They voyaged down into the depths of the earth for three days before finding anything of interest. She didn’t mind the delay—the seers had called her Journey as a child and this was her first chance to live up to the name. Everything was interesting. Finding a spot in a miles-deep crevasse to pitch a tent, gathering food among the mosses and mushrooms growing along waterflows, listening to patches of softstone for activity miles away. All of it was new to Journey, and all of it was thrilling. She didn’t even mind having Brash with her, constantly boasting, slashing at shadows, pretending he was fighting Abyssal monsters like the heroes of old. Of all her training classmates among the Blackstone Raiders, he was the one she would most have liked to avoid, but her other companions more than made up for his noise. Attention’s knowledge of the rock around them was jaw-dropping, and Memory’s insight into the history of the Oath of the Watchers and the Dwarven Kingdom before it was a revelation.
Long ago, the Blackstone Raiders had been what Brash imagined them to be now: the vanguard in the fight against the horrors that emerged from the Abyss and the Dwarves’ only offensive weapon in that long and brutal war. But since the Abyss had been sealed generations ago, martial heroics were less necessary. Now, the Raiders mapped the uncharted caverns below the World and made sure the seals on the Abyss were secure. Journey and Brash had just been deemed worthy of joining this noble tradition and were descending with two veteran Raiders to experience the depths which it was their duty to guard.
Now, on the third day of their journey, as the four Dwarves made their way slowly along a severely sloping cliff’s edge, Attention called them to a halt. “Just ahead—a gap in the wall. Not natural.” The grey and bristly Dwarf guided his hooded lantern to illuminate a small archway, several hundred feet ahead. Journey glanced back at Memory, who had stopped and begun to stroke her luxurious auburn beard, trying to place the doorway in the history of Dwarven architecture. Journey put her hand self-consciously to her chin, feeling the few wisps of hair she had just started to grow.
“We must go there at once,” Memory proclaimed, “this door is not on our maps, though it must be some remnant of the Old Kingdom. Perhaps we can learn something.” The four dwarves set off at once, Attention leading the way, restraining Brash from bounding ahead.
Through the arch was an antechamber, cross-vaulted and some 20 feet high. Across the chamber, stairs descended further underground. Attention knelt, scooping up some dust from the floor onto his finger and sniffing it. Memory gazed at the ceiling. “This vault style was common during the reign of King Vosh, a few years before the end of the Abyssal Wars,” she explained. “Can any of you see any writing? Or tools?”
Attention looked at her sharply, then bent back to the floor. “This whole room is arenite sandstone.”
Memory’s eyes flashed. “What? But that couldn’t have survived last year’s earthquake, let alone two hundred years of quakes before that. It must be new, designed to look old.” Attention nodded once, and a chill swept through the room. Brash circled back towards Memory, drawing his axe and unclipping his shield from his back. Journey grabbed her javelin and buckler and tossed her pack to the ground. Memory pulled out an icon of Leda, the Dwarven saint of martyrs.
Attention walked briskly to the wall just to the right of the descending staircase and pulled out his listening dagger. Sticking it gently into the stone, he put his ear to the hilt and looked at the other three. “There’s something, and close. Dozens of things, humanoid, and something else—it sounds like a—“. The wall leapt forward and swallowed Attention whole. Where he had been was nothing. Attention was gone.
Brash moved forward hesitantly, reaching out to where the older Dwarf had stood just a moment before. “No!” Memory grabbed his shoulder, restraining him. “We need to leave, now.” Journey turned to move back the way they’d come, and suddenly the chamber was full of ear-splitting drums, the sound of stone smashed against stone, emerging from the staircase. Shadows danced on the wall. “Kor preserve us,” Memory moaned. “Brash, with me. Journey, you’re the fastest. Take your pack and go, the Watch must be told. We’ll buy you as much time as we can.”
Journey scooped up her pack and dropped her buckler. As she darted through the archway she heard the sound of steel and shrieking war cries in a language she didn’t recognize. She glanced backwards. A dozen figures, the size of Dwarves, but deathly pale and crossed with black veins, surrounded Brash and Memory, wielding monstrous black pickaxes and hammers. Journey saw Brash fend off a powerful swing from a hammer, then collapse as one of the figures drove the spike of its pickaxe through his temple with a wet thud. Memory was keeping several of the creatures at bay with a shield of holy energy—she glanced at the doorway and saw Journey watching, then made a gesture and the stone of the doorway began to slide close. Journey saw several of the creatures turn and dart for the exit, and she whirled, running along the cliff as fast as she could.
Journey ran. She couldn’t hear sounds of pursuit over the blood pumping in her ears, but she wouldn’t look back again. She ran. Up ahead was a splotch of darkness along the cavern wall. It had to be the passage back to the surface. She leaned forward, running harder. Could she keep this up all the way back to Steelguard? She didn’t have a choice. She ran. The dark shape that meant escape grew larger ahead of her. And stayed dark. She ran. Where were the stairs? Surely, she would be able to see the passage within the darkness by now. She ran. The darkness opened its eyes. Oozing, emerald eyes in a body of pure black onyx. It wasn’t the passage; it was a beast. Journey tried to stop herself and fell to the ground as the darkness loomed over her, unfurling long clawed arms. She scrambled back but the creature was too close. Its jagged ebony maw opened above her, crushed bone, spattered blood, and bristly grey hair among its misshapen teeth. Journey screamed, and then was silent.
-Written by Graham Moyer