by Rachel Ford
She nodded. “And – well, I probably shouldn’t tell you.”
That was the sort of comment that couldn’t be ignored. “What?”
“If you have anything else you need to do here, do it before you start going down.”
“Why?”
She hesitated for a moment. “It’s basically a saving zone. But there’s no coming back. Not now, anyway. Later in the game, you can get back here. But way later.”
He glanced around the stone ruin, at the reddish sunlight streaming in through the missing window panes, and at the barren, windswept plains beyond. “I’m ready,” he said.
“Alright.” She stood aside and gestured at the staircase. “After you.”
“You’re the one who knows where we’re going.”
“I know what you know: down the stairs.”
He shook his head, but decided he didn’t want to seem like a wuss. So he strode onward, to the darkness. He hesitated half a second on the landing, and conjured up a fireball. He heard the clacking of Shimmerfax’s hooves behind him, and the grunting of the nameless ogre. Jordan said, “You going to set up camp at the top of the stairs?”
He threw a frown her way and then stepped forward. The fireball shimmering between his fingers acted like a kind of torch, casting a flickering, dancing illumination on the stairs. The darkness receded a little. He could see steps winding down out of sight. He could feel the wind at his back.
He took another step, and another, and another, until he rounded a full circle. Now, he could see nothing but stairs behind him and before him. He kept going, one step after another, into a darkness that – as far as he could tell – might have been eternal.
His companions all clattered along after him, and he found himself wondering about horses and stairs. Then, all of a sudden, he felt movement underneath him and heard a rumble all around. The floor fell away. He tried to leap backward, but it was too late. His step and several in either direction, forward and backward, plummeted downward. And he and his party went with them.
Chapter Twenty
Jack landed heavily, in the pitch black. He’d lost focus on his fireball as he fell, so it had gone out. He felt his health meter ebb away, and he moaned. It didn’t hurt, but he felt a jarring sensation throughout his body. “Son-of-a-biscuit.”
Jordan laughed in the darkness beside him. “I figured you’d appreciate that.”
“Appreciate it? Are you trying to kill me or something?”
A light sprang up, hovering over their heads. It seemed magical in nature to Jack, made of a translucent ball of shimmering energy. He glanced from it to the room it lit up. They’d landed among a heap of stones in a great, open room. The staircase behind them looked something like the first floor stairs they’d come across earlier: they reached up for a ways before disappearing into thin air. The collapse, of course, he knew must have been what Jordan alluded to when she warned him about not being able to return. Because there was no way in hell he was getting back up those stairs. Just as they’d done in the necromancer’s lair, they were going to need to find an alternate way out.
Shimmerfax picked himself up with an indignant whinny. The ogre muttered something in his own grumbling language. Jack once again found himself sympathizing with the monster. The whole business had him feeling grumbly.
Still, Jordan urged him on into the hall beyond the landing. And since there was nothing for it but to go forward anyway, he did. The fortress, somehow, seemed bigger underground than it had above. There was no lighting here, except for Jordan’s spell, which followed their party as they moved. As a consequence, the whole place seemed enveloped in an ever present shadow – as if one wrong step might plunge them into an eternal gloom. It didn’t, of course.
That happened when the spell timed out. Jack froze to the spot. He hadn’t been expecting the sudden shift into darkness, so it took him by surprise. “What the…”
“Sorry,” she said. “The spell only lasts a few minutes.” She must have cast it again, though, because as suddenly as the light had vanished, it reappeared. “There we go.”
Jack breathed out, and Jordan laughed at him. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
He frowned her way, but refused to further acknowledge the comment. He moved forward. The hairs on his arm and the back of his neck stood on end because of the cold. Or, maybe, because of his nerves. A low ambient music, dark and foreboding, carried through the place. It was so subtle he barely registered it. But he felt sweat slick up his back and across his palms. Every sound made him jump a little. Shimmerfax’s hooves ringing off the stone, the ogre’s quiet muttering, and even the occasional utterance from Jordan: it all put him on edge.
