They say the Dwarves forgot nothing. Not names, nor grudges, nor the shape of the world before men. But it was not memory that kept their secrets safe. It was stone.
— Magus Ber’odin, inscribed 6 B.R. (Before the Second Founding)
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This is the third chapter of the Series The Mystery of Etar'Das. If you'd like to catch up on the story so far, or liked this chapter and want to go back and retrace the two adventurers' steps, please enjoy the prior two installments, which can be found here.
Chapter 1 & 2:
https://hive.blog/hive-161155/@hidave/mystery-of-etar-dashttps://ecency.com/hive-161155/@hidavetoo/the-lost-ward-of-etar
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The darkness opened like a mouth below them as the lift descended into the shadows beyond the reach of their torch. Chains rattled rhythmically, punctuating the silence. The lift groaned almost as if in warning at the danger ahead.
Tagoth, leaned into the rusted iron railing, mist forming from his breath as the air cooled the further they traveled. Dravis stood in silence beside him. The weight of the unknown, like a heavy blanket draped oppressively over his shoulders, his mind still questioning his eyes. The play of shadows moments before, the hints of movement below.
The lift was a relic, wrought with Dwarven pragmatism and built to embrace eternity. Its cage framed with blackened iron and moss-covered timbers etched with cabalistic etchings of the Carvin'Dor. Its chains rattled in time with the lift's slow descent, echoing against the cavern's walls. The torch's flame swayed and flickered, fluttering gently as if its light was weighed down by the darkness around them.
Dravis broke the silence, his voice hushed, afraid of stirring the attention of whatever was waiting below. "Strange to think, no humans ever set foot down here, not and returned to ever speak of it."
Tagoth didn't look at him, his eyes fixed on the chasm below, scanning the shadows and cracks of light spilling from the ward below, alert for danger. "No human was meant to. The Dwarves buried their secrets in silence and stone..." his tone shifted, almost to a whisper, "By necessity."
"Necessity?" Dravis questioned.
"There are truths too heavy for the world above. Humanity thought they had earned their peace. This ward remembers. Stone has a stronger memory than men, longer...and less forgiving. There is much the University has not shared. You will learn Kath'ire. In time."
The lift finally shuddered to a stop, with a noise like something dying. Surrounding them, sodium crystals winked on one by one, blinking as if awaking from a slumber, illuminating the landing in intermittent shadow and light.
Tagoth raised his hand in front of one of the softly glowing whitish amber crystals, casting a warped silhouette on the stone landing beside the lift. “Sarn’Varun,” he murmured, half to himself.
Dravis squinted, recognizing ancient Keld’Tharûm, the language of the Dwarves. “Sun’s what?”
“Dawn Catchers,” Tagoth said, motioning to the softly pulsing crystal. “It’s what the dwarves called these crystals. Ancient Human traders thought the Dwarves trapped sunlight with them. They were wrong.”
Dravis stepped forward, eyeing one of the crystals as it hummed faintly in its housing, having seen them on display in one of his first-year Kath'ire class on Dwarven studies, the Lumianar had called them "Sunblight. “Then what is it?”
“They don’t store sunlight. They respond to the elements. To the magic that lives within them, their resonance." Tagoth explained. "The elves sang to magic, the humans bent it to their will. But the dwarves did neither. They did not conjure, nor command. Instead, they built with it, crafting their works in quiet harmony with the world’s hidden frequencies, attuning stone and steel until magic resonated through them, not because of them."
Together they stepped off the wide stone landing, the air thick with settled dust. In the distance, the echoing thunder of waterfalls plunging into wards basins fractured the silence. And there, looming ahead, were the gates of the ward. Twin doors nearly three stories tall of basalt and gilded in black steel.
Framing the door, a great stone arch bore the ancient script of the Carvin'Dor. Dravis' eyes followed it closely. "Kar’Vornadûn,” he worded unconfident in his pronunciation, tracing the runes with his gaze. “The Memory Vault?” Dravis questioned.
“No, Kath'ire” Tagoth said. “Not quite. It doesn't fully translate, but more like... the Deep Remembering of Stone.”
