We set out at first light.
There were 12 of us, including Aldwyn and myself, only 5 left behind with Ewan to guard the village. We traveled simply for this, bringing with us some meagre supplies of salt meat and skins of lukewarm water. One of the men-at-arms had with him a number of caving tools, none of which I recognized aside from a long grappling hook and an unlit torch.
Our weapons were nonuniform. Most were equipped with shields and axes, or hammers, or shortswords. All but Aldwyn and I. He bore a single, mighty spear, almost as long as himself. I wielded a bastard sword.
I didn't use a shield. I found that heavy armor and great weapons weighed me down, dulling the song. My fighting style was an agile one, based on mobility. In life, most battles were decided after only one exchange. I chose to strike first, and strike fast.
We moved through the woods in a discordant clamour of clinking mail, snapping twigs, squishing lichen and clanking steel on steel. The forest parted around us, as if tacitly encouraging our quest, or perhaps, guiding us towards our doom.
I wasn't afraid. The grim humours and eclectic nerves that plagued me through the night had evaporated with the rising sun, cast off and purged by the rays of dawn's light. I felt calm. I felt focused. The song swirled around me in waves, thick and potent like never before, and I felt strong alongside it.
A sense of foreboding remained, though. A soft but tense undercurrent, a leitmotif hidden within the melody. Not all of us would return home from this. I felt it in my bones.
We made good pace through the thicket, and soon arrived at the Maw.
Whatever visions I'd had about mouths of the World Titan taking bizarre, esoteric forms were dispelled upon seeing it.
It was a simple cave.
It grew out of a natural rise in the terrain, a rocky formation surrounded on all sides by trees, shrubs, and soil. The mouth itself was mundane, normal rock shaped like an inverted 'U.' Patches of green lichen dotted its exterior, some strands extending down to drape across the opening. Within it, there was naught but darkness.
Our party drew to a halt.
If Aldwyn was at all ill-at-ease, he didn't show it. Instead, he raised his hands high, and when the group gathered before him, he began to speak.
"I know the pressure on you all is enormous."
"None of us have delved before, and none know what to expect. We may face monsters. We may face fierce warriors. We may face magic. With so much unknown, I realize the temptation to fear may be overwhelming. Well, I do not ask you, any of you, to be fearless."
"I simply ask you to remember why we came here. Remember, why we decided to delve."
"What lies before us, though fraught with peril, represents a chance we will receive only once in our lifetimes. I want you to imagine that. I want you to imagine what this would mean for your children, and your children's children."
"I want you to imagine the bounty. Imagine no longer having to worry about the size of your children's meals, or your own. Imagine not having to see your wives weep over departed sons, or husbands, or daughters sent off to work far from home. I want you to imagine a life spent comfortably with the people you love."
"I want you to imagine the glory. Imagine our village being put on the map. Imagine your houses repaired, renovated. Imagine great rails connecting us to the big cities, bringing new trade and villagers. Imagine being elevated in Cell Uther, becoming part of a great noble House, being protected from all that would seek to do us harm."
"No, my friends. I do not demand that you have no fear."
"Only, that you remember why we are here."
Cheers and shouts rose in a humble yet still heartwarming wave from the men at Aldwyn's words, and I have to admit, I was moved as well. It could be easy to forget the raw charisma the experienced Headsman possessed, given his normally humble demeanor. And his words served well to banish what few butterflies still fluttered in my stomach.
He nodded, and we set forth into the darkness.
Strangely, though, it was not absolute, and torches proved unnecessary. The interior of the cave was thick with the same lichen as its opening, but which now appeared to glow in the dark, producing a natural lighting that allowed us to navigate it.
The cavern twisted and turned as we followed it, but it wasn't long until we happened upon a great double door that blocked the way forward, set within the rock itself and crafted out of the same material.
The door was patterned with an entirely alien design. Upon it were what appeared to be two massive worms. Except, they were too angular for worms, covered entirely in sharp crystals that seemed to glow in the lichen's aquamarine bioluminescence. The creatures followed each other, mouth to tail, and together formed a great circle upon the door. Within the ring they formed, were written words:
In Search of the Source.
Aldwyn regarded the writing, puzzled, as did I. The words, though individually recognizable, meant nothing to me in sequence. The rest of the party murmured softly, perhaps unsettled, shifting shoulders and scratching helms. Aldwyn reached out, tentatively, and placed his hand upon the petrified script.
With a great, grating roar that made us jump, the doors rumbled slowly open. The murmurs from the group increased in volume. It was one thing to hear stories of magic from afar, or see minor enchanted items, but beholding the arcane up close was something else entirely. It made the whole endeavor real. It cemented in actuality the fact that our lives were no longer in our own hands, that we were about to put ourselves at the mercy of an entity so far beyond us that it defied our comprehension entirely.