But for all that, the place seemed utterly deserted. The rooms had been better preserved here – unrealistically so, he thought, as there was a hint of moisture in the air that would have long ago rotted the ancient bedspreads and cushions adorning the age-old furniture they found. He managed to scrounge up some treasure in the chests and dressers, and forced himself to leave behind anything that didn’t have an obvious value or use.
He didn’t want to admit it – and he never would to Jordan – but the game was training him to at least reconsider his hoarding ways.
He might have spent longer exploring, and probably would have come away with more gold if he did. But the low, somber music, and the tense atmosphere urged haste, and he complied.
They followed a long hall that forked frequently. But Jack mirrored Jordan’s forward-facing posture, and kept going straight. Eventually, they reached an L-shaped turn. He followed it, and she said nothing to dissuade him. He started to wonder if he should ask. But her comments about needing help still lingered in his memory, so he said nothing.
As if the universe had rewarded him for his obstinacy, after a long stretch of dark hall, he spotted an orange gleam on the horizon. He slowed his pace, and lowered his voice. “What’s that?”
“We’ll have to check it out,” she said.
He frowned at her, but crept forward. The ogre muttered something in his guttural language, and Jack shushed him. There was nothing he could do about Shimmerfax, though. The battlecorn’s hooves rang out in loud, echoing clomp-clomp sounds down the hall.
Jack could feel himself sweating in earnest as they got closer. “You should put that out,” he cautioned Jordan, gesturing up at the ball of light.
She nodded, and in a moment they stood in absolute darkness with nothing but a sickly orange glow ahead of them. The ogre grunted angrily, and again, Jack hushed him. Then, slowly, carefully, he crept forward.
Shimmerfax continued to give away their presence with heavy, clomping hoofbeats. The ogre, rather than hushing, managed to run into any and every thing littering the halls – every barrel, every crate, every old, busted bit of crockery. Or so it seemed to Jack, anyway, because he made an unholy clamor.
They got a few yards from the orange glow. By now, Jack could see that it was a doorway leading into a great, open space. The light came from a makeshift fire, the flickering top of which he could only just make out behind a shattered stone throne. As to who or what had lit it, and might be in residence in the area, he could see nothing.
He turned back to whisper to Jordan, and managed to collide with her. “Careful,” she said, softly and quietly.
“Can we get these geniuses to wait here before they get us killed?”
“Sure. You can command them to wait for you.”
He breathed a sigh of relief, and started to step around her, toward the unicorn – a shimmering silver apparition in the dim light from the other room. “Of course,” she added, “if we need them in a fight, they won’t be able to help us unless you get back to them.”
He paused mid-step. “Can’t I just call them?”
She shook her head. “You have to be within the interaction perimeter.”
“That’s bullshit,” he said, which the game translated as, “That’s a load of poppycock.”
She smiled. H
e could see the shadows shift on her face as her lips and cheeks moved. “Well, either way…it is what it is.”
He considered for a long moment. Then, he decided that whatever was lurking in there must have already heard his noisy entourage. Better to have the clowns in a fight than not; they already gave us away. “Let’s just go.”
She nodded, and they moved on together. Jack reached the room first – by Jordan’s design, he was quite sure. She let him take the lead, even though he’d made a point of waiting a few seconds.
So he sidled up to the carved stone doorway, and peered inside. The room was huge, with a great, vaulting ceiling. It might have been some kind of ballroom or throne room, he thought, because there was indeed a throne sitting on a high dais. Two of them, in fact, one great and ancient, and seemingly carved out of the same stone as the building; and the other newer and smaller, and made of gold and precious gems. It glowed dazzlingly in the firelight.
Jack forgot his fear, and his caution, and stood upright, whistling. “Sweet mother of pearl. That’s got to be worth a fortune.”
Jordan hushed him in turn. “Shh.”