A deep gouge spread across the ripped-open massive basalt doors as if slashed by a titan’s wrath. The jagged scar pulsed faintly phosphorescent. Dravis's eyes widened, a signature of Vor’thalak, a brutal and rare human magic known for its raw, destructive force.
Mastered only by the Magus Veridryn, the most accomplished of wizards, the magnitude of this particular casting was nothing short of impressive.
Tagoth’s eyes narrowed. “Only Ber’odin could have wielded Vor'thalak this powerfully.”
Dravis nodded, stepping closer to the defaced, mangled entrance. “I don’t think he was welcome here. He forced his way through.”
Cautiously, Tagoth stepped between the mangled doors, Dravis following closely behind. The courtyard beyond opened into a vast, semi-covered grand atrium, not built to Carvin'Dor proportions but clearly designed to awe visitors. This chamber was no mere passage; it was a warning to evoke reverence for the power and knowledge the Dwarves once held here.
Encircling the space, expansive galleries traced the perimeter. Great murals and reliefs carved into the stone told of creation and conflict. Below the murals, bronze plaques bore the patina of age, now dulled and green, held inscriptions in the Corvin'Dor tongue. Each plaque silent and nearly unreadable in decay.
At the far end of the gallery, Dwarves carved from stone guarded the portal to the wards beyond like sentinels. Solemn and stern, etched with life-like precision, their faces held the pride and weight of countless generations.
It wasn’t until Tagoth had crossed the threshold and taken several cautious paces down the wide artery that cut through the heart of the ward, leading toward a grand square in the distance, where the largest cistern cradled the thunderous fall from above, that he noticed the pattern. Along certain archways and podiums, placed at street corners and before bridges that spanned narrow sluices and aqueducts, inset at waist height were small indentations. Dravis stooped to inspect one and stepped back, startled as it hummed loudly in response.
"These are locks," Tagoth explained. "They listen. The Carvin'Dor called them Sarn'kelun. Their keys were similar to tuning forks, made of various alloys, attuned to the magic latent in the stone. Come, lets us see if we can find one."
Shimmering faintly near one of the podiums, a small silvery artifact shaped like a trident glimmered in the pale light. Tagoth held it and inspected it, smiling. "Just like the one at the University," He tapped it against the stone and inserted it into a nearby socket. A distant rumbling answered, and a door to a nearby building yawed open.
Tagoth's eyes narrowed, and he walked to the next podium, this one before a span that crossed the aqueduct. He repeated the sequence, tapping the fork, inserting it into another indentation. A nearby pole crowned with a glass orb and mirrored facets crackled once, flickering pale amber, before erupting in a sudden shower of sparks. They hissed as they fell, cascading toward the stone floor like burning flower petals adrift in a breeze. "Not every key opens every door Kath'ire."
Dravis's eyes narrowed, his head tilting just slightly. He wasn't sure if it was the breeze, the distant rush of water, or just his imagination, but for a moment, just fleetingly, he thought he heard a whisper, like a hushed conversation, slipping through the streets. Voices too quiet to catch, yet too deliberate to dismiss.
The grand avenue led them under another great arch, enchanted on it, glowing like electric blue filigree, ancient human script. Dravis scanned the sigil, muttering what fragments he could recognize: "sealed in flame" and "unbound truth." A warning left by Ber'odin. The thoroughfare terminated in a plaza strewn with fractured stone and shattered statuary.
A silence fell before them, and then from deeper within the ward, a new sound. A faint hiss like steam on stone.
Tagoth froze. "Get the light down now!"
Dravis quickly snuffed the torch's flame, dropping them into deep shadow.
They ducked behind a broken column and peered into the concourse. A faint glow shimmered, it brightness blossoming, growing. It travelled slowly at first and then suddenly faster, streaking across a wall. Then, from behind a building at the far end of the plaza, it emerged.
