Within

by Aaron Bunce

  Chapter 37

  An ancient world

  Julian walked continuously throughout the day and night. Despite his ever-increasing hunger and exhaustion, he found that his legs did not falter. He denied himself sleep and fought to stay awake.

  He feared that if he nodded off, he would miss his opportunity to escape. The lack of sleep made him groggy, and eventually Julian started to see things. The small grey-haired woman made regular rounds, offering small drinks of water, but it was never enough to satiate his thirst.

  The sun rose on his second day since waking. They descended a steep decline and entered the peninsula of a large marsh. The cold air mixed heavily with the warm murk saturating the ground, causing a noxious smelling fog to form chest-high.

  Julian cringed as he stepped out into the muck of the bog, his legs churning with a mind of their own through the cold, knee high soup. He was only steps into the murk before the dark, dirty water worked its way into his boots, quickly sapping what little heat remained in his feet.

  The fog grew so thick that Julian lost sight of the man walking directly before him, but he could still hear the sucking noises as feet were pulled free of the mud.

  The air grew thick and muggy, but also surprisingly warm. His nose burned from the stinking fog, but he dared not opened his mouth. Spindly-legged insects fluttered about, landing on his face and head before trying to burrow crawl into his mouth.

  A bubble formed on the glassy surface of the water. It grew to an exaggerated size before finally rupturing. The air from the bubble wafted over his face, burning his eyes and stinging his nose. The realization struck Julian hard.

  We are in the Black Moors, he thought in horror, his eyes instantly dropping to the murky water.

  Light broke through the clouds, striking the sulfurous haze all around him, making it glow. The resulting shadows were horribly disorienting. He quickly lost track of the horizon, and his bearings, everything around him was fog and shadows. He felt completely lost.

  His imagination took control as something massive, and slimy slid past his legs, churning the water and wafting the fog. Julian’s body ignored him as he tried to recoil. A heartbeat later, his hand twitched at his side.

  Julian could tell that he was not the only one who realized where they were. A woman walking in the column next to him broke down and started to sob while others cried out somewhere in the fog.

  Julian gasped as his feet sunk suddenly. The murky water surged up over his chest and neck, splashing over his mouth and nose before his feet caught on more solid footing.

  They pushed through the deeper water, skirting a large grove of dead trees in the process. Julian eyed the deathly, burnt out looking husks of old trees warily. Strange noises issued forth from the mass of shadowy forms. It was strange clicking, grunting and groaning noises, like a giant hungry belly rumbling for food.

  The insects buzzed in a fevered pitch, biting and feeding upon Julian and the others in a jubilant feast. He shook his head, trying to break them loose and shoo them away, but they would not be deterred.

  A short while later another grove of shadowy trees appear directly before them, but this time Spider led them closer. A tree loomed next to him, its trunk easily fifteen paces around and stretched up into the haze, well past the limits of his sight. Julian marveled at the sheer size of the ancient derelicts.

  The shadowy tree shifted, cracking and groaning loudly, splitting the eerie silence. A flock of winged creatures broke from the tree, flapping their leathery wings before disappearing into the fog. An odd noise echoed out of the fog a moment later.

  “Does anyone else hear that? I think there is a baby out there!” a woman cried behind him. Julian craned his neck, finally hearing what the woman was talking about.

  “How can that be?” Julian asked, horrified.

  As soon as he spoke the grove of trees shuddered and started to move. Tree trunks split apart, pulling out of the water and slamming back down yards away. People instantly started to scream, and chaos took control. A tree trunk split apart and crashed into the water not ten paces away, and then he heard it, the telltale sound of a baby in distress.

  Why would there be a baby? Julian wondered, but he watched in horror as a tree branch swept down out of the fog and wrapped around the man before him.

  “Trolls,” he gasped in horror, seeing the massive arm in horrible detail.

  The man cursed and prayed to the eldest God for protection as the arm lifted him fully into the air. He tilted his head and started to scream just as he disappeared into the fog.

