Harald emerged into a natural cavern that had been partially converted into a domicile. Pale diamond light filtered down from several large vents in the ceiling, and from the largest a constant plume of water fell, bracketed by hanging vines. Where the walls and ceiling remained rough and unfinished, the floor was laid smooth by wet obsidian tiles that radiated out concentrically from a raised fire pit; curlicues of vivid orange flames leaped from its broad disc of coals.

Free standing pedestals against the walls sported elegant candelabra, while chairs were gathered around the occasional low table here and there, as if in anticipation of passing visitors. A stone bar closed off a corner of the cavern, stools set before it, while chandeliers hung within two large archways, illuminating deeper caverns that were off shoots of the main one.

The combined effect was one of savage opulence, impossible elegance, of ineffable wealth and power. The rawness of the cavern contrasted with the tasteful decor; the falling waterfall mirrored the complex elegance of the chandeliers, and the broad steps rising to each of the broad archways spoke to splendors hidden deeper within the complex.

Vorakhar emerged from the largest archway, clad as always in his sophisticated couture, a black coat draped over his shoulders, an ivory blouse cuffed at the wrists with gold. He descended the three steps lightly to stride toward Harald, his eyes burning with purple and black flames.

Harald. You’ve Ascended to your second Throne. How fitting.

“The Throne of Shadows,” agreed Harald, throat trying to knot up with fear. “Fitting because you’ve claimed it?”

Vorakhar walked past him to stop before the raised fire pit. It was a huge disc of black stone, its curved side intricately carved with enigmatic glyphs and patterns, a series of raised circles culminating in the circle of coals. And how did you come to learn such a thing?

“My father.”

But of course. The demon smiled, a private, cruel expression that was gone as soon as it came. Darius, Darius, Darius. What a wretched man.

Harald moved warily to stand beside the demon. “What does it mean, for you to have claimed the second Throne?”

Precisely that; I have stretched forth my hand and claimed it.

Harald hesitated, unsure if he should press the matter, but Vorakhar glanced sidelong at him amused.

You possess a simulacrum of the Fallen Angel within your Cosmos, do you not? That which was awoken when you consumed a modicum of her own power?

“Yes,” whispered Harald.

And is it the Fallen Angel herself that you possess?

“No, it’s a copy. My own version of her.”

Wrong. It is her in truth, a mirrored reflection, distantly perceived. But just as she is mirrored in your Cosmos, so are her Thrones mirrored there, too.

Harald frowned. “So they exist in the dungeon? The Throne of Harmony, the Throne of Shadows…?”

Vorakhar extended his palms to the flames, which seemed to rise excitedly in response. Use what native wit you possess, Darrowdelve.

“Then if you’ve claimed the real Throne of Shadows…? Does that mean every reflection of it in each person’s Cosmos is… yours?”

I didn’t bring you here to discuss metaphysics. You spoke of meddling. Cut to the chase.

“I—yes.” Harald dry swallowed, unnerved by the demon’s sudden change in tone. “House Thornvale approached me. Thracos. One of its Silver-ranked raiders. He seemed to recognize in me your patronage and said that if I didn’t swear myself to House Thornvale, he’d expose and ruin me.”

Then swear yourself to House Thornvale.

“But his ability to detect my Demon Seed indicates that he’s similarly touched, doesn’t it? That one of your siblings oversees that House?”

Vorakhar grinned, revealing fanged teeth. Why do you presume it’s not mine?

Harald blinked. “He said ‘my’ patron, as if it weren’t his own.”

Very well, I concede the point. House Thornvale belongs to my eldest brother, Silenthros.

Harald thought on his father’s letter: The most dangerous of them is the eldest brother, Silenthros.

“And… Silenthros desires my service?”

Vorakhar let loose a sharp bark of laughter. Don’t flatter yourself, Harald. I doubt my brother knows nor cares of your existence. His agents act, desperately hoping to please him. But I do care about you. At this Vorakhar reached out to trace Harald’s cheek with a talon. If Silenthros studied you closely enough, assuredly he’d recognize your potential. But he’s too preoccupied with his victories and own pursuits. So I shall intervene, and ask that he call off his hounds.

“Oh.” Harald fought the urge to step away from the demon’s touch. “So… that’s that, then?”

Hardly. My request shall indicate a need for him to exploit, a weakness for him to pursue. He shant simply accede. No. Vorakhar turned back to the fire. He shall meet my request with one of his own to gauge my desperation. In this case it is slight. Once he has ascertained the tenor of my need, he shall modulate his riposte, and I shall determine if I wish to pay it.

“Oh,” said Harald, trying desperately to keep track of the demon’s meaning. There was something about his silken voice, the power that reverberated within its depths, that made it mesmerizing and hard to follow. “I see.”

No. You don’t.