It moved like liquid fire, leaving a trail of molten slag in its wake, the very rock of the plaza weeping from its heat. A low crackling echoed off the stone. Its didn't walk, nor slither, it glided. Its body a swirling lattice of molten veins pulsing angrily. The air warped and bent surrounding it. It wasn't fire, not quite, more like something pretending to be fire. And then it turned, making its way toward them, investigating the plaza.
Dravis whispered, his mouth barely moving. "It knows something's here."
"Don't move, don't breathe too loud." Tagoth voice responded low, barely audible. "It hears."
It pulsed, then dimmed, and then flared bright again. It moved with intent. It was hunting.
An Emberkin.
Dravis could feel a tremor through the ground as it approached. No spell could reach it, no sword could pierce it. All they could do was endure and hide.
It moved.
It turned. Approaching ever closer like a predator to their scent.
Dravis's heart pounded. The creature stopped mere paces from their hiding spot. Its form surged brighter. Its flames licked the surface of a half-shattered statue in the plaza near where they couched, and the basalt began to crack.
Tagoth closed his eyes and reached into his satchel. Magic fought him here, dulled by the resonance of the Dwarven stone, but there were still strings to pull. His fingers felt the Sarn'Kelun, the tuning fork-like key, silently withdrew it and hurled it across the plaze.
PANG!
The Emberkin reacted instantly and streaked after the decoy, moving faster than any fire should in pursuit of the false signature.
"Go now! Tagoth hissed.
Dravis didn't wait. They darted from cover and ran as quietly as possible, ducking down an alley and then another, gaining distance. They didn't look back. They didn't need to. They darted across a narrow causeway and then through a window into one of the ancient abandoned buildings. And then crouched in silence.
The Emberkin shrieked in the distance behind them. The sound was not fire, but grief, and rage, and relentless hunger.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"What was that thing?" Dravis whispered.
"A left over, a sentinel, a primordial elemental. Fae-made, or worse, Kath'ire." Wide-eyed, Tagoth peeked out the corner of the window, seeing nothing. "We are not alone in this city."
The street was clear. The elemental, whatever the Fae abomination had been, didn’t follow.
Tagoth slipped deeper inside the structure, blade drawn, his senses stretched taut, keen to whatever lay ahead. Dravis followed closely behind his shoulders brushing the narrow doorway that led to what resembled an austere living quarter, taking a moment to feel out with his hand above him and ducking beneath a stone lintel too low for any human.
Their instincts drove them through the rooms quickly. Not out of curiosity, but caution. Dravis checked the windows, almost as if expecting to see the Emberkin peering back at them. But all was quiet, except for the occasional creaks of the ancient wood remembering the duty of weight once again after an eternity of stillness.
"Let's find a back exit," Tagoth muttered, stepping over a half-collapsed table crushed under a fallen wooden beam. "Just in case."
Dravis's eyes scanned what was afforded by the faint lines of street light filtering in through the dusty film-coated windows. It was a dwelling clearly built by Dwarves, but not for them. The ceilings were high enough for elves. The doorways wide enough for a man in armor, but the design was unmistakable. Utilitarian, measured, without pretense, and honest. The furniture sat in neat geometrical order, the tables short. The chairs without cushions, made from laquered ironwood. The fabrics in muted colors, now faded with time, sat stacked orderly in recessed alcoves. "functional," Dravis finally said, "like everything else in here."
Tagoth paused in the center of the room and crouched. His brow furled, and he began another binding. Although the ever-resistant stone of this place fought him, the torch began to spark hesitantly. Tagoth coaxed the connection gently as if awakening a fire in a cold hearth in the dead of winter.
The flame sputtered once more and then bloomed. As it did so, the walls around them briefly frosted over. creeping along the walls in a delicate skin of crystalline lace, like veins of winterfrost on stone.
Dravis exhaled steam, although not cold, this binding, for his adrenaline had already dulled any sensation. Still, his eyes tracked the way the frost caught in the half-light, casting golden crystalline patterns where the light from the distant sodium crystal streetlamps spilled through windowpanes punctuated by white flashes from the growing flame. Like Moonlight on ice, He thought to himself, or the way sand glowed effulgent in the starlight along the shore.
