“What are these rooms, do you think?”
“More offices, perhaps?” Ermolt shrugged. He turned and tried one of the stone doors, but found it oddly locked from the inside. Without hesitating, he continued on.
Elise tried another as they walked by, but it too was locked shut. “The layout here is familiar,” Elise said. “The Conscript barracks were like this in Khule. Although, the doors are far enough apart for single bedrooms, but not so far apart to be nice rooms, like what the Priests usually have.”
“Do you think we’ll find something useful if we break into one?” Ermolt asked as he heard Elise try another door. And another. He stopped and turned, waiting for her to catch up, if she insisted on checking every latch.
“No, but it is getting late.” She yanked on a latch a second time when it proved locked, and then kicked the foot of the door in frustration before moving on to the next. “We may be unable to see the sky in here, but it has to be nearly last bell by now. If we don’t stop and rest, we’ll be next to useless when we finally make it to the top. And with every bell that passes unheard, we’re less and less able to fight that thing if it attacks us.”
“You have a point,” Ermolt said with a grimace. He didn’t think it was half that late, but Elise was right. The last time they had slept had been barely outside the bramble forest, and since then they had fought bandits, explored and abandoned city, fought bandits again, breached the Temple, found a dozen undead, and restored function to a centuries-old magical device that Athala would have been drooling over for a week straight. “Alright. If we can get into one of these rooms without breaking the lock, we might be able to barricade ourselves in safely.”
They tried nearly twenty doors before they found one that opened. There had been one other, but the door was cracked and broken and they decided that security was important. They needed whatever time the door could buy them to prepare if something came upon them while they rested.
Beyond the door was what Elise had described. The room held no corpses, blessedly, and some of the furniture was still intact. But it was unmistakably a dormitory room.
Two tall bunk beds were on either side of the room, and a quartet of broken wardrobes lined the walls. Due to the furniture, the available floor space was only a narrow space four fen wide in the middle of the room. There was a window in the far wall, long broken, which seemed to account for the rotted state of everything other than the hardwood furniture.
The window did, however, reveal that Elise had the right of it. It was full dark out, though from the clouded sky over Marska, there was no way to tell exactly how late it was.
Ermolt moved about the room quickly to prepare it. The window would allow them to make a fire without choking themselves on the smoke, and the bunk beds would serve as fuel better than as beds, since their mattresses had long rotted away.
His camp hatchet made short work of taking the furniture apart.
While he worked, Elise was sure to close the stone door and lock it, even though the latch seemed rusted. For good measure, she moved one of the broken wardrobes in front of it. Ermolt approved. Even if something could break the lock, the heavy wood would stop the door from being forced open for a moment more. It meant they could relax a little, as long as their weapons were close enough at hand so that the time wouldn’t be wasted.
Ermolt started the fire, and with enough hacked-apart wood at hand, they could keep it fed all night if they wanted. They also had plenty of rations that didn’t’ need cooking, and so Ermolt got out the hardtack and dried sausage, as well as a handful of raw root vegetables. Elise scooted close to the fire and accepted her share of the meal gratefully from him.
They ate in silence.
Ermolt began with the hardtack. It was old and starting to taste stale, if such a thing were truly possible.
But Elise went straight for the sausage. She was also leaning in close to the fire, as though she was cold to the bones.
A part of him wanted to tease her for it, but he could tell from her hollow eyes and drawn expression that she wasn’t actually cold. It was something about the portal. And it seemed she just needed time to recover.
Once they had finished their meal, she looked better. Not whole, but improved.
“Did Athala’s notes say anything about the specific guardians of the Temple? We need to come up with a plan to face him before we leave here in the morning, and the more information we have, the better.”
Elise shook her head. “There were some notes, but most of it was just glossed-over rumors. Nothing of substance.” She reached into her bag and pulled out the book, flipping past the pages she’d already read. “Even Athala knew some of these stories were outright fabrications. Some explorer described being set upon by a skeletal snake the size of a house, which is just ridiculous.”
“I don’t know that the accounts from other explorers is what we’re looking for. If anyone encountered him, I doubt they’d survive the experience.” Ermolt chuckled gently, and poked at the fire. “And if any of them found a weakness to exploit, by the God’s blessing, he still wouldn’t be here to menace us.”
“Right, but what else…” Elise fell silent a moment and blinked a few times. “Oh. Of course. It’s a created undead.” She began to flip through the book, with more fervor. “We shouldn’t be looking at expedition reports, but history.” She stopped about halfway through the book and began pouring over the notes. “As a created undead,” she said, pausing her reading for a moment, “someone had to make it, right? And in a Temple to Isadon, a God who is known for association with undeath, the thing could be as old as the Temple itself.”
“Unlikely,” Ermolt said, scooting around the fire so he could try to read over her shoulder. “I’m pretty sure the human body has limits, even ones undeath can’t overcome. Eventually it would rot to nothing, whether or not it’s still walking around.”
