After a day of searching the Vulcanus archives nothing of note had emerged. This wasn’t surprising, the sheer volume of paper they’d liberated was staggering and the search had been abandoned after a couple hours so they could start lugging the books, ledgers, tomes, pamphlets, posters and notebooks inside lest the dew of night smother their search in its cradle.
They’d been only partially successful, eventually resorting to Amara just keep an anti-humidity spell up through the night, those with unnatural constitutions working tirelessly. Still as dawn broke they had barely made a dent and the true scale of the task before them was starting to sink in.
There were library magics, typically variants on findmage spells, that could seek out information with all the skill of a tiger on the prowl but even if they’d known them it wouldn’t have helped much given they didn’t even know that they were looking for.
It was thus an exhausted and dispirited meeting that took place that noon, The Melodious Duck acting as their centre of operations. For all the infirmary or John’s office would have served better no one especially wanted to conduct things from there.
Ilvere had at least signed off on not telling the Council yet, but her patience was an unknown quantity and no one wanted to strain it.
“It’s going to take us a week just to move everything, at least if you want there to be any semblance of order once we’re done.” Amara told them all, exhaustion written in every line on her face.
“That’s a problem. For all that we’re safe here that safety is a temporary thing.” Natalya observed, “We have no way of knowing when someone will check the Valda barrier or a scrying spell will simply stumble upon us.”
“Agreed.” Alice growled, “We need another plan of attack, once the archives are inside we can go through them at our leisure. Anyone got another angle?”
“I’ve got one.” Erebus told them, “But none of you are going to like it.”
“That is indeed the standard.” Susan joked, the shadow sat a table away, hers a stone affair that Ilvere had been kind enough to create for her.
“We’re currently trying to free ourselves up to operate free from pursuit. I suggest we skip ahead and hit one of the targets the archmages gave me.” Erebus spread his arms as if he’d just finished a particularly good stage magician’s act. Beneficent in accepting praise. It was a pity no praise was forthcoming.
“Are you insane?” Natalya hissed. “No. Do not answer that. It will just make me want to hit you more.”
“Violence ill becomes you.” He smiled broadly at her, clearly expecting to be hit. She didn’t give him the satisfaction.
“I’m with Nat on this.” Amara told him, “There’s no possible advantage.”
“The archmages indicated the target I have in mind might be time sensitive.” Erebus confessed, not so much as flinching as the near ever present glares redoubled in intensity.
“Lead with that next time!” Nat yelled, reaching across to swat the back of his head, “Idiot.”
“It was funnier this way.” He smirked, “For me. Specifically.”
“You mean you’re giving us the bad news a tiny bit at a time.” Susan remarked, “Give us some credit Ere, we’ve been through this song and dance before.”
“I am, but I’m not going to apologise for easing you into bad news.”
“Well lay it on us.” Their resident warshifter insisted, her arms folded across her toastrack chest.
“For starters half of you are going to have to stay behind. You’d just slow us down.” Erebus told them. This time he did recoil.
“Someone hold him still.” Natalya growled, voice low, dangerous and furiously predatory. To everyone’s surprise it was Lana who moved first, pinning him to his seat by simply clamping her hands on his shoulders. “Thank you. Now… go on.”
“I’m not saying this as some pseudo-heroic attempt to protect you. Some of you would make the journey more dangerous by your mere presence. Amara, Alice, Holly and Alec. You’re all going to have to sit this one out.”
“Explain.” This from Alice, “And if there’s one word about it being dangerous I’m going to break your nose.”
Erebus covered his snout hurriedly, “That’s precisely my argument. Wait. Wait! Where we’re going will be far too cramped for you to warshift, you’d just be an elderly human in what you could achieve there and the threat we’d be facing could kill you easily. There’s other practical concerns, I’m no Sato, I can’t teleport you where we have to go, whatever trick he used to move a shapeshifter he never shared.”
Alice thought about it, her rheumy amber eyes never leaving his. “I will concede I have never excelled at tunnel fighting. I will remain.”
“This is the part where you tell us we’re not powerful enough to help.” Alec observed, trying to make his mentor’s argument for him, already resigned to being left behind despite the assurances they’d be allowed to help.
“Quite the opposite actually. You’ve too much power.” Erebus informed him, “Where we’re going will be awash with predators that actively hunt for magic, you’d be like a beacon announcing our presence.”
“Oh. Uh…” He glanced at Holly, conferring at the speed of thought, “Fine. But please tell us there’s something we can do?”
“You can keep moving the records we stole to safety. That way Amara isn’t stuck maintaining a weather spell nearly every hour of the day. If you get that done before we return then you can help her search through them. It’s not glamorous work-“
“But it’s useful.” Alec finished for him, “We’re okay with that.”
Erebus turned his gaze to Amara, “Want to make your protest?”
