Book 4 Chapter 7

INTERLUDE 9D: TO BE UNBROKEN

“Of all the small things that fly amidst the flowers, the bee alone was made by Lord Suffering. The bee sacrifices itself for the hive. Then, with his nephew’s blessing, the wasp was made in mockery of the bee by Lord Undeath. The wasp stings, but doesn’t die. It returns to sting again. Between the bee and the wasp lies all of good and evil. If you would use a sword, you must be prepared to fall upon it as the price of escalation. To go unprepared is to go in honour of the wrong god.”

– from the Glaivan Creed

The room was low and dark, lit only by the glowing coals on the two hearths and a smattering of cheap candles. The curtains were drawn, the shutters locked down tight in case the squall became a storm. Durgil’s nostrils told him that the near-black timbers from which this poor hall had been constructed were warping. His keen eyes, blessed with the geometric instincts of his kind, were easily able to pick out the defects in the structure despite the gloom. His hearing, no less acute than his sight, caught the dripping in the south-east corner where none had chosen to sit. By his reckoning the masters of this place had to start replacing the beams sooner rather than later, or risk the whole place collapsing – and that was probably what they’d been telling themselves for the last decade.

He smiled beneath the beard, swirling his soup, inquisitive fingertips sensitive to the slight deviations in the battered tin spoon with which he’d been provided by the tired-looking barman. The proprietors had served the food with a hunk of decent sour bread, but without cutlery, as though their guests were animals. When the stare of Durgil’s leader finally brought thirty-seven spoons out of hiding, the dwarf could tell they’d had to scour the kitchens for every last utensil. Lord Rael, one of the three chapter-masters, must’ve been wearing his cloak in such a fashion that the golden emblems of his station upon his pauldrons were hidden, because the exhausted serving-man brought him a ladle, far beneath the dignity owed one such as him. A lesser knight-initiate, still new to the order, reached out and swapped his spoon for Lord Rael’s ladle without an instant’s hesitation – an automatic act of loyalty which earned the youngster a moment of the lord’s regard, Rael’s cool elven gaze going out briefly to touch on the low-ranked knight. A glance the initiate never saw, his eyes downcast, fixed upon his grim meal – but the look was not wasted. Many of the other knights witnessed Lord Rael’s recognition of this simple deed.

When one went without words, every speechless expression was magnified, every moment a cause for renewed brotherhood. Lordship within the Church was not something one inherited – it was something earned, with blood and with devotion. None beneath Kultemeren could portend whether perhaps one day the memory of a swapped spoon might swing a vote, raise an extra hand in salutation, and make a lord of that thoughtful new knight.

The thirty-six other members of Durgil’s company, the Chapter of the Whisper’s Predicate, sat about him, draining their own wooden bowls in tranquil silence. The peace of the scene was punctuated only by the occasional inadvertent grunt, the mercifully-dull tap of spoon on dish. Even the sky’s song had dimmed, the Birdlord’s voice lost to the vast distances of the heavens. Now the only sound from outside was the transparent moaning of the long grasses that coated the slopes, a dirge given to the night.

Those here not of his company – few in number by comparison – kept to the same silence as the brethren, nothing more than slurps and the rare belch escaping their lips. Not due to oath, or duty, but fear. Few of the faithful could endure their presence without hushing. And, whatever these vagrant souls huddled in the corners thought about themselves, they remained faithful. Lies passed their lips – oh, how often the common man would sink into deception – and yet they retained the warning, burning in their minds. They knew that lying was wrong. And that was enough.

If they didn’t respect the Ultimate Judge… if they enjoyed deceit… the markers of vengeance would hang over their heads. It had been some time since he’d last seen one such marker clear-enough to his eye that his vows compelled his hand to action. But the Knights of Kultemeren were exempt from the laws of men. Just three times, in a career spanning forty years, had his broadsword drawn itself, gleaming with the white fire as it hewed into the bodies of mortals. It was so surprising, shocking, when it happened by chance on the city-streets. A cultist, a hidden heretic of one stripe or another, striding past him on his patrol about the grounds. Then there was the trinket-seller peddling cruel little traps as children’s toys. And, of course, the fourteen-year-old human girl, standing on a kerb and balefully staring out into the teeming street in South Lowtown.

That last one – that had left him shaken. He could still remember the incandescent rage filling him as he saw the incontrovertible miasma about the girl, red energies swirling atop her black, close-cropped hair like a crown of hell’s own making. He had no idea what she was entertaining in her mind, and the actions of her grief-wracked father and brother in the immediate aftermath could offer him no insight to make sense of the ordeal. There was no report from the local watch or magistry, as was commonplace. No explanation.

But as much as he could remember the rage, he could remember the lack of resistance offered by her spine as he chopped her down, taking her head without warning. The white light, clinging about the blade, an unspoken, unspeakable reassurance. That his target would be punished. That it was deserved.

There were many witnesses. Other children saw it, and he glimpsed their onlooking eyes as he cast about the crowd, even as the girl’s body toppled. A silence like his own settled over the entire road, before people started running.

Few – exceedingly few – ran towards the girl’s remains. Most fled him – a few, at first, until the panic took hold and they flooded into doorways and alleyways, anywhere to escape the vengeance of a wrathful god. And Durgil understood. So long as the warning burned in their minds, his deed was justifiable. Justified.

It was small wonder the others who’d been sitting there since the knights entered, drowning their miseries or escaping a humdrum existence at the bottom of a beer-keg, had barely stirred. Only one had dared leave. The others settled in to wait, ordering top-ups with gestures.

Did they not know that, should judgement have been their due, it would have already been enacted, the toll of retribution immediately exacted, their corpses left to cower in the corners?

No, they evidently didn’t, and it was beyond Durgil or any of his fellow knights to express it in a form that seemed courteous. It occurred to him that he could just spare them the distress, stand and face them, pointing his mail-encased arm at the door until they slid from their seats and departed in silent gratitude…

But that would’ve been too assuming. Better to let one of the lords make such a move, if the situation called for it.

He half wished one of the lords would retire politely to his room, so that Durgil could follow suit. He definitely wasn’t a big fan of the chicken broth. For all that water was tasteless, it overpowered the flavourful chunks of meat with its blandness. The carrot-slices were hard despite their thinness, the onions still crunchy and acidic. Usually half his soup ended up coating his stupendous beard as he slaked his hunger and thirst simultaneously – the chefs at the Church of Truth had access to the best produce in the world, donated to the Chapter-Houses by Agormand’s richest, those with the most to spare. Here, in this lowly tavern-hall some miles north of Hidden Hedge, there were no such luxuries to be enjoyed. The peasants didn’t even have dwarf-sized chairs! The issue was not one so much of height – most dwarves weren’t much shorter than adolescent humans – but, rather, one of stature. Durgil was forced to squeeze his wide, sturdy frame between the two arms of the chair in which he was ensconced, and he wasn’t alone. His fellow dwarf, Sir Vanfrad, remained lithe and virtually belly-less by dwarven standards despite his obvious stoutness – yet even the younger dwarf looked uncomfortable to Durgil’s eyes. Each of them surely would’ve taken a space at one of the benches instead, had the choice presented itself. But as senior knights they’d been motioned into proper chairs, placed near to the leaders.

Longevity went a long way to securing the nobility of a high office. In that regard, members of the elder races held the advantage. In battle-hardiness, too, though this inevitably meant they often found themselves at the forefront during Infernal Incursions. Demons caused the most attrition in the ranks. That aside, the town-criers said this was one of the longest periods of stability Mund had ever enjoyed, and Durgil happened to agree with them. He was ninety-four, and his memories of his twenties and thirties were no more accurate than an elderly human’s would’ve been – the impressions remained, the bite of veracity removed from them, like the taste of yesterday’s breakfast.

A jostle with his womb-brother, Grimgil, wrestling in the mud together. A flash of copper in the sun as Bronyaka, his long-lost love, tossed her head defiantly.

Little else of note, before the Church.

Yet when he considered his long years, he couldn’t remember a peace like it. Over five months. Five months, with no masterless imps setting fire to his beard, no foot-long claws trying to tear at the rim of his shield. Weeks of stability, in which to train fresh initiates, test their readiness with combat practice.

No masterless imps – but the long-standing relationship between the Church of Truth and the sorcery-schools did permit for the use of eldritches in field exercises. No demon could be called into the earthly dimension for this purpose – no rift between Materium and the dark planes was ever excusable, and should the summoners’ misdeeds turn upon them in the end, leaving them devoured to the core by the very things they sought to usher through, Durgil would not be saddened to hear of it.

Yet, the execution of that entity which had already been brought to Mund by infernal means for another purpose now served – this, this was permissible. Such execution was an act to be revered, even.

Deep in the bowels of the Chapter-House fortifications, far below the streets of Hightown, in the heart of the sacred hills of Mund – there Durgil had presided over the destruction of hundreds of foul hellspawn, enduring their ceaseless shrieks, their stomach-churning visages. It was somehow worse, to see them chained, see them brought in one by one for the slaughter. Not that he had ever entertained any doubts as to the righteousness of his cause – oh, no. If anything it was quite the opposite. He merely felt that the demon-slaying was robbed of its potential glory. Watching an initiate dancing around his first obbolomin like it was going to explode in his face – it was demeaning.

It was all done to serve the cause. The initiates had to know in advance what they were getting themselves in for, had to see for themselves the ugliness of the underworld, so as to not give in to the fear when the moment came, hesitate at a critical moment and watch the whole company come undone. Yes, the Incursions would return. He had little doubt it would be worse than ever when they did. And, in the meantime, there were other duties given to them by their Lord God. Such as their current quest.

They’d arrived in the third hour of the night, rain streaming off their cloaks and the flanks of their steeds. Many of the hamlet’s inhabitants had come to the front porches of their ramshackle dwellings, staring in wonder at the armour-clad knights as they trotted past, the long pennants atop their spears displaying the pure-white sigils of the god against a night-blue field. According to the records, it’d been four years since an embassy from the Knights came to these parts – and that had been to aid the local constabulary in combating a cultist uprising. It was small wonder these people beheld their heraldry with awe-filled eyes. Small wonder they expressed fear, seeing so many of the paladins, the sudden presence of the holy warriors unexplained.

Durgil’s cloak bore the white dragon, the fiercest of Kultemeren’s forms. And an ironic one, given their mission.

The innkeeper had started by asking their leader, Exalted Chapter-Master Lord Ghelliot, a whole host of questions. “Your Lordship – you ride from Mund?” “You and your men – you’re wantin’ to stay?” “You’ll… be wantin’ somethin’ to eat, I suppose… and your horses…”

As the questions continued and the silence lengthened, Lord Ghelliot’s austere face not moving a muscle, the innkeep’s voice shrank away until finally he was just muttering instructions to himself, already rushing off to begin his tasks.

Where the Knights of Kultemeren went, the truth followed. The man couldn’t help but understand their need, even when faced with their silence.

When Lord Ghelliot finally stood, followed at once by Lord Rael and Lord Shebril, there was a collective sigh of relief.

The exhausted barman had been replaced with an even more exhausted-looking woman, her old eyes flashing pink as they caught the candlelight. She showed Durgil and three of his companions into a rickety room: it appeared the four of them were to share a space no larger than a penitent’s cell, replete with two narrow cots. He didn’t much care. Poor-quality food irritated his dwarven soul, and the ladle fiasco offended his sense of propriety – but the hardship offered by sleeping on the floor was something he relished. He hadn’t actually been planning on sleeping anyway.

