Deathsworn Arc: 02 - The Verkreath Horror

by Martyn Stanley

  She glared at him. “Hmmph! No, I am not. I wish to avoid Eldenizar for as long as possible.”

  Korhan’s speech was laboured from exertion and his frail state. “It’s the last thing your pursuers would expect Mir§a Vashni.”

  “That is true, but Maerun is riddled with wards, magical traps and magical alarms. My presence there would be known immediately and I would be apprehended. As foul as this place looks, it is a preferable option than Maerun.”

  Votrex, while this conversation had been going on had been conferring with Brael, who understood the runic language and was familiar with navigating underground. Having come to a conclusion he turned to address the group. “At the moment we are at the balcony, on level nuvello. I believe our best option would be to descend to the bottom of this part the chasm, then make our way west, and head south down the great corridor.”

  From his finger tracing the map carved into the wall it was clear he was referring to the stick of the ‘T’ the chasm which was at this point unseen.

  “From there, there should be a tunnel which traces the edge of the Great Divide South West, then South until it passes under Kelen. I believe there will be an exit point at Kelen and we can re-stock our supplies there.”

  Saul looked concerned. “That seems like a long time underground Votrex, have we enough supplies to make this journey without surfacing? Can we be sure the warren is intact all the way down to Kelen?”

  “If we move swiftly and ration our supplies we should be okay. There will be places we can fill our flasks along the way, parts of the warren often run past the bottom of wells. There may be exits on the way, but if we can return to the surface in Kelen we will surface into civilisation and be in a better position to make our journey to Cormaroth.”

  Brael stroked his scraggly beard thoughtfully. “What about the Verkreath? These tunnels could be teeming with them.”

  “From the look of Beren’Gedt Holt they have a minimal presence here - they may have withdrawn from the warren. If we find a significant Verkreath presence, we can drop back and look for another exit - though it may mean we surface within the Great Divide, and that would not be good.”

  Korhan limped past, grasping onto the handrail. “I think it’s agreed then, we head down.”

  Votrex scurried past him, with Brael immediately behind him. “Hold Northlander, I shall take the lead.”

  Korhan allowed Votrex and Brael past. Soon they were on the steps descending into the gloom. Votrex would’ve activated the runelights from time to time, lighting the way ahead - except large glowing flickering orbs dangled on stalactites, filling the Holt with a dim, gloomy light. Lighting the periodical rune lights would have attracted attention to their presence. The stairs themselves were treacherous, some worn smooth, some cracked and broken. Once they were down one flight Votrex began leading them across the ledge, towards the next flight, some distance away.

  As they walked, they passed what appeared to be dwarvish dwellings, carved into the rock. They weren’t large, the windows did not have glass in them, instead they had wooden shutters which were well made, but broken and flung open. Peering inside the companions saw scenes of chaos and destruction. The furniture lay strewn about and broken, broken pottery lay all over the floor. In its former glory the dwelling would have consisted of a single room, with a bed, a little table and an area for cooking.

  Vashni smirked, clearly amused at something. Votrex noticed and frowned. “What has tickled you so elf?”

  “My apologies master dwarf, but I cannot fathom how living in these conditions is possible. There is nowhere to relieve thyselves, trying to cook in this tiny cave would have it thick with smoke in moments, where do you get your fresh water from?”

  Votrex pointed towards a small stone box with runes carved into it in the corner, it was nearly covered with old books and torn out pages. “That is where we ‘relieve ourselves’ the runes when activated process the waste into useable, fresh clean water and into lumps of carbon, along with some dry waste material that has to be disposed of - though there is very little. There is a cleverly designed flue system above the stove which joins a bigger flue and extracts smoke, we also have to engineer another flue system, a means of getting fresh air down here.”

  Vashni chuckled. “Living underground seems difficult and hard work. Votrex, you’ll forgive me for smirking, but as I understand it, you clean and drink your own urine?! That is very amusing.”

