Darkfall

XVII : Darkfall

Silent, sat the Hall of Adulation, for the pondering, self-satisfied High Conrord, pleasured without the close-dance of the paupers, those choleric struts, the riotous proselytes. Behind his back were his hands wrapped, his fingers at a twitch, and tight eyes upon the Father’s Watch. A guard so vast, to know such limit to its breadth. It was sanctified arrogance, he thought. Revolting, incalculable arrogance.

The door slid askew and in a servant popped, under flabby robes of blue and gold, monk-like but snarled by poor frame, sporting thin, spindly arms. He was unseemly in all but his hair, which flowed rich and gold. By name, he was Marrion, and by deed, much less.

“Word from the North,” he said. “Aelsen’s band delves in the below, m’lord. He is unrevealed, your huntsman. Though the candor of his quill suggests a distaste for his present company. By his word, they will draw upon it in short time, or where it once was, at least. He cites hymns through the underearth, fledgelings roused by the monarch’s word. Near, indeed.”

“Hrm,” Sunt scoffed, making a mild effort to appear attentive. “Then we shall soon learn the reality of Veidt’s fixation. What lies there in the dark, what is wished so concealed. What of the West, Marrion?”

“Crude scribe, m’lord,” he said. “Not easily deciphered, but it is the crumpled letter of one Varcull. Done perhaps by claw,” Marrion jested, dryly. “He swears Searaith’s north has hollowed, given chase, bearing the heavy stock of war. Him and his… unrulies await an empty Gold Etch.”

“Good,” Sunt nodded. “Then in another letter’s time, you will have no issue sniffing the ember over his scribe. Darr will hear in due course. The old pig will not quiet his frustrations, certainly.”

“He will suspect this to be Veidt’s failing?”

“He, and every head alow the gales.”

“Of course, m’lord,” Marrion muttered. “But if Searaith is to fall, even its most infertile inch, would that not…?”

“Do you understand why men of science call it the Patch, Marrion?” asked Sunt, a scowl upon him and a hardness in his glare. “As it is no ailment that is readily undone. Never to be so. Only covered up, concealed, or buried again. Built over and hidden, like a patch slapped over a wound. But the wound remains, and the stitchwork reddens with its taint…” He shook his head. “Galehaven clings to its ferrovine, like maggots to the freshest corpse, thinking they will persist. Believing in rapture, through needle and vein. But there are no survivors, Marrion. There are only those that hide longer than they who feed the flame. By that hideous will, in fire are all of us sought. Do know that.”

“Of course, m’lord,” said Marrion, before taking his leave.

The Hall of Adulation came quiet again and Sunt’s sneer was alone with the Father’s Watch, that could see all and do naught.

“Then let flame find its victor,” said Sunt, while his eyes came bright with a burning vision.

Through the firs was an expanse of wheat, green-tipped. Their stems were stark whites, their cores well-thorned. The earth from which they crept was soft, rich with silver dusts, and through the plots of ferrovine meandered an array of serfs, clutching pikes and shovels, overseen by some spare guards strolling to and fro, with weapons slack and all alert faded. Oaken struts flagged each field, renewed upon harvest. Sunlight caught in the stems of the ferrovine and shimmered, thus did Searaith’s northernmost mark earn its title: The Gold Etch.

For some miles the plains stretched. South, they ran through and densened aside stone bluffs, upon which sat bastions, towers manned by bow. As they crawled north, the fields came vast, their garrisons far between, and through the pastures waded a wandering arsenal. At the very north however, a day past, the doors to each post opened and spewed, the fields hollowed and came cold, and from Searaith’s emerald tip up towards the northeast of the Haddlebush roaved an army of blue and gold.

The Gold Etch was quiet upon their leave, with just as many workers minding their tongues and a spec of Searaith’s swords to keep them whole. Still, guards did walk and helms did dip to spy the horizon, distrustful and queer, but they were spied in turn, from beyond the green-blade wheats and beyond their guard and through the firs at the pasture’s brim.

Unseen from between the trees lurked a figure in chainmail, bearing a broadcloth of violet and grey, with the Claw of Cyrspark upon his breast. Tufts of ginger fur crept out from his spangenhelm. An axe dipped in his grasp. He slithered between the branches, catching sight of a new foe with each blink. His breaths came ragged, eager, and out from the helm sounded a snarl.

Another stomped up the ridge, with her head down and blade-arm twitching. She wore the same garb, though her skin was dark and prickly, her back was high and broad, and her arms were wide enough to house two hands, but curved rather to rend flesh.

