03 Apr Damneus and the Cave of the Blinded Ones

Chapter 1 “The Tunnel to Hell”

The mountain groaned and geysers of fire burst from its sides. Clouds of sulphur whirled around its peak like bird murmurations and the sky churned over in red spasms all around. At the base of Dragon’s Back Mountain, Royce was still sewing up the last of Damneus’s wounds. Crows squawked above, waiting patiently for their next meal. They’d been hidden in that small and darkened ravine together at its base for some three suns, and after escaping out the other side of the Shadow Valley, past the Forgotten Obelisk, Royce was able to stop the bleeding and keep Damneus breathing somehow.

As he cauterized some of the wounds, he was amazed that he was able to even find Damneus once more. Only sound and smell had kept him tracking the path of the lone mercenary through the desert. They were supposed to ride out together from Showta, but it was very much apparent now that ‘something’ was trying to stop them on their quest. It had deceived the pair of them and split them up along the road.

And as Royce tried desperately to keep up with the man from Quinnguy a few days earlier, he’d heard the mercenary ride into the canyon ahead. For if the blind necro had lost the trail, then he would be alone and utterly defenceless against the horrors of the charred desert wastes. Curse his useless eyes.

When he’d entered the canyon after him, Royce had only heard the fight between Damneus and the Daimons, but he could tell it was a savage one. After frantically following the sound further into the Shadow Valley, Royce then heard the vicious clanging of blades and the wailing of agony somewhere ahead, before it all went quiet once more and he knew that a great battle had taken place in that valley.

He’d climbed off his camel and felt around in the sand to find the corpses strewn about the place like fallen leaves, before coming to Damneus laying there in the dust among the dismembered limbs and pools of blood. He’d recognized the mercenary by his distinct armour and the shape of his face. His body sticky with crimson and open wounds, but he was alive. After he’d hitched the unconscious warrior to the camel, he rode on through the rest of the valley until they came to the base of the mountain a day later.

There, he’d administered the aid and incantations that had kept Damneus alive. After the tourniquets were applied and the vitals pumped back into him with crude catheters, the man from Quinnguy laid motionless and sucked in pained breaths once more. Royce then smoothed potent-smelling unguents into his many wounds and lacerations. As well as being a doctor of rocks, Royce was also a skilled medic and mage and once commanded a great respect within Yoti’s ranks long ago. But that was another life. One which Royce did his best to forget about.

The salves smelled of herbs and garlic and Royce knew it was the best chance the mercenary would have now. He’d forced potions down the man’s throat and chanted spells over the body also. Damneus was showing signs of recovering, but Royce was unconvinced if the man would even survive, let alone be able to move once more. Presently, the mercenary looked more like a beaten and bloodied pig than a man.

Royce laid the body in a crevasse and leaned over him as he then wafted burning herbs over his face repeatedly, chanting all the while. The skies above groaned with malevolence and the ox-red burning clouds cracked. Royce mumbled desperately his incantations again and again until his throat started to tighten. For if the mercenary perished, then so would he. There would be no chance to come back out of the valley alone.

Damneus was deep in his dreams however, and nothing appeared to awaken him. He was still in that stone room, paralyzed, lying upon the altar as the shadows moved and schemed all around him. They’d seemingly came to a decision and Damneus’s form began levitating up off the stone table and back down the darkened corridor. The corridor soon opened up and he dreamed his body floating, drifting down a great black river where the streams fed into a vast inky delta of slow moving waves and the beaches of grey sand wound off in circles all around. Dark and clouded skies swirled above and off on the horizon. He drifted past vast impenetrable forests either side, and from those forests many glowing white eyes glared and watched the carcass float down stream. Then he heard the voice.

“Wake up, Damneus. You must wake up. We’re here,” Royce said gingerly as he coaxed Damneus up.

The voice cracked across the horizon over the black sea ahead and the eyes of the forest turned away. Hovering directly above him now, meeting his gaze, was a vast and hideous black bat of a demon that was inches from his face and its horrible white eyes pierced directly into his own as he drifted further down the river. Damneus gasped and wailed in terror. He felt his body lurching out of the water of the river like a huge frog leaping forth.

In a flash, Damneus’s eyes flicked open and his cold blue irises glared upward at his attacker. He lunged up with the speed of a gusting wind and grabbed what he thought was a monstrous demon by his shoulder, flinging him over his own and grappling him to the sand by but one hand. With the other, he held out his sword to him.

“Gah! Mercy, please Damneus!” The necro-man cried out terrified, as Damneus stood over him with his sword touching his throat, the dull red sun behind hid him in a shadow. Damneus was awake.

“It’s me! It’s Royce! Please, I am here to help you. I healed you,” Royce cried out.

