We angled for the Overspill as a place to pause, restock, and quite frankly to appreciate some food and proper refreshments before getting back on the road. When there are weeks ahead of you, you want to get in as much entertainment in as you can before you depart.
We stayed in the same inn, the stone walls now familiar, and returned to the tavern where we’d first played darts together. The food and company, as before, were satisfying and fun,though it felt somehow distant, morose. I could not tell why I felt this way, but I could see the others felt similarly.
“Why do we all feel so down?” Nemmy finally broke in while a discussion was being had regarding the pros and cons of wands versus rods. “Why do I feel like something is hanging over me? I’m not the only one feeling this way, am I?”
“No, I feel kinda crappy too,” Horace said. “Been this way for a day or two now.”
“Something is wrong in our path,” Lotonna said. “A decision has been made, or is coming, that weighs on all of us.” He drank back a large portion of his bowl of beer. “I do not recognize what it is, but it is near.”
I was surprised to discover that this was something shared by all of us. “Yes, I feel it too. What is it? Are we going the wrong way or something?”
Kineta just shrugged. “I wish I knew, but whatever it is, we should keep an eye out for causes – this may not be a natural feeling of unease. It may be induced,” she offered.
“Look, we’re in no hurry, let’s sleep in tomorrow and see how we feel in the morning with a full meal behind us. Maybe we can stumble upon some insights by then,” I said.
“I always feel better on a full stomach,” Nemmy added with a nod.
“Rats and rabbits do, too,” Horace pointed out. Nemmy just grinned back, not taking his usual umbrage to the rodent comparison.
Kineta looked over at me, and raised her eyebrows. I nodded, and we adjourned together to our room.
Our room. That felt strange to think, at the time.
We did what most couples do, particularly those who know their time together might be limited. Afterwards, while I slep, I had a very dark, foreboding dream. It so disturbed me, I can remember it vividly to this day.
A deep twilight settled on me, forests of dead, leafless limbs hanging between me and the featureless grey sky. The hunger surrounded me, it throbbed in the ground like the pulse of a glacier.
I walked through the forest, its fog clinging to my skin and itching, burning. After some time I reached a clearing, looking up at a mound of rock that cascaded mists down its sides as if it were a strange fountain. In the side of it was carved a great face, that of a screaming demon.
The Earth’s Boil. I knew its name, though I could not say why. It clung to my mind like honey to the side of a tea-cup.
Another name entered my mind. Liliandra.
From inside the stone mound, I heard the sounds of screams.
I found myself passed into the mouth of the demon-face, down its spine, and into carved flush stone corridors, choked with mist and freezing cold. Even my fingers stuck where I touched the walls of this place. Though it was pitch-black, I could see perfectly. I walked through strewn bits of corpses – mostly elementals, froglike slaadi and the occasional bits of unidentifiable things.
Until I reached the bottom. Beneath the corridors, a round room, choked with blood and lined with tables. On the center one was an enormous stone dragon’s skull. Standing before it was a human, pale of skin and thin of build. He stood with his arms crossed, facing me. From a hole in the center of the floor, black iridescent fluids roiled up like amoebic tendrils. Their ropy strands coiled around the man’s feet, up his legs and around his shoulders. They crept up into the skull, pulsing it full of their dire substance. They flowed slowly up onto the tables…
…and into the open mouths of the severed heads of every member of Fellbane. They were there, arranged haphazardly upon the tables lining the walls. Their own blood – red as it should have been – was crusted in places, as though the heads had been resting there for days.
The stench was unbearable.
The thing I’d thought was a man faced me, and opened his mouth, revealing the sharp and extended eye-teeth characteristic of a vampire. His eyes saw me, despite the darkness.
“Come join me, or join them,” was all he said. Beneath, deep down, I heard a basso rumble that escalated in volume to become a tremendous roar.
I sat up to the sounds of screaming. I could not at first place it, but in moments realized Kineta was sitting up beside me, eyes wide open, panting frantically.
The screams had been mine.
For an emissary to the Lord of Nightmare, I certainly had some unexpected weaknesses.
Kineta looked over at me, the fear on her face clearly legible. “What was that?” She nearly burst into tears asking the question.
“A nightmare, I’m sorry I frightened you.” My voice was a dry croak.
“Who was that man?” Her hand clutched mine.
“What?”
“That man, who was he? And who were all those dead people?” Her nails were biting into my skin.
“Wait…I just had a nightmare.” I shook my head to clear it.
“Yes, I saw you – I was right behind you, we were there together.”
Okay, this was trouble.
* * *
Only minutes passed before I heard the knocking on my door. The others had all had the same nightmare, and all had seen me in it. I didn’t know what to say – I explained to them who the heads belonged to.
“Are they dead? Did they die in there?” Nemmy was particularly agitated.
“I don’t know. Other than who they were, I have no idea what that was.” I held the cup of coffee in my hands, feeling the warmth eat into the chill I’d brought back with me from the nightmare. My legs were still shaking.
“Do you know who Liliandra is? What the Earth’s Boil is?” Lotonna rumbled from the far side of the table.
“No, but they must be related to the place they were going before. When we parted they left Banner heading North-West. Some place called the Deadweld.”
Kineta looked at me over the steam rising from her own mug. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. If they’re in trouble, I have to try to help.”
“I thought you said they weren’t your friends,” Horace didn’t look up from his bowl of porridge.
“Maybe I was wrong. I guess I have to. After all, it’s what I’d hope they’d do for me.” I tried to feel good about the idea. I failed. “I might not like it, but it’s true, I think I should try to help. Even if they are dead, maybe I can find some remnant of them, something to take to their family or priest or something.”
“Why?” She pressed.
“I don’t know. I just feel I should. Wouldn’t you do it if these three had been in your dream?” I waved around the table.
She thought about it, and they all traded glances among each other. “Maybe. Yes. I suppose,” she stuttered out.
“Try not to sound too enthusiastic, Kineta,” Horace said.
“You know I would, you sack of lard. It’s just tough for me to imagine you all…like that,” she finished so quietly I wasn’t sure she’d said anything.
Nemmy sipped at his cup. “So, when do we leave?”
I sat back. “We?”
He looked over at me. “Answer quick, before Horace changes my mind,” he said.