“Time’s come,” she said, gravely. “Is it quiet yet?”

“Last of their warband’s gone north, Nanyaer,” said the ginger beast. “Searaith is silent.”

“Fine,” said Nanyaer. “Then we spare them their crops and show them new harvest. This will prove a short affair.”

She began to turn, but the other kinnit caught her with a loose lip. “For this…” he began, hesitant. “Surely, they will hate us. This, Nanyaer, they will never forgive. And we run out of land to flee to.”

“Their hate’s been ours since before we formed thumbs,” she rejected. “And forgiveness is ours to grant. Do not forget that. No matter the end, Varcull is sure of this. This, we will do.”

“All this, for home?” Pargern doubted. “I’d sleep below the stars, so long as the soil’s unbloodied. What friend of his is this, you think, who can barter with the very land? What friend could there be who makes deals with lords then allies of beasts? They will discover us, surely, and this dream of his may well be cut apart.”

“Perhaps,” nodded Nanyaer. “But Searaith will fall first.”

Below the ridge, a swarm of shadows in violet and grey clambered. They bore snouts and scales, snapped and growled, emerging from between firs like a frenzy strained out from the very soul of the woods.

“If any escape this,” began Pargern, “serf or soldier, word will spread. Through the hills. And when it does, all of Arakvan will deny us pity. It is pity what’s prolonged this march, be certain. Not this—battle and… ferocity.”

“Yet this is for what we were bred, Pargern. Have they not declared it themselves?” she posed. “Arakvan’s men have ever been monstrous, since the land first split. They disguise it, but in us… in us, Arakvan made its truth. Let them despise to their sword’s content, though if that loathing dares meet us, we lay it low.”

“Any of them escape…” he said, diluted, absorbed in the totter of white, gold, and green. “Then we are beasts forever.”

“Indeed,” boomed a coarser tongue, like a hammer into turf. Nanyaer smiled. Pargern whipped around to spot the speaker, though both plainly sensed the speaker. Standing beside them, taller by two heads, was Varcull. “So none will escape,” proclaimed the Boar of Darrius.

“There are serfs among them, Varcull,” said Pargern, skittish. “Have even the fieldhands earned us?”

Two heavy eyes slid to Pargern from within that beastial skull, between dark molds of flesh. They were a dim red, but the power in Varcull’s gaze brought them to cinder, and the defiance of Pargern melted away.

“They’ve earned nothing,” Varcull stated. “We return them to it.”

The gales blew. The firs split. Through them descended a horde of half-men, and the gold of Searaith fell under black.

Walls rumbled while the old deep cried out. Stone was stirring, breathing, closing in but a trance to the eye. The flicker of torchlight sparred the dark of ancient tunnels. So far below the land was an earth striated, its abyss crushing, to both body and dream. Where stone peeled they beheld fey growths bob, quiet streams disturbed by large tracks. The light of fire could show the skitterings but catch no clear forms.

With each step deeper, Aelsen, his band of bladesmen and fiends, grew all the more estranged to the thought of sunlight. It was a naive memory, almost an obvious delusion. Dour spirits clung to that alien itch of escape. They had to question, even the most zealous of the pack, for what end was their bruising and wallowing worth? Aelsen’s nearest flock was blue-gold and demanding. Under their study, the skulkers knew the treason of return.

Days had drained on. Days without true light, without true rest, in a land that seemed to rue their trespass but bask in their doubt. Time was forgot. So familiar was the aching bone they did not remember when they moved with complete strength. They could not care. There were far greater frets in the endless stone.

Only a night prior, they fell upon a rogue ketchling: blind and hooked, it took two bladesmen to the grave. That morning, an echo boomed from the far annals, some howl of loathed solitude, and so did the land itself grate askew, to swallow a soul. They stealthed amidst a meadow where silver springs bubbled, but up swayed an air of ruination from the waters. Later they awoke coughing yellows and reds. Some strolled, unnerved and infected, through undeath.

When their rations, in the underearth airs, began their decay, bladesmen of Galehaven took to snatching beetles out from the cracks in rock. The furrfiends knew better, stalkers through the gloom, ever downcast, to eat only what meat their swords felled. It seemed Aelsen alone could muster his spirits when the march again resumed. From their leader’s grinning disposition was some courage gathered, but most saw the glint in his teeth instead as the golds of duty, to which they were entitled. Ervellyn Aelsen, however, offered no mind to his servants and their queries. He marveled at the creep-fauna, the legged shrooms, coming bright with intrigue when the calls echoed from beyond. A sensation pulled him through the dark. Records of melancholy, in their endless stretch, was perhaps inspiring of what borders men could breach, of what else he could conquer in one lifetime.

