Nate Kenyon - The Order

After he had received the letter about his wife and son, Cain had gone to visit the place where the accident had happened. The stretch of road on the way to Caldeum was unremarkable—a place where the road narrowed with thick trees on either side, providing cover for whoever had surprised them, perhaps. But a road like any other. He had never actually seen the overturned wagon; that had been long gone by the time he arrived. But he had imagined it lying there on its side in the weeds, one wheel still spinning lazily in the hot sun while Amelia and Jered were dragged away into oblivion. He hadn’t been able to help feeling as if the entire world had changed in that moment, and from then on the sound of a wagon’s wheels on cobblestones had always left him cold and empty.

Thomas led them on, through one tunnel and down another branch until he reached a point where he said none of the First Ones had ever been. He consulted the map, finding his way deeper, into more unfamiliar spaces and toward the center of the vast and complex tunnel system.

The air grew colder as they descended. Thick green moss grew everywhere, and at one point they had to wade through knee-deep brackish water that felt like ice on Cain’s skin. Shortly after, they heard the soft patter of tiny feet. Dozens of rats rushed toward them in a panic, running under the men’s legs.

There was something else up ahead. Something moving in the dark. The lantern revealed a familiar ghostlike creature, low to the ground and moving on all fours. The creature’s face was contorted into a snarl, its bald head shiny in the lantern light, eyeless sockets glaring blindly out at nothing. It hissed at them.

“A feeder,” Cain breathed softly. “We must kill it, quickly now, or it will tell others, and we will be overrun with them.”

The men drew back in shock as the feeder turned and climbed up the wall, its claw-like hands gripping the stone, then turned to them once again, hanging upside down like a bat, before crawling away and disappearing into the darkness.

Mikulov took the lantern. “Wait here,” he said, and raced off down the tunnel. The rest of the men were plunged into darkness so thick and absolute, they couldn’t see their own hands in front of their faces. Cain cautioned them to be quiet and still, and spoke the words of power until the jewel in the head of his transformed staff began to glow, and light bathed the faces of the men around him, as if they had been touched by flame.

A crackling flash came from somewhere in the distance, along with an inhuman screech of pain. Cain led the party forward. They found the lantern on the floor, and Mikulov standing over the mangled bodies of three feeders. “There were others,” he said. “They got away.”

Cain’s blood ran cold. They were surely scouts for Rau, and any left alive would scurry back to him and report their position, if they didn’t simply lie in wait and ambush the First Ones at some upcoming bend in the tunnel.

“We must be careful,” he said. Thomas regained the lantern, and Cain took up the rear. He expected to encounter a horde of ghouls around every corner, but the tunnels were empty. He did not know whether to be relieved or concerned.

They went deeper still. He felt something as they got closer to the center of the wheel of tunnels—an almost undetectable thrumming from the ground beneath their feet.

Then, far beneath the surface, the ceilings of the tunnels finally opened up to a cavernous space so vast it defied the imagination. They stood upon the edge of a silent, black hole, the light from Thomas’s lantern swallowed up by the shadows, the dust of generations thick upon every surface and the smell of closed tombs in the air.

They had found it, at last: the lost city of Al Cut.

Thomas led them through an empty, shattered street. Al Cut had been impressive once, a showplace of ancient Sanctuary. The streets were wide and paved, the buildings mostly made of stone and brick. They stared in wonder at the structures lined up and silent as graves: long-abandoned homes of the people who had lived here centuries before. The damage caused by the mage battle was still apparent, as scorched rubble lay across scattered and broken walkways, and many houses leaned drunkenly, their foundations weakened by whatever magical forces had struck them.

The scope of the lost city was staggering. The strangeness of discovering it down here, so far belowground, made it almost impossible to process; the ghosts of its past inhabitants seemed to float at the edges of Cain’s vision, disappearing when he turned to look.

“I have seen this place,” Mikulov said. “I have been here in my dreams. It is a city of the dead, burdened with the weight of thousands of lost souls.”

Nobody else dared to speak. The sense of some unnatural power gathering under their feet had increased, and the need to hurry along with it. The dust lay everywhere, but more chilling were the footprints that led through it. Some of them appeared human, but many others did not.

“Dawn is coming,” Cain said. “We must not waste any more time.” He sensed movement from an alcove on the right, but when he turned to look, the space was empty save for a huge spider on a web. The creature, the size of his fist, sat defiantly, staring back at them with multifaceted eyes, hairy legs twitching.

They continued through the street, skirting a place where a wall had collapsed, wandering through more deserted buildings. They remained silent, as if to speak here would disturb the dead. The size of the space swallowed the lantern beams; the city went on and on, the cavern’s ceiling stretching so far above their heads it disappeared like a starless sky. They passed several crumbling Vizjerei libraries and a monument to some ancient, long-forgotten leader or war hero.

It seemed to go on forever. But where were the bodies? The legend had told of the remains of Vizjerei mage warriors left to rot where they fell. Had they simply been carried away by scavengers, or was something more sinister at work?

Finally the ground began to rise gently, and the small party passed through the far edges of Al Cut. Cain saw the ceiling of the cavern come back into view, arching downward to meet the far wall, where a new tunnel loomed, its entrance as black as pitch.

Water sluiced down the center of the floor, through a groove in the stones, and out from the tunnel’s entrance. Cain could smell the brine.

This was the spot he had been waiting to find.

They entered the tunnel. “We’re close,” Thomas whispered, as they moved along. “By my calculations, we should be beyond Gea Kul now.” The mood among the men had grown tense; Cain’s plan had worked flawlessly so far, but once they had broken cover, they would no longer have the luxury of surprise.

Cain consulted the map before directing the others to place the packages they had carried with them into strategic locations along the tunnel. The group made slow progress, continuing forward. The sea was just beyond them, separated by a layer of rock. If he could only—

Deckard Cain.

Cain whirled around, searching the dark, his skin prickling. The voice had sounded close by his ear, yet he saw nothing dancing through the shadows, no demon face, no ghostly apparition. The other men acted as if they had heard nothing.

A familiar moment from the distant past returned to him: standing in his room as a boy after a fight with his mother, the smell of burned pages still thick in his nostrils, staring out at the dark as something whispered his name.

Come find us, and learn the truth about this world. Your destiny awaits, as does mine. We are linked, you and I, through history and legend. We are more alike than you care to believe. I am a scholar, as you are. I am descended from those you would call heroes. But they were blind, as you have been. You can change that.