“You’ve never met them,” I pointed out.
Lotonna stood up slowly. “If they are companions of yours, and you value them, then we can do no less than to offer our help.”
“Besides, we don’t know half the people we end up helping,” Horace added. “It’s better that way. Keeps our illusions going that we are doing the right thing.” He smiled slightly at this.
“Except we don’t know anything about this place, where they are.” Kineta said with a slight falter.
“I do,” I said. “The Earth’s Boil. It’s a place in the upper Northwest, in the Deadweld. Some kind of cave or fortress built by a group of mercenaries, a long while back, some time after the fall of Bael Turath.”
Lotonna looked interested. At least, his eyes widened and he turned to face me, which I took to mean that. He could have been lining up to charge me, though, in which case I had said something that probably offended his mother. “Where did you learn this?” I guess interested was the right idea.
“Just before we parted ways, we found an old book of history in the library of the Jessil Kerith, beneath Banner,” I sipped at my coffee in between thoughts. “It told us of an ancient dragon who’d compacted with the Abyssals to become a vampire, and who then went on a rampage for decades before a mercenary group took it down. I think they were called the Lilies of the Valley.” I tried to remember the book that Bad Dray had read out to us that night in the inn, but the details were a bit fuzzy.
“That’s a bit of a pansy name for a pack of mercenaries,” Horace volunteered.
“I think that was our thought then, too. But if they can take down a vampire dragon,” I shrugged to finish the thought.
“Then the can call themselves whatever they damn well please,” Nemmy finished it for me.
“Just so.” I plucked a roll from the center basket, breaking it openand swiping a little butter on it from the pot. “Well, if you’re decided, then I guess the question is how can we get there fastest?”
Kineta thought for a moment. “I have the sigil combination for a circle near Banner, if you’d prefer to port there and then continue on.”
I nodded. “I’ll buy some reagnets for you today, enough for the port and let’s talk about how much it’ll cost us to either use your steeds, or if you have any other traveling rituals like shadow walk or similar.”
“I don’t, but I know where we can probably find them in the Market. Probably not here in Overspill, but if we cross into the City, we can probably pick something up there.”
“Fantastic. I’m ready when you are. The rest of you?”
Lotonna looked at Horace and Nemmy, then back. “We will provision up for a lengthy trip. We’ll need ammunition, food, water,”
“Booze.” Horace interjected.
I kicked myself again for forgetting my cask.
“Okay – meet back here after noon?” I suggested to them.
“No, let’s meet at the place where we departed for Al’Veydra,” Nemmy said. “We’re all down there anyway, we can leave from there for Banner.”
“Good call. Let’s break, then.”
I didn’t feel depressed or wrong any more. Looking over at Kineta, she seemed more driven, as well. I guess we’d figured out what we were supposed to do.
* * *
We appeared in the circle in an underground space, probably thirty feet on a side, and held up by large brick columns. My ears popped as soon as I crossed the threshold, making me yawn reflexively to get them to readjust. This was a different complex than the one I had entered with Fellbane, much more open – and this time, no armed greeting committee. Instead, it was empty and quiet, the place festooned with old cobwebs that drifted lazily in the breeze that passed lightly through the portal.
“Through here,” Kineta pointed, indicating an archway leading out. “That’s West,” she said.
We followed a set of tunnels for a few hundred yards before passing through what was probably someone’s old potato cellar and emerging in a ruined building on the outskirts of Banner.
“How did you ever find that place?” I asked when we finally reached the sunlight.
“Used to be a small tribe of goblins lived in there,” she gestured back over her shoulder. “That was their shaman’s ritual room, he’d appropriated it for his own use. I and some companions were hired to clear them out.”
“Nice, good memory.”
“Memory is untrustworthy,” she patted the little book she kept. “Don’t want to end up in the wrong place.”
Banner was busy – even from this ramshackle neighborhood, I could see many people moving around, more than would be normal, I felt. “Something’s up,” I pointed out. “And I’ll bet money they’re getting ready for the arrival of Kaenig’s army.”
“Kaenig – he’s the other Shadrim, isn’t he? The one you said had also visited Vor Kragal?” Nemm’s curiosity was plain, he wanted to know more. I’d never shared my earlier connections with Kaenig, nor why he was trying to put me out of the way.
“Yes, that’s him. Traveling with an army, he’s still a long ways off. I think he was still down south in Arkhosia when we were there in Vor Kragal ourselves, but we didn’t exactly do a lot of snooping around. He could have easily led them past us and we might never have seen him.” I considered that. His spies had been there at Vor Kragal previously, perhaps I’d have seen them again and just didn’t know it. The outriders would have been near, at least, I was sure I’d have recognized scouts if they’d been present. Or would I?
No matter. In any case, Banner knew something was up, Andelyn probably had sources of information that outstripped mine at this point. “Nothing for it, really,” I said. “I don’t have anything here that needs attention. Unless any of you needs something, let’s move on.”
We got our bearings and took a few moments to check ourselves before Kineta threw us into Shadow Walk.
I’d forgotten how easy journeying was with that ritual, how the terrain slipped past so quickly. It almost made me want to drop everything and just walk for weeks, just to see where my feet took me. Trees floated by as though we were drifting on a strong river current, and I couldn’t help but think of the journeys I’d taken as a member of the Cairn Jale. It was a thrill to me, to see all this go by. It still took us several days’ travel, but the call of the road made the journey a pleasure. No dreams plagued us beyond that one night – at least, none of a bad sort.
And yet, the foreboding of the dream still held me – who was that man in the dream, and was I seeing things clearly? Were they already dead, or was it some kind of foresight? It bothered me greatly to dwell on it, so I did my best to avoid the subject. It was only as we drew near to the Sword Weld, and the town of Shaded Hollow, which sat directly on the edge of the forest.
The Sword Weld is an enormous forest, thousands of square miles, which runs roughly North-South along the Ridgeback Mountains. Over thousands of years, weather coming over the mountains dumps great deals of snow (at higher lattitudes) and rain on the forest, which itself stretches for almost two hundred miles from the foothills. Even in the time of Bael Turath, we risked the defense of roadways carved through Elvish territory rather than waste the time circumnavigating its thousand-mile length.