“Nope.” The vampire replied, “At minimum you need me to keep the books safe, if there’s other reasons I don’t need to know them.”
“You sure? I don’t want you feeling left out.”
“Lana if I break one of his fingers will that count as the kind of violence you need to stop?” Amara asked sweetly.
“Unfortunately so.” The demon replied with surprising playfulness, releasing Erebus now she was sure he wasn’t trying to ditch his bodyguard.
“Is there a reason you’re being an ass?” Natalya asked him, fully serious.
“…Not all of us are going to come back from this one.” He admitted, “I guess I’m nervous. Where we’re going is going to make Arcadia look like a family picnic.”
“Where are we going?” Lana inquired, expecting the worst. Sure enough she got it.
“To visit Susan’s adopted family. We’re heading into the deeps.”
*
They’d settled on the entrance to Daum’Kelok, one of the lesser mercantile cities the dwarves had maintained near the surface. Situated close to the edge of the Forest Von Mori, it had maintained a vigorous trade with the forest back before the shadows had risen out of the dark to devour the city.
The forest had moved away over the generations, not even Von Mori wanted to risk a straight up fight with the Encroaching Darkness and even to today she’d still been moving away. As Agh’zak and Saiko were in the process of discovering it was near a week’s travel from forest to fallen city now.
“This entrance has been abandoned for years.” Erebus told his three companions, “I was going to try and retrieve some of the relics after I found the Tear of the Sun, but I never got the chance. From there we go down to the deep tunnels, we’re looking at roughly a four day trip down, four days up. Teleporting out should be considered a last resort, if you intersect with the shadows you’ll be consumed in transit. Any questions?”
“Yeah, what’s our objective?” Natalya asked, “Cause you were awfully tightlipped back in Valda.”
Erebus held up a finger, begging a moment’s patience as he put up some privacy wards.
“You know there is a point where caution becomes paranoia.” His fellow necromancer prodded gently. “We just teleported from a secure location to what may as well be a random spot, I doubt we need the wards.”
Lana laughed bitterly, “If this were the hells I’d declare you so adorable I’d keep you as a pet. Telling you anything at all counts as minimal caution.”
Erebus gave his bodyguard a glare, miming a mouth closing as he finished the warding. “We’re checking on one of the structural chains. The archmages suspect it needs reinforcement.”
“And they suspect this why?” Natalya barbed, eyes moving from him to the cave.
“Because the shadows are ever hungry and they must have survived on something down there.” Susan answered for him, “I’m right aren’t I?”
“Close.” Erebus admitted to her, “There are defences against that sort of thing, but those too can be fed upon. They suspect they’re running empty.”
“What are rules of engagement if we’re spotted?” Nat requested, starting to move towards the cave.
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“Run like hell.” Erebus said simply, “There are magics that can hurt them, but this is their territory and they’re practically without number down here. Practically a single immense entity.”
“Mhmmm…” Susan mused, “He’s right… I can feel them even from here. Hungry… they’re so hungry…”
“Can they sense you?” Lana asked her sharply, placing a hand on the shadow’s chest and forcing her back away from the entrance.
“Yes… but they’re not smart enough to be curious about why I’m different, just whether I have food.” The shadow replied after a few seconds of agonizing deliberation.
“You do have food.” The demoness pointed out softly.
“Not from my perspective, and that’s all that matters to them. We should be safe.” Susan assured her.
Lana pulled her hand away, apparently satisfied as they finally descended into the depths of Daum’Kelok.
The going was slow, that had been inevitable, they didn’t have any chemical lights, and using magic would be the equivalent of ringing a dinner bell. As it was they were having to spend a lot of concentration just restraining their magicka from interacting with the mana in the air – what little of it was leaking in from outside.
Still Lana and Susan could at least see in the total darkness that descended once they moved out of range of the cave mouth, the esoteric mechanisms that simulated sight not technically magic, or at least not powered by mana.
If the two necromancers objected to literally having their hands held for the journey they didn’t utter a word though they could almost feel the perverse amusement rolling off of Lana as she led them whilst Susan acted as scout and outrider.
Erebus allowed himself a moment of regret, he’d always wanted to come down here and with more time to prepare he would have come properly equipped with chemical lights to let him see the majesty of the fallen city. He’d have come with a dozen specialists in light magic, twice that in aegiscasters and as many devils as he could contract to lay waste the devouring shadows that lurked in the dark.
It would be the project of decades, if not centuries, but Erebus was sure it could be done. Should be done even, but the Council of Mages seldom had the spare manpower for an undertaking of that size.
Instead he let the sights lost to aeons pass by in total darkness wondering if Natalya was having similar thoughts.