  Votrex shrugged. “Aye, that is accurate, but all the water you drink comes from the water cycle and when you relieve yourself of it, it returns to the water cycle. We have just condensed and speeded the natural processes which take foul water and cleans it. The water you drink, any water you drink is likely to have been drunk by many before you, over the years,”

  Brael chuckled under his breath. “The dwarf speaks the truth. I have never seen one of these arcane devices before, I would like to study the runes and material used and how they function.”

  Saul groaned audibly. “Brael, if only we had time to loiter. We are in a dangerous place and it is critical we return the heart stones to the Empress.”

  “You speak the truth wizard, I doubt I could gain much knowledge from it in my current state anyway, the combination of my lack of magical ability and my the curse inhibiting my use of ‘the truth’ would make any meaningful investigation impossible - let us continue, perhaps I shall return to this place at a later date, when I have regained my abilities.”

  Votrex sighed. “Living deep underground is not easy, but it’s always been dwarvish nature to love stone and valuable minerals and to be happy to set up home as close to these resources as possible. Strak is located where it is, because it is perfectly located for quarrying the foot of the Sky Cleavers, no other reason. Come, let us continue - the less time we linger here the better.”

  The companions set on their way again, passing several more similar dwellings to the first one. Votrex took the lead, with Brael not far behind. Behind Brael marched Saul, and Korhan, with Vashni at the rear of the group. The trudging and climbing was hard, hard work. In places the ledges were broken and damaged, requiring skillful steps to avoid tumbling into the depths, in places they were simply strewn with rubbish and broken dwarf artefacts.

  Of course as they descended they peered into more of the dwellings. Some of them appeared to have been inhabited more recently, with beds of dry, old straw in the corners and the debris swept into one corner. The Verkreath had been here, they had been here in number - but it was clear also that they no longer were.

  After travelling down several flights of steps and across several ledges they came to a dead end, a huge section of walkway had collapsed, taking with it not just the walkway below but the walls and roof of a larger dwarvish dwelling. Votrex, almost without pausing started across a narrow bridge that spanned the chasm. There was no handrail and the bridge was barely wide enough for one dwarf to travel single file across. Saul grumbled under his breath as he carefully walked the narrow bridge in the dim light. “Why, did not the dwarves build their homes less treacherously?”

  Votrex, who was past halfway across by this point and striding towards the other side must have heard him. “Tis a defence mechanism wizard. If the Holt was attacked and it seemed one side was being overrun, we could fall back and break the bridges, the enemy would also only be able to attack in single file.”

  “Then why are so many of these bridges intact? What happened here?”

  “I do not know...”

  The trekking continued, down and down into the depths of the Holt. The bottom of the chasm eventually became visible through the gloom, it was lined with debris, rubbish and rubble and looked difficult to traverse. Luckily they’d not been forced to brave the treacherous bridges to change sides again. Their narrowness and the poor light meant switching from the north side to the south side of the chasm was a dangerous and difficult task.

  As the bottom of the chasm drew closer Votrex heard a faint sound in the dista
nce and turned to the other with a finger to his lips. The remainder of the descent was made in silence, weapons at the ready, senses poised. Sure enough across the bottom of the chasm, towards the point where the other chasm formed a ‘T’ junction, the soft glow of firelight flickered around the shutters and the doorway.

  Traversing the chasm floor silently was difficult, it meant clambering over fallen rubble and loose shale, intermingled with broken furniture which must have fallen from the higher levels. Votrex led, with Brael on his heels. As they approached the dwelling, they saw a skin hanging across the doorway, and the shutters were closed. At first glance the skin looked like an animal skin, only upon closer inspection, did it become clear it was the dried and cured skin of a dwarf, or several dwarves stitched together - their sad faces with eyeless sockets, forever visible on the canvas of flesh. Votrex fought back the anger, it was pulsing inside him, whoever, or whatever had done this would... He shook his head, trying to emotionally detach himself from the horror he was witnessing. He knew it was Verkreath, he knew Verkreath ate their victims and even each other, any creature that lived underground had to be resourceful and could not afford to waste anything. Using slain dwarves hides after having consumed their flesh made perfect, if macabre sense.

  He turned to Brael and whispered, almost silently in his ear. “Try to keep at least one alive, we should try to learn what has happened here.”