West of Banner, some two weeks as the horse walks, the edge of the wood cuts inward deeply and almost straight West, for perhaps a hundred miles or so. It then curves back out to return to its normal border, and at its widest the open meadowland is about ten miles North to South between the borders of the wood. Through the center of this divide runs the trade road to Orrifest, a city nearly the size of Banner, and perhaps with a slightly less jaded history. Turathian caravans used to ply this route, and further west, through this naturally thinner slice of the Elves’ forest. Orrifest of course benefited greatly from being the stopover point.
The trade road curves now, and passes northward closer to the border of the forest than it used to. Halfway in, Shady Hollow sits perhaps a mile off the main road, a natural stopover for modern caravans working the old routes. It is small, perhaps 300-400 people, and mostly human. Although it has an outsized inn for the town’s size, it survives on woodwork as well as the caravan trade. A small river cuts through the countryside along the Western border of the town, traveling from the mountains out and Southward.
The Deadweld is a place few ever enter. A section of wood perhaps ten miles inside the border of the Sword Weld from the town, it is best guessed to be some several hundred square miles itself (if it were a perfect circle, it would probably be of a 30-mile diameter). It is plagued by all manner of deadly creatures as legend would have it, but few of those ever emerge to threaten the locals. The locals, as well, tend to avoid it like the proverbial plague. That doesn’t stop adventurers from entering, and certainly doesn’t stop them from buying gear and supplies in town, which of course is another slight boost to the local economy.
When we arrived at the edge of Shady Hollow, I was struck by the immensity of its barricade – sharpened logs made up the bulk of it, with occasional stone towers, and steel-reinforced gates that could swing shut. For all this, only two men were posted at the entry gate when we arrived, and they were both long in years. On our emergence from Shadow, they were engaged in a game of chess, each with a tankard, weapons leaned against the wall beside them. Both gave a fitful start when they saw us approaching – our speed, and the half-material nature of our appearance must surely have been somewhat unexpected.
“Pass not! Who are you?” The shorter of the two stammered while the taller donned his helmet. Both were easily over sixty, although well-fed and in reasonable shape to use a spear. The old man had a voice like a millstone had been at work on his vocals, and I half expected him to spit a piece of gravel on the ground in the middle of his words.
“This is Lion’s Lunge, and I am Azrael, recently of Fellbane. This is Kineta, Nemmy, Horace, and this is Lotonna,” the minotaur removed his hood as I introduced him. Both men took an involuntary step back, which engendered a grin from the big horned ox.
“What…what’s your business?” The taller had managed to get his helmet on, and gave up fumbling with the strap.
“I come seeking my companions, Fellbane, adventurers who would have possibly passed this gate some six or eight weeks ago in pursuit of another. We wish to stay at the inn.”
“Jirko, I remember that group – the nasty ones, followed a few days later by those others who didn’t even stay in town overnight. Remember them?” The short one tugged at the elbow of the one I assumed to be Jirko.
“Mmm-hmm, sure do.” He looked me up and down, with an expression that implied a mild dislike. “You may pass, but you won’t find what you want in there.”
“What do you mean?” I eyed him with a similar expression.
“They left the morning they arrived, your pursuers. The first ones, they came in and stayed a day, and a small detachment of them went in. Your fellows, they got here, talked to the leftovers, and went in right after them.” He motioned generally North with one hand while he said this.
“Went in? What does that mean?”
“First one was after the Deadweld, they went after him. It’s been two months time, now – I think you’re going to find the forest lived up to its name. If we haven’t seen them in two months, chances are the forest claimed them.” He didn’t seem particularly upset at this thought. I was growing steadily more so.
“Thank you, you’ve been much help to me,” I said. I turned back to the others. “Let’s get to the inn, someone there might be able to shed a little more light on the situation, perhaps even guide us.”
We walked quickly into the small town, passing homes, most of which had small streamers of smoke rising from their chimneys that mixed thirty feet off the ground in a thin blanket before blowing away to the West. A blacksmith, hammering at a set of horseshoes, nodded to us as we walked by.
Nemmy rapped Lotonna on the shin. “If you want, we’ll wait while you check out this year’s fashions,” he jerked his head towards the smith’s coal-fired forge. “Those might look good on y-“ His continuation was interrupted when Lotonna’s tufted tail slapped him in the face.
“Be glad I haven’t made leggings out of you, rodent,” the Oxen-headed warrior said. It was the first time I’d heard him use the pejorative, and I could see now a smile on his face – somewhat like a dog’s snarl, the lips drawn back from the sharp teeth. It was no longer a mystery why few races ever have formal dealings with the minotaurs: their facial expressions are so easily mistaken for aggression, that a successful negotiation could quickly turn violent on false pretenses. In fact, it would not surprise me at all to discover that the minotaur think the various races with more human-ish faces were subtly and unpredictably insane, as such breakdowns in communication would seem all the more unreasoned.
We found the inn, and it was genuinely too large for its town. There were no wagons around, so I suppose we found it in-between caravans. Smoke from two separate chimneys on either end of its length added to the blanket of haze separating the town from the blue sky above. There was also a smell in the air, one I hadn’t really picked up on before. Flowers. The place smelled faintly of the flowers of the forest. Of course, it smelled of other, less pleasant things, as settlements often do, but the size of the town was not so great as to overpower the natural aroma of the forest nearby.
Entering the inn – which was called the Bale and Basket – we set ourselves down at one of its long tables. A small man came out from the kitchen, and recited the four plates and two beers available, from which we all chose our various leanings.
“Will you be needing rooms, then, folks?” He finished.
The others looked at me. I turned back to the innkeep. “Yes, please, for tonight. We’d like to get a night’s rest before moving into the forest.”
He leaned back, assessing us carefully. “Yes sir, wait here, sir.” He walked back to the bar, called in the food and received an affirmation from an indistinct voice within. He then grabbed a beaten chair from another table and returned to us. Plopping the chair upon the floor next to me, he sat and leaned in on his elbows.
“You’d not be thinking to go into the Deadweld on the morrow, would you be?” His expression was one of consternation.
Kineta also leaned onto the table. “That was indeed the idea, kind sir, and we were hoping to gather information from you regarding its nature.”
