When Magnus Larsen had been a boy growing up in First Landing, he didn’t think life could get a lot harder. The son of a cartwright and a seamstress, Magnus’ father had perished shortly after his second birthday, ironically trampled in the street by a runaway grocer’s cart. His mother took on what work she could, often plying her trade by the light of cheap rushlights long after the last light had faded from the sky. She would sit up as the moon rose, eyes squinted as deft fingers darted her needle through cloth, but it wasn’t enough. As soon as he was old enough Magnus was sent out to work, bringing home paltry wages to supplement the handful of copper bits his mother received for her work.
He frequently worked as a runner, delivering messages throughout the city for those that could afford to toss him a bit for his services. When he could find no work as a runner, a young Magnus had to turn to other means. First Landing was the oldest and largest of the Empire’s settlements on the Continent, but although there was always work that needed to be done in the large city on the shores of the Terrible Sea, much of it was beyond the capability or skills that a seven-year-old boy possessed. When he could find no paying work, young Magnus could often be found sifting through the rubbish piles at the docks for food or items that could be traded to a peddler for a bit or a loaf of bread. When the chance presented itself, he wasn’t averse to nicking food or the odd bauble, but the Emperor’s laws are harsh on thieves to the point that even a hungry barefooted boy in threadbare clothes wouldn’t often risk it.
Upon turning 10, Magnus’ mother took ill. She had less and less vitality to her, and she wasted away as she coughed black phlegm laced with blood. Such illnesses were not uncommon in First Landing, as it was easier to ship most goods from the Empire proper in raw form, with refining and manufacturing taking place in the wild city. For those too poor to afford a healer’s tinctures and nostrums, life often ended with an individual laying weak on a sickbed, poisoned by the air or water itself.
After his mother’s passing, things only changed for the worse. Still too young to do a man’s work for a man’s pay, Magnus took to more illicit work. He joined one of the many gangs made up of orphaned or runaway youths and quickly attained the confidence to slit the ties of a man’s purse or slip through a shop’s upper window with his feet wrapped in rags for silence. Most of his takings went to the older children, but Magnus was able to survive, living like a guerilla in whatever disused tunnel or abandoned storehouse his fellow urchins had found to hole up in.
By the time he reached the age of 15, his time working under the cover of dark seemed to have made him half shadow himself, a gaunt youth with restless eyes that missed little. He had managed to survive in a city that cared little for his life, but malnutrition had made him smaller than most of his peers. There was little decent work in First Landing for a small man without education or skills in a legal trade, and so it came to pass that on the very first day he believed he could pass for older than he was (for any man wishing to enter into the Emperor’s service had to have seen at least 16 summers) he found himself in an Imperial recruiter’s building sitting across from a slovenly sergeant in a rumpled uniform. The man had informed him, bluntly but not unkindly, that there was little place in the main body of the Imperial Army for a man such as he. He was too small for the infantry or cavalry, and the Aeronautical Corps recruited from within the Army itself. The only option left to him was the Imperial Rangers, a group of scouts and messengers that served as the Emperor’s eyes and ears within the Continent.
When Magnus indicated a willingness for the job, the recruiter sighed and folded his arms on the table, seeming to truly regard him for the first time. The man had named himself Sergeant Cromlin, and for all his unkempt dress and haggard features he didn’t seem to be a cruel man.
“My boy,” Sergeant Cromlin spoke with a thick rural accent not found on the Continent, “I won’t be lyin’ to ye. A scout in His Majesty’s service is treated the same as any other soldierin’ man. Ye’ll be clothed and armed by the quartermaster, and when ye find yerself at an outpost ye’ll be fed in the mess. I can’t promise much about the food other than it’ll be hot and it won’t make ye ill. But a Ranger’s life ain’t that of the common soldier. Ye’ll find yerself travelling for weeks or even months at a time, often a great span from any Imperial Causeway, and oftentimes alone. Ye’ll find no quartermaster to fix your boots when they stop keeping the wet out, and there’ll be no Cookie to fill yer belly. A ranger fends for himself more often than not, and there’s beasts out there that would look upon a slip of a man like yerself as easy meat. Aye, beasts and worse.”
With that, the aging sergeant leaned back in his chair again, folding his hands over a prodigious belly before he continued. “I been a soldier in Imperial service for a long time, lad. Long enough that they went and made ol’ Crom a sar’nt, told me to lead men and boys into battle to push back the things that roam these lands. Plenty of me fellows, they’d tell ye that life in the service is a grand thing, and that any man would be wise to undertake such a life. I seen too many boys die with their guts hanging out the first time they were tested to lie to ye like that. Ye’ll be trained, ye’ll be armed, and ye’ll enjoy as much support as the Empire can give ye. Even so, even a twitchy young whelp like ye’self is likely to die well afore ye see your first silver hair. I can tell ye’ve not got much here in First Landing, but I’ll not have ye make yer mark and take His Majesty’s coin with anything but clear eyes. The choice is yer own lad, but think well before ye make yer mark.”
That day, Magnus Larsen scratched an X to serve as his mark and left the recruiter with the Undying Emperor’s coin riding heavy in his purse.
***
Recruiting Sergeant Cromlin hadn’t been a liar. When his training completed, Magnus had begun the life of a Ranger. His first year, he brushed past Death half a hundred times. On his first unaccompanied mission a rask had surged out of a marsh and onto the Causeway he was traversing, bulling him to the ground and gripping his left arm in its fearsome jaws. The scaly beast would likely have taken his arm off at the elbow were it not for the thick reinforced leather of his Ranger’s coat. Weighing almost thirty pounds, the long leather coat was reinforced with steel strips and soaked in some noxious brew created by Imperial alchemists. It would turn a blow from a sword and even stop a crossbow bolt or musket ball fired at range, and it managed to stop the rask from reaching unprotected flesh. The reptilian creature was undeterred, and dragged Magnus off the wooden planks of the Causeway and into the murky water below, where it twisted its great body back and forth, attempting to cripple or drown its prey.
Quick thinking and quicker knife work allowed Magnus to wrap his legs around the beast and, after a few failed attempts, slip the blade of his fighting knife through its eye. The creature was slain, but Magnus was a week’s travel on foot to the nearest military outpost, and while the skin of his arm remained whole, the beast had savaged him severely enough that he had little use of it. His arm was black and blue from the elbow down within the hour, and he could only move his shoulder slightly without great pain. But Magnus knew the true heart of being a Ranger. He knew how to survive.
Two weeks later, Magnus staggered up to the gate of the nearest manned outpost. He was drawn from near starvation, almost unable to hunt or trap game with only one functioning arm, and his skin was pale and slick with sweat from a fever acquired when a small scrape had become infected after being submerged in the noxious waters. He was laid on a cot in the infirmary and fed nourishing broth while the healers attempted to make him well. The resident surgeon feared a sickness of the blood that might even require amputation, but after almost a month Magnus was well enough to move about unaided, and within another he had regained almost full use of his left arm save for a twinge if he tried to bend it the wrong way.
This was only the first time Magnus would stagger up somewhere, nearly dead from one ailment or wound or another. It remained a constant in his life, although less frequent as the years went on. He lost the two smallest fingers on his bad arm the next year to a particularly quick and canny direwolf, although the paltry meal cost the creature its life, and four years later he lost an eye to a cliff wasp, a terrible creature the size of a child’s fist that made their burrows in cliff faces within the desert of the Howling Waste. The predators of the Monstrous Continent were ever present and ever hungry, but time and experience changed Magnus from a gangly boy to a rawboned and grizzled man (although neither could make him tall), a man whose life could be read in the silvery scars that traced his body. Throughout it all, Magnus survived.