"Humans were not wanted here," Dravis spoke softly, his voice quieter now. "But that thing. It was stationed there." He paused for a moment as Tagoth turned toward him. "What was it guarding? What was that building?"
Tagoth didn't answer him at first. He turned and gazed toward the window in the direction of the crumpled ruin they had fled from. "There was a crest, an old one. Pre-accord. That was a Vaul'trith Hall. A suppository of sanctioned inventions. Where the Dwarves kept designs too dangerous for the common guilds.
Dravis frowned. "You think it was guarding that place. After all this time?"
Tagoth thought for a moment and shook his head. "No. That place had been attacked. That was Fae conjurings. Elementals are built from residual memories, energetic traces. The building contained something that bled power once, maybe still does. That Emberkin is anchored there."
Dravis nodded only half understanding, and they lapsed into silence, the soft crackle from the torch their only company.
The back door creaked open, and Tagoth peeked his head through the threshold and looked both directions silently. His face was tense and alert. After a pause, he motioned Dravis forward. "Come Kath'ire, stay close."
Moving through a narrow service alley, they breached onto one of the ward's main thoroughfares. The polished stone street was worn smooth by centuries of traffic long since ceased. Pools of water lined the canals alongside, reflecting the amber shimmer of distant crystal lamps, their light barely reaching the tops of the stooped, corbelled arches overhead.
The whispers, again perhaps just the breeze, stirred once again. "This city. It's alike El'tras" Dravis whispered.
Tagoth stiffened. A breath held too long. Even he was listening now. "You hear it too. Good Kath'ire." Tagoth smiled faintly, not taking his eyes off the shadows ahead. "I was beginning to wonder if you were attuned yet. Not bad for a Kath'ire."
They walked together in silence. Tagoth slightly ahead. The torch's flame flickered as if in a battle all its own against the wills of the very resonance of the Dwarven ward. Here and there, subterranean stairwells jutted up from the stone. Dwarven entrances carved into the stone, leading to the world below, their mouths dark and full of shadows, littered with broken railings and slabs of masonry. More evidence of a ferocious battle.
"Down. Always down. The Dwarves buried their secrets like one buries the dead." Tagoth murmured, looking down the spiraling stairs into the inky blackness below.
Dravis stepped beside him, glancing down into the depths and then panned, surveying the street where a shattered window opened into a nearby storefront. Weapons. Armor. Tools. A Dwarven outfitter.
The two cross carefully, their boots splashing in the runoff from the canal that flanked the road and entered through a side door already ajar.
The shop was quiet, save for the crunch of dust and grit strewn from rubble and debris outside. Half-empty weapons racks and displays lined the walls. Dull armor greeted them, stout and wide-chested, wholly unusable by men of their stature. Even the mannequins stood only shoulder high to Dravis.
Tagoth moved cautiously, letting the low glow of the torch cast shifting shadows across the glass displays.
"Built to last until the Sun died. Even now," Dravis remarked, bending down to inspect a Dwarven Helm.
"They built with nature, not against it," Tagoth answered, but his gaze had fallen to the far corner of the shop counter, beneath a cracked display case. It was something small, shaped like a black triangle of obsidian. He picked it up and held it in his palm. "A Thûn’Rakk. Whisperblock."
Dravis looked at it quizically.
"A silence talisman. It muffles sound within a radius of the user." Tagoth turned it over in his palm and activated it with a mild pulse of binding magic that even Dravis could achieve. A sudden blanket of silence smothered the sound around them. The torch, the creak of the wood. All of it vanished.
"A similar enchantment to the Draceanae forged swords of the Southern Pale? " Dravis asked.
"Ai Kath'ire. Muffled footsteps, silenced cuts and screams. Built for killers and murderers." Tagoth nodded. "Here, keep this on you. It could come in handy if we need to evade another Emberkin."
Dravis held the small triangular chip in his hand, inspecting it, and then slipped it into his satchel in a place he knew he'd be able to get to it quickly if things got dire.
