Throne of Steel
Chapter 10 - Buried and Forgotten
In the days when the Chosen Ones of the Flameseeker Prophecies roamed Tyria, a scholar by the name of Durmand made it his mission to collect all the knowledge on the civilizations that people encountered, that he could. Whether it was the Dwarves, the Forgotten, Mursaat or Seers, any scrolls, books or even stone tablets about them - if he could get his hands on it, he would never part with it again.
Within the treacherous mountain ranges of Lornar's Pass, the unpopulated heart of the Shiverpeaks, he built a fortress, in which he would hoard all of the texts he collected. Over time, more self-declared scholars would join him in this fortress, soon known as Durmand Priory, to form a network that would collect and secure any knowledge that fell at risk of being lost.
Between the sinking of Orr, the Searing of Ascalon, the Civil war in Kryta and the floods unleashed by Zhaitan's rise, whenever a civilization was wracked with disaster, the scholars would storm its libraries to extract as much of its literature that it could.
In their pursuit of forgotten lore, the scholars set up shop in the catacombs of Ascalon, hoping to find leftover answers to problems that may have plagued the Ascalonians before they were beset by the Charr.
The catacombs of Ascalon had long been frequented by Durmand Priory, an order of scholars dedicated to solving problems such as the rise of the dragons by gathering knowledge from those who came before. First, they settled inside the catacombs to excavate the ruins in search of artifacts from the fallen kingdom, then to contain the threat of the ghost-eating predators within.
Naturally, the Priory relied on spellcasting for combat and set up ritual circles upon seeing the first Flame legionnaires. But once they got a grasp of just how massive the approaching army was, they retreated inside, hoping that the gates would make for enough of a chokehold to hold off the legion.
When the army came to a halt, with all troops setting up camp in a firm circle around the entrance, Varrock Siegeblast walked to the prisoner cart with a few human Separatists. "This is it, are you ready?"
"For what?", the tribune snarled at him.
"For your freedom. And to find answers that every other Charr was denied."
Rytlock snorted. "Please, you're telling me you're releasing us? Just like that?"
Varrock folded up his arms and raised his eyebrows. "Of course there are conditions, I never said otherwise. You, the Commander, this tagalong…" He pointed to the other wagon with his thumb, where Rox was kept. "We're gonna delve into those ruins together and have a talk with an old friend of yours. You pull anything fishy, try to break free and run away or take me hostage or anything, those scholars in there are mincemeat. Every last one, the Imperator's going to make sure every last one has their spines removed. He might even do it by hand."
The Blood Legion Tribune absolutely didn't like this. The Commander could hear the usure grunting when he spoke. "You want us to listen no matter what."
"I get why you're skeptical. I was, too. But bear with me, and you won't just have your freedom. I'll tell you my whole personal role in this. What I did, what I'm planning, the whole thing. You'll understand why I fight and you'll understand why you shouldn't."
The Commander had one demand of his own: "There is one thing I want to know most: When you destroyed the pact's fleet, you talked about the Imperator's allies, who are those allies? Who else beside you is involved."
Varrock laughed. "Yeah, I kinda expected something like that. I keep forgetting you're here to play detective. I promise, when this is all done, you'll have a name you can put to your boogieman. I won't leave your little investigation with a dead end."
The Separatists undid the prisoners' ties and removed the cuffs inhibiting the Commander's spellcasting. He performed some routine invocations, just to see if it would summon the expected currents of dark energy around his hands, and it did. At least so far, he wasn't lying.
Two more human Separatists led Rox along, still in chains and meekly tapping forward with her head held low. "Rox!" The Commander ran her way and watched closely as they undid the chains. "Did they hurt you? Are you injured anyway?"
When all the metal was off, the former legionnaire patted her clothing to shake off some of the dust and dirt and adjusted it where it had slipped in discomforting ways during their travels. "Don't think so. They actually got me everything I asked, they were just really scared I'd break out somehow."
The human placed an arm on her elbow and stared in her eyes so she couldn't look away. "Are you sure? If they hurt you, anywhere, you can tell me."
Varrock chuckled. "Flame Legion couldn't hurt her if they tried. My Separatists tried more than enough and they couldn't touch a hair. Flame Legion just doesn't know how this 'luck' thing of hers works and wanted to be extra safe about it."
