Steven Montano: Crown of Ash

Cold shadows filled t he building. Ronan lit a flare, but even that did little to combat the darkness.

Old machines l ittered an underground industrial graveyard. The light from the door behind them was muted, stifled by the black interior.

Jade couldn’t send her spirit ahead. Kane wasn’t surprised: he knew T he Revengers had their ways to combat mages. He only hoped she’d be able to call on it again when it mattered.

The air smelled like the underside of a car. T he floor was covered in frozen sludge pools and slicks of ice grease. Shell casings, iron filings and shattered steel were everywhere.

They found a closed trap door in the floor. Ronan’s flare revealed footsteps in the sticky f ilm on the ground and debris that had been pushed aside. A small group had recently passed through the area.

The y opened the door and found a n iron ladder that led straight down into metal darkness. Kane took the lead and descended the ladder two rungs at a time. His heart hammered, and his breaths were fast. Tension mounted in his arms.

We hear you

God damn it, not now.

We hear you know you feel the lust the pain in your heart in your blood your soul the pain that stabbing hurt the want the desire blood your blood her blood hers hers yes hers

Kane came to ground in a half-completed basement. He stepped away from the ladder and punched the steel wall, hard. P ain shot down his arm, and b lood ran from the broken skin on his knuckles. H is eyes regained their focus. After a moment the voices were unintelligible again, just faint whispers at the edge of his thoughts.

Pipe junctions issued steam jets and dripped semi-petrified drops of greasy water. Yellow bulbs lit the area the color of old bones. They hear d a boiler somewhere nearby, and the air smelled like a urinal.

They went just a few feet away from the ladder when they came across a section of wall that had been ripped open by some powerful force. A series of natural tunnels made of dark shale waited on the other side of the hole. Drifts of ebon dust fell across the low and n arrow passage. They saw m urky blue light in the distance, a glow the color of icy milk.

“What the hell? ” Ronan said.

“Maur is tired of strange shit like this.”

“You and me both, pal,” Kane echoed.

“We must be close,” Jade said. “My spirit is going crazy from all of the thaumaturgic activity coming from down there.”

Kane looked down the tunnel. He felt like they were nearing an end. For some reason, he didn’t want to step through. He closed his eyes for a moment, and he saw Ekko. His heart ached.

Without a nother word, Kane entered the tunnel.

He felt like he’d st epped into a freezer. The stone underfoot cracked like brittle ice. He tasted salt and the tang of frozen blood. Everything was so still he was almost afraid to move, for fear that the tunnels would collapse at his touch.

T hey follow ed the source of the light. The ice-wreathed walls glowed like a distant moon. Tiny cracks in the walls held glittering blood crystals like small red diamonds.

Kane’s skin was raw with cold, and his breaths frost ed as they left his aching throat. He shive red and pulled his dirty armor coat tight er around his body. He shook his gun to dislodge the ice shards in the barrel.

The tunnel emptied into a dark and massive chamber that looked like it had been the sight of a recent bombing. The walls were scorched and twisted. Shadows swam against the stone.

A ring of torches illuminated a sharp pillar made of monstrous dark ice skulls. Kane saw the bones of horned things, flat-headed beasts, creatures with tusks and snouts. He recognized some of the skulls as those of Gorgoloth or Vuul, but many were foreign to him, forgotten creatures from other worlds.

Each skull had been carefully packed and sealed in to place with some reflective organic glaze. The smoothed exterior of the ten-foottall structure flickered with dirty yellow light. There were no exi ts from the room except for a dark and mist-filled pit that somehow held the pillar aloft. T he bone edif ice drifted at the center of that purple and b lack morass of shadow fumes. Deep sounds issued from the pit like rhythmic metal pounding.

“Drop your guns!” Rake shouted. “Or we’ll drop your girl.”

The Revengers stood on the other side of the obelisk, at the far end of the chamber. Kane recognized Rake, the little — s een leader of T he Revengers and the man in charge of Black Scar. He was accompanied b y a number of other Revengers, among them Geist, his half-Doj henchman; a dark-haired wo man with tattoos on her face and arms; and Burke, the false Burke, supposedly a vampire named Krage, but his semblance to the Burke they’d seen just minutes before was almost exact, save for the fact that this Burke was unscarred.

A pair of Scarecrows h e ld a chain attached to a massive Talon beast ’s neck and six arms. The brutish creature scrambled against its bonds and growled noisily. It desperately wanted to get at Kane and the others.

Cross was there, unconscious and strapped to one of the Scarecrow ’ s backs like he was a baby in a papoose.

And t hey saw Danica… what had once been Danica.

“Black!” Ronan shouted.

“What have you done to her?!” Maur shouted.

Kane looked at her in horror. T he transformation that had been forced on her was stark. Blood stained the side of her leather armor. Her hair had gone almost white, and her glazed eyes glowed like sparkling ice. Her flesh was frosted. She looked something like the angel avatars the team had faced in the Bonespire, th os e undead machinations that Korva had used to try and capture Soulrazor, but in lieu of angel’s wings Danica had been given a n arcanemechanical arm, an animated appendage of blood-colored steel and iron. The flesh was visibly raw where the limb had been fus ed to her shoulder.

C rackling energies whirled in her grip. Drops of caustic fire fell from her golem fingers and turned the ground white.

“She’s better now,” Rake said with a shrug. He was so casual about the situation, like he was getting ready for a friendly game of cards. “We had to rip her spirit away, then give it back to her. It was the only way to make her a suitable sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice…” Kane said.

Oh, shit.

“ This nice little tower of skulls here generates a portal,” Rake said. “ It belongs to the Shadow Lords, t he mages who breached the hole and found a way into the Whisperlands. After we pass through, we’ll use Cro ss as a tool to track down the O belisk of Dreams, and then we’ll use Danica to destroy it. ” He paused, tapped a fingerless glove against his lips, and smiled. “Of course, you won’t be there…”

Black’s eyes flashed with hot light. The metal burned against her skin. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.

“Jade!” Kane shouted.

One of the Revengers, the dark-skinned and rail-thin woman, stepped forward. Kane saw her eyes flash, and he realized she was what interfered with their magic. She was a Fade.

He saw Jade’s face, saw her panic as she failed to call her spirit. H e grabbed her and threw them both to the ground.

Left, quick! a voice shouted in his head.

“Left!” he shouted.

Ronan and Maur followed them. All four barely dodged a barrage of steaming razors. Danica’s angry ghost folded into bleeding fog.

The Revengers loosed their weapons, and the Scarecrows leveled their cannons.

“Ronan, ” Kane shouted. “K ill that bitch!”

Ronan didn’t hesitate. Even as Revenger assault rifles and Scarecrow 20mm cannons took aim, Ronan drew a kukri, dove forward, and used the full force of his body to cast the weapon through the air. He landed hard on the ground just as the blade punched through the Fade’s skull and snapp ed her head backwards.