“Why am I still breathing?” Damneus demanded to know in his frenzied and bewildered state. “The wounds I’d endured would’ve seen to three men. Yet, I stand. How? Tell me!” He seethed.

“Please, Damneus, remove the sword from me and I shall explain all,” he wheezed. “After all, I am supposed to be your ward through this valley.”

“Royce?” Damneus asked with puzzlement, finally seeing the man on the ground.

“It is me, yes,” Royce coughed.

“Royce…  By the dying sun, I did not know it was you…” he went to pick him up but Royce cowered away.

Damneus cooled, thought for a moment, and moved away, sitting himself upon a rock opposite the crumpled man. The reality of where he was and what he was came crashing back to him in bitter waves and his faculties slid back into focus once more. Royce laid against the canyon wall, too in pain to attempt getting back up.

Damneus spoke. “After things went black, I found myself in a room. A chamber made of stone with fire in the corners. Around me were… things. Shadows. The same shadows I’d seen on the road. They were examining me. They decided my fate. I should be dead, and I know that. I was drifting down a great black river with many white eyes watching me. I’m sure at the end of that river was my terminus. But then I wake up to you standing over me. Why?”

“They were bargaining for your soul, Damneus… It seems something has a broader plan for you,” Royce said gravely, as if the destiny was worser than death itself.

“But, why? I am but a mere assassin and a sword for hire. I have no house nor allegiance. I am no lord. I am a nomad with a blade. Why so much investment in me?”

“I cannot speak for those for whom I do not know, but there must be a reason you were passed over the chasm of death and allowed to continue on. For no petty soul crosses the white glow in triviality.”

Damneus thought for a pause, pondering why he of all people had been selected for this journey. What was so special about him? Damneus turned and then looked at the necro-man who’d saved his life.

“I’m sorry for attacking you,” Damneus said. “That was wrong of me.”

Royce groaned. “It’s okay. I have endured far worse.”

“Still, it was unjustified, and I did not mean to hurt you, friend. Please accept my apology. I have wine for the pain?”

“Accepted, and no wine needed. I have my potions.”

Damneus nodded apologetically and sat still for a long pause.

“I still do not understand what is passing however. Is this a test? A movement from Orion? Blast his soul…”

Royce looked up at him inquisitively. “What business do you actually hold with Orion? A gold-enamoured sell-sword such as yourself is not motivated by repaying debts.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said he freed you from the dungeons of Hetra, but that is not motivation enough for this. In exchange for your freedom, you said he wanted your help regarding the wall. You would not have journeyed into the cursed Shadow Valley to repay a mere debt to a stranger. You would’ve taken the next vessel away from Zimitra the moment you had chance to. What is the real reason, friend?” Royce challenged lightly and Damneus admired the man’s integrity.

He spoke true and helped where he could. A forgotten way in the lands of Zimitra. Damneus looked at him and recognized Royce’s sense of honour and duty. He wanted to know whether he was a component of a grander design, or instead facilitating a cut-throat bandit looking for gold. Damneus decided to dispose of the scheming facade that had allowed him to navigate the slippery world of assassination and espionage and finally be honest with someone.

“…Orion said that a bureaucrat named Porverto knows how to stop the encroachment of the evil beyond the wall. He wants me to bring Porverto to him so we may find out how to stop it…”

“And?” Royce probed.

Damneus shuffled uncomfortably and twirled around his sword between his legs, the pommel shaping out a small crator in the sand.

“Porverto had my entire tribe slaughtered when I was but a boy,” he then said earnestly. “Nine leagues old. I watched as my brother, my two sisters, my mother and my father, and everyone else I’d known was skinned alive and dunked into vats of smoking oil. One after the other. Giant cauldrons as wide as a house where they’d toss slaves and others into it and laugh as they stirred the brew. I was pinned down under a log that fell from our roof when they attacked. It knocked me out and I’d awoken some time later to view the soldiers marching through our village and rounding everyone up. I know not why they attacked us. We were but simple folk who fished and crafted steel at our forges. But they attacked all the same. I wanted to cry out in protest from under that log, but pure fear stopped me from doing so. I was weak and cowardly. Instead, I had to bare witness to the slaughter. Porverto was there on horseback, watching it all, commanding the whole thing. I swore revenge from that moment on. A long time later and Orion offered me the chance to get the bastard who’d had my family melted for fun. That was good enough for me to journey through icy hell for it…”

Royce didn’t speak and simply tossed some old logs onto the fire in the form of a reply. They sat for a while, before the ghoul spoke again.

“I’m sorry. No soul should have to drag and heave such a heavy burden through life as such. Before you were even a man, life corrupted you and set you upon this path of violence without consent nor council.”

