“What are we looking at?” Laruna asked, conjuring a brighter light above Jynn’s head.
“The sealed files of the Leviathan Project,” Jynn said, glancing at a sheet of parchment. “And judging by the archives’ access records, we’re the first people to do so for over two decades. And before that… it’s just Handor and his father. Almost nobody alive knows what’s in here.”
The pyromancer nodded. “But you think it will help us fight Johan?”
“I do.” The archmage picked up a thin file covered in the stamps and seals of the kingdom’s most secret documents. “Before Johan claimed to have slain him in triumph, Az’Anon the Black stumbled upon something that terrified every mage working on the Leviathan Project. We need to learn what it was.”
“I don’t want to know,” Kaitha murmured as she stared with vacant eyes at the glowing images flowing over the doorway. “I don’t want to remember.”
It was unclear to Kaitha how long she had stared at the door, caught between the ancient magics that compelled her forward and something deep in her soul that forbade her from taking another step. These opposing forces, along with a probable concussion after her drop, left her in a fugue state, murmuring ignorance and denials at the watery figures on the doorway.
The glowing water and the vacant shadows combined on the door, with the dancing figures clearly cut into two camps. The hum of magic in the air had grown deep and ominous, like the thunder of a distant army on the march. On the one side, the water painted the Sten and the Shadowkin, yes, but also many Elves, Dwarves, and Humans. On the other side, a golden figure wearing the crest of Tandos and carrying a long spear led a force of all the peoples of light, with spears and blades protruding from the mob like a half-melted hedgehog. Kaitha thought the figure must have been Issan, the legendary Elven general and champion who led the Children of Light to victory in the war to come. A rift of dark stone stretched down the seam of the double-sided door, and in the middle of the darkness…
“Don’t make me,” Kaitha said. She sensed something dreadful beyond the door, something that terrified her in her core. A faint scratching beyond the stone was occasionally audible, like some distant rodent gnawing at the edge of perception. “I don’t want to remember.”
Yet she couldn’t forget, not when her eyes fell on the limp forms drawn in glowing water in the middle of the dark swath. Most of them were of indeterminate origins, but some pointed ears indicated there were Elves among the dead, and one form was unmistakable: a hulking corpse of a Troll.
Her eyes jerked away from the Troll’s face, but it was too late. One glance at the watery features, and memories welled up within her. She saw Thane’s smile, his eyes, the way he looked at her when he—
“Don’t make me remember!” Kaitha repeated, with more force than a trance would usually allow.
But she did remember, another part of her growled from the corner of her psyche. She had to remember. She wouldn’t let him be forgotten. Her determination returned, along with the frenetic scratching at the doorway, and she took a step toward the door.
Something in Kaitha’s mind shrieked in protest. She reminded herself of the moment that Thane died in this gods-forsaken dungeon so she wouldn’t have to, and she kept moving forward. Her eyes scanned the massive door for a mechanism to open it, but it quickly became apparent that wouldn’t be necessary. The door creaked open as she approached, its unseen hinges driven by some hidden mechanism or sorcery. And once the stone doors had parted enough for her to see into the room beyond—
A mass of hair and claws and whirling eyes launched from the doorway, gibbering and shrieking. Kaitha dove to the side, splashing into a wall and scattering a glowing group of Elves into tiny droplets. She drew her knife and dropped into a fighting stance, but the creature—or creatures—were already fleeing back up the tunnel as fast as their distinctive hobbling scamper would allow.
Scargs. Variegated ones, judging by the streaks of yellow, red, and mottled greens running through the bat-like creatures’ fur. Judging by the way they continued to shriek and hiss at the glowing watery murals on the walls, Kaitha surmised that whatever magic had drawn her in had terrified the nest of them. She watched as one last, tiny inhabitant of the nest bounced after its family, chirruping in displeasure, and then the gaggle of them was gone.
A part of the ranger wanted to follow them, to flee screaming from the tunnel and its sorcerous mural. Yet scargs could fly out over the deep chasm behind her, and an Elf could only plummet into it, so her only option was to go forward.
Setting aside the wild protests from the back of her mind, Kaitha stepped through the door and onto the scene of the War of Betrayal.
She expected to see battles. She expected there to be bloody armies cast in glowing water, and mounds of dead depicted in dripping currents. Yet instead, in the small circular chamber beyond the door, she saw a negotiation. To Kaitha’s left, azure and emerald water showed a Stennish king and queen with a toddler at their heels. A delegation of diplomats or advisors swirled into existence in front of the royal family and bowed low—one Orc, one Sten, one Elf. On the ranger’s right, Issan and the generals of the Army of Light gathered at a table in discussion. Nodding in agreement, Issan himself set out with a Human, a Dwarf, and a Gnome. The diplomats and the generals moved toward the middle of the room, drifting along a tide of water until they met their counterparts directly in front of Kaitha. A tent bubbled up around them, and they began to talk.