And holding Aelsen in his gaze was Kellid, who saw their headman through the steel of his half-helm and grimaced. The rest of the assembly took to rousing tents and laying out sleeping rolls, setting fires with what they could scrounge, brewing stews with cold water and roots. The furrfiends took largely to the near tunnels, watching and scavenging. Kellid did not.

Alone, with a pinch of hamroot and a pipe of oak, he leaned through fog. No comfort was in his idle hands and he did not savour the smoke in the lung when work went unaided, but he could not stand amidst the rabble. Some hypocrisy he was too ineloquent to isolate paralyzed him. To partake in their labours, to add to their chatter, he would be too much a part of them, privy to their fears, dreams, efforts. Kellid could not shoulder the responsibility of their fates. Hamroot made a blur of the shining ire.

So again, he pulled from his pipe, watching Aelsen perk at the camp’s heart. Much like a peacock, a bird of ceremony, thought Kellid, with blades alow each plume. His teeth came clamped around the neck of the pipe and the oak crunched.

“You too good to lend a hand?” asked a fellow, who strode to and stood over him. His face was almost brown and a cut took his left cheek and lip. “We’re here toiling, and you sit neatly with a pipe in your lip? You better make yourself scarce if you’re to keep lounging, beasthunter, or I’ll chop that thing in half, and you’ll go quick with it.”

“Step off,” Kellid warned, not rising from his rest, not sparking a grander enthusiasm. “Or did you come all this way to die unpaid?”

“Not afraid of you,” the soldier chirped. “And I’m not so meek as this wider lot to let a man slip untroubled. We all got costs to pay down here, furrfiend. Scars to wear.” He jabbed fingers around the camp. “Darren there cooks, I laid the armours myself. That sod keeps our blades keen. Onad, though you didn’t know ‘em, went three nights back. That too’s a cost, and I didn’t lay my friend to rock, unburied, so that cowards like you might lounge about in his stead.”

“No,” said Kellid, his head ducked. “You laid him to rock, unburied, cause your purse demands more of you than your quickening heart. I hear that fear, bladesman, so you are too a liar. Now leave my sight, or you join Onad as a ghost in this darkness.”

A tension touched the bladesman and for his hip he reached. Kellid only shook his head. A calm hand collected the hilt, then a booming rose from the deep and froze them both. The bawl was fierce, triumphant but forlorn, in lonely and loud victory, and all of the world beneath rattled. By Aelsen, they learned the legacy of that call before they knew its sound. The heartbeat of earth pumped around them, and in seconds of shouting and thrill and terror the camp emptied, leaving half-rose remnants and low fires in its wake, while a charge forth ensued. All knew that that thunderous bellow that shook stone was the call of the Brintcrag, and that the end of abyss was close at hand.

Kellid was among the last to file into the tunnels, but eventually did duty fester and his lax demeanor drained away. He took to a sprint and soon stood among the vanguard of that bladed rush, as a slot in an eager rank. Yet in his eyes there was none of the passion of his compatriots, and instead only a yellow dread.

An overturned cart was her shelter. She clung carelessly to it and its splinters. Her hands had endured much graver costs. Through its boards she peered, to behold a valley of tall grass, ill birches, wind-wobbled firs. Evening light laid bright and burning, flooding her lurk with a gleam of tired gold. Jaynell squinted to find the host, at their leisurely roam just over the pasture.

Southeast they had journeyed, for some days. They were without destination, remiss in pace, and often they slowed to play with flames in wheatyards or burgle a farmstead. They were easiest to track by the people they dragged, though no one in rope lasted long in Garrott’s company. Even from afar, Jaynell could hear the clamouring and the glee. It sickened her, hardened the gaze of the hawkhead. She could not allow herself to fall from the grip of metal, to loosen her fury, for she feared so dearly that if the cold of its iron was apart from her for too long, her wrath would be forgotten. Through sward and wood, bloodily, she had for days trekked, abiding neither injury nor exhaustion. Scar-woven was her mind, but its intent could not be split.

Their flank faced her. Two men staggered along, yanked by fists. Their eyes were gashed and they chewed on cloth. Ruptures in their backsides leaked. Booting them was a large fellow wearing a blair hog’s hide over his shoulder. She could hear him laugh. She could almost smell him. At the front, mounting a short arch of stone like a sailor at the sight of land, was Garrott. In seeing him she quivered but fear was void. It was only vengeance, its lure, its delight, that could cause such a stir in her benumbed chest.

