Gamman Keep was built upon an outcropping of stone – a landmark towering above the flat tundra expanses that surround it. Its first stones were laid by Arakh’s ancestors in the early days of the Age of Discovery when they arrived in this land and, for unknown generations, the Gamman family have watched over it.

In the known history of the Keep, it’s walls have never faltered. They’ve repelled every attack, weathered every storm, and born every burden placed upon them. But for the first time, a crack in that steadfast façade appeared.

At the base of the outcropping, hidden amongst rubble dislodged by the most recent earthquake, was a hole large enough for an adult to comfortably walk through, descending into the earth directly beneath the Keep. The outcropping was sloped on one side, making that the natural direction for the villagers of Gamman Keep to expand in and creating a sheer cliff on the opposite side that was practically undeveloped.

That was where Kione and Arakh found it. They left the Keep quickly after their conversation with Nakata. By the time they reached it, word should have already reached Jarl Utam of it’s presence, so a more official group would be coming to decide how to handle the crack.

The gnawing paranoia in Arakh’s mind had been growing for months, telling him that something was wrong with the Keep, but every time he brought it up, he was met with dismissal. Especially after the interaction he’d just had with Nakata, he wasn’t going to take that chance again. The paranoia, which had started as a mild curiosity, had grown into a sense of urgency, begging him to do something.

Until now, he had no clue what that something was. Having a clear direction both excited and mortified him.

As they stood in front of the mouth in the earth, his heartbeat grew louder and more intense until it was a deafening thunder in his ears. It was so intense, he barely noticed Kione speak to him.

“Hm?”

“I asked if you’re alright,” she repeated, her face twisting in concern. “You’ve got a weird look in your eye.”

“I’m fine. I’m just… excited, I think.”

“What do you think is in there,” she asked, peering through the darkness. A gentle, warm breeze flowed out of the hole, making goosebumps prickle across their skin. It was difficult to make out anything inside. The tunnel was a straight path right up to the point where the light of day faded and lost its potency but by squinting, they could just make out a sharp right turn just past that point. The angle was so extreme, it didn’t seem natural.

“I’m not sure. This feels man-made,” he said, moving up to trace his hand along the smooth stone wall. “Do you know anything about a tunnel being here?”

Kione’s training as a Steward meant that she had spent her life studying the Keep and its inner workings. The only person that knew more about Gamman Keep was her father.

“There shouldn’t be,” she said, wracking her mind to try and figure out what this tunnel could be. “The Keep’s deepest level is the larder, but that should be…” she trailed off, visualizing the space above her and referencing her mental map of the Keep. The larder should be dozens of feet higher and on the opposite end of the outcropping. Any work done that close to the walls would’ve recorded in the Keep’s library, but digging through her memories, she couldn’t find anything like it.

It was an anomaly.

“Do you hear that,” Arakh abruptly asked. The pounding rhythm of his heart had been cut through by a new, impending sound. A slow, dull rumble echoing through the tunnel. It immediately reminded him of the bear hunt he’d ridden with his father on the year before. It didn’t sound like the roars of the massive creature, but it carried the same feeling.

He was staring intently at the darkness as he tried to figure out what it could be when Kione spoke up. “Hear what?”

That tore his eyes away. “You don’t hear it?”

“All I can hear is wind.”

“Something is growling.” They stood in silence, pondering the implications of that statement as one thought slowly pushed its way to the front of Arakh’s mind. He tried to push it away for as long as possible, but like his heart, it soon became overwhelming. The logical part of his mind knew how foolish it was, but a deeper more visceral part didn’t care.

“I’m going in there,” he said, turning to Kione in hopes that she’d talk him down, but she looked at him with a cool confidence.

“Are you sure?”

“No, but I feel like I have to…”

“Then lead the way.”

“You don’t have to come with me.”

“And stick around to tell dad I let the Jarl-to-be crawl into a hole alone? No thanks,” she said, a hollow smile on her face. He could hear the doubt in her voice, but there was a look of determination on her face, nonetheless. For better or worse, she was going to follow him.

Their fate was sealed.

They stepped into the crack.

Their suspicion that the path wasn’t natural became a certainty almost immediately.