“I made it my own as best as I could. Killing becomes a skill the more you practise it. I guess I gotten pretty good at it. So much so that people began hiring me. Had I have had it my way, I’d have liked to have grown up as a fisherman. Sail what’s left of the waters and enjoy the environment. I’d have liked to have planted a forest. Pine trees. Douglas firs. Hardy species that can grow even in sand. I have the seeds with me. An endless sprawl of them where you could sit in the middle and suck in the clean and humming air. But life goes where the river flows,” Damneus said, then suddenly glowered, as if remembering a past indiscretion. “We were supposed to journey out together, Royce. What happened?”

“What happened?” Royce asked.

“Yes. You weren’t there. We’d agreed to meet in the market plaza at dawn. But you weren’t there.”

“But, I was with you?” Royce replied, puzzled. “I… I met you and you gifted me these clothes and the very camel I used. The saddle bags were my own, but you fashioned me with everything else. Even the rations and the equipment. We rode out together at sunrise from Showta… At least, I thought we did… I heard you talking by my side the whole time? Then, as we left Showta, you suddenly rode off ahead and wouldn’t slow down. I called out to you but you wouldn’t stop. I followed as best as I could and found you where I did…”

Damneus simmered and realized what strange phantasms were abound. That presence again. The same shadowy figure from the desert wastes and in Showta and the stone room.

“It wasn’t me. You must’ve been conversing with something else. A trickster. I woke and tried to find you in the market as was agreed. You weren’t there. When I couldn’t find you, a withered old merchant had said he’d seen you, and pointed me in your direction henceforth. He gave me this,” Damneus said and lifted the Talisman from his chest.

Royce reached out and touched the thing. He examined it with his hands and then spoke once more.

“That is the amulet of Moleth-Bai,” Royce whispered gravely. “The voice of deception. His voice moves across desert sands and ocean tides with the same subliminal ease as the air itself. The merchant was a schemer and sought to deceive you.”

“Deceive me he did,” the mercenary growled and ripped the necklace from his shoulders before tossing it into the sand. “I took it and rode on after you. On the road, several times, I saw shadows. They tried talking to me. I thought they were guiding me. And then they led me into the canyon.”

“There are many forces in the desert, good and bad, and their voices are scarcely distinguishable from each other. Someone does not want us to succeed. Someone, or something, must have known our business.”

“Then who were you talking to? Who tricked you?”

“It could’ve been anyone,” Royce said and muttered a curse under his breath. “Or, something unseen… Something wanted us to journey through this cursed valley of ancient evil. Had we not have been split up along the road, it was my intention to ride east with you, then north, around The Shadow Valley, never through it…”

“What is this valley?”

“It is neither here nor there. It is neither before nor after. It is limbo. A schism in the fabric of existence that should not be. All who journey into it, never come back out… apart from you.”

“I have a lot to discuss with Orion, it seems. He owes me a lot more gold now. Let us move,” Damneus said and tried to stand up fully, but stumbled.

“Wait, Damneus, wait! You are not ready. We must rest for a few more days. You are weak and—”

“I’ve pushed through fatigue before,” Damneus interrupted. “Where is the entrance to the old fool’s cave?”

“The entrance to his cave is through this passage and up the track,” Royce gestured to the tunnel behind him. “But, Damneus, I must warn you, other things dwell within this cave also.”

“What things?”

“Evil things,” he muttered gravely, as if the very mention of those cursed phantoms would bring them forth out of the ruddy ether of fabled blackness below and out into the sands of canyon for all to see. Royce shuddered as he muttered his grim understanding of that primordial and untouched world below the desert earth. “Things from the old world are said to wander restlessly in this mountain.”

“What do you know of the old world?” Damneus inquired. For the necro-man’s knowledge was too comprehensive and encyclopaedic to be the knowledge of but one soul. “How is it you know so much?”

“I know only what is available to me. Same as everyone else,” Royce evaded. There was another reason he knew so much of Dragon’s Back mountain and the horrors that lingered within its caves and tunnels, but it was not the right moment to divulge it to Damneus. He’d lived a greedy and shameful life before the Midnight Wall cursed him with that ghoulish illness that made a mockery of his flesh and senses, and Royce understood clearly that he now had a huge debt to repay to Zimitra. The only way he could make recompense for his brutish past life was to assist Damneus on his journey to the truth. Perhaps then he would find redemption, he thought briefly.

Royce continued prudently, “But we are not the first ones upon this cursed rock and not everything from the old world died. There are great evils about that uncoil themselves backwards into infinity and we do not know about any of them. We must be very careful moving through the darkness. I know the way through but I implore you to wait and rest before going in. For down there, blinded and hungry souls linger. They will tear us apart if we are reckless and clumsy. We must tread very carefully. You are weak and bleeding. No use entering a battle now. Least you offer yourself as a sacrifice. Let me heal you.”

