Брюс Корделл - Oath of Nerull

Ember saw Brek’s eyes widen a heartbeat before the column snapped and he tumbled into darkness. The rope jerked in her hands like a living thing. She would have lost her grip completely if it hadn’t been wound around the obelisk.

The sound of the broken stone thundering into the chasm mingled with incoherent yells from everyone. The anchored rope was taut and vibrating, and Ember could feel that it was swaying below the lip of the floor. She tied her end quickly around the tightened length of rope, then sped to the edge where Hennet knelt with the lantern. Brek swung on the end of the rope, twenty or so feet below them. The dwarf groaned.

As the ringing echoes of the crashing column finally abated, they were replaced by the sinister fluting, seductively light for all its dread melody. It emanated up from the night-haunted chasm. A miasma of fear rose with the sound and gripped Ember.

She heard the dwarf mutter a brief prayer. Then he said, straining his eyes below him, “I see…a blot of darkness. It’s moving upward.”

The fluting, too, was growing close. Ember realized then that it wasn’t an instrument at all but the unearthly, terrible voice of whatever lurked below in the darkness. It was a sound long ago bereft of life and hope. Ember’s mind became suddenly frantic.

It’s coming for all of us, she realized. And Brek is hanging down there like bait!

The dwarf struggled to pull himself up. Ember saw a black, snakelike tendril slither up from the depths to touch Brek’s boot.

“There’s something down here!” bellowed the dwarf. “Pull me up, by Moradin’s shaggy beard! Get me up!”

Ember, Hennet, and Nebin hauled madly on the rope. Fear lent a wild strength to their limbs, and with all three of them pulling, the dwarf shot up the side of the crevice. Seconds later, Brek’s groping fingers reached the crumbling edge of the floor. Ember grabbed one hand and pulled the dwarf bodily over the lip.

Something followed after him.

A sinuous arm writhed its way up from the darkness. It was dead black and coated with oily mucous. It seemed a tentacle of living night, waking from some age-long communion with the subterranean void. Three more tendrils, identical to the first, flopped up to writhe across the floor like eyeless snakes seeking prey.

Behind the tendrils came the creature, dragging itself up and out of the crevice with inhuman strength. It was a blot of oily darkness where movement never ceased, a gargantuan mass of living, constantly slithering tentacles. Half hidden by the sliding tendrils, a sac of fluid sloshed at the core, emitting a crescendo of triumphant notes.

Brek Gorunn’s massive hands pushed Ember back from the crevice. He was running, and she was running, too. They fled blindly away from the hideous piping sound. The awful music drove them in a mad dash without regard for their surroundings. The rope was left behind, along with anything else they had set down. None of that mattered. There was only death and terror behind them. By running they might hope to live.

Ember felt those things with dread certainty. She ran to save her own life. But as she caught up to Hennet and Nebin, she regained the presence of mind to match their slower pace.

Hennet still held the lantern. Shadows danced like imps across (heir path, making an ungainly pantomime with magnified arms and pumping legs. Sarcophagi and tombstones, crumbling with age, retreated on either side. Another hundred feet, and they plunged out of the vast mausoleum into a narrow tunnel.

The dread fluting ceased. Without its mental pressure, they checked their headlong flight. Ember felt as if a black fist released its hold on her stomach.

Nebin panted, “I hope we don’t have to return this way.”

Brek Gorunn, his skin uncharacteristically pale, responded, “Even if it proves the only possible escape, we’d do better to languish here. Moradin grant me strength, we woke something better left sleeping. If we leave it be, perhaps it will return to its evil slumber.”

Hennet stated, “Forewarned is forearmed. We were startled, no more. Other than fear itself, it didn’t do us any harm.”

He gripped his Golden Wand. Ember wondered if the sorcerer wasn’t drawing too much confidence from his Duel Arcane trophy.

“It didn’t hurt us because we ran too fast, genius,” said Nebin. “As my master often said, ‘It’s the tentacle you don’t see that you should fear the most.’”

Hennet frowned.

“Regardless of the creature’s true nature,” broke in Ember, “we don’t have to come back this way. We’ll deal with Sosfane and her cult in the revived temple. After that we can leave through the temple’s front door.” Nor will we be coming back this way if we lose the fight, she concluded to herself.

“Did you hear that?” interrupted Brek Gorunn.

He looked back toward the tunnel mouth that opened into the subterranean mortuary. A second of silence was followed by a distant, fluting melody. Though faint, it sent a shiver up her spine.

Brek continued, “Perhaps we should move farther along this tunnel. No need to lure that cursed thing after us with chatter.”

Ember nodded. She took the lantern back and handed it to the dwarf. Cautiously they advanced down the corridor.

Unlike the previous urn-lined corridors, this one was plain and carved directly from the surrounding stones without additional decoration. The drip of ages painted small mineral-rich stalagmites on the ceiling and long, colorful smears down the walls. The smell of damp and rot grew, and pools of water lay at their feet.

After many minutes of slow trudging through the unremarkable tunnel, Ember ventured, “What do you suppose all this was, before New Koratia was built, and before Nerull’s priests claimed it?”

“Could have been the under-portions of a ruined surface city, I suppose,” Brek offered. “The ‘Ancient City’ Nebin is so enraptured with.”

“Or the upper-portions of a subterranean city?” questioned Hennet. “I’ve heard legends about evil elves who congregate far from the sun’s reach.”

Nebin, not to be outdone, said, “A treatise I read in my master’s library hinted that these and other ruins represent some translocation of time-somewhere in the future, some terrible event destroys all life, and the ruins of civilization are buried in the deepest past.”

“That’s a thinker,” replied Hennet.

Brek gave the gnome a bemused look.

Ember smiled and said, “That sounds a little far-fetched. What treatise was this, and what learned scholar was its author, Nebin?”

The gnome harrumphed and said nothing. Hennet and Ember shared a smile.

The advancing light of the lantern revealed a branch in the tunnel ahead, a Yleading to left and right.

“Which way?” inquired Ember.

The dwarf stood quiet, looking and sniffing into each dark opening, neither of which seemed particularly different from the other in Ember’s estimation. The dwarf puzzled, pulling thoughtfully on his beard, and looked for some sign or telltale rune.

Finally, Brek Gorunn said, “We should go right. If we have to retrace our route, it pays to be consistent—we should go right at every branch. Plus, I don’t like the smell to the left. It somehow puts me in mind of that flute player.”

That was enough for Ember. They took the right-hand passage. By this time, the damp was so extreme that a thin layer of pooled, stagnant water formed a continuous slurry on the muddy floor. Ember promised to buy herself boots to keep in her pack for just such occasions—her order preferred open-toed sandals. Sandals are not suited for catacomb trekking, she thought.

“I hope the water doesn’t keep rising,” commented Nebin.

Ember realized that because of his stature, he would be affected more than the others. Still, she’d rather be short than feel the muddy sludge squeezing between her toes with every step.