Chapter 36: The Last Letter.
Xephos' feet fell back onto the hard metal floor as he stepped through the portal. He emerged and the cool air of the desert night was replaced by the heated breath of the nether. Sweat was breaking upon his brow as he stepped away from the portal to Knight Peculier's side as Honeydew stepped from the purple surface of the gateway. The heat recognised, Xephos cast about the room that they'd stepped into, only to find it was not the same as the one they'd left behind when going through the portal before.
Two of the passages that had stood open were now blocked. The left, which they'd come through prior, was now sealed by a thick sheet of magma that seemed to be melting through the passage ceiling and through the floor, loops of the liquid spilling across the floor, harding to a deep red crust. The large opening that had stood across from the portal had once dropped away into the huge cavern of the Nether, a gargantuan chain had once spread from it across a seething lake of magma to another stronghold of iron set into the high cave walls. Now the opening was filled with sand, which plugged it tight, and no way through could be found.
"Is this the same place that we were in last time?" Xephos asked as he stared around the dim room, lit only by the portal and gout of molten rock. The only way out of the room seemed to be a passage to the right of the portal.
"The ways are blocked." Peculier said.
"What could have caused this?" Honeydew said, hand on his sword pommel as though in suspicion that they may be ambushed.
"I don't know." Xephos answered flatly. He stepped cautiously over towards the right passage. "There is a way over here." Xephos was suddenly thrown into the mound of sand by an explosion that rocked the entire room. Honeydew cried out as he fell to the floor, and then the motion stopped.
"I think that's what may have caused the ways to be blocked." Honeydew exclaimed. "What did that?" as he spoke another smaller tremor rocked the facility, though not enough to send them to the floor.
"We need to find a way out of here!" Xephos yelled.
"This place is becoming unstable!" Peculier cried out, starting for the passage before Xephos. "We must find another portal, quickly!"
"Down here." Xephos called to Honeydew as he led the way down the dimly lit corridor, their pace brisk yet cautious in anticipation of another blast rocking the passageway. "Look here," he said, stopping before a hole in the floor, a ladder of iron rungs leading down the metal shaft's length. "there's a sign. It says: "Tube access to supply rail."."
"Does the passage go on?" Honeydew asked from the rear.
"No." Xephos said as he was halfway inside the shaft. "Looks like this is the only way forward." the others followed Xephos down the claustrophobic ladder, heat baking them as they descended. "It looks like there's a railway below!" Xephos called up as he looked below him where from the foot of the shaft he could see the edge of a rail. A violent force then seized the earth again and shook them within the shaft, loud rumblings crashing about them as the trio clung white-knuckled to the ladder until the madness subsided, where they made progress all the more quickly and cautiously. Xephos reached the floor, hands slick with sweat from the heat. He looked up and down the long passage he stood in. A narrow railway ran along it in both directions, the left ended after twenty yards in a pile of rubble that had crashed through the ceiling, whereas the right stretched on for seemingly an eternity, the length lit by glowstone lamps set into the walls. Peculier stepped off the ladder behind Xephos, and was followed by Honeydew soon after, both looking shaken. Xephos pondered for a moment what he looked like, so long he'd been without an examination of his reflection.
"Only one way to go. Come along." Peculier said in a voice so flat it was equal parts mystifying and terrifying, for here was a man who'd devoted his entire existence and every iota of it to his cause, a crusade that would not be easily quelled. Peculier led the way along the railway, a single occasional explosion sent them careening into the right wall with a great sound. The monotony of the passage soon ended in what appeared to be a station aside the railway, the rail split into a loading track where half a dozen carts sat idle on the rail, untoppled by the explosions. Mounted on the wall next to the station another sign was mounted to the solid metal. Peculier stood reading it as Xephos spoke it's words aloud.
""Freight Rail to NCS-88 Roller-coaster Access Chamber"." he read.
"Roller-coaster? What?" Honeydew said, perplexed.
"Do you have any idea what this could mean?" Xephos asked Peculier. He stood staring at the rail-carts, his face unreadable.
"I only know of one roller-coaster." he said. "And if as I suspect there is a portal that will take us there, we shall be in luck indeed."
Xephos racked his memory, and was then able to recall at one time seeing a roller-coaster of wood as he and Honeydew had stumbled into the Carnivale del Banjo the first time. "Do you mean the one outside Verigan's Hold?" he said. "At the Carnival?" Peculier looked at him with dark eyes and looked as though he meant to speak when a small tremor shook the passage, causing the carts to rattle against each other.
"Get in the carts." he said. "Let's go. We can use them to travel the rails faster." he stepped over to where the loading rails met the main rail. A long lever jutted from the floor beside the junction. Peculier grasped this and heaved at it, where with a whirring sound the rails all along the passageway lit up with the dull red glow of redstone machinery. "These powered rails will get us there faster than we can run." Peculier said. Neither Xephos found himself unwilling to get into the carts with the possibility of colliding with and debris further down the track, when from behind them the became aware of a distant rumbling. The floor began to shake as the explosions grew nearer, coming from down the railway and growing in power as they charged towards them, echoing down the metal tunnel.
