Magic, it was explained to Teryl, was divided into several distinct categories. While it was often easy to learn one or perhaps two different disciplines, it was nearly impossible to learn them all. While someone might be good at attack magics, things like fortification magic might be impossible for them. Healing magic was its own unique field, and if you were to learn that one, you would be incapable of learning others. Her teachers considered it a tradeoff, that none could grow too powerful.
From time to time Teryl considered her teachers to be wrong. Magic was magic. It didn’t seem to feel any different when strengthening her sword or when she was casting a fireball, after all. However, her teacher had more than a century’s experience with using magic, so clearly what he was teaching was fundamentally correct.
The magic in this land was warped, twisted, and affected the mind in a way she wasn’t familiar with. It was impossible for her to consider whether or not she was caught in its web, either. Had it affected her? She wasn’t sure, and didn’t know how to check, either. It was easy to see that it had affected her comrades, however. Snarls of magical power tangled around them like threads. Her new commander, the gigantic human known as Daveth seemed so tangled up in it it seemed a miracle he was even walking.
That was something she needed to consider, too. It seemed as though her real commander, Malacath, had decided to join forces with the Seventh Seal, a band of mostly human mercenaries. She wasn’t certain how she felt about that. There were too many questions. Was Daveth her commander, or was it still Malacath? Did Malacath give up his rank? If so, why?
*****
Malacath had gathered his men together while weird lightning had flickered in the sky and the portal to the Obsidian Palace gaped open, a tear in the fabric of the real. Things capered in the shadows, and the trees wept blood and begged for salvation.
“Ours is to make a heavy burden: Do we allow this madness to continue? Do we stand against it? Or... do we flee, in hopes of escaping it?”
Malacath had allowed everyone to make their own choices. He didn’t pressure them, he didn’t encourage them, he gave each of them the time and space to think, to speak, and to be heard.
Some chose to side with Malachi, the Mad King. Those he allowed to leave, and bade them well in their choice. Some chose to fight, and again, he wished them well in their struggle. When it came time to address those who decided on fleeing, he asked- asked! to be considered one of their number. The world was vast, he said. It was possible to escape Therannia and strike out for new lands, lands filled with the promise of hope. They would rededicate themselves to a new purpose, to find that hope, encircle it, protect it, and make that hope their own.
They marched north from Therannia. Most looked back. Malacath never did.
*****
The exodus was an eye-opening experience for Teryl. The world was so much bigger than she had expected, the people so strange.
In Therannia, people wore clothing befitting their position. You could look at a crowd and know which of them were bakers, or woodcarvers, or smiths or healers, because each of them had a distinct form of dress. In Human lands, people dressed how they chose!
Baffling and confusing was just the beginning. In Therannia, they had cultivated and sculpted the land, and used massive magical towers to regulate the weather to be favorable. Outside the country, mountains arbitrarily thrust themselves from the ground, valleys dipped, plains were covered in rolling hills. The weather was strange and unpredictable.
The Seventh Seal wasn’t their first encounter with humans, of course, but it was the most eye-opening. The Seventh Seal was an army that fought without magic. They fought for money. They had principles, but their principles seemed contradictory and vague. Even more strange, they weren’t even from this land! They’d come here to do a job! From the maps she’d seen, Therannia was but a small country on a larger continent known as Rothgar. Across a massive sea was another continent, Hesperia. There were other continents, too!
“Excuse me Commander, I have a question.” Teryl began as they struggled down the long tunnel.
“A question demands an answer.” Daveth retorted cryptically. “I’m not so good with demands right now, but ask.”
She had no idea what to make of that. “Just how many people would you say live in Hesperia?” She asked curiously.
Daveth and Morden immediately snorted, and each tried to disguise it as a coughing fit. Did they not know? In Therannia, a yearly census took place of births and deaths.
“I’ve got no fuckin’ clue.” Daveth finally replied. Morden a noise of agreement.
“You don’t know how many people are in your own country?” She asked curiously.
