Tanch shook his head in frustration and stepped closer to get a better look at the writing.
“Don’t touch it,” said Theta as Tanch raised his hand toward the plaque.
Tanch froze for a moment, no doubt remembering what happened with the golden coins. He lowered his hand, inched back from the wall, and squinted from where he stood, eyeing the runes. “Temple of Guymaog is what it says, whatever that means.”
“Who or what is Guymaog?” said Claradon. “Does anyone know?”
“I bet Dolan will tell us he’s some pagan god from the old world what Theta killed off once upon a time,” said Ob, chuckling, as he turned to look at Dolan.
“It is an ancient evil from the Dawn Age,” said Theta.
“Of course it is,” said Ob sardonically. “What else could it be?”
“Is it some obscure Lord of Nifleheim?” said Claradon.
“No,” said Theta.
Claradon didn’t dare inquire further.
“No matter,” said Gabriel. “Whatever it is, if it’s in there, we’ll deal with it.”
“But how do we get in?” said Ob. “I doubt they left the doors unlocked.”
Theta stepped forward, gripped the bronze handles, and pulled. Though there was no visible lock or bar, the doors didn't budge.
“We’ll need a battering ram to get through those,” said Ob. “They’re probably a foot thick, maybe more.”
Theta braced himself and prepared to pull again. Gabriel and Claradon moved to assist him.
“No,” said Theta, waving them off. “Best stay back; all of you stand clear.” He stared them down until everyone moved well away. Ob paid him no heed; he stood his ground.
Theta pulled on the handles again; this time, straining with the effort: veins on his forehead and neck sticking out.
“Give it up, Mister Fancy Pants,” said Ob. “Muscle won’t get us through them doors. It’ll take brains to—”
As Theta continued to pull, thundering crunching and cracking sounds erupted from the doors and the entire landing vibrated and threatened to collapse around them. When stone shards fell from above, the men scattered. Ob tripped, went down on his face, and was stepped on. Some of the men jumped from the landing for fear that the canopy above might come down on them.
Theta stood his ground and continued to pull on the doors. Huge cracks appeared in the stone, and with a loud bang, the doors shattered and crumbled: Theta's mighty grip having literally torn them asunder. The stony remains collapsed in heaps about the entranceway. Ob rolled to the side just in time as a huge piece of stone struck the landing just where he’d lain. Theta stood amidst the wreckage as the dust settled about him—the two bronze handles remaining in his iron grip.
“Stinking show-off,” said Ob as he struggled to his feet. “They was probably about to fall apart on their own, anyways. Bad workmanship; probably elvish.”
Theta tossed the handles over the edge of the landing. “Put them in my saddlebag,” he said to one of the men.
No sounds came from within the temple exhibited no signs of life—though it was far too dark to see in more than a few feet.
“Light some torches, men,” said Ob. “We need more light than these faery knives will give us. And make certain your ears are well stuffed with wax—that stinking wailing could start up at any time. We need your heads on straight, so put it in good, so it won’t fall out when things get nasty.”
The men assembled on either side of the doorway and crouched behind the rubble: Theta and Ob at the van on one side, Gabriel and Claradon on the other. The balance of the company lined up behind them.
Theta removed his shield from its shoulder strap and readied it before him, his movements crisp, precise, and practiced, with no wasted motion.
“You’re not going to step out there, are you?” said Ob. “Because that would be a stupid thing. We should wait and see—”
Ignoring Ob, Theta stood tall and stepped forward into the doorway, his shield protecting his torso, but no weapon in his hand. Instead, in his left hand he gripped that curious ankh that he wore beneath his shirt.
“Fool,” spat Ob.
“Or madman,” said Artol, from over Ob's shoulder. “I’m not sure which yet.”
“Both, probably,” said Ob.
Theta stood there, braced and ready, but no battle cry rang out from within, no arrows flew, no monsters charged.
“Looky there, what's that?” whispered Ob when he noticed the ankh in Theta’s hand.
“Oh, now that’s an odd thing,” whispered Artol.
