Right between twirling Shinayne and withdrawing James, came a hulking gray mass. Saberrak Agrannar lowered his horns, dove into four demons, and ended his roll not ten feet from the edge of a five hundred foot drop to the ruins below. They swarmed him, his scalemail armor raked with claws, he was buried so deep his friends could not tell where he was.
Snap, pop, screech, crack, sploosh, hiss, shriek, clang, Oohrrooaaahrrr!
Six or more demons launched in every direction with his savage roar, most of them with arms and heads twisted into painful postitions. Saberrak stood in the middle, surrounded by at least ten more, and his greataxes spun round once. First into his right, a brutal chop into black flesh took off a horned head. Then his left swung ahead vertically and cleaved into the chest of another demon, it was impaled. The gladiator cleaved it off below the waist, then used the upper torso on his axe as a club. He began smashing it into more demons until it fell off and disintegrated. More came, and he whipped his arms out at full length, killing two more as he marched to cover James. Another pair charged, their bodies were cut from groin to neck, then beheaded. Three more dove from above, and he jumped up and came down with two more piles of smoldering demon on the edge of each greataxe. The third grabbed hold of his horns, raked his muscled neck, and blood poured out as it burned its claws into gray flesh. Saberrak dropped an axe, grabbed it by the throat, and squeezed so hard the head burst with black gore and fiery blood.
Zen had four reach him, his warhammer was aglow with the same light he had unleashed with his shield. Blow after blow, while not killing them outright, he stunned them with his attacks and the light that seemed to burn their flesh. As he knocked one back, James finished it with his blade. When one got close, the knight blocked its path and Zen took out its legs with his warhammer. One by one, the dwarf and the knight fought back to back, and held their ground as the unholy bodies mounted around them.
Gwenneth was finally ready, she had chanted the incantation three times perfectly, and as quietly as she could. She had only done this once before, never in combat, and never empowered to affect so many. Three tandorial demons were flying straight for her, having gotten past Shinayne and Saberrak, she had little time. She saw at least one hundred fifty more, swarming above, circling the plateau, trying to find room to land. She smiled wickedly, and her staff flashed green from the emerald.
“Othiortes de manthu vushra vin duarte sembren Nirakas deth tandorial estre!”
Screams of countless demons in excrutiating pain made everyone stop and cover their ears. The eyes of the fiends burst with black blood, their bodies eroding rapidly with ash, and a deep red swirling glow began to hum and emnate from each of their chests. They fell from the sky, turned to flee, and crawled across the sandstone as fast as they could. It was too late. Their horrid faces showed fear, terror even. Gwenneth’s hair whipped in all directions, her arms raised, and she pointed with her hand as her eyes went white and flashed with her final words.
“Uthartes mog mintarre exilius!”
Suddenly they burst, all of them, into the swirling fires that they had come from. Consumed with arcane banishment to the netherworlds, the demons screamed out at once, and were gone and silent the next moment. Nothing but ash remained, and even that blew away with the winds over Mooncrest. She lowered back to the ground, a trickle of sweat rolling down from her forehead, and she smiled.
Saberrak turned to her, with no enemy to fight, and just stared. James and Zen did the same, in awe at what she had just done. Shinayne smiled back, sheathed her blades, and walked up to Gwenneth.
“I was just starting to have fun there. Nice work, lady of Lazlette. Most impressive.”
“Took you long enough.” Saberrak huffed, then knelt down to let James place his healing hand on his blood pouring neck.
“By Vundren’s left ear, that was…somethin’.” Azenairk walked past James and Saberrak, noting the blood covered scalemail of the minotaur, and also that it was more blood than any dwarf likely held inside. He shook his head. “Thank ye’ Vundren for giving me such mighty friends.”
James held his hand in place until the cuts were but faint scratches, it took perhaps a minute. He remembered in his youth that something like this would take hours of concentration to heal. He looked up to Gwenneth, smiled, but he was still in mild shock over her powers compared to his own. He shook his head as Saberrak stood, and turned to take one last look to the ruins before they went inside.
“Everyone, how fast can we get those doors shut?” James was walking backwards.
