by Andy Hoare
As the group advanced cautiously along this new stretch of tunnel, Khargrim saw that the walls were the large, solid blocks prevalent in the main passageways they had already explored. He didn’t need to warn his companions of the need to be vigilant and within the next hour Karra detected and avoided three more deadly traps. The first had taken the form of a great blade set between the seams of the masonry above, which would have scythed down upon any who broke what appeared to be an innocuous spider’s web stretched across the tunnel. Each member of the party had been forced to step through the strands without disturbing the larger ones, for to do so would have brought instant oblivion.
The second trap had been far more cunning and neither Khargrim nor any of his companions had seen its like before. A stretch of the ground was covered in twisting creepers – ancient, withered roots coiling through cracks in the masonry. Having been raised amongst the deadly jungles of Lustria, Karra was instantly alert. While it was not unusual for roots to quest so far beneath the ground that they forced their way into such subterranean places, no form of life could be trusted not to kill in a heartbeat. As the Amazon stepped over one root, it reacted to her presence, rearing up to grasp her limbs in its coiling embrace.
Karra leaped clear of the first root, but in doing so passed over several more, setting off a chain reaction so that in an instant the entire stretch of tunnel was alive with thrashing roots seeking to choke the life from any they could entrap.
After about a minute the movement stopped, but it started up again each time anyone approached. At length, each of the party had to wait until the roots stilled, then dash across, hoping they were fast enough to avoid their touch. Fortunately, everyone made it, though several, including Ghurni and Thorkell, were forced to hack through roots that coiled about their ankles.
The last trap had been simple to locate, for it had already been triggered. As the Amazon crept along the corridor, the light of her torch had glinted dully from some metal object. Khargrim joined her as she stalked to the lip of a deep pit sunk into the tunnel floor, its bottom a forest of gleaming stakes.
Verdandi joined the pair, hissing as she saw the desiccated bodies impaled below. ‘Druchii. The bastard kin of the elves.’
Khargrim had seen them too. He had no idea how long ago they had fallen foul of the hidden pit, but their bodies were shrivelled and their armour tarnished by age and the damp air in the tunnels. The flesh of the faces was rotten and shrunken, the lips stretched back into hideous rictus grins and the eyes dark, hollow pits. Nevertheless, it was clear that the dark elves had died screaming, and Khargrim turned his back upon the grisly scene. The party hesitated a moment before pressing on, and it was several hours before anyone spoke again.
‘Be still!’ Khargrim hissed and every member of the party froze exactly where they were, knowing that a single foot placed awry could unleash a deadly trap and doom them all. ‘Verdandi, what is that sound?’
The sea-maiden appeared to be listening, her expression changed from its normal haughtiness to one that Khargrim had never seen on her – doubt. The shadows in the chamber seemed to close in and the flickering of the torches to slow, until Khargrim too could tell that something unnatural was occurring.
Then, it dawned upon the engineer just how far into the Tomb of Destiny the party had travelled.
‘We near the heart,’ Khargrim breathed, not daring to raise his voice. ‘Karra? How far is it to the central chamber?’
The Amazon appeared to be almost as disturbed as the sea-maiden, her head cocked at a similar angle as if she too were listening for some sound the others could barely hear. So far as Khargrim knew, however, she had no particular mystic power. He had heard the fanciful tale that her people had elvish blood in their veins, though he had never given it any credence.
‘Karra!’ Khargrim hissed when the Amazon didn’t respond. ‘Are we near the chamber, girl?’
Karra’s eyes came suddenly back into focus and her head snapped around to face Khargrim. It seemed to the dwarf that she had woken suddenly from some faintly disturbing dream, and it took her a few moments to compose herself.
‘Yes,’ she said distractedly. ‘We approach the central chamber, but…’
Khargrim waited, then prompted, ‘But?’
It was Verdandi who answered. ‘We should not enter the central chamber, Khargrim. There are… powers lingering within it. None are permitted to enter their presence, save the handmaidens of the gods themselves.’