"Get in the carts." Xephos said as they ground began to buck. "Hurry!" he yelled running to the foremost cart, pushing it out of the loading rail and vaulting into it as the redstone rails suddenly swept him away. Landing lightly inside the cart, Xephos turned to see Peculier and Honeydew following his example, the passage behind them shaking more violently as their carts outran the explosions. Turning to face the front of the cart, he faced the passage, warm air flying through his dense hair as the hurtled along at the speed of a stallion. The weight of the cart stopped it from being thrown from the rails when a quake suddenly erupted, in spite of rocking heavily from side to side. The lights flashed by undaunted as Xephos sat crouched in the speeding cart, hurtling towards what would hopefully take them from this realm of heat and iron. Looking back to see that Peculier and Honeydew were keeping up, Xephos turned back to the front just as the floor gave away beneath him. Just as he was about to cry out as he fell into the chasm of molten rock far below, he saw that while the floor had given away the rails still stretched over the gap, equalling some ten yards at most. He hardly had time to comprehend this and hear Peculier's cries of surprise when the track suddenly veered around a bend to the right, then turning left again. Xephos squinted against the wind in his face and saw ahead of him a great hole had been burned through ceiling and floor of the tunnel, falling away into the depths below. Xephos didn't have time to do anything before he saw that the rail had been burned away with it, and he sped over the edge of the gaping hole in the floor. His fall was brief, as below the tunnel were several more rooms and passages on top of one and other, and the hole had burned through the floors and ceilings of these too. His cart sailed through the air and crashed onto a ledge twelve yards on the other side of the hole and two stories below where the rail had stopped.
Sparks flew wildly as the cart fell onto it's side, Xephos spilling out and rolling across the floor as it crashed into the far wall of the small room he'd landed in, coming to a stop feet from the deep hole.
"Look out! Hole!" he cried up to the floors above. The hole seemed to have began far above and had bored either up or down through many stories above and below them. Moments later another cart flew over the edge of the track, landing on the metal floor away from Xephos, bouncing off it's wheels and smashing into Xephos' cart beside the wall. Peculier was just crawling from the wreckage when Honeydew came screaming over the gap. He leapt from the cart in midair and landed with a clumsy roll as his cart sped into the wall where Peculier had leapt away from seconds before.
"Oh Jebus." Honeydew cursed as he got to his feet, the sound of explosions still echoing in the background. "Peculier are you alright?"
"I am fine." he answered.
The room was dark, the only light came through the immense hole in the ceiling, and by that light Xephos saw that the three of them were not alone in the room. He gave a start as he saw things moving in the darkness, and soon he heard a low snuffling sound that he recognised. Looking across at Honeydew, Xephos saw the dwarf frozen, listening, looking into the shadows that his dwarven eyes could more easily make sense of.
"Pigmen?!" Xephos called, both a warning and a question.
"Pigmen!" Honeydew confirmed as Xephos stepped closer to him. "Peculier, get over here!" Peculier wasted no time in drawing his sword and leaping over to them on the edge of the hole, both with swords already drawn. The circling shapes began to move closer to the light, the hairy bulk of their monstrous bodies and faces showing them for what they were, but something was different. Here and there a patch of skin was missing, sometimes as deep as the bone, a few lacked hands or half of the skin on their faces, and they walked with the senseless monotony of the undead.
"I don't think these are normal pigmen." Peculier said. "They look like zombie pigmen."
"We don't need to worry, we haven't hurt them. They won't attack us if we don't hurt them." Xephos said slowly, trying to keep track of the shapes moving closer. The undead pigmen did not seem to be aggressive at the moment, and kept mostly to the dark, their numbers could be anywhere between five and twenty.
"No, we did hurt them." Honeydew said, looking through the dark to something only a dwarf could see in the darkness. "One of the carts. It's crashed into one of them. It's dead."
"Shit." Xephos said quietly. He looked over his shoulder. They were backed up against the hole, which was wider than the room's walls, leaving them nowhere to go. The gap was too far to jump, and it dropped into a sea of magma some two hundred yards below after the bottom floor. Xephos looked back at the pigmen, now moving further out from the shadows, some grasping mean looking cleavers of crude make. "Why aren't they attacking?" he asked. An explosion some way off shook the room's floor.
"Maybe because we didn't hit them personally they won't-" Honeydew began, when he was cut off by a squeal from one of the pigmen as it stepped forward into the light, fully revealing it's total horrific image; a beast half man and half boar, looking as though it had been butchered and left to rot. The creatures surrounding it then came forward as one, a stampede of maybe ten brutes rushing towards them. Xephos, Honeydew and Peculier prepare to meet them when a massive tremor surged through the complex, the largest they'd felt. The metal floors bucked as though living and threw the three backwards over the gap, the pigman vanguard in tow as they flew across the gap. Xephos fell backwards before landing heavily on the floor of a room one floor below and across from where they'd stood, Honeydew bounced backwards with a grunt as he landed, while Peculier was already rolling onto his feet, estoc raised. The fist pigman that landed stumbled, and Peculier put his thin blade through a hole in it's skull where an empty eye socket gazed out of. The beast squealed and fell backwards over the edge of the precipice. Xephos was struggling to find his feet as others landed, the rest missing the gap and falling towards the hot lake below. One pigman stepped towards him with cleaver raised to hack him apart, Xephos raised his arm over his head when an axe came down into the pigman's shoulder. The beast snarled as Honeydew stepped between them, wrenching his axe free as he stabbed with his sword, held in his other hand, piercing the chest of the pigman. It fell away into the void as the dwarf turned to help his friend to his feet.