Behind the massive slabs of stone was…yet another door. But it was a single one this time, and humble, not much larger than the size of a single man, and made out of mundane, if lavishly embossed, wood.
"Steady, gentlemen," Aldwyn said, voice clear over the clamour, calming it at once. "We push forward."
With that, we opened the wooden portal and set forth into the Labyrinth.
The first room was just…bizarre.
Granted, I had never ventured within the Labyrinth before, so I truly had no idea what to expect of it. Stories of a delve varied to such a degree and were often so embellished that it tended difficult to discern lies from reality. Still, I wasn't expecting this.
Upon passing through the wooden door, we'd somehow moved from a dark, dank cave lit by glowing moss into what appeared to be a gentile manor. But this wasn't like the 'manor' house back in the village, that served as Aldwyn's home.
Oh, no.
This looked like what I imagined a proper manor to be, one built for a wealthy Aristocrat to serve as their homestead. And we'd just entered the main hall.
The walls and floorboards were built from thick, rich, lacquered oak which gleamed as if freshly polished and was embossed with complex flourishes of art. The whole place was furnished lavishly. Silk curtains shrouded the windows. Deep armchairs stitched from the most exotic leathers sat within corners and encircled the short, round tables, looking as if they'd just be absolute heaven to fall into. A vast fireplace occupied the other end of the manor, in a dining room to the left of the main hall. Its logs glowed and snapped luxuriously in the warm lighting. Captivating oil paintings hung from every wall.
The manor was entirely empty.
No servants cleaned the floors, set the tables, or dusted the furniture. And yet, everything seemed freshly arranged, as if our arrival was expected. Picturesque, but deserted. The only humanoid thing in the whole house was a striking set of bespoke armor on display just beside the fireplace. The armor was trimmed with gold, and the knight held an exquisitely engraved greatsword in its gauntleted hands.
In fact, gold was in, or on, just about everything.
Gold inlaid the paintings, studded the chairs, wove into the curtains, crawled through seams in the walls and floors. The dining table was lined with gold. The vases resting upon it were gold. The silverware, despite the name, was cast in gold. I was half tempted to try and bring some back with me.
Several of the men apparently had the same idea as, after gawking, they immediately rushed forward and began bagging everything not tied down. They didn't notice the wooden door swing softly shut behind them.
But I did. Aldwyn did, too. He frowned.
The song was giving me an image identical to that gilded suit of armor, absolutely everything else drowned out by the sound of wealth and the din raised by my compatriots. I didn't know what to make of that. I had no idea why the knight would be of any particular importance to the song.
"Alright, that's enough!" Aldwyn called out, the men reluctantly arresting their pillaging efforts in response.
"We need to figure out where to go before deciding what we're going to bring with us. Gold is worth nothing compared to crystals, anyway."
He spread his arms. "Everyone spread out, and search for the way forward." His eyes narrowed. "And stay sharp. Just because we haven't noticed anything, doesn't mean there isn't danger here."
"You keep your weapons close, your wits about you, and don't get weighed down," he said, directing the last comment towards the looters, who had the decency to at least appear embarrassed, though they didn't put anything back.
With that, we spread out and began to search the entire house, noticing first that it wasn't overly large.
Though admittedly far bigger than any of the cabins back home, with ceilings as tall as several men and at least equally as broad, the entire structure contained just two floors. The first floor consisted of the entrance hall, kitchen, dining room and living room. The second floor included only one absolutely giant bedroom, complete with a massive poster bed.
Strangely, there were no bathrooms in the place, on either floor. In fact, the entire house seemed sealed off from the outside. Lifeless. There was no food in the kitchens, no water flowed from the tap either, and though there were windows on some of the walls, nothing could be seen outside them other than darkness.
The manor sported other peculiarities as well. Candelabra were affixed to the walls instead of the ceilings. Some of the paintings had been hung upside down. The places at the table were set all wrong, cutlery in the center and dishes off to the side. The plants resting within the opulent vases were all dead or dying, having apparently never been watered.
Finally, and more perplexingly still, there were no sheets or blankets or covers on the bed upstairs. In fact, there was no furniture in the bedroom at all. Instead, the room was packed to the brim with pillows of all shapes and sizes. It was as if the building's architect had heard stories of humans, but secondhand, garbled, having received a warped idea of how they actually lived.
Most concerningly, though, was the fact that even after hours, we were no closer to finding the portal to the next room. In fact, we couldn't find a way out of the place at all.
The only door in the manor was the main one, and it was closed and locked. Axes and hammers used upon it didn't even leave a scratch, the bespoke wood somehow harder than steel. The windows were no different. The furniture within the place wasn't quite so sturdy, however, leading many no doubt expensive items to be forcefully and aggressively disassembled by irate men-at-arms.
No, the main door wasn't an option. We were going to have to find some other way out.