“The advice I’d give you then, is: please don’t.” He straightened his back. “We get groups every year or three that come in, buy us out of supplies, and venture in there, hoping to find the source of its curse and put it right. They never return, sirs and ma’am. This year the place has taken two groups already, unusual in itself. I’d be remiss if I didn’t try to avoid it being three.”
“Curse?” Horace asked.
“What else can keep a forest of dead trees standing for centuries, son?” He responded. “The place is evil, it is bad, oh indeed that. But it keeps to itself, it does, and long as it doesn’t cause harm to them what’s around it,” his gesture encompassed the town here, “then there’s no point in throwing yourself down a hole chasing its badness.”
He looked around at us, and at our gear. “Two other sets, equipped at least as well as you here, went into that place two months ago, and they never came out. They aren’t going to come out. They are gone. Would you yourselves want to join them? Spring’s coming on, and it’s time to enjoy the sunlight. Please don’t make it a time of mourning for your loved ones.”
I sat up straight. “Sir,” I started.
“Bartholemule,” he said.
“Bartholemule,” I continued. “We don’t have any desire to die there. But one of those two groups contained my friends, and if they are in trouble, or have died, then it is my duty to see them aid, or recover some part of them that can be returned to peace. Whatever evil is contained in this Deadweld, it is not my intention of opposing it unless it stands between myself and that goal.”
“Be that as it may, and forgive me for saying so, sir, but them folk is gone. They are dead. Food for worms, if you’ll forgive me being so impolite before your dinner, sir.” His grim expression described the sincerity with which he held these ideas. “Which ones were yours, by the bye?”
“I don’t know if they were the first or second to arrive, probably second, among them were another Shadrim like myself, a dwarf, and a tall, blue-skinned deva. They also would have been traveling at the time with a human of some years, and an eladrin. Does that fit what you know of one of the groups?”
“Yes, sir, the second to arrive. They were only a few days apart, then. Yours didn’t even stay beyond lunch. Arrived in the morning, departed after their meal, trying to catch up with the first bunch.”
“Then I have to go, I have to try,” I said.
“Saddens me to hear it, sir.” He thought of what he’d said. “Oh, not that you’re going to help them, sir, but that they were your friends and that I have to be the one to give you such news. And,” he added after a moment’s thought, “And that I believe if you do this, all of you, that you will join them. But I can do no more than warn you, I can’t choose for you what your course will be.”
Kineta placed her hand on his. “Thank you for trying, Bartholemule. We do appreciate the thought behind your efforts, even if we do end up going through with this.”
He nodded, standing. The remorse on his face passed, and he became stoic. “Then your meals will be out shortly, and if you please, any needs you have, just call for me.” He walked back into the kitchen. A few moments later, a kindly woman’s face stuck itself briefly out of the curtain, gazing at us with some concern before ducking back out of sight. Occasional mumblings could be heard from back there, but I couldn’t make out what they said.
“You know,” Horace started up, “I’ve been warned off of things before, but I can’t say it’s ever been quite so…thorough.”
Lotonna nodded. “This place seems more dangerous than we’d first thought.”
I considered for a moment. “You know, I…”
“Yeah, yeah, we don’t have to come along, this is your choice, not ours, they’re your friends, not ours, la la la.” Nemmy said with some exasperation. “Give it a rest, we heard all that back in the Overspill. I thinj we made our minds up back there, we’re not going to change them just because some old man says we oughta.”
“Hmm. Thank you, I think.” I said.
“You’re right. Thank us.” He agreed.
The meals arrived, and we retired to our rooms a little while later, to rest before our departure. Horace and Nemmy quizzed the innkeep about the forest a little more, and later went outside to speak with a few people he’d recommended would be useful sources on how to find it.
We supped together downstairs, joined in the common room by about a dozen locals, all of whom kept a respectful distance from us. Bartholemule stayed somewhat distant the whole time, but very helpful. I’d seen behavior like this before – you don’t get close to someone or something that’s about to go away, particularly if it’s going to die.
Still, we had a quiet meal, enjoyed the fire, and enjoyed ourselves in the way we liked. Lotonna got caught up talking to the locals, who’d only ever seen one other of his kind (a member of the group Fellbane was chasing, as it turns out). He told them a great many stories of his home, and a few of the braver ones tried to arm-wrestle him. He didn’t hurt anyone, thankfully – in fact, he showed a somewhat remarkable delicacy in handling them. His finesse was admirable.
No dreams at all that night – at least, none I could remember. The others were the same, a dark void where our minds might have otherwise bent the walls of the real and experienced the mish-mash of the real and fantastical that occurs there. I found I missed my conversations with Voedle, his advice and presence had become second nature rather easily. But then, that’s a specialty of the infernals, they insinuate themselves into one’s life as if they’d been there all along.
I could feel the bronze seeping into me, though, into every nook and cranny and fiber of me. My eyes still showed my pupils to be different, but few enough people look in the eyes of a Shadrim to begin with to ever notice that mine were different from the rest. I was somehow stronger, not as though I could lift great things, but I could endure more. I also noticed that my night-vision had improved, greatly. The Shadrim are gifted with excellent night-vision to begin with, but we have to have some light to work with. Total blackness will blind us as easily as it will a normal human.
Somehow, I’d become different – I suppose it was the bronze from the pool, a remnant of its enchantment that bound into me. I could see perfectly in darkness, as easily as if it were full-on daylight. The first time I noticed this was going to the water closet out behind the inn that night – clouds had settled in, and the darkness was absolute out there. I had been carrying a candle, which unfortunately was extinguished by a gust of wind. However, rather than be blinded by it, I could still see just fine. I could tell it was dark, there wasn’t any light around, but I could make out the finest detail near and far. The air of discomfort quickly became one of subtle happiness, and I ended up taking a walk that night for the sheer joy of appreciating its beauty.
I returned to my room and slipped back into bed without waking Kineta. I think I fell asleep counting the grains on the wood of the ceiling, but I can’t recall that closely.
Morning dawned soon enough, and although I was a little tired from my jaunt, I was anxious to get back on the trail and locate the place where Fellbane had gone. I found myself whispering prayers to the Black Queen, something I hadn’t done in months, and felt a little guilty doing so.