Vorakhar turned from the fire pit and retraced his steps across the cavern, climbing the three steps to pass through the massive archway into the room beyond.

Harald followed.

The next cavern proved to be a shadowed study, a broad and stately desk standing in splendid isolation to one side, dwarfed by the scale of the chamber. A mosaic glittered upon the far wall, depicting the Fallen Angel bound and in shackles, kneeling before Vorakhar who was portrayed with such demonic power that he appeared more an elemental force of might and dark majesty than the figure before Harald now.

Vorakhar moved around his desk to sit, leaning back to cross his ankles upon the desk. A desk that was bare of everything but for an inkwell, a feathered plume, and a neat stack of blank papers.

Harald drifted closer, unsure of himself.

Vorakhar eyed him like a cat might a dazed mouse.

You are an investment, Harald. Your value determines the lengths to which I shall go to protect you. Two Thrones, one level, and a Masterwork Artifact. A start, I suppose, but hardly anything astonishing.

“I’ve had but a few weeks.”

Vorakhar’s explosion was shocking in its violence. He jackknifed forward to slam his fist into the table with such force that it sounded like a boulder shattering. You think I care for your pathetic excuses? I have gifted you with glory made manifest and what have you done with it? Inherited your father’s baubles and played at swords?

Harald’s throat clammed shut. His every instinct told him to flee, but he held firm.

Vorakhar’s gaze was so intense that purple flames danced across the back wall and burned Harald’s chest where they washed over him.

Finally he seemed to relent. He relaxed, his expression becoming amused once more. A start, as I said. But what have you done to truly push yourself?

“My stats. They’ve risen to 11, 10, 12 in just over a month.”

Pah.

“I’ve formed a new crew. I’ve…” Harald caught himself. Why was he beseeching in this manner? Did he crave Vorakhar’s approval?

Harald squared his shoulders, raised his chin, and met Vorakhar’s gaze full on. “Stop fucking with me.”

The demon smiled. Oh, so he has some backbone after all. Good. But that doesn’t change my point. I shall extend myself as far as you prove worthy. But perhaps you’re in need of a little push. So. I shall speak with dear Silenthros and ask that he curb his wretched hounds. You, in turn, shall gain a level before you quit the dungeons today.

“Fine,” said Harald. “I’ll do what I can.”

As will I. A push, I said. A gift. Make it happen, Harald.

And Vorakhar snapped his taloned fingers.

A portal of black fire appeared behind Harald, but even as he turned to glance at it a great wind blasted him off his feet and hurled him into the swirling darkness.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

In a moment the chamber, the table, the demon were gone, and instead he fell upon a new floor, slid, and came to a stop in the center of a vast, alien chamber that he’d never seen before.

A gift, came Vorakhar’s voice. Level 27. Hidden somewhere within its expanse is a portal that shall take you back to the 8th. But it will only appear once you’ve gained a level of your own. Get to it, human.

And the demon’s presence was gone from his mind.

Harald scrambled up to all fours then into a crouch, summoning the Dawnblade and the Goldchops both as he darted looks all around himself.

Everything was aged and worn, everything made from gray stone that had rusted like iron. Great patches of orange were smeared across the floor, along the encircling balconies, upon the flagstones.

The chamber itself was as big as a ballroom and some twenty yards in height. Everything was built on a brutal scale, devoid of ornament or charm. Three rows of balconies encircled the ground floor, each supported by massive pillars, each boasting dozens of alcoves that could have been the mouths of tunnels.

A recessed square of slightly darker stone dominated the center of the chamber, and in its center rose a badly weathered statue of an angel. Harald scuttled over to this and crouched by its side, heart pounding, trying to find a source of danger.

There was no movement.

Everything was eerily still and silent.

A pair of steep staircases flanked a small door that glowed orange from some inner light. The stairs led up past a giant blackened stone cog that was laid face down just before the first walkway, part of some mechanism, perhaps, whose function Harald couldn’t devise. There were no obvious means to reach the third story, which boasted the largest alcoves and widest pillars.

His breath seemed to echo loudly in the empty chamber, and he forced himself to breathe deeply, to ease up.

The Goldchops hovered by his shoulders, their golden heads sleek and sharp. The Dawnblade gleamed green in his hand.

He wasn’t defenseless.

Hand on the eroded angel statue, Harald tried to recall something about the 27th Level. Would that Sam with her encyclopedic knowledge were with him! Sam and Nessa and Vic.

No. Best that they weren’t.

Not even Nessa and Vic dared enter the levels below the 20th.

Fuck.

Harald turned in a slow circle, again searching for some threat. Could he beseech a reprieve from Vorakhar? Obviously not. This was a test. For him to prove his worth. If he could escape from this floor, he’d obviously merit the demon’s intervention.

