The last of the stolen energy from Abyssal Attunement drained away, and Harald felt his legs grow shaky. Taking deep, steadying breaths he strode over to the first step that rose to the elevated first half of the hall, and sat heavily.
For a moment it was all he could do to just sit there shivering. He wasn’t cold. Wasn’t wounded. But his hands shook, his jaw felt jittery, and he couldn’t quite catch his breath. He observed himself dispassionately even as he felt his emotions roil and peak within him.
“What the hell?” He set the Dawnblade beside him and set to rubbing his thumb in the other palm, then shook out his arms and sat straighter.
His heart was pounding, pounding, pounding, like a mallet seeking to burst out from his ribs, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath no matter how much he focused on drawing deep lungfuls of air.
But the strange reaction didn’t last long; soon he felt himself settle, and after awhile he was able to take up his malachite blade once more and examine its length.
No notches, no nicks. The malachite tracery over the subtle black undertones was mesmerizing; he tried angling it back and forth and watched liquid gleam flow down its length. It didn’t even feel like metal, more like slick, cool stone with a wicked edge.
An Artifact.
Again he summoned its description, whispered it aloud as he reread it. “Once per day…ghostly trail of your last vanquished foe. Huh.”
He considered the last walker he’d slain. He could trace its path back through the day, back to dawn.
For awhile he just sat with that concept, worked it around in his mind. Tried to pry forth the utility. It meant he could follow wandering monsters back to their lairs, find where they came from. Perhaps if ever had to defend himself against an assassin he could work out their base. Thieves.
But mostly it would be to figure out where monsters and fiends came from. Which could be incredibly useful; the denizens of each level seemed to know their levels far better than any map could ever elucidate. Following the path of one such could reveal all manner of secrets.
Possibly.
The temptation to use the power now was strong, but he held off. He could activate the blade’s ability at any time before the next dawn, which, admittedly, he’d lost track of. First, however, the scales.
Harald heaved himself to his feet and scooped up the easy pickings, collecting 12 Copper Moons, then plotted a path through the haunt light and jogged through, scooping up scales till he stepped out against the far wall. Another 11 Copper Scales. Then he entered the tomb, collected 5 more scales, for a total of 36. Combined with the 17 he’d collected both with Sam and during their initial run with Vic and Nessa, and he had a full purse of 53. About half a Golden Dawn, or five Silver Starbursts.
“Man.” He tried not to feel let down. “At this rate it’ll take me forever.” 100,000 Copper Moons to Ascend to his second Throne felt impossibly distant. It also drove home how massive the sums he’d been playing about with before had been: a Horizon's Whisper, the stake of his bet with Yeoric, was the complete 100,000 Coppers he’d need. If he raided the dungeon for two thousand straight days he’d make a single Horizon at the rate he was harvesting.
Five and a half years of daily raids with pitched battles.
No wonder raiders joined the noble houses or sought direct patronage like Vic and Nessa.
Unless of course he simply descended to the levels where there were greater spoils.
Harald nudged one of the dead walkers with the toe of his boot. As frightening as these monsters were, they were surprisingly easy to kill. After all, they just ran at you with their arms outstretched, manifesting some basic cunning only in larger numbers.
If you found yourself a good choke point and were patient and calculating, well. The results spoke for themselves.
Then again, the lower levels would have their equivalents of leaping spiders and haunts.
The raider’s quandary: play it safe and spend your life harvesting Coppers, or descend a little and risk it all for Silvers.
Harald jingled the scales in his palm, thoughtful. The first twelve levels were called the Iron Levels due to being introductory in nature; all could be reached via pentagrams in the Dungeon Portal, but the 11th and 12th Level was where you first started harvesting Silvers with any regularity.
It wasn’t ridiculous to consider dropping to the 11th next time with Sam to see what damage they could do below. His current haul, if they’d all been Silvers, would be worth over 500 Coppers.
That would mean only 200 straight days of raiding to acquire a Horizon’s Whisper.