***
After over a decade and a half of hard service, Magnus reckoned himself no stranger to hardship, as well as reckoning himself one of the more capable Imperial Rangers. Evidently somebody in his chain of command agreed with him, because he found himself heading a contingent of five Rangers on an expedition. His duties had taken him across much of the Continent, although only rarely venturing far enough inland to take him onto the elevated Causeways that criss-crossed the great inland sea. This particular assignment was of grave importance, and a great many Imperial resources were made available to them to ensure they made the best possible speed. The location of their assignment was far into the Northern Wastes, a region that was frozen solid and covered in snow for most of the year, only thawing in the lowest, most southern regions for a few months every year. The landscape began as a great rolling tundra, transitioning to a jagged mountain range. They had been given a coach, and it was there that Magnus found himself pondering the past as he briefly opened one of the oiled leather window coverings to survey the land rolling past, the air thick with snow.
He wasn’t a man prone to nostalgia, but as he thought back to those early days in First Landing it was hard not to crack the ghost of a smile. Life in the city was hard, but it was nothing compared to life in the more remote regions of the Continent. Across much of the land, he had been the only sign of humanity’s existence, and if he were to fall all he could expect was to be marked as “Lost, presumed perished” in some clerk’s ledger. For all that, there were benefits. While he had often been attached to groups out of the main Army, after the first few years he rarely had to answer to anyone but himself when it came to carrying out his duties. Like all Rangers, he was given leave twice a year for a month at a time. A man with a Ranger’s insignia on his coat almost never paid for his own beer, food, or bed, and Imperial service as a Ranger paid well enough that he rarely lacked the funds for most other pursuits during the stretches where his time was his own. He had drunk and diced away what many commoners on the Continent would consider a small fortune over the years. Once, he had even managed to secure passage with a cargo ship operated by the Aeronautical Corps to visit the Empire proper. That had been a wondrous week, although the remainder of his month’s leave had been consumed by travel, and almost every coin he had to his name was gone upon his return.
Still smiling, Magnus settled back into the seat of the coach and turned his thoughts to the matter at hand. Very rarely did you see Imperial Rangers travelling along in more than a pair. Though their ranks were deep, the Continent was large enough that they couldn’t be assigned missions lightly. Every Ranger on one mission was a Ranger who would be sorely missed elsewhere. This mission more than warranted it, however. Just over five weeks ago, a quarry-turned-mine with the desolate name of Black Peak Pit had gone silent. No shipments came rolling down the causeway, and no messengers or scouting parties returned from being sent to ascertain the situation. Were the Black Peak Pit most mines, this would be concerning, but not concerning enough to send a squad of Rangers haring off to discover the cause. Black Peak Pit was no ordinary mine. It held the honor of being one of exactly three places in the known world where one could find floatstone, the precious material that generated lift through principles still unknown, even to the Empire’s most diligent scholars. All of these locations were deep within the Continent. The rare material made the Aeronautical Corps possible, lifting the great wooden airships aloft. Without the Aeronautical Corps, the only passage to the Monstrous Continent was sailing through the Terrible Sea.
The Terrible Sea is a stretch of ocean that surrounds the Continent for roughly 2,500 nautical miles. It is distinct from most oceans in the known world in two respects. The first is unpredictable currents and weather that frequently causes gales that seem to spring from nothing at a moment’s notice, blacking out the sun and creating waves like mountains. The second distinction is, of course, the abundance of monsters both great and small that lurk beneath the waves. A skilled captain with a sturdy boat and a capable crew might expect to pass through the Terrible Sea at most ten times before the vessel could be expected to be lost with all hands. The beasts that roamed beneath the surface ranged from small creatures like drill urchins, who would latch onto the hull of a vessel en masse and relentlessly burrow through, all the way up to legendary creatures like the Titan, a great beast who existed mainly as myth. The only reason it is known to Imperial scholars at all is that 3 times in Imperial memory, an airship happened to witness it attack. Witnesses described it to historians as a great serpentine beast that would strike like a lightning bolt from beneath the waves. In the first two attacks, a lucky lookout happened to spot it when it breached the surface, battering the unfortunate vessel it had selected as prey with its massive skull and biting viciously at the mast, sails, and any poor souls aboard. Stories tell that within minutes, the ships had vanished below the waves. The third encounter took place when an Imperial airship had come to observe an abandoned hulk to see if it might be worth sending a salvage team down the ropes. When they grew near enough, the maw of the Titan burst through the surface, managing to throw itself the better part of 1,000 feet into the air to snatch at the airship with its fearsome jaws.
The airship in question should have been lost at that very moment, dragged down into the deeps. By sheer chance the Titan struck directly amidships, but just below the chambers where the floatstones were kept and tended. It bit deeply, and tore off the majority of the cargo hold in one fell swoop. Suddenly unencumbered by the weight of the cargo, the floatstones jerked the ship free, the surviving portions of the hull splintering and breaking loose as the power of the floatstones battled against the crushing weight of the Titan. The ship survived, though with all cargo lost along with better than 50 men. The stories tell of a single massive scale found lodged in the vessel when it made port, which was shipped immediately back to the capital city for storage and study.
So it was that when one of the only sources of floatstone went quiet, all haste was employed to discover the cause. This was no common mine, dug out that the reckless few willing to brave the continent for personal gain could plunder the unusually abundant ore found beneath the surface. Black Peak Pit was surrounded by incredibly thick walls 100 feet high, and protected by a garrison of 2,500 seasoned combat veterans, along with the support staff needed to effectively employ them and the miners needed to excavate the precious material. The briefing packet he had been given (he had learned to read quickly, for a Ranger without information very quickly becomes a dead Ranger, and remembered conversations are too unreliable) outlined a seemingly impenetrable fortress guarding the miners as they delved deep beneath the rocky ground. One entrance breached the walls, with several smaller gates that needed to be opened and closed in sequence to allow the transport caravans to enter with supplies and depart with unrefined floatstone.
While a private mine or small settlement would likely be written off as victims of misadventure or circumstance and left to its fate, the loss of one of the Emperor’s greatest resources was not treated nearly so lightly. Magnus and his newly formed team were tasked with approaching the mine as a reconnaissance force to assess the situation prior to the arrival of a much more substantial force. There was always the extant possibility that everything was proceeding as it should at the mine and that the problem was arising in transit, but no chances were being taken. If Black Peak Pit had truly fallen to a monstrous incursion, Imperial forces needed to be able to move in with a vengeance to reclaim the facility. To the best of Magnus’ knowledge, a floatstone mine had never been overrun, but he was a Ranger, not a historian. The Empire had existed since time immemorial, and a soldier didn’t need to know history to fight for his Emperor.