"Come on, I can't always be the one saving you." Honeydew said as he heaved him up with an outstretched hand. He hardly had time to cry out as a thick arm reached up from below the rim of the hole and grabbed his ankle, pulling him to the ground. The pigman hung from the edge of the platform where it had landed and began to pull Honeydew towards him and the edge. Honeydew snarled and began stamping at the great rotting boar's head with his free boot. Xephos stepped forward and with a sweep of his sabre severed both of the pigman's hands. It fell away from him, reeling in the air to fade to a pinprick as it splashed into the magma.
"What was that you were just saying?" Xephos panted. He looked up to see Peculier jump away from a pigman's hack and spiring forwards again in agility that he had not had when the two had first met him. Peculier stabbed to bury his sword up to it's hilt in the chest of the beast, pushing forwards until the body fell over the lip of the seared hole, pulling his sword back as it toppled away.
"By Hari's beard." he grunted, kneading his back. "That was not welcome."
"We're alive, don't complain." Xephos said.
"Where are we?" he asked. Looking around, Xephos could see that they now stood in a long, wide tunnel, many railways abreast running the length of the passage.
"Do you think this could lead to where we wanted to go?" Honeydew asked. "The roller-coaster portal, I mean." a slight booming shook the walls slightly
"This room is wide enough for us to get around the hole. I think we should continue in the direction that we were heading when we were on the carts." Peculier stated. Xephos heard another boom some ways off, then another as the floor shook harder.
"Maybe we should try to get back up to where we were going." Honeydew suggested. The quakes were becoming almost constant now, and they felt like they were building, or coming closer.
"Okay, the level of explosions is increasing." Xephos said quickly as the rumble grew around them. "I don't want to worry you, but we should probably get moving!" he yelled.
Peculier looked as though he had just realised that standing now was like trying to stand on a wagon going down a rutted road. "Make for the end of the tunnel!" he yelled, starting around the rim of the hole, the rumbling building. Honeydew and Xephos looked at each other as they went after him, paces growing longer and quicker as the tunnel began to toss more angrily.
"I don't think hanging around here is a very good idea!" Honeydew said. They ran on down the passage, following the rails as the facility began to fall away around them one small piece at a time as they ran, the bore hole far behind them. Peculier was maintaining the lead, a miraculous feat to Xephos, who could remember having to wait for the old man before, and he ran hard. The floor was now bucking wildly, and they would surely have fallen if they'd been standing, for the floor was tilting and twisting any way the tremors forced it, when Peculier cried out, and looking ahead there came a doorway of familiar purple of light down the far end of the corridor. They were now shrouded in dimness as glowstones began falling from their braces, shattering and spreading pebbles of light onto the floor where they bounced like shrapnel in the quake. Peculier picked up his pace as they made desperate way for the portal, closing the distance between themselves and it when the building around them gave a colossal groan and was suddenly racked by a quake as large as that which sent them over the edge of the pit. The shaking did not subside, and with every footfall the three nearly fell onto the hard ground. The floor itself did not seem to be faring well, with thick splits forming in the metal as they bounded over them, legs aching and faces hot. The portal was approaching, a great monolith of dark stone. It seemed to not be in any danger of toppling in the growing quakes, moving with the floor and never leaving it. They were almost upon it when with a great wrenching the wall to their right slowly peeled away from the building, screeching as it fell back from them and towards the magma. In the ground too great chasms opened like thirsty lips, through which Xephos could see the floors below them falling away into the lake of fire under them. With a great leap he crossed one and saw the portal, not ten yards away.
"We're nearly out!" he yelled. Peculier reached the surface first, jumping mightily over the last two yards and sliding through the light. Honeydew and Xephos saved no time for courtesy with the ground opening before and behind them, and did not wait for one and other. Xephos gave a long leap as Honeydew dived headlong into the portal, both passing into the rippling light in the same breath, the hungry void swallowing them as the building began to crack and shatter. They had long disappeared when the facility gave out and slipped, grating from cliffs and through the air where it landed in the lustful magma, where the molten rock swallowed it, taking the portal with it.
". . .Where. . .the hell. . .are we now. . ?" Xephos panted. He was crouched on his hands and knees, back facing the portal which they'd exited from. Honeydew lay supine beside him, staring up at the stone ceiling above them while Peculier sat with his back to the wall of the room they sat within.
". . .We must be somewhere. . .under the roller-coaster. . ." Peculier puffed. The room was near pitch black, and would have been if not for the light of the portal behind them. They were sprawled within what appeared to be a large alcove cut into stone for the portal to rest, but it seemed that it had been boarded up some time ago by the planks that covered the entryway.
"Right." Honeydew sighed, making a small effort to roll over and stand, but giving up halfway. "I guess we have to hack our way through the boards." he added.
"Yeah." Xephos slowly began to get to his feet, legs shaking from exhaustion. "It looks like someone's tried to hide this." he said, still short of breath.
"The Carnival you mean?" Honeydew successfully rolled over this time. "Do you think they were actually in cahoots with the Cult of Israphel this whole time, and had this portal all the time?"
"It's equally likely that they found wherever we are and just boarded it up, wanting to forget it existed. They probably had no idea what it was, except Nubescu. She seemed to have some idea of things." Xephos rested his arm against the boards, leaning against them to test the weight. They creaked but did not give way. "These boards seem pretty old, it won't take long to chop a way through. Honeydew." he added, resulting in a groan from the dwarf as he reluctantly pulled himself to his feet. The portal behind them gave a strangled sigh and the purple light winked out, flooding them in dark.
