"Aeligon, please speak with me a moment alone.” called Hrathis. Aeligon came and sat next to the king. “You are probably aware that there are many tunnels and passageways underneath this stronghold in the event of a siege, which we seem to be under now. I could guide you, but it is risky, to say the least. The labyrinth below us traverses many different ways and, if we are not careful, we could wind up walking ourselves right into those creatures."
"And that's not to say that they haven't found a way inside those tunnels already. We may encounter many dangers down there, but it is far wiser to go that way than to exit the other doorway, which is no doubt guarded night and day. They are waiting for us to corner ourselves."
"How long will that seal hold?"
"It will hold as long as I have strength or proximity. The farther away I get from it, the weaker the magic will become, until it fully dissipates. We will not have much of a head start before they flood the halls and tunnels hard upon our trail."
"Then we will need to have our best fighters in the rear. The tunnels are narrow, and can easily be defended if only one or two of those creatures can attack at once. However, it will be equally hard for us to swing swords and axes in those tunnels. We will have to rely on something else. Trickery perhaps?"
Aeligon winked at him, and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Leave that to us."
Hrathis looked around the room, puzzled. “Us?” he mused.
Aeligon pointed to Pux, who was smiling widely. “Us."
The king chuckled and again reclined, grunting and mumbling something about his aching ribs to Timothy.
Aerinas sat next to Foran. It was the first time they had really spoken at all since they rejoined.
"How are you, my friend?” After noticing the distance and strain in Aerinas’ eyes, Foran spoke first. He saw that they did not carry the same fire as they once had; new rage and hate burned in them.
"I am well, though I am not,” Aerinas replied solemnly. “Round and round, I am tossed in this never-ending game of struggle, yet it is not my own that riddles me so."
"Such is the calling of one chosen to lead,” said Foran with a smile.
"And what does that mean exactly?” retorted Aerinas smugly.
"You must first be led to learn how to lead."
Aerinas did not like the sound of that. “You sound just like my father and the rest of them. Did you know of this too? Why is it that I am only now finding out who I am?” He rose, and began to storm off. Foran, sensing the pain and resentment more so than before, reached out and grabbed Aerinas by the arm. Aerinas spun quickly, but was met with his friend's kind face looking upon him with respect and dignity. Aerinas paused, then turned back and sat down next to him again.
"I did not mean any harm by telling you that. I only mean to help,” Foran said.
"I understand, Foran, but it just seems that everyone has been harboring me for some purpose that I am now being forced to see. I am frightened, more frightened than I have ever been before. What does that mean?"
"It means that you have a heart. It means that you are not afraid to feel what you must in order to survive. Your fear, though it may be used against you, will only serve to show you where your weakness lies so that you may one day defeat it. And I know you will. I have known you for a long time, Aerinas, and you do not defeat quite so easily. I only hope that I will be there by your side when your fear comes calling."
Aerinas forced a smile upon his sagging face, the first in quite some time. He then reached out with his hand. Foran smiled, and they grasped each other's forearms.
The pair talked the remainder of the day together. They mourned the loss of Arn, a valiant and courageous warrior. Lynais was greatly consumed by sorrow at his passing, and kept to himself a lot.
As the days went by, nothing was heard from the tunnels below that would have hinted at another creature's arrival. No echoes or sounds could be carried in the stale, hollow blackness crawling out from the opposite side of the room, where the passageways began.
It took several more weeks for the giants and the king to recover fully from their wounds, and from such a long period of mind altering. Aeligon worked continuously to repair what he could. Since his spells took so much out of him, the others aided in changing bandages, applying salves to the flesh wounds, and changing the cold water basins in the kitchen area for the breaking of fevers and soothing of bumps. The water was still fed by a natural spring, since it flowed down underneath the surface of the mountain to an underground spring. It settled in the stomach of Gudred and fed the kitchen via a pumping apparatus that was, at the time, technologically superior to any man-made object of the period. Constant watches were kept round the clock at both entrances to their hold. The elves would rotate at first, but as the giants healed, a few of them volunteered to stand guard as well. It was a good sign that they would all recover.
