“That being said, I think it’s a good idea. We didn’t have Guild badges before so we couldn’t use sparks like that. Now that we can, if we funnel everything we get to Hal, he can be an even bigger help.”
The higher they went in Murkmire, the cleaner and narrower the streets became. Houses grew taller and more opulent, with rich decorative touches on every building that they saw. People moved with a more languid pace rather than the rushed and busy gait of the lower levels.
Mira slowed her long-legged stride and took a right from the gate, heading around to the eastern side of Murkmire.
The Cloud Ring wasn’t quite tall enough to earn its name but it was fairly misty and drizzly up there. Something Hal noticed the sere grass of the Verdant Ring below was in desperate need of.
In fact, as Mira led them deeper into the Cloud Ring, cutting through towering white-stone buildings five or more stories tall, Hal noticed something. Without all the bustle and constant distraction of the busy people below, the true state of Murkmire was on prominent display.
Even in the wealthier rings, the town was showing signs of age. So long as it wasn’t on the main thoroughfare. Any buildings on the main streets were well-kept but it was a façade.
A single peek to the side streets that went deeper showed the truth.
“In here,” Mira said, pulling them through yet another clean alleyway between two buildings with crumbling foundations.
Up ahead, Hal noticed two members of the Watch flanking a single stone archway set into a white-stone wall flecked with quartz that shimmered in the wan daylight.
“Keep away,” one of the Watch mumbled as they came close. “By order of the Founder all who enter risk death. No member of the Murkmire Council will recognize claims against death and dismemberment if this warning is ignored.”
The other Watch shrugged his plated shoulders. “Sorry about that.” He tilted his head to the man who had just finished reciting the warning and then – inexplicably – went back to sleeping while standing upright. “Gotta warn anybody who comes along. Them’s the rules.”
There was a moment of pause between them.
“So,” the man said, “You going inside too?”
“Too?” Hal asked. “Is there somebody inside there right now?”
“Yep, big fella got here just a few minutes afore yourselves.”
With a curious look on Mira’s face, the copper-haired elf walked into the tight corridor.
Hal hurried to catch up, somehow expecting a trap to spring and kill them instantly. Spikes, darts, flames, or a giant slab that would flatten them into paste.
One foot in front of the other, he reminded himself.
The white-stone hall curved to the left and opened up onto a small room with three similar arches that led into their own halls. Each lit with lights embedded into the stonework.
Hal turned the bend that deposited them into a small circular room and nearly stumbled when he saw the hulking form before him.
Curly flame-haired locks, a pair of bronzed bull horns sticking out from the temples, and those ridiculous mutton chops meant it could only be one person.
Giel turned to them as they entered the room. “Took ya’ll long enough!”
31
Seeing the large man standing before him, armored plates strapped to his rippling muscles and a massive sword on his back, Hal couldn’t mistake his intent.
Mira came up to him, and as tall as she was she hardly made it to his chest. “You must be Giel! I’m Mira.” She stuck out her hand.
“Ah hullo….” The tavernkeeper rubbed the back of his curly head sheepishly with one hand and enveloped Mira’s smaller hand with his other in a friendly handshake. “I realize I ain’t exactly told ya I was definitively coming. I ain’t… interrupting am I?” He cast a meaningful look at Mira.
Hal shook his head and smiled encouragingly at the big guy. “We actually went looking for you. I thought you wanted to come but didn’t want to presume. When Ashera went to go find you, she saw you were already gone.”
The sound of Giel laughing was like a small landslide. “Yeah… probably shoulda said somethin’. Ya’ll as quick as a greased fart outta the Gone Goose, that I started to wonder if’n ya wanted to be left alone. Had figured maybe we’d talk over some breakfast.”
“Nothing like that,” Hal said, wincing with guilt. “The past few days have been stressful. I’m sorry for leaving without so much as a goodbye, but we never meant to just leave for good. I wanted to check out the contract and… well one thing lead to another.”