"Oh! What happened!? Peculier?" Xephos called, spinning around.
"I should think that the portal this one is linked to in the Nether has fallen." Peculier's voice came from beside Xephos, making him jump. "The connection has been severed between them."
"Well we'd better get through this barricade." Xephos turned to Honeydew. Some little light was coming through the cracks at the foot of the door, lightly illuminating the tall dwarf's boots. "Honeydew, can you-" before he could finish there came the thudding of Honeydew's axe hacking into the wooden boards. There was the sound of tearing fabric as he swung again, Xephos and Peculier standing back as the axe-falls tore through a wallhanging on the other side of the boardings, an attempt to further mask the presence of the portal. Dim light reached out and touched a dusty finger to Honeydew's face as he continued to swing away, the gap growing larger and wider until it was wide enough to pass through.
Parting the savaged hanging, Xephos stepped through the ragged hole and into the other room, Peculier and then Honeydew followed. It seemed to have been repurposed by the carnival folk, once it would have been similar to the control room in the Skyhold, for set into the walls were the glass-screened boxes and metal panels of Precursor technology. But it had seemed as though as much effort as possible had been made to cover their presence, with many plain wall-hangings covering as much as was possible, making the room resemble a patchwork quilt. Otherwise, the room was plain, with stone floor walls and ceiling, lit dimly by a single glowstone lamp, casting a honey coloured glow about the room. It indeed seemed that the room was underground, confirming Peculier's suspicions.
"What is this?" Honeydew said as he stood before a large curtain against the wall right from the portal alcove. "There's a sign here that reads: "Nubescu's room for the powdering of my face."." he read, looking up a wooden sign above the curtain, the words written in thick black characters. "It's weird reading it without her accent." Honeydew added, making a surprisingly accurate attempt at the voodoo lady's croaking voice.
"Is there a room here then?" Xephos asked, walking up and pushing at the curtain. When his hand did not meet a wall he pulled it aside and let the weak light sweep into the dusty room. The room was hardly bigger than the alcove they had just left, and appeared to be Madame Nubescu's quarters. There was no light save what they let enter through the open curtain, which showed a small bed across one side of the room with a large chest at it's foot and a small table beside it's head, and a large bookshelf taking up nearly the entire other wall of the room. The conditions were all in all cramped, and now covered in dust of abandonment.
"This is where she lived?" Honeydew looked into the dark room. "Banjo doesn't treat her well at all." he added gravely.
"I'll bet he got her to write that sign above the door as some joke." Xephos said as he let the curtain fall, stepping back into the main room. He paced across the room to the alcove where the portal stood empty. "So this is the roller-coaster outside Verigan's? Are we underneath it? Underground? Were the Cult using this as a means of transportation even when the Carnival was occupying here?" he turned to Peculier. "You don't have any idea where we could be?" he said thoughtfully.
"I'm afraid not. I can only trust that this was the portal to the roller-coaster and not by coincidence some other hideout of the carnival folk." Peculier had his helm under his arm, as though ready to put it on at any moment.
"So it's likely that this is the one at the roller-coaster then." Xephos said. "We should work on finding our way out of here and see just where it is we are."
"How will we get out?" Honeydew asked, giving a cough from the dust.
Xephos crossed over to the wall opposite the entrance to Nubescu's alcove where two doors stood, firmly shut. "We'll just have to follow wherever these door leads, I suppose." he said, pushing the thick wooden doors apart. They squealed with age and lack of use, opening to a larger room similar to the other. It was lit by two lamps of glowstone that left the corners dark. Precursor machinations were set into walls and more draperies hung over them, some moth-eaten and torn. Xephos walked over to one of a set of heavy tables that dominated the room. Their surfaces were gouged and chairs were like as not to be thrown halfway across the room than at the tables. Another door stood set into the same wall as the one they'd entered through at the other end of the room near a large bookshelf and what seemed to be a pile of wooden scenery cutouts leaned against a wall.
"Where are we now?" Peculier asked as he wandered deeper into the room.
"I think this place served as a storage room or a dining area." Honeydew suggested as he investigated the corners of the room. "Oh, hello!" he cried. Xephos turned to face him as the dwarf hefted a small chest onto the first table. "Look what I found!" Honeydew spun the chest around, where embossed on the lid were words printed in a curved cursive.
""Bruno's Secret Stash."." Xephos read. "Not very secret, is it?"
"I wonder what's inside." Honeydew grinned, spinning the box back to face him and opened it. "Not even locked." Xephos walked casually around the table to see what lay within the chest as Honeydew lay the lid back. "Look." Honeydew said, picking up a piece of paper and lifting it to his eyes so he could read the thick crude letters. ""No Babies." A message from Bruno?" he laughed, tossing the paper aside. "Fuck you, Bruno."
"What's in here?" asked Xephos as Honeydew unceremoniously overturned the box, it's contents spilling over the table with a loud thud. Out rolled a few stale biscuits, looking too ancient for consumption, and half a dozen pieces of pink cloth.
Xephos examined one of the pieces of cloth, spreading it out on the table-top."Oh gods. . .please don't be-" he began when Honeydew cut him off with a loud shriek of laughter that brought Peculier running from the other side of the room.