‘The handmaidens of the…?’ said Khargrim, frustration welling inside at the thought of another mutiny in the group.
‘Karra’s people,’ said the sea-maiden. ‘Our own were never meant to dwell in their presence, but hers… Well, I have heard it told they were born to do just that.’
‘Listen, sea-maiden,’ said Khargrim, determined that the expedition would not return empty-handed. ‘I have no idea what you speak of. We came for the gold, and if it is in the central chamber then that is where I go. Are you two coming or not?’
Neither of the pair answered Khargrim directly, but they shared a glance and nodded almost imperceptibly before Karra raised her arm and pointed down the tunnel into the shadows beyond the torchlight.
‘What you seek lies no more than a score of fathoms yon,’ said Karra. Khargrim followed her gesture, his heart suddenly beating all the harder as he allowed himself to imagine what treasures might await him there.
‘Then what are you waiting for, girl,’ said Khargrim. ‘Lead on.’
Soon, the tunnel opened up into a wider space, which Khargrim judged to be some huge, subterranean processional avenue. The torchlight lit only a part of it, but it soon became evident that the avenue was around fifty feet wide and at least thirty high, and constructed from truly massive blocks of masonry. By the quality of the air and the faint trace of movement within it, Khargrim guessed that the underground avenue formed some huge roadway, not unlike those the dwarfs had constructed far beneath the mountains of the Old World. There, such avenues connected ancient holds far apart, or at least they had, before the cataclysm that brought so much of the mountains crashing down upon them. How far this avenue ran, Khargrim dared not consider, but certainly it was possible that it connected temple sites hundreds of leagues apart.
‘Behold, engineer,’ Verdandi’s voice snapped Khargrim from his chain of thought. ‘All the treasure that your dwarf heart desires lies beyond yonder portal.’
Verdandi and Karra had stopped, and Khargrim came to stand beside them. ‘I do not know about that,’ he muttered. ‘A dwarf’s heart can desire quite a lot…’
Karra raised her torch and the space before her was suddenly alive with dancing, orange illumination reflected from a pair of doors made out of solid bronze. The torchlight seemed to glide across the surface of the rune-encrusted metal like liquid fire, lending it the aspect of a sheet of lava. The meaning of the runes was entirely alien to Khargrim, though he had seen similar forms carved into the sides of other lizard temples he had visited in his time in Lustria. Khargrim had little doubt they warned against intrusion and threatened the curses of ancient gods upon any who entered.
‘Grimnir watch over us,’ Khargrim muttered as he looked more closely at the runes. Something about them stirred some primordial dread deep inside, something that made him feel suddenly very vulnerable and very mortal. ‘And Grungni and Valaya,’ he added for good measure as he reached out to push upon the doors.
To his surprise, the doors moved inwards with barely any pressure at all, opening silently by way of some wondrous mechanism that Khargrim could only guess at.
As the portal widened, a line of blazing gold appeared between the doors, growing wider as they parted further. Khargrim and his companions were forced to shield their eyes from the glare, which had an unmistakable quality that no dwarf could miss.
‘Gold,’ Khargrim whispered, stepping forward into the blazing glow
even before the doors were fully open. He thought he heard someone whisper a warning, but he was too transfixed by the radiant glory before him to react.
As Khargrim stepped through the portal, his eyes began slowly to adjust until eventually he could make out individual details of a vast chamber. The floor, walls and ceiling were gleaming red marble, inset with hundreds upon hundreds of glyph plates, and the entire space was lined with sentinel-statues carved from obsidian, the smallest of which was ten feet tall.
But it was the sight at the opposite wall of the chamber that filled Khargrim’s heart with longing.
A massive statue of some long-limbed, vaguely amphibian being occupied almost the entire wall. Its eyes were almond-shaped and made of glistening, jet-black stone that appeared disturbingly alive. The being’s skin was made of gold, and it was burnished to such a shine that it reflected and magnified every glimmer of illumination so that it hurt Khargrim’s eyes to look upon it for long.