In turn, each of the three humans insisted on gesturing him to a bed, and he was forced to look them in the eyes one by one. He was a chapter champion, and he understood their reticence to overstep their boundaries – yet he knew these lads, and they knew him. He drew his broadsword, Glaimborn, forged just for him, and went to put his sturdy back to the door. He placed Glaimborn’s tip into a groove in the warped wooden planks beneath his boots, leaned back against the barrier, and folded his hands upon the sword’s cross-piece.

Even his trio of human brothers, weaker of flesh than he, found it hard to reach sleep this night. As soon as the last candles were extinguished a spring storm arose, the blasts of Orovon’s bottomless pipes setting the whole tavern to shuddering.

Durgil was no cave-dwelling dwarf in ancestry. His folk were the hill-peoples, and the wind spoke to his soul. He didn’t shudder with the structure. His breath slowed, and he closed his eyes, rolling with the motions.

Redeem me in truth, O Hallowed Rectitude! Father of Sincerity, empty me of all inward-turning desire – empty me that I might lose my inhibition, my compulsion. There is no freedom in impulse; the unicorn is chained to its desire, and knoweth not the bliss of choosing duty. Lord of Retribution, I wield the white fire as your weapon, and persist in your name for so long as your hand would grip me!

As he formed the thoughts, the familiar warmth filled him, utterly unlike any touch of sunlight, beginning in the bone-marrow and working its way outwards.

His brethren prayed with him. He knew it.

Almighty, Eternal Onlooker, cleanse me of my impurity. Cleanse me that your light might shine the clearer through me. I will not reflect; I will not refract; I will not will. Allow my purification, and I…

I…

A bleak vista greeted his inner eye. A cavern, as broad as it was long, vast beyond the imaginations of humans – an immensity of open darkness such that even Durgil’s dwarven dreams had scarcely the scope for it. Yet it was the fodder of nightmare, not dream. At first the towers appeared to be stalagmites, but that first impression was only momentary. The hundreds of little streets resolved in mortifying detail, the inner eye swooping closer without his consent.

He knew what it was he saw. He gritted his teeth.

Undeath.

Durgil had not experienced the quest-vision. That had been the purview of the Church Prophets, and the meaning of prophets’ dreams had been conveyed to the chapter by Lord Ghelliot with a single action: the unfurling of a banner, the white dragon emblazoned there as it was upon Durgil’s own cloak. They had understood – this time, the sigil signified their foe. The mad witch who spoke a dozen lies a minute to each and every corner of the holiest city in the world –

The mad witch had been right about one thing.

Dragons. They were coming.

And the Whisper’s Predicate was going forth to do battle with one.

Foresight was the keenest edge in all their arsenal. The god’s sight outstripped that of Everseer or Timesnatcher a thousandfold. No one else would interfere in this holy work, nor know enough to propose such an endeavour. Kultemeren saw all, and that was the truth. Nothing was left for the individual paladin but the execution of his part. Through their piety, Kultemeren handled the heavy lifting himself. Their personal prowess was more to be found in wisdom than sinew, and while the two tended to go hand in hand, it was not unheard-of for a man, dwarf, or even elf in his dotage to enter the battlefield as a divine tempest, providing his vows of silence still went unbroken.

It was the purview of the Knight to place himself in the right place at the right time – that was all.

Despite not enjoying the same insights as the prophets, it was common-enough for the brethren of the knightly orders to experience their own visions. As Durgil looked with closed eyes upon this sunken metropolis of restless creeping fingers, he thought at first that he alone saw what he saw.

But the warmth never wavered. The feeling of companionship never faded.

Nigh unprecedented, for them all to simultaneously share the god’s oracular blessing like this. Still, it could not be denied. The dry tinkling of hollow bones, magnified to the crash of a wave as battlements formed about the unholy town, echoing back at him from the halls of his brothers’ minds, louder than any spring storm.

Femur-trees sprang up in courtyards, stretching their leafless frames towards the cavern’s shimmering blue ceilings and shivering in the stifled air as though touched by a wind that could not exist. A dome of skulls took shape before his eyes, as grand and lofty as any Hightown had to offer, yet with the palpable aura of a hulking monstrosity, a macabre imitation of dark elf shipbuilding, perfected to a form of unholy architecture.

Why, Kultemeren? The thought was not intended to be a prayer, yet he knew that the Lord God or his agents would hear. Why must we see this?

There was no answer; only the slowly changing landscape before them as the night wore on.

Not one Knight of the Whisper’s Predicate slept more than an hour that night.

It could only have been necessary.

It could only have been the truth.

No answer. No insight. No battle-plan. No glimpse of their foe. Nothing changed, except the ongoing construction, the bones moving into place, million by tinkling million.

What did it mean?

What does it mean?

Trapped in the question, Durgil kept his watch, waiting for sunrise.

And the only resolution came in the last moment, the last heartbeat of the vision:

An unseen woman’s Westerman voice, gentle but insistent, speaking a single word clearly to them all.

“Hurry.”

* * *

Dawn couldn’t have come early enough, but, for all that it came sooner each day, it felt like the night had lasted a thousand years. Everyone got up once the sky’s blackness started to soften to blue-grey patches, the novices heading out to the stables in groups to rub down the horses, feed and water them, while the elders took the first turn at breakfast. Durgil just took a chunk of bread with butter and went out into the mist to join the squires and speed the whole process up.

Now he was just glad to be astride his charger, Thistlefoot, his boots back in the shortened stirrups once again. He didn’t get enough chance to be in the saddle, but the aches and pains were old, familiar friends. He rode near the head of the column where they could go three or four abreast on the path, just two rows behind the chapter-masters. The mists coming off the meadows quickly lifted away in the warm morning air. The paladins followed the route as it climbed above wild, gorse-coated fields, and when the hedges fell beneath the high roadway, Durgil could finally see the fruit-growers in their vineyards, the walls of the distant quarry where all the thumping was coming from.

His brothers riding about him were stony-faced, the humans of the company looking a little fatigued by the last night’s mental exertions: the vigour of the Judge should’ve filled them, endowed them with divine strength as they pursued his holy goals, but after the ordeal of the excruciating three-hour vision, they’d stirred from their bed with red eyes, weak knees. Lord Rael and the other elves seemed paler than usual, and their braid-bound hair seemed almost to have dimmed in hue, from gold to copper or silver to grey. Only Durgil’s dwarven fellows maintained their stalwart exteriors. He knew it was a vain thought, and beneath his dignity, but he hoped his eyes were as clear as Sir Vanfrad’s.

Before mid-morning, Lord Ghelliot steered Floodmane abruptly to one side – but he wasn’t halting. He was leading them off the road, walking his steed calmly towards a thicket-choked hillock. As the company’s leader came about, Durgil caught a sight of his face. The reassuring coldness of his facial expression was there, the impassive detachment which was his signature – but he’d never seen the lord look so drawn, so troubled.

Like reverse brickblood, he caught it by looking, feeling the dread permeate his own features, feeling like fear was now something that could be sanctioned –

He was tempted to look aside, check whether he’d caught Vanfrad’s gaze – but no. He kept his face forward, and kept his eyes down on his reins.

I’ll not turn away, he thought. I trust in your Judgement, Father. He raised his eyes, fixing his gaze on Lord Ghelliot’s streaming pennants. I trust, until the end.

It started to get hot, and when they took a break to water the horses Durgil unclipped his cloak, replacing it with the lightweight cape from Thistlefoot’s pack. It was against regulation for him to shed more of his armour than his helm while he was out on an expedition, and, in fact, not one of them had yet donned their ceremonial helmets; he had to wear the cloak or the cape at all times, unless he was within the monastery sanctum. Thankfully the choice as to which was left to him. Glancing around, he noted he wasn’t the only one replacing his rain-cloak with a more-fitting alternative. Fighting a dragon would call for going lightweight where possible, being ready to react quickly to dangers as they appeared. It wasn’t going to call for extra warm clothing.

He gave Thistlefoot a bonus biscuit and a grateful pat on the rump while he stowed the cloak in the pack, tying the straps down tight.

To me, you are as I to them, he told the old courser silently. Better able to bear the burdens.

He was offered an initiate’s assistance in getting back in the saddle, as sometimes happened in situations like this – most of the new boys had never seen him outside the city walls before. He snorted, waving the fine young man aside, and sprang up onto Thistlefoot’s back with the practised ease of an experienced rider, the agility of a dwarf in the prime of his faith.

That earned Durgil an admiring look or two, ridding the haunted expressions from a couple of young faces.

They always underestimated the leg-strength of dwarves, he found.

They’d been picking their way uphill through the treeline for almost an hour, following the banks of a stream clogged with willows and limes, but now the undergrowth was too thick for the mounts to proceed. The sun was high, Kaile the Protector smiling down benevolently, as Lord Ghelliot threw his leg across Floodmane’s back and dismounted on the true edge of the forest. The wind stilled had stilled to a hushed murmur, but when the knights of the company followed suit, slithering from their mounts with all the subtlety of thirty-seven bags of coins spilling to the ground, the voice of Orovon rose up, the leaves and branches crashing and crying in response. Durgil took it as a sign from the gods of light: the chapter was acting on celestial command, watched-over and guided on every step of the journey. Though the Knights worshipped Kultemeren, it was not an exclusive relationship. They revered every Power of Celestium equally. But just as a man might have only one woman in matrimony, a man had to choose to give himself to just one of the gods. No minister permitted in the walls of Mund spoke for more than a single deity, on pain of death. That was as the gods willed it. Those divisions certainly didn’t stop them from all joining together in a single endeavour, to aid their Father’s mortal children now in their quest.

The paladins took down their battle-packs, and wordlessly went on foot through the spiky bushes, Durgil bearing Dwimmerfoe upon his left forearm, the blessed diamond shield which was one of three such defensive relics owned by the chapter. Within seconds the sticky green tendrils started as they meant to go on, snaring their capes, fastening to any exposed scrap of fabric, looping awkwardly about Dwimmerfoe’s points. With swords sheathed to save their edges, the company of knights battered their way through the endless walls of scrub, only pausing to catch their breath as they came briefly into small, weed-tangled clearings.

Durgil no longer felt so certain when they reached the lip of a crevasse, acrid smoke pouring from the open earth like steam from a geyser. He suddenly felt like he was being watched, as though a demon were hanging invisible above his head – but when he cast about his keen senses imparted nothing out of the ordinary.

It was not water boiling down there in the darkness, but something far fouler brewing, the taste of it like bitter berries on his tongue and in his nostrils. The knights were fortunate to bear the blessings of their patron, their bodies inviolate, immune to the vagaries of health which so afflicted other men. Durgil fancied his dwarven constitution would’ve seen him through without it, but the humans and elves might not have been so lucky.

After two passes about the rim the feeling of being observed lessened, and he judged that the northerly edges of the zig-zagging opening in the earth seemed the shallowest, with the easiest slope by which to traverse the yawning, vaporous blackness below. He pointed as Lord Ghelliot regarded him, and started moving back around the crack, watching his footing on the uneven ground. He heard his brethren pooling behind him, following the same exact route.

Just as he came within twenty yards of the riven stone ramp by which he intended to head down into the pit’s depths, two figures emerged, climbing out of the column of mist ahead of him. They were identifiable before they stepped out of the swirling gasses; the man’s shadow alone was enough to force recognition, and the woman cast none, her radiance alone clarifying her fellowship with the knights.

