Chapel of Chains Part 1
As the City, So the Spirit
In the blasted ruins of a city under seige siege, in the bright shadows of demons vaporized by ancient towers, a mixed group of warriors found survivors from the underworks while fighting a mob of the stooped invading mass. An implacable restless ancient appeared, speaking words of power and bearing no mercy.
19:00 Vasilios, 14 Moiraias 14389
But for the… creature standing before them, the Sergeant's band would have met an inglorious fate. The kaulivakos slain by the capital-S Spires fled early (was vaporized quickly), leaving behind more of its coterie than suspected, his own men of twenty outnumbered two-to one. With the creature's entry, eighteen still stood, gulping water and air, mending lacerations and adjusting kit among the twisted forms of the slain mob. Survival rates he would have given anything for the past week, and he quietly regretted Providence's humor.
Presently he counted nine men in the blues (Arcadians) and reds (foreign volunteers) of the army currently standing for last rites of their two slain comrades; two mercenaries in black, two hobgoblins in their lacquered armor and iron masks, and five paladins--four initiates watching their superior administer the last rites. The quiet rain a gentle relief from sweat, heat, and caked dust; silk could not make a more comforting shroud for the dead.
It was outrageously undead, of the corporeal sort to stalk ancient tombs and mountain temples. Standing between it and his mostly-wary men, he could not suss what axis of cosmic alignment possibly claimed the creature, despite the subtle facial gestures and sotto voco mutterings the Sergeant made to pick up auras. Only an unsettling sensation, but nothing indicating it was a fiend or fiend-aligned. The Sergeant saw it twitch and recoil before backing away from the battlefield funeral.
It only seemed to move what was necessary, when it was necessary, like a marionette in the hands of a novice puppeteer. Water beaded off downswept horns on an otherwise classical Thelos-style helm surrounding an opening somewhere between a T and a Y in shape. Underneath, a rictus shadowed by two icy embers matching the dying aquamarine fire of dusk. Dark plates, dark cloak, dark kilt; all russet, brown, and grey. A creature of bright cold and deep darkness--but the Sergeant could not place what kind of creature exactly, and that bothered him almost as much as needing it to keep his men alive the last fight.
It stomped into the mess as the Sergeant and his men covered the retreat of the wounded, somehow in possession of the old crow's contraption, somehow perfectly comfortable using it, and to effect. The bayonet for anything up close, the crossbow itself for when any of his men were getting overwhelmed, with one quarrel for what amounted to the mob-superior, one slightly less stooped and slightly better-equipped.
With the conclusion of the fight, it spun the contraption over its shoulder, fixing it to its fur cloak with a long hook on the underside of the weapon. Its motions betrayed surety--it decided the fight was over and said so by the way it shouldered the crossbow.
Now, it held the deceased mob-superior by the collar of crude chain mail, flicking away an irrecoverable quarrel from the degenerate's neck. Despite threadbare nerves, the men leaned to get a better look as it dug around the corpse's gear, and the paladins' hands jumped to their swords when it pulled something out.
A large earthenware flask, of the sort of countryside rustic spirits the wealthy keep. As the men got up and edged closer, they saw it lever the stopper off with its helmet's eye slit and drink the contents. "It doesn't understand our speech," said a tall man in blue. The men looked at one another, tension released in astonishment, as the undead smashed the bottle against the degenerate's head and casually threw the body against a broken wall.
"I like this one's attitude!" Of course a hobgoblin said it.
"What do we do with it?" someone asked. The undead stood away from them, its gaze cast to the broken skyline, the Spires, and the blisters of mountains on opposite ends of the sky.
"I glimpsed it down in the underworks--several times. It's a real war-machine; even with all of us, killing it would cost lives we can’t spare.” And frankly, he simply wanted to see it up close. This was the third straight sortie he ran, had been up for two days without rest. He needed something novel to gawp.
The rites finished, the lead paladin spoke to him in confidence. "Sergeant, this thing rustles my jimmies." The Sergeant asked himself who the fuck said shit like that, concluded it was another hayseed Arcadianism. For a cadet-novitiate transferred to Saint Irinia's church-militant from Amortian Regimental Command--Arc Royal's force made up of actual royals--the Amort was indiscreetly vernacular.
