Jeff LaSala - The Darkwood Mask

Tallis had been here once before, a year ago when Charoth had given him a private tour. During the night hours, just like this. Of course, back then he’d entered through the front door.

“The factory,” Soneste said as she joined him. Halix and Aegis followed, taking in the scene in silence.

Through the rumbling ambience, Tallis detected the murmur of voices-somewhere further in the room. Of course, there would be a night staff. The factory could not simply close down when the daylight hours ended, lest the molten glass harden and shut the entire operation down.

Tallis eyed the two cylindrical tanks at the far end, where chutes from the wall fed in raw materials. Within each, glass was heated and maintained in a liquid state until ready for shaping. Such maintenance required manpower at all hours.

The factory room had too many variables. Charoth’s men could be many, and in a space this big they were sure to use ranged weaponry. Tallis pulled two potion vials from his pack, pressing them into Soneste’s and Halix’s hands. “Drink these now . They’ll keep you alive while you get in close. Once we’re discovered, it’s going to get tricky in here.” He looked to Aegis. “Sorry, I only have two.”

“It is well, Tallis,” Aegis said, lifting the shield on his arm.

“Good man,” he said with a smile of camaraderie. Tallis wished he’d known more warforged like Aegis.

“And you?” Soneste asked.

“I’ll be fine. Stay here until I call for you.”

She nodded, seeming uncertain, and Tallis set out across the room. He kept to the shadows as much as possible.

After five minutes had passed without any sign from Tallis, Prince Halix bristled.

“I’m not waiting for him,” he said, drawing his sword.

Soneste nodded. “We go together then, Your Highness. Aegis, please take the lead.”

“Of course.”

The warforged strode forward with loud, echoing steps, eliciting a wince from Halix. Soneste didn’t want to make the prince a target, so she kept him in front of her where she could keep an eye on him, and followed cautiously.

When they neared the far end of the great room, she spied Tallis and a handful of men, most of whom lay unmoving on the ground. Only three remained. Dressed like the glassworkers she’d seen earlier in the day-Host, had that been today? she thought-they surrounded Tallis with brandished weapons. She glanced at the stairs that led up nearly fifteen feet from the factory floor to the glass door of Charoth’s office.

One of the glassworkers spotted her. He turned to face her and pointed a wand at her. Soneste hadn’t seen the bolt coming, had no time at all to decide which direction to try and dodge. She gasped as the missile struck her in the chest. She felt an unpleasant stab of pressure and winced at the splintering smack , but she felt no pain. When she realized she was still alive and unhurt, she smiled.

I need to get myself more of those potions, she thought.

Soneste looked up in time to see the same man loose another bolt-this one aimed for Halix-and felt her inhibitions drain away. She drew her crysteel blade, ran close enough for a throw, and sent it through the air. The glassworker threw up his arm and watched in horror as the blade sank to the hilt in the flesh of his forearm. He screamed-

And the hooked end of Tallis’s hammer caught him at the back of the neck, dropping him to the ground.

Halix engaged another glassworker, a man who wielded both a Karrnathi scimitar and a mace. Sword clashed against mace repeatedly as the prince’s face lit with delight. He was utterly unafraid, using speed and precision against the man’s wilder attacks. Soneste moved to flank the man, but the glassworker pivoted hard and slapped the rapier from her hand with his scimitar.

“Unholy Six!” she swore.

Aegis could not hit his new opponent, who labored for breath. Face flushed as he worked to dodge every one of the warforged’s heavy swings, the man did not see Tallis place one of his magic rods in the air at knee level behind the man. When he stepped away, the Karrn pointed with his hammer at the glass door at the top of the metal stairs.

“Something’s going on up there,” he told her. Soneste nodded, turning to retrieve her dagger.

When Aegis’s man stumbled over the floating rod, the warforged sank Haedrun’s blade to the hilt in his exposed stomach. He withdrew the sword and ended the man’s suffering with a second, careful stroke. Tallis retrieved his rod.

Soneste and Tallis both turned to help Halix, only to see him slip the Rekkenmark blade beneath his opponent’s arm. With a scream of fury, the prince ran him through. The glassworker dropped to the ground as his blood welled beneath him.

Seven bodies lay around them, unmoving.

Mounting the metal stair, Tallis crouched when he neared the top. Soneste joined him, aware that a glass wall would allow those within the room to look out just as easily as looking in. Tallis’s expression was one of revulsion.

Soneste heard the sounds of Halix and Aegis climbing the stairs behind her, but as she looked through the perfect glass herself, she tried to make sense of the scene within.

Wir, the 11th of Sypheros, 998 YK

Three figures oversaw what Tallis could only assume was some sort of blasphemous ritual: Lord Charoth, swathed in his customary midnight robes and mask. A woman in the ceremonial black and red vestments of a Seeker priest-presumably the Lady Mova. Standing behind both, as rigid as a statue, the nimblewright. Undisguised, it resembled a helmed, elven knight whose armor covered every inch of its body-except for one hand. That one was still missing. The rest of its metal body showed no sign of their battle from the previous night.

Before them, a young woman lay bound to a thick table of smooth glass obviously sculpted for this very purpose. Tallis recognized Borina from the night before. She lay awake, cognizant of her surroundings but too weak to struggle. Her bare feet were shackled. Her arms were splayed beside her, strapped to the table at the elbow, the sleeves of her soiled shirt torn away. The exposed skin was pierced in three places along each arm by sharp glass tubes like the proboscises of giant insects.

Dark with her blood, these siphoning tubes attached to the tabletop itself, where they threaded through the glass like arteries and attached themselves to the next component of the ritual-an outlandish throne, its back affixed to the table, also composed entirely of transparent glass. Where the tubes fed into the back of the throne, red blossomed and hung frozen as if the blood were soaking slowly into ice. It faded to a cloud of pink that pervaded the whole.

Sitting limp in the throne was a cadaverous figure in a smart, but utilitarian blue uniform, a living man of indeterminate age and sickly, mottled skin. Tallis could see black, wormlike veins through the man’s own translucent flesh. He looked like he was dying or had been for a long time. Eyelids only half open, his head lolled to the side. A livid glow suffused the throne around him, evidence that magic was at work. There was some sort of emblem on the man’s shirt and a ring on one skeletal finger.

Tallis had spied upon ceremonies of the Blood of Vol before, had witnessed variations of the Sacrament of the Blood that was vital to the faith. He’d personally sabotaged many of them. But this was different. This was something more … clinical. It repulsed him in a primal way.

“Gods,” Soneste breathed as she stared in horror at the gruesome scene. “What is this?”

Halix came up beside them, but Soneste tried to hush him before he could call out. Tallis could feel the tension boiling out of the boy at the sight.