When they reached the entrance, it was quiet. The scholars had long retreated inside and not a sound was heard from within. Allowing them to enter unhindered. Even all the way to the very first room beyond the entrance, the catacombs were made up of unshapely rooms and constricting corridors, surrounded by rubble and misaligned bricks. Not so much a conscious design but rather shaped by happenstance, between random cave-ins and people's improvised attempts at stabilizing the area.
"Now remember…" Varrock said: "Flame Legion is itching to slaughter those scholars, I'm the only reason they're alive, just like with you guys. If this doesn't go over smoothly, all those scholars, dead by tomorrow."
The path inside was not as difficult as they thought. The Priory had done a good job reducing the number of gravelings and spiders in the catacombs. By the time they heard the skittering sounds of the first spider gliding down its string, they got a lot further than before.
And they were much better prepared than the Commander used to be. Before he could do too much with his handaxe, Rytlock drew his burning sword, braced himself for the incoming attack and when the spider jumped at him in an attempt to bite him, he struck several of its legs, throwing off the angle of its jump and grabbing it with his other claw to throw it on the ground.
The Commander channeled his magic through his axe, made it spin in the air and carved his way through the burning spider's mandibles, killing it within moments. The issue should have ended here, but apparently their brief fight caused enough noise to draw the gravelings' attention. Heavy cracking sounds, with enough force that the Commander could feel them in his spine, announced the arrival of a graveling digging its way through the rock. "Gravelings! Stay sharp!"
Clicking and shifting noises drew the Commander's eyes to Varrock, who was undoing the locks on a large rifle he brought with him. The creature crawled out of the ground, a hunched lizard with a pointed head and a long tail. A twisted skale lizard, a descendant of manmade horrors conjured and shaped by Ascalonian necromancers centuries back.
Many of the scales on its back glowed in bright orange, teeming with pure heat from the inordinate amounts of magical energy contained within. Those things were saturated with power from consuming an infinite supply of ghosts, adding to its toughness and the force of its attacks.
To everyone's relief, it was alone, if there were more coming, they would have heard it. But even one of them was a deadly threat. It got ready for its feared leap and everyone prepared to dodge it, except Varrock who simply took aim and spoke up: "Over here!" Which drew the creature's attention.
When it jumped right at him, the Commander half expected for Varrock to have several bones broken. But instead, the moment it actually pushed itself off the ground, the Charr pulled the trigger, hitting the creature right between the eyes and throwing it off its angle. Which gave him room to duck and completely miss the ridiculously heavy body. When it hit the wall, it created cracks all around the wall and made a large dent right where it landed.
It sagged to the ground, but everyone waited for a few moments to see if it would get back up. It didn't, so Varrock walked over it to tip its head around, just to make sure. "If you're dealing with tougher beasts, just bring a bigger gun. Bigger or better." He swung the rifle over his back, leaving it to hang off his shoulder by a leather band. "This one's made just for hunting gravelings."
At least this was where it ended. They weren't beset by packs of them like the last few times the Commander had been here. When the four of them stood in front of the gate that led to the Priory's encampment, no doubt lined with trigger-happy scholars, Varrock stopped and pointed ahead. "If they see a bunch of Charr come through, they'll no doubt attack us, but one human will be fine, especially you. So 'Commander', go ahead, command them."
The Commander looked over to the others. Rytlock visibly didn't like it, but he had nothing to say and Rox shrugged. This had to be good enough, he didn't have a choice but to move on. The Flame Legion made it a point that they weren't about to forget the Pact's assault on the Citadel of Flame, and the Priory was part of the Pact. They had valid reasons to kill every member on sight and the only chance at saving these scholars was if he played along with whatever Varrock wanted down here.
With his hands raised and slow steps, he made his way through the gate. To not give the impression that he was sneaking, he called out to the scholars. "Hello? Durmand Priory? Detha? Hodgins? Tzark?"
Under the usual tiny steps, Tzark the Asuran scholar snuck around the corner to see him. He bore the usual gnomish stature of an Asura and wore his white tunic with a rag wrapped around his head. "Commander? Thank the Alchemy it's you, what is going on out there?"
"The Flame Legion is outside the catacombs!"
"Everyone knows that. But how?"
"Long story, Gaheron's son took over and reunited them. The Citadel's army is dead and they have new weapons, they took me prisoner and only released me on condition that I come down here."
Tzark crossed his arms. "To do what, exactly?"
"I'm not sure, I'm here with three Charr, one of them is with the Flame Legion and wants us to see something."
"And the other two?"