"Doesn't have an alignment, speaks the same language as the damned--and the monoliths for that matter--and it's behavior implies a lot of power," he said, pointing to the tendency of undead to act and think more like the living the more powerful they were. "Most distressingly, it registers to us as several undead, like it's possessed and haunted on top of animated…"
"The Old Bird wasn't impressioned enough to mention such a threat chasing them, and he has a beak for trouble. It doesn't regard us as a threat, so it’s not a priority." The Sergeant glanced at the undead, then looked to the men. "I'll mind it for a few hours, see what it does, if more are moseying out of the undercity. After that, unless it presents a clear threat… we leave it alone, refocus on our mission. Everyone else, take our two fallen and withdraw to the cordon. I'll take five volunteers.”
The other four paladins of course stepped forward, polished armor sequined with condensation. Noticeably, their cuirasses bore no name-stencils, a subtle nod to surrendering the ego to The Saint.
"The five of us will return the creature if you don't want to, Sergeant. You've your mission and I respect the dedication, and from your standpoint it's practical to let it continue killing our enemies. But I swore several oaths; and the fact this thing is walking around during the biggest incursion in three centuries is too convenient to be dismissed, and we of the Order have to suspect everything." As he said this, his hand closed on his hilt in a way that was more than idle. "We need to kill this…" A rustle of gravel and fabric.
With nobody registering the alacrity, it was among them, squaring off with each of them--simultaneously. Each saw it staring them down individually—all at once. It bore a flattened club held in one hand, and… a lead bullet balanced on the flat. A single word like a shot-put breaking flagstones. Whatever it said, the living felt in their diaphragms, the word itself displaced air.
A very long, very quiet moment. "Stanis, Joker, with me." A mercenary with a heavy beard and the taller hobgoblin stepped forward. The Sergeant also pointed out two Arcadian soldiers. He finally nodded to the lead paladin. "Come with me. We need to reconnoiter this district anyway."
"I'll head back with the survivors," said the other black-clad mercenary, and the only person larger than the undead. He tapped the hobgoblin called Shorty, who gave a farewell to his taller kinsman.
"Deacon-Lieutenant?" asked one of the junior paladins. Their senior was still looking the statue-like undead in the eye.
"Go with them," he sighed. Reading the situation, the undead flicked the bullet into the folds of its kilt sash--stashed another held in its offhand--and backed away to resume its place outside the circle.
The only ones not really bothered by it were the hobgoblins. Their only unspoken but viscerally implied question early on was whether it constituted another fight. That it was undead held no more distinction to the non-haergiothan foreigners than the brannoch still staking a stab at wetwork in his advanced age or, the Sergeant imagined, one of their own wrinklies getting back in the saddle.
The Sergeant saw it in their body language: admiring astonishment at what they saw as a local ancient returned from the grave to drive out the invasive freaks--and that to the haergiothans of the Penicillininsula undead being vile monsters of evil was never intimated to the foreigners, and any attempt to explain would majestically soar over their hairless pates anyway.
"What is that thing it wields, soldiers?" he asked either of the two Arcadians.
"Looks like a hurley, Sergeant. But the way the boss is jacketed with brass and the langettes going down the front and back, it'd be too heavy to take to the green." Ah, right: the team sport he saw the locals play every now and again. There was even a small league among the Arcadian diaspora in Krespask back home, he remembered.
The creature itself seemed to have some input: it looked at them over its shoulder, voice like heavy rocks striking a shallow river, and pointed its head deeper into the ruined city. Its words rang of derision. As the rain eased into a slow-falling mist, six followed it while thirteen went the other way, carrying two full stretchers improvised from spears.
23:00 Vasilios, 14 Moiraias 14389
CONTRARY TO THE old brannoch's assertions, Runt Scarlet did in fact have experience with injured ribs--she was just so frail that 'normal' for her was not much better than this fresh new hell.
Cutting the Lidovican sergeant's rope fetters was easy--how rarely people noticed her feet were taloned like her hands, or the abrasive scaling of her horns, or, you know, her tusks--and she thanked Korrohl the naïve fools were vexed by entropy’s thralls so she could nick a few vials from the Irinine priestess' backpack and her own effects before fucking right off, thanking the Big Man in the Big Mountain again for the rain to hide her scent and prints as she whipped her anorak around.
Downhill, near the terrace-wall and the ramp to the lower level of the city, the cupola of a mansion's fallen turret shielded a dry nest of stone and wood from the elements and notice. The fires--even a week later--all over the district kept it warm, and in this sanctuary she knelt, taking a moment to savor the dryness in the damp air and a fragrant tree surviving in a shattered indoor pot.