Which meant Vorakhar wasn’t going to bother speaking with his brother till he did.

“All right,” he whispered. “OK. Let’s work this out.”

His little inspirational speech completed, he took one last glance around and then darted toward the closest wall with its pillars and covered walkway. He crouched down in the shadows, heart hammering as if he’d run a mile, and again he peered around, trying to see if he’d alerted something.

Anything.

But nothing moved.

The silence and stillness were almost worse than seeing a monster.

Almost.

Which way to go? There were easily a score of alcoves running around the perimeter of the ground floor. All were dark. Harald tapped his scale-lantern, reassuring himself that it was there.

Or he could approach that orange-burning doorway, suspiciously small and flanked between the two steep staircases.

Something important had to lie within. The doorway led directly into a room beneath that huge cogwheel. Perhaps some operating levers or means of turning the cog?

But no. He was a Level 1 Abyssal Initiate. He had no business going into important-looking rooms on the 27th Level.

He’d play it safe for now, do some reconnaissance, see what he was up against.

So thinking, he crept toward the closest alcove, which indeed proved to be the mouth of a tunnel. The air was stale and had a harsh, rusted scent to it, like sun heated metal.

Was lighting his lantern a bad idea? Wouldn’t that just alert the enemies to his presence? Then again, was anything worse than stumbling forward blind?

Harald blew out a slow, silent breath, and closed his eyes.

The urge to panic was strong. To second-guess himself, to review every option until he was paralyzed by indecision.

He took a moment to center himself. The fear, the panic, the nerves—they all slowly settled, and when he opened his eyes again, he felt clear-minded and in control once more.

The Fallen Angel bless his Ego 23.

This was going to be brutally hard, but Vorakhar wouldn’t have sent him here if he didn’t think he could survive.

Not only that, but Nessa had stated that the Goldchop was a viable weapon all the way down to the 60’s.

Harald glanced at the heavy-headed hatchets and took immeasurable comfort from their presence. They bobbed gently beside him, as if floating on invisible currents. Quiescent and lethal, but ready to spin into action at a moment’s notice.

He could do this.

Harald turned the dial at the base of his lantern so that the faintest of glows shone from through the glass and stepped quietly up to the tunnel mouth. There, he listened.

Silence.

Dawnblade held at the ready, his Aura of the Aching Depths just barely suppressed, he slipped into the tunnel and advanced.

The walls were rough and granular like sandstone, but well-shaped and precise. The dim glow revealed only a few yards ahead of him, so Harald moved slowly, listening intently and pausing every few steps to make sure he wasn’t missing anything.

Light slowly manifested ahead, a washed-out orange hue, along with faint scrabbling sounds.

Life.

Or monsters, at any rate.

Harald took a moment to collect himself, focusing on his breathing, then killed his lamp and resumed creeping forward, the fingers of his left hand tracing the hallway wall.

A rectangle of dim light appeared ahead.

He reached it and made out a large room beyond. No galleries, no balconies, just a stained dome that rose a good dozen yards above the ground.

A bathing chamber of some kind, because the room was dominated by a sunken square into which short flights of steps descended. The water was long gone, leaving behind only large cracked tiles of glazed orange. A small basin in the center sported the remnants of what might have been a fountain. Stone benches were sunken into the square’s rim, where bathers might once have sat, partially submerged.

A handful of narrow dark doorways led off into the depths. Slender columns rose from the edge of the bathing pool to support the base of the dome. All was stained and old like the first grand chamber, rusted and decayed.

But Harald stared at a hunched over figure that was excavating the far side of the pool with its taloned hands.

Enshrouded with a dun-colored robe made from dozens of torn fragments, it stood with its back to Harald, busily at work levering flagstones up and away with unnatural strength. Hunched and cowled as it was Harald had trouble determining its true height—about that of a tall person, perhaps? But it moved with inhuman, jerky strength, and Harald was certain, right to the marrow of his bones, that this was a denizen of the 27th Level.

It hadn’t noticed him yet, being fully fixated on its project. But though it had a passing resemblance to the Crypt Keepers of the 10th, Harald knew this was something far more formidable.

For a moment he hesitated, sucking on his teeth, but this was as opportune a moment as any. It was distracted and had its back to him.

Time to strike.

With a silent command, he sent the Goldchops flying forth and raced silently after them.

The golden hatches blurred forward, but the very sound of their approach must have alerted the monster; it froze briefly, tensing, and then vanished.

Harald staggered to a stop as the hatchets flew through where it had been a second ago, but both immediately veered together to the right, leading him to glance that way.

There. Behind one of the slender pillars. The cloaked and hunched creature leaned out, staring at him.

Harald saw its face.

It wore a wooden mask. It looked to have been carved from a single piece of driftwood, broad and bulbous at the brow, then quickly tapering to a beak of intertwined roots. Twin slender eyes of burning red were buried within knotholes, and the visage was so alien, so bird-like, so fey, that Harald momentarily froze up.