Horace and Nemmy had acquired a roughly-drawn map showing the path to take and the direction we were headed – the Deadweld was only about ten miles inside the border of the wood. From what we were told, no elves worried about this area, and we’d be of uncommon luck to see any animal larger than a housecat once we got close to the place.
Once we got inside the Deadweld, though, all bets were off. As no one in town had ever had the slightest intention of entering it, and no one had ever to their knowledge returned from it, there were no maps of the interior. We’d have to figure that all out for ourselves.
The boles of the trees at the border of the forest were huge – each at least three feet, some as much as twelve or fifteen feet across. The loggers of Shady Hollow had taken three or four at a time from various places, having arranged clear paths to reach their felled trunks. We walked through a mix of living monuments and enormous table-like platforms carved before us. The mosses and lichens lining the northern sides of the trees gave us the indication of direction we required, and at least at first the forest provided some patches of mushrooms and small scrambled-egg fungi. I didn’t recognize any myself, so avoided the temptation of harvesting them, though the thought of wild mushrooms to augment our trail food was a strong one.
It was mid-day of our second day when we reached the Deadweld. It wasn’t so hard to find, in the end – it was as if a truculent god had drawn a line in the earth and said “beyond this point, nothing lives.” It was a stark demarcation point, for looking about even the branches of the forest that crossed the borderline seemed to die in mid-air.
The trees on the opposite side were twisted, bare relics of their living counterparts. Where the bark remained, it was covered with wart-like boils, black fungus, and scabrous growths of lichen. In places where it had sloughed free, the interiors of the tree were charcoal-gray and smooth, as if all memory of life had been erased leaving a blank and dead slate ready to accept whatever writing fate would put upon them. The ground beneath the trees was littered with dry, dead leaves. In a normal forest these would likely have rotted to mulch, and in fact where they crossed into the living forest that was indeed what occurred, but around the bases of the dead they seemed untouched by time, simply drained of color and life. The entire place gave off a smell of rot, reminding me of the slops behind a particularly bad inn. Nothing stirred inside the border, at least nothing visible to us.
Looking up and down this dividing line, I could see two, perhaps three places where the Deadweld reached into the living, like tiny cancerous streams into the prospering forest. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could almost sense the living trees recoiling from the encroaching veins of necrosis. It was truly a terrible place.
“What could cause this?” Kineta whispered beside me.
I shook my head and did not speak.
Horace sniffed the air distastefully. “Dunno. Just don’t die here, I got a bad feeling about this place.”
Lotonna turned his head to look at him. “I had not planned on dying at all, but thank you for that observation.”
Nemmy surprised me by being first to step foot over the line. He walked in some six paces, and turned to face us. “Seems safe to me, I feel ACK!” His hands shot to his throat as he fell to his knees. Pitching forward, he supported himself on one extended arm while raising his head back to us. Choking noises escaped his mouth.
“Nem!” Horace and Kineta shouted in unison. Lotonna was already unslinging his pack while I prepared to lurch forward.
Nemmy fell over on his side, and the choking sounds quickly dissolved into hysterical laughter. “Oh for the love of Tymora’s dice!” He took a huge shuddering breath while cackling like a banshee. “You should have seen the looks on your faces!” He slapped at the ground with both hands while laughing.
Lotonna let out a roar that startled even me, standing roughly behind him. Brandishing his axe, he charged the tiny man and closed the distance at a sobering speed. I felt the tremor of his stamping feet, and apparently Nemmy did, too, for the little Halfwise looked up over his shoulder to see the oncoming fury of horns and fur and axe. With a squeal that probably had earned him his nickname he rolled to stand and flee.
Not fast enough – Lotonna had a hoof on his back before he could rise up, holding him face-down in the leaves. The axe swung with a flickering whistle down before I could even try to stop his rage. The Halfwise shrieked in terror, a shriek that cut off abruptly with the halt of the axe.
Quivering, Nemmy craned his neck and stared at the gleaming steel that was resting against the side of his head. His breathing was rapid and shallow, and his eyes darted from the steel to the other leg of the huge minotaur standing over him.
Lotonna leaned way down, pushing a bit of his weight onto Nemmy’s back, causing the halfwise to strain for breath beneath his hoof. The oxen-headed creature leaned in close, and chuffed a few times.
“Should see the look on your face now, Rodent.”
With that, he raised the axe back over his shoulder and stepped off Nemmy’s back. The beleaguered little man scrambled away as fast as his hands and knees could carry him. He drew himself up against a tree, breathing heavily and staring at Lotonna, one hand testing the red line of a cut that the minotaur’s axe had left him.
“Did you see what he did to me?!?” Nemmy called out.
“Yes, and you’re lucky it wasn’t me, rodent, I’d have burnt you to ash,” Kineta was frowning and holding the wand I’d given her.
I nodded. “Yeah, Nem, not a good plan to cry wolf in the wilds here. Someday seconds might count, and if we mistake you for joking, you might be dead before we realize.”
Nemmy collected himself and stood up, brushing off the clinging leaves. “This place smells,” he said half-heartedly. “Like it’s waited too long in autumn, and winter never came.”
Horace stepped over the line and into the Deadweld. “Yeah, something isn’t right.”
The rest of us gathered up, Kineta shaking her head. “Leave it to you two detectives to figure out there’s something wrong with a forest of dead trees that begins with a clear line and in spite of being dead, none of them seem to have fallen.”
Nemmy grinned up at her. “Nothing to it, all that training in the arcane arts, you know?”
She huffed slightly. “Isn’t there a Lollipop Guild somewhere missing a member on its roles?”
“Hah, hah, hah,” heresponded lamely. “Always with the short jokes. You guys really need to up your game.”
“All right, enough. We know we’re looking for something called the Earth’s Boil, I suspect it’s roughly in the middle of this place, so let’s get started.” Lotonna urged us all on.
Horace remained silent through most of this, just staring at the trees. He didn’t speak when we moved out, either.
Trying to stay quiet was pretty much impossible in the forest, the dead leaves beneath our feet crunched louder than most logging trains, I would imagine. We kept moving roughly perpendicular to the edge which we entered, breaking stride only from time to time in order to eat a bite or drink a little. The smell of the wood permeated everything, and the absence of any kind of animal life actually became slightly disturbing after a few hours.
