Crossroad

by Riley S. Keene

  Returning to the hallway without the panic-driven urgency of a wounded Elise on his shoulder made everything look different. Almost surreal. It was lit by more glowing white globes, and both walls were decorated with flowing, delicate engravings. They clearly depicted historical events, carvings of people with backgrounds that were exaggerated but simple. Age had smoothed the features of the people, but he could still see what the locations were supposed to represent.

  Many of the scenes took place in Grunith, with all of Neuges spread out below it at impossible angles. But a few appeared to be in Marska, with the single tall tower of the Temple transported to the center of the city. One of the scenes even seemed to take place in Khule, with the spires of the Temple of Ydia, and the Wizard’s Tower, clear against the lines of the city.

  Ermolt looked back and forth down the hallway. It ended less than a dozen fen in either direction. One way was the door he’d left open that led to the portal he had come through, and the other way was a closed stone door. There were other stone doors on either side of the hallway, but those were likely more apartments, like the one Elise was resting in. After long moments of indecision, Ermolt decided to go back to the portal and start by orienting himself there.

  The portal room was nothing like he remembered. He had thought there was a missing section of wall toward the inner pit of the Temple, but it turned out to not be so. The stress and panic must have scrambled his memory a little.

  Ample lighting came from more of the white globes set into the walls, but the glowing runes of the portal dominated. They flickered ominously. The portal would power up again soon. Ermolt would have to move quickly. If the Champion was waiting at the other side, this would rapidly turn from a game of running to a game of hiding.

  He missed his hammer.

  The rest of the portal room looked distraught, if a room could look troubled. Something had happened here. There was no furniture around the room, but the far door was torn from its hinges, and surrounded by bits and pieces of smashed wood. Someone had tried to barricade the stone door, but something else had smashed its way through the blockage.

  He wanted to investigate further, but it would be barely a dozen breaths before the portal would open again. Ermolt found he would rather not have the Champion between him and Elise, and so he retreated back towards his recovering friend.

  It wasn’t until his back was turned that the sound began.

  A tinny scream.

  Ermolt rolled his eyes and turned back around. The familiar old man was charging at him out of the far doorway. He held a length of wood, and one end of it was a splintery point. It might have been threatening if he were holding it like one did a lance—steady and point forward—but he was instead carrying it above his head like he did the rocks. The point of the improvised weapon bobbed and weaved wildly.

  With a frustrated sigh, Ermolt dodged aside from the man’s wild blow and then stepped up forcefully, slamming his giant form into the old man’s frail body. Unsurprisingly, the old man lost his balance, and his grip on the weapon. Both tumbled to the floor, the length of wood skittering away.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Ermolt said. He stomped over to the old man, reached down, and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Come on, then.” With barely any exertion, he lifted the man to his feet. It was like trying to move a sack of bones. The old man tried to struggle and scramble away, but Ermolt found it no more difficult than holding a child mid-tantrum. He lacked the strength to break Ermolt’s grip, or even slow down his progress as Ermolt set about dragging him down the hall towards Elise.

  “You can’t take me!” the old man shouted in a voice that squeaked shrilly. “I’m escaping! Breaking loose! Once I’m free, you’ll never see me again! You’ll never find me!” He clawed at the wall, trying to find purchase on the uneven engravings in the stone. There was no grip to be found. And that wouldn’t have stopped Ermolt anyway. “I’m running away! Nearly loose! Across the Temple, so far away already!”

  Ermolt raised an eyebrow at the man, amused by his antics, but otherwise ignored the ravings. Instead he opened the second door on the left side of the hallway. Elise was sitting up against the wall again, but now she was alert and awake, dagger drawn to defend herself if the person at the entrance was someone other than Ermolt.

  “I found a friend,” Ermolt said as he shoved the old man into the room. “I thought we could ask him a few questions.”