It was her voice we heard, Durgil realised. O, Kultemeren, thank you for delivering us. Thank you…

“The Order of the Whisper’s Predicate?” Kanthyre Vael asked, then, seeming to realise how foolish she was being, smiled warmly. “Welcome, brothers. We’ll be glad of your aid.”

Her husband, Phanar ‘of N’Lem’ (whatever precisely that was supposed to mean), cut an imposing figure in his burnished armour and high helm, his wolf-pelt cloak. He kept his own silence, regarding the paladins critically. But despite the differences in size and frame between the two dragonslayers, the High Healer of Wythyldwyn was no less intimidating than her husband to one who knew of her. The mace at her belt was the same as Durgil had seen before when she’d worn it in public: bands of gold metal and azure stones were interlaced, spiralling up the handle, and the spiked sphere on the head of the shaft was pulsing with a soft amber light bespeaking its potency. The young woman wore her own coat of shining mail, built and belted for its protective properties with no eye to vanity, accentuating rather than hiding her lush, heavy frame. Along with her fiery hair, she was the true visage of a battle-maiden – a battle-bride – and Durgil knew it for a fact that had he lacked the detachment of his station he would have, of all humans, dreamed of this one.

“The fog won’t affect you, I assume?” the Exalted of Wythyldwyn said, gesturing at the noxious vapours billowing up just behind her. Her eyes crossed him, to settle on another target behind him, surely one of his superiors. “I… I hope not, it would blind most men in minutes of even mild exposure, and kill them in…”

Her voice dropped away. Uncertainty twisted her features.

Durgil glanced back and noted Lord Rael in motion.

The lithe elf-knight was moving through the ranks of his fellows with the uncanny grace of his particular kindred, and when he vaulted a mossy boulder to come to the front rank of the paladins he twisted like an acrobat despite his armour, putting to shame any hopes Durgil previously fostered to impress the initiates with his own agility. He somersaulted over the foremost brothers, and in his gauntleted hand –

Phanar stepped in front of Kanthyre only at the last moment, the gladiator’s sword snaking through the air to catch and turn aside the paladin’s, deflecting the blow the elf aimed at the cleric’s throat.

The light-arc of Lord Rael’s sword still burning in his vision, Durgil felt Glaimborn’s grip in the coarse leather lining of his gauntlet, and he smiled grimly, crunching the heel of his boot into the earth and rooting it there. Under the radiance of the chapter-master’s attack, everything was made plain. Lord Rael’s vision was clearer that of the lesser knights.

The moment the sword was turned aside, everything changed.

Kanthyre Vael and Phanar of N’Lem – they were suddenly strange, dimensionless entities to Durgil’s eye. The dragonslayers’ outlines were no longer filled with colour and texture, but with racing black clouds, the images distant, somehow, as if seen from a great remove, and far darker in hue than the vapours coiling up behind them. Indigo lightning danced about inside the borders shaping their false forms, flickering across the remote-seeming storm-clouds and crashing down their extremities, as the illusory creatures reacted to Lord Rael’s wrathful onset.

The Phanar entity had responded more quickly than the knight appeared to have anticipated, and even the parrying-stroke threw the paladin off his balance – Phanar’s dark, empty hand reached up and caught the chapter-master by the front of his helm.

The illusion’s turbulent, flickering fingers sank through the steel and into the elf’s skull.

Silent but for their footfalls, two of the youngest knights at the forefront surged to aid their lord, but Durgil and the others just behind held their ground. The chapter champion kept Dwimmerfoe and Glaimborn readied, and started casting about for other threats.

The Kanthyre entity, now poised behind her protector and assailant with her head-shape turned towards the two onrushing initiates, raised her void-mace and pointed it at them.

The indigo fire crackled down her arm, her weapon, and burst free into the air, stretching and forking out to blast the ignorant pair.

Despite their rashness, they were Knights of Kultemeren. They might never have faced this type of foe before, but they would learn their lessons from this encounter, and their natural instincts compelled them to ignore the nethernal lightning, brute-force through it, which was precisely what would be required to sap at the illusion’s strength.

The fire passed harmlessly through their armour, their bodies, sputtering out behind them.

And Lord Rael never needed any help.

The tall elf reached up with his free hand and took Phanar’s forearm in his gauntleted fist. He overpowered the thing, pulling its fingers free of his face, and simultaneously brought his blade up into the entity’s midriff.

Phanar parried it but, this time, the whole chapter disbelieving, his scintillating weapon was like a stick of butter before the master’s own glittering sword.

The keen edge of the blade ripped Phanar in two, and the elf’s gauntlet closed, shattering the illusion’s wrist. Suddenly, the black creature’s outline was falling apart, drifting about on unseen eddies.

The first of the young knights to reach Kanthyre shoulder-charged right through her, dissolving her where she stood.

The lad went flat on his face, and when he sat up and looked around, one of the first whose eyes he met was Durgil.

The dwarf gave him a thumbs-up, and the boy grinned, wiping off his cloak as he got back to his feet.

Durgil strode past him, looking down into the broiling mist.

Was that trap designed for us?

There was no answer, but he could breathe in the fumes without sensing any untoward effects, any uneasy feelings. In that at least the illusion had told the truth.

No. Unless it were a trap designed more to lull one into a false sense of security… Designed to persuade us that the dragon expects a different interloper. An interloper incapable of seeing through such lies.

If this dragon they sought was smart, perhaps it knew of the Red Harlot’s escapades in their city. Durgil had seen Lovebright up close with his own two eyes and had been none the wiser. Maybe this drake had itself been lulled into a false sense of security, thinking the paladins weak, when in fact their failure with regard to the interloper was only a sign of Tyr Kayn’s extreme puissance.

He was ten steps into the thick vapours, half-blinded and guided only by divine instinct, when he realised:

Yet, if not Kanthyre’s… whose was the voice beckoning us to hurry?

* * *

No dream had captured reality. No vision had shown him truth. That much, at least, became plain.

Descending through clouds of poison into the underbelly of this untouched forest, Durgil might have expected to find the way difficult, even for a dwarf. He brandished Glaimborn at the ground beneath his feet as he led the way, and the holy blade shed its starry illumination, cutting through the fog and darkness alike. But as the minutes passed he found no particularly treacherous footing. They left the smoky fissures behind, and soon the passage was almost pleasant. Several of the initiates bore coils of rope in their packs or slung across their shoulders, hooked from pauldron to sword-sheath. None of it proved necessary. This chasm – it was inviting. Where the slope was precipitous, shallow stairs had been cut into the rock on either side, as if to better facilitate the transit of large groups. If he hadn’t known better, Durgil would’ve said this was the site of an ancient mine, the signs on the surface long eroded, tracks and the foundations of surface buildings buried beneath tons of foliage. Yet this was no ancient mine. There were no such tracks, no cellars to excavate. The steps were recently-cut – he could tell just from the smell. This was no matter of millennia, centuries, even decades. There was dust in the air that could’ve lasted days, weeks at most, especially given the moisture in the space.

This place was prepared for their arrival.

Each step brought him closer to the understanding: as much as the church prophets had seen, their enemy had seen more. The cunning of a dragon could not be underestimated, especially one endowed with the sorcerer’s powers. Could it have been that, somehow, their prey desired the same conflict? That it thought it could prevail? Against Knights of Kultemeren, experts in combating all forms of nethernal and infernal creatures?

There could be only one solution. Kultemeren had somehow lulled it into a false sense of security. It had provided them with an illusory obstacle, with Kanthyre and Phanar, thinking it was drawing them in with such a pathetic opposition. It had employed its servants in shaping this place for their access…

But the voice? Where did the voice come from?

Then Durgil rounded the final bend, clambering across a slick boulder and through a natural archway in the rock. He saw it, and froze, the breath catching painfully in his breast.

Iridescent blueworm covered the ceilings of the galleries. Azure brilliance painted the smooth-carved walls, but the bands of turquoise and teal were split by layers of vivid tangerine where Glaimborn’s radiance touched it. Shafts of shadow seemed to ripple like curtains as the blueworm flickered on and off in waves, momentarily dimming, darkening, until the next wave caught them and they slowly brightened once more, lighting upon the pale walls and turrets of this enormous, sunken sepulchre.

His footsteps didn’t falter – there was just the one moment of hesitation as he beheld the necromantic fortress which represented the climax of their quest. Then he continued on his way, hearing the thuds of his fellows’ boots behind him, and found himself wondering if they too paused at the sight. It was impossible for even Durgil to tell from the sounds – they were too many.

Was I the only one who failed to see the… beauty of this place in the dream?

He couldn’t have been. A quick glance over his shoulder as he was flanked let him catch a look at Lord Rael’s harrowed visage. The elf’s lips were pursed, the almond-shaped eyes wide and watery.

Fear.

Durgil turned back around to face the open doors of the deathly city, and set his jaw. Even Lord Rael could fear – Durgil knew that now. It didn’t matter one jot. The long-legged chapter-master might’ve been afraid, but that didn’t stop him from overtaking the dwarven knight as the way broadened and the ground evened.

The elf provided an example to them all.

Pain is a teacher; fear is a guide. Through you shall we learn to put lesson into context. Through you shall we learn when not to follow, but lead.

It was a catechism of the Church, one that he had long since come to believe he’d surpassed. His vow of silence was part of that. Spiritually-speaking, he was pure. He had no longer any need for teachers and guides, those agonies and horrors which afflicted less-fortunate souls. He was ascended. Consecrated in every parcel of flesh, every wordless action.

So it was that he railed internally for almost a minute, as they drew closer across the turquoise-lit floor. He couldn’t deny it. He’d faced dozens of hell’s denizens in life-or-death situations, been blasted and clawed and scorched and bitten. But now – here, in this serene blue silence – he was frightened.

He didn’t stop, but, ever so slightly, he slowed. He slowed.

His brothers surrounded him as they passed him by, and he was a few ranks behind Lord Rael as they passed beneath the great archway of the bone-built city – as they placed the boots that did not thud, but crunched instead. Beyond the pale walls were pale courtyards connected by winding streets, and row after row of pale, empty houses. Looming over the landscape, leaning strangely against each other or the far wall of the cavern, were nests of taller structures. The domes he’d seen in the vision. Towers and halls and twisted churches.

What is this place?

He watched along with the others when Lord Ghelliot tried one of the houses. The chapter-master hadn’t deigned to sully his gauntlet by touching it to the mesh of ribs serving as a door, instead smashing through the necrotic barrier with the heel of his heavy boot. It fell apart under the force of the blow, shrapnel impacting against the far wall of the building, and the lord stepped without hesitation into the dust cloud clogging the entrance. Durgil’s heart had been hammering so loudly that he heard it ringing inside his helmet, and, for a moment, he’d thought the chapter-master would never return – then Lord Ghelliot emerged once more, scowling and appearing entirely unperturbed.

Durgil peered in the doorway as the leader stalked away up the street. A perfect, putrid replica of any mortal dwelling-place, complete with bone furniture, webs of dry skin hanging in place of curtains over the misty glass windows.

It was right then that the dwarf realised just how close he was to the shattered door frame, ancient marrow leaking like paste from the ripped-open substance. The door’s hinges, the jutting remnants of jawbones…

He’d turned away, sickened, the feeling of doom settling over him like a wet cloak. The awful emptiness of the place preyed on his mind. Why had the architect of this cursed town seen fit to outfit each home with furnishings? Why even create these houses, this whole city, in the first place? It was all something of a sickening joke, Durgil was sure. A way to while away the hours as the sorcerous dragon awaited the paladins.