The sudden sharp right they saw before led to a gently curving path that kept going for an unbelievably long time before turning back on itself. A full 180 degree turn that followed the same curve as the one they had just followed just in the opposite direction. Then, further on it did the same thing again, leaving them spiraling around some uncertain center.

The darkness was also far gentler than it first seemed. After the first turn back, they found subtle luminescent lines scrawled across the walls like writing, giving just enough light to see the path at their feet. They coated everything in the tunnel with a sickly green tone.

“This is a labyrinth, isn’t it,” Arakh said, breaking the silence.

He recalled old stories they’d grown up with of creatures living out in the wilds beyond the Keep. Some inhabited mystical ringed structures that filled the land they were built upon with odd powers that would lure you in to your doom. For a long time, Arakh thought they were just fairy tales. Things Nakata told them when they were young and liked to sneak out and run free of the Keep’s walls. He though Nakata just wanted to scare them into behaving.

Of course, as he got older, he learned the truth was far more complicated. When he was about 10, Jarl Utam received word of a beast ravaging some of their lands. He personally led the hunting party 20 men strong to slay it. They returned two weeks later as 5. Even his father, the best hunter among them, returned bearing a severe wound on his chest that he was lucky to recover from.

None of the survivors talked about what happened in detail. Arakh had pressed his father for details, but the most he got was that the creature in question had built a labyrinth around its nest. Labyrinths were real, and they were just as deadly as in the stories.

That realization sank in as their pace slowed to a crawl. Arakh still had the nagging urge to continue on, but his mind just kept snapping back to the image of his father, draped in bloody bandages, and each time it did his resolved faltered. Desperate for anything else to think about, he trained his eyes on the glowing lines on the wall.

“Do you think this is writing,” he asked, tracing one of the lines with a finger. It turned out they were actually carved into the stone. The glow came from a fine moss stuffed into the grooves.

“I-I’m not sure,” Kione said, briefly stopping to take a closer look. “I think this might be founders’ script.”

The founders were the first people to settle the northern lands. The Gamman family drew its lineage back to those first people, so Arakh knew a little bit about them, but only really as far as his family was concerned.

“Can you read it,” he asked?1

Founders’ script was rare to come by and practically useless for normal people to read, but Kione was an exception. She thrived on learning new things and collected pieces of knowledge like treasure. Whenever Arakh wanted to know about something important, she was always the first one he went to because no matter the question, it always seemed like she had the answer right on the tip of her tongue.

The reason she knew so much was that she spent practically all her time in the Keep’s library. Part of it was for her training as Steward, but even beyond that, she liked picking through the untouched books that other people had deemed useless. “Nobody else is going to read them, so it’s nice knowing that I’m the only one that knows what’s inside,” she’d say whenever Arakh asked about why. “It’s like sharing a secret with myself.”

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Awhile back, she found records written by some of the first Gammans which had elements of founders’ script in them. She thought it was important enough to share with the Jarl and her Father, but the “records” were mostly old journals without much general use, so they didn’t particularly care. She, on the other hand, pored over them for months trying to decode and understand it.

If anyone knew what those walls said, it’d be her.

“Not quite,” she said, shattering the illusion Arakh had of her being all knowing. “There are some sigils I recognize, but these look different from the ones I found in the library. I can only pick out a handful of words, like here it says… darkness, I think? I remember seeing it used to talk about winter, so it could be night or coldness too. Then here it says something about blood. And here…” she trailed off, looking at the next word.

“What is it,” Arakh asked, noticing her hesitation.

“You should come and see this.”

On the wall underneath her finger was one he recognized, although it was a bit different from where he had seen it before.2

“Is my family’s crest,” he asked out loud. The Gamman crest looked to Arakh like a crown resting on top of a spiked flower with flowing water trailing off to the right. As he looked at the symbol on the wall, he could see all of those elements in it, but simplified down to just as few lines as possible. It was vague enough that he could have been reading too much into it, but the deepest parts of his mind told him it was.

“Why is it here?” A million questions started roaring through his mind.

“I don’t know. The Gamman family is descended from the founders, so maybe your ancestors took this sigil as their crest?”

