by Andrew Lynch
Like now.
‘Found something! Well, someone!’ Darrius shouted, the echo carrying through the cavern.
Luckily the ruins weren’t dense enough to obscure the team’s lines of sight, so assembling around Darrius was a simple task.
‘Bit of a crushing blow,’ Khleb said.
‘A rocky finish, you might say,’ Darrius replied.
‘Very. Stony faced,’ Gar said, and received several congratulatory pats on the back from Darrius and Khleb.
‘All right. We don’t know how long we have, so let’s save the puns till later.’ Lucian had to keep them in line despite enjoying the camaraderie. They clustered around a body swathed in red cloth worn in the Western style. An insignia brooch glinted in the torchlight.
Also, his head had been crushed by a rock.
Khleb reached down and felt the body’s forearm. He confirmed that underneath the loose red cloth the corpse was covered in leather armour. A fighter of some sort.
‘Anyone familiar with the Western factions?’ Lucian asked.
‘Not our field of expertise,’ Khleb said, instinctively rifling through the corpse’s pockets.
Lucian’s face brightened but clearly Darrius noticed and pre-empted his explanation. ‘Don’t worry, sir, you can tell us later. When we need to go to sleep, perhaps.’
Khleb cut the brooch off the corpse’s shoulder and handed it to Lucian.
‘Hmm. It looks familiar but I couldn’t say off the top of my head who this would lead back to. What would you do in this situation?’ Lucian asked, never one to ignore the input of others.
Khleb shrugged. ‘Leave it as it is, I guess.’
Gar suggested they hide the body completely.
‘Strip the body but leave an obscure weapon for Moxar to find, to be traced to the West?’ Darrius guessed.
‘All viable,’ Lucian agreed. ‘I’m inclined to replace the brooch. Moxar already knows the West is a location of interest, so there’s no need to hide that from him, but the insignia could jump him straight to the end of his quest.’ Lucian waited for any arguments. ‘So, we swap the brooch with the blank the Company supplied, and drag the body to somewhere we know Moxar will check. No one wants a legendary story with no build up to the big fight, after all.’
They all nodded agreement, and Gar took out his sword to finish what the rock had started.
Gar had the unpleasant job of dragging the body, but he didn’t complain. Social attitudes to such things must have been different in Karakgar, Lucian supposed. The man had been dead for long enough that no blood was leaking from the body, so they didn’t need to worry about cleaning their trail.
Lucian looked at the brooch’s design before placing it in the Company bag. A small crest, with an oddly misshapen hammer crossed over a shield, and an orb with radiating striations above them. Three small indentations lined the bottom of the crest. It was a dull bronze, the marks from the forge’s hammer still visible. Relatively unremarkable. He let Khleb carry the Company bag from here on.
After half an hour of walking through the cave, they finally saw the fort. A great structure towering over them, which had truly been engulfed by the cave. The rock was like a plant growing organically around the bricks of the fort. A fusion of the two types of stone, the smooth, man made walls, and the rough, jagged mountain.
The fort looked like a mind bending puzzle, able to lean at impossible angles, warped by the magic. In places the natural stone grew to replace the walls of the fort, in others it had smashed through - presumably in the initial eruption. There was no question that this had been powerful magic - but since it had been performed by the literal God of magic, the skill he could wield meant there had been no excess power wasted to infuse the air. That, of course, was a problem. A site of vast magical history with no sense of power to it? Moxar, and the tourists that followed, would need to sense the magically charged air, otherwise no one would believe it. That’s what Jess was remedying now.
‘Well, blow me down,’ Darrius muttered. ‘The tour groups will be in for a real treat.’
‘Has to be on the tour, this,’ Khleb agreed.
‘Only the extended tour. Too far out of the way for the standard package,’ Lucian said.
They left the body at the entrance to the fort, its new blank brooch in place. Lucian had to practically drag Darrius away as he kept repositioning the limbs, talking about artistic integrity and believability.