And yet, he’d never heard of its like. Not outside fiction, at any rate, and he’d not read a work of fiction for decades. This was like something from a dark elf story – and, as far as he knew, even those were highly exaggerated. It was, after all, only their sea-going vessels which were known to be made from bone. All the rest of it… the undead cities putting Zadhal to shame – making Zadhal look like an amateur effort… those were just made up.

Or so he’d thought, till now. It was a bitter elixir to swallow, especially for one so used to understanding the truth of matters. The Knight of Kultemeren found himself having to reassess his assumptions. Seeing this – it suddenly made the legends seem feasible.

A cold wind came whistling down as they approached the city’s heart, emanating through fissures that were hidden beneath the blueworm coating the cavern roof. It was soothing, feeling the rush of cool air in his beard, slipping through the plates of his armour, until he realised that no air from outside should’ve been so chilled. This was something their enemy had done, some part of its plan.

His dwarf skin couldn’t shiver, not from the cold, but he shivered now. He kept his eyes down on the ground under his feet, listening to the crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch of their marching steps – wondering why the Judge didn’t just smite the necrotic landscape right now, incinerate their surroundings with white fire, using the very tread of their boots to channel the power and blast this heathen metropolis down to dust…

But the power never came. And when, at last, he raised his eyes, the company drawing to a halt in a wide court of bone, bone, bone, he cast about quickly only to find his brothers in much the same state as him.

Ghostly faces, wide eyes – that was the least of it. He saw trembling fingers. He saw rivulets of sweat running into mouths and beards. He saw pallid cheeks inflating and deflating as air was gulped at rapid pace.

And then, suddenly, Durgil winced as felt the old wound in his right knee, long-since healed, threatening to spill him to the floor.

He could not fall. He could not go down on his face, in a place like this. It would be beneath indignity, beyond humility. To place his hands upon these bones, these mortal remnants of their foe’s victims – to push down on them for support as he rose to his feet again –

No. He would not fall.

He braced his feet, set his teeth, and studied the body-language of his leaders, trying to ignore the sensation that was telling him there were three demonic teeth, each the size of a dagger-blade, buried right in the front of his knee-cap.

It is not real, he told himself. It is not here.

He refused to look down, check there wasn’t a hairy, bug-eyed head hanging off his leg.

But the pain never alleviated as it should’ve done, and the reason for their halting still hadn’t been made plain to him. Lord Rael and Lord Ghelliot had both put out an arm for the rest of the company to stop, but they weren’t studying their surroundings – the two chapter-masters were eyeing each other, staring deep into one another’s eyes, almost as though the Father had supplied them with a means of communication beyond the ken of the lesser knights, something akin to the gift enjoyed by enchanters.

As expected, Lord Rael’s narrow features were grimly drawn across his face, like a mountain eagle on the hunt. In contrast, Lord Ghelliot was almost smiling, cunning in his eyes. Each of them had lowered their swords, and here in the shadow of nearby towers they were concealed from the blueworm nestled above; as such, the pair were primarily lit by the radiance emanating from the weapons of those clustered about them.

The silence was split only by the whistling of the evil wind, the hammering of Durgil’s iron-anvil heart in his ears.

He gritted his teeth, biting down to stifle his cries of pain, and sought to distract himself, turning his attention inward.

Many times he’d seen it, and many times he’d had the same suspicions about thought-sharing amongst the chapter-masters. The ‘instinct of congress’ and ‘vision of congress’ were intertwined concepts mentioned in more than a few sacred texts, and these matters had always intrigued him. Yet, never before had witnessing such a thing filled him with so strong a sense of foreboding.

Why do we stop now? Are we near?

Again, he resisted the urge to look down at the source of the hallucinatory pain – refused to look down at his knee. He tried to distract himself again by casting about.

The chapter had ended up in a courtyard, and they would’ve been blocked in on three sides by the hideous walls of tall, broad towers, except that narrow gaps let out between them into yet farther-flung districts.

But, surely, they had to be close to the rear of the cavern by this point? This immense, morbidly-beautiful space couldn’t go on forever…

Unless we are being subjected to a strong delusion.

He couldn’t say the words; it was not given to him to describe truth. Only to be the vessel of action.

He pulled his gaze from the nearest distraction – a mockingly-dry fountain ringed with skulls, the bones of its central decoration arranged into a vaguely equine statue (though instinct alone informed Durgil that the construction materials brought to bear were not the skeletons of horses). He cast his gaze upwards instead, trying his best not to be staggered at the scope of the towers, the apparent pearly smoothness to which their surfaces had been finished. Row upon row of thin, shadowed windows looked out on the courtyard, yet there was no sense of nethernal magic, no scent of eldritch on the icy wind. The spells employed here were the subtlest he’d ever had the displeasure to encounter.

The tower to their left, upon the highest fortifications of which several dead monstrosities were displayed, carcasses glistening in the blue light…

One in particular drew his attention – it was an old wyrm, time-eaten and translucent. The other critters had surely been fearsome in life, but this… this would’ve exceeded even the Red Harlot in stature, if he understood the nature of the enchantress correctly,

It will make us fight that, he decided, and set his jaw.

The moment his gaze seized upon it, the agony in his knee flashed to the front of his mind, his knee-cap now a bubble of lava running down his leg, flesh falling open to reveal stinking, rotten insides, bones comprised of flies and locusts –

I will not look down!

The ringing of sword on sword brought him stumbling back to reality, phantom pains receding in the face of paradox.

Before he knew what was happening, it was happening.

Lord Rael and Lord Ghelliot were engaged in combat, here, on this unhallowed ground.

* * *

The Knights stood, staring in horror as two of their most-senior members came to blows. Lord Ghelliot seemed to be the more aggressive of the pair, pushing Lord Rael back with a deliberate series of blade-loops. When Lord Rael caught the rhythm of the strikes and side-stepped, keeping a high-guard and lashing out at Lord Ghelliot’s face, his assailant confidently took the blow on the helm, and used the surprise caused by the unexpected manoeuvre to close the distance once more. The elf was forced to twist about in a manner few could’ve hoped to achieve whilst keeping their head on their shoulders – Lord Rael barely parried the back-swing aimed at his throat, almost tumbling to the ground as the bitterly-sharp, bright-glowing sword’s edge passed mere finger-widths from his face.

There was no explanatory power to the swings of their swords. Even Lord Shebril glared, dumbfounded, looking between his two equals as if trying to decide between them.

No decision came down from Celestium to enlighten their minds this time.

The human seemed to have the advantage in strength – Lord Ghelliot was built like a bull beneath his hauberk, and many times Durgil had witnessed him wrestling unclad during the exercises. But he’d also seen Lord Rael wrestling, and the slender sinews possessed by elf-kind were not to be underestimated on the basis of outward appearance. The fibres of their muscles were woven of steel, and the responsiveness of their limbs in action and reaction was startling.

Lord Rael had recovered his footing, and was pressing his own attack now upon Lord Ghelliot. The elf wielded his weapon two-handed for greater cutting-precision, gauntlets clasped about the grips and held just off his brow as his feet wove left and right, left and right, leveraging his nimbleness against his brutish opponent. Again and again, the human turned aside Lord Rael’s flashing blade at just the last instant as a never-ending series of lofty lunges drilled in at his face.

Then the elf’s sword-tip suddenly circled down, striking the shin of Lord Ghelliot’s fore-leg. The diversion carried its risks – the grim-faced elf was forced to pivot, retract his upper body – and it was a fruitless action. The shins of the knights were protected at the front by a plate of battle-standard steel, inscribed like all Church relics with the name of Kultemeren in various alphabets and blessed twice each moon to maintain its holy defences; the straps holding the greaves in place were themselves almost impossible to strike –

The duel continued, but Durgil’s fascination now fell upon the thin line in Lord Ghelliot’s lower-leg plate.

So close to the spot in which he felt the burning in his own leg.

But unless the Judge’s hand were behind it, no glancing strike from a sword would mar such well-tempered steel, break the holy names that were the relic’s seals of consecration. That itself was a sign of the weakness of Lord Ghelliot’s will.

But Lord Ghelliot would never… never…

The thoughts were slow to form in Durgil’s mind, as he alone of all his brethren stared at the damaged shin-plate. There were many different stresses upon his spirit in this time and place, the cauldron of his mind filled not with boiling water but molten metal, and the ideas were slow to surface.

Lord Ghelliot… entered the house…

His attentive dwarven mind registered the screech of the human’s sword being notched, the ping as a shard of sanctified steel went ricocheting off the putrid ground.

Lord Ghelliot… emerged again…

The worst thing about realising the truth was knowing it wasn’t an insight from the god. It was just him. He’d been abandoned – they had all been abandoned. The others, they weren’t looking, couldn’t perceive the truth.

Durgil drew in a hissing breath, then brought the crystal pommel of Glaimborn crashing down into the gold, lion-sculpted face of Dwimmerfoe.

Cloooooong!

White light speared forth from the impact, shining upon Lord Ghelliot.

It was Durgil’s way of challenge. He could give no battle-cry, but it was dishonourable to go into combat against an unaware opponent, even a creature born of evil.

Rael danced aside, disengaging, as Durgil rushed to the elf-lord’s aid.

It was only three great strides. The knee held, and when Glaimborn sheared Lord Ghelliot’s sword in two at the first strike, it happened all over again.

The illusion was made plain – a black cloud with the chapter-master’s shape stood there on the bony ground, crackling away.

Disintegrating, as the reversed upswing of Glaimborn tore cleanly through the illusion’s skull.

Lord Rael was panting lightly as he came and clapped the chapter champion on the shoulder. The elf wasn’t looking particularly relieved, all things concerned, despite their defeat of the strange entity.

The other paladins of the company had come around at last, but it had taken too long. Their enemy was toying with them, using phantasms against those to whom such hallucinations were usually child’s play. That in itself was cause for disconcert, but now it was apparent that Lord Ghelliot had – what?

Gone missing?

Indeed, as Durgil cast about he saw his fellows peering back the way they’d come. The same thoughts now filled their mind as had come to Durgil in his despair.

He was taken. When he went in the house.

Lord Shebril made the forked gesture for splitting the group, but there was an inquisitive look on his face, and Lord Rael shook his head solemnly. The elf turned on his heel and stalked through the assembled paladins, leading them back out of the necrotic city.

Once more boots crunched on bone. The cold wind whistled again. The blueworm flickered and faded, lights flaring to life and dying as the shadows surged across the surroundings.

The air was so moist… the ground underfoot so unutterably dry…

The dwarf knew that they were ostensibly only seeking out Lord Ghelliot, but the moment he was walking the other way, heading out, heading up, home, Durgil felt a wave of relief flood through him. His knee still ailed him, and he was forced to set his jaw against the incessant grinding he could feel with every step – somehow the sensation still wasn’t being cleansed by his disbelief.

It didn’t matter now. The fact he could walk at all was proof there was no actual damage to his body, whatever his nerves were screaming at him, and once they found Lord Ghelliot they were done here. They would return to this cavern with all nine chapters. Perhaps the lords would even contrive to pass messages to the Magisterium, the champions, the other priesthoods. Such a thing was not unheard of. They would purge this nightmare from the earth…

At a later date.

The quest – it had therefore been one of reconnaissance, of recognising the true scope of the threat. But in bringing support – might they not be playing into the Hierarch’s hands? Vardae Rolaine, ‘Everseer’, as the mad witch called herself in a vain effort to blacken the name of a dead heroine… Someone like this Vardae could take advantage of any weak point. What if she were involved somehow – what if this bore upon her insane ‘Crucible’? And if Kultemeren intended for them to deal with this upstart dragon without further support, who were they to judge in the Judge’s place?