Magnus had never worked with any of the Rangers in the group, but he had confidence that they were the best of those that were within a reasonable distance to deal with this threat. His second on the mission was a tall Areki man who was either naturally bald or had somehow contrived to keep his head perfectly shaven throughout the journey without Magnus witnessing him shave it. He had the dark brown skin of his people, who hailed from an island nation that held a mid-sized landmass in the Emperor’s name. J’Tan was softspoken and moved like water, with a graceful economy of motion that Magnus knew he couldn’t hope to match. His specialty was long term tracking. He would be tasked with monitoring hordes of monsters that formed in the interior of the continent and keeping the Army abreast of their movements, staying in the field for long months at a time. He was currently driving the coach along the mountain roads, bundled in a thick greatcoat over his Ranger’s coat to ward off the driving wind and bitter cold. Two of the more junior members of the team were an established pair, siblings from the main Imperial lands who had evidently enlisted after their family fell on hard times. In addition to their standard equipment, both men carried a pair of wickedly sharp long handled hatchets. He had seen the brothers use their axes to shave in the mornings, and one night early on in the journey they had put on an impromptu display of their skill at throwing the weapons, with both able to sink the bit into a tree 30 paces away. They were friendly and talkative, providing the main body of the conversation during the trip. Their names were Alec and Jon, and apart from a scar across Jon’s jaw they looked similar enough to be twins, with sandy blond hair that fell to their jaws.
The last member of their party was the youngest and least experienced, a young man by the name of Thomas. He was a musketeer, an unusual position for a Ranger due to the inherent conflict between stealth and the *crack* of musket fire. Musketeers had been frequently used in the infantry for the last 60 or so years, and a line of them could inflict withering damage on a group of monsters, far more than a similar number of archers. Unlike other musketeers Magnus had worked with, he also carried two smaller pistols across his chest. Unlike the pistols Magnus was familiar with, these weapons were evidently capable of carrying 6 shots apiece, primer, powder, ball and all. While circumstances hadn't permitted a demonstration prior to their departure, the briefing material had made it clear that while the pistols weren’t infallible, they were reliable enough for work in the field. In addition to the tools of his specialty, he also carried a cavalry saber with his gear, looped onto a belt to allow him to don it quickly if the need arose. Magnus himself favored a long hafted infantry spear and carried the standard recurve bow issued to all Rangers, along with a fighting knife possessed of a wickedly sharp stiletto blade. It wasn’t the same weapon that had saved his life all those years ago against the rask, that night had been stolen during a particularly boisterous leave while he was lying unconscious in an alley, but that encounter had taught him the importance of carrying a knife purpose built for combat, rather than the broader and more utilitarian issue knives most Rangers contented themselves with.
They road in silence during the last stretch of their journey, each man quietly preparing himself for action in his own way. Thomas sat with a tight jaw, staring down at the floor between his boots as he pondered the upcoming excursion. Alec and Jon had ramped up their conversation, until an hour prior when Magnus had less than politely requested that they both put their teeth together and give everyone else some peace and quiet. Since then, both men had pulled leather strops from interior coat pockets and were polishing the glittering edges of their axes. Magnus himself pretended to doze as he went through his pre-deployment ritual. Any time he knew he was going to be sent into particularly bad business, Magnus tended to grow reflective. Death was no stranger to a Ranger, but when it seemed particularly close, he often found himself reflecting over his life. Magnus was good at what he did, but he knew luck played an uncomfortably large role in any Ranger’s survival, and he was very aware that this mission could be when his luck finally ran out. Like he always did, he thought back over his life. He had done things he wasn’t proud of in his youth, and in his earlier days in service to the Emperor his temper has sometimes flared while at a tavern on leave, or in the barracks of whichever outpost he found himself at. Despite his regrets, looking back over his life he felt he could be proud of it. If this was when he was slated to go, he intended to go with his back straight and a weapon in his hands, selling his life dearly so as to buy his compatriots what time he could. Despite His Eternal Majesty’s position as the undying ruler of an empire than spanned the entirety of the known world, the Emperor left spiritual beliefs to others. In one of the few historical texts Magnus had bothered to read, he learned that the Imperial stance on the after life was simply that those who lived well would be rewarded in the next life. Privately, Magnus hoped that he would be re-united with his mother and several comrades that had fallen over the years. It would be good to finally rest, and better to rest with those he cared about.
As darkness fell, the coach slowed to a halt, and J’Tan banged on the roof twice to signify they had reached their destination, a spot along the Causeway some 8 miles from the location of Black Peak Pit. They had brought no extra hands to mind the coach and horses during the trip, and leaving them unattended would surely mean the death of the horses from a wandering monster. Thankful, horses kept for Imperial service were trained to be sent down a Causeway without a driver, and the poor animals would return to the nearest outpost back the way they had come, a minor waystation with fortified stables. Reaching for the door of the coach, Magnus broke the silence.
“Alright lads. Time to go show that we’re more than a bunch of pretty faces and a draw on the Emperor’s purse. Thomas, you make sure to keep your powder dry. I know you’ve only seen action down south, but this snow will wet your powder as sure as any rainstorm if you let it get in there and melt.”
When Thomas nodded in affirmation, Magnus opened the door and swung himself out of the coach, boots sinking into the powdery snow. Once they had all disembarked and unloaded their packs, J’Tan turned the coach around, hopped down from the driver’s seat, and gave one of the lead horses a slap on the flanks to set them on their way. Magnus shouldered his pack and began to set off, only to be halted by a cough and J’Tan’s low baritone.
“Captain, maybe it’s best if you gave us a brief rundown, maybe say a few words for the men. We can’t all just keep a stiff upper lip and march into the unknown.”
Damn me, he’s right, Magnus reflected. J’Tan was as calm as always, but the brothers definitely had a nervous energy about them as they peered through the snow while the sun sunk towards their horizon, giving the falling snow a reddish tint. Thomas was clearly nervous, standing close by J’Tan and tapping the trigger guard of the musket he held in his hands instead of slung across his back. Magnus cleared his throat nervously before beckoning his team to draw closer. He knew his second was correct. Better than half their team was quite a bit more inexperienced than they were, despite everyone present being considered seasoned when you considered the high mortality rate among Rangers. Beyond that, this was no standard mission. Either there was something between them and the mine that had completely halted any and all traffic along the Causeway, or something had managed to slaughter the mine and its garrison to a man. Otherwise word of some sort would have been received by now. Every Ranger was accustomed to violence, but preferably of the sort dispensed brutally and with the element of surprise. If a Ranger came across more than one mid-sized monster, the smartest move was usually to skirt them and relocate if they didn’t pose a risk of heading towards an outpost or settlement. It was a solitary trade, and Rangers were usually unaccustomed to the type of large scale conflict that would be involved in the garrison falling.
“Alright Rangers. You sat through the same briefing I did, and you’ve had a chance to read the packet on the trip here. There’s some nasty business afoot here, and it’s the kind that threatens the Empire’s position. We aren’t here to fight, all we have to do it get in, observe the situation, and get out. Just pretend we’re a pack of mice creeping through your mother’s cupboard. The first sign of things going pear-shaped out here and we’re in the wind. I know you’re all killers who are ready to lay down your lives in service to the Emperor, but a handful of damned fools dying out here isn’t going to do the Army any good when they show up to clean house. So, I suppose those are your orders. Get in, get out, and I’ll be very crossed if you manage to get yourselves killed. Full silence from here on out, handsigns only unless I give the word. Silence your kit if you need to, and let’s get a move on. I want have a poke around and make camp before full dark.”
With that, Magnus cast a sheepish glance towards J’Tan, and saw the ghost of disapproval flit across his solemn features. He wasn’t wrong. Magnus had heard the types of speeches infantry officers gave before battle, but he was a Ranger first and foremost. Having somebody around to give a speech to was odd enough, surely he couldn’t actually be expected to be good at it as well. With that, the small group set off across the darkening road to Black Peak Pit.