“Maybe not that specific one.” Elise flipped the page before Ermolt could figure out what she was looking at. “But if anyone was creating undead in this Temple—or near enough for it to decide it wanted to haunt this place for however many decades until its body held out—they might have tried to do it in honor of Isadon. There might be some practice that His Temple engaged in to create something like that. And if someone uncovered their secrets about it and tried to recreate it…” She trailed off as she read down the page. “Here. Every Temple has some unique elements to their ranks. Ydia’s Clerics are a much larger part of the priesthood than in other Temples. She also has a High Cleric that watches over them, and only answers to the High Priest. Isadon had something similar. But it was the supervisor to the Temple Guard.”
“That still sounds like a human person,” Ermolt said, leaning back away from the book. “Not an undead.”
“Right. But they weren’t allowed to die.” She flipped back and forth between two pages, frowning. “Catarin didn’t translate all this word-for-word, likely because she was pressed for time. We wanted warnings about traps, not a history lesson. But this is pretty explicit.” Elise pointed to a specific passage of Catarin’s notes, but when Ermolt didn’t lean forward again, she started to read them aloud. “‘The death of a Knight Commander of the Temple Guard represented a significant setback for the Temple. Isadon’s Priests would ensure that their skills were not lost by creating a Champion. The body would retain the former Knight Commander’s skills, and while it would be rendered incapable of acting as an advisor, the Champion would be capable of tirelessly training its successor, as well as acting as a soldier and bodyguard until Isadon determined the Temple Knights were no longer at a disadvantage at its loss.’”
“Hm. What does that mean?”
Elise leaned back away from the fire, putting the book down in her lap. “Perhaps a lot. Why wouldn’t it be able to act as an advisor?”
Ermolt tapped a finger to his chin. “Alright. Its body is still good. It can fight. And by fighting, it can train. But perhaps, no matter how much it retains its skills,
it’s just an undead. There’s no humanity there. Its body is strong, but, ah, but its mind is weak.”
“Of course,” Elise said, picking up the notebook again. She glanced through the notes, and frowned. “But how? Without Athala, all we have is brute force.” A moment of silence fell between them, and Elise looked up towards the window. Ermolt could see she was wrestling back tears. “What are we, without her?”
“We don’t need to answer that question,” Ermolt said firmly. He put a hand to Elise’s metal-encased shoulder. “We’re here. And we’ll get her back.”
“But what if we can’t?” Elise asked slowly, somehow keeping her voice from cracking, likely by sheer force of will. “What if we get to the top of the tower and there’s nothing? What if we really are without her for good?”
“Then we don’t give up. We find another way. If we have to go to Grunith itself and knock on Ydia’s door, we will.”
“Right.” Elise sighed and closed her eyes. The tears began to fall. Each one hurt Ermolt worse than the previous. He looked away, watching the moonless night. She shrugged his hand off her shoulder and wiped at her face. “We’ll just… go to Grunith.” She laughed, a soft and almost distant thing. “And we’ll do whatever it takes. If I have to rip the power out of Ydia’s heart with my bare hands, then so be it. I’ll get Athala back.”
Ermolt grinned at her. “And I’ll be with you,” he said, before throwing another chunk of wood onto the fire. “To the end.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They slept in shifts, each only really resting for what they assumed was a few bells before trading off with the other.
During one of her shifts, Elise heard movement in the hall. She had risen to her feet and waited in the pitch black for something to start working at the door. But long moments had gone by without something trying to force the lock, and so Elise let it go. She tried to relax.
They were resolved to get moving as soon as the sky outside the narrow window began to brighten. Though not before they had some rations to break their fast.
Bells passed before the sky was full of light, and Elise felt secure enough that Ermolt had rested well. She woke him with a gentle touch to the shoulder, and they set about to get ready for the day. Elise prepared their meal while Ermolt reapplied bits of his armor.
The meal was much the same as the last, though instead of vegetables, Elise found a pair of oranges. Citrus would greatly improve her mood. They ate in mostly silence, and then packed up their belongings.
Once they were ready to move on, Elise moved the wardrobe back out of the way of the door and let Ermolt take the lead.
As soon as he turned the lock, a few undead tried to force open the door. But these were frail corpses, frailer still than what they had faced on the bottom floor. And there were only three of them.
Ermolt had crushed one of them to dust before Elise even turned to look, and he body slammed the other two into the opposing wall at once, leaving them similarly shattered before she could even draw her blade.
“I see how it is: having all the fun for yourself.” Elise smiled as the barbarian brushed bone dust off his armor. “I didn’t want to deal with them anyway,” she added with a faux sniff.
“You’re welcome then!” Ermolt said, cheerfully. He smiled and then fetched a torch from his pack. “Shall we go?”
Elise rolled her eyes and motioned down the hall. Ermolt took point. The dormitories only filled the next dozen or so fen before the hallway opened up into what might have been a lounge. Rotted furniture lined the room, but it looked as if it had been recently disturbed. Elise guessed that the undead that had attacked them were here before rising to stalk the halls, though she wasn’t sure why. Did the undead always wander at night? Or had some outside force make them wait at the door to the room they’d barricaded?
She shuddered to think that the Champion could command the loyalty of the other undead, ordering them about like an army.
