The next day dawned grim and grey. Despite the chill wind keening through the bridge, it remained veiled in the same shroud of heavy fog that had enveloped it the day before. It had stopped raining at some stage during the night, though that meant little to Hulbard as he gathered his things. None of them had slept well after the attack the previous night and it showed in every one of them; from Shankhill’s sullen silence to Quintus’ grumbled comments about his aching knees. Everyone seemed twitchy, furtive, irritated and after a night of troubled, restless sleep, Hulbard felt fit to murder someone.
Exhausted though he was from their trek through the wilds of Volyumenth, he hadn’t been able to get comfortable enough to doze for longer than a few minutes between the attack from those beasts and the watery dawn. The rain had dripped ceaselessly from the open hatchway in the roof of the tower, spitting and hissing where it landed on their meagre campfire while the whistling wind rose and fell. Trastgor’s heavy plod had made him start every time he’d traipsed past the open doorway, reaching for his weapons with aching arms.
Despite his weary muscles, though, he still led the way into the sporadic gusts of wind. It clawed against his armour, whipped his dreads around his face and left him chilled to the bone, making it hard for him to appreciate the lack of rain. It also made conversation such an inconvenience that if anyone had been in the mood to talk, Hulbard doubted they would have bothered.
He marched on, deaf to everything beyond his rattling footsteps but it wasn’t long before even that sound began to grate on his raw nerves. The bridge stretched away into mist ahead, to either side and behind, seemingly endless and making him feel trapped, bound to that stretch of stone.
He paused beneath their second gatehouse of the day to take a long swig from his canteen when he heard Quintus muttering to Skye. The sound prickled at his nerves but he ignored it. Shankhill, though, showed no such inclination.
“Have anything worth sharing with the rest of us?” he asked the Sorcerer, tone dripping with irritation.
“The bridge,” Quintus told him, nodding ahead, “Is it just me or is it beginning to slope downwards?”
Looking ahead, it took Hulbard a long moment before he realised the old man was right; it was extremely subtle, but the stone underfoot had begun to curve away from them. Shankhill hummed in response but they all exchanged a round of nervous glances, standing there under that archway. Hulbard stuffed his canteen back into his pack and shook his head, trying desperately to gather his fragmented thoughts.
They passed beneath another gateway before the bridge began to descend more sharply ahead of them, its curve now clearly visible to the naked eye. Another five minutes of trekking brought them to a deeper, larger shape looming ahead of them, easily twice as tall as anything they’d previously seen on the bridge. At first, it was impossible to distinguish anything of the structure through the wreathing mist other than the fact that it was there but as they drew closer, Hulbard raked it with his narrowed eyes.
Clattering with every step, he watched it solidify into something that looked more like a fortress than anything else they’d seen so far. It not only spanned the bridge but spread beyond it, mounted on a reinforced stone pillar trailing away into the fog far below. It was a squat, square and angular building with a set of iron studded doors standing almost twice as tall as Hulbard and partly ajar. The wood was crawling with moss, half rotted to mulch in places. Even in that grim place, it was an imposing sight of harsh lines against the grey fog.
He didn’t need to look to Quintus for confirmation; this was it, the end of the bridge and their destination. So close to where they’d set up camp the previous night that it galled him. Soon, they would know whether their journey had been worth a damn or whether they’d be returning the way they came with nothing to show for their time and effort beyond aching muscles.
Hulbard’s heart began to race with mounting excitement and apprehension as he approached that opening and he licked his lips, kept his twitching hands away from his weapons with difficulty. He knew there would be nothing to fight in that place but there was something about it that set his skin crawling. The weight of centuries hung about that entire place, clung to every stone. Moving cautiously, his senses straining, Hulbard edged through that opening.
Within, everything was as utterly disappointing as it was still and silent. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but the large hall before him now was remarkably unimpressive. Lances of dull grey light filtered through rectangular windows set high into each wall, illuminating an empty archway of that strange blue stone standing at the heart of the chamber. A slab of the same material stood in front of it, where something glinted in the gloom, but he forced his gaze to move on from that, to continue inspecting his surroundings. Everything else that there could ever had been in that chamber had long ago rotted away to dust.