"They're his pants!" Honeydew roared. "His fucking underwear!" he leaned against the table in a fit of laughter, pointing to the spread out pair of tight shorts identical to the ones that they'd seen Bruno wearing both times they'd encountered the brute. "I can't. . ." he gasped.
"Wait, what's this?" Xephos said as Honeydew continued to border on asphyxiation. In the dust atop the table he saw something pressing it's image into the dust as though he could only see the imprint and not the object itself. Xephos reached out and as his fingers drew near the long groove in the dust they met something resisting them. The jolt of meeting his fingers pushed whatever it was along the table slightly, dragging a gouge in the dust. "There's something here!" he said, fumbling for whatever lay there, invisible. His hand came around a solid shaft that felt of wood, but he saw nothing. Cautiously he lifted it. The object had some heavy head at the other end and he lifted it, running his hand all over the length of the object, feeling it's shape. "Gods, Honeydew. . ." he said, staring at what he was unable to see. "Honeydew!" he yelled slapping the still immobilised dwarf across the back of his head. Honeydew looked up at him, a hurt expression on his face.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Look at this." Xephos said. He swung the invisible object and slammed the head into the table, the heavy beak stabbing through the boards, leaving a deep hole visible as Xephos let it stand. "It's an invisible pickaxe." he said.
"An invisible-" Honeydew said for a moment, confused, then his eyes widened in rage. "Oh my gods that's how he cheated! That son of a. . . Oh, I'm furious." Honeydew fumbled out, eventually finding the shaft of the charmed pick, wrenching it free. "Who's the weak babby now?" he yelled, dropping the pick back onto the table. "I knew something was rigged in that competition. We fucking called it."
"I knew there was something." Xephos agreed. "There's no way he could've beaten you."
"What are you two talking about?" Peculier asked.
"We told you about the first time we met the carnival folk ages ago, remember?" Xephos said. "We suspected that Bruno was cheating in the Test of Strength, and it seems that he was." Honeydew listened, gave a nod of approval and turned his attention to the pile of Bruno's underwear. He took a pair from the pile and began to pull it over his boots. "What are you doing?" Xephos asked.
"Call it a trophy." Honeydew said, pulling the pair of pants up around his waist, They were stretched to the stitches around his trousers and made the dwarf look utterly ridiculous.
"That doesn't look very heroic." Peculier commented blankly as Honeydew proudly placed his hands on his hips.
"How is it?" Honeydew asked. "Be honest."
"It suits you." Xephos laughed.
"Heroes, we should continue." Peculier interjected. "And we should try to avoid distractions in the next rooms." he added in a slightly hard tone.
"Gods, you're right." Honeydew blinked. "Sorry Peculier, this door was it?" he said, walking across the dim room to the other door.
"Yes, you're right let's get the hell out of here." Xephos agreed, following Honeydew to the door. It opened to a ladder that reached up some fifteen yards to another room. They climbed swiftly, now eager to reach the outside and discover just where they were. The room at the top of the ladder was small and on plain stone save one wall of wooden paneling that looked far more permanent than what had block off the alcove.
"There's nothing up here." Honeydew sighed, looking about the dark room as Peculier crawled out of the tube. Xephos walked over to the wooden wall, searching for a doorway, when where the wall met another on the right he found a large stone circle set into the wall, traced with metal.
"Wait, there's a button over here." he called to Honeydew.
"Oh? Well press it then!" Honeydew replied. Xephos' hand hovered cautiously over the circle, then he pushed the button firmly into the wall, where it rested with a click. For a while nothing happened, and Xephos went to press it again when the entire wooden wall gave a shift and began to sink slowly into the floor, opening the way into the room beyond.
"Where the hell are we now?" Xephos said, taking a cautious step into the room, lit only by the glowstone from the ceiling hanging above the ladder. It was a wide room, filled with colourful curtains and drapes hanging from the ceiling in tatters.
"It's a bit dark, isn't it?" Honeydew commented.
All about the room were chests and int the center was a large black cauldron. Xephos stopped a step into the room. It felt familiar, but of equal importance was the fact that the floor, of colourful carpets, was covered in a thin bed of sand.
"Oh gods." Xephos breathed, staring at the cauldron in the center of the room. "This is Nubescu's old room where she told our fortunes." he looked over at Honeydew.
"Gods, you're right. It's the room from before." Honeydew walked across to the cauldron. "She charged us almightily to have our fortunes read."
"Honeydew, there's sand here as well." Xephos added. He was now moving to the far corner of the room on the right, where if memory served him well was the way they'd entered the chamber weeks ago. Only now the ladder-way was filled with sand a foot deep, seeming to slowly drop from the trapdoor that was above it.
"Sand? Uh oh." Honeydew breathed.
"We need to get to the surface, now." Peculier urged. "Come now, up the ladder!" he said, all but an order, walking quickly over to the alcove that the ladders leading to the surface were within. Honeydew and Xephos followed him to the alcove, looking up at the trapdoor above.
"This sand," Honeydew said, looking at the runnels of sand creeping through the cracks under the trapdoor. "please don't mean what I think it means."
