Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

Something was coming up through the earth below the seatt.

She had seen the madness spreading here, but if enemy forces outside had blocked all entrances, why dig underneath, and why so fast? Surely they could hold this place until everyone within perished.

Yes, all will be lost. This is written in stone. But in death, what might come if you can kill me?

Deep-Root stared into the dragon’s eyes, glistening with fire flickers like polished obsidian orbs. His blades were but slivers against an enemy of such size. The beast let out a rumble that made Wynn want to cover her ears. Deep-Root rose and backed against the dead end.

The dragon began retreating up the tunnel, its bulk too wide to turn about.

Stay here in the dark, listening and unseen at your end ... or follow me. Either way, you will die, as written in the stone of your bones. But what purpose will death be remembered for, one day to come? Choose.

Its spittle no longer flickered with small flames, and the tunnel grew dark. Only the sound of the creature’s steady retreat marked that it was still there, until it backed over the charred remains of stonewalkers. Blackened bones crackled under its clawed feet.

Wynn didn’t know what she would’ve done in Deep-Root’s place.

He took one hesitant step and then another as he followed. Once the dragon backed up to the breach into the Chamber of the Fallen, it turned about, heading up the dark tunnel’s other way.

There were too many turns in the dark where unseen side ways could be felt in the walls. Wynn had long past lost track of where she was. But each time the way branched, Deep-Root followed the scrape of the beast’s movement against the tunnel’s stone, until he stopped at the sight of flame flickering in its maw.

It turned into a wide passage that sloped steeply downward. Again he followed. A long way down, it emptied into a vast cave, and the air of the place choked him. Wynn felt suffocated, as well, for the stench rose from a large, long pool of viscous fluids that filled most of the cave’s bottom.

Soft light flickered red-orange. To one side of the cave, on a slope of rock, the dragon dripped ignited spittle that burned there well away from the large pool.

Sheath your weapons. Do not create even one spark in this place, or we perish to no purpose.

“What is this place?” Deep-Root choked out. “What is in that pool?”

I have eaten and disgorged all of this, weakening myself without true sustenance since my arrival. I am now prepared to die, if you can kill me. First, listen ... and hear them.

The dragon lifted its head, looking to the cave’s distant rear wall.

Deep-Root hesitated, but the beast merely stood waiting. He sheathed his blades and crept around the pool, never taking his eyes off the dragon. It watched him in turn. When he reached the cave’s wall, he placed a hand on its stone.

At first he barely heard anything.

Higher.

At that command, he tried to find purchase in the wall for his foot. He reached upward, and the farther he went, the more he felt—heard—the same sound of endlessly breaking stone as in the dead end.

Deep-Root stretched as high as he could, until his thick fingertips touched where the wall curved into the cave’s ceiling. The whisper gale rose to a roar in his head, as if he’d stepped into the storm’s heart.

Wynn lost all awareness in that torrent.

When it finally faded, she was looking toward the pool, but it was sideways and low, as if Deep-Root lay on the cave’s floor. She was sick with dizziness. Deep-Root moaned and pushed himself up as the leaf-wing voice came again.

They call themselves the in’Sâ’yminfiäl, the masters of frenzy. To the few who have ever escaped them and yet never have seen them, they are known as the Eaters of Silence. They have driven the peace from your people’s thoughts—and driven them mad. Nothing can stop this now.

Wynn knew of whom the dragon spoke. She’d learn of these sorcerers, once in service to the Ancient Enemy in the forgotten war. If she’d had her own voice, she could’ve asked so many questions. But she was only an observer, reliving all this through Deep-Root’s eyes and ears.

Your blades are worthless. Something greater is needed to breach my bowels, once I ignite what is left within me. And then ...

The dragon looked to the pool, and Wynn went numb.

She didn’t understand why it needed to be impaled, but it intended to somehow ignite all of the fluid it had disgorged. This place would collapse in an explosion, pulling down those who were right above, digging their way into the seatt. And she knew it would shatter this whole realm.

There is little time, for I cannot prepare all this again. Even now I fade in starvation. That is why I have made certain that what is done here is enough to reach them, no matter the cost.

Every question Wynn wanted to ask vanished as Deep-Root’s breath caught.

The way out through the range will become their way, if they take this place—and they will. It is what they seek to gain as quickly as possible, at any price.

Wynn envisioned the map she’d sketched in her journal, looking for what lay just to the north of here.

But the price to stop them is even higher. To halt those who would breach this place, all here must die by our choice ... though they would be lost just the same.

Wynn began to see the choice the dragon offered; it was no choice at all. Sacrifice an entire people to slow or cripple the enemy’s advance, but with no certainty that it would bring ultimate victory. Or wait and hope that more of the dwarves here might yet escape this place of madness, but at the cost of the enemy achieving an unstoppable advantage.

She knew the path the siege forces would secure, for she had traveled it, and then nothing could stop more of them from following. The Slip-Tooth Pass would take them into the north, unseen until too late. The very tram tunnel that she had used would lead them right to it.

Unlike the horde of undead buried by time in the plain beyond the Lhoin’na forests, nothing would stop an invasion of the living from swarming over it, even into First Glade. Perhaps that was what they were after most of all, that one place the undead couldn’t go. And then what would become of the Numan nations? Without First Glade, there would not even be a fragile sanctuary for the few who could reach it.

There is no more time. Either believe or not. If so, go and find what is needed. But if you die before it is your time, all is lost.

Wynn shrank in self-recrimination for all that she’d thought of Deep-Root in the passing season.

He turned and fled into stone.

Wynn choked for air, still immersed inside the memory.

Over and over Chuillyon prayed until the rise of Chârmun’s presence within him grew into a pure silence, as if he were alone and all that was left alive in this world—as least for one more moment.

And that moment lingered on and on ... too long.

Chuillyon clung to Chârmun’s presence as he barely cracked open his eyes.

He stood there ... alone ... staring toward the dark breach where il’Sänke had madly thrown himself to his death. Even the flickers of fire on the stone had died, leaving only trails of smoke filling the air.

Where had the creature gone? Why would it leave him alive? For an instant, he wondered if his prayer to Chârmun had affected it, but that was a foolish thought.

From the moment Hannâschi had fallen, he had barely had the wits to think or feel anything. His gaze drifted to her, lying on the floor, and then continued onward, stopping at the charred pile that had been Shâodh.

Chuillyon quickly looked away from that unbearable sight, and it shook him from complacency. Only moments before, he had been ready to face death. He walked to the hall’s end and dropped down beside Hannâschi. With a touch of his fingers, he found she still breathed weakly.