***
They proceeded along the Causeway in a ragged line. J’Tan took the lead, bow strung and held ready. Behind him the brothers bookended Thomas in the middle, with Magnus taking up the rear guard position. There was a chill that managed to worm its way through their layers, while the wind and snow conspired to muffle and whip away any sounds but the crunches and squeaks of their boots in the snow. At this elevation trees still lined the Causeway, evergreens that stood tall and straight. He’d heard the trees nicknamed “Emperor’s Soldiers” for the way they stood in their silent, straight ranks. Once they were halfway there, Magnus increased his pace slightly to move up to Jon, tapping him on the shoulder and giving the sign for a halt. They worked their way up the line to J’Tan, and then Magnus motioned for the four men to proceed to the woods at the edge of the Causeway. Gathering them close, Magnus pulled the muffler from his face and spoke in low tones, but without whispering. Every good Ranger knows that whispers carry.
“Alright boys. We’re sitting ducks out here on the Causeway. We need to enter the woods and travel parallel to the Causeway. We might run into a beastie, but I’ve got a feeling in my belly that whatever caused this isn’t some bugaboo holed up in the woods taking travelers unaware. The garrison would have noticed, and 2,500 men can spare a very persuasive escort. No, I’ve got a bad feeling that whatever caused this is going to be waiting for us at the mine itself. We won’t be able to get too close, they should have a killing field cut back around the walls, but hopefully it will let us observe the situation without whatever is inside observing us back. Same formation as before, let’s move out.”
His men nodded gravely, and those that had only been walking with a hand resting on their weapons drew one. J’Tan kept his bow and Magnus his spear, but Thomas unslung his musket while Jon and Alec each drew one of their axes. Prior to their departure on foot, everyone but Thomas had gathered around a greasy tallow candle that J’Tan had produced from his pack for the sake of blackening the edges of their weapons to prevent a tell-tale glint from giving them away. Rangers secured their kit to prevent noisy movement as a matter of course, so when they moved out into the forest they seemed more like a cadre of sylvan spirits than men traversing the woods. Twice J’Tan had called a halt so that he and Magnus could examine damaged tree trunks. The first seemed like the marks of an elk’s passing, but the second was different. There was the slightest pink to the snow at the base, and when J’Tan scuffed at the ground with his boots it revealed that under the topmost layer of snow, there was a small pool of blood, along with a few scraps of brown fur and flecks of bone. The trunk itself was covered in a series of deep vertical gouged that ascended roughly 20 feet before ending at a snapped branch that was dangling in the wind. Something had gone up this tree with a fury to take a squirrel, something monstrous.
Magnus initially didn’t think anything of it. After all, even in these frozen mountains monsters and beasts were common, and the kind of creatures that took squirrels for prey wasn’t the kind that could threaten Black Peak Pit. As they grew closer and closer to the site, it became more and more common. They happened upon pools of blood, scraps of fur, and in one notable case it seemed like something had completely shredded the wood around a knothole, opening it into a splintered white crater with traces of blood on the exposed wood. Everything they saw seemed to have occurred within the past few days, which didn’t line up with the timeline of the mine going quiet, but there were also no records of any beasts haunting the area that behaved this way. While the monsters and beasts that roam the Continent are as varied as they are seemingly endless, reports were often collected after an encounter and recorded to give Imperial forces as much intelligence as possible. Cave bears and dire wolves weren’t uncommon to the area, and a particularly nasty type of avian beast nested on the upper reaches of the mountain that gave Black Peak Pit its name. Peak vultures were nasty, but also highly territorial. They didn’t bother humans that weren’t on their mountain, and they certainly didn’t hunt within the forest on the ground. Whatever did this had to be fairly small, fast, and ferocious, but nothing small could have overwhelmed the garrison. A horde was possible, but unlikely. Hordes tended to develop in the warmer regions of the Continent when a particular breed was able to reproduce unchecked. They could be a terror when they finally exhausted the resources of their home range, but a horde would have left a great many more signs.
By the time they reached the edge of the woods, they had seen over two dozen such signs of violence, but nothing that could have carried it out. Like Magnus had said, the woods were cut back around the garrison walls for roughly 150 feet. Magnus signed for a halt at the tree line, while he and J’Tan peered through spyglasses at the fortress hunkered down in the valley. Looking through his glass, the only thing that Magnus noticed immediately was that the entire installation was darkened. Night was coming quickly, and the standard procedure called for the great lamps that studded the ramparts to be lit well in advance of full dark. Thankfully the snow served to reflect and amplify light, so that despite the gathering dusk they could see the walls quite well, seemingly lit by ghostly light with no source. Upon additional inspection, one more detail drew itself to Magnus’ attention. Deep marks had been made in the granite walls, pockmarks that ran in vertical stretches up and down the walls. The only noise that the wind carried to his ears was a slow, repetitive banging that seemed to be coming from the inset entrance of the sally port. With a few quick hand signs, Magnus indicated that they were to break from the tree line and make for the sally port.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
It was set back into the great wall, and as they approached they could see the arrow slits and murder holes that lined inset portions of the wall. Anything that approached the great gate would take heavy losses trying to break through, as soldiers could mete out violence at their leisure from behind sturdy stone. The great gate itself was shut, massive wooden planks shod with steel reinforcements, but the smaller man door hung open, banging open or shut every few seconds. The five of them huddled out of the wind and considered the open door.
*Assessment?* Magnus signed, casting a glance at his second.
*Abandoned* came the reply. *Quiet*. J’Tan paused, hands still as he pondered something. *Smell?* he signed, tilting his head to indicate that the last sign was a question. Ranger hand signs were varied, but they still relied on context and body language for nuance.
Magnus lowered his muffler enough to take a deep sniff of the frigid air. Predominantly is smelled like ice and pine trees, but upon smelling again Magnus realized he *could* smell something. A faint whiff of rot and iron reached his nostrils, with the barest undercurrent of... something. It reminded him of the traces of musk you get when you make camp in a cave that was once a predator’s lair, but the musk was sourer than you would smell in something like an old bear’s den. Magnus was growing more and more concerned that there was something seriously amiss, and he simply wasn’t putting the pieces together. However, a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach was no excuse for a team of Rangers to shrink from their duty, and thus far they had absolutely no indication that there was anything inhabiting the mine, at least nothing alive. If the mine *had* been overrun, there was a possibility that once the slaughter was done, whatever creature or creatures had done the dark deed had moved on in search of new prey. If that was the case, time was of the essence. If whatever it was had moved further north, that was one thing, but it could easily have headed further south. Settlements and outposts were few and far between in this part of the world, he knew of nothing but small waystations within 100 miles. If whatever had done this had skirted the Causeway, Magnus and his team might have ridden right on past them and been none the wiser. They needed to get inside and gather evidence for the main body of the Army coming behind them so that they didn’t waste any further time marching north to face a threat that had moved on. Besides, if the site was deserted, it would be a damn sight easier to camp inside for the night, rather than out in the woods. They could hole up inside and count themselves fairly safe from any wandering monsters.
*Advance, caution, watch* Magnus signed. With a hand motion and a flick of his head, he indicated that he was taking point, and that J’Tan should follow at the rear. He clasped each of the men briefly on the shoulder as he moved to the front, giving them what he hoped would be a reassuring squeeze as he did. The group prowled forward, and through the door. J’Tan grabbed a stray stone that lay along their path and used it to prop the foot gate open, to prevent it making further noise and to give them an extra half second if they had to beat a hasty retreat. Very little light made it beyond the foot gate, and so Magnus reached inside his coat and brought out one of a Ranger’s most useful tools.