The insides of the fort continued to be a mixture of natural, damp and dark rock, with light and dry hand crafted stone. Lucian ran his hand over the different surfaces, and Darrius gave him a quizzical look.
‘Definitely rock,’ Lucian said. He wouldn’t admit it to the others, but he could tell that the natural rock was dolomite, and the hand crafted rock was a sandstone. He had found in the past that not many shared his interest in geology.
It was a struggle to get around some of the natural rock formations. They poked into corridors, making them claustrophobic. At one point the team had to turn back and find another route, as Gar couldn’t squeeze through. He took it as a compliment.
Lucian was leading the group, and they were rationing their torches now, unsure of how long this exploration might take.
They spent the better part of an hour searching for the artifact room, marking every turn they made so they didn’t get lost. They went through several sticks of chalk because the natural rock had destroyed the grid layout of the original fort.
At last they came to the central chamber. Lucian had already been impressed by the fusing of the natural dolomite and smooth, carved sandstone, but in this area it was even more striking.
‘This must have been where God Magic stood to cast this behemoth of a spell.’ Lucian whistled appreciatively.
‘Think any of this is worth something?’ Khleb asked.
‘I’m no expert, but I'd say this chamber would be worth more than we're going to make in our lifetime,’ Darrius said.
‘Shiny,’ Gar added.
The walls, both natural and manmade, were infused with glowing veins of blue crystal. The light from the group’s torches bounced off the magical lines, managing to illuminate far further than a normal torch should. An empty pedestal lay, knocked over, in the middle of the room.
Khleb ran a hand over one of the crystal veins at his feet. He took a few probing chips at the vein with one of his utility daggers. Grunting in annoyance, he said, ‘I’d need proper equipment to get this out. Reckon there’s time?’
‘Not even a little bit,’ Lucian said. ‘Come on, let’s place the shard and get out of here. We were only a day ahead of Moxar, and the snow delayed us.’
Lucian could tell Khleb was fighting against his instincts to play the game of “I’ve lost the shard, oops”. But after a few seconds of what must have been an epic mental struggle, he took the glowing shard from the Company bag and handed it to Lucian.
Lucian looked round to see where the shard should be placed. His eye was naturally drawn to where the different stones clashed. Large outcroppings of rock jutted inwards around the edges of the chamber. The smashed pedestal lay in the centre. There was a staircase leading up to the floor above them, but its upper steps had been destroyed long ago, making it inaccessible.
‘Sir?’ Darrius jogged him into action. ‘I think you can just put it by the pedestal. The artifact fell and shattered, and that small shard was left behind. Seems plausible.’
‘Yes. Yes, that sounds good to me.’ Lucian walked to the centre and placed the shard close to the pedestal. As he placed it on the floor, a radius of crystal veins lit up around it, providing a shimmering blue light.
Lucian whistled again. ‘They give us the real stuff, that’s for sure.’
‘Where they get?’ Gar asked.
‘To be honest, I have no idea. I haven’t been sure just how far the Company might go for a while now.’ Lucian whipped his head round to see if his slip of the tongue had raised any suspicions. No one seemed interested. Did t
hey even listen to him?
‘Well, the messenger probably delivered it, I suppose,’ Darrius said. ‘One of the Lodgemen grabbed it before Moxar saw, and decided that it would be more suitable as part of the Quest.’
Darrius wasn’t giving it much thought, happy to accept the Company as his benevolent overlord. Just as Lucian had until a week ago.
Gar had been keeping his attention on the corridor. ‘Someone running!’
Lucian turned towards the doorway and listened. Sure enough he heard rushed footsteps. A dark monster from deep in the caves come to attack them? The group drew their weapons, taking up positions ready for whatever might be coming.
Gar planted his shield in the ground and braced himself, ready to receive any charge. Lucian stepped to the side, drawing his bow and ready to shoot. Khleb darted to the wall, out of sight from the door - ready to do something very sneaky and deadly, Lucian hoped. That left Darrius to stand behind Gar ready to deliver a killing blow to whatever was foolish enough to meet the shield head on.
