"Watch your footing," Mallery said. "You'll have to consciously pass through each stone. We'll be here for a while, but we should get at least an hour of movement per casting. And I can perform three of these in one day, four if I push myself. Let's not have it come to that.
"And another thing," she said as they set out. "Don't break the contact, especially not when you're in the middle of stone."
"Or what?" Leah asked.
Mallery's response was flat. "You can guess or what."
"Got it."
They moved slowly but steadily. Most physically able adults hadn't needed to consciously think about walking in many years. For Mallery, it was back to being in physical therapy from the last time she'd gotten injured on the job. She'd had to work her foot back into fighting form over the course of several weeks before the medical team cleared her for fieldwork again.
It was also the weirdest bath she'd ever taken standing up. And clothed. And armored. And holding hands with several people.
Mallery had lived a full and interesting life, but magic? Magic was a whole other conversation. A different level of experience and oddity.
She kept up the chant to Felur, maintaining her concentration amidst her wandering thoughts and the strain of keeping a physical bead on everyone in the group through the chain of touch. "Felur of holy might and blessed transport, deliver us through this trial that we might raise a great victory in your name..."
The next hurdle was to accommodate for the fact that all four of them had noticeably different-length legs. Roman could outpace them all, so he stayed in the back, taking small, measured steps. Qargon lengthened his stride to set their pace fast enough to move well. The four of them crossed the bridge, and by the time they got to the fortress itself, they were moving at probably three-quarters normal walking speed—a leisurely stroll instead of the near-marching pace they'd used through the tunnels.
"Praise be to you, Felur, just and wise..."
Mallery's eye was constantly drawn up and about to the beautiful details of the stone working. There were rotten ruins of wooden boards and scraps of decomposed cloth as well, but the stone endured, even where it was marred and worn down or shattered beneath the collapsed rock. Shining plates of the cavern's overhead mantle caught the luminescence and scattered light among the shadows in the crushed fortress, light bouncing up and around at odd angles, disorienting her. She held tight to her companions and kept walking, pushing forward as Qargon led them through the ruined Fortress of K'gon.
They passed the battlements and the courtyard, their light growing dim, down to Qargon's torch, which bounced off the rubble, casting odd shadows on the surface of the rocks. As they moved through solid rock, the light disappeared entirely, leaving them to trust Qargon's sense of direction and keen dwarven darkvision.
Sometime later, they reached an open area with little rockfall, an untouched kitchen long since picked bare. Qargon set his nearly spent torch in a sconce and lit another, placing it on the opposite wall.
"Here's a good place for a respite."
Mallery exhaled, dropping to one knee. She steadied herself on her shield.
"Are you well?" Leah leapt to Mallery's side in a sweet display.
"I will be fine. Holding your concentration for most of an hour..."
"Not easy?"
She managed a weak smile.
"I'll take care of the provisioning, then." Leah fished out the cheese and bread and dried meat they'd packed, handing bundles around to the group. Qargon passed on the bread and water, instead opening his wine flask, wetting the food his own way.
Roman took the food with thanks, leaning against the wall next to a rusted-out stove, the exhaust feeding up. Mallery imagined the smokestack piping all the way to the top of the fortress, then dispersing as soot up the mantle of the cavern, some industrious dwarves on cranes or giant bats scrubbing off the roof of the cavern to keep the luminescent and reflective plates active and their city lit.
"How much further to the chamber with the Hammer?" Leah asked.
"I'd reckon another hour, maybe two. We have to get to the heart of the fortress, then down into the burial maze. That'll slow us down, not because of the stone, more because of the traps and puzzles."
Mallery had taken a seat, shield sitting by her side. She looked wiped. "You didn't say anything about traps and puzzles earlier."
"K'gon's a dwarf lord. They're all buried with traps and puzzles. Artisans from around the world came to compete to contribute protections to his tomb. But don't worry. I've a nose for traps. And the three of you have shown yourselves to be quite resourceful, so we'll muddle through."