Carefully, he edged into the hall, looking this way and that, a hand perched on the pommel of his coiled flail. The others came behind him, moving in near reverent silence, just as slow and wary as he was without knowing why. The thick walls blocked out the elements, offering some measure of respite against the raking wind.
Once he was sure the hall was empty, Hulbard returned his eyes to its centrepiece; the archway and the altar set before it. It was a block of blue stone perhaps four feet in height and of an irregularly, vaguely rectangular shape. The larger, shadowy archway looming behind it was much the same, all jagged curves and jutting angles.
As he drew closer to the altar, he saw that its light blue surface was flecked with splashes of white veins. It had been shaped to include a crescent of its own, sweeping crookedly over the chunk of stone, and it was from this that a small, brass bell hung. Quintus must have seen it at almost the same time, because he snapped a command in a voice that echoed around the hall.
“Nobody touch it!”
“Awh” Shankhill muttered sourly, “And here I was about to play a merry tune on it”.
“Don’t be a Valki,” Trastgor snorted, “This is an altar raised by Sorcerer’s. Clearly, you need to start waving your hands in the air and reciting gibberish before anything can happen”.
Hulbard saw Quintus’ face twitch, thought the Sorcerer might let that comment go for once considering the circumstances and was mildly disappointed when he didn’t.
“It’s a pity it wasn’t built by your people or all we’d have to do is sacrifice a few goats over it.” he muttered and the comment got a bark of laughter from Shankhill.
Despite their comments, though, Quintus’ eyes had remained riveted to the bell, unblinking.
“Skye?”
“I feel it.” she told him quickly.
“That altar is our key” Quintus said, moving towards it slowly, his staff tapping against the floor with every step, “And this entire building is the lock. That archway is our portal into Dalághast”.
“As the wise master of all things arcane decrees” Shankhill grumbled sarcastically, running a hand through his damp hair, “How do we get it to work?”
“I’m not sure.” Quintus told them as he reached the altar and this time, they fell in around the Sorcerer, letting him take the lead.
Hulbard watched Quintus’ steel grey eyes roam over the block of blue stone, lift to settle on the bell for a long moment and then rise higher to the archway behind it, scowling thoughtfully as he considered every detail in turn. In the silence of that gloom shrouded hall, Hulbard shifted nervously and looked over his shoulder. Trastgor was peering around them with narrowed eyes, looking just as ill at ease as he felt. Knox caught his eye, shrugged and Hulbard half heartedly returned the gesture, unsure of what to say or do.
He turned back to Quintus as the old man gingerly lifted a hand, reached out and flicked the brass bell. The sound that emerged from it was sweetest, purest ‘clink’ he’d ever heard, like the ring of a hammer against a fresh forged blade. Yet still it pricked at the edge of his hearing, seemed to come to him from some far off place, growing and growing until it hummed through his eardrums, until it filled the hall instead of echoing around it. Hulbard took an instinctive step backwards, as if distance might help, and was about to claps his hands over his ears when the note died away.
It was quickly replaced with another sound though; a soft but steadily rising hum. Movement drew his eye to the jagged portal and he saw the air within its edges beginning to shimmer as if in a heat wave. The air crackled with barely restrained power and he caught a whiff of something sulphurous and acidic hanging in the air, reminding him of a thunderstorm about to break. That shimmering veil thickened and began to coalesce into a slowly turning pattern, suspended in the air. The forces at work made the air in the chamber rumble until Hulbard could feel it in his bones.
“What’s happening?” Shankhill asked, voice rising above the whirring hum.
His words were followed by a loud ‘snap!’ and an explosive gust of wind billowed outwards from the archway. Hulbard threw up an arm as a blaze of white light lit up the chamber and distantly heard the rasp of blades being drawn. When he looked at the archway again, a misty white orb hung at its heart, swirling and spinning slowly, humming with power as the air around it wavered madly. He took another, measured step backwards, putting the altar between him and the arch, heart thundering in his ears as he slowed his breathing.