The Commander wasn't sure if they were aware how serious the situation was. He thought it right to remind them. "Those are just Rytlock and another prisoner. The issue is Varrock - the one that wants us down here - he's threatening to have the Flame Legion kill you all unless we follow him"
Tzark stopped for a moment. "Varrock? Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while. I'll tell the others, you can fetch the Charr."
He returned to the others. "The coast is clear, at least Tzark says so."
Varrock's ears perked up. "That little rat is still here? Wonder what's keeping these people in these ruins. Not like they're making any efforts to explore or learn anything."
When they walked up the ramp to the hallway behind, the Commander decided to press him on this. "How do you two know each other?"
"I told you before, I worked as a sellsword for the Priory, clearing out gravelings day and night. They don't always have adventurers coming through, someone's gotta do it on off times. So whenever there aren't any freelance warbands or other fortune hunters volunteering, I'd spend day-in-day-out patrolling these catacombs, bashing ghosts and gunning down swarms of gravelings."
Rytlock stopped to turn around one more time and check if the graveling was still on the ground. "That clearly didn't last."
When the Commander and the three Charr arrived at the Priory encampment, all the scholars still had their weapons drawn and very sinister looks on their faces. Varrock raised his hands. "Friends, friends, I'm not here to hurt you, just coming through with these guys."
Detha Tremblebones, a Charr with very small horns who stood there clad in plate armor when most of the other scholars wore their usual elaborate robes, was armed with a large rifle very similar to Varrock's. She made sure to step in his way and point at him. "You better explain yourself. Why are you working with Flame Legion?"
Varrock sighed. "We've been over this. The war between the legions is pointless, I offered to show you why several times. You declined every time. I get it, you don't WANT to find out, I accept that. But you can't stop others from doing the same."
Detha pointed at him: "You watch me. That stuff you said back then was insane. How the ghosts are in the right and how we shouldn't be in Ascalon! You're damn right I'll keep others away from that madness."
Varrock looked right in her eyes, all that calmness, the grins, the cheekiness, all of a sudden, it was gone. He regarded her with a seriousness and a sense of gravity that the Commander had never seen him with. "Detha, this isn't a negotiation. You and the other scholars can either step aside, or Flame Legion will raze this camp to the ground. If they have to come inside, no-one in here is walking out alive. Nobody, not even you. So please, see eye to eye with me just this once, you can get out of this in one piece. I just need you to meet me halfway."
Detha still kept a solid stance, trying to square up to Varrock's effortlessly larger frame as much as she could, but she looked away, frozen in motion. She was weighing her options and while she didn't want to let it show, whatever Varrock had told her when he left, was so unsettling that it scared her. But eventually, she saw reason and - if only very reluctantly - backed away and retreated into one of the tents. "Thank you.", the Separatist leader mumbled before he waved for the others to follow.
As they descended down the long staircases, the tribune sped up until he was side by side with Varrock. "You and her have a history, huh?"
"I guess you could say that. The things I discovered down here - it changes a man - after all we're taught in the Fahrar, finding out it's all for nothing…I just wanted to get out of here. I wanted nothing to do with the ghosts, or the legions, or anything. I thought if I could show her, we could escape all of it together."
The Commander caught up with them as well. "It doesn't seem like you 'escaped', if you're going out of your way to come back down here."
Varrock stopped for a moment and glared at him. "The ghosts only haunt you in Ascalon. But the truth won't let you escape, no matter where you go."
Rytlock was not amused by Varrock's vagaries. "So how does a random sellsword stumble on this grand forbidden knowledge, when all of the Priory doesn't?"
"The ghosts won't show you, unless you're willing to let them. The Priory benefits from the current social order. The legions holding Ascalon, Lion's Arch keeping a leash on everyone, all of that. They're scared of big changes, like the ones we need."
"And you just knew so much better, huh?"
Varrock laughed. "I wish. I had no idea. It was luck more than anything. All the wildlife, the trolls, spiders, gravelings, you kill them once and they're gone, so if you fight them every day, there's less of them every time." They came through the flat room at the bottom of the stairs. It was reinforced with new pillars and all the rubble was removed. They made their way down the stairs, into the crypt where the Commander had often been beset by swarms of spiders. The Priory and the gladia in their hire had cleared out the catacombs thoroughly, any spiders that were still left were so small that they didn't attack people on sight.