Within the tangle, as well, light simply didn’t make it down to the floor easily. Much as in a living old-wood forest, the canopy blocks out all sunlight, here no shaft disturbed the ground. I couldn’t figure out how, at first, since there were no leaves on the branches above. The closely-packed boles and the tightly-woven branches were a lot to get through, but the gloom remained unbroken. I realized after a while, that a thin mist hung in the branches. Not enough to call it a fog, but it was pervasive and just barely thick enough that it would scatter any light trying to find its way to the ground.
“Does anything live in here at all?” I asked of no one in particular.
No one responded to me, though I did see Horace and Kineta conferring a little distance back. She nodded and came up. “We should consider making camp somewhere along here, night will be on us soon. If this is daylight, night will be impossible to see through.”
I refrained from discussing how this might not bother me so much these days.
“I don’t see anywhere flat enough to put up a tent, but we can at least string a cover up.” Nemmy said. He started to rummage in his pack for the overhang, but Lotonna put a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t,” the mino said. “There probably won’t be rain tonight, and I think we might need to see above us.” He looked around cautiously.
“Oh, that’s reassuring. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of sleep thinking about that,” the halfwise shoved the tarp back into his bag.
“Horace, a fire please. Everyone, start bedding down.” Kineta was a bit more authoritative than usual, though I didn’t question her mood. This place was enough to set anyone on edge a little.
We cooked a little food, and settled our blankets in crooks between roots around the fire. As predicted, the night’s darkness wrapped our camp up like a curtain of black. Kineta didn’t even bother concealing the fire, since more than six paces in any direction led to an interposing tree trunk.
“If anything is going to find us, it’ll do by smell, not sight,” she said. “Now rest, I’ve got first watch.”
We did as instructed, each of us chasing whatever inner confusion or joy that would dominate our minds for the evening. I dreamed of Voedle, though this time it was just a dream. I burned him in the fire this time, separating pieces of his infernal form and hollowing them out in the fireplace before sliding them on like armor. It was somewhat disturbing to look in the full-length mirror of my library, and see myself fitted out in the spiked hide of a devil. I saw the nightmares I’d invited to stay as well, they were playing cards in the parlour next door, and each greeted me when I walked by.
I am particularly glad that dreams are not generally the measure of one’s sanity.
Kineta woke me for second watch, and I stoked the fire a bit while adding a large log to it. She didn’t say anything, just smiled and rested her hand on my shoulder longer than usual before settling down and wrapping herself up against the cold. The chill here was pronounced, in spite of it being springtime. There was a bite in the air that gave the impression of winter onset, as though to say ‘this chill is here, it is part of this place, and it will not falter.’
I sat beside the fire on a large tree-root, and warmed my hands. Yes, in spite of my proclivity for chill, I do feel cold at times, and appreciate warmth when it is available.
After a while I leaned back to look up, hoping to see some break in the roof of branches that might grant me a star. I was surprised when it seemed that luck was with me. At first I made out a faintest glimmer overhead, a tiny glint of light above. Before too long I had traced a different darkness above us, a long, thin cut in the pitch of the roof. Tiny glimmers along its length shone from time to time. When I squinted, I could make out a larger dark there, also shining faintly from time to time in small points. From this large area above, it appeared that many thin breaches in the perfect blackness radiated out.
I thought it must have been a clear night in the sky above, for the soft glints that came to me were so very faint that they could never have punched through the mist I’d observed earlier without brightly shining. While I considered this, I made out a small constellation, eight stars arrayed in a rough “V” shape, four to a side. They gleamed all similarly, and I thought I could make out a faint bit of color, the slightest hint of red, shining from them.
Then they all winked at me.
Time seemed to slow, and I tried to shout a fast warning, but as if in a nightmare I was too slow. What I had thought to be breaches in the roof of branches above us folded in and speared down, the eight spear-tipped legs of an enormous spider form. The glints along its surface – which I could now see were reflections of our firelight on its armored hide – danced wildly as it moved. In mid-shout, one of the forward arms swung scythelike at me, catching on my armor to lift me cleanly from my seat and hurl me into the tree across the camp. I heard my own breath whuff out of me and for the second time that night saw faux-stars. Thumping to the ground in a heap, I looked up just in time to see a flaming blob of viscous goo arrow my way across the small clearing. With a splat it stuck me solidly to the side of the tree and managed to burn me, singeing the skin on the back of my right arm where a particularly thick rope of the stuff clung. It all continued to burn while I struggled to free myself.
I heard the others shouting while I struggled, and the clang of weapons was clear. Nemmy let out a particularly loud yell which I took for injury, and this was enough to energize me into ripping roughly out of the clinging mess. I stood and whirled, gobbets of incendiary slime falling away as I did, and I drew Dreaming Fire and Riftspar together in a flash.
The sight that greeted my eyes was not pretty – a confused battleground, with the enormous spider-thing (a Bebilith, I now know) sweeping its claws across one after the other of my companions. It was fully twenty feet from the tip of one claw to the tip of its opposite, and encased in a steely black chitin that possessed an oily sheen. Its eyes burned red – what I had mistaken for a constellation before – and each had a curved, elongated pupil with two triangular members at either end resembling some perverted form of punctuation. Each of its legs was tipped with a spear-point claw, and the front four extended and flaired theirs to become something more akin to a halberd. I could see now in the firelight that it had markings on its carapace, silver and red lines that came together like an arrowhead.
Nemmy was crumpled at the base of one of the trees, his right hand clutching a bloody gash across his belly. Horace stood beside one of the trees, firing arrows at the lurching dark form above us, while Lotonna hewed at a blade-like leg beside him that was supporting the creature. In the dark, his axe struck sparks as it passed through the spider-form’s appendage, severing its tip and engendering a hissing screech from the creature above.
None of them were wearing their armor.
We’d been surprised as we slept, and this crucial weakness was showing – Nemmy’s fall, Lotonna continuing to take gash after gash, blood glimmering on his black fur.
With a crack of thunder, the darkness around the bebilith ruptured and sprouted. An enormous maw, filled with serrated, gnashing teeth and surrounded by whipping frilled tentacles, emerged from the tear and immediately lashed out at the demonic spider. They wrapped around the monster’s middle left legs, and its teeth slashed at the carapace of it, cutting severely into the side of the thing’s body.