Damneus thought for a pause. He looked at his sewn up wounds and saw that they were still weeping and the bandages were still sticky. His hands were trembling and cold sweat popped out of his skin like ice droplets. He could barely grasp his sword also. Damneus knew Royce was right. He was weak and tired. He relented and sat back down opposite Royce.

“Fine,” he grunted. “Then, let us make a fire at least. I’ll not shiver through the night like some abandoned dog. We should eat well also.”

“Agreed. Lucky for you I packed provisions. Do you like deer or boar?”

Damneus smiled. “You’re a very useful man to have as a companion, Royce.”

They sat about the fire and made a great camp for a few days where they slumbered at the edge of the shadow of the valley of death, and they rested until the fires and the coals died and the meat was used up. The ghostly winds howled all about them with the restlessness of the undead spirits, but both men had done their best to ignore the lingering cold howls of death.

Damneus had produced a bottle of fortified Quinnguy wine that saw the pair off. They exchanged great stories and laughed and talked about home. Damneus felt his ability coming back fully. No longer was he sluggish and weak. His wounds had miraculously healed and his limbs felt at full capacity again. He felt strong and capable. He felt energized and ready to wrestle the moon. Royce had provided him with very sharp tasting potions and tonics that fortified his strength and will even further. His entire body was vibrant with fierce life and the desire to destroy it.

Once they’d dismantled the camp, they set off into the dim crimson morning on camelback. As they did, both men now held a quiet sense of camaraderie. Royce believed it was fair to say that they respected each other. Damneus meanwhile rode quietly and contemplated the meaning of the objective itself.  If he was to get to the bottom of the whole affair and find out just what this Orion had planned, then now was his time. From its very genesis, Damneus was not convinced by it all. The schemes, the deception, the malpractice. So many moving parts and influences. But, why lead him, of all people, through it all? All that he could surmise was that he was some sort of instrument for a false flag operation to prove to the masses that there was indeed a broader threat to their livelihoods other than that of the environment.

The lands of Zimitra were dying a slow agonising death and the colonies would not last much longer. Each sunrise, the anarchy and the marauding and the collapse of commerce grew. Yet the senate on the Azure Isles could not afford to lose their grip over the lands. The councillors upon those islands schemed and lied and inculcated every aspect of Zimitra’s existence, all for the benefit of those few heads of the government. But it was all a ruse and the people were slowly disobeying. The Azure Isles needed a bigger threat to the people to keep their position. For, deep below, the Isles needed the peasants more than the peasants needed the Isles.

They moved through the chasms together that breathed back at them with the stink of death, and in that stink of death they found the calling of perdition. A long and tight crack in the earth that could give way at any moment, and they shuffled through its tight grip with the patience and the cautiousness of a fox.

Later in the day, and they’d broken free of that gorge and found themselves moving up and along the spine of the mountain that sat stark and black and menacing against the great flat plateau of the desert. Like a round dark crown adorned in the middle of the desolation. They trotted up the back of the mountain together and Damneus turned and watched the dim sun sink lower towards the vast battered lands behind him.

Somewhere, down below, to the north, the legless husks of the ancient men crawled across the twilight plains towards some infinitely obscured destination. Lifeless emaciated bodies that clawed forward across the desert sands, faceless and labouring. Their fate was sealed and each day they would start back at the mountain’s base before crawling forth on their forearms once more until the sun set, forever. Damneus watched them with pity. No one knew what had caused them such damnation, only now that their destiny was cemented in the mortar of time and choice, and now they crawled.

When night fell, they came to a small track that carved its way up and around the mountain. What was left of the sun sank deep below the rim of the world and the sky turned purple. Later, and they came to a platform on the far side of the face. A circle of sand to stand on and at the base of that circle was a hole. It plunged downward into sheer blackness like some kind of coal chute or mine shaft. Royce looked at it with blinded eyes and nodded solemnly, gesturing at it.

“This is it. This is the way to Orion…” Royce said and pointed to the shaft.

Damneus looked down at the hole and frowned. “How do you know of this way?”

Royce sighed and knew he could evade the probing no longer. “It was once one of many mine shafts, long ago. Like all things now, just another ruin. That way, as like the others, leads into the heart of the mountain. Precious liquid Litrium was once mined from down there by slaves. It was my business to know of such places…”

“Why was it your business?”

“I was a rock specialist for Yoti, remember?”

Damneus grunted and leaned down and shuffled into the narrow fissure that led down into sheer blackness. He peered in, squinting, and saw only darkness and felt the draw of hot air against his bronze skin. The earth below his body smelt metallic and when he touched the walls of the passage he felt a great unease within him. Was this really an old mineshaft, or something else? Dragon’s Back mountain was indeed a great mine long ago, but at an indeterminate junction in the past, no one was able to say when, a great evil occured and the shafts fell silent and all those inside never came back out to tell their story. Now, standing at the hole, Damneus could feel the eagerness of death beckoning him into it.