Much better than five years.
Harald inhaled sharply and glanced around, coming back to the moment. For now he had to get back to the portal. Curious, however, he stepped over to the stone shelf and studied the disturbed bones.
An adult, he’d guess, the bones pale. The skeleton had been laid upon an ancient green cloth, but all of it had been tugged at by the falling walker, so that it was dragged halfway off.
Revealing a clearly incised pattern on the shelf itself.
“Hello,” whispered Harald, turning his head to consider the markings. “What have we here?”
It was a series of small rectangles and squares, six in total, each numbered in random order.
Harald gingerly placed the bones back on the cloth, then hesitated and scooped up those scattered on the floor as well. This he bundled up and then set against the wall so the entirety of the shelf was exposed.
Six slightly different squares and rectangles. A map of sorts? Did each signify a room on the 4th Level? Then why the order?
Harald rested his hip against the shelf and crossed his arms, lost in thought. Abruptly he pulled out the blade and examined it anew, wondering if it perhaps were the key to the puzzle. He laid it upon the squares, moved it around, but it didn’t in any way conform to the squares.
He tried pushing the squares in order, but they were merely etched into the rock.
“Damn,” he whispered. He had no parchment with him to sketch the pattern either. Again he sank into reverie, staring out at nothing, and then he blinked.
A large block in the far wall was the same shape as the largest of the squares incised into the shelf. He checked and saw another block conforming to the second square, just two yards over. For a moment he simply flicked his gaze back and forth, and in rapid succession found all the blocks that matched the pattern.
They were right there, embedded seamlessly into the wall.
Surprise and delight blossomed in his chest. Glancing one last time at the pattern, he stepped up to the first block. Other than its shape it was indistinguishable from its neighbors.
Should he come back with Sam and the others? The blocks weren’t going anywhere.
But what were the odds that following secret instructions would lead to danger?
Slim, surely.
Plus he was just too damn curious.
Harald placed his palm on the block and pushed.
There was some resistance, then something clicked audibly and the block retracted an inch, the sound gravely as if grit had gotten into the machinery.
He stepped back, admired his handiwork, then moved to the second block. In quick succession he pressed each one, and when the sixth block retracted a greater rumble sounded from behind the wall, like a huge rusted contraption coming reluctantly to life, and a segment of the wall retracted completely and then slid aside.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
A secret door.
A musty smell exhaled from the darkness.
Harald raised his lantern in one hand, malachite blade in the other, and peered inside.
A narrow corridor extended into pitch darkness, crudely cut into the living rock itself. He could even make out the faint grooves of the chisels.
Again he bit his lower lip and glanced out the tomb. What if the door closed behind him? What if it led to some ancient horror?
Harald flexed his fingers on the grip of the malachite blade. Five years. That’s how long the cautious approach would take him. Five years of non-stop daily grinding, harvesting Copper Moons and praying he didn’t make a mistake.
Or he could take a gamble.
The nature of this setup indicated a reward, did it not? A hidden boon? Otherwise it would have been simpler to have the blocks trigger the roof to collapse or giant iron spikes to shoot out.
He knew he should be content. He’d succeeded against all odds here, won a hard-fought victory. Wisdom indicated he should retreat, wait for his friends, play it safe.
But he simply wanted more.
Raising his lantern he stepped through the aperture into the narrow tunnel. He moved forward cautiously, constantly glancing back, but the doorway didn’t close.
The air was cool and had a mineral tang. The floor was damp. His shoulders brushed both walls as he walked.
At least if he were attacked here his foes would have to come at him one at a time.
Dawnblade resting on his shoulder, he advanced.
The darkness was absolute up ahead and behind. He moved in an endless island of golden light, the walls scrolling by, the ceiling pressing close.
His mind remained calm, however. Once the tightness of the passage might have bothered him, but no longer.
As long as he didn’t run into any spiderwebs, at any rate.
The passage began to slope down. Subtly at first, it soon became quite steep, so that Harald had to advance cautiously so as to not slip.