But only just a moment. Now came the painsome task of redressing and setting her ribs. Runt doffed her anorak and shirt, carefully unwrapping Lau's work underneath from twenty-four hours anon--not even a full day, but it felt like a lifetime.
She carefully pushed against her ribs, confirming the worst of it were hairline fractures and dislocations, equally careful as she re-wrapped the dressings to keep the fractures from grinding and the dislocations back into their receptacles on her sternum.
All on her right side, she bowed her body leftward as she tightened the dressing, assuming a ballet pose for the first since childhood, drinking the contents of a vial and swiftly biting the ropes that once bound her.
The envelope around her ribs moved, like a living thing, the dislocations back into place and inflame around the fractures as the tissue was pushed along in the work of repairing bone which the potion itself could not complete, but gave her lungs to expand fully.
Finally able to breath more than shallowly again, the rush of oxygen made the air dance, every sound merge together, every sight blend; Runt dizzily put her shirt back on, wrapped herself in her anorak, and blacked out under the liberated plant.
25:00 Vasilios, 14 Moiraias 14389
THE SERGEANT REELED back as the undead took its fingertips off the side of his head. He barked as he came to, started himself up where he laid. A particularly large demon alit to fight them, but was cut down by the towers' fire and turned a partially-collapsed manse on a hill into a fully-collapsed manse. He unthinkingly chased after the final kill and was refenestrated when the entire front side fell as one.
The words from the undead's vision lingered in his mind, recognizing a shared memory--those Arcadian soldiers never reported back after being sent to scout enemy movements. "Duty even for the dead," he repeated, the memory crossing languages.
As it spoke with the low staccato of tumbling rocks, it gestured with the Sergeant's sword--as if moving it for emphasis. The infernal knight, paladin, mercenary, and regulars ran past, one of the last checking his pace to check the Sergeant. The undead wound up its hurley and clotheslined a charging thrall before using it as a stand for the sword.
The Sergeant waved away the tall guard's offered hand, and he looked for the undead as he recovered. Another mob of wild subhumans in their patchwork armor and nigh-improvised weapons pursued three Arc Royal guards stumbling down the hill, now gulping air to join their saviors. The creature was on the fringe, seemingly drawing attention to itself by design--the Sergeant saw the enemy line take on a lopside as they shifted towards the inhuman thing with glowing eyes.
Rattles--as the hobgoblin and mercenaries cristened it after the second skirmish--seemed to hold a different regard for these foes than the living held; an absence of hesitation, not unlike the hobgoblins--but they were foreigners. Was this undead really local? But where Joker was focused on slaying enemies with concentrated technique, Rattles seemed to move with blasé rigormortis rigormorale, as if having to perform a task long since believed finished and which went on far longer than was welcome the first time. A beast-featured half-human broke a club against it's shoulder; the undead reeled back its weapon and struck it one-handed before stomping the degenerate's neck.
Much of the fighting was long seconds of squaring off against the thralls; eyeing one another down, furtive jabs with weapons and swatting the enemies’ away, trying to move away from them and closer to one's allies, trying not to be flanked or backed into a corner.
Then a few quick instants of fighting--and the fighting was never as loud as people imagined--even for the surviving participants immediately afterward. Different flavors of grunts--from swinging weapons, from slipping out the way of incoming blows, from recovering after a telling strike (giving or receiving) were the notes to a tempo set by breathless pants.
The occasional oath, and the Sergeant could hear the paladin reciting a Chaplet to himself as he moved from one half-his-size degenerate to another, parrying once and killing with a single blow.
Another mob too small to have a demon showed up, and he lost track of everyone while his off-hand worked to cast a ward to move up and distract the enemy. A thrall in front of him braced for a wide arc and was met with more a spear-thrust. The thrall's partner tried lunging in with a jagged short blade and earned the actual wide arc--right on top of it. The tall guard was faltering and the Sergeant angled in to square off two thralls trying to overrun the man.
As he glanced around to see the state of everyone else (the three newcomers were enthusiastic to return their tormentors' favor), the Sergeant saw Rattles and Joker sliding down a collapsed roof to flank the enemy, the hobgoblin shouting in some ritualistic manner as he swung his tetsubo and Rattles emitting a staccato; the entire enemy mob distracted on top of the foes nearest them flanked. The sergeant drew back and threw his sword, making a grasping motion with his hand and incanting a rote spell to make it fly an arc as it spun, wounding some of the cretins and distracting the rest.
Then something fast and heavy glanced his face, and he yelled "Push!" as he clutched his eye, his concentration nearly broken. He drew his hand back, and his sword came with it. Yes, he could still see out both eyes, but he gave voise to the pain.
