“The only question is what ‘it’ was,” said Laruna.

The corpse of Grettel Sparklit, also known as Bettel Torkin, lay face down on one of the narrow bridges that crisscrossed the Black Fathoms. She was split from the shoulder to the middle, black blood staining her gold-inlayed leather armor and the stones around her. Jynn knelt by the body, probing around the corpse with currents of sorcery.

“It’s obvious,” said Gorm. “That’s a sword wound. A monster would have eaten the body, and a bandit would have looted the armor. This is intra-party violence.”

“You’re likely right,” murmured Jynn. “Though I find these irregular puncture marks on her neck and face strange.”

“Johan’s armor has plenty of spiky bits,” said Heraldin.

“These weren’t from armor. Listen, we agree on the culprit,” said the archmage. “But there are troubling questions about the means.”

“Can’t you just, you know, ask her how Johan did it?” said Heraldin. “Some light necromancy.”

Jynn eyed Laruna the way a bayou deer might watch an apparent floating log drifting its way. “There are those who would frown on that.”

The solamancer shrugged in a manner that suggested that, while she was certainly unwilling to participate in such abominations as necromancy, she could be elsewhere if someone was going to do it.

“But even if we do find room for… moral flexibility in this situation, I’m afraid Bettel cannot be communed with or otherwise summoned, as she’s been sealed against such magics.” Jynn sent a strand of amethyst sorcery at the body by way of demonstration. It crackled and fizzled out in a golden flash as it reached the body. “Another troubling event is that her body has been consecrated. This whole area has. It’d take powerful artifacts or… unacceptable measures to defile it sufficiently for necromancy to work.”

Gorm sighed. “I suppose we should have assumed Johan would cover his tracks.”

“It’s easy to see why he’d do it, yes,” said Jynn. “Consecration is one of the best ways to ensure that dead men tell no tales. But it isn’t sorcery. It has to be done in the service of one’s god, and what god would help cover up an intra-party murder?”

“Maybe.” Gorm waved away the concern. “Ye don’t have to quest with too many clerics to know the gods are fine with intra-party violence, especially if their folk are winnin’ it. They can always come up with some reason for justifyin’ it. All it’d take is Bettel here crossin’ her eyes at a statue of Tandos or bein’ insufficiently faithful to earn the whole crew some divine wrath. Or at least some divine complicity in Johan’s crimes.”

“Perhaps,” said Jynn, doubtful. “Maybe we’ll find some additional clarity when we locate the rest of the Golden Dawn.”

“I wouldn’t count on any easy answers,” Kaitha called from the edge of the path. She and Gaist stood on the walkway running around the tall staircase in the middle of the cavern. “You’re going to want to see this.”

“Somethin’ wrong?” asked Gorm, trotting toward them.

“Many things,” said the ranger.

Gaist nodded with uncharacteristic emphasis and pointed to the other side of the pillar.

“Of course it is. It always…” Gorm’s grumbling died in his throat as he walked around the pathway and into a paradox.

The cavern beyond the pillar was the cavern behind them. That is to say, the next bridge from their walkway, and indeed every other path extending northward, ended suddenly in a smooth, slightly curved barrier that extended from the ceiling down into the depths as far as the eye could follow it. Its surface was black and smooth enough to perfectly reflect the stone trees and pathways behind them, but—impossibly—it was also the source of the pale blue light that filled the cavern. Gorm could see an azure glow from behind the reflected stonework, though if that light was reflected as the trees and pathways were, it should have been somewhere behind them. The expanse they had been walking toward was an illusion cast by the monolithic sphere. Gorm had the sensation of looking forward and backward at the same time.

“What is it?” breathed Laruna.

Gorm approached the strange field, watching his own reflection approach across the narrow bridge. He gave the surface an experimental prod with his axe. Silence rang out, a ringing quiet spreading from the point of contact. He set his axe down and touched the strange wall with a gloved hand. Warmth radiated from the smooth surface through the leather of his gauntlet.

“It’s like one of the prophecies you had in your lab, Jynn,” said Heraldin. “Only bigger.”