“Well, we don’t really owe ...allegiance to any country.” Morden explained. “Besides, there’s several countries in Hesperia, each with their own people.”
Teryl nodded. She expected as much, even though she didn’t understand it. It was important that she learn, however.
After they traveled some more, Daveth called a halt, and they ate an impromptu lunch, cheese, meat, and bread rolled together. Daveth occasionally tucked something crunchy in his mouth as he ate.
“What is that?” She asked curiously.
“It’s a pickle. Nobody likes them as much as I do.” Daveth confided. He handed over a half-bitten one and she took it gingerly in her hand. It had a sharp, pungent odor. She bit into it, it was both salty and unbelievably sour.
She made a face and pushed it back to him. “I don’t think I like them either.”
He glanced at Morden, shrugged, and popped the rest into his mouth. “More for me.”
After they finished eating, Daveth eyed Morden and Teryl.
“So... how much further do we have to go?” He asked. “I haven’t heard anything for a while.”
Morden listened for a moment, and then shook his head. “Can’t hear anything. Should we backtrack, or keep going?”
Teryl tossed a handful of sparkling material in the air. “The air is free-flowing, so it has to come out somewhere.” The sparkling material became tiny motes of light that swarmed, insect-like, up the tunnel.
“Can that tell how much further we have to go?” Daveth asked.
“Shush. I’m concentrating.” Teryl admonished him, and then after a few minutes she smiled. “We don’t have much further to go. At least about ten minutes more at our current pace.”
She looked to Daveth, who shrugged and glanced at Morden, who shrugged and nodded.
“We’ll do it.”
Daveth eyed Teryl. “When we leave the tunnel, I’ll clear left, Morden will clear right. You hang back in case shit gets real. Slow count of fifteen, okay?”
It suddenly occurred to Teryl that while their exploration had seemed almost like a casual outing, Daveth and Morden had been keeping a watchful eye out on their surroundings. Nothing in her long experience in the Therannian army had prepared her for this. She’d been trained to fight in groups, to fight as part of a line, but exploring unknown ruins? Combat underground? She suddenly felt like she was over her head.
She checked her sword’s draw, and the two long daggers at her hip. She would be as ready as she could be.
Daveth stepped out of the tunnel and immediately moved to the left, with Morden slithering out behind him and immediately moving to the right. Teryl stepped out after a count of ten, earning her a raised eyebrow from Daveth, but he simply glanced around him with a frown.
“Huh. This was stupid.” He muttered.
“If we’d wanted to come here, all we had to do was go down the rope.” Morden agreed. Teryl glanced at both men, puzzled. Stretching out before them was a deep, shadowy gash in the earth that was hard to see the bottom.
“Now what do you think?” Morden asked. “Go back?”
Daveth shook his head. “Might as well check up on Aldric.” He moved around until he located the rope that had been used to drop into the crevasse, looped his arm around it a few times, and stepped off the ledge, letting gravity pull him down and the tension of the rope around his bracer to slow his descent.
“Man’s got a head filled with mush.” Morden muttered, and then copied Daveth. He eyed Teryl. “You coming?” he asked, and then stepped off the edge of the ledge. Teryl could hear the coarse whisper of the rope humming as they dropped.
“I think I should have stayed aboveground.” She muttered to nobody in particular, looped the rope around her forearm the way she’d seen Daveth and Morden do it, and awkwardly stepped off the ledge.
*****
Daveth dropped about twenty feet, then his feet hit the side of the gap. He kicked away from the wall and dropped about fifty more before his boots scrabbled on the side of the chasm. He kicked away again and dropped some more, letting the slow pendulum of his descent carry him down.
He could feel Morden’s movements on the rope; was the elf girl coming as well? He had no idea. It didn’t seem as though she was very alert when looking for threats; he should probably point that out sometime.
Suddenly he realized he could see again; light was coming up from the chasm, dim and flickering. As he descended, the light got brighter and he suddenly jerked to a stop in fear as the light illuminated something right in front of him.