"Muddling isn't my preferred way of doing anything," Roman said. "What else can you tell us that we'd need to know before we get there?"
"Aye. There's three things you need to know about dwarven burial traps..."
———
King woke to a guttural scream of alarm. A shadowy figure, hooded and cloaked, stood above him, the canvas of his tiny tent pulled back. But the screaming was coming from somewhere else.
Xan'De crashed into the assailant as King reached for his sword. The foreign-born warrior tackled the assailant out of King's sight, giving him the time to grab his sword and slide out of the tent.
The fire had died down, but the moon was bright, defying the Night-Lord's shadowy influence.
Unarmored, he was vulnerable, but the sword was all the armor he'd have that night.
Another nine figures stood around the fire, already fighting with the remainder of his party. Nolan's blade clashed with that of an assassin, sparks igniting in the darkness. Shirin held several assailants at bay with electrified fingers reaching out like white-hot tentacles.
"Form up!" King said, shuffling toward Shirin as two more cloaked figures with long knives started to circle him. He lashed out with a reverse cut at the shoulder. The figure ducked under the strike and lunged forward. King parried the blow with a back-edge cut and riposted with a slash across the chest, sending the killer to the ground.
The other assassin tossed a dagger, which embedded in King's knee, his sword out of place to parry, the range too short to dodge.
King cried out in pain, which alerted Shirin. She raised her staff at the killers with an incantation.
He touched a hand to his holy symbol, and healing warmth raced to his wound. The damage was still done, but he'd be able to fight until he could cast a proper healing prayer.
Faced by a kite shield and a longsword, the killers kept their distance, switching to thrown daggers and darts. They flanked as they went, trying to box the team in. Xan'De rampaged through out the camp, a whirlwind of mayhem. Nolan dispatched assassins with practiced ease, but their numbers kept up the pressure.
They fought for most of a minute, two more assassins falling to the heroes’ blows.
A whistle cut through the sound of combat, and the remaining assassins backed off, disappearing into the brush. Nolan went charging off after them, until Xan'De caught up and pulled the man back.
"Patience, old friend! Where one trap is sprung, another two lie in waiting."
Nolan puffed, face red from exertion and rage, but he let himself be contained by the Matok.
"How did they breach our defenses?" Nolan asked.
King’s mind went straight to the Tall Woman, though he had no evidence. If he were in her shoes, infiltrating a story being worked by a rival team, a three AM assassination attempt would be very high on his list of maneuvers.
Shirin closed her eyes, hand clutching her staff. "The enchantment has been dispelled. This would have taken someone with impressive magical capabilities.”
King nodded. “That would be a tall order,” he said. She nodded, taking his meaning.
“But what matters is that we're unharmed." King shifted weight and winced. "Mostly."
King put his weapon aside and sat. Shirin helped him dress the wound. When that was done, he intoned a longer prayer to Felur, which closed the wound.
"So, who do we think they were?" King asked.
Nolan snorted in derision. "Assassins from the Night-Lord, I'd wager. We've seen killers like this before."
Xan'De nodded. "They plagued us all the way to the castle. Each time, we were able to rout them as we did tonight, but they are formidable."
King said, "Well, I'm not going to get any more sleep tonight, so I've got watch." Got to work the story. Figure out what her next move will be, he thought.
"Nor I," Xan'De said. "Perhaps we can speak of philosophy, as you suggested."
"I'd be honored. Nolan, Shirin, get some sleep if you can."
Shirin nodded. "One of the advantages of getting older. Any bunk will do. I'll get to sleep now and wake for last watch to prepare my spells."
Nolan sat with his blades, cleaning and re-polishing, then crawled back into his tent.
King set another log on the fire. He leaned over and blew on the embers, coaxing them back up until they caught on the log. "I'd like to go back to the beginning. How is the Ay-eh different from the Yui?"