The trailing smoke-like emanations of the rupture trailed back to the base of one of the trees, where I could see Kineta now, leaning out from behind the huge gnarled trunk. Wand in hand, she focused her concentration on the enormous aberration she had summoned up, barely keeping it under control while doing her best to remain clear of our arachnid assailant.
I grabbed hold of the creature’s soul with my trained curse, and gripped with a concentration that sent sweat immediately cropping up on my face. Taking inspiration from Kineta, I focused my will through Dreaming Fire, reaching into the space in and around the enormous spider, and locked hold of its mind – if one could call it that. The vision of horror that thing called a psyche was disturbing even to sense, and I was certainly glad that I could not see further into it. I felt the vibration in the blade as the orium and bronze added their own resonance to the spell I was calling up, turning my solo song into a melodic symphony of carefully-architected fear.
I used the same method I had used on myself – I ripped open a path to Taer Dian Loresh directly inside its mind. Tearing and worrying at the ripped edges with my curse, I also ignited the leaking strands of power, which sent fire dancing over the forebody of the great spider. Visibly I could see viscous phantom vapors puffing from chinks in the creature’s armored shell, and its forelegs flailed miserably at its face. I laced the spell and my curse both with weaknesses between this realm and that of the Stygian pressure depths, setting a trap that would erupt with an explosion of ice as soon as the beast shook off my other effects – a rude surprise to finish with.
It took a lot out of me, but it seemed that if ever there was a time to go for the guts, this was it. I ducked through a small opening I made with Riftspar, and emerged some distance away, gathering shadows about me as I ran.
I must have done something right, because almost immediately the beast turned on me. The flames I’d ignited went out with a loud crack reminiscent of lake-top ice, and a small shower of frost fluttered to the ground beneath it. I could still see my summoned nightmares leaking from its edges, and by the way it twitched its face, there was still some damage being done there.
Neither the fire nor the ice seemed to cause the creature any great concern. Both, however, appeared to compound its foul disposition.
Uh oh.
It charged at me, all four of its forelegs pointed at me, as though to impale and segment me like a pinned insect on some sage’s workbench. I moved with the intent to dodge, but I was nowhere near fast enough.
Kineta’s aberration was.
Those tentacles whipped down and pulled the rearmost left legs out from under the bebilith, throwing their stilted lengths skyward and sending the beast tumbling to the ground in a mass of gyrating blades. Even as it landed, Lotonna took a measured step, watching the body fall, and met its rebound with the blade of his axe. It tried to shove itself clear of his maneuver, but the tightly-packed forest denied it the movement necessary. His weapon sank deeply into the body of the demon, spraying a shower of black and purple ichor into the air.
From behind kineta’s tree, a flicker of greenish iridescence flew across the campsite to splash against the side of the bebilith, raising an acrid steam where it hit. The beast appeared to take no harm from this, but Kineta was yelling even before it hit.
“Ice will harm it again!” That was all she said, but it was enough.
Observing its mobility even while thrown down, I snapped my hand through a rift to Levistus to harvest its growing ice-fields and flung a spray of shards at the creature, freezing the claws supporting it into place and adding a great deal of razor-sharp reasons why it would not want to strike out recklessly for a moment. I again ducked away, trying to keep my cloak of shadows intact and continue to confuse the thing’s attempts to follow me.
Summoning up a little extra burst of reserves, I threw myself into action as I emerged from the teleport. I had retained my grip on the creature’s spirit, and through it wove a spell of prescience that permeated my friends and their own movements. Tying it to the chill of Fey winter, I grabbed for the strands of destiny that bound this demon and our own lives together. The spell sank home, and I tore at the bebilith’s animus with my curse, while taking assurance that my companions’ own strikes would find themselves augmented by my short enchantment.
It certainly worked – Horace’s two arrows found their mark, and the thing shrieked so loudly I thought my ears would burst! Kineta’s creature also sank its teeth into the warped spider, spilling more ichor into the air, while she blasted an arrow of blue-white at it that impacted it’s shell with a resounding thwack. Lotonna laid in with a reprise of his axe, slicing off a thick chunk of the creature’s thorax.
It took two slices at Kineta’s creature while righting itself, the tips of its claws ripping through the ground with a rattling echo against the trees around us. I watched in a sort of detached fascination as the sharp edges of the ice crystals I’d plastered it with dug in, their tips shattering and scraping against the thick skin of the spider, a great many of them sinking through the tough shell. It turned to me, its…I guess you could call it a face, all eight of its eyes blazing at me. The leaking shades of nightmare were finally slowing to a stop – and the demon jerked in a brief spasm as the link I’d set to the Stygian wastes sent a jolt of frost through it as the previous rift sealed.
It saw me again as its head settled back into place, and from a strange orifice above its eyes sparks began to burn. A bulge of purple emerged from the hole, the sparks playing across its surface as it welled up. It ignited and began to burn fiercely, and before I could react it seemed to sneeze, the head whipping in a snake-striking way as it flung the glob of flaming gunk at me.
The stuff spread out slightly in flight, and I recognized the burning material as the same which had trapped me earlier. Recognition was little help, as the stuff landed squarely on my upper legs. I couldn’t run, the stuff seeping in and spreading down to my feet and up above my waist while it burned.
With a shuddering crack, the creature ripped its legs free of the earth I’d locked it in. One fast swipe sent Lotonna skittering back faster than I ever imagined his hooves could carry him, while a second claw singled me out and stabbed at me from across the remnants of our campfire. This claw found its mark, and although – luckily – it didn’t punch through my armor, I felt an ominous creaking among my bones behind it. My breath was expelled forcefully from me, carrying with it a fine spray of my own blood.
It covered the distance between us almost patiently, and although it was grievously wounded it moved with a remarkable amount of grace. KIineta’s summons tried to snag it with its tentacles again, but they only managed to slide off its polished exoskeleton this time. Although my inner self wanted to quail at this, a part of me was thoroughly furious. This hunter belonged Outside our world, not in it, and it was a hazard to those whom I was close to.
I’d had quite enough of it.