The entire floor of the fortress suddenly dropped out from under them, falling a foot before jerking to a violent halt and bearing him to his knees. He looked up in time to see the walls lifting on all sides, his mind swimming at the sight. Grey light flooded into the chamber and a gust of wind tore at his legs. It took him a second to realise that it wasn’t the fortress that was rising. The floor was descending.
It moved at a slow, measured pace, passing through where the support pillar should have been. Pushing himself back upright, Hulbard gaped at the space opening on all sides, watching with mounting horror and awe in equal measure. The wind ripped at his cloak, scoured his armour as the platform was enveloped in a thick bank of fog. His eyes snapped to Quintus, clasping his staff in hand with his robes billowing around his slender frame, but the old man looked just as surprised as Hulbard felt.
“What in Herena’s name is going on?” the warrior snarled as the platform descended into open space, its edges becoming indistinct in the veil of vapour.
“It’s some kind of transport” Quintus called over the howling wind, “I thought the archway would act as a portal! Instead, it seems to be some sort of power source”.
The fortress was already lost to view overhead, leaving them adrift in a sea of dense, swirling mist, descending rapidly into the unknown. Warily eyeing the hazy edge of the flagstones, Hulbard joined the others clustered around the altar, heart in his throat and thumping in his ears. The platform suddenly fell free from the clinging fog and into empty space, surrounded on all sides by rolling banks of wispy white clouds in place of the dull, lead grey mist they’d left behind. A lance of sunlight, pure and brilliant, painted the roiling shapes in radiant gold for a long second before they plunged back into a blanket of snowy white vapour and it swallowed them whole.
“What the fuck?” Knox yelled, “We’re at the bottom of a canyon. Where did that sunlight come from?”
Quintus’ deep, baritone laugh reached them over the wind.
“We’re not going to the bottom of a canyon,” he called with a wild smile, eyes fever bright with excitement, “The sun shines in Dalághast!”
“You’re sure?” Knox snapped back.
“As sure as I can be.” the Sorcerer replied, still beaming.
“Then we’re through this barrier you keep mentioning?” Shankhill asked.
“I think we’ll know the answer to that very soon” Quintus told them.
Hulbard began to feel queasy as the platform continued its merciless descent. The clouds swallowed them and swirled in their wake as their surroundings transformed from a veil of mere mist to a single, great vista of splaying, rolling white vapour for as far as the eye could see in every direction. He drew in a deep breath to steady her churning gut and suddenly stiffened as he realised the air tasted cleaner somehow. The cloying, damp rot he’d been breathing since they first set foot on that grey bridge was gone, replaced by fresh, cool air instead. He saw Knox tilt his head back and sniff the wind, his brows furrowing in confusion.
“I smell salt” he said in answer to Hulbard’s raised eyebrow, “It reminds me of the sea”.
Without warning, the platform suddenly fell through the cloud cover and into open space. Hulbard threw up a hand to shield his eyes against the sudden glare of sunlight and squinted up across the underside of a rolling sea of white clouds. They formed a carpet above them now, rolling away into the distance on all sides. This time, Hulbard’s heartbeat quickened with excitement as he tentatively plodded towards the edge of the platform. Taking care not to get too close to it, he leaned forward and peered down past the grey flagstones, only vaguely aware of the others crowding around at his back. The sight beneath them now made his breath catch in his throat.
A cityscape unlike any other he’d ever seen sprawled far below the descending platform. Towers of alabaster stone spun into the air, looming over neatly ordered buildings in a multitude of different shapes and sizes. Domes of glittering glass caught the sunlight below, surrounded by a carpet of flat, tiered rooftops that reminded him of fields he’d once seen in the far west. Elsewhere, other roofs were sloped and sheathed in tiles of every colour imaginable and, focusing his gaze past them, Hulbard picked out pathways, impossibly slender and graceful, winding their way between the buildings.
