Rowan awoke to a fist slamming on her cabin door. She had tied to the Black Docks last night. Two weeks on the Lake had left her longing for the discomfortable comforts of shore life. She threw herself out of bed, dressing hurriedly. It was even odds that the local city watch was there to extort her, or some desperate townsperson was seeking her out for medical treatment, so she grabbed her coin purse and implements case just to be sure.
She opened the door to her bedroom, walked out into the laboratory and sample storage room. Again someone pounded their fist on the door. “Alright, one moment! Stop that racket!” She yelled, striding over, unbolting, and opening the door an inch, glaring at the person on the other side.
The man was dressed in dark gray robes and chain armor, with a red patch sewn into the upper right hand side of the garb, right above the man's heart. A grunt in the Blight Wardens. Not what she'd expected. “Eh, ma’am, sorry for bothering you so early in the day, but we've got something we need you to take a look at.” The man was stout and more than a little portly, about fifty, with graying hair and thick mutton chops. “I'm Jeck. I'm to escort you to the Tower.”
“I'm not being burned at the stake?” Rowan asked, still trying to recalibrate her expectations.
“No, ma’am, as much as folks may or may not like ya, you've been extensively cleared of any blight infection or use of magic, Dark Arts or otherwise. Now, if you'd follow me.” Jeck stepped aside. Still wary, Rowan stepped out of the door.
The two of them walked down the docks and through the streets. For once, no-one gave her death glares. The Blight Wardens were respected in these parts, the first line of defense against the threat of blight beasts and Risen. It was perhaps five in the morning, and fog had settled on the streets. Few people were out and about.
They reached the Dreadhold gates swiftly, great towering thirty foot tall gates supposedly made of thunderbolt steel and enchanted by the Wizards long ago. She indeed noted tiny, intricate lines of runes carved into every available inch of the metal. According to the stories, the gates could hold against even a giant. The material had been critical: thunderbolt iron, iron from the stars, was the only metal that could hold spells within it without them fading. Supposedly, the Dreadhold had stood for a millennium.
The Dreadhold was a vast, square complex of gray stone, twice-walled: the outermost wall with its iron gate and parapets every one hundred feet. Guards strode atop the first wall, which was wide enough for two men to walk side by side.
Jeck came to a stop and hollered up to the guard tower nearest: “It's me, Jeck, returned with the wise woman!”
One of the watchmen yelled back: “State the password!”
Jeck scratched his head. “Oh, I don't know, ‘skylark’?”
“Password received! Opening the gates!”
The ginormous gates opened inward, just enough for Jeck and Rowan to walk through single file, and slammed shut behind them. Jeck led her through a maze of training yards, tents, thatched huts, stone buildings, and people in dark gray. Some, she saw, wore greens and browns with only a dark gray band of cloth on their right arms, denoting them as scouts, and others wore full black, denoting them as scriveners, though that last group was few and far between. The second wall was as high as the first, and its gates opened to them at their approach. They walked into the central keep of the Dreadhold, at the center of which sat the Tower.
Outside of the main building attached to the Tower, amidst the bustling of the inner courtyard stood a broad shouldered man, with a long brown beard streaked with silver, and hair that came down to his neck. He had a scruffy beard, and an eye patch. He did not say much, but observed the goings-on intently.
Rowan strode up and stuck out a hand. “Rowan of the Black Lake. You must be the Commander of the Dreadhold.”
Before the man could answer, another, smaller man who Rowan hadn't noticed cleared his throat and said: “That would be me.” He shook her befuddled hand.
Rowan apologized effusively, but he waved it away. “It's alright. Second Lieutenant Ram does cut quite the figure. I'm Commander Justice Karth. My older brother, Fortitude, is Lord of Karthane. Our family has a tradition of taking virtues for surnames, you see. But I digress. The reason I brought you here is that we have found something— someone, perhaps, if you belabor the definition of person— that has defied all attempts by our scriveners to categorize it. It is not entirely blightborn, not entirely human, and definitely not an elf, we know that much. It doesn't need to eat or sleep, though it has shown signs of weariness and expressed thirst, though every drink we bring it, it spits out. Our First Scrivener has been doing extensive tests on it. It has become something of a passion project for him. He requested you specifically, saying that if anyone has the expertise he needs, you do. To be honest, I didn't even know who you were until he requested you.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Rowan processed this, and smiled internally, ecstatic. She was being asked to consult on a groundbreaking subject? The idea of being one of the first to ever study such a unique phenomenon was heady. She squared her shoulders and said: “How long has he been here, and where is he being held?” Basic information first. Best to save the advanced questions for the scriveners.