Tagoth grunted as if spotting something of interest and wandered off deeper into the shop, his curiosity drawn to an old cabinet nestled in a shadowed alcove that looked important. Dravis watched him for a second before his eyes wandered off to a low shelf tucked behind the counter, covered in dust. Half-buried in crumpled leather, a few odd items sat quietly.
He reached down and brushed one off. A curved dagger, lightweight and perfectly balanced, its unmarred blade reflected light like a polished silvery mirror. Looping Carvin'Dor script was etched near its hilt, unblemished by time.
"Ceremonial?" Dravis asked, holding it up for Tagoth to see.
Tagoth glanced at it almost dismissively. "Probably. But Dwarves didn't make things just for show. It'll probably hold and edge sharper than most men you'll meet."
Dravis looked down at the blade, smiling, and slid it into his belt.
Tagoth knelt in front of the narrow cabinet, opened its lower door, and began rummaging around with his free hand, mindful to keep the torch flame away from an aging tapestry affixed to the stone beside it, humming to himself softly.
Next, Dravis picked up a small compass-like device. Its delicate golden needle suspended in a sphere of swirling black liquid. Instead of pointing north, the needle spun erratically as if not quite making up its mind and then steadied, pointing outside toward the canal. "What a strange compass."
Tagoth looked up and furrowed his brow. "No. Not a compass. A Sarn'Vaelik. A Seeker Dial. It detects mass displacement...motion. It probably detects the flow of water...or footsteps." Tagoth said almost as if an afterthought.
Dravis smiled. "I like it," and slipped it into his pocket.
At the bottom of the shelf, he found a rolled scrap of parchment and unfurled it, a cloud of sandy dust and grit sprinkling into the air, glittering as it fell to the floor. It was a map, or something like one. Not of the ward around them but of deeper levels. Utility tunnels. Dravis walked over to Tagoth, unfurling the map carefully. "What do you make of this?"
Tagoth's eyes widened. "A maintenance schematic. If it's still accurate, it shows the underpaths." Tagoth muttered, tracing his finger tip along the black, shimmering ink. "Hold on to it. It might show us a way around obstacles...or out."
Dravis rolled the parchment up and placed it in his satchel. These weren't just artifacts. They were stories to be shared around hearths and friends. Souveniers...If he lived long enough to tell the tale.
"Now this is rare!" Tagoth grinned, gently picking up a flat stone disk no larger than a coin. A rune on one side glowed faintly gold.
"What is it?" Dravis questioned, walking over to his side.
"It's a Skystone Pebble. An Azel'Vorim." Tagoth muttered in a reverent, hushed tone.
Dravis leaned over the flat, coin-like stone and then looked up. "What's it do?"
"It's attuned to resonances." Tagoth began to explain. "Place it on stone, and it will react. Magic, bindings, couplings, even weak enchantments. They all leave their mark. This pebble will draw them out," he paused, his expression growing darker. "If Ber'Odin has come through here, this Skystone will show us his trail. Even if it was long ago."
Dravis began wrapping the Skypebble back in the square black velvet piece in which it had once lain and slipped it into his satchel. Tagoth had already begun moving, his focus on a heavy wooden door fitted into a stone archway halfway down a narrow hall near the back of the shop. "The outfitter's office. If anything is important, it will be in here."
Tagoth placed his hand on the iron handle. The door didn't give easily, and when it did, a heavy stale air washed over them like the room had exhaled after centuries of stillness. Inside, it was damp and dusty. Papers littered a worn, crippled desk. On the walls, tools, precision calipers, alloy meters, and rune etchers glinted faintly in the torchlight.
Sitting on a far shelf, an antique, ornate wooden box sat with its iron clasp open, inviting Dravis to investigate. Inside another Sarn'Kelun, this one made of a strange golden green alloy that shimmered faintly in the torchlight. Unlike the first resonance key, this one was different. Longer and heavier, shaped more like a trident. Its prongs curving gracefully inward slightly, their tips glowing a mild violet as if their presence had awoken it.
"There," Tagoth said reverently. "I bet this will open the stairwell seals...maybe even more."