We can’t leave. Can’t go home.

Out of nowhere a new sensation settled upon him. Eyes. Eyes investigating him.

There was something back there. The words were born in his mind, spoken in his own mute voice, and yet he didn’t understand them. There was something back there and I’ve forgotten it.

He turned back to look, but it was too late. The street curved out of view behind a bumpy, spinal-column tower. It had slipped away from him.

They came upon the house Lord Ghelliot had entered… or so it seemed.

The rest of the local environment matched with Durgil’s recollections, the sense of perspective when the grim house was viewed against the equally-grim surrounding buildings. The knights were not used to making errors. Everything screamed that this was the house.

Yet the door was there once more, as though their leader had never smashed his way in. There was no detritus, no sign, no discernible footprints about the threshold.

Durgil looked at his brothers. Sir Vanfrad was shivering. The initiates were like a gaggle of blenching maidens. Even Lord Rael was paralysed, staring at the reconstituted door with horror-filled eyes.

No spirit of courage filled him, but something in his dwarven soul let Durgil take a step forwards – then another.

Can’t wait here forever. Have to go. Leave. Can’t leave without him. Without… whatever’s left of him.

He was afraid his leg would give out under him if he attempted a kick, and he would be left lying on the awful ground, weeping in front of everyone. Drawing a quivering breath, he raised Glaimborn and brought its pommel down in an overhead blow.

He’d half-expected it to repel him, but the ‘door’ was as much a dry crust of bone as it had always been. With the single blow he’d hammered his gauntlet halfway through the surface, so he quickly ripped it free, struck again…

When it was shorn in two, he hurriedly stepped back, far from the nethernal dust-cloud. He was immune to poison, to disease… but this was something far more malign.

He gripped Glaimborn and Dwimmerfoe tight, waiting, waiting for the cloud to abate, for the dust to settle.

When it did, he warily shuffled about and took a shallow angle, peering into the main room.

And saw that Lord Ghelliot sat with his back to the door, in one of the chairs ringing the repulsive table.

Durgil had spent many hours in the saddle right behind his lord. He knew him anywhere. This was the feigning of no random knight. It was Ghelliot, or another double of him – of that the dwarf held no doubts whatsoever.

So Durgil slowly retreated.

The notion, that the chapter-master might willingly sit in such a putrid creation…

It is not him. It is not. Just something in his armour. Or…

He felt the release of tension as Lord Rael flanked him – felt the surge of comfort as the elf’s hand fell on his shoulder-plate with a reassuring clank.

He’d done it. He’d broken down the door. They would all remember this, and he’d be made the chapter’s junior master. The first dwarf in almost thirty years. One of only four dwarven chapter-masters in the whole Church.

It would forever haunt him. To gain position, at the expense of such a leader. It would be a constant reminder of this: the time the Knights of Kultemeren were forced to turn tail and flee.

There was no running right now. Durgil watched the elf again in admiration as he made his way into the doorway, bringing his sword up to better-illuminate the form of Lord Ghelliot sitting motionless in the shadows.

When he turns around, Durgil said to himself against his will, he will be something else. Something ghastly, and just the sight will stop our hearts, and… and…

Lord Ghelliot swivelled suddenly in the chair, peering over his shoulder at them.

He was unchanged. But he was grinning. An expression of manic delight Durgil had never witnessed on the face of a sane man.

Lord Rael swung back his weapon, as if preparing to charge in and slay the apparition; Durgil adjusted his grip on Glaimborn, preparing to back the elf up if necessary –

It was not necessary. Lord Rael had lost his patience. When he swung the sword, he did so without moving, without aiming, an incandescent nimbus suddenly swelling about him.

The blade-arm swept down with a sound like thunder, and when the brightness had faded and Durgil could see once more, he found nothing where the house had stood but a smoking, shallow crater in the bony firmament.

Lord Rael sheathed his sword and turned on his heel, his eyes shining with tears as he strode away at once. The message was clear. Lord Ghelliot, his chapter-master brother, was truly gone. They had to abandon the quest, for now at least.

Vengeance would be theirs, in the end.

However, as they approached the city’s gateway, Durgil spotted a black-clad figure awaiting them on the right-hand side of the road. It was leaning back stiffly against the nauseating, wide-thrown door of the fortress itself, right beneath the arch. Its hands were clasped upon the cross-piece of a heavy sword, the tip planted in the ground. From that sword an amethyst steam billowed, like a goblet of hot wine carried out into a winter wind, the individual wisps of vapour changing hue softly to violet or magenta or pink as they vanished away on the air.

Lord Shebril halted when it came into view, and some of those younger brothers closest to him followed suit, but Lord Rael quickened his pace. Durgil didn’t like the disarray in the ranks implied by Lord Shebril’s cowardice and that of the initiates. The pain in his knee now just a dark memory, he followed the elf eagerly. Whatever the creature before them was, it was just one man. It would fall before them, and they would be out of this accursed imitation of the shadowland. The tramp of his boots would once more be given the quality of leather on solid stone, the reassuring thud that told him he was safe, rather than this overwhelming feeling that he was walking on the frozen surface of a lake, a lake of undeath, just waiting to fall through the surface and be swallowed, dragged by immortal currents into the dry darkness.

He quickened his pace yet further, as even more of his companions fell behind. Soon it was just Lord Rael, Sir Vanfrad, Sir Seliot, and himself.

Throwing caution and care to the winds, he ran at the enemy, charging ahead of the others.

The recalcitrance of the weak-willed would be punished by Kultemeren in their dreams, while Lord Rael’s cohort would be rewarded with the knowledge that they upheld their oaths. They stood firm, surged forward, when everything was cast into doubt.

Yet the figure ahead came into sharper relief, and, too late, Durgil realised that, had he been less hot-headed, he might’ve observed in advance the signs which had eluded his notice. The dwarven eyes didn’t lie, piercing gloom more easily than most.

The charred armour was covered in Kultemeren’s names, but every character was twisted, each letter melted, all meaning lost.

Meaning lost.

It was a symbol of unutterable despair that struck his heart like a dagger.

Struck his knee like a trio of fangs.

He hit the ground face-first not thirty yards from the solid stone of safety. He went flat on his front, the bone-cobbles rubbing against his beard, his lips, the full grisly scent of the stuff drowning his nostrils. When he tipped his head back, raising his jaw off the floor, little specks of dust streamed from his face.

Still – he did not lose his grip on his weapon, did not cry out in disgust or pain, did not break his vows. Just stared, jaw clenched and eyes wide, as the black-clad Lord Ghelliot seemed to suddenly come to life, stepping out into the centre of the archway and hefting his dark sword in one hand.

The burning amethyst orbs in his sunken face swept up to fix themselves on the three onrushing knights who had retained their composure. As they neared him, the same purple fire spread in renewed gobbets down either edge of his weapon, the sickly light beading and pooling on the ground almost like burning oil.

An illusion, Durgil gasped silently. Another illusion. Lord Ghelliot’s soul belongs to the Judge. There’s no way that –

Lord Rael evidently felt the same way and, filled with righteous confidence as he neared his foe, he swung his broadsword down at the deathknight’s blasphemous helm, using his full strength, ignoring the nethernal weapon that was upraised to parry the blow.

Durgil expected the false deathknight’s blade to rip in two under the force of the stroke, so he wasn’t surprised at the metallic screech –

When the top half of Lord Rael’s sword fell smoking to the bony cobbles, its light extinguished – it wasn’t surprise that filled Durgil’s mind. It wasn’t shock.

The despair sank its claws into his spirit. He closed his eyes. Half-unconsciously, he rolled on the bones and wrapped a gauntlet about his screaming knee.

He left Glaimborn there on the bones, and knew that, bereft of his touch, the sword’s light would soon falter. He could no longer care.

O Kultemeren, why? – why have you deserted us?

He heard the hiss of nethernal power, the grate of metal punching into metal, the unsteady steps of knights trying to stay afoot despite grievous wounds. Durgil could no longer grasp at any divine insights his god may have been offering him, but his mortal brain was more than capable of processing what had happened.

It was with acceptance of the inevitable, not rage or resistance, that he heard three bodies topple without so much as a murmur, crashing in full battle-armour to the ground. He could even pick out the glug, glug of blood gushing from an opened throat.

Blood. Dust. Decay. It was in his nostrils. It was in his mind. All was lost.

“Halt.”

The word seemed to come from everywhere, resounding from the blueworm roof and cavern walls, echoing out of the mouths of alleyways. A noxious wind followed the voice, shrieking down the street, culminating in a titanic grinding sound behind him.

Yet it was not directed at them. Durgil noted that the deathknight’s clanking came to a sudden stop, the former Lord Ghelliot stilling at his new master’s bidding.

The dwarf tried to screw his eyes shut as tightly as possible, tried to fight his curiosity, but when it spoke a second time he couldn’t hold back any longer. He had to see it. He had to know. He rolled again, opened his eyes just to slits –

And beheld the titanic monstrosity which was their enemy, watched the vast undead jaw gnash out the words.

“You have been tried, sir knights, tried and tested – and have been found wanting. Go. I will not trouble you further. I expected more of you.”

Its head was bigger than a house, the glowing, slimy orbs of its eyes alone equal in size to a full-grown horse. Its wings were like the sails of an old ship, left to rot on the seabed for centuries; yet all the same they caught at the air as the dracolich settled itself in place, perching idly atop a row of nearby structures, the gargantuan third set of limbs sweeping down about its shoulders. The fragile buildings barely murmured beneath that atrocious mass, surely steeled by his sorcerous will, and the gruesome rips in the tenebrous fabric of his wings seemed no impediment as his motions drove a rancid wind down in the paladins’ faces.

“Go! By Kultemeren, I implore you – why must you creatures insist upon –”

It was enough for Durgil. Too much. It could not speak the Judge’s name. Could not.

He put out a hand for Glaimborn, only to find the sword half-submerged, slowly being dragged down, taken into the road’s substance.

“– such abhorrent despite! You do not understand. Your hearts are those of the flock, and, though you think otherwise, you cannot recognise the meaning of the pack as the wolves’ teeth close about you! But it is too late for lessons. Now you must simply learn…“

He wasn’t looking, but Durgil felt his gauntlet’s radiance as a painless heat when he sank his fingers through the grisly material, crunching into and pulverising bones like they were the frail bodies of insects. In the instant his fingers closed about his weapon’s hilts, pulling the grip into his palm, an incandescent white fire threw stark, elongated shadows across the scene.

The old wound, bawling in complaint as though there were no kneecap, no ligament to support his weight – he could see past it now. He was no longer the dwarf, no longer the herdsman’s son. Just the champion of the god remained. Just the weapon in Kultemeren’s hand.

He rose to his feet, and saw that every Knight of Kultemeren save for him was being slowly drawn beneath the surface.

The bone-chip gravel formed into fingers, hands, arms and elbows, stretching up to grapple the paladins, pull them down to a place where only death, or deathknighthood, awaited. Their armour had dimmed, their faces wracked with pain and guilt. Sir Elbanor, Sir Yobbrox, so many of Durgil’s bravest brothers were facing their ends like puling children. Lord Shebril was weeping, unable to fight back as he was borne under. Sir Vanfrad was head-down, Durgil’s fellow dwarf half-submerged in a puddle of blood and shorn-off beard-hair, his hidden throat still pulsing, adding to the crimson pool about him.