A horn blew. Just as she rose to enact some vain and overzealous ambition, to chase some dullard’s swift doom and perhaps bring company to her hell, she startled and ducked low again. The lip of the valley erupted. The horizon shone blue and gold. Lance and sword rose and took the rim, then came the cries and the fists, that barreled down to the valley’s heart. The horde found a band of no more than forty marauders, who saw the gates of their southern paradise burst at the hinges and collapse atop them.

Instant was the panic of the raider hive. Some shouted their pleas and scurried, others cried contempt and charged. Indeed, amidst the scattering were a few who would not yield, who would stake torment and the drones of the ever-dungeon for one more heinous day of great freedom. Crazed did they meet the bladesmen of Searaith in the open field. Men of plate mail fell upon those of fur and iron, glaive struck axe. It was the brief rampage of sheep who did not realize the pen was already raised around them, who could not smell the metal barbarity amidst their known predators. It was a slaughter of minutes until the valley’s heart was murky and red, shored by bandit corpses. Valiant in the face of meagre odds, the bladesmen pressed on and weeded through flesh. They chased the runners into a woodland at the valley’s brim, where gave the mossy way north.

Garrott took to the trees before landing a lone blow, though every step insulted him. Many followed and many were pulled from their flight by that of arrows, or the blades of swifter men coursing through their backs. It was a few more than one dozen that breached the treeline and no more than six that met it entirely unscathed. Rhaebjorn emerged amongst them, gliding between trees, yet none had ever seen him flee, nor enter the carnage. Surely enough, however, blood rode his either blade.

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Searaith’s northern garrison slowed to savor their total and effortless success. The heavy charge taxed them but in their panting they were gruntled. Their valour was beyond reproach, so they hollered and sang of the holy gale, above the worming of ruined men. The gasps for mercy were impaled upon lances, joined to earth by a steel member. The crawling to the dream of trees was hauled away, through the puddles of kin then butchered to the chant of splashing. Finding no joy at the sight of a vandal left standing, many did streak for glory into the upper wilds, drunk on savage pursuit. Two more they caught, to beat then cleave against bark, yet the rest did sink away into the shade of the forest, though the folk of Galehaven were not sullied, not defeated by the revelation. The woods had weapons of their own, and to the eyes in plate mail, warriors so meak as Garrott and his band would not outlast Arakvan.

Steps were swamped and the air chafed with moribund pleas. Amidst coloured jesting and honoured recounts, they discarded their scouts and returned all sights to the ferrovine fields. It was when they turned apart however, that quick steps crossed their shadows. Behind turned helms crept Jaynell, not to salvation, but deeper into that glade of heathens. She did not believe ruth could be well spared on sinister hearts, no matter how bruised it was that they returned to their alleys. Garrott was beyond forgiveness. His every lick was its own abhorrent little lust. She could not live in the same winds that carried him from judgement.

Evening found its first dark—a mist, soft over the sun—when the first serf of Searaith beheld apocalypse. He could gasp and drop his rake, then his mind was liquid. A furred man took and sank teeth into his throat. Around, wheats flattened, as if a log had tumbled through, then was his homeland laudation for the clout of the Baelgarth. Through the whites of Searaith flowed ash, an unsparing and volcanic zephyr, led in vermin that gobbled, decayed country.

What drew bladed against them was bashed aside and buried under iron. Limbs went thieved and flagged through the reek overhead. Smoke took the sky. Cinder choked its verdure. There was a red spice in the thick liquors of ferrovine, whilst a swarm, clenched and made to devour like morning mist, broiled below.

Boots tread atop trophies of the broad-footed, fuming dilettantes. It was a sputter of brief revolt, of turned backs, of screeching instinct. The land went hot and split, cooked in the forge of the conqueror. Vengeance, under the rays of murdered daylight, was satisfied, while downhill did tales to rue begin again.

Pargern paused, under the exhaust of the sun, atop his newest corpse, smelling the fire that embraced Searaith. He gazed down at his battleaxe and at the shivers of adrenaline that brought it to quake. He waited, staring, expecting a horn or a song to ensue: a melody to take from him his private thoughts, to pull him apart from the body he smote. An inviting eye, a lopsided jaw, and a brown mess of hair, all seeping at his feet, awaiting the declaration. The ballad forgot its glorious end. He was lost in the troubles of heroics, in the gathering awesomeness. The stench of flame ignited his sinuses but the smoke chased him everywhere. Torches bowed and light leapt, darting from field to field until all in sight was aglow with red. Pargern did not remember with what volume he should cheer, nor with what height his weapon should be hoisted.