"Why would a shopkeeper have such an important key that could access municipal seals?" Dravis questioned.
"Good question. I doubt he did." Tagoth squinted, looking at the key, stroking his beard in deep thought. "Perhaps this shop was involved in smuggling?"
Dravis froze, the contents of his satchel clinking insistently. He reached inside, frowning. The Seeker Dial twitched in his fingertips. He pulled it out slowly and watched the needle jitter wildly, the needle looking like it had lost its mind.
"What's it doing?" Tagoth stepped closer, his face shifting into a frown.
Dravis didn't answer right away. The needle trembled and then shuddered to a fied heading, pointing deeper into the ward. "It's...tracking something." The needle shifted slightly to the right. "Something moving."
Tagoths eyes narrowed, then he quickly turned toward the door, tightening his pack. "Come Kath'ire. We'd better get moving."
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The two moved swiftly through the street, staying mostly to shadow, only slowed momentarily when they cut across a half-collapsed cuaseway heading in the direction of the sealed stairwells they glimpsed earlier.
The Seeker Dial stirred in his pocket again. He pulled it free. The needle shifted erratically and then settled then began to move on a slow but steady course. Dravis looked down and frowned. "Movement. Closer now, nearby."
Tagoth glanced over and nodded grimly, then quickened his pace to a cautious trot, moving as swiftly as silence allowed.
The stairwell emerged out of the shadows like a mouth of dark stone sunken into the ward floor. There, set into the wall, was another familiar Sarn'Kelun indentation, its socket waiting for them.
Tagoth sighed, as if hesitant to attract attention by breaking the silence, and struck the key against the stone with a reluctant flick.
Like a prayer through iron, the key sang its note with unwavering confidence. Dravis winced. It was loud, almost uncomfortably so. He felt exposed.
The sat inserted for a heartbeat too long, and then from deep below, a rumbling as gears began shifting from somewhere behind the wall. The stone doors groaned and folded inwards, revealing a spiraling staircase that plunged into the darkness.
Somewhere in the ward, the whispering returned, almost clear now. Something had awakened. "Go! Now!" Tagoth barked, shoving Dravis forward. "Quickly! Across the threshold!"
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The torch flickered and crackled as a cold, dry air rushed upward from the depths below, its golden light revealing Dwarven reliefs carved along the spiral. The descent had been long and treacherous; small alcoves still held long-dead Sunblight Crystals that Tagoth found not worth the effort of coaxing to life.
With each level, the reliefs of the ancient Carvin'Dor became older in language. The relief of the steps was too shallow, narrow for the Dwarven stride, and wholly not suited for the human foot. The ceiling pressed low, almost claustrophobic.
Finally, they reached a great antechamber. Its ceiling soared overhead into vaulted shadows where the light of the torch could not reach. Ahead, an archway loomed, its frame silhouetted by the glow bleeding from the chamber beyond.
Dravis stood alongside Tagoth at the mouth of the archway. Before them sprawled a second ward. Deeper, Older. Different.
Columns thicker than any watchtower stretched impossibly high into the vaulted darkness. They bore the tight angular script of the Carvin'Dor. Sharp, meticulous, unforgiving, but braided between the lines, almost as if graffiti, were finer, more elegant strokes curling through the Dwarven glyphs like creeping ivy, its script like spider's silk and silver fire...Elven. Perhaps collaboration, but suspiciously like interference.
Stairs spiraled around the giant columns like stone serpents that wound past and through tiered galleries carved into the pillar faces. Each tier blazed in the warm light of crystals, glowing alcoves, shelves of manuscripts, tomes and tablets.
This was no mere archive or grand library. It was what the Dwarves worshiped. A temple to memory. The wisdom of the Carvin'Dor. The heart of the ward.
Water plunged in narrow falls through sluiced channels carved into the great columns, collecting in overflowing cisterns set into each tier. Uncontained, the waters spilled through iron grates, vanishing like rainfall into the depths...into realms still hidden far below. The sound was constant, steady....measured. It was far too much water for a place long since abandoned.