Giel’s red curls bounced as he nodded his shaggy head. “I heard about that, figured I’d come see if ya’ll still had a spot left in your party….” He eyed them sidelong. “Got room for one more?”
Elora promptly added Giel to the party. Nobody was surprised when his HP bar dwarfed everybody else’s.
They struck off down the left-most tunnel, following Hal’s muttered mantra of “always go left,” that he adopted for just about every game he ever played. It seemed to work out okay most of the time.
“Holy-wow. You were planning on coming in here like that?” Giel asked Hal. “You got a mighty big pair on you, don’t ya Hal? Ya’ll are mighty inspiring, I’ll give ya that!”
Hal furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“I ain’t meaning no offense, but yer about as fierce as a basket-full-of-kittens! It’s mighty impressive that ya’ll are willing to go in to the unknown in such a state.” He slapped Hal on the back, nearly knocking him off his feet. “It shows one heck of a fightin’ spirit!”
While they continued on, Hal thought about what Giel had said. He wondered just how weak he was compared to the countless adventurers that had perished trying to fulfill this very same task.
The halls twisted and wound around with no discernible pattern to them. Hal could only guess why there wasn’t a single, defensible way into the district. He was starting to think that they had taken the wrong path when a final blind bend led them into a wide chamber filled with dust and debris. The far wall held another archway but this one was filled with glowing blue light.
“Would you look at that!” Giel cried out and tromped through the dust, raising black clouds of the stuff as he put himself face-to-face with etched glowing letters on the wall. “What do you reckon that is? Some ancient language or warning?”
Hal’s stomach sank when he saw it. He knew what it said. It was his language after all, not theirs. The words carved into the wall and suffused with their own blue glow were in English.
They read, “#37. Failure. Lost cause.”
For a long while, they all stared at the lettering. All but Hal trying to make out what it said. Even though he could read it, Hal didn’t have the faintest idea what it meant.
“I’ve heard Scholars from all over sometimes come here and study the writing of the Founder, they say it’s an ancient and powerful rune-based magic that keeps this place safe from outside threats,” Mira said, tracing her fingers into one of the deep grooves of the letter R.
“It’s English,” Hal said without even realizing it or taking his eyes from the writing. “It says, ‘#37. Failure. Lost cause.’”
Every head in the room whipped around to stare at him and only then did Hal realize how strange it would be to all of them that he could read the Founder’s language.
“Hal….” Elora said with an edge of warning to her voice.
Giel looked worryingly toward Mira. “How much does she know?”
“Not enough,” Ashera answered.
Hal turned to the barrier, something about it tugged at his mind. The voices of his friends faded away and all he could see was the magic before him.
It was familiar. Like a sense of déjà vu, Hal was almost certain he knew how it was cast. Even though that was utterly impossible. He stood less than a foot from it, studying it intently.
The only thing that existed in the world was this blue barrier, preventing him entry. It was all that w
as between them and the contract they needed to finish.
Shimmering gold sigils, patterns so imperceptibly small that he nearly missed them at first, began to glow brightly. He recognized them from the book Giel had given him.
Hal took out the [Unknown Codex] and the book opened onto a page of its own accord. The sigils within shimmered in a line, an esoteric phrase of power that sent a tingle through Hal’s fingers like an electric current.
The sigils were next to those drained of magic. They looked exactly like the ones he could see within the magic of the barrier. At that moment, Hal came to have a deeper understanding of the codex.
Your Investigation has risen to Level 4.
+1% Investigation speed (+4%).
+2% Investigation success (+8%).
It was a spellbook. Each phrase, a spell. And each spell had a counterpart. Positive and negative.
What stood before him was a barrier, a positive-oriented spell. It created. The neighboring row of sigils that lifted off the page constituted this spell’s counterpart. A negative-oriented spell that removed.
His forearm burned and his fingers twitched with nervous energy. He breathed in and the sigils fluttered off the page like motes of dust. Another breath and the sigils were pulled into Hal.