Yet he could scarcely tear his eyes away, for surely the massive idol was made of enough precious metal to sate even the greed of a dwarf. Without conscious thought, Khargrim was already considering the statue’s worth, and how he might go about deconstructing it for transportation out of the tomb, out of Lustria, across the Great Ocean and–
‘No,’ Khargrim heard Karra breathe as she came to stand beside him. ‘This should not be…’
As Khargrim tore his eyes reluctantly from the mighty golden idol, he saw Karra walk falteringly towards its base, her torch and blade held low as she gazed up vacantly into its upturned hands, which were resting as if in meditation in its lap. There, in the centre of the idol’s palm, was a simple gem that glowed with an inner light which grew brighter the closer the Amazon approached.
Khargrim’s eyes grew wide as he took in the sight of the increasingly brightly glowing gem. As much as he loved gold, he knew that the stone must surely be worth an order of magnitude more. What wonders could he finance with such a treasure, he thought…
‘This should not be,’ Karra repeated. ‘We should not be here…’
‘Now is not the time to get cold feet, girl,’ Khargrim said distractedly, now entirely unable to look anywhere else but at the gleaming gem.
‘Wait, engineer,’ Verdandi called out from behind, her voice edged with something akin to fear. ‘I believe she is correct.’
Khargrim turned on the sea-maiden and saw that the party seemed to have split into two factions. Beside Verdandi stood Yngv, his wizened face twisted in fear and his body stooped and tense. The hunter Ovar stood nearby, his bow raised towards the eight or so thralls facing them, their eyes wide with greed. Between the two groups stood Ghurni and the marauder Thorkell, doubt and uncertainty writ large across the face of both. It was clear that some form of confrontation was brewing, and Khargrim would have none of it.
‘What is going on here?’ Khargrim growled. ‘Is there not enough for all of you?’
It was Ghurni who answered. ‘Khargrim, the gods know I love gold as much as any dwarf, but–’
‘But?’ Khargrim exclaimed, dumbfounded that his old friend might falter now, at the moment of their victory.
‘But something here is very wrong–’
‘The ancients…’ Karra breathed, and Verdandi let out a small moan of despair. Ovar stumbled and grasped his head, while the rest of the party cursed or hissed in sudden pain. ‘They watch us even now, from across such vast gulfs…’
‘We leave!’ one of the thralls, a broad-shouldered, shaggy-bearded Kul clansman exclaimed. The man cast about him and upon locating the nearest golden glyph plate mounted upon the marble wall, crossed over to it and set about attempting to remove it from its aeons-old resting place. In a moment, the man’s companions had joined him, determined to claim at least some small treasure for themselves before fleeing from the tomb.
‘Stop!’ Verdandi ordered, her voice faltering, but sufficiently loud to echo about the chamber. Her recurved sea bow was levelled directly at the lead mutineer, who turned slowly to face the sea-maiden.
‘I said, we leave,’ the Kul growled, before resuming his attempt to tear away the golden glyph plate.
He never completed his attempt, however, for as the thrall struggled, Khargrim strode across the marble floor, unlooping his hammer as he advanced.
‘I warned you,’ the dwarf snarled through gritted teeth. The thrall glanced over his shoulder and his wild eyes widened as he saw his peril, but too late.
Khargrim’s hammer arced through the air, striking the thrall hard in the side of his head. The man’s iron helmet saved his skull from being staved in and he went down hard at the dwarf’s feet, alive, but stunned by his wound nonetheless.
‘Would anyone else gainsay my orders? Khargrim growled at the remainder of the thralls. None were foolish enough to continue their companion’s mutiny.
Unseen by all apart from Karra, a runnel of blood ran from beneath the Kul thrall’s helm onto the marble floor.
The Amazon made to shout a warning, her soul suddenly filled with cold dread. Her people had trod these lands, walked in the halls of long lost gods, since time before time, and were possessed of an instinctive wisdom. The instant the blood that Khargrim had shed touched the sacred ground of the idol chamber, she knew that some form of offering had been made, and something, somewhere, stirred in response…
It was Khargrim who had shed that blood and made the offering, and so it was he who became the focus of the response.