Dravis watched it pass under a grated trench at his feet. "That's a lot of water," he murmured.
Tagoth's eyes followed the columns above and nodded. "Too much. What were they feeding?"
Causeways soared overhead, the catwalks connecting each level to other towers and to shadowed tunnels beyond. The passages, like trunks from a tree, penetrated into the bedrock presumably to habitation wings, workshops, dwellings, and bureaucratic offices. A buried city centered around a sanctum of secrets.
A warm pulse flared through Dravis's pocket. The Sky Pebble had awakened. Dravis drew it out and unwrapped it from its black velvet tessera. The etched gold of the rune shimmered, sensing something. Dravis turned, holding the small shard in his hand, and the etching flared in favor of one of the columns. There, several tiers up, a soft lavender glow pulsed deep within one of the alcoves of an upper gallery almost beyond their view.
They climbed.
It was beneath an ancient Dwarven plinth they found it. Pulsating a deep violet like lightning fire, the sigil of Ber'Odin. The Sky Pebble light spilled across the inscription, an ancient human script flared in its path.
They never spoke of it. Not to me, nor to any beyond their stone-bound oaths. Etar’Das was hidden behind riddles and rites, veiled by their smiles and the songs they sang to stone.
I was their ally. Their honored guest. I broke bread in the mountain halls. I bore their mark with pride. But all the while, they kept the truth. Buried it deeper than death.
I have seen it now. Forced my way down. And still it beats.
The Heart.
It is no craft. It is an abomination.
Forged by this unnatural Accord.
Let them tremble in their deep halls, for what they buried was never theirs to bind.
For what they sowed in silence, they were right to fear the wrath of men.
Dravis exhaled slowly. "What is this place?"
Tagoth didn’t answer. His eyes had drifted past the alcove, fixated on a catwalk that spanned across the void to a stairwell beyond, its gates torn partially open, splintered by violence.
"Varkun'Dor," Tagoth whispered, reading the lintel above the gate. Dravis looked at him puzzled. "Forgeheart. But its meaning is twisted. 'Kun.' It implies a weapon...or a part of one."
They stepped out onto the narrow blackrock that spanned the void of the great vault. Far below them, like veins in the mountain, the water glimmered as it sluiced through the ancient carved channels.
With each step, the torch's flame faltered. dimming and sputtering, the bindings that held fire to wick leeched by the very stone of the catwalk. "The minerals, they drink not water Kath'ire." Tagoth warned, his voice low and taut.
Dravis frowned and clutched his cloak tighter. "El'tras, Why's it so cold?" his breath fogging with the sudden chill.
"A specter of the Fae, perhaps," Tagoth said, his voice lowered even further. "An elemental may be nearby, of what nature I can not say."
Together, they stepped through the broken gate, and the cold deepened.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The descent was made in silence, save for the rippling flutter of the torch's flame. There were no ornate stella or carvings in this stairwell, just meticulous, functional masonry. Dwarven, built with intent and purpose only. Once at the landing, no sentiments needed to be expressed, for the site beyond the partially collapsed lintel spoke for both of them. The hush that wrapped the descent was now shattered by the roar of cascades that echoed against the stone like a chorus of aggravated voices.
The chamber was half-drowned. Narrow bridges of carved basalt stretched across watery expanses, linking battered buttresses and walkways like fragile ribbons over inky hallows.
Overhead, steel grates from the vault above plunged water that showered down onto clusters of crystals suspended by rings of buttresses, and kindled them to life, their faces glowing chartreuse green. Where the water struck, the green flared gold in brief trembling bursts, sequined flecks of lights scattered across the fractured crystal faces.
Tagoth brushed his hands across one of the crystals. It did not react to his touch. "Look at this," he said softly. "These crystals, they feed off the water's resonance."
Dravis craned his head, tracing the rivulets crashing down. "The shimmer, I've never seen a crystal like this."
Tagoth pursed his lips, 'Neither have I Kath'ire. They are alive with something, ancient...Unnatural."