“Why, you see…oh Siril…” Shinayne turned to James and let a small gasp escape her lips. Countless, thousands for certain, more winged forms of black began falling from the black clouds over the ruins as laughter slowly rolled in whispers from deep inside the mines.
They all saw it, no one said anything, and they ran inside as the swarm of flying demons began to cloud the gray skies and block out even the black cloud they had come from. Saberrak and James pulled on the left handle, inching the two foot thick door shut. Zen, Gwenneth, and Shinayne pulled on the right. Grunting, struggling, the left door closed with a slam of golden metal.
Screeching and shrieks of hellborne creatures rose over the plateau, then all went dark. The light of the cursed place was blocked, and the five pulled together on the right door as nothing but countless red flaming eyes shone outside.
Slam!
The doors were closed, the handles on the inside pulled tight. Saberrak breathed out finally, in the black of this place, he could hear his friends breathing but saw nothing.
Scrape, smack, smack, shriek, hiss, smack…
“Light, we need light Gwenneth!” Zen shouted.
The entry chamber glowed with bright green from her emerald atop the staff of Imoch. They backed up from the door, hearing the horde of Tandorial demons assault it. Then they looked to the ground.
Scrape, scrape..
Hair by hair, inch by inch, the doors were being pulled open. They all lurched ahead and grabbed the handles once more, pulling against the demons on the other side.
“Who puts handles on each side o’ a blasted door then!” Zen looked around, and saw fitted platinum shelves up above his head. He turned, looking for the bar that would set inside.
“Dwarves, dwarves would be my guess.” Shinayne struggled, trying to hold the doors closed, then she was shoved aside.
Saberrak pushed Zen and James back as well, dropped his axes, and growled. His eyes were glowing blue with faint flickers of flame. He wrapped his forearms into each handle, one on the right, one on the left. Every muscle in his body heaved, bulged, and he lowered his horns. The minotaur kicked his feet down hard, then arched his back with an intense jerk, then again, then threw his head and horns back and roared.
Slam!
His arms were trembling, holding the doors shut as claws reached the gaps, and demons untold pulled against him. “Get…the…bar…and…lock..it..soon!”
James and Zen scrambled, Gwenneth and Shinayne searched their surroundings, and spotted a massive bar of solid platinum. It was twelve feet long, a foot thick, and leaning against a rock wall.
Crunch, crunch…
“Oh Vundren, help me now, don’t be doin that.” Zen tried not to look as they stepped. Bones and skulls he surmised, likely of ancient dead dwarves crumbling underfoot.
They grabbed each end, two to a side, yet it was too heavy. Gwenneth backed up, leaving the three to struggle with dragging it slowly to the doors.
“Hivalsh, uthumbra, divaste!” She pointed her hand, and the platinum bar rose and shook. Her hand shook, it was heavy indeed. Foot by foot, it levitated through the air, as the elf, the dwarf, and the knight assisted and guided it toward the hanging shelves. Saberrak ducked under it, the doors open two inches, and claws began to reach for him. Then arms, the smoldering fingers scraping his scale armor, and their breath was pouring through and fouling the air.
“Hurry…can’t…hold…it…” The doors pushed and
Saberrak pushed back with all his might. Then he rolled back to get his axes from the floor, sure that a thousand demons would be ontop of them right now.
Slam!
The bar fell into place, on both doors, and the slamming barely moved them a hair. A few tugs to no avail let them know their was no way for the horde to come through. They all collapsed onto their backsides, finally taking breaths that were not hurried. The demons continued to assault the doors to Kakisteele for a few minutes more, then it stopped.
Their eyes opened, one by one, and the five sat silently staring into the green lit cavern. The celings were high, groomed with decorative etchings, over fifty feet up into the mountains. They looked over to the south, where they had found the bar, had heard the bones break under their boots, and they all stood as they now saw the source. No piles of dwarven soldiers, no remnants of war long past, it was the remains of something else that had their attention.
“Is that?” James whispered as he walked closer.
“Yes, yes it is.” Shinayne knelt low and touched the skull.
Her hand caressed the ancient bones of a dragon, stretching farther than the green light carried, its pose was that of a resting magnificent creature. Forearms crossed over, head laying atop of them, wings folded far behind. It had been the claws and finger bones they had stepped on.