Beyond the lounge were two stone doors, and Ermolt chose the door to the exterior side of the Temple. The room was choked with rubble, and Elise noticed Ermolt frowning at the piles of stone blocking the way. It wasn’t an insurmountable barrier, but it would slow them down. He checked the other door, and found it much the same situation: the interior wall had fallen in and filled the space with rock.
“Neither seem to be good options, so let’s go this way.” Ermolt walked up to the wall of rubble and stepped out towards the open space to the left, skirting the rubble and walking on the remains of the wall next to the pit. While the inner wall had filled the room itself with rubble, there was now an opening to the interior pit, as well as a lip of stone barely wide enough for Ermolt’s large feet.
“You sure about this?” Elise stepped up and peered over the edge. She wasn’t going to suggest that it might be dangerous. They both knew that it was. But she was tempted to ask him to dig out the rock in the other passage instead.
“I have a better feeling about this direction.” He pointed ahead of himself. “If there’s not a way through on the other side of this, we only need to climb across a few fen of wall. There’s another gap there we can enter.”
Elise swallowed hard and followed the barbarian who she was absolutely certain was part mountain goat. His steps were so sure along the ledge. Meanwhile, Elise’s footsteps were hesitant, and she forced herself to look towards the ceiling. If she looked at where she was putting her feet, she’d have to look out over the edge. And she didn’t need that.
She was grateful that Ermolt was holding the torch, since it meant that she could use both of her hands to steady herself against the pile of rubble to her left, instead of needing to balance on the uneven edge without the added support, like Ermolt did.
Elise tested every step she took. She was careful to kick pebbles aside before stepping on them, and she felt around for cracks in the mortar before putting her full weight down on them.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of heights. Not really. But a moment of clumsiness now would mean she would fall to her death. And what would happen then? If Ermolt was capable of reaching Isadon’s Favor alone, he would have two friends to beg to return. And who would he call back? Elise wasn’t afraid of dying. But she was afraid that Ermolt might choose her instead of Athala, out of some strange sense of recent comradery.
A sound like stone grinding against stone caught her attention, and Elise looked over sharply. For a moment she feared that she saw Ermolt tumble out into space and plummet to the bottom of the pit. But she realized quickly that he was still ahead of her, and he had only muscled aside a huge fragment of rubble and shoved it out of the way before stepping down into the space it cleared.
The chunk of wall crashed to the bottom of the Temple with a rumbling sound. It was distant, and muted by whatever was preventing their voices from echoing, but Elise could feel the impact in her boots, even this high up.
“Stealthy,” she remarked, a grin crossing her lips. She hurried to hop down off the wall to stand next to him on safer ground. “Perhaps next time you can scream when you do it, so that the whole Temple knows where we are?”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ermolt said with a smirk. “Hold this.” He handed her the torch. “There’s more rubble to clear ahead.”
Elise looked to the sizable chunk of stone in between them and the door. It looked impressive, but Ermolt made short work of it with his mattock.
She regretted teasing him for the noise he had made when this obstacle required him to make almost as much of a racket to break through the rubble. Pieces of stone, too large for him to handle, blocked the path, and he needed to use the pick side of the tool’s head to break them down to move them aside.
It only took about half a bell before the doorway was clear, but it felt much longer to Elise. With every crack and grind of stone against stone, she was afraid of the undead that hunted them appearing around the corner. Especially since they had no where to go but down. There was rubble ahead, rubble behind, and t
he open space of the pit to the side. If the Champion decided to walk up behind them, they would be at its mercy.
As such, she was incredibly grateful when Ermolt finally pushed the last of the stones aside and muscled the door open.
“That could have been much worse,” he said, turning to her and accepting the torch. “And we didn’t have to climb out over—” He trailed off, staring out across the open pit behind her.
Elise whirled to see the Champion standing across the Temple from them. It was in a room lit by those white globes. The light illuminated the painted side of its face. It looked to be on the same floor as them, but two rooms to the right of the one the portal had brought them into.
Just as before, it was staring at them. Watching.
“It’s alright,” Elise said, carefully. “It’s just messing with us again.”
“Right,” Ermolt said, unconvincingly. He backed towards the door he had just cleared. “He wants us afraid, right? He’s doing a good job at it.”
The barbarian passed through the door, and Elise followed behind. She kept an eye on the Champion as well as she could before she stepped through the door and out of his view.
“We still don’t exactly have a plan to deal with him,” Ermolt said as he walked forward. The next room was a wider hallway, and it was decorated with statues along the walls.
“I know. I’ll try to think of something. We just need to outsmart it. It shouldn’t be too difficult to shake him and get away with the Favor. But if we can avoid it altogether, that would be for the best.”
Ermolt fell silent, and Elise took the opportunity to examine the statues that they walked past. There had once been four against each wall, but on one side, a chunk of the wall had caved in, falling into the pit in the center of the Temple, taking the eighth statue with it.
She recognized six of the remaining statues. There was the cloaked figure of Numara, the windswept robe of Teis, the hirsute and broad-shouldered Dasis, the bared chest of Vitos, the leafy garments of Kildir, and the muscular form of Hether.
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