“Oh,” he said, whispering again, “right. But do you see that, Jordan? That thing’s got to be worth a fortune.”
“I heard you the first time. But you won’t be able to carry it.”
He nodded glumly, remembering Richard’s infinite inventory. Richard, he knew, would have been able to stuff the entire thing into his enchanted rucksack. But not Jack. No, Jack had to fiddle with how many potions and cloaks he could carry at one time.
“Well?” Jordan said.
He realized he’d been standing squarely in the doorway, simultaneously in plain view of anyone who might be inside while also blocking his team’s entrance. “Right.”
He scurried past the door, to a bit of rubble. He couldn’t tell where it had come from – the ceiling, perhaps – but it was the same cut stone as the rest of the building. Jordan ducked behind the rocks with him. Shimmerfax followed, clomping along. To his credit, the horse tried to blend in. But he was taller than their patch of cover – so he stood there, a seemingly disembodied head shimmering in the stillness.
The ogre didn’t even bother trying to hide or blend in. It squeezed through the doorway with an effort, grunting and grumbling as it went. Then it stood by their hiding place, still complaining, like a giant signal to anything that might be nearby: intruder alert. Intruder alert. We’re hiding right here.
Jack tried to ignore his rising pulse as he glanced around the room. He didn’t see anyone. But there were pillars and piles of rubble galore – plenty of hiding spaces for bad guys to lurk. His eyes came to rest at last on the fire, and what he could make out of the makeshift camp beyond the thrones.
He pointed in that direction. “We should check it out.”
“You’re not going to be able to carry the throne,” she said, a hint of amusement in her tone.
“I know that,” he shot back, a little snappily. “I mean the campsite.” Then, he considered. “Although, you think I could pry some of the gems out and take them?”
She didn’t answer. She just started toward the dais, keeping low and ducking behind cover. Jack followed her example, although he wasn’t sure why: however careful they were, the glittering unicorn and grumbling ogre would give them away.
She reached the dais first, and slunk up beside the shattered stone throne, waiting for him. He felt his palms slick again, and he recalled the crumbling staircase. Jordan knew the level. If she was waiting, that meant they were about to stumble into something bad.
He surveyed their surroundings with heightened senses, looking for any signs of traps or snares. He didn’t see anything, though: no tripwires or pressure plates, no magical glowing or strange symbols.
“You okay?” Jordan whispered.
He nodded. “Just checking the place out.” He took a breath and crept forward, around the throne.
Then, he froze. There, not five steps ahead of him was a dead body, face down on the cold stone.
The music picked up a little, sounding every bit as foreboding as before, but louder now. “Sugar,” he said. He threw yet another glance around, and crossed the stone platform to the body.
It was a man’s body, bearing a broad, red gash on the back of his skull. It smelled like the bodies Jack had found in the necromancer’s lair: like death. Part of him wanted to back away, and put his hand over his nose. But part of him realized that whoever this was, they were important to the quest. He reached out a hand, and flipped the corpse.
All at once, he got an alert that the main quest had been updated.
Objective complete: locate Aderyn
Then a slew of new objectives piled on: find out what happened to the dead adventurer, search his body for clues about where Kalbidor might be, and find a way to escape the ancient fortress.
Jack sighed. “I should have known it wouldn’t be easy.”
Jordan smiled subtly, like she agreed but had opted to be too polite to say so.
And, of course, it was true. This was a videogame. Nothing was ever as simple as that. So Jack reached his hands into the dead man’s pockets, and pulled out five items. The first was a bejeweled amulet that glowed with the power of enchantment. And unlike the rings he’d picked up earlier that required a spell to know what they did, the amulet kindly told him:
Protects the wearer from curses.
Jack snorted. It might protect against curses, but that seemed to be it, because it sure hadn’t done much for poor, dead Aderyn. Still, he slipped it around his own neck, and a surge of fortifying energy coursed through him.