"Sarge!" shouted Stanis the mercenary, trying to make way to him.
"It’s a fucking priest!" he barked, pointing at a newcomer in unsettling-toned robes at the crest of the hill, on the landing of a fallen house, but his alert was drowned out by the priest's long, loud string of nasally vowels. The dwindling subhumans in front of them chuffed and barked under their leather masks and the loose team stumbled for the first time absorbing strikes. He saw the paladin fall under four leaping on him and he rushed forward to aid.
Joker dropped his tetsubo and unsheathed a strange scimitar, bracing his grip and made a yelled dash up the straight lane of cobblestones. He bound over a fallen statue and fell, the priest tracing a wide arc with a sling, its chanting unceased. The sergeant saw the hobgoblin recover, but his momentum vanished several dozen yards short of the priest and a thrall jumped on his back.
A messy grapple to stand the fallen paladin back up, he and Stanis aiding with long knives, the four degenerates proving little work. The holy warrior braced himself and began a well-practiced litany, his shouting drowning out the drone of the enemy priest. The Sergeant had a chance to see everything between the slow swings of a fool with a miner's pick--the enemy line was even with them, numbers-wise, and the undead cut two wide arcs with the hobgoblin's tetsubo, making the foes hesitate and think twice about retreating.
Rattles and the sergeant regarded one another a moment. It walked to the middle of the lane as if to challenge the droning priest, one of the mob underlings only succeeding in breaking its club against a plate under Rattles' hide cloak. The undead struck it with such force both victim and tetsubo arced away.
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A word drier than a bouldercrash in a ravine, with the same echo. Sarge saw everyone convulse, his own insides seemed to move and his diaphragm felt like a drumskin. Even the paladin faltered, slightly, and the mob reeled as if struck in their heads.
Most importantly, the priest stopped, for a moment--but that moment was all Sarge needed to focus. He kicked one in the ribs and cleft another's chest. What was the undead doing? The bullet that struck Joker rolled down the hill and Rattles… scooped it up with the flat of its club. The undead flicked the missile into the air and spun its club about in its hands, its arms spinning about its body. Two sharp impacts, and the priest on his landing sunk to his knees.
The creature shouted a facsimile of the word 'Sergeant', looking back, pointing to the priest. Feeling like his very consciousness was drawn from his body for a clearer look of the opportunity, Sarge ran ahead, almost tripping over a dead abyssal human. He saw the others trying to intercept him, and the undead moved to foil them. A fast crush of bodies, he trying to get his sword-arm free and ignore a sudden pain in his side, even Joker falling back to grapple a degenerate off the Sergeant's waist. The Sergeant sprang his back like a spring and got his weapon free, taking a thrall’s fingers with it, and spun it like a bullroar.
The priest recovered, stood back up, made a loud note.
And met a heavy sword to his chest. At the base of the hill, the Sergeant reeled in his outstretched hand as he collapsed under the scrum. Joker swore as he rolled out of the flying blade's path. Every warm body crashed on the scrum, defender and stooped invader alike, every sweaty breath used to effect, nobody sure which could be their last.
26:00 Vasilios, 14 Moiraias 14389
SARGE FORCED HIMSELF up, but he envied the guards laying down on the cold stone. The tall one was billowing his kilt, and the three newcomers warily sucked air and water from flasks while eyeing the armored husk. The wards Sarge cast during the last fight protected everyone, but he knew in his mind he was finished for the day, two hours before midnight, if the dim glimpses of the sky were any hint. Sat on a fallen column from an arcade, the paladin seemed to be indulging the others' rest, but kept his gaze on the undead--the Sergeant saw him postured for a second round, and it was not lost on him that he sat near the newcomers.
For an instant, long-limbed Rattles reminded him of a labradoodle or other sheep-dog, his fur mantle and brown-and-grey kilt like a shaggy coat, the flat of his helmet square like a canine snout. The undead stood apart from the group, looking this way or that as if alert for coyotes or wolves--but the Sergeant saw it constantly looked at the Spires and the wall of the upper terrace, a black slab in the orange glow of the destroyed city. He approached it as it looked intently at the black edifice of the Keep and the skydock, the highest points of the city save the inscrutable, ancient Spires. He gestured to them and the two great structures with the pommel of his sword. The creature rattled off something that sounded like it would have later verbally mutated to 'Storm’s Vale'. Close enough to Thunder's Vale?