You have learned Founder Sigil: Rend.
By focusing on the weave that makes all things, you can now channel the Sigil of Unmaking and rip the weave at its most basic level.
Without conscious thought, he stepped forward again and raised his left hand in a claw gesture.
His fingers worked through a foreign dance, making patterns streak through the air that blurred his vision. He began to feel faint. He kept going.
The sensation came on in full force. A tingling, excitation that made Hal certain he was on the right track. Just inches from the glowing barrier, itching with the desire to tear it down, Giel looped his massive arms around Hal’s middle and tried to haul him back.
He was dimly aware of the thought flitting through his head saying, “No.” And then it was gone and so was Giel. Hal hooked his thumb and first two fingers, twisted his wrist, and ripped.
Brilliant coruscating sparks of molten light bled from the wound he tore into the barrier. The blue light of the barrier began to ebb. It took only two heartbeats for the barrier to wink out.
Even with the long sleeve and the bracer, Hal’s mark shone through as if the solid material wasn’t even there.
“That boy’s got a kick!” Giel hooted.
His voice brought Hal back to the present. He looked over his shoulder for the source and found Giel, who must have easily weighed several hundred pounds, flat on his rump in a cloud of ash looking at Hal in shock.
And he wasn’t alone.
Only Ashera looked at Hal with pity and sympathy. As if she felt the turmoil within him. The worry that now filled him to the brim.
“You’re a Founder!” Mira squealed, pointing at the rapidly fading mark.
Good to know that it flares when I use it.
Hal staggered, suddenly on very unsure footing. Black spots flitted around his vision. The sudden outburst from Mira seemed like it was coming from the other side of a very long hall.
He wasn’t even aware of the fall that folded him into the comforting oblivion of blackness.
* * *
“I don’t care what your scrying says, I felt it, Hirash!” Founder Rinbast shouting into the [Tuple Mirror] filled with the Archmage’s doubting face. “Find him. He wasn’t supposed to live past his first day. He’s out there. To the west. I can feel him but it’s fading.”
On the other side of the mirror, at least two days away, the Archmage Hirash bowed low and said, “As you wish, my lord.”
Rinbast had been on edge ever since he learned that they had the new Founder in his very dungeons and they let him escape. Everything had gone wrong so fast.
He was still at the training grounds far to the south awaiting Hal’s arrival when his home was attacked and the escape happened.
By the time he returned, the boy was gone. All traces of his whereabouts were scrubbed clean. The “Hope Rebels” as they liked to call themselves had an uncanny amount of Rangers among their number.
The tiresome lot was fast wearing at Rinbast’s patience for their silly antics. “We cannot allow him to tap any further into his Founder powers,” Rinbast said, more to himself than Hirash. “Not without proper ‘guidance’. Bring him to me, Hirash.”
“Forgive me for saying so, Founder, but ‘west’ is an awfully vague direction. Might you have a more….” The lean man with the hawkish nose and thin goatee licked his lips as he thought over his next words carefully. “Exact awareness of his location?”
“No,” Rinbast snapped, rubbing at his graying temples. “Already his presence is fading. I only felt the briefest spark, but it’s already gone. Go west, take the Kinslayers. I will not tolerate another failure.”
“I will see it done,” Hirash said, and the [Tuple Mirror] went blank once more.
Working his jaw, Rinbast tried to get a reign on his spiraling anger. The boy would err again. And when he did, Rinbast would have the scrying pool ready.
He might yet turn this blunder into a success.
Yes, Rinbast thought as he sank into his opulent seat in his private sanctuary far from prying eyes, I need only be patient. A wicked smile found itself onto his handsome features. A smile not at all like the kindly visage he had plastered all over his castle in Fallwreath.
* * *
When he started to come to, he heard the group talking. He kept his eyes shut and stayed as limp as possible.
Your Stealth has risen to Level 5.