But before the hurried steps rounded the corner, Jess’ voice rang out, ‘It is me!’
Everyone sighed, and sheathed their weapons.
‘Why run?’ Gar asked as Jess entered the room.
‘Why haven’t you all returned yet?’ Jess asked, while rushing round the room, waving her arms, flicking the contents of her vial all over the place.
‘It took us a long time to find this central chamber. Why?’ Lucian asked.
‘You’ve been exploring for hours. It was the first right, up the stairs and second left. Simple.’
‘Well... we may have taken the long route,’ Lucian said defensively. ‘We were discovering the place, you just had to follow our chalk marks. There were a lot of dead ends, you know?’
‘True enough.’ She took a moment to take in the room, seeming to lose interest in the conversation. ‘This is a fascinating place. I wish we had more time here. Amazing.’
Khleb made a dismissive noise, clearly for the sole purpose of disagreeing with anything Jess said. Lucian tried to give him a warning glare, but he’d returned to attacking a crystal vein.
‘Darrius positioned the body?’ Jess asked.
‘I did,’ he confirmed.
‘Very nice. It is good to see someone appreciate the craft a bit.’
Darrius beamed for a second but composed himself. ‘If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.’
She upturned the rest of the vial on the pedestal and finished her flurry of activity.
‘Why are the torches still lit?’ she asked.
‘We'll leave soon. The shard only seems to light the crystal veins in this room, and sadly, none of us have developed your keen Elvish sight in the last few hours. So we still need them.’ Lucian replied.
She turned to face them, her features a mixture of confusion and anger for a split second. She composed herself, realising she might have forgotten to mention something important. ‘Did I not say? Moxar is right behind me.’
A list of curses that fitted the situation ran through Lucian’s mind, but he settled on a slightly panicked, ‘Hide!’.
They all scattered to the closest nooks and crannies large enough to shield them from view. Lucian found himself on his own behind a rock, torch in hand, and listened intently for the footsteps that would indicate Moxar’s arrival. He looked at the brightly lit veins of crystallized magic around him. He hadn’t known magic could be so powerful it became physical and implanted itself in rock. Maybe his own first Quest would lead him to somewhere like this.
His brain clicked into gear and he shouted, ‘Douse your torches!’. He drew a water skin from his waist, took a swig for himself, and poured the rest over his torch to extinguish it.
He heard the sizzle of other torches dying, followed by the echo of footsteps. Curiously, two sets of footsteps. He peeked out from behind his rock, but everyone else was well hidden, and he couldn’t see them. Lucian hoped Moxar would simply take the shard and leave. It would be a disaster if Moxar discovered the team now, so far from where they were supposed to be. Would the Company have another Selphina the Red on their hands?
The steps grew louder.
Why were there two sets of footsteps? Moxar was meant to be on his own. Wasn’t he? It was true, the teams were only told what they needed to know to get the job done. But a companion was something they should have been told about! Any deviation from the plan now, a voice whispering in Moxar’s ear, could lead to things going wrong further down the line.
The last hero Lucian had followed was a middle tier Hero. Moxar was a big step up, but Lucian was starting to appreciate the slower pace his previous assignment had allowed.
Lucian heard the footsteps enter the room. They were slow, cautious.
‘Is this it?’
He’d know Moxar’s voice anywhere, exuding heroicness as it did.
‘No... but a shard... it may suffice,’ a voice he didn’t recognise answered. It was a disturbing voice, stilted and hissing.
‘I'll... get it,’ the hiss came again.
‘No.’ There was a pause. ‘You shouldn’t be near the shard, Xly’dia. This much magic must be a strain for you. I’ll get it. Then let’s leave quickly.’
‘No no... it’s good... I like it.’
The crystal veins stopped glowing, presumably because someone had picked up the shard.
‘Give it to me, Xly’dia.’ Moxar’s voice stayed soft and calming. Like he was negotiating.