In the center of the chamber, resting on a great basalt dias, lay the heart. A crystal nearly as large as a dwelling, fractured, its cracks glowing silver, wounded by Elven magic, beat faintly. Still alive, but just barely.
Around the chamber, the marks of sabotage were clear. Dwarven script, once geometric and concise, were overwritten in hurried, spidery elven runes. Tablets smashed half half-melted, lay strewn about. Arcane conduits severed and torn open.
"See how the Elves struck here," Tagoth said, bending down, inspecting a fractured Dawrven vein that once ran to the great crystal. "They feared this place."
They stepped closer to the basal dais. Dravis was the first to see it. "Look El'Tras!" he said, pointing above the crystal.
The water, frozen mid-air like beads on invisible strands, bent away from the great crystal like a curtain parting. The droplets suspended, veering a path around the great monolith, denying it its lifeblood.
Tagoth's breath came shallow. "He diverted the waters."
Dravis gaze jumped between the waters and the crystal, not quite comprehending. "Why keep it alive, as if to torture it?"
"Ber'Odin's wards are here. He meant for it to be wounded, but not dead. It held purpose...even to him."
A sharp crack like the rasp of stone splitting in a storm rang from across the chamber.
"It's here!" Tagoth hissed, tugging Dravis' arm, moving the Kath'ire behind him.
From between the pillars, it breached the wall. Not walking, nor crawling, but flowing, leaping from the rock, living inside of it. A creature in an ocean of stone. It's form like molten smoke laced with metallic dust. Smoke that glinted as if flecked with iron and veined in silver, swimming through shadow. Wherever it moved, the stone sighed as if suffering.
Dravis froze, trembling. A Woundweaver, a creature of Altir sorcery. Elemental imprints of the Fae's wrath.
"Kath'ire, the stone is its home. Stay away from the walls." Tagoth's voice snapped taut and sibilate. "It kills on contact. Do not let it touch you."
The specter lurched toward them, a predator tracking its prey. The Woundweaver paused, hovering just within reach of the water, and recoiled. The creature withdrew, staying close to the walls. melting into the stone....emerging elsewhere. Always following. Relentless in its frustration to find a path to its prey.
Keeping to the fragile safety of the watery bridges and paths, they fled to chamber into where the Elves had breached their own path into the chamber.
With a distraught wail, the Woundweaver melted back into the stone as if it had never been. The Elven magic anathema to the Fae's raw elemental essence.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
They broke through into the Elven tunnel, not knowing if they were running towards safety or inscrutable danger. The walls dissolved into space and starlight, glittering like rivers of jewels around them. Above them like a pastel mist, nebulae drifted. And then, ahead, the Ward's threshold, effulgent like soft moonlight.
Tagoth held out his arm, halting the both of them. "Kath'ire, The Elves...Their works are folded into time beyond our weaving. They build with dimensions we cannot even know, and walk between them like shadows. Beyond this threshold bends reality. They carve doors not just into stone but in the spaces between. As we pass through, we will experience fear, marvel, and confusion, often all in the same breath."
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Whoooo! Ok. That...was hard. Two weeks of escapism captured on these pages, written every night after long hours of work. I learned my grammar is horrible. That I need to use a LOT more commas. retyping sentences over and over again to make all the red underlines go away. fighting with Grammarly or whatever. Conversations often going something like this "Yes, thats what I want the person to say. What? I don't care if that's not proper sentence structure. They talk weird ok!" Had to build a lexicon of Dwarven terminology to not keep getting confused, renaming or forgetting the names I had made up for everything. But in the end, I had a lot of fun. Now, to continue to unravel the mystery of Etar'Das. Ber'odin and the Accord. On to the next chapter! The Elven Ward.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
**All images were generated using some free AI Image rendering program I found online. My workflow was to take excerpts from my story, and as a text to prompt, I asked it to render the scene depicted in the passage supplied. Thus, these works are of my own. If there is a problem with this, let me know and I'll remove the images. Probably make the page load faster anyways.
**** Also, the images rendered aren't exactly what I envisioned in my mind and aren't accurate. So if you envisioned something else, then go with it. You're right.