“It's near a twin to that old relic what Gabe carries,” said Ob.
“No coincidence is that, I’ll bet you,” said Artol. “What do you figure it means?”
“Don’t know,” said Ob.
Theta peered inside, looking this way and that, and even up toward the ceiling. He removed one small object and then another from a belt pouch and tossed one to each side of the darkened hall. When they struck the floor, the objects shattered as if made of glass, and then somehow illuminated a portion of the infernal place, flooding it with light that centered on the remnants of the objects, whatever they were. The mist fled from that light, just as it did the light from the glowing daggers. Moreover, the darkness itself fled from that light. It wasn’t just extinguished by it, it actually moved away, as if the shadows in the temple were alive and feared it. After but a few moments, the foul blackness of the place returned and swirled about the light as if to smother it. The lights didn’t wane entirely, despite all the shadows’ efforts; enough remained for the men to see the way ahead.
The knights gasped at this bizarre phenomenon, never having seen such magic before.
“Theta’s a sorcerer,” said one knight. “He throws foreign magic.”
“Don’t trust him,” said another.
“Witchcraft,” said a third.
Several others muttered much the same sentiments.
“Clam up you dimwits,” said Ob. “Lots of holier than thou tin cans can toss a cantrip or two. No need to go dampening your drawers about it. Besides, he’s on our side, you fools. Raise a hand against him, and I’ll cut it off myself.”
There was grumbling and murmuring in the ranks but nothing more was said about it.
Theta paid them no heed. He slowly drew his falchion from its sheath as the men looked on. After a few moments, he stepped carefully over the rubble, and cautiously stalked into the malevolent edifice. Dolan followed close at his back, holding Theta’s silver lance.
The others followed, weapons bared. (Ob took a long drink from his wineskin before he entered). Some of the men still held their mystical daggers, but others sheathed them in favor of longer weapons or a burning torch.
An unnatural malaise came over them the moment each man’s feet passed the threshold. Feelings of dread and hopelessness assailed them. They were torn between a desire to flee and one to lie down and give up, to surrender to the oppressive, ancient darkness that lingered there, to yield to the temple’s alien will. Where common men would have faltered, these did not. Honor bound and anger brimming, they pushed back their feelings and soldiered on.
Strangely, it was even colder inside the temple than without, and the mist was there too—how it got inside, none could say. It was thinner, but clung about their legs. The air, oddly thick and heavy, had a curious, acrid taste. The same bestial odor resided there, as outside, only stronger.
The building’s interior was a most singular hall, some hundred feet in width; it stretched back into the darkness beyond the limits of the men's vision. The size and scale, and the details of construction of the place were all wrong. It was too massive, too ponderous, and too meticulous to have been man-made in the days of yore. It featured two rows of immense, ornate, obsidian columns set forty feet apart. They formed a wide corridor that extended from the entranceway to the rear of the foreboding structure. The ceiling, lost in the darkness, surely resided more than fifty feet above. The flagstones were ground perfec
tly smooth; the joints between them so flawlessly cut and fitted as to require no mortar. Expert craftsmen that possessed skills far beyond those of the most renowned of modern masons and artisans had built that place. Surely, the Old Ones or their minions—those ancient fiends that walked Midgaard before the dawn of man—had constructed it. Somehow, the fell sorcery at work had restored the antediluvian temple, which had only lately been no more than a crumbling ruin, to all its former majesty and frightful glory.
The men stalked into the sinister structure, their way illuminated: by Theta's magic, by the soft white light emitted by their mystical daggers, and by the torches that many of them carried. From the moment they entered that place, it seemed to Claradon that everything moved in slow motion. Perhaps it was the dizziness and nausea that afflicted him, or some byproduct of the feelings of dread that oppressed him, or maybe something more. Even his boots made ominous, echoing sounds as he crossed the black stones. Unnaturally loud were they—the mystical nature of the edifice somehow served to amplify the sound tenfold.