Lord Rael’s upper body had already disappeared entirely from sight, just the corpse’s long elven legs and their decorative greaves still protruding from the hungry undead soil.

The deathknight which had been Lord Ghelliot – it stared at Durgil, at the dwarf who alone of all the chapter’s knights stood tall, waves of uncertainty emanating from it as clear as purple fire.

We stand upon the dracolich’s army, Durgil realised. I… stand upon it.

I alone.

He caught Glaimborn’s radiance out of the corner of his eye as he held tight to Dwimmerfoe’s grips.

Kultemeren! Through me deliver your blow! My life for your stroke!

Boots crunched into soil that grew fingers, grasping arms rendered to dust beneath his footfalls.

The god blessed him, imbued him with power. His pace increased beyond that of mortal-kind. He crossed the distance between himself and the dracolich in a handful of bounds. When he hurled himself into the air and swung the blade at its disbelieving reptilian face, it was like wielding a shooting star. It bore him up, up, higher than he’d ever sprang before in his life.

The light of the blueworm faded and a curtain of shadow fell across him. He reached the apex of his vault and brought his arm down.

Glaimborn passed cleanly through the dracolich’s flesh like it were as soft as wool.

He’d been expecting to die in the act, expecting to suffer a tremendous recoil from the dragon’s defences. There was nothing.

The dracolich became a vast black outline between one moment and the next, filled with swirling storms and the wings of vast moths; the laughter of the true creature rang down from the black recesses high in the cavern-walls.

Durgil passed clean through the illusion’s ethereal maw, and fell into the very corner of the bony structure upon which the fake creature perched – the building promptly sported limbs, hands to clutch at cloak and armour, pinning his shield-arm, sword-arm…

He struggled to free himself, but he couldn’t. There were too many. Individually they were weak, no match for his divinely-empowered strength, but taken together – the sheer weight of them – they would draw him into the walls –

A skeletal hand closed over his mouth, and he heard himself gently whining, the horror finally claiming him.

Kultemeren didn’t wish me to see through the illusion – he wanted me to be taken by them –

A whip of amber light seared across his face, and all his necrotic bonds were washed away, dusted at the touch of Lord Shebril’s faith.

Durgil fell, but even as he hurtled towards the ground he stared in wonder at the chapter-master who had risen to his feet, whose sword trailed the honey-coloured energies as it moved.

The dwarf landed heavily, and his knee didn’t give way, the grace of Kultemeren allowing him to keep his balance despite the undulating nature of the street beneath him.

He caught Lord Shebril’s awed gaze in return, and Durgil realised in that moment if he hadn’t acted as he had, if he hadn’t cast himself into what he thought to be a dragon’s teeth, they would’ve all been dead already. As it was, at least half of the other knights were also freeing themselves, small clouds of dust bursting about them as they started ripping loose of their skeletal bonds. The road might’ve been swelling and surging like an ocean wave, but the most stalwart of the paladins dragged themselves above the surface.

They would not be so easily defeated.

Inspiration. Being willing to fight for the truth – it brought the same drive out in others. They just needed to see someone else take that first step.

That was Kultemeren’s plan.

They were going to get out of here, and Durgil would be made chapter-master. It was as good as inevitable now. He alone of the company had stood his ground. His nobility could not be questioned.

The road fluctuated – Durgil saw Lord Ghelliot’s deathknight striding towards the recovering knights, riding the mass of body-parts as he approached implacably, no uncertainty any longer to be found in the position of his side-extended blade, his amethyst glare. The charred boots didn’t falter as they carried him over the billowing waves of the unliving road.

He would’ve brought the evil mockery of a paladin blade straight down into the front of Sir Timeron’s helm, had Durgil not leapt across, flinging up Dwimmerfoe between them.

This time it was the deathknight’s implement which was sundered at the force of that tremendous impact, the blade riven in two right up its length, and the charred gauntlet released the smoking blade, letting it fall, gushing precious energy like blood.

It might’ve been blood – on the shadowland side of the world.

A vicious upthrust of the shield’s flat face against the front of the deathknight’s helm sent the former Lord Ghelliot gliding back, sliding strangely across the undead terrain, his demeanour almost serene.

The illusory dragon might’ve vanished, but the laughter of its maker rang out again, cold and harsh and utterly devoid of mortal attachment.

The deathknight’s sword did not clatter as it fell near Durgil. A fully-formed hand of bone crested the street’s gravel-like surface, and even as the dwarf crouched there over the still partially-swallowed form of Sir Timeron, trying his best to keep his footing, riding the road as it coasted up-down, up-down – the road came alive about him.

As a vague insight at the back of his mind, he’d noticed the shapes of the city’s walls and buildings morphing in the background all around the company. By now many had melted down to basic foundation-lines of their former dimensions, their various substances borrowed, utilised with a far more militaristic outlook –

It was no humanoid skeleton which burst forth first, the shattered bits of the deathknight’s weapon in its hands, but nonetheless it was created out of humanoid parts, bones sewn together by invisible sorcerous intent. The triplicate skull was a particularly disgusting touch: one atop the spine, one within the ribcage, and one hanging from the pelvis. All three empty jaws produced sound while they were still moving into place, cackling and chattering meaninglessly. Its numerous femurs pumped away on the surface of the ground, upon the heads and shoulders of its emerging brethren, bringing it skittering closer before it even was fully-formed.

As the third skull slid into place with a sickening click, there were more taking shape on all sides, undead servitors of equally-hideous design.

Durgil looked down, dreading what would come next – and his breath left him as, once more, he plummeted.

The firmament offered by the bone-ocean beneath his feet vanished with a suddenness no amount of training or experience could’ve prepared him for.

Surrounded on all quarters, pressed from below and above – the chapter was consumed as one, pulled into the embrace of the dragon’s magic.

* * *

Cold bones tore at Durgil’s helm, half-ripping it from his head as his arms were pinned once more – digits scraped at his beard, his nose – his jaw went slack and his stomach convulsed as the skeletons forced their fingers inside his mouth, too afraid even to bite down, fight back in the simplest of ways –

The stench of it all. The taste. Durgil was familiar with all of Mund’s most-debaucherous districts and the alleys of filth that ran behind them. But never – never had he experienced anything like this.

He almost gave up, feeling the tears beginning to well from his eyes at the terror of it all. Even death – even that was no escape. The Judge couldn’t save them from the putrescent dragon’s necromancy – Lord Ghelliot was proof of that…

Sir Timeron’s sword backlit the morass of corpses as it was wielded, just to Durgil’s left, the arc of its passage releasing a nova of pure sunlight.

It wasn’t just an internal struggle. He did understand the pack. He was part of something greater.

It was acceptable to fail. So long as he didn’t let failure kill him. So long as he played his part.

Timeron for chapter-master!

Durgil couldn’t swing his arm, trapped as he was, still choking, descending into the ocean of skeletal warriors – but they hadn’t yet been capable of prising Glaimborn or Dwimmerfoe from his grasp. He couldn’t see his sword and shield, but he knew they were still there, hadn’t been torn from him; perhaps the eldritches were deliberately avoiding the blessed implements?

He rotated his wrist – that much, at least, was left to him – and that was all it took.

A single touch of faith, to ignite evil.

The dwarf felt the wave of satisfaction as the sword sang in response, slicing effortlessly through an unseen swathe of enemies.

You didn’t avoid that.

He experienced little more than a series of brittle snapping sensations reverberating down the length of the blade, as though he were hewing through dry branches.

These foes – they were puny. To be defeated by them would be for shame.

It could not be borne.

Two more flicks of his wrist and he’d slashed through several of the key appendages that belonged to the abominations gripping at his bicep. He swung Glaimborn fully for the first time, and destroyed the things whose fingers were still trying to get acquainted with the inside of his skull. Burning steel passed through their spines, snicking away the spells binding bone to bone in place of ligament, of tendon.

He retched the remnants of their fingers from his throat and, brimming with righteous fury, set about his work.

A timeless void of struggle claimed him. Only to one such as Durgil, tempered in the fire of dozens of Infernal Incursions, could this descent into the lake, this unliving sea of skeletons, resemble something akin to combat. Yet it did. His mind sharpened as the doubts and fears melted, replaced by singular purpose:

Survival.

In the moments that followed, pulling himself to the surface and gulping the dusty air, he couldn’t reconcile his experience with what his eyes told him. To his mind, the battle had been a thing of seconds – perhaps a minute or two at most. But he was now waist-deep in a pit of twitching body-parts, and as he cast about he saw that all had changed.

The necromantic city – gone. The ghastly domes, the eerie houses, the looming walls… everything had melted. The blueworm was farther away, its radiance muted. The cliff up on his right – that would have been where they’d entered the dragon’s lair. The city’s foundation had plummeted at least twenty yards, sending them down into the depths of a shallow basin.

In the aftermath it was the glowing forms of his surviving companions which afforded him scale, perspective. He could see them out there, turning their own eyes upwards in surprise, or, for those still putting down the last of their assailants, thrashing about.

They were spread across the squirming undead lake, and some of them had been carried very far indeed, almost to the back wall of the cavern where the biggest towers had loomed. But golden light bathed every form.

Kultemeren’s blessing could no longer be denied. Those who had survived – sixteen, all told, by Durgil’s count – were chosen.

“Fewer than half of you endure the first trial.” The unseen dragon’s voice was an electric rasp, the echo of his words rattling every morsel of the dead matter in which the paladins swam; the very rocks of the chamber seemed to hum, vibrating in the aftermath of the sound’s passage. “Let us tally the number after the second.”

The deathknights gave no battle-cry, silent in death as they had been in life. He saw them emerging from the darkness, striding effortlessly across the shallow skeletal lake towards his brethren. He cast about, seeing nothing, no one coming for him –

Trust in the Father.

As the sounds of renewed violence spread across the quivering sea, Durgil left his allies to their duels, closing his eyes.

Almighty, Eternal Onlooker, cleanse me of my impurity. Cleanse me that your light might shine the clearer through me. Cleanse me that my brethren might be healed by my prayer. I will not reflect; I will not refract; I will not will. Allow my purification, and I…

I…

Only a clanking sound beneath Durgil’s feet gave him warning, casting a shadow of peril across all his thoughts. The noise, faint at first, grew louder across the course of seconds until the dwarf was filled with an urge to scramble across the quiescent bones, to get away, get safe and secure –

There was no such purchase, no safe sanctuary from which to regenerate the wounds sustained by his brothers, or even to counter the attack of the deathknight which had been assigned to him.

He had to meet his enemy on its terms.

It was coming up at him, from beneath his boots. He knew it.

He had to dive.

The very moment he ceased resistance, letting the god’s certitude flow through his veins, everything changed.

I…

I…

I will break the enemies of Truth, as the rock breaks the wave!

The light pouring from him became a blazing white beacon. He thrust Dwimmerfoe down into the detritus beneath him and suddenly the lake was reanimated once more, arms and whips and other, cruder implements forming from the ivory pebbles.

It was as if the place knew its time had come, and fought him now as the prey contended with the predator, lashing out desperately.

Fragile twigs of bone snagged at him.

You’re cornered. Snivel at your final purification if you will.

He smiled the hawk’s smile beneath his beard, and dusted it all with the shield’s heavenly glow, ton upon ton of undead substance wholly obliterated in every heartbeat that passed. He swung Glaimborn, and the sword was a living, beating sun in his hand, the metal burning and blinding, but not to him – the wind trailing in the wake of its glorious arcs was cool, the white fire causing his eyes no pain but rather letting him see –

His deathknight was there, surging up towards him at a diagonal angle, traversing the weird landscape beneath the bony surface like a fish might water. The broken runes along its blade and upon its armour were glistening like molten lead.