Then there was a low level dagger with a bejeweled hilt. It dealt minimal damage, but he figured he’d get an alright price from a merchant. He slipped that into his pack too.
Next, came a healing potion – that had done Aderyn no more good than the amulet – and a magicka potion. He swiped both of them, then concentrated on the final item.
This was a leather bound journal, and Jack opened it. Bold, easily legible handwriting filled half a dozen pages. The first detailed Aderyn’s current – and last – adventure. He was seeking something called “The Blessed Tears of Saint Acaria.” He filled an entire page with speculation about whether they were actual preserved tears, or some kind of tear-shaped gem, and filled another with the lore of the ruin that had claimed his life. Apparently, the place had been home to an ancient elf king called Miradorn, who had been put under a terrible curse from a rival. Aderyn had translated an ancient work on the subject, and quoted it in his notes.
“‘When he took the Princess Arya from her father’s house under cover of night, King Brutmyr’s wroth burned hot. He cursed both the king and his new bride, making them hideous in the sight of all men, and condemning them nevermore to walk in the light of day. Their entire court shared in their misfortune, and despite his daughter’s pleas, Brutmyr’s heart would not be softened.
“‘To break the curse, Miradorn had only to return Arya to her father’s court. But the elven king would not, and so it is: that they are condemned to hide in shadow, far from the light of day, despised by all who look upon them.’”
Aderyn added his own thoughts on the topic, few of which interested Jack. But one paragraph did stand out: “Whether the cursed king still lives there, I cannot say. But none who venture into the ruin return alive. So I will need to come well-armed, and I’ll bring my amulet of protection as well, to ward off any evil they may try to send my way.”
Jack read on. He found a roughly sketched map, apparently depicting someone’s idea of the fortress ruins. At the southernmost end was a large, boxy room with the annotation, “lower ballroom.” Beside it, Aderyn had penciled in a note, “Secret passage???”
“Well,” he said dryly, “there just might be a secret passage around here.”
Jordan nodded, and he went on reading. The last pages detailed Aderyn’s journey to the fortress, and some impressions he had about it. None of them we
re particularly profound, in Jack’s opinion. “Massive devastation,” and “endless corridors of stone,” didn’t tell him much. But on the last page, the dead adventurer wrote, “It’s been two days now, and though I’ve found the throne room – and a beautiful place it is, even after the ravages of time – I’ve yet to figure out how to open the passage. It opens behind the stone throne. I can see the old grooves worn into the floor. But I can’t for the life of me figure it out.
“And I hear noises behind the door. I know it can’t be the old elf king; not even elves can live in exile that long. But still, the thought of old Miradorn prowling the halls puts a shiver up my spine. If I can’t figure it out today, I think I’ll leave on the morrow.
“I may set sail for that fortress south of here, in the lands of the plains dwellers. If the old stories are right, and Iaxiabor himself once dwelt there, who knows what dark and powerful items may remain. Better to spend my time there than staring at cold stone here.
“But I’ll not go home empty handed. The throne itself is too large to shift, but I’ll be able to pry jewels from it. And they’ll more than repay my time and effort. In truth, I’m surprised no one has tried before me. Maybe the stories of the cursed elf kept them away. Regardless, it’s my good fortune.
“But, I should lay down my quill and get to work. Either I’ll find a way to the tears of saint what's her name, or I’ll fill a purse full of the old elf’s gems. Either way, I’ll do okay by the venture.”
Jack concluded his read with a shiver. Whatever Aderyn’s happy notions, he had certainly not done okay.
The game, meanwhile, marked the appropriate objectives completed: he’d discovered what happened to the adventurer, and searched his body for clues about the demon’s lair. He wasn’t sure what, exactly, he’d learned that explained Aderyn’s fate. The adventurer had mentioned hearing noises, which, Jack conceded, was a bit of a clue. But certainly it was no more of a tipoff that they weren’t alone than the giant axe wound to the back of the dead man’s head.
His quibbles notwithstanding, the game added a new objective to the list: