The air was crisp and clear deep within the wilds of the northern Frontier.
Even back home, it was still cold this time of year, spring unwilling to make way for summer without a fight. But here, so much closer to the pole, the chill was biting indeed. Thick, high drifts of white snow coated the gargantuan pines and sharp shrubbery like icing on a continental cake. The sun reflected cruelly off of them, swiftly blinding those who lacked some manner of protection. Great icicles hung like sharpened daggers from the boughs of trees and the mouths of caves.
It was a bleak place, the Frontier. But beautiful.
Beautiful and dangerous. These were genuine, bona-fide wilds, a different beast entirely to what I’d experienced growing up in the sticks of Uther’s demesne. Those rural areas had been well-kept, patrolled, policed. Maws were reported and dealt with succinctly. A mundane man could still have died to wolves or perhaps to boar, but never a Blessed. Not so, here.
Here, there were monsters.
I felt their presence in the air, I smelt it on the wind, I heard them all around me. The shrill calls of something big and powerful high in the sky, above the clouds. The creaking and cracking of branches off in the distance. And every now and again, a soft but greatly troublesome tremor that shook the ground beneath our feet ever so slightly, just enough to remind us that this land belonged to our kind no longer.
Or, perhaps it was nothing more than my own nerves.
The Hand had ported us here one group at a time, all six of us linking arms with the Immortal Blessed for a hair-raising moment before the world twisted and flip-flopped in a way that made me queasy.
Rover, the poor wolfman, had lost his lunch. Quarrel japed that Thaum looked even greener than usual, which, I had to admit, I’d chuckled at.
The temperature plummeted upon our arrival, the climate in the wild north well below freezing, despite the sun’s presence high in the sky. It made my teammates shiver. Glare, Rover, and I were unbothered for the most part, Draconic Blood taking good care of me. The High Inquisitor’s power likely kept him equally warm, and as for Rover, well, I doubted all that fur was just for show.
But Quarrel trembled in her thin leathers, quickly zipping up the exposed cleavage that had previously aimed to distract us. Thaum seemed ill-at-ease in her similar wear. Vox should have suffered, too, but displayed no more emotion than usual. If the chill troubled him, the man gave no sign of it.
“Fucking Priest, it’s cold,” Quarrel snarled. Though perhaps not quite as eloquently as I’d have put it, I had to agree with her.
“Shit, sorry, hot stuff,” she added quickly, apologizing for her blasphemy while glancing at Glare. The Immolator himself, genial as ever, waved her apologies away, saying;
“Oh, I don’t care much about all that, actually–,”
“COLD!”
Pylon’s voice boomed from within our midst, shocking each and every one of us, and making us jump. Including Vox, for once.
The Godkin rubbed his gunmetal-grey gloves together eagerly.
“YES!” he shouted once more, clapping his hands together in that loud, startling way of his.
“Yes, yes it is! Welcome, my brave contestants of group fourteen, to the wilds of the NORTHERN FRONTIER!”
As his thunderous voice echoed gratingly from between us for the third time, Quarrel scowled.
“Can you stop fucking doing that?” She snapped, angrily.
I gaped, doing a double take at the Blessed archer. Priest above, she must have sported the biggest stones of us all to dare speak back to him.
Pylon simply laughed, and leaned in close to her. Quarrel stiffened, jaw clenching, holding firm a fierce expression despite her proximity to one of the most powerful Immortals on the planet.
“My apologies,” he whispered in a sotto so muted it was barely audible.
Quarrel’s face shifted from tension to incredulity.
“MY APOLOGIES!” He shouted once more, still face to face with the archer, making her recoil with a shriek and fall into the knee-deep snow, cursing profusely.
Pylon laughed again, leaning back and turning to walk away from the group, the rest of us falling in line. His mirth was deep and boisterous, but thoroughly confusing to me. It seemed harmless, benign, but somehow…hollow. I could never tell if he was being genuine. He almost didn’t seem like a real person.
More…a fraction of one.
“My apologies,” Pylon repeated for the third time, still chuckling slightly. “Sometimes, my young Blessed, I simply get caught up in the moment, and forget myself. I forget my company.”
The Immortal mimed breathing deeply, chest expanding in a grand motion, though I heard no inhalation.
“Still, will you just smell that fresh air? That crisp, bracing spring breeze? Oh, how I love the wilds!”
With that, Pylon abruptly set off.
We trekked dutifully behind him as he carved a path through the heavy drifts, still speaking eccentrically, almost schizophrenically, at us all. We took no part in his one-sided conversation, but the Immortal didn’t seem to mind. And we didn’t have far to travel. Soon enough, we came upon our destination.
The Maw in the north.
It was altogether different from the one I’d encountered two months ago. This was no dank grotto, no dark and twisting entrance to a mossy cave. This Maw seemed more like something I’d imagine an Uther Tinker might create, tall and sleek and entirely mechanical. It rose from the snowy ground in a perfect cube, a strong and sturdy box of steel covered in blinking lights and twisting wires. On one side of it was a glowing orange portal that, I assumed, led to the interior of the Dungeon.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Back to the bowels of the World Titan.
I swallowed, clenching and unclenching my fist, absently.
“…said to Romulus, ‘Are you sure? There hasn’t been a Maw up there in ages! And the ecosystem is impenetrable, already saturated, how could we possibly plumb it enough?’ And that’s when he suggested the Agoge, and I have to say, a fine idea to outsource the labor, but so dangerous, I just don’t know about it and he–oh, here we are!”
Pylon finished, arresting both tirade and march to present the metallic Maw with the sweep of a single arm. He turned to regard us once more, clapped forcefully once more, and then…stopped.