It was a limb of some sort, but to say that it was a limb was an understatement. The tips of the claws on each of the fingers were large enough to gouge a hole in his chest big enough for Teryl to stick her head through. Each entire claw was bigger than he was tall. The palm itself was massive; Daveth’s room could have fit in it comfortably, with room for more.
He took long, ragged breaths as he tried to imagine a creature that would need limbs like that, something so mind-bogglingly huge that it could indifferently crush someone like him as indifferently as he would an insect.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t picture a creature that huge. It defied reason, defied his ability to put the pieces together in his head.
Surely it was dead, right?
He glanced at the wall; there were long gashes in the wall, as if the mighty talons had attempted to claw their way out.
When? How long ago?
Daveth immediately kicked away from the wall and let gravity take over. He wasn’t going to wait around to find out.
Daveth hit the ground hard enough to kick up sand, and he went with the impact like he’d been taught, giving with his knees, falling backwards to absorb the momentum, and then rolling to his feet, yanking out a sword from his pouch and glancing around, holding his light crystal high.
“Wellnow, here’s a face I didn't expect to see.” Aldric called out caustically. “The fuck’re you doing down here?”
Daveth eyed him, and then gave him a brief explanation.
“Decided to explore one of the buildings. The sewer let out here.” He paused for a moment, and then added, “Didn’t expect that to happen. Morden and one of the elves are behind me.”
He eyed Aldric carefully, bending down to look the other man in the eye.
“The fuck is down here?” He asked.
“You saw the claw.”
“Damn fuckin’ straight I saw the claw. The fuck is it?”
Aldric gave him a sheepish look and turned up his palms. “Nobody fuckin’ knows!” He crowed. “Personally, I say it’s a dragon, like in the legends. Yukiko says it’s a magical beast. She won’t say what type of beast, so... dragon.”
“Malacath?” Daveth asked.
“He’s got no fucking clue. I was sure he browned his trousers when he saw it, though.”
Morden hit the ground, his pale face even moreso than usual.
“Cap, Commander, that-”
Daveth nodded. “Yeah.”
“It’s dead, right?” Morden asked, and Aldric’s mouth worked.
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“Well, Yukiko says... it’s alive.”
“Then what are we doing here?” Daveth asked, baffled. “Mystery’s solved. There’s a fuckhuge thing here, and it’s fucking terrifying and huge.”
“You’re repeating yourself.” Aldric cut in dryly.
“No shit. Because it’s fucking huge. The fuck are we gonna do? We don’t have anything big enough to kill it. We can’t dig it out. Even if we did dig it out, what’s stopping it from just squishing us?”
“Daveth, calm down. We all had that reaction when we came down here.”
“Fucking tell me to calm down? It’s goddamn toenail is bigger than I am and you want me to calm the fuck down?”
Aldric stepped right up to Daveth. “Yes, Commander. Calm the fuck down. That’s a fucking order.”
Daveth gaped at the man and took a step back and sat down, rubbing his face with his hands.
Yukiko and Malacath appeared from around a pile of rubble.
“I heard shouting; is everything all right?” Yukiko called.
“We’ve got some rubberneckers from camp.” Aldric replied.
Yukiko glanced at Daveth and her eyes narrowed. “I see.” She moved over to where Daveth sat, and squatted near him.
“Your head hurts, doesn’t it?” She asked him, and he nodded.
She pulled out a slip of paper from her sleeve, and held it out to him. “Hold onto this and it should help.”
Daveth glanced at the slip of paper which appeared to be covered in ink scribbles.
“The fuck is that?” He asked, and she smiled. “A spell that’ll take the pain away a bit.”
He eyed her suspiciously, but took the paper slip from her.
He blinked a few times. “I thought you were fucking with me... but it doesn’t seem to hurt as much.”
There was a terrified scream from above them; Daveth rolled to his feet and vaulted over an unseen piece of rubble to catch the elf girl as she fell.
“Is everyone going to be coming down here?” Aldric complained angrily.
“Sorry Cap. I forgot to teach her how to use a rope.” Daveth replied. She glared up at him as he set her down.
