosh smacked one of the heads with his shield, but the spray of acid refused to focus on him, spattering around the chamber and hissing against the pillars and walls. The adventurers ran for cover as corrosive gobbets hit them and red numbers ticked off the acid and poison damage. Severina sent green tendrils shooting from her hands, each of which coiled across the chamber and into one of her party mates, counteracting the damage with healing.
The bilious torrent halted and the hydra sat back on its haunches, the poison glands beneath its throats temporarily sagging and empty.
‘Now!’ shouted Severina.
Reynard leapt at the hydra’s flank, driving both his daggers into its side for an avalanche of sneak attack damage. Arrows from Asphodel and magic crystal darts from Bartholomeo thudded into its slimy hide. The hydra roared and thrashed, and one of its heads swung low over the surface of the water as it tried to take a bite out of Ghorborosh.
The warrior took his chance. He swung his shield onto his back, taking the ultra greatsword in both hands. With a bellow he heaved it over his head and powered the blade downwards like an executioner’s blow. The blade cleaved into the flesh behind the hydra’s skull and sliced right through. The huge lizardlike head span as it fell and green-black blood sprayed from the stump.
‘Fire!’ called out Severina.
‘I know,’ said Bartholomeo annoyedly. He was already drawing sheets of flame out of the air with sweeping movements of his arms, and concentrating it in a pulsing sphere between his hands. He splashed out from behind the pillar he was using for shelter, and thrust out both his hands. A jet of flame coursed outwards, searing against the stump of the hydra’s neck. The flesh spat and bubbled as it was scorched to a blackened charred mass.
‘It’s not growing back,’ called Ghorborosh. ‘One down.’
‘Remember the first time we did this?’ said Reynard, who was almost invisible in the shadow of a pillar. ‘It grew back, like, six heads before we got it down.’
‘Stay focused and it’ll be a lot faster this time,’ said Severina.
The hydra recovered and reared up again, forcing Ghorborosh to run out of the way before its huge torso crashed down. Its acid glands were already filling again as it snapped and slathered with its remaining heads.
‘Keep it tight!’ demanded Severina as she conjured yet another magical shield around the Fighter. ‘And Ghor, turn the sodding thing away from us!’
Down at the end of the Halls of Darrnagar, in the remains of the seat of dwarven power, the many-headed monstrosity lurked as the final encounter of the dungeon and the principal barrier between player characters and the bulk of the loot contained therein.
The hydra required a solid tank to both weather the damage of the many heads and keep the acid spray from dousing the whole party. The rest of the player characters had to act with close enough timing to cut off a head and inflict enough fire damage to cauterise the stump, between the acid spray and the hydra’s glands refilling, otherwise they would be met with another gout of corrosive bile and two heads growing in place of the severed one. The encounter could rapidly get out of control, overrunning an ill-coordinated party with more heads and bite attacks than a healer could cope with. The boss had a certain notoriety as a stern test of a party’s teamwork, a test the Company of the Waning Moon had almost failed on their first attempt to complete the Halls of Darrnagar.
This time, the fight had gone more smoothly. The party were higher level than their first kill and were prepared for the fight mechanics. The hydra’s heads fell until only one remained and the boss’ brief second stage ensued, where it began thrashing wildly and snapping at all the party members regardless of the tank’s efforts. Then it became a damage race to pour enough hurt into the monster before the healer could no longer keep the party members up and they began to fall.
Severina was equal to the task. The red numbers became a seething mass of digits over the hydra as spells, arrows and blades tore into the grey-green hide. Severina still had a decent reserve of mana left as the hydra hauled its body into the air, shrieked and shuddered, and slammed into the water again.
‘Apocalypse strike!’ yelled Ghorborosh as he swung the ultra greatsword down on the neck behind the hydra’s final head. The blade passed through scale, flesh and bone, and the last head rolled off into the blood-filthy water. The hydra’s final breath bubbled out of the stump, and the creature’s thrashing finally ceased.
‘Nice work,’ said Asphodel.
‘Almost broke my top crit,’ said Reynard, wading through the gore oozing from the hydra’s corpse.