  The troll echoed a hungry keen as the man’s screaming came to a sudden and horrendous end. Julian could not see it through the mist, but he heard the wretched creature crunch through the man’s muscles and bones in a single bite, and then noisily chewed him up. It's thick tree trunk shaped legs splashed in the murky water as it trumped off, loudly savoring its meal.

  A prayer quickly flashed in Julian’s mind, and his lips twitched as he asked anything and anyone for protection. Spider appeared at his side. He looked up into the fog and chuckled.

  “Why is that funny?” Julian growled.

  “It just is…we brought extra. You have to feed the trolls to keep them happy. And if they’re happy, then they will let us pass,” Spider said, before disappearing back into the mist.

  Julian listened as several more people were pulled off and consumed by the loathsome trolls. Julian wished for the freedom to bury his head in the mud to drown out the screams.

  Like the rest of his body, Julian’s mind was starting to go numb. He worried he would be completely lost before they cleared the wretched confines of the black moors.

  Am I damned? He wondered as he started to flinch at every bubble in the water and shadow in the mist.

  Julian withdrew into himself, clinging to memories of home, family, and Tanea. He wrapped himself in cherished memories until his feet landed on dry land.

  He told himself that his feet would plunge back into the murk at any moment, but with each step forward he started to hope. A short ways in the mist started to clear. Julian looked around eagerly, hopeful to see a familiar face.

  Stop! Julian felt Spider’s will fill him, forcing his legs to stop moving.

  Pain filled his neck beneath his collar and for the first time in a long while Julian’s body was his own. He instantly wished that it wasn’t. Every muscle from his waist down burned in agony. He dropped to the ground and rolled onto his side, cradling both of his legs close to his body.

  The gnarls descended on them, cracking their whips in the air or into the soft flesh of their human captives.

  “Silence, or there will be no more breaks!” Spider’s voice bellowed around them.

  As much as it pained him, Julian fell silent. He rocked from side to side, biting his hand to keep from making noise until the worst of the pain ended. Julian pulled his battered legs before him and sat up, rubbing his arms and watching Spider circle the group.

  His control has limits, Julian thought. He felt it growing weaker over the past hours. Slowly but surely he had started moving his finger, then his hand. But how could he escape if he couldn’t move his legs? Spider’s control appeared to be a double-edged sword.

  Julian thought of Tanea just as a young woman appeared at his side. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. She looked just like her, but different.

  Have I forgotten her face already? He thought, his collar pulsing against his next.

  “Do you know Tanea?” he asked the young woman. She shook her head apologetically, and dropped a small cheesecloth into his hands and offered him a drink.

  He couldn’t keep it straight anymore. Spider told him that Tanea was still in Craymore, and that she had never left. Yet, he continued to see her. Julian shook his head again and rubbed his eyes. His mind was becoming more than a little jumbled.

  Julian opened the cloth and found a few modest sized pieces of dried meat and a lump of gray, unappetizing bread. He held meat u
p to his nose. It smelled unpleasantly bitter and felt greasy between his fingers. It also had several pieces of hair still attached to it. Julian didn’t want to know where it came from, or what it looked like when it was still alive.

  I will need the strength if I am ever going to slip away, he rationalized, understanding he would only grow weaker the longer he went without food.

  He closed his eyes and shoved the dried meat into his mouth, chewing hard and fast. It tasted as bitter as it smelled and left an odd, gamey taste in his mouth. The bread was no better, but at least it required significantly less chewing.

  Julian searched the crowd, hoping to catch the young woman with the waterskin before she got too far away, but she was nowhere to be seen. He moved to wipe the greasy crumbs from his mouth as a pain stabbed into him from beneath his collar. His arms fell limp to his sides and before he knew it he was rising to his feet.

  They formed up into parallel lines, allowing Julian a chance to grasp the number of their group, he couldn’t count fast enough, but he easily saw dozens or more.