"Storm's Vale!" he said, gesturing with his pommel to the piles that were said city a few days ago, then to himself and the living. "Thunder's Vale! Do you know what's going on?" he pointed at the Spires and exaggerated a shrug. Rattles craned its head about while doffing a gauntlet. It gazed on him with cold blue motes and held up a bare hand of desiccated lichen-colored leather. The Sergeant heard the paladin and newcomers shift to stand up. With some hesitation, he let it place it's fingertips on the side of his head; the protestations of the paladin and newcomers faded like shorebreaks in the distance.
THE BLOODY SUN of dusk cast the white stone of the city in crimson highlights against the darkening blue. Everyone awaited the black diamond-like shape far in the distance, Point Radovic, sharply defined among the shifting clouds. The largest nimbus lumbered in front of the sun, and the city was cast into a velvet twilight. Apprehension gripped Thunder's Vale for hours by then, mobs having been causing havoc in multiple districts.
Stooped and bandy freaks in piecemeal armor, the ones without masks grimaced with deformed faces. They surged into the city hours ago and nobody fathomed where, and set to work overwhelming everyone they found using crude weapons and sheer mass of bodies.
Then rumbling; the thirty-two Spires of Thunder's Vale, dizzyingly-tall artifacts silent and inscrutable for all of history, molted their tops like lobsters. Strange antennae and mandibulae unfolded, their stone shells fell as cart-sized debris. The foundations of Thunder's Vale's terraces were built around these things, the city densest around them. Uncounted residents and buildings of storied history alike were crushed, yet before the first shed pebble struck, the Spires screamed; their awakened parts turning and rotating in place radiating beams of light, spraying motes of fire, and chuffing plumes of glowing death into the sky above the city and towards the flying mountain.
Fiends fell from the sky, dismembered, injured, or enraged, in Staff Sergeant Tiber Klepacki's memory from a mere handful of days ago.
Bedlam; hiding from the Spires' collective wrath as it followed the descending fiends, and fighting the ones that made it to the streets. A family running to cover from the towers' fire. That same family crushed under a limbless torso the size of an elephant. The mother, out of her wits, trying to drag the remains from under the mass. A cart-sized demon swooping in and tearing her in half. A swarm of fiery motes cutting it to pieces. The mother looking up at Tiber from where she was dropped, eye fading in shock and blood loss. Parrying the swipes of a third before diving for cover as a beam melted its pelvis.
All while getting knocked over from impacts, blown aside from explosions, tripping over bodies and debris, rolling from pouncing fiends, wiping eyes and nose of dust and smoke, and leaping headfirst into cover when the towers wailed and raged. More energy spent trying to roll upright and recover than doing any other single thing.
Bodies, blood, and entrails everywhere. Guts inconceivably high on stone walls of mansions and arches of parks, people struck dead from falling demon parts. Among the mobs were dark priests in robes of human skin praising dark gods with long names and invoking every kind of magical destruction; and champions blessed with powers that made them even more monstrous than the crouching degenerates.
Unexpected aid during a desperate last stand against a fiend on a pile of bricks and corpses, a band of fifty surviving warriors from different units, and news of Lady Bochra securing a redoubt at the sky docks. Evacuating civilians to the safety of the cordon. The team of fifty, dwindling with no time for burials. A call goes out for volunteers to scout the enemy movements, and four men step forward: the same men the undead would encounter deep underground.
THE UNDEAD PULLED away, rictus curled down slightly and brow furrowed an iota; this was not the place it knew. It refocused, and Tiber fell into eternity's gulf, a nebulae the color of the undead's eyes.
HE SAW A DISK OF LIGHT covering most of an uneven grassy slope large enough to be a plain in and of itself, but for being one side of a saddle. The disk was bordered by a thick, jagged shadow, and he stood at the trough of that immense frame. A stone road ribboned across the width of the saddle from the base, where a massive garrison was nigh-finished, to the top where a fortress knelt mid-construction. Nearby mountains sang in the wind--the mountain-range spurs that pinched Thunder's Vale.
Where he stood, a black shaft shot into the disk of light. Turning, he saw the Morningstar at the top of the saddle: built into a huge tor that in later centuries would be hidden with the construction of the first of the great terraces. Behind that hung the immense silhouette of Point Radovic in the air, the eye of the cronegate creating the disk of sun and frame of shadow on the saddle.