  “Free! I’m free!” The old man’s shrill screeches continued as he ran into the room, stumbling a little as Ermolt shoved him. He looked around quickly, and then bolted through the door at the back of the room. “I’m free! Completely free!” This was, of course, followed by the crunch of glass, and Ermolt winced for the man’s bare feet. But there was no scream or curse of pain. Instead, it was followed by more crunches as the old man circled that room, before running past the door again to the other side of the room. “Yep! Free! Gone! Never going to see me again! I’m out of here!” There was a pause, and then the man appeared in the doorway again. “There’s no way out in here.” He looked between Elise and Ermolt for a moment, and then tried to bolt for the door that led back into the hallway, even though Ermolt was standing in front of it with his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m free! You’ll never catch me!”

  Ermolt looked to Elise. She seemed surprisingly amused by these annoying antics, and he huffed a sigh in her general direction. With one hand he reached out and grabbed the old man’s shoulder once more, stopping him almost as effectively as if Ermolt had been a wall. The old man stumbled back and fell to the floor.

  “Enough,” Elise said, her voice quiet and calm. “You are not free, but you can have your freedom if you answer our questions.”

  “You can’t hold me!” The old man shot back up to his feet with surprising speed and grace. “I’ll deal with your lackey and then you’ll see what you’re dealing with!” He raised his bony fists and took up a clumsy stance, bouncing over towards Ermolt with a nearly comical mockery of a fighting approach. Ermolt would have been insulted if it weren’t done so seriously. “Have at you!”

  His fists landed their intended blows along Ermolt’s chest and gut. Had he not seen them with his own two eyes, he wouldn’t have believed they did, however. It felt like leaves carried by a strong wind.

  Ermolt didn’t want to hurt the old man, and he knew it would take a surprisingly small amount of pressure to do so. But he was also tired, and wanted to be done with the raving madman. He reached out and planted the palm of his hand on the old man’s shoulder and shoved him backwards. The old man tumbled, tripping on an uneven tile in the floor. He fell to the ground once more, but this time it was hard enough to hurt.

  “Mercy! Mercy!” The old man curled up in around himself. “I surrender! Please! I mean you no harm! I’m helpless! No threat! No threat at all!”

  “Please, just answer our questions,” Elise said, shifting so that she was sitting more upright. “Who are you?”

  “No one!” the man cried out, almost in anguish as if he’d been struck. “I’m no one! Definitely not important!”

  “Right,” Ermolt said. “If you were important, you’d be a better liar.” He crossed his arms over his chest once more.

  “Alright, alright! I’ll talk! Just… just don’t hurt me!” When no one responded, he uncurled himself and sat upright. “My name is Claus. Claus Lugglin.” He looked to Elise as if he expected some reaction. “I am, or rather, was… I don’t know anymore. They made me the High Priest. I don’t know what that means, with Isadon… you know…” He gestured around the room, as if its dilapidated state reflected upon the God.

  “Wait,” Elise said, struggling to her feet, “you’re the High Priest of Isadon?” She arched an eyebrow. “That would make you hundreds of years old. Plus however long you had been a Priest before that. And how long you would have been High Priest before…” She paused and mimicked his gesture. “You know.”

  “Right!” He raised his hands defen
sively, as if he expected a blow. “But it’s the truth. I’ve been here forever. Being the High Priest to the God of Death has its perks… if you can consider them such things.” He gestured out towards the Temple. “You called him the Champion, so you know that His followers were only allowed to die when He was done with them.”

  “Does that make you undead?”

  “No, no, absolutely not.” Claus paused, seeming to think really hard about it for a moment. “Well, alright, maybe. Kind of. But not really!” He waved a hand in front of himself. “The path of death is closed to me! That’s all.” With a thin frown, he shook his head. “This was never part of His plan. I mean, of course it wasn’t. Who can plan for a God to die?” He held his arms out in front of himself, frowning at them. “I didn’t even age until I left this place. I wish I had returned years before… before I was reduced to…” He waved his bony arms. “This.”