That was Durgil’s last glimpse of Lord Ghelliot.

Then his deathknight was gone, erased from Materium by a single flood of Celestium’s power. The blackened hauberk, the charred helm, the pallid twin nimbuses of the former chapter-master’s eyes – they winked away, not just torn apart but altogether removed from existence.

We are stronger, in every way, he thought as he forced his way down. Truth will out. The way becomes clearer with every breath we take.

His boots found the stone, and Durgil grinned the hawk’s grin once more.

This is purchase.

He strode and wheeled about, fearless, watching in bliss as, through him, the God of Truth undid all the necromancer’s work. The light didn’t bathe the dwarf – it was emitted by his mortal flesh, augmented by his unblemished armaments, until he was a sun at the base of the buried hollow, withering away the necrotic rain even as it showered down upon him. Glaimborn’s sunfire was a beam, a ray of pure destruction, and he raked it back and forth, watching as other forms, glowing of their own accord, came hurtling through.

Knight after knight, one by one, his brothers found their way to his side – and each that joined him on the solid ground only added to the incandescence. He nodded to them in turn, and only a few of them retained the detachment to return the casual gesture; most simply stared at him in obvious wonder.

Marvel at the glory of the Lord, my brothers. Marvel… and grieve…

Twelve, he counted grimly, as it became obvious no others would arrive. So many young men, so many initiates whose lives have been lost.

But not in vain.

With a fitful clatter, the last remains of the dracolich’s host evaporated. The radiance reached up the jagged walls of the wide bowl in which they were gathered, snagging a final pair of deathknights in its swell as they attempted to leap back into the safety of the higher caves.

There was no escape, fingers of light reaching out for them, bursting them into motes of pallor against the stone, like white dapples from an artist’s brush.

The blueworm was almost another ten yards farther away, shimmering at a great remove, now that they’d sunk into the bottom of the chasm. Kultmeremen’s light stretched far, but fell short of illuminating those highest reaches, where shadowy curtains still rippled, hiding their enemy.

“Good,” came the dragon’s voice, its steel texture filling Durgil’s mouth, making his teeth ache. “You waste your greatest ammunition on the cattle, and its like will never be seen again on this earth.” Even as the dragon spoke, the divine radiance wavered, as though Durgil’s body were an eye that suddenly blinked, a candle guttering in a cold breeze. “But no, Durgil, son of Vondana. Arithmetic was never your strong suit. Twelve others, yes; but you make the thirteenth. A favourable omen, to my eye.”

The downward rush of its descent set the air itself screaming, wind whistling through the painful-looking tears in its wings.

We slew thousands of your minions, Durgil said to it silently, staring as its horrendous plummet suddenly became a graceful drop, the wings drawn in, talons poised to settle its great weight gently to the stone. Tens of thousands. You tally the losses. You won’t be getting those back from the shadowland any time soon.

He tightened his grip about Dwimmerfoe’s strap, feeling the flesh of his fingers pressing through the leather of his gauntlets, biting into the metal.

Then the immense, rotten dracolich was there, squatting before them in the basin, its scaly hindquarters and tail coiled about the rim of the depression.

Aside from the ceaseless scintillating of its yawning eyeballs, like purple wells spiralling into an infinite abyss, the creature had stilled to the likeness of a marble carving. Its serpentine lips were closed, its head cocked somewhat, akin to a cat pausing for a moment in curious examination –

Before pouncing upon the paralysed family of mice that had been the object of its attention.

We exist upon just a thread. Yet we shall dance upon its length regardless, back and forth, dangling over the killing-ground – and take this foul beast with us when we fall.

Glaimborn propelled itself, forward and back; and with the reverse lunge, the sword’s pommel smashed into the face of Dwimmerfoe.

Cloooooooooooooooong!

The eruption of sound and light was like the birth of the universe.

The dracolich shrieked, and Durgil knew – he knew – that this was the truth. This was their enemy, not an illusion.

And here their enemy would perish.

* * *

The first assault went well.

Durgil strode forward, and each stride ate away treble the normal distance; he felt himself propelled once more by Kultemeren’s will, thrust out in defence of all mortalkind as he now thrust out Dwimmerfoe before him. Several of his cohort gathered behind him, close on his heels – he didn’t need to look back to ascertain their presence, didn’t need to hear them to know they were there. Lord Shebril and some of the others fanned out, forming a rough semi-circle so as to reduce the risk of a single attack eradicating them all at once; they effortlessly took on the role of healers as they had been trained, already silently praying to Kultemeren for success and salvation. Even as he sped towards the monstrosity, Durgil felt the soothing balm of their unheard words, clearer than the clarion call of any trumpet.

His knee had never felt stronger as he leapt.

The undead dragon’s howl of pain had become a snarl, the rolls of its vast lips drawn back in a kind of wince, exposing an army of filthy teeth. Its pulsing eyes were fixed on the dwarf as this time he hurtled not towards an illusion but straight into its true, all-too-vulnerable face.

He cast his judgement into the maw of the beast, a lash of pure golden energy which blinded even him, his weapon seemingly quadrupled or more in length. The dracolich recoiled, bringing up a claw to savagely swipe him out of the air.

Dwimmerfoe broke the dragon’s talons as it reached for him, huge chunks of bone shearing away, edged in golden light. But the sheer strength of the creature, the ferocity of its attack, left little to be desired. Durgil was cast aside, sent flying off amidst the shards of claw, cartwheeling as he fell.

He collided full-force with the stony floor, hip and elbow striking the rock, sending a sickening crunch reverberating through his body – but even then the holy vigour filled him, healing him on the inside. It was as though nothing had happened to him. Durgil sprang back to his feet, watching two of his brothers take the lead, slashing at their enemy with their own radiant weapons. The dwarf nodded in gratitude towards the nearby Lord Shebril, whose eyes and prayers were on him, then leapt to rejoin the fray.

Their foe was sparring the knights, clumsily batting them away, and Durgil could see the way the gigantic swirling eyes appeared unfocussed, rolling now and then in the folds of their vast, putrefied sockets.

Cloooooooooooooooong!

He clanged Glaimborn’s pommel against the face of Dwimmerfoe once more, even as he barrelled back into range of the titanic paws of the monster. The dragon screamed again, twisting, bringing its tail down at Durgil’s head in a fluid motion that would crush him beneath tens of tons of undead flesh.

No.

He braced, clenching his jaw and buttocks along with every long-trained muscle in his arms and chest, his legs, his back… He raised Dwimmerfoe over his head with his shield-hand, then reinforced it with the fist clutching Glaimborn, preparing to meet the overbearing attack.

The instant the dragon’s translucent scales touched the shield’s surface, they smoked, and sloughed away.

The effect was similar to pressing a stick of ice down on a red-hot coin. The dracolich’s tail simply separated, the twenty-yard tip released from its long service, tumbling down the incline near the edge of the bowl and coming to a stop near two of the healers, like the dead half of a giant worm.

If it had been screaming before, now it entered the lamentatious wailing of one who has sustained a mortal injury – and knows it. There wasn’t just pain in the monster’s shrieks. There was fear.

More talons rained down on Durgil’s head, and he bore the blows, aware that his brothers were moving in on the creature’s flanks, wounding it yet further even as it sought to kill itself, smashing its own limbs to tenebrous webs of rot on the holy shield. After a few seconds the awful pummelling on his shield started to slow, and he dared to move his sword-arm, pointing Glaimborn along the rim of Dwimmerfoe, adding the blade’s sting to the various factors which would contribute to the dracolich’s demise.

How much longer the battle lasted, he would not afterwards have the wherewithal to calculate. At last the dracolich tried to flee, shaking its wings as though it had palsy, and Sir Lyret was crushed beyond all healing, beyond recognition, as he fought to slow it, further damage its already-tattered appendages. Sir Fosterweyn was too hesitant to dart aside at one point, and was eaten; Durgil saw the knight’s arms and armour searing away at the monster’s gums, even as it noisily crunched through the steel with its jagged, rune-scrawled teeth, spattering the man’s blood and innards across the roof of its mouth.

Again and again, the dwarf champion drew its attention back to him using Glaimborn and Dwimmerfoe. Again and again, Lord Shebril’s faith knitted his wounds together. By the grace of the Judge, Durgil was able to block the worst of the blows that avalanched down upon him.

And, bit by painstaking bit, the dracolich came undone.

Finally it lay there, sprawled in their midst and smouldering from hundreds of sword-blows. Durgil stood near to its head, leaning on Glaimborn and breathing heavily, assessing its condition. By the sounds coming from the other side, some of his fellows were still laying into it, the hissing thunks of blessed blades unmissable in the silence. Yet the dracolich no longer stirred, no longer reacted to their attacks. The eyes were closed, ruined by sharp metal as much as divine fire, each of them popped and gushing a vile-smelling purple mucus. Its various layers still quivered from time to time, but overall it looked somehow to be deflating, the scant remaining musculature seeming to turn into the same noxious mist which had greeted them upon their arrival, outside the cave.

Outside the cave. Before this ordeal began. It came back to him, heavier than a dragon’s tail – the gravity of just what had happened here. The magnitude of the change these last hours would make. They would rebuild the chapter with fresh recruits if they had to, but there would likely be a flood of volunteers from the other chapters, willing to transfer over, bolster their numbers and share in the glory, once the victory of the Whisper’s Predicate was known. The bards would sing of it. The Chroniclers of Chraunator would enshrine the knights’ names in everlasting ink upon the pages of their eternal tomes. Lord Durgil’s acts of heroism would outlast the bones of his brother’s grandchildren.

No matter how much he lost, before he died, he would always remember this.

He knew what he had to do.

Smiling grimly, he rebalanced himself, hefted Glaimborn, and approached the dracolich’s long, glistening neck.

Kultemeren power my strike, he prayed. Let me lay it low at a single blow.

He felt the eyes of his brethren on him as he stepped up to do the grisly work required of him. Under their gaze, he brought Glaimborn back over his shoulder – the sword sang, a metallic keening to fill his soul with glory –

He took the final step, and as he brought his boot down in the puddle of slime surrounding the monster’s throat, he hewed at its neck with every ounce of the amplified strength thrumming through him.

* * *

The effect was akin to chopping into the trunk of a tough old tree. No golden axe of divine execution appeared to hang in the air over the dracolich’s unmoving head. The wave of power generated by Glaimborn was reflected back, pale dapples of light rippling upwards and dissipating harmlessly into the darkness.

Durgil looked down, watching as some of the heavier motes of light drifted like snow, spattering across the surface of the dragon’s vile effluent and fading away.

It felt wrong. Something was amiss.

Durgil swung back his arm for a second attempt.

A third.

He cast about in disarray, catching the eyes of his brothers. He could see the same alarm on their faces.

Within thirty seconds they had formed an impromptu death-squad, each of them hacking in rhythm, a team of miners desperate to break a star-iron ore vein.

Even if they’d had ensorcelled pick-axes, they would’ve failed. The level of power required to chop through the dracolich’s neck-scales was beyond them, despite the fact they’d torn similar scales asunder all over its body.