He turned and spoke to Royce. “I’ll go first. Release the hoofs. No use keeping them anymore.”

Royce obliged and let the loose the reigns on their dromedaries. The pair of camels snorted and turned and ran away back down the mountain together keenly. Damneus watched them scrabble off and disappear in the twilight red haze and thought it was for the best. For something told him that they would not be coming back this way regardless and the camels would stand a better chance out there alone. He then turned and looked back down into the hole again. This is the way to Orion apparently…

He crawled in.

Chapter 2 “The Beating of the Drums”

The air inside was thick and damp. The walls, jagged and veined. They were slippery and the stench of something metallic lingered up ahead. Cave water dripped somewhere. Damneus shuffled forward on his stomach in the dark. He held out only a small flame on a burning stave for illumination. Behind him, at his heels, Royce grunted and shuffled forward also.

“How does a man like Orion get in here exactly?” Damneus growled in frustration as his bare chest scraped against rock and the ancient railway tracks of the mine carts. All his equipment and swords clanged and banged across the rocky tunnel.

“I highly doubt Orion uses this passage,” Royce coughed behind him with a tinge of sarcasm. “Oracles move in strange ways…”

“Meanwhile the rest of us dogs are made to scrabble around in the dirt like termites.”

“Hierarchy, I guess. Everything has its place. Even rocks.”

Damneus scoffed at the comment and they crawled downward for a while. The tunnel was unrelenting and at points, he thought they would become wedged in its aspects and never move again. The earth seemed to heave against them, but they pushed on regardless.

Eventually, the tunnel did open up and they soon scrabbled out of the hole together, but it led into somewhere the duo were not expecting. From the ceiling, both travellers fell out of the tunnel and crashed down into a large domed chamber. They’d flopped out from the hole and onto the floor with the same shamed embarrassment as that of a newly-birthed lamb. They both groaned and then they tried to stand up.

“Well, that tickled,” Royce winced.

Damneus staggered to his feet first. Shakily, he saw the room and drew back. It was illuminated for some reason. Small braziers burned and the walls of the cave flickered amber with the incandescence.

“What in Talboss’s name is this place?” Damneus exclaimed. “I thought you said this was a mine?”

“It.. it was…”

“This looks more like a temple. What is it this? What lit these?” Damneus asked, as he looked around and reached for his sword. The large bell-shaped room was unnerving to him now. “Part of your mining expedition?”

“I do not know. Maybe it’s always been here?” Royce replied, stupefied also. He shuffled and adjusted his rucksack and looked around with blinded eyes.

Damneus glanced around and briefly investigated the room. It was wide and warm, like a chamber of great commerce or religious practise. The huge domed roof above was adorned with marbled carvings and passages of some unknown language.

“There are no other entrances to this room…”

This is no mere mine shaft. What we’d crawled in from was, but not this. It seems that the mines hit a find that they were not expecting…

“Anything you want to tell me?” Damneus challenged.

Royce cowered slightly. “This is all I know, Damneus. I swear. All I know is Orion is somewhere in this cave and that I used to oversee the mining operations long ago. That’s it…”

Damneus took the statement but bristled. He did not believe it.

“Looks like your miners found this room.”

They moved around quietly and investigated the room. After a brief pause, he saw it. On the far side of the temple, behind a large marble altar, was a passage down to the below. A wide primordial staircase with staggered stone steps that sank downward into the earth as if going over the throat of a great animal. Damneus stepped lightly across the floor, cat-like, until he came to it and peered in.

“Down here,” he said.

Royce obliged, following the sell-sword’s footsteps. The staircase was deep and drenched in gloom. They snuck down together and passed many rooms and hallways.

If this is what the miners stumbled upon, then where are they?

Their shoes padded against the stone passage like soft kneading on a flour board in the dark as they slinked down it. The torch whished about in the blackness quietly, coupled only with the sound of their furtive breaths. Further down, in the alcoves was the answer to his question. In iron cages, were bodies that sat charring still over glowing coal fires. Damneus glowered as he passed them by.

“I’d say these are your miners,” he said over his shoulder to Royce, then quickly remembered Royce was blind. Royce seemed not to hear him anyway, either that or he was too horrified to reply all the same.

Damneus’s breathing was steady and controlled. He held his sword out as he moved down. Just the steaming dripping of cave water all around. The wolfskin shoes he wore done the majority of the work in covering up the sound of his steps.

After some descent, they came into a wide arched corridor with sandstone columns lining it. Beyond the columns, the earth slid off into sheer black crevasses either side and Damneus dared not imagine what horrors lay below. Desecrated corpses of all manner of being laid cast aside in the various eroded cracks and it’s jagged cavities and there was a strange fog that moved around unnaturally in the space—one that seemed to ebb and flow like the tides.