“What does it say about us. I know you’re not sure, but just get as close as you can. I need to know.” The sense of impending doom had surged forward in his mind again. Whatever was compelling him to go down there had to do with these sigils.

“A great drought is coming. When blood flows and…” she paused with a furrowed brow. “…and Gamman blood flows again Gamman will awaken for the newest to wrap the world in darkness... It repeats the phrasing there in the middle, but I don’t know why.”

“What about the rest?” She traced over a brief section, but there was still plenty more.

“It just… loops. It keeps saying that same thing over and over again.” They both looked down the hallway at the scrawl continuing on into the distant darkness, now aware of the familiar repeating pattern

Neither was sure what to say about that, so Arakh decided to just keep pushing onward, deeper into the labyrinth. The winding twists and turns kept going, but as they went deeper, the timing between each turnback shortened. By the end they could barely walk 5 feet without turning around. Then, just as they fell into the rhythm of it all, they made the final turn.

Instead of seeing another matching curved tunnel, it was a short straight path that opened up into a chamber filled with more of the dull green light. For the first time in months, the vague foreboding anxiety in Arakh’s mind took form and he knew he found the answer. As he rounded the corner, he broke into a mad dash.

“Arakh?! What’s wrong? Do you see something?”

He couldn’t hear her. His heartbeat was back at full strength as he locked his sights on the large sphere in the center of the chamber.

It was an egg. Arakh didn’t know how he knew it was, but he did even before he got close enough to see the rough cracked surface. It was so large the two of them could have curled up and fit inside it together.

He reached out and let his fingers loosely brush against the shell. The moment he made contact, his vision flashed white and the ground began to shake. Another quake wracked the chamber, stronger than any other, dislodging dust from the roof.

Arakh dropped to his knees as he felt Kione tackle him to the ground and cover his head. They sat there together, waiting for the shaking to slow down, but rather than fade, it grew in intensity. Just as they thought the roar of the earth couldn’t get any louder, an explosion happened above them, showering their crumpled forms in debris.

At first, they thought it was the chamber itself collapsing, but when the ringing shaking subsided, they were still alive and intact. The room was unaffected. The debris on the floor around them wasn’t from the ceiling. It came from the egg.

It had burst violently outward. From the ground, they couldn’t see what was inside, but something was making a shrill trill from inside. As they slowly rose to their feet, wary to see what had emerged, they found themselves staring straight into the eyes of a large, lizard creature about the size of one of the hunting hounds they kept around the Keep. It’s scales were pale green, matching the light from the sigils on the walls.

It locked its sights on Arakh. As he took a step backward in shock, it followed his movement, crawling up onto the shattered remnants of the shell to maintain the distance. It had a long, thin neck, so its head seemed to float freely in the air, perfectly still as the body moved. It’s front two legs that it used to stretch out of the shell, had thick leathery skin connecting them to its torso. Arakh moved his head right and it matched that movement too. He moved his head in circles, trying to shake off the connection but it matched him at every turn, like he was looking in a mirror.

“What the fuck,” Kione swore under her breath from behind him. As she did, the creature’s gaze snapped to her. It opened its mouth and began to hiss, rearing back with its neck like a spring ready to strike. In a blink, it thrust toward her face.

The two were barely able to react. Kione instinctively took a single step back and Arakh thrust his arm forward to try and come in the way. If either had been a fraction of a second slower, blood likely would have been spilled. Instead, just as quickly as it began its attack, the lizard froze, its open mouth that was aimed at Kione’s face stopped around Arakh’s hand, serrated fangs just millimeters from his skin.

It shifted its gaze back to him, a questioning look in its deep black eyes, but what was it asking?

Whatever this place is, it’s tied to my family. Will this thing listen to me?

“S-she’s a friend,” Arakh said, trying to be assertive, but his voice cracked ever so slightly. The lizard slowly pulled its mouth away from his arm then moved back to staring him down.3

This time, Arakh decided to take the initiative. He cautiously reached his hand out, looking for any signs of aggression, but the beast had returned to its calm, trancelike state and didn’t even glance at his hand. Slowly but surely, he reached forward and placed his hand on the lizard’s snout. At the contact, it closed its eyes and seemed to press into his hand and with that simple movement, every ounce of fear left Arakh’s body.

