I hit the water of the canal with a clumsy splash, followed shortly thereafter by Liora. In contrast to her smooth dive into the artificial stream, I was much less elegant. We were lucky that none of the Revenants were paying attention then, as they were preoccupied with Baldric’s…decision.
Because I made a ton of noise.
Still, that didn’t end up being a problem.
What did, was I discovered that trying to swim with only one arm and one eye was difficult.
I started to sink, and when I did, a world of unexpected horror opened itself to me.
The canal was filled with bodies.
I…wasn’t expecting that, but in a way, it almost made sense. I didn’t see as many Orcs down here as I did Humans, and there were…a lot of them, to say the least. The water was stained red from the blood of those who seemed to have jumped in the canal in a desperate attempt to escape the hordes of Revenants plaguing the twin cities. In the darkness and crimson that the Godbound had cast the sky in, I hadn't been able to see that before I dived over the railing. Elderwyck wasn’t constructed in the same way as Tlatec, after all, so I guess it was hitting the cities differently. The alleyways and spaces between buildings weren’t quite as narrow in Elderwyck, and I can only imagine how difficult it was to find a hiding spot in the madness.
I didn’t blame them for hoping that the water would see them a measure of safety. Only…
It didn’t look like it had. I tried not to look at the despairing faces of the freshly slain victims I could see all around me, and it was surprisingly easy for me.
Because I had other problems.
I flailed in the water for a moment, caught off guard by…everything before the sleek form of Liora caught me. I had started to sink, but she dragged me back to the surface, where we tread water for a moment. I tried to thank her before something from above caught my attention that she didn’t seem to notice. With only moments to spare, I gulped down a deep breath and yanked the both of us back down beneath the waters.
We only barely dodged the form of a diving Revenant that tried to snatch the two of us right out of the water. Strangely, it balked away from even dipping its talons into the canal, shying away and rising back into the air on monstrous wings.
I had startled Liora with my move, but she recovered quickly. I think she caught the tail end of the Revenant’s dive and exchanged a nod with me underwater.
We had discovered what had killed the people in the canal, I suppose. If you were stuck in here and were unwilling to get back on land in fear of the Revenants, you were either going to die to exhaustion or the monsters themselves.
Most weren’t crazy enough to want to approach the central island where Fort Duality once stood, now the throne of the Godbound.
Not like us.
Having caught our bearings, Liora and I slowly started to swim through the bloody waters of the canal in the direction of the ruined Fort, supporting each other the entire time. Every once in a while we had to surface to catch our breath, before hurriedly diving beneath the surface to escape the attentions of the circling Revenants above us.
It was…beyond exhausting. I don’t know if I would have been able to do this if I didn’t have someone to lean on, during the long swim. I don’t even know if Liora would have been able to do this, not after everything.
Not after all we had been through.
Eventually, however, beneath the water and in the distance, the lower shores of the island came into view. It was reinforced with massive stone columns, so it wasn’t difficult to see through the murk. We picked up our pace, forgoing another breech to the surface for breath in order to hurry. The entire lower dock on the island was covered by the upper platform that the Fort resided on, and might just be safer from the hungry Revenants above.
We reached it and scrambled onto the carefully maintained docks at the lower portion of Fort Duality. They were empty, with none of the possible military vessels that might find birth here normally. My core ring spared a thought, wondering if they had tried to flee from the horror the twin cities had become, but that didn’t matter.
The only thing that did, was that we were safe from the flying Revenants.
For now.
But the Godbound, on the other hand….
As Liora and I lay gasping on the docks, flat on our backs, I gradually became aware of something.
The air here…it felt wrong.
It was thicker, somehow, and felt tainted with an awareness. It was like I stood at the foot of a mountain with the mind of a god. I was so far beneath the presence as to be unworthy of acknowledgment, as if my existence was worth less than that of a single ant. The Aether all around me was strangely still, seemingly held by what felt like an iron will that demanded subservience.
This…it had to be the Godbound. Even though we were separated from it by hundreds of feet of solid stone, just being this close to it was crushing.
I felt so impossibly small. But…it was, for now, bearable.
With a grunt, I leveraged myself to my feet before looking down at Liora. There was a disquieting despair etched on her furred face. She hadn’t gotten up from her water-logged position on the docks, and was instead staring dully in the direction we had swam from.