"The Ay-eh is all living things known and unknown," Xan'De said, taking a seat beside King. "Yui is the unity of all known things, past and future. They are like two axes, intersecting in the observable now."
"So, gods are of the Yui, but not the Ay-eh."
"Indeed. And ancestors are of the Ay-eh but not the Yui."
"So, each Matok's life circumscribes an area comprising the second derivative of a function of Yui over Ay-eh, as more things become known and living things move from alive to dead and from un-being to alive."
"Just so. And you spoke of a man and his cave. Did the man truly believe that shadows cast on the walls were the whole of reality?"
"Ah, no. The man and the cave is a story meant to teach the lesson that observable reality, what can be seen and perceived, is merely an interaction of senses with physical existence."
"So, Plato's shadows did not include Yui."
"Only a small slice of Yui, if I take your meaning. No men were willing to leave the cave, so they saw only manifestations; their worlds were small."
"They did not expand their Ay-eh."
King smiled. "I believe we're beginning to understand one another.”
And so they talked on, in hushed voices, until the sun came up. King changed details and names but still managed to learn a great deal about Matok philosophy through story and complement it with mythology and philosophy from Earth Prime. The risk of cultural drift was incredibly low, as Xan'De's people were the Eternal Other—the Matok had not made a major impact on any kingdom or region in the Fantasy World in the two hundred years that it had been observed by the High Council.
But more importantly, he gained an understanding of the Matok and built trust. Even as he gave Xan'De and Nolan room to drive the story themselves, it was necessary to retain a strong relationship so he could “advise” and count on his words being heeded. It was a delicate balance to strike, a game of push and pull, like guiding a student through a rhetorical maze without ever letting them in on the joke that they were being led.
The morning came, and with it a fresh wave of fatigue. He brewed the coffee doubly strong that morning, promising himself he'd take last watch the next night to get himself a chance to catch up on sleep.
And soon, they'd be back in the capital, with real beds. And all-more-present danger.
———
Leah was on an honest-to-goodness dungeon crawl. Single-file party walking, trap-disarming, monster-fighting dungeon crawl. They battled bronze-and-gold automata animated by dwarven artifice, and dire rats that would make a Baltimore wharf rat jump on a boat and sail back to England.
If it weren't for Qargon being around and not in on the dice-chucking, ten-foot-pole-using jokes, she'd be cracking up. As it was, she quipped bard-style, drawing on her stand-up skills to find the right overlap between insight and joke about their surroundings and the care required to move through the tunnels the way they were.
"Something you don't hear about much is trap-finding speed. That gait where you balance expedience with care. Just fast enough to make good time, just slow enough to avoid blundering into poison darts or endless pits."
Working stand-up into her bardic paradigm also helped her stay focused, to look for hidden traps and other dangers. Qargon and Roman had enough dungeoneering skills to steer them right, but it never hurt to have backups.
Qargon led them into a new room with a similarly low roof. Leah had to stoop a hair, and Roman had taken to walking on his knees, strips of leather tied around his leggings as low-rent kneepads.
"Ach, this one here is a classic," Qargon said to the group as they stood in the doorway. "See the tiles here?"
Each tile was marked with a set of dwarven runes. "These rooms are built to test a visitor's knowledge of the life of the honored dead. K'gon in this case. We have to walk only on the right tiles and in the right order to recount one of the legends of K'gon."
"And you know these legends?"
"Aye, of course. The trick is figuring out which legend to use. There's snippets here from at least three."
Leah said, "I have a song for translation, but I imagine it'll go easier if you just do that for us."
"Aye," Qargon said. "You'll be wanting to save your strength."
Leah pulled out her journal, turning to a fresh page. She'd already filled dozens of pages taking notes on Bardic magic and songs, but plotting out a grid for a puzzle was 100% a valid use of parchment.
Once again, it turned out that a lot of dungeoneering came down to being prepared and taking your time. Leah took notes while Qargon sorted through the tiles and their associated tale snippets. Roman stood guard while Mallery rested, exhausted from all of those earth-shaping spells.