At Gabriel's direction, they fanned out and moved deeper into the black hall. As they did so, a bizarre, inhuman wailing sprang up all around them, emanating from the very walls themselves. The men halted, weapons held at the ready.
“What madness is this?” said one knight. Several others said much the same.
“It’s the wailing,” said Ob. “Sounds different up close.”
“Where is it coming from?” shouted someone. “I can't see them.”
The men turned this way and that, up towards the ceiling, and down at their feet, but they couldn’t find the source of the sounds. It was everywhere at once—from all sides, but from no particular place.
“Steady boys,” said Ob as he warily looked around. “Ignore the wailing and keep moving forward, the sounds can't hurt you.”
But as they went, the shrill wailing increased. Growling, malefic intonations began: roaring and barking, howling, chattering, and gibbering. No throat of man or beast could produce the bizarre cacophony that filled that evil place. It surely sprang from the demonic tongues of a thousand wretched fiends reveling in the very pits of hell itself.
The faces of the soldiers blanched as the skirling sounds oppressed them and the bitter cold within the place took hold. They were knights, schooled in battle and tactics, the scions of noble families and olden northern bloodlines. They knew how to fight as a unit and were experts in single combat. But this was altogether different. An unseen enemy whose caterwauling deafened and disorientated—that was beyond their experience, beyond their training. All they could do was flee or follow their officers' orders and move forward against the din. Though their resolve was dampened and their wills were breaking, still they followed orders as their duty and honor required. They moved forward.
When they approached the first line of obsidian columns, the grotesque, painted bas-reliefs that adorned their surfaces came into view. Every manner of horrific, depraved, obscene, and unspeakable activity was prominently depicted on the pillars’ gruesome faces. Such was the horror of those images, the men surely would have lost their sanity, if not their very souls, had they gazed on them for more than mere moments.
The hellish din intensified but did not prepare them for what came next. Beyond all reason and logic, beyond sanity itself, the walls of the temple and the surfaces of the black pillars soon began to move and wriggle as if alive. Hideous pseudopods shaped like malformed hands, claws, and demonic arms pushed against and protruded from within the black stone. The obsidian surfaces seemingly transformed to nothing more than thin, opaque, elastic veils. The horrid appendages writhed, flailed about, and sought to ensnare the men when they moved past.
For a moment Claradon questioned the reality of what he saw. Was he asleep? Was this naught but a fevered nightmare? If only it was. But it wasn’t: he was wide-awake. Then he thought it must be some poison that hung in the mist. Some noxious weed or decaying fungus that clouded the mind and brought on hallucinations and visions of horror. But he knew it wasn’t. His head pounded from the din, but his thoughts were clear enough. He was himself. He was there and it was real. Dead gods, they were real: monsters. True monsters surrounded them—the gathered hordes of hell, the spawn of Nifleheim. He shuddered and cringed as he saw them struggle to burst through the flowing stone and enter Midgaard from somewhere beyond sanity—just as they had done two nights previous. The night they killed his father.
The dim light and eerie shadows that filled the place only served to enhance the horror of the surreal scene and unnerve even the bravest of the company. Looking around at his comrades, Claradon saw stony resolve on the faces of some, stark terror marred the aspects of others. Steamy breath rose from all, as did the soft glow of the ensorcelled daggers, which leaked out even from those covered in their sheaths.
Gabriel and Ob shouted for the men to keep well away from the demonic arms and to keep moving forward. Through the din, most surely couldn't hear them. Lord Theta pressed on at the van. He cautiously stalked forward while he evaded the writhing things that protruded from the columns and sought to grab him.