*
Darkness had a way of grinding a person down. The uncertainty of it, the feeling that the entire world had narrowed down to just what could be felt or heard. Erebus had been trained for this sort of scenario and still he was sure that if it weren’t for Lana’s hand in his he’d have likely gone quite mad by the dawn of the third day. Not that there was a dawn.
Sleep had also proven a trial, though he’d at least managed it. Fear of what could be lurking in the darkness would have been a problem at the best of times, when the thing lurking was the darkness… it wasn’t a comfortable sleep. Worse still he’d begun dreaming again.
If he’d been forced to do this on his own he’d have done it very differently, and a hell of a lot more dangerously. He’d have gathered power, condensed mana, spell spheres and crystals, every artifact he could beg borrow or steal and then just tried to fight his way down to the chain.
It would have been a long shot, a last resort and how he’d achieve the return journey he couldn’t imagine, but it had been an option. That at least helped settle his mind, this way was a lot better.
Susan certainly would have agreed. It was good to feel useful again. To be in the field again. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed this sort of thing, and for all Lana was able to sense her way through the dark it had soon become clear the devil’s senses did not extend even a fraction as far as hers.
She was the darkness, able to move through it at speeds that were startling. By the end of the second day she’d all but abandoned human form, thin tendrils of her spanning for miles as she scouted out the labyrinth of tunnels, probing ever deeper down. Whatever this aetheric chain was, the gods had buried it to greater depths than the dwarves or trolls had ever probed.
Strange things had lurked here once, for the gods had not been vigilant of what lay beneath and bizarre combinations of magical monster had grown to stalk the deep tunnels. Susan quietly suspected lurked still despite the best efforts of one of Reath’s most vicious predators.
Despite her earlier reservations the total darkness had done her a world of good, it was a lot harder to worry about what people thought of her when there was no one even able to see what she was doing. Now if only the infernal whispering would stop.
That was probably unfair, at least if Lana could be believed. The forces of the infernal realms apparently battled with what she had to (reluctantly) call her kin every day.
Still the shadows whispered. There wasn’t much coherent in it. Mostly just hunger, unbound and desperate from a being that could not starve to death yet longed to devour all the same. Susan could sympathise, she too was hungry. Finally she could put a name to the feeling of wrongness that had haunted her every moment. She’d simply been hungry, a gnawing ache that she knew no amount of food would ever fill, that simply could not be sated for what use was a weapon that could choose not to kill.
Susan wasn’t an idiot. She knew she was being seduced. That the silken and sibilant whispers were, intentional or otherwise, little more than a pretty lure and a promise almost as empty as the creatures that made them.
That didn’t make resisting them easy, if only because part of her didn’t want to. It wasn’t a part she was proud of, but she was tempted, truly tempted, to give in. To just give up her identity and join them. No more fighting, no more choices, no more loneliness, just the feast and the feast yet to come.
But she’d been feeling those pains for a long, long time and even before her accident she’d been part of Second Response. Noone joined the elite response force from the entire continent because they wanted things to be easy or because they lacked willpower.
The third day beneath gave her an answer to one of the questions the dark had given her. Faint tremors passing through the stone. One would have been meaningless, a slight shifting in the earth. Two could have been coincidence. Three the start of a pattern.
This for all it was a gentle vibration in the rocks was a lot more than that. A regular tapping that could be nothing less than a living being. Tap tap taptaptap tap tap taptaptaptap. The message continued, long and convoluted and making no sense at all to her.
It meant nothing to the other shadows, too hollowed out by their creator to realise what they’d just heard. To her it was a beacon one she was delighted to head in the opposite direction to. Withdrawing her body from a dozen different directions where she’d spread herself thin, she coalesced in front of Erebus and Natalya.
They didn’t even flinch, and not because they’d failed to notice her approach. In fact both necromancers more or less ignored her presence, his ear still pressed to the rock. “How much of that did you pick up?” Erebus asked, concentrating so hard it would have been mistaken for constipation if anyone could see it.
Natalya answered slowly, dredging memories out of long term storage, “Most of it but… there’s definitely been some linguistic drift. What did you get?”
“Some. I know some of the subtleties of the dialect but I’m not proficient at the language. If that makes sense.”
The older necromancer stifled a guffaw, “We did wonder where you’d disappeared to. My money was off-continent but not off-world.”
“Who won then?” Erebus asked softly even as his brain tried to squeeze the last drops of information from the message.
“Oh… no one. I mean who could have predicted this?”
Lana growled, an animalistic sound of pure annoyance, “I take it you know who was making that noise.”
“Yes. It’s Arachni Groundspeak.” Natalya told her simply, “at least a version of it.”
“Arachni? Like the spiders we killed in Avalon?” The demoness asked, “They didn’t strike me as intelligent enough for a formal language.”