Called sunstones, these small lumps of tumbled stone seemed to drink in sunlight like dry ground drinks up water. The Army quartermasters would leave them sitting out in the sun during the day for a few weeks, returning them to their tightly sealed cases at night. The stones continued to radiate the light they absorbed even in darkness, and the hard leather containers they were kept in had a threaded lid that allowed the user to progressively widen the opening at the top, dictating how much light would escape. The stored light wasn’t infinite, but if you were careful to keep it tightly shut when not in use and occasionally leave it out on a bright day, they would keep for almost half a year. Normally Rangers would just use lanterns or a torch, but when convenience and stealth were needed sunstones reigned supreme.
Magnus cracked his open wide enough to illuminate the interior of the tunnel. The sally port tunnel was made up of 3 gates. One at the exterior of the wall, one at the interior, and one in the middle. The group found themselves facing the second gate, roughly 30 feet ahead of them. Like the exterior, the foot gate hung open to reveal the blackness beyond. Dark brown stains, much larger than the bloodstains in the forest, were scattered across the ground. More concerningly, most of these stains showed drag marks leading further into the installation. Alex knelt to retrieve an object from the ground, and held up what turned out to be a boot. Even in the dim light, Magnus could see that it had been cut to ribbons, and it seemed to be completely soaked in frozen blood. Magnus looped the strap of the sunstone case around his wrist, and signed for the others to bring their own cases out and do the same. With that, they proceeded on. The next chamber was much the same as the first, although there they found a splintered spear on the ground, as well as part of an Army officer’s coat that had been left behind. More blood, yet no bodies. When they opened the final foot gate night had all but fallen in earnest, but the silvery glow off the snow illuminated a bloodbath. The snowfall had stopped shortly before they entered the first gate, but the wind still kicked up flurries that blew across the open square. The interior of the walls was largely empty of any freestanding structure, aside from two barracks for troops, and one smaller building that presumably held support staff and miners. The thick walls of the garrison held most of the storage space and common areas, aside from where that space was taken up by the sally port tunnel.
The doors to the various barracks were all hanging open, some hanging on only one hinge. One door to the interior of the walls had been ripped free entirely, buried under a small mound of snow. There was blood everywhere in the interior, massive splotches of the stuff, so much that hung the odor hung thick and oppressive even in the frozen air. Few tracks were still visible, the dry powdery snow constantly shifting from the winds, but a few deep drag marks still remained. Most seemed to lead towards the interior of the courtyard, but Magnus spotted one that seemed as though it had been made by somebody attempting to drag themselves toward the gate they now stood inside of. Thomas looked down between his feet, and jumped back with a startled yelp that he managed to mostly catch in his own throat. The young man reached down with gloved and shaking hands, and pulled a small grey object from the snow. At first Magnus didn’t realize what the small object was, before he realized that Thomas was holding half an ear, mottled grey and black with frostbite. The young man dropped the grisly object and unconsciously wiped his glove against his leg.
J’Tan reached out and patted Thomas on the shoulder and the younger man drew in a slightly shaky breath. Magnus signed for them to move out towards the closest barracks, the one that should have held the miner and support staff. They squeaked through the snow, their footsteps occasionally crunching over blood that had turned to ice. The door to this building hung mostly closed, the black sliver of the opening giving no clue as to what might have been inside. Magnus’ eyes continued to flit around, never staying in one place long. He could see several broken sets of shutters, deep gouges carved into their surfaces, and the longer he looked, the more grisly artifacts of a slaughter he saw laying in the snow. A tattered clump of scalp lying next to a water barrel, a bloody knife laying forgotten, half submerged in a small drift of snow. Laying beneath one window he noticed a musket laying on the ground, a finger still caught in the trigger guard. Magnus wasn’t sure what to make of it, but the longer he looked the surer he was that a large group of monsters had caught the garrison unawares, and unready for pitched battle. He wasn’t sure how such a thing could have taken place, or why there was nothing left behind other than blood and the detritus of combat, but something had clearly gone horribly awry.
Adjusting his grip on his spear, he reached out with the steel capped butt and opened the barracks door, quickly turning the point to face the empty doorway. They all froze, poised for something to come out of the darkened portal and bound towards them, but no such threat materialized. J’Tan nodded at him gravely, and they began filing inside.
***
They had proceeded slowly throughout the barracks, but found nothing more than blood, weapons that had been dropped or cast aside, and personal effects strewn throughout the interior. Bunks were unmade, many of the blankets shredded on the floor, and a bowl, mirror, and razor rested on one of the beds as though the occupant had been called away in the middle of a shave. They had moved as a group throughout the building, and after clearing it they had proceeded to the other freestanding buildings. They found absolutely nothing to clarify the events that had turned the facility into an abattoir, and Thomas started to cast uneasy glances towards the darkened pit at the back of the massive courtyard. After traversing most of the interior of the walls and finding nothing, they happened upon what seemed to be an armory. The stout doors were locked, but they had passed a quartermaster’s office earlier on in their search. Jon and Alec had been dispatched to search it, and they returned triumphant with a heavy ring of keys. One of them had opened the door to what did indeed prove to be an armory. They had shut and locked the heavy doors behind them, before Magnus slumped onto a crate and gave the sign to speak freely. The brothers had immediately started speaking back and forth in hushed tones, their words tumbling over each other. Thomas was clearly shaken, but he dutifully proceeded to a workbench and went through the rote task of inspecting his 3 firearms for any damage from the weather, producing a small bottle of oil from one pocket.
J’Tan came and squatted in front of where Magnus sat, after leaning his bow by the door, and began to speak quietly.
“Captain,” he said, “This has a bad feel to it. I don’t see an angle where every soul at this mine wasn’t lost, but there’s nothing here but blood and a few body parts. At least nothing so far.”
Magnus knew where this was leading. While they hadn’t been able to do a detailed search, they had been through almost every part of the garrison other than the mine it was built to protect. Situated at the back of the courtyard, the opening to the Black Peak Pit mine was the remnant of the pit mining operation that had discovered the floatstone while searching for other ores. In the centuries since, it had been deepened, with many branching tunnels and deep shafts. There should have been schematics in the foreman’s office, but they had yet to locate the office. Magnus had deemed it a worthwhile risk to enter the garrison as night fell, but he wasn’t about to take his men down into a mine that had been growing deeper and deeper over the centuries.
“I know J’Tan. The pit. We can’t leave until we check the pit, but I’ll not be going in blind when dark fell almost 2 hours ago. This room clearly weathered the original attack well enough; I think we should be able to shelter here for the night and investigate in the morning. If we do find something down there it isn’t likely to be any friend to us, and if we have to flee I'd rather do it in daylight. For now, we’ll break out the hard rations and try to get some rest. We’ll set a watch, but I doubt we have anything to worry about in here. I think whatever did this has moved on.”
J’Tan look unconvinced. “Captain, with all due respect, that seems like a dangerous assumption to make. If something in these mountains came out of the woods to butcher the garrison, why couldn’t they do the same to us?”
Magnus sighed and slumped a little lower. He definitely preferred working alone. He was fairly sure he was correct, but gambling with other lives than his own had never set right with him.