  Brael nodded and passed the message back. While the message was being passed around Brael leaned in to Votrex and whispered in his ear, “We should try to be quiet, we are not in good fighting state, if we can sneak past unseen, unnoticed - that may be our best course of action.”

  Votrex nodded, putting aside his desire for revenge for the survival of the group. Now, down here, in the gloom, potentially about to face some Verkreath, the thought of having to deal with the servant of the flame did not seem quite so terrible a task. Of course the reality was, most of the servant, were enchanted townspeople, who would probably be easy to slay if it came to it, their only chance being to overwhelm the skilled warriors with massive numbers - the trouble was the very people they would have been slaying were the people they’d wanted to save from Thrax. Part of Votrex wanted to think the servant would disband and return to their normal, non-dragon worshipping lives after the death of Thrax, but Korhan and Vashni’s report of Ramon Hern seemed to exclude that possibility.

  They were at the lit dwelling now, carved into the rock like the all the others, though this one seemed a little larger. Votrex carefully, silently peered through the cracks in the shutters. The inside of the cave had a fire burning on the stove, the dwarves flue system seeming to suck the smoke through a small grill in the ceiling. There was a Verkreath sitting on a small stool, it’s back to them. It was clearly cooking something, the smell of grilling meat wafting around despite the extraction in place. Two more of the foul creatures were sleeping on beds of straw in the room. Votrex was coming to the conclusion, moving quietly past might be their best option, except as he moved to turn away, he saw a sad face, with matted white hair and sullen eyes at the far side of the cave, on the floor behind some bars. He gazed at what appeared to be a captive, lying on her back, she looked defeated - but alive. Her dark greyish blue skin, suggested, she was a gravian. He sighed, it complicated things.

  Slowly he turned to Brael and gestured with his finger for him to look. Brael, his short sword at the ready, moved to the shutter and peered in. He saw the Verkreath with its back turned, slowly turning over a piece of meat, on the stove, out of view. His eyes moved around until he picked up the sad form of the gravian girl, locked behind a barred portal to a cave further back. She was alive, though clearly not in a good state.

  His first reaction was that she may be beyond saving anyway and they would be better moving on trying to conceal their presence here as long as possible. The trouble was, he’d been away from the underdeep for some time and he wanted to know what effect ‘the truth’ had on gravian society. She could possibly provide that answer. He also felt compassion for the girl, though she looked like she was doomed to die anyway, leaving her to meet her destiny at the hands of these vile creatures seemed unjust.

  He backed away and beckoned the warriors into the gloom. In a tight huddle some distance from the dwelling he whispered to the others. “We have to help her.”

  Vashni raised an eyebrow. “Doing so would surely alert the remaining Verkreath to our presence. We cannot risk doing so, we are not in a fit state to fight off a horde of Verkreath.”

  Saul nodded his head in agreement. “The elf speaks the truth, though tis sad we cannot help, I fear doing so could jeopardize our mission and our lives.”

  Korhan felt a little uneasy at the way this conversation was going. Ishar’s teachings were that it was better to look death in the eye and make a bold stand against tyranny than allow an innocent to suffer, for a seat in Kirkfell was surely reserved for warriors who died fighting, defending the weak, a seat at the table of Ishar himself would be reserved for those who died facing insurmountable odds.

  Brael looked at Saul. “Are you still spent wizard? Do you think you could muster a spell?”

  Saul raised an eyebrow. “I am rested, I could muster a spell though I question whether I could perform a spell such as the one you had me performing in Strak.”

  “This is a simpler spell, it creates a bubble of air about ten metres in diameter around the caster. The bubble reflects sound waves back into the bubble and muffles them. It means we should be able to eliminate the Verkreath silently.”

  Saul looked doubtful. “I don’t kn-”

  “We must help her, there are five of us and two of them are sleeping. I will not let her die at their hands!”

  Korhan looked at Saul hopefully. “At least try to cast the spell Saul, the gravian may have important information as to what happened here, which may ease our passage to Cormaroth and if the spell works, the risk shall be minimal.”