Saberrak walked up with Zen and Gwenneth, admiring the massive length of the long dead dragon. He saw dust on the floor around it, patterned as scales, and his feet scattered it as he walked. He followed the bones down, the passage was declinging slowly, and not a single track in the dust could be seen. He smelled nothing here, and nothing moved nor made noise.
“Ansharr said there was a dragon here, I remember. It looks so peaceful, it does.” Azenairk put his keys back on his belt, felt inside the iron box for the dust, it was there.
“Door ahead, let’s go.” Saberrak broke the melancholy stares as they all passed by the ancient wyrm of bone and dust.
Deeper into the dark they walked, quiet as they could, each abreast of one another in the ever widening tunnels. The double doors ahead were closed, yet dwarven words were written upon them. More gold, more dust of precious stones powdered into the words, this time it was emerald.
“Virnu borda, second born son.” Zen looked up to the words, then to Saberrak.
“Siril was the second born of the Caricians.” The minotaur replied.
“Thank ye’, me horned sage.” He took out the keyring, and placed the key with the crescent moon and stars into the lock. Again, a brief flash of peaceful white light emitted from the door. Before he could pull his hand back with the key, he already had without seeing it. The doors creaked open, and they saw light that was not their own somewhere beyond.
First Zen walked in, then Saberrak, and the rest followed. It was not what they expected to see, none of them. A cavern stretched below them as they stood on a balcony of sandstone. It was half a mile deep, twice that wide, and nearly a thousand feet down. Stalagmites and stalactites of yellow and gold grew motionless in many a spot, preserved and untouched. They were as great pillars when they touched one another, forming columns the size of the largest of towers. Flowstone draped the walls on every side, still moist and smooth, and straws of spiked rock hung from the cavern ceiling.
Stairs on either side of them spiraled down, connecting at small platforms to yet more stairs. Their breath still held, the beauty of what was inside this ancient natural wonder awaited. It was a city, homes by the thousands, smooth rock homes with colored glass windows that sagged with time, and thick wooden doors that curled with antiquity. Lights, greens and blues and golden whites, all shone from eternal spots atop platinum pillars of dwarven craft. It was too much to take in with a glance from so high, but they tried.
“No, by Vundren, no.” Zen whispered in a sorrowful tone, seeing a black spot in the center. It may have been a temple, perhaps a shrine or dwarven castle, but now it was something black and dark. He saw spears, many, many steel spears, planted into the stone floor. Only a few still held their victims, skeletons that had once been impaled from end through end, dwarven victims. But below the spears, on the floor, were piles of black bones, a small mountain of the long dead people of Kakisteele.
As he ran toward the stairs, he could not take his eyes off the horrific scene. He saw a stone slab, not of sandstone, but of dark gray rock with words not in dwarven. He saw a symbol, a triangle with three eyes inside. He saw a banner, not unfurreled, yet he knew it held the three dragons of Altestan, he just knew. Azenairk neared the bottom, closer as he ran down old steps of his ancestors, and he could see the skeletons. Some large dwarves, some not so big, and some were tiny indeed. All dwarves, all long dead.
“Bastards! Rotten bastards!” He yelled it into the city, he heard his friends right behind him, through the streets he kept his pace, hoping when he arrived it would not be so. His hopes were not granted.
Past the great columns, around stalagmites from forgotten ages, and down streets of sandstone bricks, Zen ran. He stopped, falling into a slow walk, then slower steps, and he dropped to his knees.
Shinayne and Saberrak rounded the corner first, slowing as well, then Gwenneth and James appeared behind them. They saw Azenairk, face down, trying not to look at what was before him. They saw it. The hundreds of steel spears that were driven into the stone, nearly ten feet tall they were. Only half still had charred bone remains, held up at the top as the tips were buried into the skulls. The rest had fallen, or been taken down and thrown into the pile behind, a mound of thousands of skeletons of black bone and melted metals. It was obvious that they had been executed, murdered in some horrific genocide, and they all hung their heads as their dwarven friend wept on the ground before it.
