When Siegfried reached the old temple, he first rode a slow, deliberate circuit around the area. He smiled dumbly as he passed riff-raff of the lowest order, hoping to look the part of a slumming nobleman. In actuality, he was taking a head count of all those out in the open. His horse grew agitated and unruly as he rode about the area and he’d noticed, as he fought to control the nervous beast, that the whole place was devoid of stray dogs or cats, and there weren’t any birds nesting in the rubble, either. The only animals that lingered here were those bound in one way or another. He found what looked to be an impromptu stable of crudely put together blocks from old ruins further away. There were half a dozen horses being cared for already in it. A word with the suspicious owner confirmed his fears. A large party had been here just a few days ago.

“Led by a minotaur?”

“Aye, m’lord,” said the gypsy that ran the stable. “Had a couple of others with him, too.”

“What was he like?”

“Big, m’lord, even fer talkin’ livestock. Black hide an’ weird eyes. I ain’t never seen eyes like them, before. Between you and I, m’lord, I’d live a happy life never having to see them again!”

“How were they strange?” asked Siegfried, glancing quickly over his shoulder, fighting the chill creeping up his back.

“Never seemed to close, m’lord. They was always just….staring.”

“Did you get his name?”

“Nay, m’lord. This fat bull he had with him did the talking, and none of his fellows were very chatty. They all stuck close to the black fella, though. This old crone he had with him were holding onto his arm the whole time, and he didn’t seem to notice. Strange bunch, that lot, but they paid well.” The man stepped closer, his eyes narrowing as his hand reached into his pocket. He took out a gold coin, held it up to the light to Siegfried could see. “Foreign coin, but gold is gold, m’lord. You look well-travelled, and educated too, sir. Tell me, do you know what these are?”

Siegfried had stared at it for quite some time. The stable keeper must have expected the noble to reach out and touch it, but he did not move. The older, swarthy man laughed, though he didn’t seem to understand why. Siegfried said nothing. He had seen coin like this before, in books. Even the Grand Museum in Gozer had taken its collection and melted it down.

“Did he tell you where he got them from?” Siegfried heard himself ask, eventually.

“No, m’lord. Why?”

“Do you know anyone who might be able to melt those down?”

The man raised an eyebrow at Siegfried. “Why would you ask a thing like that, m’lord?”

“Because they’re elven.”

Those coins were hidden in his satchel now, after the Prince had traded them for an equal number of currency that wouldn’t get the poor man in trouble. As a witch hunter, Siegfried had the power to confiscate them, but that would only have caused needless trouble. Revealing his identity here was the last thing the Prince wanted to do. They would have to be safely disposed of when he got back to the Capital. Until then, he needed to keep focused on why he came here in the first place. The party from the plantation house had definitely stayed here. If they talked to anyone inside, the Prince was willing to bet it was with the leader of the Ashen.

The inside of the temple was somehow worse than Siegfried had been expecting, in that it served as a reminder of just how little experience the Prince had had beyond the confines of the Royal Palace, or the upscale districts of Gozer. Since he’d begun his life in exile, he’d mostly stayed in the Palace, under guard, or wandered the richer districts of the Capital, generally escorted. Poverty and misery were concepts, not realities, to the exiled royal. The underground remnants of the old place of worship were somehow crowded, but too large at the same time. The ceilings seemed unusually high, the walls and floors of the first two levels too smooth. Footsteps and sharp coughing reverberated back and forth as the Prince held his nose against the terrible stench of too many people living too closely together, and proceeded.

There was a far greater diversity of belief here than he had expected. The Faith had little time for other opinions of creation, and with the Crown’s help, their inquisitors did what they could to convince the populace of the falsity of other belief systems. When words were not enough, they turned to fire, or the noose. Siegfried knew only the bare bones of the spirit faith of the river dwarves, and even less of the distinctly mystical and personal worship of the minotaurs. His wanderings through this dark and noisome complex was educational, at the least. He asked those whose attire seemed the least ragged for information about the place, and where he might find the Ashen. Despite his information from the whores, the Ashen might have claimed this temple as their own, but they didn’t care who else inhabited it, even if they were of a different theological bent. Siegfried found it very curious.

All those the Prince questioned advised caution, but pointed him nonetheless in the direction he needed to go in this unnatural labyrinth. He thought he had readied himself for anything by the time he reached the bottom level. He was wrong. The number of males and females of various species down here was alarming. There was a thick, noxious surface he strode on, as he proceeded through some of the most violently cut rock he had ever beheld. He had not seen the sudden drop from the ramp, but his reactions were quick, thank god. Someone had been using the patches of rough, spiky rock around the wooden steps as a toilet.

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The weak light made things worse. His imagination concocted the idea of evil waiting for him in every shadow and made every hunched, coughing figure a fiend from another time. Crude, evil faced demons appeared suddenly before the Prince, and he gasped and staggered back, nearly dropping the burning torch he had brought as he fumbled to draw his sword. When the grinning face did not follow him in his retreat, he sighed and cursed himself at having fled from a statue. He held his torch to the thing then, stared into its blank obsidian eyes for a moment, as the light from the flames danced over its roughly carved features. This had been an important place once, especially during the Last Days. How many elves had gathered here, during that final, awful night? Why hadn’t this place been filled with earth and stone, its existence hidden and its history erased, as had happened to the temple in the Capital? All that remained of the temple in Gozer were myths and half-remembered tales passed down from the ancestors of the people who had lived through the Last Days and seen the end of the elves. The temple itself had been buried in the foundations of the city’s richest housing district, it stones cannibalized for walls and roads and a hundred other things. The past could not change, but it could be forgotten. Why had no such action been taken here?