“I know how to use a rope, human!” She spat at him.
He chuckled at her. “Sure, kid.”
Aldric frowned at them. “Anyone else going to be dropping by?”
Daveth frowned at the question. “I certainly hope not. I have Alysia and Lynnabel running drills with the rest of the men up top.”
Aldric frowned at that. “Why them?”
Daveth scratched his beard. “Leadership experience. If you go down, it falls to me to keep them together. If I fall, then Morden, provisionally. After that, it’s the file leaders. I wanted to make sure that someone among the files could keep them together.”
Aldric nodded at that. “Makes sense. You’re finally using your head for once.” He agreed.
Daveth rubbed the slip of paper in his hand with a calloused thumb, and glanced at Yukiko.
“So is this thing a dragon, or what?” he asked.
She gave him a disapproving frown. “Dragons don’t exist. They’re mythical tales told to frighten children.” She spat back at him.
“Then what is this thing?” He gestured up to where the massive arm reached up towards the stone wall of the crevasse.
“A magical beast of some sort. It doesn’t belong in Aggenmor.”
Daveth gave her a puzzled look. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Yukiko sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “It comes from a world of magic, which means that it shouldn’t be here.”
He immediately shook his head. “I still have no idea what you mean.”
She rolled her eyes. “I guess...” She sighed. “The closest approximation I can make is a demon.”
Everyone immediately turned to her at that revelation.
“We can’t fight a demon.” Daveth immediately relayed to Aldric.
Yukiko brought her hand down from her face angrily. “I didn’t say that it was a demon. I said it’s similar to a demon.”
Daveth gave her a baffled, frustrated look. “Speak sense, Yamato.” He demanded.
“I’m trying.” She complained. “You’re just not listening.”
“I think you should try harder, for all our sakes.” Malacath urged gently from behind her.
She let out a sigh and seated herself on a chunk of rock.
“Demons don’t come from the world. They live in a place beyond. They have to be summoned here.” She explained patiently. “This creature is like a demon because it’s not from here. It comes from a different place. Like a demon, it doesn’t belong here.”
“So what’s the plan?” Daveth repeated.
Yukiko shook her head. “Ideally I would bring every Shrine Priestess across the known world together and we would find a way to send it home. Effectively banish it from our world.”
Daveth frowned. “Obviously you can’t do that.” He muttered.
“No shit!” She spat at him and then rubbed her temples. “We would need... a miracle to fix this.” She finished in a whisper.
Daveth pressed the slip of paper she’d given him to his forehead as he seated himself on the ground. There was something in his mind, a memory, a fragment of a whisper in a dream that urged him to remember it.
“Ancient secrets lurking in the halls of silence. Uninvited vermin, scratching at the walls to gain purchase.”
“You found one of the Original Keys, and you were given another. Do you know what this means, Daveth?”
“Kesh is dreaming in a different sky, a sea without boundaries. She will not waken for just anyone.”
Involuntarily, his hand brushed the pouch at his waist. In it he carried hundreds of weapons: swords, axes, spears, bows, arrows, crossbows, even daggers. Weapons to outfit an army.
What would a weapon do against such a beast? The strongest blade would be a mosquito’s pinprick in the great beast’s hide. Even with his phenomenal strength he could no more slay the thing than he could prune its claws.
“So what have you crazy kids been up to down here while we’ve been working up top?” Daveth asked quietly.
“Malacath has been turning some of the rubble down here into sand. We were trying to see exactly how big this thing is.” Yukiko offered. Daveth nodded, still digging in his mind for the clue that wouldn’t come.
“How do you remember something you were whispered in a dream?” Daveth complained quietly to no one. Malacath and Yukiko eyed him curiously, then each spotted the other eyeing Daveth, and looked away.
Malacath approached Daveth. “Come with me, I want to show you something. Yukiko and I just unearthed it.”
Daveth gave him a weary look, but nodded and stood.
