They are sick. As a race on this world, they are sick, and their sickness seeps deep into the bowels of the earth. They should never see the light of day, nor be allowed to seize on life with their petrifying grasp. They belong not even in their dank tunnels and holes of blackness. They dig, they delve, they channel through the earth seeking some hard-clawed space to call their home. They belong nowhere. They are an abomination.
Orstanor defeated the wardings on the doors, and we all stood staring at the final enormous portal. We had been beneath in the darkness for – how long? Certainly, we had slept. Some remnant of the day’s light glowered dimly as it came and went about the walls of the great cone above us, but we largely judged the passing time by the thirst in our throats, the hunger in our stomachs. The whole place reeked of slow rot and stagnation. Rusting stairwells, chambers crumbling and fallen, dripping water and empty spaces. We had slain many dwarfs, who had fallen easily enough, given our matching numbers: they must have waited hours, squatting in their quarters, assassins, ready for the ambush – they might have had the drop on us were it not for the keen senses of our Brother in Inevitable Change, the Humakti. The lightwall confounded their crossbows then before we charged, and we made swift work of the slaying. I was not so lucky later down in the dungeon, when I opened the door onto lurking Death, striking from the very walls themselves. A vile and dishonourable mostali trap, unthinking, indiscriminate, soulless as its makers.
So the five of us stood before the door, and reckoned on what unknown foe we must face beyond it. More of Mostal’s minions? Another trap? And – God forbid – another jolanti? We placed our faith in Orlanth and thrust the doors aside. The grating doors ground their iron teeth against the ancient stone walls enclosing us and echoed through the halls. The scene within was stark and shocking.
Death itself faced us. From the centre of a hollow stone sphere protruded an enormous crucifix - the Great Rune of Death, cast in iron. And crucified upon it was the desiccated corpse of a long-dead aldryami. As we stood transfixed a creeping horror rose within us all, as we realised the terror and the pain that must have been endured in this closed chamber. How long had he endured against the iron’s indefatigable searing? What torment had been his? How long had he taken to finally die? And then – what mad and broken vestige might yet remain here, trapped in this underworld, unable to seek its peace? What ghost might yet animate this tortured and long-forsaken husk?
I was drawn to it. I could feel the crosses tattooed upon my skin start to prick me. If there is blasphemous unlife here, it must be confronted. It must find release. It must end.
Of our party, I had the greater protection against any possible hostile spirit, having the gift of the Foundchild of the Brown Boar Clan about my neck – the spirit of their great ancestor hunter Alioki to protect me, sealed within the tooth of the Dragon’s Fury I had slain. Seeking for something less ethereal as an insurance, Aransar tied a rope about my waist, for none other would enter this unholy tomb, lest we all fall into darkness. He commanded his sylph to bear me across the empty globe to the cross that stood before us.
The torture of centuries was etched into that withered visage. Hopeless, forlorn, forsaken, forgotten. The majesty of the regalia that we sought made grim mockery of the carcass which now wore it. I placed my hands upon its arm to pry the body loose. Immediately my mind was engulfed, and my frame shivered at the alien spirit that probed my brain with its ancient tongue. I told it I had come to bear it away to peace and freedom; that its body would find rest amongst its own. When it asked how I would do this, I knew my folly. The body was long-empty – the spirit needed another vessel.
Orstanor provided its receptacle. He released his own bound spirit back to the plane where all souls dance til they are called again to this world. The noble essence of aldryami Prince Torlane took its place; his wracked and febrile presence drifted from my brain, and his physical remains dropped away from the Cross as dust. I shook the memory of his desperate countenance from my mind.
Feet on solid ground again, I looked back inside the sphere with its Terrible Rune again, to the door beyond. What wonders might lie beyond this cell of horror? What treasures of kings and princes might here be interred? What powers might be gained if we were to venture, just one more door…
We had no way to get through another warding. No time to wait if another patrol were to come. No inclination to spend another moment under the ground, away from the light, away from the air. With no small measure of reluctance, I turned and followed the others. What lay beyond those gates in the Chamber of Death?
More darkness. Endless tunnelling down into the black, searching, searching for a place to call home, pushing into the unlife, into the deadness of the blank earth; forever lost to the cosmos, to Gods and to life. The cursed mostali. Against the light, hiding from the air, the wind, the pure wild world.