“He has been here four days and three nights. As for where he is, follow me.” The Commander strode off, and Rowan followed, with the quiet Lieutenant staying back. “The inner keep of the Dreadhold was the first part of it constructed, all those years ago.” Commander Karth said as they made their way through various hallways. The hallways were structured in such a way, Rowan noticed, that choke points and defenses were easy to set up, in the event of an assault. Anyone trying to take the keep would be forced to conquer foot by foot, with heavy resistance at every step.
They went down several staircases. The Commander led her to a thick metal door with a small, narrow window and three keyholes. Commander Karth pulled a ring of keys from his belt and slowly sorted through them until inserting each one separately. “A hand, please? They must be turned simultaneously.”
Rowan turned one key as the Commander turned two, and all three locks clunked in time. Commander Karth turned the knob of the door and heaved, and it swung inward. Beyond it was yet another staircase, and at this one the Commander had to light torches along the way, and carried one himself.
When they reached the bottom, he turned to her and said: “Listen closely, if you would, madam. Beyond this point lie our most horrific and vile specimens, only kept from being burnt to white ash on order of the First Scrivener and myself, that they might be studied to strengthen our knowledge of our enemy. Steel yourself.”
Though she’d seen many horrors in her time, Rowan took his words to heart, for she’d heard such dark tales about the Deep Cells, the underground cells where the most horrible criminals and strangest blight monsters in the realm were contained. She had never imagined that she’d be allowed to see it first hand.
She was led down a row of cells. Some were made from iron, others from stone, and still others from strange crystal that shifted in hue from green to blue to purple, and back again, with the passing of the torchlight. “You will make out nothing of them.” Commander Karth said as he went, and indeed, all Rowan could see within the cells was a kind of gray fog or haze of smoke. “They are filled with a smoke that makes them docile and shields us from seeing them. Some of the monsters contained down here are perilous simply to gaze upon.”
“Why aren’t we breathing in the smoke as well?” Rowan asked, as they continued to walk. The corridor stretched on for hundreds of cells, though most of them were empty. It was said that all the kingdom’s worst criminals who for some reason or another couldn’t be beheaded (usually for political reasons) were thrown into the Deep Cells to rot right next to the specimens the scriveners imprisoned for study.
“The smoke is bound to not move into any of the bridging corridors like this one by a spell placed here by the Red Wizard many years ago. He visits every fifty years or so to re-cast it, or so I am told. The last time he did so was before I was even born, ha-ha. Now, here we are.” They had reached a forked corridor. They took the right fork, walking only a hundred feet, passing various locked iron doors. At the end of the hallway there was a door that had been propped open by a large stone, opening inward onto an eerie scene.
A shriveled, bent creature, as pale as milk and with teeth like knives, hissed and writhed while tied down to a stone slab. Several figures in black robes were studying, prodding, and taking samples of the creature’s blood and spit. One was taking notes on a large scroll, furiously scribbling.
One of the black robed figures stood out from the rest, as he was sitting in a chair by the side of Cynorath, attempting to talk with him to little success.
Commander Karth walked to the threshold of the room, gulped, and waited. Rowan stood behind him, confused.
“Enter.” The voice of the hooded man in the chair was cold and rough, as dry as any voice Rowan had ever heard, like its owner had not drank a glass of water in a thousand years.
Commander Karth waved her in, and she stepped into the room, wary. The Commander said, in a desperate kind of voice: “Madam, in front of you sits Tyrenoth, Second of His Name, First Scrivener of the Dreadhold, in life King in the South and Slayer of the Weeping King.”
“The Valorous Revenant.” Rowan gasped, for she knew her history.
The First Scrivener pushed back his hood to reveal a skull whose eye sockets were filled with naught but azure fire. “My warmest greetings, Rowan of the Black Lake. I hope you will be of some use to us.”