+1% Stealth success (+2%).
+1% Stealth speed (+2%).
-1% SP drain (-2%).
“…can’t be serious!” Mira said. “We all saw it. Look at that mark on his arm, it’s just like theirs. He’ll be just like them.”
“But what if he is not?” asked Ashera in her quiet voice.
“That’s like raising a two-headed bearcuda and saying, ‘maybe this one isn’t going to bite my hand off and murder the whole block!’ Since that’s exactly what they always do,” Mira snapped.
Hal had never heard such venom and anger from the elf. Granted, he hadn’t known her very long but her bubbly personality was nowhere to be seen now.
“He will not be like the other Founders,” Elora said. “He may be a bit naïve but….” She sighed. “We might as well lay everything out in the open. We were supposed to take Hal away from the Founder of Fallwreath. But do you know what kept happening?”
“Ya’ll nearly died to multiple ambushes by vicious beasts because you traveled outside the Sanctums and Sanctuaries?” Giel guessed.
“No,” Elora said. “Hal kept getting himself in trouble because instead of running away and saving his own life and only thinking of himself, he was saving other people.
“He broke out of the Founder’s prison and freed the prisoners without ever stopping to think of how dangerous that was. When he was captured by goblins, he had the perfect opportunity to leave undetected and turned it down. To save children and beastmen.
“Those refugees you saw? Those were their kids he saved. Over two hundred souls he rescued from slavery and death. Name one Founder that ever did something like that.”
“He freed me from the Founder’s slaving collar,” Ashera said. Hal heard the rustle of fabric and several gasps a moment later. “You can still see the bruising. The very first time I met Hal, when I thought he was just another poor, unfortunate soul to be executed, he saved me. He nearly died in the process but he never seemed to think much of it.
“Even to this day, he doesn’t realize what he gave me. What it meant or how rare such a sacrifice is. Even among our own people, we rarely are so willing to give up our lives if it means we will secure a better tomorrow. He is different.”
Hal had never heard Ashera’s voice so strained with emotion. So sure and confident.<
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“I don’t have much of a say in the matter,” Giel rumbled. “But I won’t have you harmin’ him, Miss Mira. Somethin’ ain’t right about this place we’re headin’ into but Founder or no Founder, Hal’s trying to set things right.
“Now, I can’t rightly say if’n he’ll turn out good or bad. Too early in his tale to tell, I reckon. But your own two pretty little eyes ought to show you the practical side of things. He opened that door. Ain’t never been done before, now has it? What other tricks might he have?
“He threw me clear across the room. Without even looking my way, mind. Don’t we at least owe it to him to see what he does before we convict him of a crime he ain’t commit?”
Mira grumbled. “Listen, I’m not saying we kill him or anything! It’s just… I mean you know what it’s like out there. Murkmire is rare. Most places are either totally abandoned, people dying in the streets, or they’re under an iron rule. People are spirited away at night, never seen again for saying the slightest objection against the Founder.”
“Nobody is asking you to follow him blindly,” Elora said. “We’re asking that you give him a chance. Treat him like anybody else. He’s here hoping to find a home for the koblins. That’s why he’s doing this in the first place. If I had my way he’d be bound in a chest that’s impervious to all harm until he’s safe.”
“Wait,” Mira said. “He’s mortal? Does he know he doesn’t have to be?”
Elora’s familiar groan of frustration made it hard to keep a straight face. “Yes, unfortunately. He’s well aware that every minute he stays here or anywhere else, he risks a final death just like the rest of us. I’ve tried that argument on him. He doesn’t care. I don’t know if he’s an idiot or too kind for his own good.”
“Bit of both, probably,” Mira offered. She dropped her voice to barely a whisper. “Okay, so why are you letting him run around and get stronger? If I had a Founder in my confidences, I’d want to have him completely under my control. Do you know how many people would flock to a lame Founder that could be controlled?”
Beastborne- Mark of the Founder Page 30