Between them though, the roadways were hazy and indistinct. Hulbard stared at them for a long moment before realisation dawned; they were filled with water. Seawater, if Knox’ nose was to be believed. With that thought in mind, Hulbard scanned the horizon and, on three sides, the city stretched away into the distance as far as the eye could see. To the east, though, he saw the buildings fall away into a deeper stretch of water glittering in the sunlight. To the North, though, they thickened and coalesced around a dark shadow in the far distance.
“Quintus” he called, “Is it supposed to be flooded down there?”
“It must be the docks” the Sorcerer said, eyes wide in awe as he looked down upon the city, “They were reportedly flooded towards the end of Dalághast. It’s mentioned several times in surviving manuscripts as the reason their authors fled this place. Don’t worry though, the water is confined to this part of the city. The rest should be bone dry”.
Lifting his eyes, his tightly braided beard and robed billowing around his slender frame, Quintus stared to the north and pointed with his bladed staff towards the indistinct, dark shape on the horizon Hulbard had already spotted.
“That must be the Dominaris Keep” he said, “The first building of Dalághast to be raised and home to the royal bloodline. If our Star is anywhere, it will be there”.
“Then that’s where we’re going” Hulbard nodded, eyes fixed on the blot scarcely visible in the immense distance.
The city sprawled below, separating them from their destination, impossibly vast and ancient. It utterly dwarfed anything he’d ever imagined, outshining every ruin they’d ever visited in both scope and design. Here and there, certain buildings in the distance caught his eye; from a vast archway to a tower rising higher than any of its brethren, spearing the sky itself. Great structures dotted the landscape, rising silent and still above the ruined stone. Closer now, he began to see spots of brighter colour amongst all that stone where plant life had managed to take hold and flourish.
No modern city even came close to rivalling it in the same ways and the realisation left Hulbard feeling suddenly very small again. The sight of the city filled him with a strange sense of cold isolation that seemed to seep into his very bones. Had such a place ever been alive? How many thousands of people had lived in the now empty and flooded streets beneath them?
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His companions were silent, sharing uneasy glances or gaping at their surroundings. For once, even Shankhill seemed to have nothing to say, so they said nothing at all as the platform fell through the air at a graceful pace, descending from the clouds themselves.
“Hul,” Knox’ voice came in his ear and he looked to the grim hunter. “How long do you reckon we’ve been on this platform?”
“About twenty minutes or so” the warrior replied, “Why?”
“Because judging from where the sun is sitting...” Knox replied slowly, licking his teeth, “I’d saw we lost two hours. Maybe three?”
“Meaningless.” Quintus scoffed, waving a hand dismissively, “We are standing above a city no one has occupied for centuries and we had to pass through a magical veil just to get here. Losing an hour or three seems like a small price to pay for the privilege”.
“Whatever you say” Knox drawled.
“Back to the more pressing concern of our prize, though” Shankhill cut in, “You’re sure that’s where this Star will be? In that blot on the horizon?”
He gestured grandly towards it, at the same time Hulbard noticed that their platform had drawn level with the highest spires of far off towers. They were drawing closer and closer to the city below with every passing second.
“Modestly sure” Quintus answered with an irritated glance at the smaller man.
“Wait...” Shankhill’s eyes narrowed, “Modestly sure? Are you telling us that you don’t know, for a fact, where this gemstone is? The one that is worth our weight in gold?”
“I cannot possibly know what no one else does” Quintus snapped, “I never claimed to know where it was, did I? I’ve made an educated guess that it still resides with Magnus, the last King of Dalághast, and that is where he would have ruled from right up until this city disappeared off the face of the world”.
“And where it should still be” Knox surmised blandly.
“If my guess is right, yes” Quintus replied.
“And if it isn’t?” Shankhill threw up his hands in exasperation, “We...what, spend years searching every building of this place in the hope we find something we might not even know on sight? I hate to tell you this, Quintus, but you don’t have many of them left”.