"Come on." Xephos started up the ladder. "We need to get the map to Adaephon. That was our quest." he didn't think about the sand as he climbed. He did not want to think about why it could be creeping through the trapdoor. Reaching the trapdoor, Xephos tried to push it open, but a great weight bore down upon it. Heaving, he managed to open the trapdoor a crack, and as he did so a stream of sand poured through and fell past him. Heaving again he pushed the gap wider, and the trickle turned into a torrent, with great steams of hot sand washing over him as he swung the trapdoor wide open. The sand swept past him and onto Honeydew and Peculier below him as he held onto the ladder in the flood-tide. As the flow stopped, Xephos looked up and saw all around the mouth of the trapdoor two feet of yellow sand. Xephos scrambled feverishly out of the hole and up onto the sand, and when he looked up the sight was worse than he could have believed possible.
Honeydew and Peculier were soon crawling out of the hole too, a dark bore in a plain of sand. They looked up and saw what lay before them and were terrified by it. Sand lay everywhere, thick swathes of it covered as far as they could see, from the carnival grounds to up over the hill that led to Verigan's Hold. From beyond The Wall, now toppled and buried under great dunes, there reached great arcs of sandstone, higher than the tallest power of Verigan's reaching over their heads and over the mountain behind them, the carved skull now looking as though it had been weathered by one hundred years of age. The worst of all of it was the Hold itself. Half buried in it's entirety, one tower was lay broken somewhere under the dune that now sat atop the keep. The front wall was smothered by the sand, and from the foot of the hill that they looked up at it from the path leading to the castle was invisible under the drifts. The Sands had taken the hold, and The Wall was broken.
"Jebus fucking christ." Xephos breathed, looking up at the castle, aghast as a dry breeze blew past them. "It's fallen. The Wall is down."
"Verigan's Hold. . ." Peculier groaned.
"It's all covered in sand and shit!" Honeydew cried. "Is it too late then? Have we been too fucking slow!? Is it done!?"
"It's the Sands, they've. . ." Peculier continued to speak with a tremble. He then looked up with a look of desperate resolve. "Adaephon!" he cried. "We need to find Adaephon! Gods please allow him to still live."
"Alright." Xephos said, still awestruck by the fury of the unchained desert. "We need to get into the castle. Come on!" he did not look back when he started off at a run up the hill to Verigan's Hold. Running uphill through sand left him tired by the time he got to halfway but he would not allow himself to stop until he reached the gates, covered by the flanks of the dune that engulfed the castle walls. Honeydew and Peculier were not even a moment behind him.
"We need to get inside." Peculier said.
"We can get over the wall by climbing the dune." Honeydew suggested. "Do you know where Adaephon would be in a case like this?" he asked. Peculier gave no answer as he doubled back to get to the foot of the dune and climb over the wall.
"We just need to get into the keep." Xephos said as he turned to follow Honeydew. "And take off those goddamned pants!" he snapped after noticing that Honeydew was still wearing Bruno's tiny pink underwear. Honeydew grabbed them by the crotch and ripped them off as he ran after Peculier, leaving them to the sands.
The dune brought them up over the wall and down into the courtyard of Verigan's Hold, which was now filled like a bowl with sand; the entire ground floor was submerged, with the sand coming to the foot of the second floor windows. Not stopping his pace, Xephos ran over to the right-most window and drew his axe.
"It's a shame about the window but this in necessary." he said as he shattered the window with a toss of the axe's heavy head. "We're in a hurry!" he knocked away the long knives of glass that remained before stepping through and making a short drop onto the mezzanine floor within the keep, with Honeydew and Peculier followed him inside.
"This place used to be in need of some love, but now it's beyond saving." Honeydew said. From under where they stood on the mezzanine a drift of sand spread across the floor where it had smashed through the window and doors, sweeping the large table that sat in middle of the room into the back wall. The large wall hanging depicting the Crimson Cross of the Templars was in shreds and barely hanging from the wall, a forlorn metaphor for the state of all that the Wall had for.
"Where is Adaephon?" Xephos asked.
"Adaephon!" Honeydew bellowed to no result. The silence that followed his call was emphasised by the hissing of the wind across the dunes
". . .He may be dead." Xephos said. "Maybe he decided to go down with The Wall."
"No, I don't believe he would give up like that." Peculier said. "There is one place that he could be hiding: His private quarters."
"Where is that?" Honeydew asked. Peculier had leapt off the mezzanine before the dwarf had finished. He landed on the drift of sand and slid down it onto the floor of the first floor. "This way!" he called. Xephos jumped after him and Honeydew landed beside him. Peculier stood before the hanging of the Templar standard he reached to the middle of the sheet at the bottom and lifted in away, revealing a crank set into a hole in the wall. He pulled it and there came a scraping sound from the right wall. Peculier was already standing before the entrance when the secret door finished sliding open.
"There was a secret room here the whole time?" Honeydew gaped as he stepped off the sand drift and followed Xephos after Peculier through the doorway. It opened to a dark narrow stairway with bookshelves lining each wall, filled with tomes of every variety. Following Peculier, Xephos heard him talking quietly under his breath as they ran up the winding stairs.
". . .please Uncle, be here. . .be buried under The Sands. . ." he said. Moments later they reached the top of the stairs, finding themselves in a moderate sized room of modest accommodation. There were no windows, leaving the room dark, only several tapestries of past Templars and another door on the opposite end of the room interrupted the walls. A single rug of cream with the Templar sigil adorned the floorboards, and the only furniture was a single table and chair, more bookshelves, and a large bed across the other side of the room. The darkness clouded there eyes, but as their eyes fell on the bed Xephos saw the form of a man half slumped on the mattress, fully dressed in Templar uniform, spear lying on the floor beside him.