In the direction of Baldric.
I heaved a sigh and held my one hand down at her. Her eye moved slowly to look at it before one hand rose limply to grasp mine. I heaved the Gnoll woman to her feet before shifting my grip.
Instead of her hand, I instead grasped her forearm tightly. At her visible confusion, I smiled tiredly and met her gaze.
Singular eye, to singular eye.
“Together,” I said firmly.
Her eye closed for a moment before she nodded and returned the tight grip I had on her. “Together,” She whispered.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
The both of us turned to face the distant entrance into the fort proper. As we did so, I noticed that this far down, it wasn’t quite as ruined as the upper reaches were, where the Godbound reclined like a King in waiting. Still, that didn’t mean it wasn’t damaged, as a damned structure wasn’t meant to function as a chair. There were fresh, visible cracks all up and down the façade of the outpost, and some of the blocks comprising the columns of the keep itself had broken entirely. All in all, the structure looked a bit unstable.
But we had no choice. We had to brave the depths of this place, to reach the surface where the Godbound rested. Where I was supposed to do…something, in order to kill the damn thing. There was no way that we could climb the outside of the structure to reach the upper platform, and even if we could, the flying Revenants would pick us off easily.
And so, Liora and I carefully picked our way across the crumbling and eerily deserted docks to reach the lower entrance of Fort Duality. Once we had arrived, the two of us stared into the dark and silent depths of the portal. Somewhere deep inside of the ruined fort, a warbling, high-pitched howl echoed, reaching us like the wail of a banshee.
Great.
Not only had all the lights gone out inside, but it was infested with Revenants. I was reminded uncomfortably of the trek through the Tlactecian mausoleum, where we had encountered wild undead above Tlazo’s lab.
I would prefer the zombies, honestly. Hell, at this stage, they probably would be on our side.
Liora held out one hand and summoned a familiar-looking light Skill, to brighten our path. I stared at it dully for a moment, as it occurred to me that I still didn’t have one of my own. Somehow, someway, it had just kept falling to the wayside for literal months.
“If I survive this,” I said slowly. “I’m going to force someone to sit me down and teach me how to get one of those.”
A breath exhale of extremely mild amusement exited Liora’s snout, but she immediately sobered up. “We can't risk getting bogged down with combat,” She said. “Attempt stealth as much as possible, but prioritize haste. We must hurry if we are to prevent the doom of this world.”
I nodded shallowly, and when the Gnoll stepped forward into the darkness, I followed behind her.
………………………………..
I had never been inside of Fort Duality, but Liora guided me through the halls like she was born here. Which was impressive, because entire sections of the keep had collapsed in on themselves. Multiple times, the senior Agent was given pause when we reached a rubble-strewn hallway. But she always knew where we had to double back from, to continue our upward trajectory.
Despite the howl we heard before, and even after ascending several floors, we still hadn’t encountered any of the Revenants that I suspected dwelled within these wide, crumbling halls.
But we sure as hell found the evidence of their passing. It looked to me like packs of the damn things had rampaged through the inside of the Fort and slaughtered all of the Loyalist soldiers, Elderwyckian guards, and Tlatecian Orcs to be found. Blood and gore coated the stones of the building, and evidence of battle was found on nearly every surface.
It looked like it had been a total rout. I’m not sure anyone had survived in here.
But still, none of the Revenants themselves were to be found. Maybe since they had already found their meals in these halls, they had abandoned them to crowd the streets outside? Maybe…the Revenants that Baldric had chosen to engage had been the doom of this fort?
I didn’t know.
I needed something to take my mind off of the oppressive silence of this ruin. Luckily, I had a somewhat useless question I could ask Liora, that would hopefully take her mind off the impossibility of our task as well.
“How do you know this place so well?” I asked her in a whisper, the next time we came to a crossroads. We were before two separate halls, one that stretched out to our left, and the other forward. Liora was examining them, but shifted her eyes my way at the question.
“This is where I was posted,” She ghosted back to me, lupine lips barely shifting. “I had infiltrated as part of the cleaning staff, and was learning what could. But…it’s also where I found evidence of ‘Rhiannon’s’ true nature. She left traces on the Portal Stone that I was taught to detect, from when I suspect she tried to attune it to Azul herself.” She shook her head abruptly. “But that doesn’t matter. The stairs upward are this way.”