The Goldchops didn’t hesitate but whipped around the column.

The monster vanished again, but this time, when it appeared on the bathing chamber’s far side, it attacked.

That’s at least what Harald presumed was happening when his head exploded in a flash of cataclysmic pain.

He gasped, reeled, clutched at his scalp. There was no blood, no wound. Instead, it felt as if the cloaked creature were trying to pry his actual thoughts open with spiritual claws, ripping his mind asunder.

The Goldchops flew across the bathing chamber again, and once more the creature vanished.

The second it disappeared the pain went with it.

Thank the angels. That meant it couldn’t keep up its—

Renewed agony. Harald cried out and clutched at his temples, almost dropping the Dawnblade.

The fiend was trying to burst him open. Its will bent upon him, tried to dominate him, to blast open the doors of his memories, his very being.

But Harald possessed Ego 23.

With a rough, raw bark of effort, he hurled the creature’s mind away from his own, and he saw the cloaked being stagger against the far wall.

It was just enough of a distraction for the Goldchops to hit home. Both slammed into its spindly chest with devastating force.

But instead of dying, it vanished again, leaving the Goldchops to sag momentarily. But this time it appeared directly before Harald, the front of its hempen robes soaking with black blood.

It drew a large, clawed hand back, each finger splayed out so wide it could have closed them around Harald’s head with ease, but instinct kicked in, and Harald thrust the Dawnblade forward as he activated Abyssal Attunement, its soapstone length turning jet black just before it punched home.

The Dawnblade was met with little resistance at first then stopped abruptly. It felt like stabbing a basket filled with loose rocks.

The creature hissed and swiped, but even as Harald wrenched his blade free, trails of the abyss spreading through its chest, the Goldchops slammed home into its back.

The creature’s crimson eyes flared brightly once, and then it fell upon Harald’s blade. He turned as he sidestepped, so that it crashed to the ground before him, hatches buried deep, and then it lay still.

“Fuck,” Harald whispered, raising a hand to his brow. What even was that attack? What would it have done to someone like Sam whose Ego was far lower?

To be certain, Harald stabbed the Dawnblade into the back of the monster’s head. His mouth twisted in distaste, but the creature didn’t move.

Five Golden Dawns appeared in the air above it.

“Well all right,” said Harald, scooping them up.

Then he gingerly pushed at its side, flipping it over.

Its masked head lolled from side to side as it rolled onto its back, the Goldchops disappearing. The crimson eyes were black beads now. Thick tarry blood had ceased to flow from the wounds in its chest.

Curious, glancing at the other exits, Harald used the tip of the Dawnblade to push the cowl back, intent on removing the mask, only to realize there was no mask. Its head was a knot of roots from which the smooth beaked visage grew.

“Weird,” he whispered, scrutinizing it. A scarecrow of some kind? A woodland golem? He’d no idea.

It was clearly smarter than the enemies he’d fought on the Iron levels. Proof of that was the pouch tied to its rope belt.

Still wary, Harald crouched and poked the belt. He knew that shifting resistance anywhere.

Scales.

With a swift cut he severed the pouch from the belt and opened it. A mess of Golden Dawns and a few Aurora Veils shifted within, giving off gentle glowing light.

“Damn.” There had to be some four, maybe five thousand scales’ worth of loot within. Curious, he rose and stepped down into the sunken pool, crossing the glazed orange tiles through the jaundiced light to where the fiend had been laboring.

It had torn up several of the large flagstones to reveal a mostly depleted cache of scales.

It was the first actual cache he’d ever seen, despite hearing about them all his life. Under the flagstones was a small cavity, a thin filament of blue-white energy belonging to the Fallen Angel’s armature curving up like a fishbone, and hanging off it like leaves from a bare branch were a handful of Golden Dawns.

“The angels wept,” said Harald is disbelief. He set the Dawnblade close at hand and quickly plucked the remaining scales from the armature, which, once denuded, began to fade.

He dropped them into the fiend’s rough pouch, and this he tucked inside his tunic, where it sat, fat and heavy and welcome. This many scales were valuable, true, but could also help heal him if the next battle went badly.

“Well damn.” Harald took up the Dawnblade and glanced back at the dead monster. For all the scales he’d gained, the Goldchops had still been instrumental in defeating it. Which meant if he was to get out of this level, he had to try and kill the next one with just his blade.

A tall order.

The scarecrow could teleport short distances, immobilize him with mental attacks, and given its obvious strength, probably tear his head off with one blow.

Harald tongued his cheek.

He had no choice.

It’d avail him nothing to continue collecting Golden Dawns with the help of his Masterwork Artifact.

He was going to have to do this the hard way.