A long pause before, ‘Yes... But... I can’t... Take it!’
‘It’s over. You’ve done well, let’s go.’
‘Wait... I smell... smoke.’ Lucian heard the footsteps getting closer to him.
‘Yes, I smelled it when we came in. Fresh.’
A soft screech came from just behind the rock Lucian leaned against.
‘Hunt?’ The voice was next to Lucian’s ear as talons the length of Khleb’s daggers gripped the rock next to his head, almost scratching his face. Lucian shrank into the stone as best he could.
‘Just the bandits leaving their torches lying around. There’s no one here and every second we wait is another innocent life lost.’
‘The hunt... is good for the soul.’ A second set of talons gripped the rock at the other side of Lucian’s head, and large, ragged feathers could be seen creeping over the top of his hiding place.
‘Keeping the Gods alive is even better. You may not care for God Mercy, but how long do you think it will be until God Pride is attacked?’
Another soft screech resonated next to Lucian’s ear. He struggled not to let out a screech of his own in surprise.
‘We fly!’
Footsteps hurried from the room and Lucian was left in darkness. The soft glow of the crystal veins had gone. The room had turned on its side. That wasn’t right.
Lucian let out a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding, and gulped in fresh air. After a few seconds, torchlight filled his vision. He sat up, deciding not to tell the others how close he’d just come to passing out.
Chapter 9
Back at the Lodge…
Gar was enthusiastically trying to show everyone his new shield. But for some reason, everyone backed away, eyes shifting from him to the broken pillar his opponents had just been thrown at.
Once Darrius came back with a new drink for everyone, they returned to poring over the map.
‘Jess, you’ll have the strangedust,’ Lucian said, pointing to the Company bag. ‘It will need scattering around the cave.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘The dust gives off the essence of magic, right?’ Lucian said. ‘I guess they want the place to seem magical.’
‘If an artifact of ancient power has been there for centuries I don’t see how some dust will change much,’ Jess said. Lucian was starting to realise that she wasn’t arguing with him when she made such comments, just stating the obvious.
‘I guess they want it... more magical.’ Lucian was used to no
t having much to go on with these assignments. ‘Khleb, as Jess will be busy, you’ll hold on to the shard.’
Khleb eyed the glowing shard, obvious in the bag of Company provided sundries. ‘Sounds perfect.’
‘Khleb, are you going to play the game of pretending you lost it?’
Khleb looked to the side a bit guiltily. ‘No, boss, 'course not.’
‘Okay, good. I’m putting you in charge of it, as we might need to place it somewhere only a thief can sneak to. You never know.’
Lucian scanned through the rest of the Company assignment note. ‘That’s about it. It also says “Make clues obvious”, so I guess we scour the place for clues too.’
There was a lull as everyone took a synchronised swig of their ale.
‘Next?’ Gar asked.
‘We'll get in and out of the cave before Moxar arrives. It says there’s a road up to the cave with no obstructions, so the journey should be easy enough. This early on in the Quest, everything should be going according to plan, so we’ll be out in time to get a good’s night rest at the next town we come to, Mounthold. '
* * * *
Lucian cursed their luck. After waiting in the cave long enough to give Moxar and his unexpected companion enough time to move on, Lucian’s patience had been rewarded by having to take cover from a snow storm. Once they had made their way back to the wagon, reuniting Darrius with the wolf, they’d set off to try and regain their lead over Moxar.
The wagon had held up well, and everyone sleeping inside it meant the temperatures didn’t get too low. Gar was struggling as he still hadn’t - after six years - acclimated to the colder weather. He insisted on wearing his great fur at all times even when it was positively balmy. He had taken the bulk of the spare furs, and Jess had yielded hers, saying something about the cold never bothering Elves.
It had been two days travel and everyone had applauded Lucian’s decision to keep the wolf around, as it acted like a furnace in such cold weather. They took turns leading their horses and resting in the warm wagon.