"Uncle!" Peculier yelled, crossing the room in long bounds, coming to the bedside of the man.
Xephos hurried after him, looking down at the bent form before them.
"Honeydew, get us a light going!" he said.
"How's he looking?" the dwarf asked.
". . .He's not looking good." Xephos said quietly. "Come on, we need a light."
Honeydew ran about the room, eventually finding a lantern on the table. He lit it quickly with his flint and bryne-steel, sending a brief, bright flash across the room before the lantern took, and brought the light over to Peculier, who had rolled Adaephon's broken looking form onto his back on the bed.
He was alive, that much relieved them. His eyes were closed and eyebrows knitted in fitful sleep as he limply groaned and shuddered in his stupor.
"Oh gods, last time I saw someone like this the skin melted right off their bones. What?" Honeydew added when Xephos shot him a look.
The noise seemed to have disturbed Adaephon, and he stirred. The old man did not wake, but he spoke as he slept. ". . .Verigan? Is that you?. ." he gave a cough as Peculier leaned closer to him. ". . .Why aren't you at school?"
"Wake up, Uncle!" Peculier said, trying to shake Adaephon awake. "Uncle! What is wrong!?" he said shaking him more rigorously, to no result.
"Oh gods, he's lost his mind." Honeydew said under his breath as he held up the lamp while Adaephon gave no stop to his monolog.
". . .The Sentinels!" he cried in his sleep, voice slightly muffled by his scarf around his mouth. "They boil the desert with their eyes. . !" he began to thrash about, and his scarf came loose, showing his mouth for the first time that Xephos had seen. All about his mouth his sun-darkened skin was covered in the scar-tissue of hideous burns, leaving ruptures in his flesh and burning away a hole in his left cheek. Peculier fell upon him to hold him down as he trashed.
"He is burning with fever!" he said as soon as his hands touched his arms.
". . .The molten terrors of the Old Ones. . ! . . .Nightmares of steel and fire. . .They come!"
"Wake up Uncle!" Peculier cried at Adaephon's face.
"Xephos, just say the word and I'll smother him with that pillow." Xephos heard Honeydew whisper over his shoulder. He gave a kick backwards, heel colliding with Honeydew's shin and resulting in a satisfying groan.
"Water! Heroes we need water to pour over him!" Peculier turned to them. "Do you have any water!" he asked.
". . .Ash and apocalypse. . ."
"Right, water. . ." Xephos felt about the side of his pack for his water-skin, taking it walking over to Adaephon's side.
"Quick, pour it over his face!" Peculier said from beside him. Xephos un-stoppered the skin and tipped it over Adaephon's head. The nearly full skin spilled out clear water onto Adaephon's face, splashing over him. He gave a start, his eyes flashing open, then tried to sit bolt upright as Xephos jerked back. Peculier caught Adaephon by the shoulders halfway through a wordless cry, and stared him right in the eyes. "Uncle, you're awake!" Peculier yelled over his screams. "You're alright!"
"Adaephon!" Xephos sighed. The old man stopped screaming and sat still a moment, looking about himself in the silence.
". . .Where am I?" he asked, voice haggard.
"You are safe, Uncle." Peculier responded. "But I am afraid that Verigan's Hold has fallen to the Sands, as has much of The Wall." Adaephon looked at Peculier lowly for a moment, as if only barely able to recognise him.
"Then I have failed." he croaked, shaking off Peculier and pulling himself off the bed to a shaky stand. "I am so tired." he groaned in a quiet voice. He turned to face the three of them roughly, wobbling dangerously as he did. "Go, please. Let me die. . ." he said, distorted mouth trembling. He seemed to not realise he did not wear his scarf any longer.
"No!" Peculier took a step forward to steady Adaephon. "Uncle, you must come with us." he said firmly.
"Run. Run far away and never look back." Adaephon cried tearfully, trying to fight off Peculier. "Without The Map the world is doomed!"
"But we have the map fragments!" Honeydew yelled over him.
"Yes Uncle, we have the map fragments right here!" Peculier echoed. At these words Adaephon ceased his struggling. He looked at Peculier, then Honeydew, then Xephos with a look of wonder.
"The- You really?" he said, voice a whisper of a gasp.
"Get the maps, get the maps!" Xephos hissed to Honeydew. The dwarf handed him the lamp and rushed to drop his pack and began to virtually upend it until there were four pieces of yellowed parchment on the floor before them.
"Here! Here!" he scrabbled to pick them up, handing them to Adaephon, who received them with shaky hands. Xephos stepped over to Adaephon, holding the lamp over him as he looked over the torn pieces of paper.
"Yes. . . Look!" Adaephon breathed. With unsteady feet he nearly fell over himself as he rushed over to his writing desk in the corner of the room. "The light, boy, the light!" he called as Xephos set the lamp beside him. Xephos heard his breath catch as Adaephon shuffled the paper about, eventually setting them together as one square. "This. . . This is the map." Adaephon said in a voice thick with emotion.