“The paper needs to touch your skin... but you don’t really have to hold it in your hand, Commander.” Yukiko advised him. “It would probably be best for you to put it in your shirt.”
Daveth gave her a considering look, and finally nodded, tucking the slip of paper into his shirt as he was led away by Malacath.
“Look at this, Commander.” Malacath advised, picking up something from the shadowy ground and resting it in his hands.
As Daveth hefted what felt like a sword, Malacath produced some of the glittering dust and cast it into the air, turning it into the tiny swarming lights Teryl had.
It wasn’t a sword, though it was sword-shaped. It appeared to be a feather, but made out of metal.
“It’s light.” Daveth wondered.
Malacath nodded. “Ridiculously sharp, too. Look what it did to the ground- solid stone- when I picked it up to hand to you.”
Daveth obediently glanced down; the ground was covered in gashes. Daveth himself eased the feather down and found he could cut into the bedrock as if it were butter.
“Fucking shit.” Daveth swore. “This is... something else.” he muttered, lacking the words to describe it.
“I thought you might like it. Aldric has been telling me of your fondness for collecting weapons.” Malacath replied amiably.
“What else have you found?” Daveth probed, looking around in the gloom. Malacath’s lights were fading.
“Not much at all, really. We suspect the body of the beast is a bit further in the rock. It’s makework, really. There’s no conceivable way we can get it free, or to send it back to its home realm.”
Daveth nodded. “So what you’re saying is...”
Malacath folded his arms across his breastplate. “Permission to speak freely?”
Daveth waved his hand; the Seal didn’t often stand on formality.
“I think we’re here to waste the Yamato woman’s time. There’s nothing we can do.” He paused, grimaced, and then added, “I could have all of my spellknights that are good with working with stone down here, turning this place into a sandpit and it would still take us years before we could free it, just going off the size of that claw.”
Daveth nodded and scratched his beard. “Your thoughts?”
Malacath rolled his eyes. “I’m reluctant to speak them.”
“You think we should leave her here.” Daveth decided, and Malacath looked away.
“We could do that. The Yamato aren’t part of the Seventh Seal. Just leave her here as she likes, move on to the next mission.” Daveth explained patiently.
“What is the Seventh Seal’s next mission, actually?” Malacath eyed the giant.
“Hmm. I would suggest to Aldric that we retreat back through the mountain pass to the coast and go back to work escorting merchant caravans, honestly. Or we could side with a faction in the Angel Queen’s country and try to restore some semblance of order. Aldric would probably want to do that. If he did, I’d have to stand against him.”
Malacath blinked. “You’d do that? Object to a superior officer’s orders?”
Daveth blinked. “Sometimes, yeah. When they don’t make sense, or when the risk is too great. Not in a way to undermine Aldric’s authority. He’s the captain; he makes the final call.”
Malacath gave Daveth a baffled look. Clearly this was something he was unused to experiencing. “So... why would you object to Aldric’s decision to pick a faction in this Queen’s country?” Malacath asked cautiously.
“What, you can’t figure it out? It’s simple: to ally ourselves with one faction would be to draw the attention of every other faction against us. I have no idea how many factions that is, but the Queen had her land parceled out to nobles. The first noble we ran across had an army of several hundred mages. I’m guessing that we’d have ... however many factions with their own hundreds of soldiers, each of them pointing their blades directly at us.”
“So... thousands of soldiers, each with their own allegiance.” Malacath muttered, stroking his chin, unconsciously mimicking Daveth.
“Not a good spot for the Seventh Seal to be in.” Daveth agreed.
“For the record, Commander...” Malacath began, and then hesitated. “Why exactly is it called the Seventh Seal? Are there other Seals out there like this one?”
Daveth grinned. “Ask Aldric. He’d love to hear that question.”
Malacath raised a skeptical eyebrow at the giant’s gleeful tone. Clearly this was something he shouldn’t ask.
“I saw the way you landed, Commander. Were you trained by a Yamato?” Yukiko spoke up as she approached. She held a spell-slip in her hand that shed light brilliantly.