Varrock continued: "But the ghosts play by different rules. You strike one man down, and the very next day, he's back, repeating every line from before. Sometimes I'm not even sure if they remember past encounters. Eventually, I started experimenting, poking them with different taunts, seeing how they react to each thing I said. All the knights and nobles are always talking down to you like you're a cub that knows nothing. So as I kept doing this, every single day, I began to dig, peel answers out of them one day and on the next, use that answer to peel another answer out of them. I realized what's going on. The ghosts aren't keeping secrets from us, they expect us to know everything already. They expect you to know, because everyone knew when they were alive. So every time you get one of them to be a little less vague, you can use that to tickle some new answers out of them. Here we are…"
They stared through the narrow corridor, leading from the crypt straight to the blue light of the Foefire's Heart, the place in the catacombs where the foefire's power was the strongest. This whole place was once rigged with traps, swarms of gravelings crawled through every corner and trolls hid inside the walls. Now it was empty and quiet, no more spike traps, gargoyle heads or explosives.
It was a large and open hall, the corridor they came from led to very narrow walkways along the outer walls, overlooking pits of rock and bones flooded with water. With no railings or the like to secure anyone above. In the middle lay a small temple atop a platform held up by a single giant pillar beneath it. Braziers with blue fires hung from the ceiling and a bright blue light shining from within the temple, illuminated the entire room. This was where Magdaer, the sword of Ascalon's last king had remained for centuries until Eir Stegalkin came here with the Commander and Rytlock to claim it.
Four bridges connected the platform in the middle with the walkways along the walls, but several of them were broken. As they crossed one of the bridges to get to the Heart, the mists hanging around the source of the blue light, converged to form a familiar face. The image of a tall man in a decorated suit of Ascalonian armor. The ghost of Lieutenant Kholer, who would always be the first to face intruders. And he addressed the other ghosts manifesting around him with the same line he used, every time he appeared. "You heard Grast! Hold the line! Send the intruders to Grenth!"
Instead of charging at them like most would, Varrock gestured for them to not come closer and held his hand out to Kholer. "Stop! We come not to defile your graves, but to listen! I know that this land belongs to you! And I'm willing to teach it to others! Show them the truth! Show them that Ascalon does not belong to the Charr! Show them the Library of the Five!"
The ghost, now accompanied by several others, had already drawn his weapon in anticipation of their attack, but now they sheathed it again and all ghosts in unison gestured off to the side, to the edge of the platform. The loud rushing of water drew the Commander's curiosity. As he peeked over the edge of the pillar, he saw the water drain from the lower half of the hall. The jarring sounds of stone grinding against stone shook the Commander, he paced over to where the ghosts were pointing.
A stone staircase, wrapped around the platform, was rising from within the water at an agonizingly slow pace. The four visitors looked back at the ghosts, all of which stood in place, staring at them. Rox tipped Varrock's shoulder. "So are you - are you sure about this?"
Varrock was completely confident. "The ghosts can sense curiosity and they can tell if it's a pretense. Whether or not you want to admit it, even you want to know, Brimstone. They would have attacked us otherwise."
When the top finally lined up with the platform, Varrock led the way as all four of them descended into the depths. A seemingly endless walk, with a long, unbearable silence almost all the way through. Ever so slowly, a giant bulbous structure crept up as the Commander could see further and further down. "So…" he began. "What was that about a library of the Five?"
"Yep, that's where we're going. It's way deeper than the ruins you know, and something's protecting it, it survived a lot of the decay. Bigger than the archive of the resting, older too. It's dedicated to the human gods."
"Shouldn't it be the 'Library of the Six'? Dwayna, Balthasar, Kormir, Melandru, Grenth, Lyssa. We have six gods."
Varrock turned to the Commander and answered in a matter-of-factly way, as if this was something a Charr would normally know about. "The Ascalonians only worshiped five gods during the Searing. Every mention of Abaddon had been buried and forgotten. And Kormir hadn't ascended to godhood yet."
The stairs ended at an archway that extended into the structure, and Rytlock snarled in response to Varrock's explanation. "Why would you bother to learn any of this? One of the first things a Charr is taught in the Fahrar, is that unlike humans, the Charr are above the worship of gods. Always have been, always will be."
"Your ancestors would beg to differ!" called a voice from within. It made everyone stop, because the sound of it made no sense to anyone. It bore the intrinsic growl of a Charr talking, but it was wavering in the same way as the ghosts' voices. And sure enough, the mists in the hallways converged to form the image of a Charr, if only for a moment before it dispersed again.
Rox stuttered: "Was that - did that just look like a Charr…ghost?"
Varrock grinned. "Why don't we go and find out?" He ran further inside, prompting everyone else to pick up the pace as well.