They looked down upon the map in a cocktail of hope and confusion. Together the fragments created an image of looking down upon the Sands, a long, thick body of water hooked from the bottom of the page into the center, with what appeared to oases dotted along it's coasts. All across the map were icons of mountains set seemingly at random into the landscape, striking out of the sand like spires of a buried palace. Yet from the bottom left side of the map there snaked a sinuous dotted red line. It wove through the desert until it came to rest at a red "X" near the top left of the map. Adaephon was working busily as they watched, heating wax over the lamp and glueing the pieces to another larger sheet of paper, set once more together.
"Now, this might not seem like much on it's own, but with aid from some charts this clearly shows the way forwards." Adaephon suddenly stood up and rushed across the room, forgetting the lamp and hurrying over towards the chest at the foot of his bed. He seemed to stumble as he ran, and caught himself with a wince, then stood with his back to them a moment before kneeling slowly to open the chest. "I am too old and too weak." he said. It seemed like less of an excuse and more of a realisation, as if he had only now admitted that he was not capable of defending The Wall now that it was fallen. "I have no choice." he wearily opened the chest and began to remove rolls of charts and a map-case, stowing they carefully within.
"Are you okay Adaephon. . ?" Xephos asked as Adaephon reached back into the chest and withdrew a letter. He stared at it for a long while until Peculier stepped forwards and repeated Xephos' question. Adaephon looked at him and then at the letter he held again.
"Come young one." he said, taking a breath. "There is something that you need to see." he pressed the map-case into Peculier's hands and started for the set of doors across the room, gesturing for them to follow. Honeydew and then Xephos followed after Peculier as they made after Adaephon for the door. It led to a tight spiral stairway, some small light trickling down from above as Adaephon made his slow way around the bend.
"This probably goes up one of the towers." Honeydew said as they started after Adaephon. The stairs wound about the column twice before opening into a wide circular room with wide windows and a bridge spanning across to another high tower, only now the great dunes swept up to just below the floor level. Out of the windows they could see the great dunes stretching as far away as they could perceive, only the dunes were now different to the ones that they'd seen weeks earlier. To the south The Wall stretched onwards, great patches smashed down, allowing sand to pour through. The same situation followed the other length of The Wall as it turned east, with the land that lay to north and west covered in a yellow sand, save for what they saw in the far distance.
"Why would you want me to see this?" Peculier breathed.
"Not that." Adaephon said as he stared out of the window, the sight transfixing him. He tore himself away and raised the letter. "This."
"What is it?" Xephos asked.
"This is a letter that Karpath left me before he died." Adaephon said.
"You knew Karpath?" Honeydew asked.
"How do you know that he's dead?" Peculier asked. "Uncle, what have you been hiding?"
"It is all in the letter my boy." Adaephon stepped toward Peculier and held it out towards him. "I only hope that you will forgive me for all that I have done, and what I am about to do." Peculier took the letter and began to read, then began again, reading aloud. All were silent throughout the reading, and the script was as follows:
Little brother,
I leave you this note in secret, knowing that you may never see me again. My fears of a darker evil are true. I have changed my name to Peculier, and under the guise of a City Guard I have infiltrated a Cult, and tonight I will halt the corruption at it's source. If I should fail then terrible events would proceed quickly, and you must be ready. The sand will flow from the desert, devouring everything.
You must recover my map from the hidden places I have placed them, and then travel to the Spider Tree along the East Wall. From there seek the tomb of our ancestors, and do what must be done.
I have left Isabel and young Verigan in the care of Gwynevere Bacon. If I do not return and The Sands remain calm, then we have won, and you can rebuild the world in peace.
My last request, brother, is that you never tell my children of my fate and of the terrible burden of our family bloodline.
My The Sands never dull your blade, Brother.
Karpath Antioch
"I-I am sorry to have kept this from you nephew." Adaephon hung his head. "And I am sorry that I have had to break the promise that I kept your father."
Peculier said nothing. He had not looked up from the paper, he seemed to be constantly be re-reading the phrase "Isabel and young Verigan" over and over. Finally he looked up.
"Is this true." he said in a hard tone.
"Yes, your true name is Verigan Antioch." Adaephon looked up at him. "Named after your grandfather of the same name."
"And you?"
"My name is Adaephon Antioch, not Peculier."
"So Karpath is "Peculier's" dad?" Honeydew said. "And he was the guard that we heard about in Mistral. And Peculier's name is actually Verigan?" Honeydew blurted out.
"That's right-" Xephos began.
"And we have to go to a tree full of spiders!?" Honeydew continued.
Adaephon continued to talk with Peculier as though Honeydew had not spoken.
"Karpath said that I am the last of the Templar Kings. When I die, that title will fall to you." Peculier looked even more taken aback by this than he had before.
"To me?" he said. "Who are the Templar Kings? And what is this burden of our bloodline?"
"I cannot say because I do not know." Adaephon moved over to a window overlooking the golden expanse of the desert, almost seeming beautiful in the high golden sunlight. "Although I suspect that you will be the bearer of the title very soon." he stared out over the desert wistfully, as strange expression on his scarred face. "I am old, Verigan. I have watched over this Wall my entire life, and now that it has fallen, it seems fitting that this is also the time for me to do so as well." He looked up at Peculier and pushed himself back to his feet. "But enough talk, to the next tower! I hope it is not ruined." he hobbled past Peculier, Xephos and Honeydew and towards the bridge that connected the tower to another to the east. "You have much to do, and not much time to do so."