Down and down, till at last he came to its end: a flat wall.
Harald scowled. That didn’t make sense. Had the tunnelers simply given up? He stepped in close and examined the dead end. Smooth stone, but with a seam running alongside the edges.
Interesting.
As he moved his lantern about the shift of subtle shadows gave away another feature; a faint plaque of metal about two inches wide at head height, set flush against the wall.
“Hmm.” Harald leaned in close to examine it. A single nail was driven into the upper left corner.
It took a little effort, but by pushing up on the bottom right corner he caused the plaque to swivel up and around, revealing a narrow slot in the stone through which blue light faintly glimmered.
Harald stepped in and put his eye to the gap.
The wall proved to be only two inches thick, and beyond lay another massive chamber.
Harald’s vantage point was high up; he could look out over the great rectangular room and take most of it in. A broad walkway encircled the hall, rimmed with a waist-high stone parapet. Broad stairs descended to the ground level on the north and south ends, along with a pair of far steeper and narrower flights of steps along the broad eastern side across from him, each at its own opening in the parapet.
Stood to reason two other flights led down from his own side as well. Four narrow sets of steps, two massively broad ones.
And below?
A raised well, its rim edged in glimmering bronze, as if a flame burned within the coppery metal itself. Above it floated a single scale, its coloration ethereal and ever-changing, shifting with the elusive beauty of an aura glimpsed at dusk.
The well stood at the center of a hexagonal dais, two encircling steps of stone rising from the floor. The rest was familiar buckled flagstones, though in each corner of the sunken ground floor stood statues so demolished and covered in lichen that Harald could only guess that they had once been representations of the Fallen Angel.
There was one dark archway on the ground floor, set into the wall between the pair of steep stairs. No matter how Harald peered, he couldn’t make out anything within its dark frame.
But the entire room was filled with the brightly burning azure burn of haunt-lights.
The four corners of the walkway around the great room were filled with their own searing radiance, while smaller pools were located at the top of each narrow flight of stairs. Two more pools burned with cold blue light at the base of the large staircases, while four more small pools burned at the base of each flight of narrow stairs.
The giant hall seemed flooded with glacial blue light.
Harald just frowned.
He couldn’t understand what he was looking at. Ten distinct pools of haunt-lights of varying sizes? Was this a haunt… graveyard of sorts? But all of it arranged around that well with its livid bronze rim, a precious Aurora Veil Driftshell hovering above its empty heart. From where he peered down at it, the well appeared the pupil of a great eye, the bronze burning like a supernatural iris, the hexagonal dais the eye itself.
For awhile he simply studied the chamber. There were massive archways at the head of the broad flights of step, leading off into the dungeon. So this room could be reached by other means. But this secret passageway of his opened on the walkway about halfway along the hall. He could feasibly hop the parapet, drop to the floor below and reach the well without passing through any haunts.
And there snag a scale worth 1,000 Copper Moons.
Sam had indicated that the well on the 47th Level was probably a portal to the next level down.
Would this one lead him to the 5th Level?
Harald rubbed at his chin.
The Aurora Veil was an alluring treasure. By his current understanding, it represented twenty days’ brutal work.
If he could open this door it could be his.
Then he could race up the steps, moving through the haunt-lights faster than they could manifest, and re-enter his passageway before anything he could stop him.
Excitement gripped him.
He’d come away from this raid with 1,050 Copper Moons. And wouldn’t possessing an Aurora Veil go a long way to convincing the authorities that he’d found a dozen more, which would explain his Ascending to his first Throne?
A uniquely rare cache of Aurora Veils.
Yes, that could make sense.
But first, how to open this door?
It didn’t take him long to figure out. He found a familiar pattern of blocks on the right wall, and after carefully depressing each in order, the secret door pushed out with a grinding shudder and slid out of view to the left along the wall.
Harald grasped his malachite blade with both hands as he peered left and right along the walkway that ran along his wall.
Nobody.
No ashen walkers, no spiders, nothing at all.