  Spider stood motionless as they all marched by, the dark eye slits of his mask unreadable. Julian longed to reach out and wrap his hands around the man’s neck, but his body disagreed.

  They didn’t have to walk far before the scenery changed. Everything grew green again, but it was far from the lush, sprawling forests around Craymore. The rancid smell of the moors wafted over them from behind, the twisted sprouting trees doing little to shield them from the swirling mix of cold and musky air.

  They dipped into a valley and when they emerged they stood before a massive set of solid stone doors. The giant-sized portal was chiseled out of the stone face of the bluff and was covered in tangled, poisonous looking black vines and creeping thorns.

  Barely visible beneath the ivy were enormous block letters, long since worn smooth by the wind and rain. Not enough of the writing remained to read, but Julian recognized the language from the white tree in Cottonwood Grove, the language of the dwarves.

  Julian couldn’t tear his eyes away from the ruined structure as they grew closer. He became enthralled by the detail. Honored dwarvish heroes were carved fifty paces tall into the side of the bluff. Some holding spears while others clutched to magnificent looking hammers.

  Monsters adorned each of the stone slab doors. He beheld a wild looking dwarf atop a fire breathing boar, along with a monstrous horned bear and even a winged serpent coiling around a smoking mountain of fire.

  Julian wasn’t just looking at mere ornamentation. The dwarves had written their history, their mythology on the outside of their buildings for all to see. The mystery of the ancient structure drew him in.

  What battles have these doors seen? How many kings have they parted to greet, before this land grew septic and poisonous? Julian marveled at how such small figures could craft grand monuments.

  They approached the massive stone doors, the column ahead of him disappearing into a fissure marring the smooth stone. Julian stepped through the crack in the stone and was instantly pitched into absolute darkness.

  His legs continued to carry him forward, regardless of any inhibition he felt about the darkness. He cringed, anticipating jagged outcroppings banging into his head, but nothing touched him, save for wispy strands of cobwebs against his face. Moments later a pale, flickering light appeared ahead, and he stepped out into a large tunnel.

  The ground beneath his feet was uneven and broken, the large cobblestones jutting up in spots like fractured sheets of ice. They weaved a slithering course through a maze of broken road and collapsed stone, passing piles of the cavern’s ceiling, but also old corroded carts and wagons.

  Ancient braziers hung sporadically from the gloom, but their light spread in paltry pools, illuminating only small patches of their path ahead. Julian eyed the shadows in between wearily, waiting for something to leap onto him and drag him into the darkness.

  The tunnel had not only been ravaged by time, but also by war. Julian spotted abandoned fortifications and skeletons picked clean by rats, their bones bleached white by time. No one moved or collected them for burial. They lay where they fell all those thaws ago.

  Gradually the tunnel shrunk around them until Spider reordered them into a single, long column. The smaller tunnel curved and dipped for a while before opening up into a large circular chamber.

  Julian turned his head in a vain effort to shield his face from the bright light at the room’s center. His eyes burned even with his eyelids closed. Julian squinted through the glare, taking notice of the subtly changing surroundings.

  A raised walkway followed the circumference of the room, branching off into dozens of separate side passageways. Set just beneath them was a sunken pit, and at its center a massive, ornate lantern. A raging fire burned within the glass enclosure, its smoke rippling into a metal chimney set overhead.

  The room was a hub. Julian read about them growing up. They were believed to connect tunnels spanning the breadth and width of Denoril’s lands, perhaps even further, to unexplored lands.

  As a child, he dreamt of exploring those deep tunnels, adventuring into the unknown and unlocking long-forgotten and their lost treasures. But now, standing at just such a crossroads, it felt less like an adventure and more like a nightmare.

  Spider led them around the massive lantern and down one of the side passageways. Julian looked at the brick and mortar archways as he passed underneath, but there were no markings or engravings to differentiate them from one another.