‘Heavens forbid the Rogue doesn’t get to see those big pretty numbers,’ said Bartholomeo.
‘It’s what I do,’ said Reynard, cleaning off one of his daggers on the edge of his cloak. ‘I bring the damage, you try to manage.’
Ghorborosh splashed out of the water onto a raised part of the floor beside the throne, and let the worst of it drain out of his armour. Asphodel picked up a couple of stray arrows that had clattered against the throne and the back wall. ‘That’s a terrible name,’ she said.
‘What?’ asked Ghorborosh.
‘Apocalypse strike. What the hells is that?’
‘Bart gets cool names for his spells. Cataclysmic this, Prismatic that. He gets whole books of them. Why can’t I have one?’
‘It makes you sound like a prick.’
‘What do you call yours?’
‘I don’t. I just shoot things.’
‘Not… Slaughtering Bolt or Glittering Volley or some shit?’
‘Nope.’ Asphodel slid the last wayward arrow into her quiver.
‘Can I get some help?’ demanded Reynard from down by the hydra. ‘This thing’s not gonna butcher itself.’
‘What are you doing, Rey?’ asked Severina, who was poking around in the water with her wand.
‘This thing’s poison is five hundred a vial,’ said Reynard, struggling to turn over one of the huge severed heads. ‘It’s got gallons in its… sacks or pockets or whatever they are.’
‘Be our guest,’ said Asphodel. ‘I’m not sticking my hand in there.’
Severina’s wand hit something in the water and she reached down to haul it out. It was a set of chainmail, long enough to cover the whole body along with a hood. Green gemstones were worked into the mail, which shone bright silver in spite of the grime.
‘Warsilver Mail,’ said Severina. ‘Tier seven.’
‘Worth anything?’ asked Bartholomeo, who was prodding around in the water nearby with his staff.
‘A decent amount,’ replied Severina. ‘Depends on who’s at the Eyrie.’
Bartholomeo lifted the end of his staff out of the water to show a necklace hanging on the end of it, with a gold chain and a pendant in the shape of a dragon’s head clutching a ruby. ‘Periapt of Flame,’ he said. ‘I used to have one of these.’
‘Check behind the throne!’ called Severina as she continued to search for loot.
Asphodel, having found the last of her arrows, crouched to search behind the dwarf king’s long-empty throne. She dragged out a wooden chest with a golden clasp and flipped open its lid to show a glittering heap of coins.
‘Got the gold here,’ she said. ‘Looks like… five thousand, maybe.’
‘Then that’s our haul,’ said Severina. ‘Pack it up and head back. Reynard, what are you doing?’
The Rogue was up to his elbows in the corpse of the hydra, sawing away at its insides with his daggers. ‘I’m getting its heart out,’ he said.
‘What the hells for?’
‘These can go for three thousand!’ Reynard withdrew an arm covered in thick, blackish gore. ‘It’s an ingredient in a ritual, talking to your god or some shit.’
‘He won’t shut up about it if he doesn’t get it,’ said Bartholomeo.
‘Fine. Five minutes, then we’re gone.’
Ghorborosh picked up the chest Asphodel had found and held it up on his shoulder. With his enormous Strength score, the weight of the chest and the thousands of coins barely registered for him. ‘Should be enough to potion up and get my shield enchanted,’ he said. ‘Get some of those fancy starburst arrows, too. That’ll put us over the edge when we hit Hypoxia again.’
None of the other Player Characters answered. The only reply was the sucking of bloody flesh as Reynard cut away at the hydra’s aorta.
‘Right?’ said Ghorborosh. ‘We sell this shit, then we’re straight back to Hypoxia. That’s plan. Right?’
‘Let’s just get to the Eyrie,’ said Severina.
‘Whoa, whoa, that is the plan, isn’t it? We’re taking that bitch down!’
‘It’s not the gear or the tactics, Ghor,’ said Asphodel. ‘We can’t heal through that… Incantation of Whatever.’
‘No way I’m grinding again,’ retorted Ghorborosh. ‘Screw that! Once we’re past Hypoxia we unlock the whole Riven Shore!’