Still, he waited a good five minutes before venturing out. It felt interminable, but there was no reason to rush.
His first step was the most nerve-wracking. He could envision each haunt-light flaring up the moment his boot touched the flagstone, but again, nothing happened.
Wary, glancing back and forth, Harald stepped up to the parapet. It was a steep drop. Some fifteen feet to the ground floor. But the walls below were ancient and roughly built, or perhaps the architecture of this place had simply been roughened by time. He’d be able to scramble back up.
“All right,” he whispered to himself. His malachite blade fit his scabbard almost perfectly, but left a couple of inches of green blade exposed once it refused to go in any deeper.
He’d need his hands free to climb back up.
Harald took a final deep breath, set his lantern on the low wall, and rubbed his sweaty palms on his hips. Then slid his legs over the parapet, lowered himself till he hung from his hands, and dropped.
He fell into a neat crouch, heart racing, and peered around again.
No movement. There was a second archway between the two steep staircases on his side, mirroring the first. The darkness within was impenetrable.
Again Harald waited, straining to hear anything. The shuffle of ashen walkers’ feet, breathing, a low rumbling snarl.
But there was nothing.
Slowly, cautiously, he rose to a half crouch and ghosted toward the well. Up the couple of encircling steps to the broad wellhead proper.
The bronze rim was fascinating. Its inner light flowed and fluctuated like a living coal, highlighting to gold along its copper curvature. He peered inside the well, but the burning smolder failed to illuminate anything deeper than a foot or so. Beyond it was pure darkness.
“Well,” he whispered. He turned about, studied each haunt light, the twin archways, then looked back to the Aurora Veil.
Never had a scale looked so beautiful.
It slowly revolved in place, its fluted length shimmering as effulgent greens chased rich blues along its length, the occasional streak of yellow flashing through.
A quick grab, then he’d dart to the wall, up to that rough shelf, grab those blocks there, and hoist himself up to the parapet. Over the top, into the passage, and he’d run all the way home.
Harald raised his hand, flexed his fingers.
The silence was terrible. Oppressive.
It felt as if the entire dungeon were holding its breath.
“Here we go,” he whispered, and snatched the scale from its invisible column.
Nothing happened.
But Harald didn’t want to tempt his luck. He raced to the wall and leaped, snatching at handholds, and quickly scaled to the parapet, which he swung himself over.
Dropping into a crouch, he paused to survey the room. No matter what he saw, he vowed, he’d make his exit. There was boldness, and there then was suicidal foolishness.
Nothing. The haunt-lights didn’t flare up. The dark alcoves below didn’t disgorge some horror.
Harald felt a brief thrill of victory. A well-executed and daring plan had rendered its reward.
Dropping the precious scale into his pouch, he stepped into the passageway and turned to key the sequence.
Even as he pressed the sixth block, however, and initiated the grinding of the secret door, he saw a figure appeared at the top of the broad stairway at the far end of the hall.
Harald’s eyes widened.
It was a young woman clad all in white, a pair of slender angel wings furled behind her, conveying purity and power. Her face bore a stoic beauty, etched with classical features: high cheekbones, full lips, a straight nose. Her alabaster skin was unblemished, her face framed by a short mane of curly black hair cut at jaw length.
The door was swiftly grinding closed.
The woman remained where she was, twin arming swords held with casual expertise, their points resting on the ground.
There was a fierceness to her stare as she gazed at him, a majesty, that completely froze him in place. She was a study in duality: martial and serene, her white silk gown with its black corset belt contrasting with her warrior aspect.
He wanted to call out, but knew not what to say.
Then the door closed, blocking her from view.
For a moment Harald could only stare at the door’s inside, but then he pressed his eyes to the slot and tried to spot her.
She’d disappeared from the top of the stairs.
Frantically he pressed the blocks in sequence once more, and again the machinery protested and swung the door free.
But when Harald stepped back out onto the walkway, his fears were confirmed.
The angelic woman was gone.