  As Claus had been speaking, Elise had circled around the room to Ermolt’s side. She stood to one side, nodding at the old man’s story with her arms crossed over her chest. “He’s mad,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth. “Completely mad. This can’t be real.”

  “It doesn’t seem any more ridiculous than anything else we’ve seen here,” Ermolt said from the corner of his mouth as well. “What would you have said if I had told you last week that we would fight against a created undead?”

  Elise pressed her lips together, saying nothing. But her glare towards the old man—Claus—seemed a little less critical.

  “You don’t believe me,” Claus said finally, as if remembering there was a world outside of his bony, flapping arms. “But I’ll prove it. I can help you! You see, I know about this place.” His voice took on a conspiratorial whisper. “About the Champion.”

  Elise’s glare hardened once more. “And what is it you could possibly tell us?”

  “Oh, so much. So very, very much.” When neither of them said anything in return, Claus started speaking again. “You see, Isadon’s mercy is his greatest flaw, and thus his greatest weakness. The Champion has limitations. Death is the eternal reward of all Isadon’s followers. The Champion was once one of Isadon’s most trusted followers in life—”

  “The Knight-Commander of the Temple Guard,” Elise said. “We know some of the historical details.”

  “Yes, yes. The Knight-Commander.” Claus nodded emphatically. “But every Knight-Commander devotes their life to Isadon, and exemplifies His will and values. When they die, it’s true that their loss would cost the Temple Guard their strongest member, but refusing them the honor of death would be Isadon betraying one of His closest friends.” The old man began to gesture vaguely. “And so the Knight-Commander’s spirit leaves the body, but the body keeps going.”

  “But what does that mean for us, though?” Ermolt asked as he leaned back against the door. “We assumed that the Champion is vulnerable, mentally, but we lack the ability to utilize magic against him.”

  Claus leaned forward, his eyes alight with intrigue. “All that his body possesses is muscle memory. In a fight, he has all the skills and knowledge and ability that he had in life. More than that, too, since he’s got the strength of undeath added to him. And the fact that he’s spent centuries doing nothing but training drills.” Claus paused, flinching. “He’s a nasty foe.”

  “We’re aware,” Ermolt said with a frown. “But I still don’t get it. How does this help? We can’t beat him in a fight—we’ve already discovered that.”

  “When there’s danger, you don’t go blindly through—you go around. Or, well, maybe you two go through. But smart people don’t.” The old man cackled as if his joke was a real zinger. When no one else laughed, he shook his head. “So uptight, you adventurers. Alright. You need to go outside of what he has. The Champion doesn’t have the ability to reason or think like a human. It might seem like he does when he’s fighting, but beyond the reach of his blade, logic doesn’t exist. You can’t just outsmart him in a fight. He’s too good. You need to outsmart him outside the fight.”

  Ermolt went to go say something, but hesitated. He didn’t quite understand how to use this new information, but also didn’t know how to ask the right questions to get the old man to tell him what he needed to get there. It wasn’t like he could plan for a fight before he saw the battleground.

  Perhaps there was a way to prepare a trap. Or something. Ermolt nodded along with his own thoughts. They’d think of something. Maybe.

  Elise must have accepted his nod as assurance that this was enough information, for she continued on. “Alright, so what can you tell us about the Favor of Isadon and how to reach it?”

  “Oh. Right.” Claus shook himself, trying unsuccessfully to hide his shudder of disgust at the name. “I almost forgot that’s what you were after.”

  “We need it,” Elise said, her tone firm. “I don’t need you to get close to it, but we need to. Please, help us.”

  “I can’t,” the old man said in a high-pitched whine. He shrank back against the wall, hugging his arms to his chest. “I don’t want to.”

  Ermolt sighed heavily. “Listen, Claus. I hate to say it, but you’ve proven how trustworthy you can be as soon as you’re out of view. I have the rock collection to prove it. So either you come with us, or we have to make sure you can’t harass us every quarter-bell.”

  “Oh, right,” Elise said, “you have rope.”