Liora silently walked down the left-hand path, and I followed her. Not far along, we encountered another collapsed pile of rubble that blocked off the path, but that didn’t stop Liora. Instead, she carefully eyed the door to our right, set into the stone of the hallway. “This…is Longstripe’s room,” She said lowly. “If I remember correctly, there should be another exit inside that will allow us to bypass this.”
I started to nod, before abruptly pausing. Hadn’t Longstripe said something about Fort Duality, before Nerexxa had torn him apart?
Hope filling my breast, I eased open the door to the deceased General’s room before Liora could and peeked inside. It looked deserted to me, and thankfully free of the corpses that filled the rest of the keep. I guess nobody had tried to shelter inside of it when the Revenants came.
But I did find what I was hoping for.
Resting right next to a bloodstained Loyalist uniform on the sheets of a large, four-poster bed were two things I had doubted I would ever see again.
My hand-forged Oninite blades.
A smile crossed my lips, and I quickly stepped inside the room with Liora on my heels, as the Gnoll woman carefully shut the door behind us. When I reached the bed, I let my remaining hand drift over my weapon's cool surface and breathed a sigh of relief.
At least something at least halfway good had happened today.
I shook it off after a moment and picked them up.
I think I surprised Liora, though, when I handed one of them to her. I smiled at her confused face and held up the stump of my left arm. “Can’t exactly use two right now, and I bet that’s better than Tlazo’s bone crap.” My smile faded after a moment, and I fixed her with a mock-serious look. “But I’m going to want that back later, you hear? Think you remember how to use it?”
Liora took the Oninite blade and held it upright, before depressing the activation switch. She nodded in satisfaction when it extended to its mid-spear length with a swish of air. Depressing the switch again, she nodded at me. “I believe so. I will…endeavor to return it to you.” She abruptly shook her head, discarded the rough bone sword she had taken from Tlazo’s lab, and let it rattle to a stop in the corner of the deceased General's room. Liora then nodded at a door on the far side of the room. “There. That door should lead to a private stairwell which leads to the surface.”
I sobered up and nodded. “Where the Godbound waits,” I said quietly, to Liora’s accompanying nod.
Silently, the two of us approached the door and opened it, revealing a well-maintained spiral stairwell that seemed to have dodged most of the structural damage. We entered and started to climb the steps.
After a few minutes of upward travel in silence, lit only by the light of Liora’s Skill, we came to a door. We didn’t step through though, because I think we had finally found the missing Revenants.
On the other side, we could hear the snuffling and growling of what must be dozens and dozens of the things.
Liora snuffed her light Skill, sending us into near-total darkness. The only reason I could see at all was because of a faint light creeping through the bottom of the door.
“Full stealth,” She whispered to me. “We do our best to avoid them and get outside. Once there…you…” She trailed off, which I didn’t blame her for.
Not even I knew how I was supposed to slay the Godbound. Elys, in all her wisdom, hadn’t shared that fact with me.
Still, I nodded at the makeshift plan. But before we could act on it, there was a tremendous boom somewhere from outside of the keep, beyond whatever room was on the other side of this door. It shook the entire platform that Fort Duality rested upon, causing Liora and I to bump into each other.
But more importantly, it riled up the Revenants. They snarled and howled, and moving almost like a single mass from the sound of things, rushed away. In moments, it sounded like there wasn’t even a single Revenant waiting for us on the other side.
Which was good, because it felt like that impact had caused our stairwell to start crumbling. We had to scramble to open the door and slide out of it to avoid being crushed, activating our respective stealth Skills in the meantime.
Just in case.
We needn’t have bothered, as like I had suspected, there wasn’t anyone or anything in here to hide from. The room we had entered looked like the main receiving hall of the keep, but none of that mattered to us.
Something far, far more important was happening just outside the shattered gates of Fort Duality.
In the courtyard, surrounded on all sides by snarling Revenants, and seemingly uncaring about either them or the Godbound itself, stood a familiar figure.
Tlazo.
And in his skeletal right hand, he held the battered and bloody form of Nerexxa, suspended in mid-air.
He’d caught her.