“Because the more I look at this, the more it smells like a horde. Whatever did this was small enough to fit through foot gates and doorways, so there had to have been a lot of them. These mountains are too cold and too barren to support a horde, and it’s been long enough that most of them must have moved on. I think what we found in the woods was the work of stragglers catching up to the main group, or individual beasties that stayed behind for the scraps and had to start taking small game from the forest to survive. Probably a horde that somehow got turned around and found itself too far north. You’ve seen it yourself how mobile a horde has to stay, even in parts of the continent that support a lot more life. There’s every chance that if the Army searches these woods, they’ll find a trail of monstrous corpses that dropped from the cold or starvation trying to reach greener pastures. Depending on which way they went, the mountains might have already gotten our revenge for us.”
This was all true enough, but he could see his own private doubts mirrored on J’Tan’s face. It was true that a horde required a constant supply of food which would be in short supply in this far-flung region of the continent, but if that was the case it begged the question of how they got to Black Peak Pit in the first place. It would have had to be a horde of truly epic size, feeding off of the weaker elements within the horde just to survive long enough to get here, but there had been no reported hordes anywhere near this region. They almost exclusively formed in the more remote reaches of the southern part of the continent, and tended to stay there. Beyond that, the valley was giving off an almost palpable aura, an aura that said this was no longer a place for men. Desolate placed like this often seemed a little haunted, but this was different. Stronger. The last time he had felt something similar was when he had been attached to a company in the Howling Waste, and a sandstorm had turned them around, leading them deeper into the desert. The men had started to say they felt unwelcome, and very closely watched. Soldiers had started to disappear. Outriders started to go missing first, but after the second night men had started to go missing in camp. Their losses started coming quicker and quicker, and the men had started to become more and more paranoid. The company had finally happened upon a landmark to use as a guide, and a day of forced marching had diminished both the effects and the number of missing. They had eventually made good their escape with minor losses, but for years afterwards Magnus would hear about smaller groups that had vanished in that region of the desert.
What Magnus had felt then, above all else, was the sensation of being hunted. It had felt like there was something watching them from behind every dune, something hungry, something hateful. He had started to feel the same sensation as night fell. Magnus wasn’t one to let a little fear prevent him from doing his job, but he had been a Ranger long enough to not ignore the knot in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t see any reason to take risks that weren’t needed, and nobody could fault him for putting off exploring the subterranean system until the sun was shining once again.
Conversation gradually petered off and they ate and saw to their equipment, and eventually Jon was selected to take first watch. Magnus himself took one of the poorer watches in the small hours shortly after midnight. They unrolled their bedrolls, and Jon took up a seat on the crate Magnus had vacated, hatchets lying across his knees.
***
Magnus fell asleep quickly, but his sleep was anything but peaceful. He dreamt that he was a boy again in First Landing, in the years following his mother's death. He couldn’t remember how the dream had begun; all he knew was that he was being relentlessly pursued through a warren of dark alleys. His pursuers were hot on his trail, and his chest pumped like a bellows. He ran on and on, through a network of alleys larger than the slum district of First Landing could have held in the waking world. He ran tirelessly, but the sounds of pursuit never lessened, the scrape of what he took for hob-nailed boots echoing behind him, his own labored breathing filling his ears.
On and on he ran, until his bare foot snagged on a divot in the ground, some piece of debris that snared his ankle and sent him tumbling across the ground. When he looked up, what had previously been unending alley had transformed into a dead end. He scrambled to his feet and attempted to scrabble up the wall, but it seemed to be utterly devoid of even a toe-hold. Resigned, he put his back to the wall and picked up a loose cobblestone from the ground, clenching it in one under-sized fist. Suddenly the dream changed, and he found himself in a cold stone tunnel, clutching his fighting knife in the hand that had previously held the cobblestone. The sounds of pursuit echoed louder and louder, and just when he was sure they were about to round the bend, a piercing scream rang out and a force buffeted his chest.
***
He was being shaken by the shoulder when he opened his eyes, the piercing scream still echoing in his head. He opened his eyes to see Thomas squatting above his bedroll, eyes wide with panic, one of his revolving pistols clutched in his free hand. When he saw that Magnus had awakened, he stopped shaking him and frantically made the most urgent hand sign for silence, repeating it several times. Magnus bolted upright, knife in hand as though it had appeared there by its own volition. He flashed the sign for an update, and Thomas leaned in until his lips were almost touching Magnus’ ear, and spoke.
“Something out there sir. Just a moment ago, I’d swear it on my life. I remember there was a window in the hall, and it sounded like somebody in the courtyard kicked a stone.”
The whites of the young man’s eyes formed two wide rings around the darkness of his sclera and pupils, and Magnus thought he could see the faintest tremor in the barrel of his pistol. He nodded once, and rose the rest of the way to a standing position. He pointed at where Jon and Alec were sleeping, and he himself moved over to J’Tan, shaking him awake and urging silence. Once the party was awake, they huddled close together as Magnus gave them their orders.
They took only their weapons and what they carried on their persons, moving as stealthily as possible. They slipped out into the hallway; sunstones cracked just slightly to provide enough light for them to see with adjusted eyes. Both brothers had their axes out, and moved in a low crouch. Thomas had drawn his second pistol, and J’Tan held a standard infantry short sword. They crept down the hall until Magnus signaled a halt while he slowly edged one eye past the window frame to steal a glance into the courtyard. The ethereal illumination from the snow had diminished, and much of the courtyard was in deep shadow. Magnus observed the scene for several minutes, but it remained still other than the small flurries of snow that kicked up off of the ground. Just as he was beginning to think Thomas had dozed and dreamt the noise he claimed to have heard, a small sound disturbed the stillness that blanketed the site. It sounded, Magnus thought, like the sounds a man would make walking up a gravelly embankment. He heard a small scrape, and a sound like pebbles falling down a slope. He held his breath, and moments later he could just make out a shadow slinking in from the left hand side of his field of view. As though it had come from the mine. He could barely make it out, but it seemed to be about the size of a large dog, walking on four legs. An oddly shaped head seemed to move about close to the ground as it slipped from shadow to shadow, and for the briefest possible moment he caught a glimpse of a bulging round eye, shining with light reflected off the snow.
He edged away from the window, and just as he began to turn back to his team he heard a sound that turned his blood to ice in his veins. He heard something scraping on stone, the same scraping that had pursued him so relentlessly in his restless sleep. He turned abruptly, and saw his fellows whip around to stare down the hallway. In the shadows at the end of the hall, a nightmarish creature crouched, low to the ground. It was hairless, with loose skin sagging around its joints and on the undersides of its limbs. He could make out the clawed hands and feet that had betrayed their owner by grating against the stone, and he could see the tension gathering in its rear limbs as it prepared to charge.
Most of all, he saw its face. Most of its body was wrapped in shadow, but the face could be seen almost clearly in the dim light. The monster’s face look like a distant cousin to the one Magnus and his men wore, but warped beyond what anyone would mistake for human. Pointed, shell-like ears jutted from its head, and bulging eyes glimmered in deep-set sockets, almost seeming to glow with their own light in the darkness. A grotesquely flattened nose sat above a thin, almost lipless mouth that wrapped around needle-like fangs, and a lone droplet of drool fell to the floor as he watched, seeming to move at a glacial pace. The creature was almost chinless, and almost completely bald but for a few whisps of brittle hair.