Daveth shrugged. “I was trained by a monk. He wasn’t Yamato, though. Just a conman. Maybe he was trained by the Yamato before we met him, I don't know.”
“What was his name?” She asked curiously.
Daveth immediately waved his arm. “He called himself Darius Trakker.”
“The one from the stories?” Yukiko asked.
“Probably not him. Like I said, a conman. Probably took the name to grift a few easy bucks from some suckers, or to hide his real name because he was a criminal. Definitely not the kind of guy that punched out a tribe of giants or fought Altalach-Nacha to a standstill.”
“Oh, I hadn’t heard that one.” Malacath immediately spoke up.
“You’ve heard of him?” Daveth asked.
The elf nodded, but dipped his hand in a seesaw motion. “Not that he’d fought the Queen of Spiders, though.”
Daveth blinked. He thought that Atalach-Nacha was an Anglish legend. A monstrous blasphemy, said to be able to see through the eyes of every spider in the world. She hated mankind, and did everything she could to destroy it.
“You were saying some pretty interesting things earlier, Commander Daveth.” Yukiko mentioned.
Daveth raised an eyebrow. “I say a lot of things, Priestess. I don’t know what you’d think were ‘interesting’.”
“You were talking about whispers in dreams.” Malacath supplied helpfully.
Daveth shook his head. “Just dreams.”
“Dreams are sometimes messages from our Patrons. They can be cryptic when we hear them.” Yukiko offered.
Daveth glanced from Malacath to Yukiko, suddenly feeling trapped for no reason he could explain.
“If you tell us about it, maybe we can help you understand.” Yukiko offered. “After all, my temple serves the Fox.”
“Well, there’s one way I can tell if you’re full of shit.” Daveth decided. “Have either of you heard of...” He trailed off, trying to remember the name. “Re-ye she-shen-shi?”
Malacath’s mouth dropped open and he covered it with his hand. “You mean Renyi Zhixin-li, don’t you?” the elf corrected, his voice filled with shock and awe.
Daveth turned to him. “I think so. I’ve never been able to pronounce it right.” He rubbed his head. “She always yells at me for that.”
“You’ve met her.” Malacath muttered. “You’ve spoken with her.” He looked up at Daveth with a strange, fervent look in his eye. “The Original Phoenix.”
Yukiko immediately frowned, her face twisting. There were many kami throughout the lands with various strengths and powers. The Phoenix was right up at the top, perhaps equal to the Unnamed Stone.
While the Nameless Stone refused the role of Patron, the Phoenix gave her protection freely to any who asked, even if they belonged to another Patron. She had the power to do so because she was an Original. Her “protection” however was never significant or dramatic. At best, one might feel uncommonly warm on a chilly evening. It was nearly impossible to draw her attention.
“And?” Malacath prodded. “What did she say?”
Daveth reached into his pouch and pulled out a sword that was nearly as long as he was, silvery, with massive cabochon sapphires studded down the fuller.
“She said this would be the key. Or maybe it was a key.” Daveth replied.
“Where did you get that?” Yukiko asked. “Was it from her?”
Daveth shook his head. “Eleven gave it to me... two or three years back, when we were campaigning in Nauders.”
“Eleven?” Malacath muttered with a frown. “Who is that?”
“I know her.” Yukiko replied. “She’s fickle, that one. By our reckoning she’s quite mad. Very difficult to deal with. Unlike most kami, she roams freely, wherever she wishes.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the term ‘kami’.” Malacath asked respectfully.
“Patron, if you prefer.” Yukiko replied dismissively, unable to take her attention from the sword. Malacath discovered that he too was struggling to focus on anything but that blade. It radiated ancient age and unfathomable power.
“Do you know what you’re supposed to do with it?” Yukiko asked Daveth.
Daveth gave her a pained look. “There’s only one thing you’re supposed to use a sword for, Yukiko.” He replied condescendingly. He frowned after he said it, though. “I just don’t understand what this sword is supposed to do with this mammoth monster, though.” He added. “It’d be like a fleabite to something this size.”