One of the knights was not so careful. He strayed too close. A snakelike appendage darted out from a column and wrapped about his waist, pinioning his arms. It effortlessly lifted him into the air and pulled him toward the column as he cried for help and struggled to pull his arms free. Ob, Claradon, and others raced toward the struggling knight. It was Sir Erendin of Forndin Manor—a sparring partner of Claradon’s who had near his skill with a sword. Erendin’s eyes locked briefly on Claradon; Claradon saw his lips move, but couldn’t hear his words. He knew that his friend pleaded for help. Before Claradon could reach him, another tentacle appeared from above and looped about Erendin’s neck. The otherworldly limbs pulled in opposite directions and tore the knight’s head from his shoulders. Blood spurted in all directions and washed over Ob and Claradon who gasped in horror at the monstrous sight. Erendin’s head fell to the floor, but the creature’s vile tentacles still gripped his body as they shot back whence they came. The body crashed into the column with a sickening crunch. The tentacles repeatedly smashed it against the stone until it was an unrecognizable heap of ruined metal and flesh. Ob and Claradon moved toward the column with swords raised, to deal out whatever vengeance they could.
“Stop,” shouted Par Tanch as he ran to intercept them. “For Thor's sake, don't strike the things. You might break the seal and give them entry—then we would surely be doomed.” Tanch grabbed Claradon’s arm and pulled him away from the column. “You can’t fight it,” he said.
“Look at what they did,” said Claradon.
“We have to back away,” said Tanch.
And they did, though Tanch had to pull Claradon along, and Ob followed. Mindful of the wizard's words, Claradon took care to remain beyond the range of the writhing things that haunted the other columns. Adrenaline rushed through Claradon's system, but he still struggled with the thought that it must all be a nightmare. He had seen men die before, but never by magic or monster.
“This is it; it's the end of us and maybe of all Midgaard,” said Tanch. “You think you’re so smart,” he shouted at Ob and Claradon. “I told you we should've sent for the army. You people never listen to me. You think I’m a fool, but it's you who are the fools, and now we are doomed. We’ll all die here; mark my words. No doubt, they’ll blame me. The wizard should have known better, they’ll say. It’ll be all my fault.”
“Stow that talk, you sniveling turd, or I'll bash your knees in,” said Ob. The gnome raised his wineskin to his lips and took a long draught as he pressed forward.
Claradon's vision clouded and his stomach churned as the waves of nausea and lightheadedness flooded over him with renewed vigor. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen. How would he face Rachel, Erendin’s fiance? He couldn’t tell her the truth of what happened, of how he fell. Not ever. He would never plant that image in her head; he could never be that cruel. He’d have to
make up a story—the truth, too painful to hear.
The abominable clangor around him increased more and more to near deafening levels and threatened to implode his very skull. Time and space became increasingly distorted; everything moved slower and slower.
Blood streamed from the men's noses and ears as the pressure and maddening cacophony intensified. Several knights doubled over and vomited great gobs of putrescent green ichor as the sinister forces of the place assailed their mortal bodies. Others heaved and spat, but little came out. Some simply collapsed unconscious to the ebony slab.
Claradon watched in horror as a claw-like pseudopod pushed out from a column and ensnared the ankle of one of the fallen knights, Sir Zaren. The man screamed in terror as it dragged him to his doom; Claradon, too far away to come to his aid. Those who were closer were too dazed from the madness about them, or too shocked to spring to his rescue. The knight's magical dagger sent sparks flying everywhere as he repeatedly but ineffectually struck it against the obsidian slab, trying to slow his slide. Within seconds of reaching the pillar, other demonic pseudopods and misshapen hands fell upon him and rent him limb from limb. He never had a chance. (Another friend dead). Claradon shuddered with the thought that that could just as easily have been him.
“I can't take this noise—it's maddening,” shouted one knight. “If we can't attack these things, we must flee before we're all torn to pieces.”
Ob grabbed the man and pulled him forward. “You're a knight of House Eotrus, boy, and you'll not flee while I yet live, that's for certain. We face this together. Come on,” he shouted as he steadied the knight and pressed forward. “For House Eotrus,” he shouted. “To victory and tomorrow.”
Tanch mashed his hands to his ears and desperately struggled to keep the maddening noise from reaching him. He must have tried to recall some bit of magic, some arcane spell or charm that would safeguard him from the din. But he failed—for how could any man focus his thoughts through that insane clamor? Blood streamed from his nose and his eyes were unfocused. His strength sapped, he collapsed to his knees.
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