“Does it deplete you?” asked Nanyaer, stomping out from the blazing wheats, with a wet broadsword in her grasp. “You’ve been stashed away too long, Pargern, to be tired so soon… To the fight! We are not retired till the last field sways no more.”

“Have we won?” he asked, distracted and off-balance. “The fires spread farther and farther. The hunt… persists. Have we not yet won?”

“Won?” she laughed, seeing some crooked humour in his folly. “Do not tell me you believed victory laid amidst these pastures, Pargern? That torches could unearth it?” Nanyaer shook her head. “We are not here to make stories. Come! Our riders claim the east end already!”

A skirmish roared down a low slope, upon an open field of black grass. Varcull stood there, with blood in his fur, on his tusks, and a terrible heat in his jaw. His throat glowed orange. His greataxe tossed men like rags, soaked and discarded. Varcull opened his mouth against a blue-gold charge, then flame stormed through his teeth. With one deep bellow, the proud assassins were clothed in fire, writhing through the molestation of their armours, without escape. Varcull took the smells of their martyrdom in his snout, then carried on to the next field, the next fire, the next bodies uncloven as they shook and screamed.

Nanyaer smiled fanatically at the brilliance of warfare and their foul gifts bestowed. A rhapsody of creation and its comeuppance was her serenade in the smog. She turned her passion back to Pargern, expecting the same cheer. “Feel that heat, Pargern!” she cried. “Taste it! Taste your victory! Today, Searaith! Tomorrow, Galehaven! For in this flame, the world of man bleeds!”

On she stepped, after Varcull, to the next bout of fleeing serfs and soldiers, leaving Pargern alone in the smoke. Indeed, he was there for a time, and the heat felt dim around him, even while fire kissed his feet.

The cavern was a stout creep, winding long, before breaking away into what seemed an antechamber for underearth gods. The space was massive, floored by a stair that climbed ragged to their hole, walled by pillars of molded black earth, roofed by a fungus that shone white-green. The air seemed clear, the stone crystalline, and all the earth came to shimmer.

But alas, beauty goes seldom unclaimed, and stomping atop the scrawled rock and coursing streams was what seemed a deity amidst the darkness; a principle of void; a champion king of beasts. The dread of the company was palpable, for of course they then gazed upon the Brintcrag, and only was its grandeur beyond the woe of its spanning myth.

A titan of steely flesh, it walked as a four-legged monstrosity, more of an ironworks’ ilk than any kin of known—of fathomable beasthood. Giantish it loomed: tough obsidian, in a hide of dark, powered plate. Its spine bore some dozen antlers, its head, a hundred horns. The snout of the Brintcrag was firm, of broad teeth, and bearing an opal spike where its nostrils should have sat. Its eyes, vast seas of blue about black irises, tightened upon the hole from which the furrfiends and bladesmen poured. The wailing and shouting taught it upset, as if sensing a beloved monument so callously toppled; a painting slashed in mud. Furiously, the Brintcrag stamped its hooves and brought the cavern to a tremor, issued forth a pound that suffocated the sounds of assault. Then, over it and all else, rode what came first as a whistle: a whisper from its opal snout, that then degraded, gutturally and fiercely, and impossibly loud. The ground moved and the walls shed their dust, as the killers of Aelsen fell upon legend, never before beheld.

Glum and uncertain was Kellid, amongst them and led by an unwavering blade. Duty had carried him so far, promise had urged him forth. Even if onward meant the very end, his back did not bend alow the weight of his charge. If fate willed it, then with these cowards and fiends he would perish. Were it all for naught, a pursuit against the forefathers’ delusions, then in vain would he succumb. His heart would be steady at the tale’s end. He could feel his blood curl in the face of the mighty Brintcrag, so did failure become feasible in the warrior’s eye. Kellid Arr Robess was, however, no son of Arakvan to be crushed on a whim, slaughtered at the land’s indeliberate heed, so swifter and defiant he sped.

The sabre leapt from its sheath. Kellid struck his steel across the stone beneath him and, in a clang, a spark shot, a light flashed, and the erovite of his armament went up in flames. Around his burning wreath bladesmen shuddered, for a demon breached their rank.

The vanguard’s was a reckless assemblage. They formed, bucked through a stream, braced themselves in its drag, then set foot into their battlefield. Tusks flailing, hooves smashing, the beast came upon them. Arrows flurried overhead, striking neck and chest and head and led, but to little avail. Another volley burst above the vanguard, then the gap was sealed. Its tree-like legs were ravaged but the Brintcrag answered.