Suddenly, the beast leapt, and the slowness with which Magnus had first observed the scene seemed to be repaid with interest. It sprang forward and began to lope down the hall towards them at a breakneck pace, claws digging into the stone floor of the hallway. Magnus stepped forward and shouldered Alec to the side, kneeling down as he slammed the butt of his spear into a joint in the stone floor, angling it forward. Despite the speed with which it moved, it made almost no noise at all. Magnus was able to discern the sound of an arrow leaving a quiver, and the creak of J’Tan’s bow as he drew it. The nightmare bounded ever closer as Magnus attempted to track its course and keep his planted spear on target. The hallway was wide enough for it to pass him if it so chose, but Magnus hoped that the bestial rage and hunger he saw in its eyes would cause it to attack the closest prey, hopefully giving him the chance to run it through before it could bring him within reach of those fearsome claws.
Then, he heard the thrum of a bow being loosed as he heard a metallic click from behind him. At this short distance, it hardly seemed as though the arrow flew at all. It seemed to simply sprout from the monster’s eye socket, causing it to collapse and begin to roll forward from unshed momentum. Then the world flashed, and thunder rolled through the hallway. He found himself blinded; vision obscured by pungent smoke. Their most junior member had aimed and fired his pistol, a mere instant after J’Tan’s shot had found its mark. The beast was dead, but the crack of the gunfire may well have doomed them all. Magnus whirled, his teeth bared in a desperate snarl to see Thomas standing off to one side behind him, pistol extended between where Jon and Alec stood frozen. The young man’s eyes opened even wider as his jaw dropped, the magnitude of his mistake dawning on him. Deafened by the report of the shot, Magnus flashed the sign for outright retreat, and reached out with his off hand to give the one of the frozen brothers a push as he began to run. J’Tan was immediately ahead of him, and the others were pelting along behind him when he glanced back, unable to hear the sound of their footsteps over the ringing in his ears.
They fled at a dead sprint down the hallway, and Magnus hoped that J’Tan’s sense of direction was leading them true. He knew there had been at least two of the monstrosities within the walls, and if his theory was correct there would be far more close by. He didn’t know how a horde would have sustained itself in the recent weeks, but it seemed an inescapable conclusion that a horde had conquered Black Peak Pit, retreating down into the mine for shelter from the sun as many monsters were want to do. They needed to either find a way to escape and hope the creatures wouldn’t pursue them far, or find a different place to hide, a better hidden nook or cranny. Suddenly he heard a shriek loud enough to overpower the ringing that was still muffling the sounds of their frantic flight. A terrible scream that seemed to go on longer than should have been possible, piercing right to his very core. He risked another glance back and saw the other three members of his party close on his heels as another pair of glowing eyes rounded the opposite corner.
They ran like men possessed, but every time he risked a backwards glance there were more of the creatures, and they seemed to be closing the gap. During one such glimpse Magnus saw Thomas pointing his pistol over his shoulder as he ran, blindly firing. He saw one creature stumble, one of its front legs collapsing, and saw them all flinch in the momentary flash of flame that burst from the weapon’s barrel before the corridor behind them was shrouded in yet more smoke. At one point two of the horrors burst from a side door that J’Tan had just passed. Magnus lunged forward with his spear, sending it ripping through one of the beast’s throats as he sprinted past. Looking behind him he saw the other fall to one of the brother’s axes, the axe’s owner leaping over the collapsing corpse as he ripped the weapon free. He wasn’t sure which of the brothers had dealt the fatal blow in the chaos, but the other brother was less lucky. Due to the man’s position at the rear of the group, Magnus thought he was the only one that saw the other brother stumble and fall over the corpse, lost to sight almost immediately in the smokey darkness.
It broke Magnus’ heart to do it, but his training was clear. A Ranger would never leave on of their fellows behind if rescue was possible, but neither would they throw away their own life to save a doomed comrade. The creatures were less than 30 feet behind them as they fled at a dead sprint, if Magnus had tried to save him, he would have barely been able to arrest his momentum before the abominations had set upon his new friend. So, he ran. It seemed like they ran for an eternity, but the rational part of Magnus’ mind that had retreated to the background estimated it at around 60 seconds before J’Tan burst through an exterior door at the end of the hall, with the rest following him out. Magnus lagged behind just slightly once he passed the threshold, and when he saw the last man come out he slammed to door shut, hoping to buy a few seconds’ respite. The last one to exit was Alec, hair streaming behind him as he ran. Evidently Jon had been the unlucky soul that had fallen during their mad dash.
The view in the courtyard echoed his rational mind’s estimation of the time that had elapsed, because even as they all got their bearings Magnus could see a wave of shadows pouring from the pit at the other end of the courtyard, nothing but a stream of black except for where eyes or teeth glinted in reflected starlight. He saw Alec turn, confused, to the door that even then shuddered in its jamb as something rammed into it from the other side. He read the name of the fallen brother on the other’s living lips as Alec reached for the door, axe in hand. Suddenly Magnus found himself closer to the distraught man, striking him with an open hand across the face. *Dead* he signed twice, before shoving the man after J’Tan and Thomas as they ran for the foot gate in the first sally port gate. The creatures were gaining ground, but the Rangers were far closer to the only exit. Magnus overtook Alec as terror lent him speed he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of. J’Tan sprinted through the first open door, Thomas hot on his heels. Magnus once again paused at the door to throw it shut behind them, but Alec didn’t appear in the portal. Magnus risked a glance and saw Alec sprinting over the snowy ground, an axe in both hands. The ringing in Magnus’ ears was beginning to subside, and over the unholy shrieking of the monsters pouring forth from the ground he faintly heard a human voice bellowing in animal outrage.
Magnus stood there, momentarily frozen, just long enough to see Alec meet the tide of abominations head on. He laid about him with his axes once, twice, three times, and Magnus somehow managed to see the gouts of black blood that flew where his blows struck, parting skulls with every strike. On the third blow Alex had turned, and Magnus saw the tears that flew from his comrade’s face, lips parted in a wordless roar. Then he was overrun, falling in a heap under a mound of attackers. Magnus regained his senses and slammed the door shut, running into the second chamber. They were coming too quickly. Terror sped the Rangers’ flight, but he didn’t believe the doors would hold long against the press of bodies, and in a race over the open ground of the causeway they were outmatched. Slamming the door to the second chamber shut, he saw J’Tan exit the room into the exterior portion of the tunnel. Thomas had stopped in the second room, drawing his unspent pistol and unslinging his rifle, leaning it against the rough stone wall. He had looped the belt of his saber across his shoulders before they left the armory, and now Thomas was frantically buckling it around his hips. The two men made eye contact, and he saw the same thoughts that were racing through his mind reflected in the younger man’s eyes. J’Tan was the fastest of them all, and their superior at woodcraft. He was the only one that had a hope of making it out of this, but his narrow lead wouldn’t be enough. Magnus estimated that J’Tan would be overtaken within a half mile. Grinning wildly, Magnus took three long strides to close the distance to Thomas, throwing his free arm around the man’s shoulder and striking him twice across the back. The lad had made a damned fool mistake, a mistake that had already cost two lives, and it would take more than a little luck to have it only claim two more before the night was over.
Despite his foolishness, the younger man stood with his back straight, a saber in one hand and a pistol in the other. Every man in the Imperial Army knew he might one day be called upon to fight against impossible odds, even the normally solitary Rangers. The Imperial Army was a ferocious fighting force, but no army managed to never lose ground. In the war for the Continent, the best a man could hope for was that if they lost the day, they made the enemy pay dearly for every inch of ground. Magnus intended to do just that, and he saw the same steely resolve in Thomas’ eyes.
