Keith Baker - The Gates of Night

Beyond this newfound confidence, Daine was amazed by his own strength and stamina. Once, descending the ridge would have proven a challenge. Now, it felt like child’s play. He found that he felt even better when he was close to Jode. If the halfling was within a few arm’s lengths, Daine felt swifter, more coordinated, and his every sense seemed sharper … almost as if he were adding Jode’s strengths to his own. And all of his abilities were enhanced yet again by the breath of the draconic eidolon. He felt as if a fire raged within him, an endless pool of energy. When he fought his first battle at Keldan Ridge, Daine didn’t know about the Mourning. He didn’t know that it was the last night of his service to Cyre. Today, he knew exactly what was at stake, and if he died in dreams, he would take a few nightmares with him.

“There it is,” Lei said. She was wearing the goggles she’d been given by Thelania, and the lenses shimmered in the moonlight. “There’s a door on the other side of the illusion.”

“I know,” Daine said. “Krazhal blew it open. Once inside, we set secondary charges so we could seal off the exit if needed. I can only assume that those blast disks were never detonated, since we made it out alive.”

“Hmm,” Lei said, adjusting the lenses on her goggles. “I’ve never much cared for explosives. It’s going to be tricky working through the illusion, but I should be able to get it open.”

“Keep watch,” he told Pierce and Jode. “We didn’t encounter any resistance going in, but obviously history isn’t going to repeat itself perfectly.” A curious thought occurred to him. “Jode, are we going to show up here? If we’d waited, would Krazhal have opened the door?”

“Anything’s possible, but it’s unlikely,” Jode said. “Essentially, we’re in your dream. Since you’re already here, and breaking in at that, there’s no reason for you to appear again.”

Daine shook his head. “Dreams.”

“Got it,” Lei said. She stepped forward, into what appeared to be rough hillside, and vanished. Daine signaled the others and made his way through the illusion.

The hallway was exactly as he remembered. Bare stone, just tall enough for a warforged juggernaut to make his way through, spheres of cold fire set at distant intervals, shedding faint illumination throughout the hall.

“I know we didn’t encounter any danger in the tunnel itself,” Daine said quietly, “but I can’t remember what came after. Jode, when we first came here, I sent you to scout ahead. What do you remember?”

“There’s a sort of barracks up ahead,” Jode said. “Empty now. I came back to report to you, and that’s all I can remember.”

“Then from this point on, we go quiet and careful. Given the presence of the warforged, we have to consider the possibility of magical countermeasures. Lei, I’ll need you watching for glyphs, blast disks, or anything else.” That would have been Krazhal’s job, he thought. I wonder how well he fared.

“Pierce, bring up the rear. If we get more space, move to the side. If you see a clean bowshot, take it.”

“So we assume all motion is hostile?” Pierce said.

“Have you forgotten the battle, Pierce? Did you see the corpses? Whoever built this place is responsible for the deaths of all those soldiers, and who knows what else?”

“Remember, it’s only a dream,” Jode said.

“And if it’s drawn from my memories, then this is our chance to finally make these bastards pay for what they did.”

Lei nodded, her expression grim. “Let’s go, then.”

She adjusted her goggles as she moved forward, and something occurred to Daine. How does she know what those goggles do? The lenses were a gift from Thelania, but Daine never saw Lei put them on while they were awake. Now they were dreaming she was wearing them, apparently to some useful effect, but if the powers of their weapons were based on their own memories, how could this work?

Daine shook his head. He had his sword and his dagger, and that was all he needed. The rest of this dreaming could go to Dolurrh, for all he cared.

They’d moved less than fifty feet down the hall when Lei raised her hand. Danger! She knelt, making a few passes over the ground, and when she stood, she had a blast disk in her hand.

One of Krazhal’s blast disks.

Daine realized-this was where the dwarf had set the charge to bring down the tunnel. He glanced back at Jode. How was this possible?

“It’s part of the environment,” Jode whispered. “You knew it would be there. I suggest we move past and let Lei reset it.”

“I’m not a sapper,” Lei said. “I can place it, but not to do maximum damage.”

“Lady Lei, I seriously doubt that it matters,” Jode said quietly. “It’s not even real. It exists only because it has a role to play, and if it’s supposed to bring down the tunnel, I suspect your skill in placement won’t be the deciding factor.”

“What if I just keep it?” Lei whispered.

“I think it’s better if we don’t find out.”

Daine nodded. “Enough. We move on. Replace the disk behind us.”

They emerged in a large chamber. As Jode had suggested, it was a barracks of sorts … a barracks for warforged. There were no beds, no tables. The warforged needed no rest. Instead, the room was littered with the tools of war. Weapon racks were largely empty, but a few swords and maces hung from the walls, along with quivers of arrows. A small forge filled the room with heat, and hammers and tongs lay scattered around it. There were no molds, nothing that would serve to create new weapons. This was simply a repair station, where warforged could remove the wear of battle.

Daine gestured. Keep moving . Doubt gnawed at the back of his mind. What if there was nothing to find? What if this place was simply an outpost for the warforged now on the battlefield? Could he and Jode have explored and left? No, he concluded. Because Krazhal and Kesht didn’t survive the night.

Lei led them through the barracks and down a hall. The smell of molten steel filled the air, mingled with another scent. Sap? Burning wood? They came to the entrance of the next chamber, and Lei stopped short in amazement.

They stood on a wide platform at the top of a flight of stairs, with at least a hundred steps leading down to the floor of the hall. The chamber was a vast sphere, with walls of polished black marble covered with lines and sigils, complex engravings that pulsed with crimson light. But it was the object in the center of the chamber that took his breath away. It was a pillar of black marble, but it was neither smooth nor uniform in shape. Rather, it looked like the trunk of an ancient tree, gnarled and twisted, with patterns of red light in place of the lines of bark. It was studded with glowing stumps, as if limbs had been severed with a perfect blade. The base of the pillar was hidden in a radiant pool. Fibrous tendrils-massive roots-rose from this pool and spread out across the floor, each terminating in a stone pod.

“It’s a creation forge,” whispered Lei. “This is what House Cannith uses to produce warforged.”

“So whoever’s running this place was using this to make the warforged army?” Daine said.

“They must be,” Lei said. “But only one who bears the Mark of Making can use a creation forge.”

“So … rogue heirs? Or was your house creating an army for its own ends?”

Lei shook her head. “It still doesn’t make sense. There’s no practical reason to produce such a diverse range of warforged. The labor and resources required to create the variety of designs we saw on the battlefield would be immense, and to what end?” She squinted down at the forge. “And the colors, the patterns … there’s something strange about this forge. I want to take a closer look.”