Eight men lifted from the front rank. A tusk bashed through, tearing atwo what it did not send soaring to crash at far rock. A cat-helmed furrfiend landed beside Kellid with a broken spine: young and wartorn, streaked in desperate sweats. He beheld eyes flood, the twitching hand go numb, then stepped past his corpse and unto the fray.

A hoof met him and shattered the land at his feet. Three more took to the air, failed to recoil, so Kellid instead darted forth, ducked low, then rose to whip fire through its great foot. It stomped again, so fast it split his vision and tossed him. Each form bore four shadows, but in that ethereal haze Kellid witnessed an undoubtable massacre.

Their stage was the pounding of drums. Every beat splashed red. Rows of beastfoes and bladesmen were trampled into flat, fleshy mounds. In that accursed cavern so far below the sun, the company split and dear to them was their terror, for nothing else in the darkness was real. Chaos was blind. The fight streaked in every which way. The thump of death caught a mire of locked limbs. With the terrible and ancient upon them, they were squeezed between the next rank and the sea, and the sea was hungry and cruel that day.

But the arrows kept. Again and again, to always little avail but no end, swords pestered. A hive loosed from its home, they rolled against the Brintcrag’s feet. In one swat, a rank was felled, but in swept the thoughtless next. They encircled the old terror, plunged lance and sabre through its shins, slashed for its ribs, launched steel to its head.

It was almost valiant. Breathless, Kellid nearly laughed. Aelsen’s dreams were their delusions: its slaying was to rid the earth of a horrid plight. They were there for gold, but others through belief. There was an inkling of nobility they clung to, in the ravages of stone. Kellid snarled to himself, at the lie they died for, then rushed in again. He leapt upon the beast, shot fire through its ankle. Cutting, twirling, bending blood; a wretched alchemist, who cursed his own performance. Flame chased his every step.

Nothing could be heard over the screams of his comrades. Even while the knees of the Brintcrag buckled and the stomps slowed, Kellid could not breathe relief. Nowhere was there a louder misery. Behind it all, nestled securely to their farthest flank, stood Ervellyn Aelsen, with a belt of bowmen to do his will. No doubt he giggled at his coming victory.

The Brintcrag staggered through the next volley. Another batch of bladesmen were crushed in the trip, then it threw its skull high and bellowed again. There was agony and command both in the echoes of its last resort. A sound opened around them, like chasms in the very walls and pitfalls under their steps. A great tunneling was heard, the scraping of a thousand feet. Scampers came from the dark. Each annal of the chamber filled and exploded with troves of furred, thorned, barbed terrors. Fast and crawling, succumbed to the Brintcrag’s call.

Through the caverns, many-legged and eyeless carnivores squeezed. Worming and fanged, winged and boneless. There was an outcry of men and beasts alike, when the fog of death came thick. What arrived in the Brintcrag’s chamber was a grand warring, coating each cheek in blood and leaving no body unscathed. In some chapter of the hysteria, of the revenged and rebirthing brawl, the bellows of the monarch had quieted. The alarm had gone silent. With a tremor that sent all scurrying in scores, the ancient beast collapsed, and so did the earth beneath it shatter. Through the rifts fell monster and man, to an endless abyss. On the rafters of what was left, above fate’s last plummet, the cemetery of strife, of faceless soldiers, cannibalized itself. To grapple and descend, to clash and cry out and wane into nothing.

The volleys persisted, until swifter fiends caught and ate the archers living. With nowhere to flee, furrfiends and bladesmen cut at random, ever wantonly, to cleave madly through flesh and fur with no mind that could make a distinction. The corpses stacked and the injured sorts suffocated in gore’s dozen sumps. Some fled upon the death of aim, others at that of their liege, but most were choiceless but to keep on, to keep cutting. Crazed, unyielding, leaping upon enemy blades, self-impaling onto iron only to gain a sooner cut at the wielder. Where Kellid carved a gap of flame, keener curs drove forth, so was the toll restored. Exhaustion conjured a battle of bent knees, of kneelers. To again summon up steel was a terrible cost. In armours, heavy men fell under the onslaught, to be entombed in their own metal: choked before they could fatally be pierced. Kellid witnessed, amidst the crash of confused horses, a man consumed, who drove his own blade through his belly, to then be pulled into the last cavern, down to the groins of the dark fall. It was an enduring night of carnage, invincible to mortal hands, without faith for a sensible conclusion. It was the infinite blasphemy, claiming them all, though after a chop as regular and weak as any other, Kellid lifted his eyes from the beast torn before him to realize the battle was done.