“That’s because they aren’t.” Susan said, a touch bemused, “There’s a vast gulf of difference between arach and arachni. Though I can see how the confusion would arise, arachni are… rare doesn’t even begin to cover it. Neither does ancient. Is this where they’ve been hiding?”
“One of the places yes.” Erebus admitted, “Though it would be more accurate to say they never left.”
“And you both speak the language of a long vanished species of sapient spider why?” The shadow asked, wondering if it would even get an answer. She could hear the reticence in both necromancers words to discuss this, which already told her volumes.
“They were not yet vanished when I was girl.” Natalya said simply. She wanted to confer with Erebus on whether to share more, the Necropolis held many secrets dearly and this certainly touched upon one of them, but without light or magic there was little she could say without using actual words.
“I suspected they would be down here. Wandered until I stumbled upon them then begged tuition until they caved.” Erebus answered with an unseen shrug. “They’re friendly enough as long as you know how to move quietly.”
“It also explains why your umbramancy has always been so damn weird.” Nat noted, “So do you think you can make contact?”
“I hope so. Depends what the message was. All I managed to pick up was ‘flesh in the tunnels’ and ‘returned to the village’. What did you pick up?”
“That fills in a couple of gaps for me.” Natalya nodded her thanks reflexively before realizing that was pointless, fortunately her embarrassment went equally unnoticed. “Message reads: Our furthest scouts have detected carapace-less ones in the tunnels. Assemble a hunting party to escort them to safely. It seems the Clumsiest Fly has returned to the village.”
Erebus winced, “One word. Just one word and I’ll- I’ll… come up with a really good threat.”
Tapatapatap tap tap tap tap tap. Another message through the stone. “The fly is lucky we used one of the less embarrassing names.” Natalya broke into giggles as she translated then stopped abruptly as the implications sunk in.
Without any further warning, and not even the slightest whisper in the mana, a dozen spiders, each easily able to stand level with a fully grown horse, were simply there. Even to Susan’s superior sense of darkness it was like they’d just teleported in place.
After a moment of panic the shadow relaxed, with the tunnels renowned for the living shadows that lurked in them it was almost inevitable that whatever else survived here could hide from her.
“How many are they?” Natalya asked quietly, fingers twitching as she fought the urge to summon a shield. Any spell would be a death sentence, and a fist fight in the dark would probably go to the one with the fangs dripping in venom.
Lana and Susan would at least be able to fight back, but having to rely on others sat wrong, and whether they’d be able to protect their two (relatively) helpless friends was a dubious question.
“A full dozen.” Lana told them, the devil trying to figure out how best to interpose herself, eventually settling for guarding Erebus’s back, informing him of the change in position by resting her hand briefly upon his shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze that probably had drawn blood.
The necromancer was almost distressingly relaxed, to the point Lana had to worry for his survival instincts. They’d been ambushed and she didn’t have to see his face to know he was smiling about it, his stance all but screamed it.
Slowly Erebus sunk to his knees before beginning to drum his hands on the stone. He paused a few times as he hammered his message upon the rock, struggling to remember what little he knew.
“Greetings hunters of the night that is long. I am Clumsy Bug. May we be escorted to the larder?” Natalya translated ‘helpfully’.
Now Susan certainly wouldn’t claim to be an expert on giant spider body language but she could have sworn there was amusement in the arachni that answered back.
“It is pleasing that your groundspeak has improved in your absence.” His friend continue to translate, doing a double-take at that particular announcement. “We would be thrilled to bring you to our home though we find your companions concerning. Also you know we can understand you. Just talk.”
Erebus nodded gratefully, even that brief message had strained his grasp of arachni to the limit, “I can vouch for each of my companions. Lana is a devil in the service of the imperator of Madness and Darkness, assigned as my bodyguard for services rendered. Natalya was my superior in the Council of Mages seeking to help me in a time of great need and Susan, for all she shares the body of your great enemy, has the mind of a human mage; it is only through her aid we have gotten even this deep.”
The lead arachni considered that. It couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds but for those who couldn’t see through pitch darkness it may as well have been an eternity.
“Thinking Hungry Darkness may come with us, but should she harm one of us you will all be held accountable.”
“Of course.” Susan bowed, deep and low, “I will not lay a hand upon any of you and I thank you for your forbearance.”
“That is acceptable. We would ask you questions later, that we might learn more of the hungry darkness. Now please, no more speech until we reach the village, we risk being noticed already with your loudness.” The arachni tapped out.
“It will be good to see the village again.” Erebus replied wistfully.
The arachni’s next comment caused Natalya to miss her step and stumble to the ground, staring up at her former right hand with complete disbelief. Whatever the spider had said it had startled her enough she wasn’t even trying to get to her feet.
“What did they say?” Lana asked softly, one hand moving to the hilt of her blade.
The old necromancer took a moment to compose her, and then a second moment when that failed. “Your… your wife has missed you.”