“Enough” the Sorcerer snarled, “Unless you have a better suggestion?”
“My suggestion was to recruit a man who knew about these sorts of things” Shankhill prattled on, “And now, he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. What if Magnus got axed off and his people stole the Star?”
“Hey!” Skye hissed at them, peering straight down over the edge of their platform, “Where is this thing supposed to land?”
Hulbard did the same, trying his best to judge their descent from where he stood but it was nearly impossible to divine anything from where he stood. His eyes roamed over the water lapping at the stonework below, now a lot closer than the last time he’d looked. He watched the currents flow between the buildings, sweeping down alleyways and weaving between the columns of proud halls surmounted by stone statues. He began to see more of them now as they drew closer, standing sentinel over the flooded streets below, but he also started to see signs of the city’s age; broken tiles on rooftops opening up to darkness within, chipped stonework here and there where the weather had done its worse, every window standing gaping and empty. With each new detail that he saw, Hulbard felt that sense of foreboding increase until it sat in his chest like a heavy, empty weight.
Shaking his head as if that could dispel the feeling, Hulbard scanned the nearest buildings until his gaze settled on the roof of a building rising above the clutching waves, still some fifty paces below and covered in a carpet of crimson tiles. The platform looked like it would pass close to the rooftop, close enough for an idea to take root.
“Alright” he said firmly, “Gather ‘round. That building there with the red tiles, everyone see it? We’re going to be jumping to it”.
There was a chorus of voices, some protesting, others assenting, and he let them wash over him, pushed them from his mind as he focused on the task at hand. He was vaguely aware of them gathering closer, craning their necks to look at the building he’d chosen. He took a deep breath, willed his thundering heart to slow down even though he knew it was useless, and forced himself to stare at nothing else except the distance between the platform and the rooftop.
Details began to resolve themselves on all sides as they drew closer, each and every one of them vying for his attention; from the vivid, emerald green of a broad leafed plant growing between two tiles to the layered and stunningly patterned stones worked into other buildings to either side. The sound of rushing water reached them and, gulping, Hulbard took a measured step to one side, letting Trastgor take the lead by unspoken consent. The Kurgal moved to the edge of the flagstones, patted down his weapons and pouches to make sure they were all secured fitted in place before heaving a throaty sigh.
Trastgor slid into a compact crouch and flung himself into the air without hesitation. He dropped almost ten feet to slam into the tiles with a splintering crunch, shattering several of them to shards. Shankhill’s grating tone came to Hulbard and his hand slapped down on the smaller man’s shoulder, caught a fistful of his shirt.
“Wha-wait!” he squawked, but Hulbard flung him across the divide and straight into Trastgor’s waiting arms.
Knox landed next to them and smoothly slid to one side, making room for Semekt to follow. The Dramaskian coiled in upon himself and sprang forward, landing with a wet slap of scales against sun baked tiles. Skye followed with breathless eagerness, her robes billowing around her slender frame as she flew through the air. She landed, slipped and yelped as Knox’ arm swept around her waist, hauled her to safety. Quintus clapped him on the shoulder before going next, easily clearing the gap with surprising speed and agility for a man of his age.
With the edge of the building approaching fast, Hulbard took a deep breath. Taking a running start, desperately trying to ignore the thought of what waited for him if anything went wrong, he threw himself into open space. He landed on the tiles in a compact crouch with a horrendous crack as they shattered under his armoured bulk. Hulbard felt the beams under them bow and flex under his weight as he stood back up and whirled towards the platform just as it fell from view. He turned back towards the others as Skye threw back her head and laughed brightly.
Knox, aware that he still had an arm around her slender waist, quickly withdrew it and stepped backwards with an uncomfortable cough.
“Woo!” she called, “We need to do that more often! What a rush”.
Despite himself, Hulbard found himself smiling right along with her and he shook his head as her infectious relief spread through the rest of them. They sighed, panted breathlessly, grinned like fools, ran hands through hair or checked equipment. All except Semekt, of course, who watched it all silently and unblinking. Setting his hands on his hips, the armoured warrior turned to survey their surroundings.