At the zenith of the Morningstar's shadow, near the center of the disk, stood a figure in dove-grey armor with short black hair. Black pleats fluttered in the wind. The figure turned to face the top, shifting on a lance. Wait, no… yes, it was Her. Smaller at this distance than a quillhead held in the hand outstretched, Tiber still knew she must have been much taller than any normal haergiothan.
Down the slope from the base of the Morningstar's tor a building emerged from the ground, of a kind similar to the towers that ringed Thunder's Vale--this vale--and of a kind Tiber never saw before. An insect-like construction glittering in the sun, resting in the hillside like a pollenating creature asleep in a flower. Curves and shapes embodying all that is charming of insects gradually tapered to a mammoth-sized opening.
Even in this vision that predated the city as he knew it, this building was beyond ancient, every curve and accent a nonverbal hint of vintage too old to be conceived. It was being able to see the face of the antiquitant building that the designs of the Spires became clear: being utilitarian and having limited surface area, their design style only became evident with this large insect-like example.
Most importantly, the opening was closing, sliding together from opposite walls as concentric half-ellipsoid shapes sliding into place and pushing forward. The final pieces, egg-shaped half-disks large enough for a man, slid in place and closed. The massive Spires in their rings surrounding the building hummed a low horn-like note and all spoke with the same, single voice.
In this memory, Tiber felt tiredness in his eyes, a weariness tugging at his head and shoulders; a longing for rest.
Men in strange armor approached; their faces were familiar, their speech familiar--sharing a root with that of the towers. With the degenerate mobs; but these men were well-built, well-bred, but of a race he never before saw. The woman, half again as tall as a man and just as broad, stepped forward to inspect the hillside, and faced the rememberer.
TIBER CAME TO just as he was about to hear the voice of a deity. Rattles was seemingly looking over Tiber's shoulder. The sergeant looked back and saw Joker and Stanis holding back the paladin; the three newcomer guards were behind the deacon-lieutenant, the tall guard and his compatriot off to Tiber's side. Both had hands on hilts, one's sword halfway out. "A second time is too far, sergeant! We must dispose of that creature, we have no--"
"It knows," the sergeant forced out, holding his head. "It knows about what's at the core of Thunder's Vale… how to access it." The paladin paused, stepped back and relaxed. Almost relieved.
"I'm all ears for you to justify Rattles' presence. What did it tell you?"
"Nothing. It showed me a memory, it… he was here when the city was founded. When it was all a hilly saddle and just a wagon-path. There was a building near the crest, down from the base of the Morningstar. Built into the earth… no!" he gave them a meaningful look. The men began to lean in. "Not built into the earth. The earth shifted around it. Buried it. Something older than we can imagine." Now even the paladin was leaning in; for all men are boys fascinated by history, and paladins are still men, after all.
"The towers are of the same kind. It was almost Nouvean in design, like it was from Mucca or Alfonsa. But they couldn't hold a candle to this edifice. Flowing lines, design, and construction we wouldn't even think of, the whole thing looked like a massive songbeetle digging in the earth. I'm certain the towers are connected somehow--maybe literally--to whatever the enemy are chasing after." He sat down on a fallen statue and drank from an offered canteen. He was about to tell them about the woman in the vision and paused when the paladin spoke up.
"Does Rattles know how to stop them?" asked the deacon-lieutenant.
Tiber shook his head. "From what he showed me, the towers coming alive is new to him also. But his friends," the sergeant said, nodding at Joker, "in the Morningstar are closest to the entrance. The keep was built on a large tor, and the base of that was a stone's throw from where the giant songbeetle met the earth. Another stone's throw to the entrance. It's within reach--for us and for the enemy.”
"As the three terraces of the Vale were built up, the building was buried." He threw his head towards the black mass looming over the broken teeth of urban buildings. "It's under the kaczarn." The men began discussing how they would get there, as it was on the way to Lady Bochra's safezone. "Hold on, there's another thing." He looked to the paladin. "You're right--in a way. We can't ignore the fact this ancient is up and about now of all times. I can't ignore the visions it--he--shows me. I think Rattles is from the same place as the subhumans, the mutants, the toxic priests and demons… just from a different time. Before they became this way. Before they became corrupted."
"What are you saying?"
"The lands east of Thunder’s Vale and Arc Royal’s other mainland holds weren’t always the entropy-blasted domain of fiends and thralls." Every voice paused. "This undead, I think, is from the Abyssal Rift before it was Abyssal or a Rift. He's a missing link to the place before it was called Tijakim—when it was still Sidonis." Everyone craned their heads back in the direction of Rattles.
He had found another bottle.