  How will I ever find my way back out of here? Julian thought, panic rising inside him. If he managed to break free and escape, somehow, he might never find his way back out.

  They continued in that manner for what felt like days, marching relentlessly onward, with only sporadic breaks for rancid food and water. Julian fell to the ground every time the collar’s control lifted. Without Spider’s control, his legs buckled, ravaged by the brutal distance.

  He choked down his food and waited for the burning to fade from his limbs. At most he could wiggle his toes, then his feet, and eventually he could move his legs a little. He fumbled with the iron collar around his until his fingers bled, searching for a way to break free.

  One of the gnarl slavers found him tugging on the collar. The savage creature spared him the whip. Instead, it thrashed him relentlessly with a club that hung on its belt.

  Julian woke up a while later, his head throbbing and bouncing painfully against his chest. His eye, which had never fully healed from the first attack, was blurrier than ever.

  Julian longed for the feeling of his legs and arms moving under his power, but he could barely stand the thought of the pain. His boots were falling apart. The leather split and tore, while the soles rubbed his feet until the skin on the bottom of his feet tore loose.

  Julian dosed off for a while, trying to escape his pain for a while. He dreamt of home and family but awoke when someone nearby started chattering loudly. He blinked away crusty sleep and took several deep breaths before he could fully detach himself from his dream.

  The air felt and smelled different. It didn’t feel oppressively close anymore, nor did it smell stale. The stone tunnels that had cradled him for so long were gone. They passed through a large natural looking cavern, the ceiling arching high overhead before walking into an enormous cavern of domed rock.

  “It’s a city…look, a city!” the woman ahead of him said, chattering in a wild and half-crazed voice.

  Julian saw the tops of shooting spires and towers, but couldn’t see what those in front of him were so excited about until they descended a sweeping walkway.

  There was just enough ambient light within the cavern for Julian to make out the dark outlines of buildings. The city took shape as they drew near. Shadow became form until he beheld sweeping structures of glittering stone. He couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  Each structure didn’t have a definitive beginning or end. Instead, they flowed together in a graceful span. They were bot
h sleek and angular at the same time, the miraculous product of more than just hammer and chisel. Julian imagined the stone had been formed, and not broken apart.

  The floor of the giant cavern pitched up slightly towards its center. The city flowed along with it, sloping up to a towering fortress. They wove their way through broken and pitched roadways.

  Julian glanced sidelong down an alleyway and realized with a shock that the buildings flanking him were not abandoned as he thought. Light flickered in a select few windows, and shadowy figures moved within.

  The thoroughfare became cluttered with primitive looking structures. They appeared completely out of place amongst the dwarvish structures, like scabs growing on the sleek stone. Most of them, Julian realized, were not empty.

  Julian passed close by one. A small fire burned off to the side, but it wasn’t burning wood, but some form of large, dried mushrooms. The odor wafting off the fire made Julian dizzy. He gazed at the darkened doorway and cursed as several pairs of eyes appeared, glowing eerily in the shadow.

  The farther they moved into the city, the more emboldened its shadowy inhabitants became. Some of them crept out of the buildings but lurked in the darkness. By the time they approached the city’s midpoint the streets were filled with hundreds of the creatures.

  Julian turned away, flinching at the sight of the beasts. What he thought to be stooped, pale-skinned people moving in the shadows, turned out to be something altogether more terrifying. Their white skin seemed to glow in the darkness. They had bulbous eyes and toothy maws. Several of the smaller creatures, which Julian figured had to be children, scampered forward to paw curiously at his pant legs. Julian watched the beasts hobble forward, supporting themselves with a pair of small arms sprouting from their chests.

  Julian watched the gnarl slavers shy away from the pale beasts as they grew emboldened and crowded in around them. One of the slavers cracked its whip over his head, agitated one of the white beasts. It pawed forward into the light and opened its mouth to hiss, exposing row upon row of glistening transparent teeth.