  “No! Mercy, mercy!” Claus threw himself to the floor, curling in on himself. “I’ll help! I’ll guide you! Just please… don’t tie me up. I can’t be helpless here for whatever guardian or undead finds me first.” He sniffled, pitifully, even though no tears came to his eyes. “I may be—have been?—the High Priest, but without Isadon, there’s no way for my voice to reach them.”

  “You have to mean it this time,” Elise said firmly. “No tricks. And no setting us up and delivering us to our doom through the Champion. Get us to the Favor, and then we’ll leave you to whatever existence you like here.”

  Claus seemed to think about this for a long moment. Ermolt wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like he had many options. But after a heavy sigh, the old man nodded and struggled to his feet. “Alright. I promise. No more tricks.” He brushed off the front of his threadbare robe. “The sooner we get you to the Favor, the sooner I can be done with the two of you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Walking on a leg that had been severely broken no more than half a bell before was distracting. Elise’s thigh tingled with the memory of the injury, and she expected to need to limp on it. But there was no pain, and no need for a gait that would take pressure off the weakened flesh. The break had been well-set. And whatever was in that potion of Catarin’s, it was very strong. It was only the memory of the injury, and it was disorienting.

  Ermolt offered to go scout for the Champion, and so Elise watched Claus while he did so. She didn’t trust the man. There was something so off about his story, even though it did make sense with what they had learned. Could he really be centuries old? If so, it made sense why is mind was so gone.

  But it just felt off.

  “The teleporter is still active,” Ermolt whispered back into the room, “so I think the Champion hasn’t come through yet.”

  “Oh, he hates those things,” Claus said, waving one boney hand in the air. “Always did, actually, even when he was alive. As Knight-Commander, he would try to build his entire schedule around using them as infrequently as possible. As Champion, he doesn’t have the capacity to face his fear.”

  “I don’t blame him,” Elise said, shuddering at the thought of what lay between the teleporters. “But how does he travel between floors?”

  “He climbs. If you stand on the edge of the pit long enough, you can watch him scramble up the cracks in the walls.”

  “Whenever we were on the edge of the pit, he just stared at us,” Ermolt said, opening the door so they could all exit the room. “He didn’t seem inclined to let us see him move.”

  “Ah, b
ut see, I said if you waited long enough.” Claus started leading them towards the teleporter room. “If he’s got someone to watch, it could take him a few days to get bored enough to move.”

  They fell into an almost straight line, with Claus in the lead, Ermolt following, and Elise bringing up the rear. Ermolt seemed almost incomplete without his hammer, and Elise almost offered him the dagger she wore on her hip opposite the sword, but if felt blasphemous. Not only because the dagger would look like a child’s toy in his hands, but because the two weapons were a pair. And they weren’t hers to give away.

  Claus led them to the teleporter room, and then out through the other door. He picked his way over the scattered furniture, but Ermolt just waded through it, knocking them to the side so Elise could just walk normally. She wasn’t sure if it was him being done with caution, or if he worried about the strength of her leg. Either way, it was nice.

  The hallway beyond the room they were in was filled with rubble, but Claus led them through a path that seemed nearly invisible to Elise. They took a sharp turn, and then another sharp turn, and walked through a narrow passageway behind a doorway. And somehow, they ended up on the other side of the rubble. Elise’s sense of direction couldn’t make sense of the route, but it worked.

  “You’re lucky we’re coming through here now,” Claus said as he led them down the hallway. “If the Temple was still active, you’d be in trouble.”

  “I assume so,” Elise said with a smirk. “If we’re not supposed to be here, I’d imagine we’d be fighting an army of Temple Guards now. And with the Champion to train them day and night, they’d be an indominable force.”

  “Oh, well, yes, but no—I meant the traps.” Claus gestured at one wall, and Elise could see that the engraving in the wall contained a few holes worked into the scene. “Half of the tiles here are pressure plates. You’d be full of poisoned darts by now.”

  Elise stared blankly at the back of the old man’s head.