All of a sudden his demeanor shifted, posture recalibrating, back straightening, regarding us for perhaps the first time with a considerate, careful gaze. It was strangely reminiscent of the shift in character he’d demonstrated to me back during the entry exam. In a mere moment, it was like an entirely different person stood before us.
Pylon, clasped both palms behind his back, slowly, leveled a serious stare at our group, and spoke.
“I will not waste your time with words,” he said, calmly.
“Nor will I caution you,” he added. His visored face rotated slightly, regarding us in turn,
“You have each been informed of the risks involved with this delve, and made your choices accordingly.”
Even though I could not behold his eyes from behind the mask, I got the distinct feeling he was looking directly at me.
“I am sure,” he said, “you all have your reasons to be here.”
He paused for a moment, almost seeming to hesitate. But then he shook his head slightly, and made to leave.
“The Coterie has no need for weakness. We cannot abide it. Now, more than ever.”
His departing footfalls left no tracks in the snow. Despite the distance he’d put between us, his final words reached our group without difficulty.
“Be strong, and you shall become strong.”
The falling snow made no noise, so for a moment all we heard was the soft snapping of twigs and subtle crackling of ice.
“Well, that was…kind of ominous.” Quarrel murmured.
“One final test, of our conviction perhaps,” Rover rumbled, though he didn’t seem convinced by his own words.
“It doesn’t matter,” Thaum stated, confidently. She nodded my way. “Lord Hero was right. We’ve little to fear from this floor, at least.”
“Let us begin,” the sorceress said, trudging hastily towards the auburn portal. I followed quickly behind her, wanting to set an example for the rest.
One by one, we stepped through it.
~~~
Upon entering the portal, we found ourselves in a room.
Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, the interior of the mechanical box fell exactly in line with what one might imagine it to be. It was a sharp, metallic cube with wires running all along and over it, large enough to house the six of us quite comfortably. Unlike the construct outside it, though, this one sported a physical door.
The door was vast and grand, and sprawled across its breadth in a manner reminiscent to that of the previous Maw I’d delved, was a bizarre mosaic.
“What…is that?” Rover murmured.
It depicted a giant, metallic dragon.
Or perhaps, a robotic one; for the creature was not a dragon with skin of steel, but an actual mechanical creation, a golem of sorts with all manner of cannons, exhausts and engines affixed haphazardly to its butchered frame.The creature appeared angry, features contorted in some mix of fury and pain. Its body curled sinuously around the center of the image, which detailed an almost imperceptibly small character by comparison, likely a human, shrinking in fear of the beast.
Around the strange mosaic, just like the one I’d encountered months ago, were written words. But the phrase itself was different.
The wizard sleeps in gilded cage, a maddened DRAGON guards the mage.
Quarrel raised an eyebrow, smirking slightly.
“Any ideas, princess?” She snarked at Thaum. “Come, let’s see that vaunted education in action!”
The sorceress scowled at her, before leaning in to frown at the mural, brows furrowing.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Rover cut in. “The Dungeon’s theme must be dragons, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Thaum muttered. “It could just as easily be machines. Or–”
“Or wizards,” Quarrel interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Or cages. Or sleep. Or any number of things. The starting doors always have some kind of weird shit written on ‘em. Half the time, it never comes up again.”
Thaum, Rover and Glare stared at her blankly.
“What?” Quarrel asked, staring right back at them incredulously. “I mean, it’s no news to you, right? We’ve all delved before.”
Thaum and Rover remained silent, fascinated all of a sudden with the polished steel floor. Quarrel’s eyes widened, then narrowed.
“We’ve all delved before, right?!”
“I haven’t, actually.” Glare cheerfully piped up.
One of Quarrel’s brows twitched as she shot a brief but scathing glance at the man, but directing uncharacteristically little anger towards him otherwise. Perhaps, she respected his honesty. Or, more likely perhaps, his looks. Instead, she inhaled deeply, no doubt to lay into the group again.
“I have,” I said, cutting the woman off and drawing her attention. Quarrel raised an eyebrow my way as I turned to regard the mural once more.
“You’re right,” I admitted. “In my experience, the entry stanzas don’t necessarily correlate to the Dungeon’s expression,” I said, confirming her words.
To be fair, though, my sample size was currently a grand total of one.
Quarrel snapped at the other three regardless, taking my admission as proof of the Priest’s own truth.
“See? Meaningless,” she reiterated. “No point in worrying about it. Let’s just get going. We’re wasting time.”
“I still think it might be dragons,” Rover maintained, petulantly. “After all, the mural looks like a dragon, and it literally says ‘dragon–’”
“Wrong.”
A sixth voice spoke for the first time since our arrival in the north. Our eyes all locked on Vox, who continued in his syrupy drawl.
“The stanza,” the dapper man intoned precisely, “does not say ‘dragon.’”
“It says, ‘DRAGON.’”
Vox explained, a small smile dancing across his lips. “In all capital letters,” he added.
“Oh, please. What’s the difference?” Quarrel snorted.
Vox paced slowly towards the mural, closing his golden eyes as he laid a palm gently across its surface.
“Words,” the Master uttered softly, caressing the cold steel, “have great meaning.”
“Perhaps,” he said, drawing his hand back, stroking his chin thoughtfully, “those stanzas you assumed purposeless, simply concealed intent you lacked the requisite cognitive resources to divine.”
Quarrel frowned, confused, not quite sure if she’d been insulted. Vox rapped his knuckles twice upon the door, and hummed. Then he shrugged.
“No matter. We’ll find out soon enough.”
He smiled slightly, bowing in Thaum’s direction.
“Shall we, then, Master?”
Thaum, to her credit, didn’t dignify his sarcasm. She nodded, strode up to the doors, and pushed them open wide, revealing the Dungeon’s first room.