Khargrim felt the air around him turn solid, his body all but crushed as if he was nothing more than an insect trapped in amber. His vision was filled with the light radiating from the gem held in the idol’s palm, the illumination turning blood red in response to his unwitting offering. Trapped, Khargrim could not even blink as that crimson illumination expanded to swamp his vision, and soon his companions and the interior of the chamber were gone from his sight.
His soul cast upon a formless sea made from the raw stuff of magic, Khargrim felt the attentions of impossibly ageless beings turned upon him. He steeled his heart against the raging insignificance imposed upon him by that unknowable scrutiny, desperately holding on to what little of himself could be said to exist within that raging, screaming sea of souls…
…something reached out, and although Khargrim thought for a moment that his soul would be seared to ashes and scattered upon the currents of the seething ocean, he realised that the opposite was true. Something he could neither see nor even begin to comprehend was shielding him, warding his immortal soul as well as his sanity from the awful truth of that unreal domain.
And then it spoke to him, not in words, but in impressions. Khargrim’s soul was filled with a formless mass of visions and emotions, all of which congealed into one gestalt truth…
…and that truth was war. In a single, timeless instant, Khargrim saw every battle ever fought and every battle that ever would be fought. Primitive beings caved each other’s skulls in with heavy rocks. He saw serried, gleaming ranks of armoured warriors so noble he was all but crushed with sadness, for he knew that every one of them was doomed. Mighty ironclads ploughed through black oceans between worlds, unleashing such devastation upon one another that thousands died with every blast. Entire worlds burned and stars blinked out of existence, all to the laughter of mad gods…
And then it ended, and reality crashed in upon him. He was on the hard marble floor of the temple, the golden idol rearing overhead while several of his companions pressed in around him. A fine pattering of dust was raining slowly from the distant ceiling, and he blinked his eyes to clear them of the grit.
‘Khargrim!’ said Ghurni urgently. ‘Thank Valaya… Khargrim, we have to get moving, and quickly!’
The dwarf raised himself onto his elbows while the Slayer cleared some space around him. The red-hued gem in the idol’s upturned palm filled his vision for a moment, echoes of the sights he
had seen whilst unconscious flickering across his mind’s eye. Another patter of dust rained down, and reality came thundering in. ‘Wait, Ghurni,’ he coughed as he stood with Thorkell’s aid. ‘What is happening? Why do we have to–’
Khargrim never completed his sentence, for the entire chamber was suddenly struck by a fearsomely powerful tremor. The idol rocked and the illumination cast by the gem guttered. A resounding crash sounded from near the portal and Khargrim staggered about to see that a sentinel-statue had toppled over and shattered into a million fragments of obsidian. A ruin of flesh near the portal told him that one of the thralls had tried to flee, but had been cut down by the lethal rain.
The glimmer of gold in the midst of the ragged mess told Khargrim that while he had been out cold a number of the thralls had attempted to steal some of the temple’s contents. Part of his vision returned, and he knew that Karra had been correct. This place was the domain of ancient gods and above sacred.
‘We leave, now!’ Khargrim bellowed over the sound of the earth rending itself in two. The rain of grit from above redoubled. Khargrim staggered aside to avoid a cascade of heavy rocks and stumbled against the rearing idol. For an instant, he was looking directly up into its gleaming black eyes and the blood-hued gem was directly before him. Another tremor struck and Ghurni was at his side, propelling him towards and then through the massive portal even as one of the huge doors crashed down upon the hapless form of a fleeing thrall.
Khargrim found the remainder of the party gathered in the avenue outside, but instead of fleeing the destruction of the chamber, they were standing with weapons drawn, ready to face a foe that Khargrim could not yet see.
A curse upon his lips, Khargrim shouldered his way through the group, and then he saw why they had halted. By the light of Karra’s torch, he saw the rippling of reptilian muscle and the gleam of water on a bony armoured crest.