‘We’re not unlocking anything if we wipe,’ said Asphodel.
‘Don’t tell me you’re all in on this,’ said Ghorborosh. ‘Bart? Rey?’
‘Can we just get out of this hole and make it to the Eyrie?’ said Severina, her voice raised. ‘If I stay down here any longer I’ll get Swamp Rot.’
‘Fine,’ said Ghorborosh. He began stomping towards the door leading to the dungeon’s upper reaches. ‘But this discussion isn’t over.’
With a loud squelch, Reynard fell backwards with a huge lump of gory muscle in his arms. ‘I got it!’ he said, grinning through a mask of spattered hydra blood. ‘Guys? I got it! Look!’
None of the Company of the Waning Moon returned the Rogue’s smile as they began the ascent out of the Halls of Darrnagar.
The second cup of tea had gone down more slowly. It had lasted a long conversation, during which Fodrish had told Grumcrag the Wise of the events since the devastation at the cathedral square. Without the regular intake of tea he would have gone hoarse with talking.
‘And then you found your way to me,’ said Grumcrag with a smile.
‘Then I found you,’ said Fodrish, and sat back against the cushions covering the stone bench.
‘I see. And your question is..?’
‘I just want to understand.’
‘Hmm.’ Grumcrag made a steeple of his fingers and his wrinkled brow furrowed further. ‘Quite the conundrum. No puzzle is as taxing as those of the human mind. No, not a puzzle. A puzzle always has a solution. The mind, not necessarily so. This… lifting of the fog through which you walked in a daze. The loss of your friend and the pain you feel. This is what you desire to understand. And, presumably, it is the pain you wish to end?’
‘It… sneaks up on me,’ said Fodrish, staring into the dark flecks of tea leaves in the bottom of his cup. ‘The thought will just come out of nowhere. I see his face, covered in blood. I can feel the healer’s kit in my hands and how useless I was. I can be doing anything, trying to sleep, walking, just sitting there with my head empty, and it will come to me.’
‘The memory of Melagorn.’
‘Yes. And his death.’
‘Do you wish to forget him?’
‘No.’ Fodrish shook his head and sighed. ‘No, not that.’
‘Then to be without the pain?’
‘Yes. I suppose so.’
‘You do not sound certain.’
‘I’m not certain of anything any more. I don’t even know what to do. Should I keep following these adventurers? They’re going to a place called the Eyrie next, it sounds like a city. I don’t even know where I am except that it feels a long way from Noblehearth.’
Grumcrag gave him a gentle smile. ‘My knowledge of the world does not extend far beyond the Devilfrost Mountains. I cannot draw you a map of your Known Realms. Nor a map of your own mind.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Fodrish. ‘I haven’t brought you a question you can answer.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Grumcrag. ‘The slippery logic of the mind does have some truths to it. The poor soul you saved from imprisonment, for example.’
‘The NPC?’
‘An unfortunate victim of Hypoxia’s undead realm. One of many. Doomed to a horrible end, abandoned by fate and by the gods. But you helped her, for no benefit to yourself. At some risk, no less.’
‘I don’t know why I did it.’
‘Perhaps that is the question you should really answer. Why do it? And why did it return to you such clarity of emotion? In one sense you have given me an impossible task, Fodrish Ablewright, for that question I cannot answer. But there is no need to offer an apology! I greatly enjoy such brain-teasers, whether I can solve them or not. I will, however, offer you this-’ Grumcrag stopped as if forgetting something. ‘By the way, would you care for more tea?’
‘I’d better not,’ said Fodrish. ‘It’ll go right through me.’
‘Quite so. I can offer you this, Fodrish Ablewright. The only changes that ever truly happen for the better, come about through compassion.’
The sound of footsteps on the spiral stairs made Fodrish spin around where he sat, tensing as he imagined some dungeon horror oozing up into Grumcrag’s study. But instead, he saw the bald head and cut-glass features of Bartholomeo.
‘Ah,’ said the Wizard as he reached the top of the stairs, stooping to avoid the low ceiling and hanging torches. ‘I thought I would find you here.’