  Vashni nodded. “If the spell works we will have no risk, it would be unjust to leave her to her fate. If we can keep one of the Verkreath alive I can attempt to enter its mind, I may be able to learn what happened here and more.”

  Saul sighed. “I suppose if I can cast the spell then we have much more to gain than to lose.”

  Brael looked sternly at him. “This is a difficult spell, but not as energy consuming as the transmogrification spell. It’s a matter of concentration more than anything. As you form the words of the spell, feel the bubble forming and help to shape it with your mind. The bubble can pass through rock and other material, it is most stable when it is most spherical. Communicating inside the bubble once it is formed will be difficult. I suggest we slay the cook first, then select one of the sleepers to question, and slay the other one.”

  Korhan looked at Brael in disgust. “You are suggesting we murder them in their sleep?”

  “The Verkreath are ferocious, frenzied fighters, their weapons and claws are likely to carry all manner of foul diseases. They are as pure evil as a creature can be - better to slay them without risk.”

  “Ishar would not app-”

  “Trust me on this Avil, we should slay them as easily as we can. Your following of Ishar’s teachings is perhaps commendable, but it is faulty. I am hoping if we can save this poor soul from the Verkreath, I may be able to break my curse of silence and reveal ‘the truth’ to you.”

  Korhan shuddered, there was something in Brael’s voice. ‘The Truth’ what was it? Brael had been mentioning it regularly since he’d been dragged off the chopping block back in Trest. Korhan was intrigued as to what this great ‘truth’ could be. Whatever it was, it was big. It was true they weren’t in the best form to fight, particularly if it meant risking the rest of the Verkreath becoming alerted to their presence. He sighed. “Very well gravian, we shall murder one while they sleep.”

  Brael nodded. “Good, I will slay the cook, Votrex - you slay the first sleeper. Vashni, Saul, Korhan - pin the second sleeper down
with your blades. Now Saul, the words to this spell are:-“Mer§i§a relinoh marr, gri§tla gorsh mor §alembub §lar, cora§olasly-amara§ i§lish §la§a, ama morakoth §irn racha marr.”

  Saul listened, struggling to remember the long incantation. Eventually Brael finished and shook his head. “Can you repeat it more slowly? It’s too much!”

  Brael sighed impatiently, “Mer§i§a relinoh marr... Gri§tla gorsh mor... §alembub §lar, cora§olasly-amara§... i§lish §la§a, ama morakoth... §irn racha marr.”

  Saul concentrated hanging on Brael’s every word. He was a skilled spellcaster, but it was right to be cautious; a misplaced pause or syllable or mis-pronunciation could make the spell fizzle or worse have a completely different effect to the intended. Eventually, satisfied that he had the words down he whispered. “Again, but at the correct speed.”

  “Mer§i§a relinoh marr, gri§tla gorsh mor §alembub §lar, cora§olasly-amara§ i§lish §la§a, ama morakoth §irn racha marr.”

  Saul took a deep breath, checking his incantation and pauses in his mind, then opened his mouth to speak. “Mer§i§a relinoh marr, gri§tla gorsh mor §alembub §lar, cora§olasly-amara§ i§lish §la§a, ama morakoth §irn racha marr.”

  Brael waited for a moment, then smiled softly, and whispered. “It has worked.”

  His whispered voice seemed tinny and echoed around inside the bubble, bouncing from the sides of the bubble as it faded away. Saul’s face was a mask of sheer concentration; he was holding the shape together in his mind, having to focus almost entirely on the spell. Any fighting would be entirely down to the others, so hard was it to hold the bubble together.

  Brael headed towards the dwelling, with Votrex at his heels and Vashni and Korhan close behind. Saul was bringing up the rear, clearly unable to think about anything except concentrating on his spell and staying with the others.

  Brael gently pushed the tanned dwarf skin curtain aside and stepped in, his sword at the ready. The cook didn’t turn around, at least not at first, however as Saul neared, the bubble extended to surround the cook, his fire and the sleepers. The sleepers didn’t rouse from their slumber, but the cook stood up suddenly, aware of the presence of magic due to the change in sound within the bubble.