Suddenly the door shook in place, and the screaming outside reached a fever pitch. The door shuddered again and again as the two warriors took up their positions as the door, Magnus at the front with his spear poised to thrust forward, and Thomas standing just behind his left flank with heavy saber raised above his head. A clawed hand burst through the doorway before retracting, and Magnus thrust his trusty spear forward, feeling it part flesh and skate across bone as it made contact on the other side. Again and again he thrust, screaming a battle cry that could only be heard as a vibration in his own gasping chest. He screamed for the Empire, for the Rangers, for Jon and Alec. Another clawed fist smashed through the door, and Thomas stepped up to his side and joined him in thrusting endlessly through the door as it slowly splintered apart, after first emptying the six rounds of his remaining pistol through the door.
Inspiration hit Magnus like a thunderbolt, and he paused in his butchery, reaching up to the sunstone container on his right wrist. The beasts had eyes that gathered the light like those of a cat, causing the eyeshine he had seen before. They had hidden deep beneath the earth, not venturing out until the night was as dark as it was going to get. He twisted the threaded cap all the way off and dumped the sunstone on the ground just as the door finally gave way, and hoped that his intuition was right.
He felt his heart soar as the suddenly revealed beasts recoiled as one from the sudden daylight scouring the chamber. He returned to thrusting his spear, the point seeking out eyes, hearts, open mouths. The creatures were ferocious, and stronger than their childlike stature would suggest, but the narrow opening of the door meant that Magnus and Thomas didn’t have to hold the door against the entire horde, they just had to hold it against two or three of the nightmares at a time, and it was working. By the Undying Emperor, it was actually working. Magnus had no illusions about how this would end. Though their position at the choke point lessened their tremendous numerical disadvantage, terror could only strengthen their thew for so long. Eventually, the beasts would overwhelm them. Even as the thought crossed his mind, one of them managed to make it past the darting tip of his spear. A blow meant to pierce an eye had been turned at the last second, skating across the top of a bald head. Magnus felt his throat tighten, but Thomas was there in an instant, heavy saber splitting the thing’s skull halfway to the jaw.
Magnuss felt a fierce sense of exultation rise in his chest and he began to laugh, spewing forth half mad cackles as his spear felled more and more of the enemy. The corpses had started to impede the beasts’ ability to attack the door, and Magnus realized that he was at peace with this death, even though he could still feel fear coursing through his body. He had always known he would die in service to the Emperor. Technically, a Ranger could retire, the same as any Imperial soldier. After sufficient years of service, you were eligible for a pension and a small allotment of land in the main Empire. In all his years in the service, he had heard of it happening only a handful of times, and most of those to Rangers who had been crippled beyond recovery but managed to survive. No, death in some peaceful cottage was never in the cards for Magnus Larsen, not if he was being honest with himself. But as he stood there madly thrusting for all he was worth, he decided that this death was far better than perishing on a solitary mission in some lonely part of the Continent. They had to hold to their grisly task as long as they could, and after that they simply would have to trust that they had bought enough time for J’Tan to make the most of his almost preternatural speed and cunning.
Then Magnus felt a sudden impact on his back, as though a smith had swung a sledgehammer into the back of his reinforced Ranger’s coat. He stumbled forward, a heavy weight hanging from the collar of his coat. He lost his footing and was born to the ground. He felt an impact jar him, and the head of one on of the nightmarish beasts fell next to his shoulder, coming to rest facing him, bulging eyes still darting around in their sockets. For a split-second Magnus was bewildered, before his mind suddenly flashed to the gouges in the stone walls that they had noted on the approach. He rolled over, dislodging the spasming corpse on his back, and craned his neck to look behind them, back towards the exterior chamber. Despair stole over him as he saw more of the creatures entering through the exterior foot gate, with yet more pouring down the causeway at their best speed. He’d been a fool, Magnus realized. The horde of horrors hadn’t been held back by his and Thomas’ last stand, the majority had simply gone up and over the wall while some of their monstrous fellows attempted a rage-fueled charge.
Turning back to the door he had been defending, Magnus looked up from the ground just in time to see Thomas fall, frantically beating his pistol against the monster that had latched onto his chest. Clawed hands raked against his own as one of the beasts wrenched the spear from his grasp, and he heard Thomas’ saber clatter to the floor. Grasping hands grabbed the mantle of his coat and began to drag him out of the foot gate, back into the courtyard. Disarmed and battered, blood leaking from a hitherto unnoticed cut on his brow, Magnus struggled futilely against his captors as he and Thomas were dragged across the courtyard. At first he puzzled by his continued survival, before a wave of horror crashed over him.
He and Thomas were being dragged towards the shadowy pit of the mine, surrounded by a tide of screaming horrors. He redoubled his efforts, thrashing madly about with most of his body, kicking out hard with his boots. Magnus could see Thomas struggling next to him as he was dragged, but the young man’s resistance was feeble. It appeared as though when the monsters had laid him low, he had taken a blow to the head. The monsters continued to drag him by the storm mantle of his coat, with clawed hands and feet occasionally lashing out to score a bloody line in and skin not covered by the alchemically toughened leather of his coat. With desperation born of fear he darted a hand to his combat knife, concealed under his coat. He drew it and desperately swiped it above his head at the hands that dragged him, causing them to lose their grip momentarily as the things recoiled from the biting edge.
Gathering his legs under him, Magnus managed to lurch to his feet and whipped his head around, scanning the courtyard. The chances were slim, but if he was lucky he might be able to cut a path through them and attempt escape into the snowy forest. It was unlikely, but he knew it was infinitely preferable to at least die under the sky than experience whatever fate awaited him in the bowels of Black Peak Pit. With that, he made his decision. Screaming wordlessly, he reversed his grip of his knife and struck.
***
He hadn’t been free longer than a moment when they dragged him back to the ground, claws gouging across the back of the hand that held his last ditch weapon. It appeared he wasn’t fated to die under the open sky. His only regret was that he hadn’t been faster. If he had managed just a bit more speed, he might have been able to ram the blade of his knife into his own throat after he had driven it through Thomas’ confused eye. Instead, he stared with vacant eyes at the leering faces of the monsters that pulled him down the Pit’s slopes and hoped that if he met Thomas in the next life, that the young man would understand what Magnus had spared him. His sunstone lay discarded on the floor of the room where they had made their ill-fated last stand, and Thomas’ had been ripped from his wrist during the struggle. As the reflected starlight grew dimmer and dimmer, Magnus hoped that J’Tan had been able to beat the odds and make good his mistake, and that his own end would be quick.
The life of a Ranger in Imperial service is most often a short and brutal affair. At thirty-two, Magnus Larsen was practically an old man by the standards of the Rangers that served on the Monstrous Continent when he died in the dark. Compared to most individual Rangers, the story of his life was an epic. He had seen more of the Continent than all but a handful of humans ever had, and during his service he prevented a great many deaths and catastrophes. Due to the solitary nature of a Ranger’s work, few knew of his passing, and only two living men mourned it.
J’Than, having somehow managed a death-defying escape from Black Peak Pit, hoisted many a glass in his erstwhile Captain’s name. Four years later he died carrying a routine message along one of the Emperor’s Causeways, never to raise a glass in Magnus’ name again. The only other human who mourned Magnus’ passing did so while sitting on utilitarian chair at a desk that closely remembered those used by military commanders many centuries ago. This man mourned him silently, as he had mourned countless millions that died before him.
Magnus Larsen’s service record had one final note made upon it, “Missing, presumed perished”.