Siegfried put these questions aside for now. He had other, far more pressing business inside. He had been told upstairs that the leader of the Ashen would be found at this time at his cult’s shrine, and if this demon and the compatriots at its flanks that the young man only now noticed were anything to go by, he had found it. The gaggle of sitting, drugged out humans and scaled showed him the way to the entrance. As he stepped into the black room, Siegfried became vaguely aware of a sense of space he had not expected, or encountered at all before. His mind could not quite articulate to him what was wrong exactly, but he felt a sense of displacement and fear slip over him and linger like a cloak. He raised his torch as high as he could as he looked upwards. Shivering, he looked first left, and then right. There were walls here. There was a ceiling. He just couldn’t see them from where he was standing. That was what he told himself again, and again.

Crackling flames from another source drew his grateful attention. Thick incense filled his nostrils, driving away some of the awful stench from outside as Siegfried paced quickly to reach the gathering of grey figures around an altar whose surface he was grateful he could not make out just yet. Coming here alone had been a mistake. It was a wonder how much braver a man could be in front of even a single comrade, than when he knew himself to be alone.

One of the group on the fringe straightened their back suddenly, as if he felt a knife at his back. He turned and spotted the coming intruder. He was one of the scaled, though it took Siegfried a second to realise that. He wore a strange mask over his features that looked to be made of broken animal skulls. Aside from the strange mask, the male was naked, his malnourished frame distorted, covered in layers of what looked like it might soot, or ashes that were smeared all over his body. Siegfried held his torch up and scanned the dozen or so people who turned to face him now. They wore masks much like the first to have noticed him, and like him, they were all naked except for their faces, their bodies smeared with dust and ash. The Prince nearly recoiled as the smell hit him. These people were beyond repulsive.

“Who is in charge here?” he asked, fighting the urge to gag.

A male dwarf stepped forward. He was better fed than his fellows, though that was hardly saying much. As well as the shattered bear skull that covered his face there was a crown of antlers on his head.

“I am Urba. I am the High Priest here,” he said with a superior, parochial tone. “What do you want?”

“My name is Siegfried,” the Prince began, fighting the urge to look over his shoulder to make certain the way out was clear. “I’m looking for information from your cult.”

“If you seek ultimate knowledge, Siegfried, then you could not come to a better place.”

The other worshippers seemed to grow tense. In gaps between their bodies, Siegfried was almost he saw metal reflecting the flickering light of his torch. Were those weapons?

“Thank you, Urba, but that is not the knowledge I seek today. I understand that a large number of people came to stay in this temple a few days ago. They were led by a minotaur with a black hide. Did they stay here?”

Urba made a gesture with his hand. His cultists began to disperse, spreading out in a line. Siegfried felt himself take a step back, but his attention was drawn then back to the dwarf, who had pulled off his mask. He was beardless, much of his face bearing scars from burns. He smiled at the Prince.

“Yes.”

The other worshippers kept walking to the left and right of them, almost vanishing out of sight in the darkness beyond the reach of his torchlight. Siegfried’s free hand drifted down to the pommel of his sword. The urge to flee was strong, yet he could not make himself turn away now. He had come this far. It was a supreme act of will which kept his breathing steady just then. Could they hear his heart hammering to escape his chest?

“Did they stay here, with you?”

“Yes.”

Siegfried thought he heard a foot fall to his immediate left. He risked a glance that way and cursed himself silently. There was nothing. There was nothing. He turned around, making a full circle, waving his torch before him, his breath ragged as his mind struggled to understand. There was nothing in here. Nothing but the altar and the naked, smiling dwarf. Siegfried slammed his foot on the ground and felt a spark of pain against his sole as his boot crunched down on sharp, crudely cut rock. He drew his sword, and the blade flashed in the fire light of his torch. It was real. The floor was real. The confidence given him by such simple truths was astounding.

Siegfried turned to face Urba then, his attention wholly on the dwarf. Urba was real. His body was flesh and would die if a sword was plunged into it, just like anyone else of this earth. The room was wrong. Siegfried knew this, but dared not dwell on it. It was not why he was here. He needed to focus, needed to remember the responsibilities he bore, and the oath he had sworn.

“He killed people to the north of here. He stole a child.”

“It is as he said he would do, then.”

“You spoke with him?”

“Of course,” the dwarf said with a nod. His smile grew as he spoke, and his eyes burned wild in the darkness. “He is a priest, as I am. He walked in the dead places, as I have done, as others have before me, and as thousands more will do after. He has gone further than any of us have ever dared. He alone has seen the face of God. He has stood before the Gate at the edge of the world, and beat his fist against its doors. He has seen where the elves have gone, and he will take us all there with him.”

The tip of his sword scraped against the floor. Siegfried was cold and afraid. Every story that kept him awake as a child at night, every question the Cardinal who taught him of the Faith could not answer about those days, all the terrible knowledge that had become his as Master of the Order, came rushing back upon him in that moment. The fire in his torch crackled. It was the only sound in this black hell until he found his voice again.

“Who is he? What is his name?”

“Volkard,” said the priest, and his minions seized Siegfried.