He moved forward, sword in his right, torch in his left. The sweat from his brow crept into his eyes but he stared forward still, alert and keen, like the hungry panther that moved swiftly across the nighttime desert brush. As much as he didn’t relish admitting it, this was his loudest calling. This was what he was designed for. This was his only purpose. If he were to be a merchant sailor, or a tradesman, or a senator, it would’ve been an utterly misused talent. For he was born to be a savage animal, even it was to be prey at times. To turn his back on his blessed instincts would’ve been to deny the very thing that made him alive in the first place. He was a hunter and a killer and a great adventurer to his very bones. No shanty civilization could tame his wild spirit and ferocious desire to roam and carve out his own track in the sands.

Royce followed him closely, listening to the controlled breathing and the steady beating of Damneus’s heart ahead of him. It was the pounding of a champion’s heart. Loud and constant. Fast but not panicked. At times Royce felt his way around with his hands. When the contours of walls were too far away, he hummed a strange song to himself that seemed to provide a form of sonar to his senses.

As the two edged their way through the dimness, somewhere further ahead, something clanged, and then fell silent once more. It sounded like metal. Chains. Damneus froze, as did Royce. Both primed to strike. But no further sound came. He turned over his shoulder and whispered for Royce to stay closer and they moved on.

Damneus’s sword probed forward into the gloom as they crept further. Damneus reckoned the corridor was at least as long as the Red Priest’s temple back in Hetra. But what manner of architecture was it? What ancient race crafted this place and what was its purpose? As they moved through the emptiness, he thought of every possible answer to what it could have been. His senses tingled with the heightened alertness and his razor sharp eyes scanned forward into the gloom, looking for any movement. Something felt wrong. The eerie stillness of the hallway was alarming to him. He gripped his sword tightly and stepped forward slowly. The stone floor ahead was littered with various ancient bones and fallen swords. Many men had tried to cross this corridor in times of old and it seemed none had succeeded.

“The…the floor. It’s filled with bones?” Royce announced as his withered feet crunched over them all.

“Too many bones,” Damneus said thoughtfully. “Old bones. Those helmets are of the long-dead race of Gorgs from the South,” he continued as he looked down at one of the grey skeletons, still wearing its boiled leather and chain mail armour.

“What happened here do you suppose?”

“They weren’t fighting anything. They all died looking in the same direction. Something must’ve ambushed them from the sides, flanked them, and—” With that Damneus’s eyes flashed wide as the realization struck him. With a surging heat, his instincts took over.

“Down!” he yelled as he tugged Royce to the floor with him. They crashed together onto the rough sandstone tiles and laid prone, and but not a moment later, the walls suddenly became alive with screeching, as darts and spears and blades flew out of unseen cavities all around and filled the corridor with lethal projectiles. They hissed and clanked as they whizzed overhead the pair.

“The floor is triggered?” Royce said as the walls sang their death song to the trespassers. “Why would Orion do such a thing?”

“This wasn’t Orion. The darts are ancient. We need to crawl. Follow me.”

They crawled forward on their stomachs together as the volley continued overhead. It was a long and merciless crawl and by the end of it, Royce was panting hard and coughing out the last of his spit.

At the end of the hallway of death, they then stood up and passed through a wide ancient archway with a menacing iron portcullis suspended from the ceiling. That must’ve been the clang of metal I heard, Damneus thought.

Once they’d crossed it, they came into a large circular room that had no other exit save for the one they’d just came from. It was almost identical to the original chamber that they fell into way back. Ahead, shrouded in the gloom on the other side of the chamber, was a large ornate archway that was blocked by a large cylindrical stone pillar. In the middle of the room was a huge circular coal pit that burned brightly and made the room pulse with red. There was nothing else on the walls apart from bare and jagged rock. They crossed the space together silently and came to stand in front of the stone archway. Damneus scanned it. There were no inscriptions nor marking anywhere upon it. Just a sheer smoothed surface of white glistening granite.

Damneus looked up at the roof of the chamber. Pitted in the stone oculus ceiling were hundreds of black shoots that no doubt held the same deadly spears and darts ready to rain down upon them.

“This must be the way forward, right?” Royce asked quietly.

“I think so. This is an ancient place of worship it seems. And they’ve booby-trapped its outer walls to keep intruders out. Either that or it was designed to be a gauntlet for initiates to attempt. I’d say this is what happened to your miners. This must be from the old world? It predates any architecture I know of.”

“So how do we pass?”

“An offering maybe?” Damneus said, unconvinced by his statement.

Just as he said it, the pillar ahead suddenly creaked and words began to carve themselves upon its surface, as if being inscribed by a phantom unknown. They embossed themselves upon the stone with the confidence of an oracle. Damneus watched on.

“It’s a riddle,” Damneus said as he watched the inscription finish.