Saberrak walked over to the odd slab of upright stone with all the words written upon it. He could read it, it was in Altestani, and the symbol of Yjaros was plain to see at the top and bottom.. The flag of the emperors, the three black dragons on white cloth, sat still on a pole behind the slab. The minotaur hung his head.
James and Shinayne put their hands on Zen, trying to help him by letting them know they were there. Gwenneth walked around the spears, curious, as one of the spears had a platinum placard chained to it, but no body, hanging eternally on the spike of steel. It was in dwarven, not Altestani, yet she kept quiet.
“There, there…be children here…and not just…what the hells…children..and me people…why did…” He sobbed, wiping his eyes and trying to breathe through his nose. But every time he looked up, it was too much to endure. “Did anyone…say the prayers at least…give em’ any last rites…or ..no, they were just left…why…who could…do..this…”
His friends did not have answers to those questions, none they would like to say right now anyway. They knew the answers, they had all been told of what happened at Mooncrest and Kakisteele and Tintasarn, long ago when the northern empires destroyed the kingdom of the Crescent Moon. Still, nothing, no words or fancy fables could prepare one, especially a dwarf, for what was here.
“What does it, does it say, Saberrak?” Zen was trying to stand, his fingers pulling on his beard and wiping hard across his face.
“My friend, out of respect for you, I will not read this.”
“Damn it, horned one, I be asking ye’ to tell me. I cannot read it, stop the respect nonsense and by Vundren help me here.” Zen stood and walked forward, hand on his hammer and moons.
“No.” Saberrak huffed and backed away from the stone slab.
“Fine, Gwenneth, read it to me please.”
Gwenneth looked to Saberrak as he walked away, then to silent James and Shinayne, then to the placard on the spear. “False king and traitor to God, may Mudren Sheldathain suffer the curses eternal for his unclean life.”
Zen looked to the spear placard, chains still holding. He saw the platinum card with the engravings in his native tongue. He hung his head.
“I can read that one, I meant the one there, the slab
o’ stone.” He pointed, fighting the tears as he stood next to the only remains of the dwarves of Kakisteele.
“Are you sure you want me to read this?” Gwenneth took a big breath, her eyes watering just a little, for the pain she saw in her friend.
“Aye.”
She traced her fingers along the words, reciting it in her mind as she translated it into Agarian. Another deep breath, and she summoned the courage to read it aloud.
“By the voice of God, the unfailing piety of the holy emperors three, may the eyes of Yjaros see mankind preserved. It has been found that unclean creatures have polluted this realm, and procreated in number, against the sacred laws of God. These disease ridden things, known as dwarves, have not the Grace to be allowed the air of the Lord. They stand in grave violation of natural law, and are hereby condemned to death. False worship was witnessed, breeding was discovered, and these living blasphemies have even dared to declare themselves a kingdom. Henceforth, they shall be put to the spear and the flame, and removed from this corrupt territory, like the animals they are. This land is deemed infected, and now cursed, the child Arabashiel shall remain to keep the judgements of Gimmor and God intact for all time.” Gwenneth took a deep breath, hearing the sniffles of Zen.
“Was…was that all of it then?”
“No, there is more.”
“Get it over with.”
“As you wish.” Gwenneth paused and read the bottom portion of the slab.
“Praise be to God, may the spirits of these wicked things never reach their false heavens. May their offspring watch as God sees their blood collected. May the heathen women scream as the blood is boiled to ash, and may this race be nevermore. The pagan men shall be silenced, never to visit unto the eyes of the Chosen Men that have inherited the world under God. A curse upon them, a curse upon their deaths, and a curse upon their remains has been invoked by the will of God. Amen.
Prince Admiral Azriid Ka’Joor VII
Third Agarian Executional, 4792 H.I.C.
Azenairk felt anger, not an anger he had ever felt before. This was something else, a rage that he thought would be against Vundren to even dwell upon. He breathed deep, trying to take his eyes off of the genocide before him. He had to make peace with it, it was long ago, he tried to talk to himself. Instead, he felt the urge to pray, to say the last rites of the dwarves of Kakisteele.
The Exodus Sagas: Book IV - Of Moons and Myth Page 35