Rebel cravens scurried away into their pits. Soldiers slumped the ledges, finishing any chest that did not yet sink. Above it all, Kellid could hear crying, from wounded men without medics. In the chasms were red trails from where warriors vanished.

No more than twelve of the warband remained, excluding their commanding pack, who remained far and unbloodied. They did not clutch wounds, limp idly through the shock of survival. They did not rediscover the sensation of skin over their bones, the luxury of it. Leather seemed ungainly, upon limbs so taxed. Those who roamed upright seemed to belong to a better pantheon of battle-makers, for most moved on hands and knees. Panting, so onerously their hearts felt louder than any idea of gratitude. With legs crossed, a furrfiend sat, playing soundlessly with his insides that dripped through a gash in his stomach. He laughed, for it was a wonder that the dark had not yet discovered him groveling at its lobby. Kellid walked past him and, in two steps more, the laughing ended.

Another tried to stand, then staggered and fell into a ruptured fellow. Muffled as it was, Kellid heard him weep. He rested in a red pond and splashed his hands, like a child in the whimsy and fuss of a first bath. Up from a corpse-stack leapt a blur that toppled him. Kellid quickly took the head of the beast, but the man below it did not move again. He only then realized that the fire on his blade had long gone out, pervaded by the cutter’s pledge. The steel seemed worn and barren. The shadows trickled out pleas and pants and the stink of devastation. He held each nook unseen in contempt. Each pile of the fallen was a treasonous premonition.

The fool who had confronted Kellid then entered his sight, half-buried under a goatish abomination. The will of his throat swam in blood and was unfathomable. His chest rose with jagged rhythm. Some desire was petrified in his accusing eye, that rose to Kellid as a question and a command. Kellid understood it well as mercy. Without relish nor lament, Kellid stabbed the man through his heart, then stayed with him until the eyes explored the frost of a hollow skull. It seemed a conceited ceremony, closed by murder. He withdrew his sword and brought it to the next in need of deliverance.

On and on it went, until he wondered which faction he had more callously destroyed. To come without healers was Aelsen’s heartless provision. Did he grieve, to see all who strode unraveled from his melee turn executioner? Kellid’s gaze was too wet to know. He carried his sorrows like humiliation, from dying to dead brow.

Eventually, the work expired. Inaction was its own heartbreak. One could only stand, fall victim to the senses when the sword went still. The scent entered the nose and once it lingered it never left. Without a walk to contest it, the weeping was unbearably loud. More fault-finding, more critical. Nothing beautiful could survive a massacre. Triumph was a lonely, forsaken thing. The distant scuffling of fleeing beasts echoed off the high ceiling, then fell like a low gale upon the dead and dying. A gale, he thought. Arakvan laughed at them all.

Then steps sounded again, in force. Kellid turned to find a short band of archers strutting through the battlefield, to the corpse of the Brintcrag with a lantern to guide them. Aelsen, of course, stood at their center. By his command, they shed their bows and brought out broad knives, then went to work on the beast’s head. When the slicing and tearing was done, Kellid beheld the band corral around a single prize: a lone trophy, claimed from that slaughtered stage. It was tiny, opal, hewn from the end of the Brintcrag’s snout. It appeared to him like a tiny horn, and he understood that it was for this little relic that all in that chamber had fallen.

Could that be all? So rank was the stench of rot, so resounding were the pleas. Could all of it—every cut, carve, scar and scream—be for a thing so meagre? Was all this pain for a reward so slight?

Then Aelsen whispered to his band and turned back towards the stair, with the relic in-hand. What remained of the fighters had come to a frail circle around Aelsen’s archers, looking on with a need for order, for validation, to give destiny to the swords slacked in their grip. They awaited gold perhaps, or some assurance of earnings, but what raised against them were bows.

Strings hissed. Arrows flew, staking heart and neck. In their exhaustion and their agony, no defence was mounted. There was no effort at evasion. With a gasp, a slow lean into the tumble that slew them, were the first of the onlookers betrayed. A furrfiend fell to the rift, another clutched the opened throat before twisting into death. A third gave a gargled voice to his confusion, then his back struck rock.

And Kellid smiled, for now the work could be done.

Again, they knocked their arrows, then took aim against all in the battlefield, of which remained a meagre cluster. As unembellished as a domino tips, each champion dropped dead. When three bows drew against Kellid, however, he dropped quicker, and rose with a corpse to fill their path. Arrows struck the body, then Kellid threw it aside to propel a dagger forth from his belt.