“A riddle for what?”

“Access,” he replied. Damneus looked at his feet and realized. “Don’t move. We’re standing on pressure plates now. We have to answer the riddles or we’ll die.”

Royce sighed. “I’m so glad you hired me to be your porter on this grand adventure,” he then smirked wryly.

“At least you get to ‘see’ the world,” Damneus retorted with a grin. He then began reading from the carving.

“I exist only when shared,

Yet I am not diminished by giving.

I can trap the wise,

And free the foolish.

I grow when questioned,

but die when proven.

I am older than language,

Yet I live inside worlds.

What am I?”

Royce didn’t say anything. He simply stood motionless and scratched his head.

“Mystery,” Damneus said aloud confidently. After a short silence, the stone cylinder groaned and rotated. Its heavy stone bulk grinding against the mechanisms left behind.

“It seems that was the correct answer?” Royce said, amazed at how quickly Damneus solved it.

“If it wasn’t, we’d never have known.”

As the stone pillar rotated, it presented a new riddle. Words, from unknown forces, began etching themselves in the stone as before. Damneus studied it, then read it aloud.

“Shapeless, yet it forms the spine of all beginnings.

I am the silent architect behind every doing.

I am what drives the aimless into the vast unknown.

Yet if I vanish, even the brightest path becomes overgrown.

What am I?”

Before Royce could even formulate an answer, Damneus already solved it.

“Purpose,” he said and once again the stone pillar rotated in acceptance.

“Not just a sell-sword after all?” Royce joked. He looked across at Damneus with awe and amazement. Behind those savage blue eyes was a sharp and cunning intellect that was completely incongruous within such a primal being, yet strangely fitting for the mercenary. Royce found himself truly admiring the savage next to him.

When the pillar stopped once more and presented another riddle, Royce grinned and gestured for Damneus to proceed. His hand said, ‘By all means’. Damneus smirked also and read out the next riddle.

“I’m a circle unfinished, a tale untold.

A fire that smoulders, never quite cold.

Invisible chains bind the future and past.

A reckoning delayed, but certain to last.

What am I?”

Damneus stared at the stone now.

“Wha-what is it?” Royce asked tentatively.

“Vengeance,” Damneus replied and the sound came out like stone crashing against rock.

This time, the pillar sank down in its archway to reveal a doorway behind it.

“You seemed to have solved it all,” Royce said with glee. “You’re truly showing your prowess now.”

Damneus looked ahead and pondered. “Strange how all the riddles seemed to be appropriated just for me…”

“How do you mean?”

“Mystery. It knew about the Midnight wall and why I came here. Purpose. It understands why I must find the secrets. Vengeance. It knows what I’m after is not only mystery, but Porverto also. Oddly specific for an ancient gateway, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps all of this is preordained after all?”

“Maybe. Maybe it can see my thoughts. The earth speaks after all. Maybe it’s not inert matter. I wonder if it is connected to us all somehow?”

“Like I said, not all things from the old world are gone.”

As they stood at the darkened entrance together, contemplating the nature of the universe, a drum began to beat from within. Slow at first. A slow booming thud began echoing up out of the stygian depths like a war drum, like a great beast awakening down there. Then it sped up and more drums joined in. Before long, the entire chamber throbbed with their beating.

“They know we’re here…” Damneus said as he stared ahead into the tunnel.

“The blind ones, Damneus. They may not see but they can hear everything.”

“You should be right at home then,” Damneus quipped. His face then hardened as he prepared for what about to come next. He stepped forward slowly, sword at the ready. They moved in and the torchlit illuminated the tunnel as they did.

Chapter 3 “The Belly of the Barbarians”

The tunnel was long and dark and the walls were jagged and uneven. The beating of the drums persisted. It was getting louder now. They crept forward towards its sound. Up ahead, Damneus could see a small hole of light growing wider at the end. Coupled with the crescendo of drums which rumbled the tunnel now, Damneus and Royce both heard a loud cheering and clapping coming from the bright orange hole at the end of the tunnel. Something was waiting for them.They came to it and stepped into a blinding circle of sand. The sheer noise alone was disorientating to the pair as they looked around blearily, up at bright amber flames and braziers.

They were welcomed into a large pit by maniacal and feral clapping. Surrounding them was a grotesque audience of cave dwellers in podiums that roared as they entered. The audience all around were so horribly twisted and hunch-backed that they appeared like a gang of rabid and hairless monkeys up there in the tiered seating. The pale entities had no eyes, no nose, no features at all save for the wild and rotten mouths. They twitched around in the shadows with their emaciated and elongated limbs chained to the seats.

Damneus squinted as he tried to look up at them all as it dawned on him what they had just walked into and why the drums were beating to begin with.