Judging by the slack-jawed grin the wizard wore, the omnimancer had already reached the same conclusion. “A prophetic vault!” he gasped. “The whole chamber is one giant Stennish artifact designed to channel low magic! Look at the patterns of pillars! The sigils made by looking at the paths from key angles! The⁠—”

“The strange machine with that corpse,” said Gorm. He nodded across the eastward path. A strange contraption of brass and iron had been set up along another path leading into the magical field. It reminded him of a Gnomish drill engine, but instead of a bit, the front was fit with several stone tablets, each of which was covered in strange runes.

“Umbraxian make,” said Laruna, reading from a small plaque on the side of a machine. She stood back and shook her head. “Their artifice is usually as untested as it is dangerous.”

“I doubt the machine did that.” Heraldin pointed at the body of an Elf in golden armor, presumably Fenlovar of the Golden Dawn, slumped against the strange device. Her back and arm were hewn by several sword blows, but her own blade was still in its sheath.

“Another one cut down with a blade,” said Kaitha.

“And another one with the strange puncture marks.” Laruna nodded to the distinctive wounds around the dead Elf’s neck.

“And another one consecrated, I’d wager,” said Gorm.

Jynn nodded, kneeling next to the body.

“So where are the others?” asked Laruna.

“Presumably dead,” said Kaitha.

“Yeah, obviously. You can see where they got slagged.” The solamancer gestured to a brick-red stain on the blue-gray stone behind Fenlovar’s corpse. “One went there. And another over on the other side of the machine. And one of them really got nailed.” Here she pointed to a large splatter on the side of the pillar. “But where’d they go? They didn’t run away—at least, not far—and bodies don’t disappear into the air.”

Gaist gestured at the vast chasm surrounding the walkways they stood on.

“Aye.” Gorm peered over the edge into the inky depths. “There’s a lot of air for a body to disappear into here.”

“Maybe,” said the solamancer, glaring at the red stains. “But it doesn’t make much sense.”

“None of this does,” said Gorm. “Why they came down here, why Johan killed ’em, and what they were doing with this thrice-cursed contraption.”

The other heroes looked at the machine. Its exact purpose was inscrutable, but to the extent that it meant to be aimed at something, it was clearly aimed at the heart of the gently glowing barrier.

“They wanted to pierce the vault. To bypass the prophecy,” Jynn murmured, inspecting the machine. “They wanted to undo the knot without unraveling the weave around it.”

“That even possible?” asked Gorm.

“I don’t know.” Jynn stepped around the machine. “Whatever is sealed in the prophetic vault could have been here for ages. Perhaps since the Sten. Whatever’s on the other side of— auugh!” A line of crimson light seared across the stone beneath Jynn’s feet. Smoldering graffiti spread across the ancient walkways as the sinister glow burned an arcane symbol over the face of the path.

Gorm shielded his eyes from the sudden glow. “What in the Pit is that?”

“A magical trigger!” Laruna pushed past Gorm as she rushed to the wizard’s side.

“A trap?” Heraldin had to shout to be heard over a sudden cacophony.

“Ain’t a trap!” Gorm hollered, but his words were lost amid the horrible, sibilant roar. His ears filled with a wet whispering, thick and sick and susurrant, as three shadows detached from the dark heights of the cavern and dove toward the heroes’ platform. “It’s an ambush!”

Chapter 23

The Alpine Gnurg is a master of ambush. Members of the monstrous species wait patiently in caves or crags for weeks at a time, nearly dormant until some unlucky or foolhardy creature stumbles over their dens. And though it is impossible to truly understand the mind of a hideous amalgam of titanic centipede and fleshy nightmare, it is easy to imagine something akin to anticipation flowing through their neuron clusters whenever their antennae detect the vibrations of approaching footsteps.

The specimen lurking on the southern slopes of Mount Andarun clacked its mouthparts and tensed its many appendages in just such a facsimile of eager glee. Something approached from the lower slopes—at a full run, judging by the vibrations—and it felt large.

It never occurred to the Alpine Gnurg that this might not be food. Ancient sorcery and subsequent evolution had collaborated to tune every part of the creature, from its multitude of powerful legs to its rock-shredding mandibles, for leaping out of deep tunnels and making alpine climbers wish that they’d taken up boating instead. Gnurgs that passed up opportunities to feed never passed on their genes; there weren’t enough wayward hikers and careless goats around to sustain a population of cautious apex predators. If it moved and it was on a mountain, an Alpine Gnurg was built to assume it was food.