I stood straight and opened my arms in a fighting stance, calling up the anger I felt and channeling it into Dreaming Fire’s blade. I felt the bronze that was infusing my blood and flesh meet and combine with that embedded in the weapon. I focused on my link to the Land of Nightmare and laced my voice with dripping dread as I screamed a battle-cry at it.
“You will stand down and cause no more trouble here, or I will banish you to your homeland, follow you there, and rip your spirit from your body then and there.” I held up the saber, ready to cut. “You. Must. Surrender.”
I readied my most massive spell, a gout of the primal forces of nature, to channel through my blade should it decide to ignore my warning, and stood fast. Dreaming Fire dripped smoke an an occasional spark, and I could sense it thrumming in tune with my blood.
The bebility drew up, suddenly appearing directionless. The enormous claws danced fitfully, jittering as though in seizure, and its eyes squinted to slits, gleaming brightly at me.
The others drew up for a moment – Lotonna readying a stroke with his axe, Horace drawing steady aim with a wicked arrow, and Kineta’s summoned beast hovering directly behind with slavering jaws.
I held my stance. “Look around you – you are beaten. We will send you to your home, screaming in agony. And that will only be the beginning. I will find you, and I will make you my slave.” The shadows slowly dissipated from around me as we stared each other down.
It held motionless for a long second, then anchored its long legs in the ground. The eyes flitted about, taking stock of the situation.
I leaped forward, both arms reaching wide and set to swing, screaming at the top of my lungs.
Without a moment’s pause, the beast reached into the canopy and drew itself high above us, and vanished. A great cracking of straining branches sounded overhead, receding rapidly into the distant air.
Horace shouted something indistinguishable and threw his bow to the ground beside the fire while he raced to Nemmy’s aid. Lotonna kept hold of his axe and positioned himself between the fire and the rapidly-vanishing sounds of the enormous beast’s departure. Kineta’s creature returned through its rift to wherever she’d summoned it from, and she ran to assist Horace in his bandaging of the downed halfwise.
I took stock of my condition, painful as it was, and realized I would survive. I trotted over to where Nemmy was being tended, looking closely at the bandage. It was deeply blackened in the faint firelight, not a good sign. I turned and built up the fire, getting a roaring blaze going with the wood we’d gathered. It had a faint odor, the smoke from this wood, that was different from regular dead-fall. It was dusty somehow, more rotten.
I returned to Horace and Kineta. They had opened Nemmy’s clothes and applied a new bandage to his stomach. The new cloth was staining rapidly as well.
“This doesn’t look good,” I said.
“He’ll be fine,” Horace didn’t even look at me to say it. Kineta turned to me, her face set grimly.
She added, “It’s not.”
I pulled my lips back in a grimace. “I’ll fetch more bandages from my pack.”
She nodded and turned back to Nemmy.
Retrieving the promised cloths, I returned and pressed them to her. “I have no other means of healing, I’m sorry. I thought you all carried potions for this?”
“They’ll do him no good – you need some residual strength for them to fuel themselves,” Horace said. “He’s barely breathing, and his heart, I can barely tell it beats.”
“Then make him warm, we can at least keep him comfortable and do what we can to encourage him to return to us.” I suggested. “Let me see the wound, please,” I asked.
Horace pulled away the bandage, to reveal five deep punctures across Nemmy’s abdomen. Three of them oozed a rich, dark blood that I could smell from where I stood.
“That’ll attract nothing good, I think. Perhaps though, in this place, we might actually be luckier than were we in a living forest – no wolves.”
Kineta was neutral. She whispered something in Nemmy’s ear, and placed something in his palm before closing his hand around it.
“He will survive,” she stated without emotion. “We can’t afford to lose him.”
I didn’t believe her, but I stood and nodded. “Get him close to the fire, keep him warm. If you are one to pray, now would be the time.”
I stepped away and muttered a request to the Black Queen. Of all the times I’d prayed to her, this I think was the first in which I didn’t ask her to spare someone – just that she take him painlessly if that was her intent. I joined the minotaur on the other side of the fire.
Lotonna still stood where he was, unmoving. His axe still had mess on it from his strokes against the bebilith.
I didn’t speak, but instead pulled a cleaning cloth from my leg-pocket and offered it to him. He looked at it, then at his axe, then back into the far distance.
Pressing the cloth into his hand, I drew Dreaming Fire and stepped in front of him, facing into the dark.
Over my shoulder, I could hear him settle to one knee and begin wiping his weapon clean.
“How did you do that? How did you send it away?” He asked quietly. “I am fierce, but I have never been so frightening as that.”
“Are you serious? Have you seen how ugly I am?”
Heavy laughter came over my shoulder, relieving the tension I knew had been building in him with the fight. I could feel my arms shaking as well, the adrenaline passing and leaving my limbs locked in the memory of action.
“You are not ugly, Shadrim. Kineta would not share her bed with an ugly man.” He stood and took stance beside me, and looked down at me.
“Hmm. Perhaps her judgment has been…obscured of late,” he added.
I raised Dreaming Fire as if to strike him, then laughed while lowering it. “I don’t know how to answer your question, Lotonna. I am who I am. I like to think I am not trivial to deal with, but I also do not consider myself invincible.”
He nodded. “You have never revealed much about you to us.” He looked down again. “I am not asking, I respect your choice. Your actions with us show you to be honorable, your choices are generally good.” He chuckled at my quick glance on the use of ‘generally.’
“But that, that was a demon of the abyss, Azrael. Not an inconsequential one, either. That was a hunter. He felled Nem in seconds, pierced him like a rabbit digging out vegetables. I took a chunk of it, yes,” he gestured to the clump of rapidly-decaying flesh that he had carved away. “But it would have felled us four. We would have hurt it, there is no doubt, but it would have killed us all.”
“Perhaps we work well together,” I offered.
“That’s not what I was talking about. As five, we had it and it would have lost. But you frightened it, Shadrim. You frightened a demon. That…my people worship demons, and that one ran in fear.”
“I had help.”
“Yes, that’s true.” He sighed long and heavily. “Where is it that you take us, that such creatures hunt its outskirts?”
I looked back out into the dark, and gave him the only answer I knew for sure.
“I don’t really know.”
The night closed back in on us.