As the tiny emissaries haggled, Kaitha carefully walked into the chamber. The room was like a cistern, a smooth stone cylinder that extended higher than her vision could see. A few vents and rotted steps were visible in the shadows above. The air was damp and musty here, and the floor covered with all the disgusting trappings of a scarg nest: fur clumps, rat bones, and mounds of scarg guano that were all being slowly pushed about by the rivulets of glowing water streaming into the room from the tunnel behind her.
To Kaitha’s surprise, the water showed the negotiations on the wall working. As the current drew crowds of anxious onlookers on either side of her, the parties shook hands. The Sten raised her hand into the air, and Kaitha half-smiled in a reflection of her tiny, pantomimed triumph.
It was too good to be true. It wasn’t true. Already she could see the dark shadows spreading down the walls, blackening the stone behind the dancing lights.
The darkness touched Issan, and he stabbed the Stennish woman through the back. Kaitha covered her mouth to choke back a cry as one of the greatest heroes of her people then killed the Orc and, taking up the warrior’s axe, fell upon the other members of his own party. Bloodred water dripped from the bottom of the tent as the general finished his grisly task. When Issan emerged alone from the tent, he was cast in a crimson light, and as he gestured back to his own party, the angry red seared across his army. Issan’s crimson forces fell upon the Sten and their allies, slaying warriors and women and children alike.
Kaitha watched the carnage with wide eyes, biting the back of her hand until a trickle of blood flowed down her arm. The Sten hadn’t betrayed the Children of Light. They had been betrayed. She was certain of the truth of it; no, she remembered the truth of it, and with the memory an unbearable anguish pressed down on her heart, like the pain of losing Thane a thousand times over. She fell to her knees, and tears streamed freely down her face, falling to mingle with the ruby river flowing over the stones.
The river of tears flowed on.
It had no deep aquifer to burble up from, no snowmelt to feed it from on high, nor any slope to guide its impossible flow. Yet it bubbled along in happy defiance of physics, humming as it flowed through the Black Fathoms at the mountain’s heart. The sound echoed through the massive chamber, bouncing off the treelike pillars and their branching pathways. The stream’s music filled the air as the water rushed over the pathway into the dragon’s lair.
Kulxak the dragon, Guardian of the Stones, ordained Warden of the Future, regarded the oncoming stream warmly. The water flowed up to her back where it paused, burbling musically just behind her wings.
With a pained and labored grunt, the dragon lifted herself and shifted her massive weight to the other side of her precious charges. The stream waited patiently for her to settle down, then proceeded into the deep grooves encircling the ring of dismembered statues. Patterns and sigils glowed with sudden vibrance as the luminous liquid sluiced through ancient channels. Matching symbols began to glow on the stone statues as well, faint characters cast in blue that seemed to light up from just beneath the surface of the marble. A new sound joined the stream’s music, a deep thrumming echoing up from the stony depths of the cavern. This tectonic tala began to beat in a staccato pair, like the heartbeat of the mountain itself.
As Wynspar’s isorhythmic pulse strengthened, the scattered sculptures in the glowing circle began to move. The disembodied head of a Sten shifted suddenly to the side, as though shaken by the swelling of music around her. Another beat and the statue’s head lurched a finger’s width away from the stone beneath it, as though dislodged from the floor by the rhythm. One more pulse from the depths and it was free, drifting into the air with the lazy grace of an unmoored boat. Beneath it, other parts of the sculpture began to shake and float.
Borne on a languid tide of music and light, the stones slowly began to rise.
“They need to move faster!” Duine Poldo cried as he stared at the Domovoy’s chalkboard. A Wood Gnome in a chipmunk pelt was coloring frantically as her colleagues squeaked numbers at her, yet the chalk graph showed that only half of the known shares of the dragon’s hoard had been exchanged. The Scribkin glanced up at the Pinnacle. Andarun’s top tier flashed and smoked like a waking volcano as blasts of sorcery and exploding alchemical potions flew about the palace. “We won’t have time if we can’t move the shares faster!”
“My employees labor with all haste,” Asherzu called back. “We cannot do more!”
She was right, of course. They needed more hands. And Poldo could only think of two. “Mrs. Hrurk!” he shouted.
The Gnoll looked down from her perch by the slate, still keeping perfect rhythm. All around her, swarms of Wood Gnomes sloughed their pencils across spreadsheets or ferried rivers of paper around her feet. Messenger sprites swarmed overhead, bathing the one-woman concert in a flickering rainbow of light. She looked to Poldo like a master of her element, a sorceress commanding the seas and sky. He smiled as he said, “I’m afraid I must impose on you to mind things yet again.”
“Why?” the Gnoll shouted down, her head cocked to one side.
Poldo grabbed a stack of boilerplate contracts from a nearby Warg Inc. clerk. “I thought I might try my hand at day trading.”
“You can lose a fortune that way,” she warned him, but he could see her tail wagging.
“That is the idea,” he said.