During this time, what remaining strength Aeligon had was spent deliberating over the plan to escape Gudred beneath her cool exterior, undetected and unannounced. The king aided the most, along with Timothy, since they were the only ones present who knew the underground well enough to plot out their path. Once Farrin healed, he too joined the meetings; his knowledge of caverns and tunnels was surprisingly extensive, considering that he lived in the mountains. “The mountains have caverns and deep places too,” Farrin would say to them all, when they questioned him. After some time, they took his word as the value of gold. One of the larger tables was used as the map. Hrathis and Timothy would carve out what they could recall into the wood grain with small knives, crudely mapping out dangers and pitfalls as they went. They knew they could not take the map with them in that form, but there was no paper or any other form of dictation available to them, so all of them were assigned a section that would be committed to memory.
"The lot of you having been under a mind alter spell for the last twenty-one years does not solidify my confidence that you can remember anything,” teased Aeligon, when Farrin pounded the table after an argument about which section he wanted in his charge. So, the task of memorizing the details was left to the elves and Aeligon. Farrin spent the better part of one whole day pouting and cursing about unfairness of some sort, but few paid his ranting any mind. Giants, unlike their elfin allies, were not afraid to display emotions of disgust, and displayed them well. They had all just hoped that he would get over it soon.
Finally, the day came when the plan was to see fruition. With renewed hope and comfort, the giants and elves, a wizard and his apprentice, a king and his aide, made ready to journey into a future that was both unknown and bleak. As the plan stood, once they were clear of Gudred's labyrinth, Farrin would go forth and travel with Aeligon and the chosen elf warriors to the wizard city of Lünathar, in the land of Salanthanon, north of the Farrin Range. King Hrathis and Timothy would break off and head for the mountain home of the remaining giants to try and establish contact with the rest of the colony, if they still dwelt there. Fear ran through each one of their hearts. They questioned fate. Doubt, fear, aggression, and pity coursed through their veins. It was as if each of them were bound together by a common thread of insecurity, of being caught in the middle of a web of evil that they could neither see nor comprehend. Only uncertainty lay ahead.
With a wave of his hand, Aeligon opened the net of magic that sealed the northern passage entrance into the gloom. He stared into the stale blackness for a few minutes in silence, with the rest of them awaiting his first step inside. Breaths were held. Piercing gazes kept the wizard suspended with doubt that hung thick upon the air. Finally, he stepped across the threshold and a new path spread out before them all, one that would test their courage beyond measure. They heard above them more scurrying and screeching of the Cray as they fought to find a way inside. Little did the monsters know that their prey was slipping out from right underneath them. At least the brave party would have a little bit of a head start before Aeligon's magic faded, and the doorways opened to the creatures. Each member st
epped inside, consumed by the stuffy dampness immediately, as if the air too had been contained by Aeligon's spell.
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A dark form stirred in the darkness from a place unknown. Unseen, except by ethereal eyes, and born of wraiths from the dead of Vaalüna, it was darker than a sky without moon or stars. Spirits and ghostly forms twisted and writhed, tortured in their prisons, belching out screams and evil whispers too horrid for any mortal ears to hear. It was a place of death and decay, of evil dreams, and of rancidity. There, in the unimaginable, the figure took pleasure. As the laugh echoed across the Nether, the souls of the damned screamed louder and took to slamming themselves against their prison walls, begging for it to stop. There, in the midst of the turmoil, suspended in the void where nothing could ever exist besides evil things, a hole was torn; flowing, it fought to close what was opened by dark magic. It was a window in time, shaped by the stirring darkness as the laughing continued, directed at the images it contained.
"Fools!” groaned a voice so deep that it shook the foundations of reality. Vaalüna's unsuspecting inhabitants mistook it for thunder or a volcanic eruption. The sinister figure placed his spectral fingers on the face of Aerinas, and seemed to caress it gently. “You have come at last!” Thundering laughter roared across the Netherworld. The writhing of the dead never ceased, but only grew louder as the clamor of their rage filled the void.
The battle for Vaalüna was about to begin.
You have just finished The Chronicles of the Planeswalkers, Part Zero.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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B.T. Robertson was born July 21, 1977, and currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA. B.T. is currently working on attaining his Bachelor of Science in Information Science and Technology, and works in Pittsburgh for an IT consulting firm.
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Chronicles of the Planeswalkers Page 25