Buildings rose all around them, a shock of ancient architecture in a wash of harmonious colours, half crumbling but dominating all at once. The sound of rushing water surrounded them as the street below swirled with competing currents, eating away at the stonework as it had done for centuries now past without making much of a mark. His eyes raked over the nearest bridge of pristine white stone, connecting the building they’d landed on with a tower emerging from the corner of a neighbouring building. It spanned a narrow street separating them, flanked by a rail of stone moulded into a semblance of writhing vines.
It led to an empty archway in the side of the tower and his eyes rose higher to see that it led to a flat, open rooftop another twenty feet higher than where they stood now. This, too, was surrounded by a stone railing, chipped and cracked with age, while four slender pillars rose from its corners to support the fragments of an arched canopy. Seemed to him like as good a place to start as any.
“Alright” he said, shrugging his shoulders to loosen the straps of his backpack, “Enough standing around, let’s get going”.
Hulbard led the way across the slender bridge and up a winding flight of weather worn steps with Quintus nipping at his heels and the others shuffling along behind. The sound of their movements echoed up and down the narrow staircase within the tower, from Hulbard’s plodding thread to the clattering of their packs and weapons, making him glad no one was left alive in that place to hear them. When they emerged onto the rooftop a moment later and he drew in a deep breath of fresh air, he was struck by almost overpowering taste of the salty, sea air on his tongue.
They gathered at the rail to stare out at the flooded city for a long, long moment in awed silence.
“I still can’t believe we’ve really made it” Quintus’ voice was soft and reverent, “The tomes I read spoke of this place before it was flooded. They spoke of merchants and traders lounging on these rooftops in the midday heat beneath canopies of silk and satin, eating fine food and drinking finer wine. The roadways below would be thronged with the masses, but they sat up here, each a lord of his own dominion”.
“It lives up to your expectations then?” Hulbard ventured when silence fell and no one else seemed inclined to say much.
“I’m not sure I ever expected to even breach the veil” the Sorcerer told him, “But to be one of the first people to set foot in Dalághast since it disappeared? You have no idea how much this will mean to the world. To future generations. We could learn so much here”.
“And how....” Knox mused slowly, “Are we supposed to get back to share our discovery with the rest of the world?”
“We will worry about that when the time comes” Quintus said dismissively, “I’ll think of something”.
“You better.” Shankhill told him, “Or it won’t matter what we find down here”.
Finding a route through the upper floors of the flooded city proved surprisingly easy. Pathways of multi-hued stone wound from building to building in picturesque patterns, making it easy for them to pass from one building to the next. There were so many of them that Hulbard was only rarely forced to cross more slate clad rooftops, but when he did, he moved with extreme caution considering the weight of his armour.
Even after the bridge they’d left behind, the ruins of Dalághast were a strange place to traverse. Its grand silence left him feeling uneasy and awed all at once, filling him with a potent mixture of both dread and excitement as he picked his way across its carcass. The city seemed to roll with an uneven landscape, rising and falling erratically so that in many places, the depths below seemed endless. In others, if Hulbard stared long enough and the water was still, he could make out the distinct shapes beneath its surface that looked like the flagstones of a roadway. In other places, the topmost halves of statues broke through the flood, though it was hard to see what they might once have been. It didn’t take Quintus long to discover two things about the water below; that it was, in fact, salt water from the sea and that there was little in the way of a tide in that still place.
After Volyumenth’s miserable weather, the sun overhead was scorching where it broke through the wispy white clouds, though this was balanced against a chill breeze whispering through the ancient stone to cool his sweat soaked skin. Below, the sound of gushing water surrounded them, leaving little room for anything else to be heard over it. Despite this, Quintus spoke nearly none stop, gesturing this way and that with his staff as he went, speaking mostly to Skye though Hulbard tried to catch most of what he said out of curiosity.