After the first few steps were decided, Leah piped in, drawing on her Genrenauts-honed sense of story progression. Dwarven legends, she'd read, used a four-act structure, where tension built and built, the action circling the climax until all the threads connected at once, the climax like a lodestone to complete an arch.
The three of them agreed on everything up to the last three pieces. They stood a mere twenty feet from the far side of the room.
Mallery pointed forward. "There's got to be at least three tiles left. That completes a perfect square of four stanzas of four."
"But there's only two lines left in the tale." Mallery pointed at the tile diagonally to her left. "K'gon's friends forged their fears into axes and faced the four lava fiends." Then she pointed to another tile in the final row. "And so, the fiends defeated, K'gon split the heart of the Lava Lord and brought peace to the under-realms."
Qargon tugged at his beard. "Aye, but that's only fifteen lines. There should be a sixteenth."
"Maybe the ending is in the far doorway?" Leah suggested.
Qargon held his lantern out toward the doorway. "There's no runes on the stone in the far landing."
Leah pointed. "But look, there are runes on the door frame. I count two on each side, and I think one on the underside of the lodestone."
"Aye, that'll be it. Well done, bard." Qargon hopped the last two tiles and reached out with a hand-axe to tap a rune in the doorway, which glowed.
The room shook, and the runes faded back into the tiles. The far door clicked and swung open, revealing the next hall.
Qargon clapped Leah on the shoulder with a meaty hand. "We'll make a proper tale-singer of you yet, young lady."
Leah staggered back, falling toward an incorrect tile. Mallery grabbed her hand and pulled her back. Leah squeezed her thanks and caught the comedienne blushing.
Leah pulled herself up and steadied. "For now, I'll settle for getting the Hammer and returning to the surface in one piece. I'm starting to miss the sun. And as someone who almost never sees the sunrise, let me tell you that is not my natural state of being."
"There was once a year where I never saw the sunrise," Mallery said. "The theater life."
"I didn't know Fel
ur had theater."
Mallery recovered with practiced ease. "I wasn't always a priestess."
"Aye, I suppose. And I can understand yer impulse. Too long aboveground and I get twitchy, like I'm liable to step outside and fall into the sky. It won't be much further before the Hammer. Keep on."
———
Sure enough, after two more long hallways and a “fill the bucket” puzzle straight out of a computer RPG, they reached the burial chamber of K'gon the Mighty.
The room was tall, three dwarven stories or so, and every inch of it was carved and painted, perfectly preserved. A dozen arts and crafts filled the room—earthenware, weapons, textiles, scrolls of poetry, and more. A great king of craftsmen, honored in every dwarven discipline.
In the center of the room, resting in the hands of a life-size golden statue of K'gon carved into the sarcophagus, was the Hammer of K'gon. It looked like the love child of the Weta workshop and something out of Jack Kirby's Thor. It was ornately carved steel, runes and fractal designs on every inch. The Hammer had a flat, square head bigger than Leah's face, sloping back into a curved point on the other end. The head was mounted on a leather-wrapped handle, two feet long, with a spiked metal cap on the bottom.
"Cool."
"This is the final rest of K'gon the Mighty. It is venerable, it is sacred, it is far more than a place of mild temperature. Next we decipher how to call forth the spirit of K'gon to seek his blessing and receive the Hammer."
Mallery spoke a few quick words, then scanned the room. "This entire room is glowing with magic. And the Hammer is noon-day-sun levels of powerful." She shook her head and looked again, not strained this time. "All I can tell is that this is the Hammer. Or a decoy so good that no one could tell the difference until the artifact was used."
Qargon approached the sarcophagus with reverence. "Aye, this is the Hammer. I can feel it in my fingers, down to my gut. On my beard, this is the Hammer." Qargon continued to speak, his voice low, even. He spoke in dwarven, but it sounded different from what she'd heard before. Maybe Old Dwarven, or a high speech dialect.
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