The stone arena was a stark and circular pit that sat in the centre of a huge bell cavern with its overarching pillars of rock. They clawed up over the pit like dead and hardened spider’s legs. As he glanced up, Damneus briefly thought that the pillars looked like an opened rib cage of a giant. The cave pulsed a deep and wavy red as the many braziers and open fires burned furiously and the blinded ones thrashed about in their chains in fits of demented animation. The whole room throbbed with the beating of the drums and of excited shouting.

Then the cave spoke. Its voice smothered the chamber.

“E Shy Buwa Koi?” A huge booming voice called out from the darkness above.

Damneus stood in the sands, scanning the shrouded crowds for the speaker, but he could not see anything. All around him the bones of past gladiators lay silent in the dust.

“Stay close to me, Royce. I will get you out of this,” he whispered to the necro at his side.

“I doubt that,” Royce smirked.

“E SHY BUWA KOI!” The voice bellowed from the eaves with its unnaturally guttural sound. It seemed to be all around them now, echoing, and it took on the aspects of stone grinding against stone.

“I can’t see who’s speaking,” Damneus grunted to Royce.

“The mountain Damneus, it’s alive and it speaks,” Royce said, awestruck.

He turned to him. “It’s alive? How? What’s it saying?”

“It wants to know who we are…”

Damneus looked up at the ceiling of the cavern and tried to fill his voice with congeniality. “One that wishes you no harm. I merely stumbled upon your blessed palace, and for that, I am sorry. It was not my intention to trespass on such hallowed ground. We followed the wrong path and it had led us here. Forgive me, my lord, and we shall be on our way.”

“UM SHABA KOI THAI?!” the voice cracked and the noise was deafening. The whole cavern seemed to vibrate with the voice and it appeared that it might collapse in at any moment. Small chunks of rock fell from the ceiling and landed about the pair.

“Royce, what’s it saying?”

“It’s hard to understand. It’s a language I am not familiar with, but its roots are the same as that of the Hetrians. I think it’s insulted we stumbled upon the arena, and not sought it out.”

“Tell him I’m sorry to disappoint him” Damneus shrugged.

The pale and blinded figures in the eaves all started squawking and screeching banshee-like in their holes and alcoves like rabid bats twisted into agony. Damneus watched them and noticed something about them. Some of them were still wearing crude leather harnesses about their thin bodies. Others wore half-slanted helmets fastened tight around their jaws. The miners from eons past. He didn’t dwell on the thought.

“My apologies, my lord. We are ignorant in your ways. We are from far off lands and do not know your customs. Please, with all sincerity, forgive our indiscretions,” Royce spoke up in his gravelled voice.

“COM CHABO E CAN NEY!”

“The mountain says you are filled with hatred and violence and that is why you are here,” Royce whispered.

“I do hold hatred in my heart, but that is mine to bear and none of your business,” Damneus shouted up at the ceiling with defiance. “For the hatred that burns within is not meant for you. I have no hostility towards you. Let us pass!”

“KOI….” The voice growled at length before falling away.

Then, without prelude, the entire cavern fell silent with it. The deranged audience ceased to move and all faced down into the pit with feverish anticipation, standing on parade, looking at the pair with useless optics. Damneus squirmed and looked up at them all as if he were a prized tiger in a zoo exhibition. The thought irritated him and he knew that given the opportunity, he could slash his way through the entire mob. What manner of civilisation could generate such regressive spawns of filth such as this? How long had these pallid creatures been down here in the grim and what aspect of worship did they prostrate themselves toward now? What corrupted their minds into twisted mockeries of man?

“Does that mean the mountain will let us pass?” Damneus asked Royce.

But, before Royce could answer, from somewhere ahead, an awful animalistic bellowing roared. It sounded like a great war horn blaring over desert plains, or a monstrous bear groaning awake from somewhere below and the sheer noise made the sand under their sandaled feet tremble. The mob in the maenianums howled and cheered and began dancing around in their seats. Their entertainment was nigh.

“I guess not…” Damneus answered himself wryly.

“It wants us to beat its champion in open combat…”

“What champion?”

The earth thudded with the reply of huge lumbering footsteps coming forth from the large black gate at the far side of the arena. The duo stood motionless in the pit and waited. The steps came closer and the wild snorting on the other side was heard by Royce.

Then the gruesome black iron gates parted like the opening of jaws and from the middle of that blackness, a huge pair of swinging mandibles jutted out as if it were the gate’s tongue.

“YU-GONG!!!” The mountain announced cheerfully and was met with the roaring applause of the blinded ones. Damneus drew back instinctively at the hideous sight of the beast shrouded in the shadows of the gates. Royce swallowed on his fear and only listened to the great plodding and monstrous snorting of the beast that he could not see. He hastily drew his sword and pulled his senses tight. The crowd screamed with delight once more and the pair prepared for the fight to come.