Mostly, he spoke of how the ways their surroundings matched the tomes he’d read long ago, but he also talked about the statues, the stone, architecture and just about anything else they passed as well. He’d never seen Quintus so excited before and for once, it seemed like his student was hanging on his every word.
They’d been on the move for almost an hour and were just crossing a broad street when he felt a hand tap his pauldron. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw Knox gestured towards the water below and followed his cold gaze, peering down over the unprotected edge of emerald green stone. Below, the water was crystal clear and utterly still, shimmering a few feet above a raised plaza. As he stared, Hulbard caught a glimpse of movement and, frowning now, narrowed his eyes until the shadowy shapes resolved themselves into fish swimming languidly just beneath the surface. Their scales glimmered all the colours of the rainbow in the lancing sunlight as they lazily moved to and fro.
They were more colourful than any fish the warrior had ever seen dragged from the sea and, despite his travels, Hulbard couldn’t place the large, flat bellied species drifting through the plaza below them now.
“If all else fails, at least we won’t go hungry” the hunter commented.
“Finally!” Shankhill called from behind the hunter, “Signs of life! I was beginning to think we were the only living things down here besides the damned plants”.
And there, Hulbard realised with a start, was another reason he’d felt so uneasy without ever realising it; the utter lack of life about the ruins. There were none of the usual insects to be found in Dalághast that he’d always seen in past explorations. No small animals skittering across the stone or, most prominent of all, birds soaring through the sky overhead. The air was unnaturally silent without their song.
There wasn’t even any signs of their droppings on the pristine stone. Instead, all they’d passed so far were plants that had overgrown their pots and sprawled across the rooftops, taking hold wherever they could find purchase.
“I’m personally not in favour of eating anything out of this miserable place” Shankhill continued, “But I’m not sure I’d ever be able to pass up the bragging right of having tried a fish from fabled Dalághast”.
“I’m sure bar wenches across the land will be tripping over themselves to marry you after mentioning that little fact” Hulbard told him wryly.
They covered a lot of ground throughout the day but in a place like Dalághast, that didn’t necessarily mean they’d travelled very far at all. Not when their path through the ruins was serpentine just to avoid the deeper stretches of water where the buildings had been submerged. They were forced on several occasions to retrace their steps and seek alternate routes through the ancient, silent buildings, each detour taking more time than Hulbard would have liked.
By the time the sun was slinking towards the horizon, they seemed no closer to the edge of that sunken place. Ahead, their route wound on through the rooftops, arching gracefully between towers and tile shod halls. It swept east while a deeper stretch of water blocked their way directly north. All around them, the shadows were lengthening, sheathing the gaping doorways they passed in eerie gloom. Hulbard was so preoccupied with peering into them that he almost didn’t notice Skye pausing ahead of him and nearly barrelled her over.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing towards the west.
Shuffling closer to her on the narrow bridge, he followed her gaze until he spotted a large, dark mass bathed in the shadow of a nearby tower and half hidden by it as well. It seemed to be floating on the surface of the water, at the very edge of where the buildings dropped away into its depths. From where he stood, no matter how he craned his neck, Hulbard could make nothing definite of the shape.
“Huh” he grunted uncertainly. “There’s something floating down there”.
“I know” Skye rolled her eyes, “That’s why I pointed it out”.
“Let’s take a look” Quintus decided from the front of their column and nobody seemed inclined to argue against the idea.
The bridge they’d been following met another tower ahead and wound into steps spiralling around its exterior, leading both up and down. He’d never seen that particular feat of architecture anywhere else but this was the sixth or seventh example of it they’d passed in already that day. A slender walkway broke away from it at a lower point, curved around the corner of a large building and shot straight to the tower Skye’s discovery rested beneath. Again, the staircase had been wound around the exterior of the towering monolith of jet black stone and, with each revolution down its length, the object of their curiosity became clearer and clearer.
They descended to where the water lapped at the edges of the dark stone, where Quintus paused with a thoughtful frown. Hulbard loomed at his shoulder, with the others gathering behind. The shape was scarcely fifty paces distant and, at that range, there was no mistaking what it was.