To the surprise, then relief, of the archers, it whisked past them, unbloodied. They readied their arrows again, just as the light went out. In the sudden eclipse, they realized in horror that the aim of the dagger was not them, but their lantern. The flame scattered across rock, flickered, and died. They did not consider themselves the henchmen of that vicious errand, and while they collected at the rear of the company, its vanguard had embraced the workings of the dark.

Silence loomed. Fearfully, they stammered and aimed and shot at random, awaiting a step to be heard or a charge to be seen, but the cavern seemed empty. Aelsen gave them no heed, seizing the chance to reach the stair and his escape, even after they called for his aid, for direction. For a tense strain of seconds, they held their breath, and placed a most trepid watch upon the darkness.

Then the darkness was smote. A clang sounded, a streak of flame took form, and the archers were alone with a floating blade, basked in hellfire. For a moment, it stayed to a distance, while their arrows flew and chinked against rock, then Kellid breathed deeply, and stepped forth.

The fire lunged: a devil’s spear. It cut through the deep, waded past their volleys, danced through every angle while the light came bright upon them, as they hearkened to its roar. Another volley flew and missed, then all in that sorry band could feel the heat come for them.

Aelsen was on the stair when he heard the screams. He gave a last look to that devouring flame, laughed in anxious fear, then clutched the opal closer to his chest and darted back into the hole from which they had first emerged. He advanced a stride, on hastened feet, before he realized that, in that tunnel, he was not alone. A shadow shared it. Aelsen could see its chin an inch away, then beheld teeth.

There was time to gasp before it lunged upon him.

The beast rammed him, carried him over the edge of the stair, and together they plummeted down. The creature emerged on top and a stream ran below. Aelsen paled. He could not feel the water rush against him. He saw only a red squint—a squint that stole his full eye—then dropped his gaze to find fangs.

Its paws pinned him in the water while its teeth worked. A tooth stabbed under his left cheek, and with a cock of its neck the flesh was peeled off. Again it bit, then into his temple, digging deeper until it bent across his right eye. He flailed, splashed, but it kept him down, though did nothing to obstruct the screams. The beast foamed at the lip and crunched its jaw shut, then ripped apart from Aelsen to tear away part of his face. Half his eye was caught between the thing’s teeth, and the half left over sludged and bled. Again, it bit, and Aelsen’s shrieks filled that high chamber and made its every critter flee. His hands twitched in the flow of the stream. Its waters pulled the blood from his face.

With them rushed the opal. The stream coveted it away towards a distant depth, to be forever swallowed, but a boot arrested its flight. Kellid, cloaked then in newer blood, plucked it from the stream. He held it a time, feeling its strange heft and ogling its shimmer, before the screams of Aelsen at last swayed him. Kellid scowled at the little gem, then pocketed it away and made for the stair.

With a whistle, the beast left its meal and came to his side, then together they made their way towards the hole. Halfway up, a cry stopped him, and wearily Kellid looked down. Impossibly, the man was yet to die.

Aelsen laid in the waters, tainting them red. His hands trembled, but the rest of him was still, and through what remained of his face he wept, though the fall of tears burned his wounds and he shrieked. Skin covered his left eye, his bottom lip, and the chin below it, yet the rest was stolen from him. His glare was all tissue and bone, blood and bursted vessels, red ooze and red wrappings. He should have been dead, but with one eye gouged, dripping, and one whole and wide and quaking with hate, he looked up at Kellid, and through the blood in his mouth he found words. They were gagged and wrong, forged with terrible effort, as if what he heard was the wagging of an open throat.

“D-death…” he croaked. “I g-g-gave you d-death… Y-you gave me… this…!” Just as he seemed near a final word, he tensed with violent urge, and so ardent was the flex of rage that he squeezed blood out from his own skull. His neck corked up, and faceless did his hate lift against Kellid. “Y-you gave me this!” he screamed. “You gave me hell! Hell!”

Never before had Kellid heard such a sound. It irked him, sickened his stomach. He shuddered at the sight of the flayer head, the sound of its buzzing, and with a ducked head could look upon it no longer. He and his beast parted into the caves more shallow, made way for the long exit, and thought of sunlight to distract him from Aelsen.

But the cries followed. Endlessly, Ervellyn Aelsen wailed. His misery echoed up every annal of the vast cavern, like the swollen, sloshing rivets of torment’s basin.

“Hell, farfend!” he shrieked with his deformed tongue. “You gave me hell!”

____