Some deep instinctive part of him knew that this creature was a friend.4

That’s why, when it lurched back again, instead of fear, he felt a sudden pang of worry. It erupted in a coughing fit, the thick sound of something dislodging in its chest.

“What’s wrong, are you okay,” he asked rushing forward. He slapped it on hard on the back, trying to help dislodge whatever it was choking on, but it used its back foot to push him away. Despite its size, it stuck with an impressive strength, knocking him on his ass.

Then, something hit the ground with a heavy metal clang and the creature stopped, breathing heavily. On the ground beneath it was an elegantly curved longsword, far too large to have been inside the lizards, and covered in a thin layer of slick bile. Absolutely bewildered by that turn of events, Arakh just stared down at it until the creature started to nudge it toward him with its snout.

“Is this for me?”

The look in its eyes seemed to say so.5

Arakh reached out a tentative hand, hesitant to touch the slimy surface. Initially, it was just as off putting as he expected, but he pushed through the disgust and hoisted it off of the ground. It was heavy. He had a sword about the same size that he received on his 10th birthday but had never used outside of training and it was much lighter than the one he held now. It also had founders’ script inscribed in tiny detail all across it.

Eri uuy raa riw hion?

Someone whispered in his ear. He jumped instinctively as he turned to face whoever it was, accidentally letting the sword clatter to the floor, but there was just Kione standing there with a startled look on her face. She instinctively looked over her own shoulder to see who he was looking for, but it was only the two of them in the chamber.

“What’s up? Did you hear something?”

“I- I think so? It sounded like someone just whispered in my ear.”

“I didn’t see anybody. Can you still hear it?”

He shook his head.

“Hmm,” Kione furrowed her brow. “Let me see that.”

She walked over to the sword, and as she reached out for it the lizard snarled at her. It started forward again but Arakh stepped between them and that seemed to reassure it. She picked it up, turning the blade over in her hands before extending it out to him again.

“Your family crest is on the handle. There are some other sigils, but I don’t recognize any of them. I think…” she trailed off, trying to figure out how to say what she was thinking without sounding crazy, before finally giving up. “Just, take it and tell me if you hear the voice again.”

Arakh, piecing together what she was implying, took the sword. Sure enough, as he grasped its handle in both hands, the raspy whisper returned.

Fi dit faur fir e um ina if yio. Yon cei diundrstom nu?

Even though he was expecting it this time and knew there wouldn’t be anybody there, the sensation was so intense that he still flinched forward and turned to see who was behind him.

“I hear it, but I can’t understand what it’s saying. It sounds like it’s speaking another language.”

He did his best to repeat what he heard, but Kione also had no clue what it was.

“Do you think,” she said slowly, working out the idea in her own mind as she spoke, “the sword is the one talking to you?”

“Is that possible?”

“I don’t know, but this whole thing seems impossible anyway and that at least makes the most sense.”

“Okay well,” Arakh held the sword up and stared at it like it was a person standing before him. “Are you talking to me?”

Ysm a mi.

“I think it said yes,” he said over to Kione, “but I’m honestly not sure. What else should I ask it?”

As they both paused to consider what to do next, the ground shook again, only this time they could tell instinctively that it was different from all the others. The beast reared back and glare up at the ceiling, baring its fangs and letting out a feral hiss. It wasn’t like the ground itself was shaking, but rather something outside was shaking the ground.

Something was happening in the Keep.

As fast as they could, they sprinted back out through the winding hallways of the labyrinth. Kione lead the way as Arakh followed behind, weighed down by the sword and the beast who leapt onto his back as they fled the chamber, wrapping its long skinny body around him like a child clinging to its parents back. When Arakh did finally make it out into the gentle dusk light, he found Kione frozen, staring up at the sky.

Smoke was rising into the sky above the Keep, its acrid smell hanging heavy in the air. Far in the distance, they could hear the sound of iron on iron. Battle was underway.

In the brief time that they were underground, war had been declared on Gamman Keep.