The whale turned with ponderous slowness in the deep water, most of its bulk lost beneath the surface. It floated between the spires of shorter towers and the crenulations of smaller buildings, deathly still. Just as well, he couldn’t help thinking, considering the fact that its flank had been pierced with several spears, each standing almost as tall as Hulbard himself and slender as a whip. He’d seen them harpooned and dragged from the oceans of distant K’Varinmoor, to be stripped of meat, fat and bone, but this one was mercifully intact.
“What a waste of hide,” Shankhill quipped from higher up the staircase, “It would have made for a fine pair of shoes.
“What do you make of this?” Knox’ voice was deathly soft.
“I don’t know” Hulbard said, but his eyes were already scanning their surroundings.
“No signs of feeding,” Trastgor pointed out, “No marks from scavengers. It was not killed for its meat and nothing has touched it since. That is very, very strange”.
“Perhaps we had best find a place to bed down for the night” Quintus suggested quietly.
“Somewhere close” Knox hummed.
With the sunlight dying all around them, they were quick to find a spacious room at the top of a nearby tower, the jade stone glimmering in the golden rays blanketing Dalághast. It stood at the corner of a broad, flat roofed building and soared into the sky overhead, making it nearly impossible to miss. With only one entrance, Hulbard found it ideal in light of what they’d just discovered. A small stone balcony stood opposite the gaping doorway, set to overlook a broad street below that once must have overflowed with foot traffic instead of seawater.
It was a large room and though the stone floor was cold and hard, he’d often slept on worse. Knox was quick to unload some of his kindling near the balcony and strike a fire while they all unburdened themselves of their equipment. Hulbard dropped his pack to the floor and rolled his aching shoulders to loosen them after the days travel before craning his neck from side to side until his neck cracked. Only once the others were settling in and Trastgor had moved to the door to assume first watch, did Hulbard start stripping off his armour.
Knox helped him with some of the harder to reach buckles and, before long, it was resting in a neat pile next to his gear, leaving him in his sweat stained, linen clothing and leather vest. Adjusting his weapons to ensure their handles were free of anything that could tangle them and within easy reach, Hulbard slumped down with his back against the wall and heaved a sigh. The arrangement was a long ingrained habit, more than a new one born out of a suspicion he would have need of them soon, but it had never hurt in the past to have them at the ready. In fact, the habit had saved his life on several occasions in the past.
Sitting in that chamber with the crackling fire sending their shadows dancing across the walls, Hulbard tried to gather and order his thoughts, to make some sense of everything that had happened over the last two days. The problem was that none of it made any sense to him, from the impossibly deep and broad gorge to the floating platform that had lowered them into that place. He’d been a part of some wild adventures in the past but nothing that even came close to where he sat now and it was making him nervous. The surreal stillness of the city was a new experience for him, alongside the thoughts they brought to the surface in his own mind.
None of it made sense but then again, he reminded himself forcefully, none of it really mattered. They were where they were, regardless of how they’d gotten there, and their goal was clear. Nothing else mattered and, just then, he was too tired to give the situation much more thought than that. Instead, he let himself focus on the scent of food wafting to him on the breeze. Knox cooked a simple meal of steamed potatoes, carrots and lamb, but it was welcome after their trek through the ruined city.
They ate in silence, the weight of their travels hanging heavy over everyone with the exception of Quintus. After their meal, Skye made him his customary cup of tea and they both retired to the rooftop below, likely to inspect the night sky as he’d often done in the past. Spreading his cloak on the ground, Hulbard sprawled across it and propped his head up on his backpack, blearily blinking past the flickering flames to the night sky beyond the balcony. He didn’t like the idea of their only Sorcerer’s exposing themselves when a whale had been harpooned nearby, but just then, he hadn’t the strength to pay the discomfort much heed. Instead, he cracked a laborious yawn and closed his eyes as the stars began to blink into existence far overhead.