Durgil was no stranger to limitations. He’d seen his fellow Knights fight bravely in Incursions, but he was under no illusion as to the scope of their abilities. No Knight had ever turned the tide of a battle. For them were the minions, the low-rank war-fodder that came pouring out of the Twelve Hells whenever the dimensional gates were thrown down. He’d defeated a kinkalaman, once, in a one-on-one duel; he’d taken part in the destruction of a thinfinaran, one of the devastating so-called ‘white knights’ of Infernum. But that had been with overwhelming numbers, and two chapter-masters from other holy orders had perished before the attempt was proven upon the smoking armoured corpse of the demon. Durgil knew that Kultemeren was not omnipotent; it was not as if all of creation was under the Judge’s direct influence, and the Lord’s sway waxed and waned as time and place dictated. Kultemeren might’ve been the greatest of the gods, but his throne was not alone, separate from those of the others – this all the faithful with even lay knowledge could understand. Their Celestial Father could not strengthen their arm such that one of his Knights might single-handedly turn back the armies of fiends – even the boldest champions of the grace-granted archmages were not so endowed. It fell to the paladins to do their part, guided by prophecy and instinct to those tasks which lay within their capabilities. Mother-Chaos was real, all too real.

But how was this not their part? A whole chapter had been sent, to destroy a single foe. How was it that the visions had been bestowed upon them, how was it that the Seals of Legitimacy had been formed upon the Prophets’ scrolls, if this was not their victory? Was there something more they had to do, something beyond merely separating the dracolich’s head from its snaking neck?

He stepped back wearily, almost overcome by the sudden temptation to run, scramble away up the slope and escape back into the tunnels leading up, back into the brightness awaiting them up there, on the outside… He leaned gratefully on Glaimborn once more, and closed his eyes, burying himself in contemplation.

He should’ve known, even when he’d been running towards it. Should’ve known, when there was none of the tell-tale recoil as he burst its invisible shields. He understood why it refused to enter an insubstantial state – if anything that would’ve only amplified the harm his holy strikes caused it – but that didn’t explain why it didn’t armour itself. Why it made itself visible.

Why, when it had outmanoeuvred them at every turn, did it land in front of them and let them have at it? It was likely that the dragon had no eldritches remaining to it, given the sheer number of skeletons it’d employed, and yet –

Where is its breath-weapon?

“Do you still not understand, Sir Durgil?”

It looked dead, and there was no heaving of the gargantuan chest, no wheeze as exposed lungs filled and deflated. Yet the lips curled, the eyes reignited, swivelling to focus their gaze at him.

And there it was – the sound of the dracolich’s voice, crackling and booming, like lightning shattering old trees, sending them crashing blackened to the ground. The creature tried to speak softly, its tone one of amusement, but at Durgil’s proximity the tumult was nauseating in its effect.

The stone didn’t shake underfoot. All the same Durgil was not alone as he was driven back, the mental impact of the dragon’s continued survival striking him worse than any physical blow or sonic strike.

He stumbled, and gasped, the pain in his knee suddenly flaring up, magnitudes worse than ever before. He felt teeth, tearing into tendons, felt the bitter pain of a kneecap splintering in two. A wordless yelp thrust itself up, out of his stomach, peeling back his lips and hurling itself into the air. He went down, clutching at himself, gulping the rotten atmosphere of the cave between mouthfuls of agony-fed bile.

When he looked up once more, it was slowly coalescing into its former shape, every dissection rotting as it was fixed, each tear gradually mending, dripping. The wet mess of its hindquarters solidified, bit by bit, the tail forming out of fleshy sludge as it pressed its rump into the revolting puddle. There was a faint rustling, an almost-crunching sound, as shattered bones found their places.

The odours released by its transformation were overpoweringly sweet, the rancidness filling Durgil’s skull. At another time it would’ve been enough to unman him, unmake him, send him vomiting to the floor. But he was already there. Already staring up with wet, hopeless eyes.

A single claw, as long and delicately-wielded as a jousting lance, reached up into the air, plucking a huge black crown from pure nothingness and casually flipping it about, settling it atop the horned head. Just from the sheer size of it, the trinket had to weigh more than fifty men, but the dragon bore its burden as though it were a feather. Upon the horns of the enormous serpentine brow, it looked positively dainty, a trinket of no great consequence.

“Despair is my chief weapon.” Even as Durgil stared the dragon rose up, its neck arching to elevate the head, the speed and sheer fluidity of its motion startling. “In battle, the telling blow with such a weapon cannot be achieved at a single pass.”

The dragon’s right forepaw came up then nonchalantly stamped down again, crushing a nearby transfixed knight beneath its tremendous limb. The man made not a sound, leaving the plane without so much as a whimper, but the sanctified steel plate in which he was clad screamed as it was rent asunder.

“It is achieved through a series of entirely avoidable reversals,” the evil creature went on, “bringing you here, to this point.”

The upraised head looked down, the dragon’s crown combined with its bearing to make it appear almost regal, its burning eyes raking the environment, moving from one knight to the next.

“Upon the very first application of pressure, the razor-wire garrotte spills your victim’s life-blood to pool at their feet; yet it takes more to bite through a man’s spine… A dwarf’s spine.”

Why? croaked the dry voice of despair in the champions’s mind. Why this? Why me?

One by one, the last members of the Whisper’s Predicate were extinguished.

Sir Pent was sliced in two where he knelt, blubbering. Lord Shebril was hissed-upon, deluged in a poison breath so caustic that no faith, no flesh, endured when the clouds parted. The youngest knight remaining to them, Sir Lilaire, had his breastplate, ribcage and the whole front of his torso stripped away by the swift incision of a talon, left exposed and bisected upon the rocks.

And then he was alone. The last paladin.

You abandon me – now, Kultemeren?

You dare abandon me now?

“You thought to become chapter-master, did you not?” The dragon’s tone of voice was playful as its immense claws set about their work, reducing Durgil’s friends, his family, to tatters of flesh and cloth, chunks of riven metal, toying with their remains like a toddler tearing idly at grass. “Always, even amongst the silent paladins of the Almighty Judge, there is the thread of doubt in truth, that single, singular trap lying in wait inside every heart, whether it beats or no.” It kneaded the remains of the paladins, and the scraps came skittering from all across the stony basin, joining the ball of amalgamated awfulness beneath its paws. “Ego,” it went on. “The desire for attainment. For meaning. To pass beneath the archway. But it’s nothing more than a paradox. The thread is tugged, and every drop of blood flows along it, leaving the shell a dry, emptied husk. Truth is no more real than the doubt it swears upon as its foundation-stone, its unapprised assumption gnawing at its core, a hole aching for a key…”

“Why.”

The dwarf’s voice cracked and popped as he spoke, like he was gargling wooden splinters and stones.

It didn’t come out like a question. It didn’t even feel like his tongue moved. Durgil heard the word in his inner ear, clear as day, as the dragon finished its sentence.

At first he wasn’t certain that the sound had come from his throat – it had been so long since he’d heard his own voice, it was unrecognisable – and, yet, there it was.

The sound itself was almost incoherent. But the meaning? The meaning was there.

Quiet. Dreadful. Disbelieving.

It was summary judgement, encapsulating all the world’s truths into a single choked noise. But Durgil would set it to stand like a figurehead before all mortal-kind, a flag to wave in the faces of heedless gods.

“Can it be? Do you speak? Ahhhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaa…”

The dracolich’s laughter was accompanied by wreaths of fumes pouring from between its savage teeth. It pawed more-furiously at its ball of corpses and pulverised armour, as if unable to contain itself.

Durgil shook his head, feeling every good thought, every wholesome thought, drip right out the bottom of his skull like warm water through a wicker basket.

“I had thought to ruin you, of course – but this!” The dragon reared up to its full height, and the brightness of its eyes was a terrible thing to behold. “You excel, Durgil, former Knight of Kultemeren. I am most pleased with your progress.”

“Why…“

“Why not?” The dragon took his outburst in its stride, smiling callously. “You came for me, a morsel with which I might entertain myself; but do not think I take my entertainment lightly –”

“Why did he bring us here? Why… why…”

Durgil’s eyes found the warped bodies the dragon had missed, the remnants of once-splendid armour, scattered about the cavern floor.

And he knew the power had left him.

He hadn’t accidentally broken his vows. He had rejected them, taken them up in his hands and twisted them till they broke.

That was all they deserved.

“Why…”

His armour was heavy upon his back, the straps restrictive on his joints. Dwimmerfoe and Glaimborn were bereft of light. He felt old, suddenly, the weight of his years coming down on his chest like an avalanche. The sigils of Kultemeren hurt his eyes to look upon.

His voice, so newly reclaimed, fell away to gasps. He cast off his gauntlets with flicks of his wrists and set about fumbling with the buckles.

“Kultemeren has always desired violence.”

Durgil looked back up sharply.

“You do not believe me!” the dracolich cried, mocking laughter erupting forth once more. “Oh, hahaha, you fool! How might I lie? Always it is the way with mortals; to ascribe those morals you proclaim to the highest of heavens, and those you deny to the basest planes. Yet your heart knows the truth, as your forsaking father, the Judge of All and Nothing, knows it. And does it not grieve him! O, he would change if he might! There is no higher morality than survival, and for you, yesssssss, even for you I was set to the challenge. Do you not realise the threat you posed to me? O, Durgil of my dreams… Even a single soul imbued with divine force might wreak terrible vengeance upon one such as I, linked by such astral strings as you are, fastened into a web of power you cannot even begin to comprehend.” The fluid eyes drifted with the blueworm waves. “One man, armed not with a sword and shield forged of steel but of faith… That is an awful thing. But forty of you, with your little sticks, metal spikes? No… No, they were but fodder for my war-machine. Too many swords – too little confidence. I say it again in defiance of your paltry epiphanies: you do not understand the pack. Had you been started upon this quest alone, it would bode more ill on my chances…

“Hahhh!“

His enemy’s voice had entered a musing, thoughtful phase, almost lulling Durgil into a state of tranquility; this new explosion of sound brought the dwarf back half-way to his senses, and his body was set reeling, shaking away there on the floor at the dragon’s feet.

“No. I was forced to break your spirits before permitting you to face me. I watched the fluctuations in your steadfastness. And in the end I needed do naught. You slew yourselves, I think. Had your former god wanted aught of you, he would not have let you die to the last man. Now, here, at the end of all things, I make you in Kultemeren’s stead: my Forsworn One. My antipaladin. And so shall I gloat in the face of Vaahn himself!”

Antipaladin…

The moment the word fell from the forked tongue, Durgil’s hand fell away from the belts on his greaves. Ecstasy flooded him and he trembled, folding in on himself so that he didn’t topple in spasm.

“Yes! Feel it!” the dragon spat, playful scorn in its voice. “When the reward is stripped, the void left in its absence is beyond mere Wellspring. It is more than just my magic. It is older than spellcraft. Older than your world! Strip away the gloss, the varnish, the layers of old paint! Expose the raw soul, and let the acid bite at you! The tongue proclaiming its own truth is always that of a liar! There is more to what you were than what you are. Thus we reveal the shape hidden within. With chisel. With incision. With self-directed violence.”

All lights faded. The blueworm died. The curtain of shadow became a blanket, covering everything, blackness coalescing about the dwarf’s frame. In the heart of the darkness, it found him and filled him.

There was no more wholesome sensation than the electricity coursing up his spine. It was what it was to be loved. To be known and understood. Not for one’s face, one’s front, one’s fawning outward expression before the whole of society. No. For the inside. For the guzzling gizzards, the bile and wroth, greed and ego. For the self-expression and the truth –

Yes! he exulted, writhing. The truth of it! The truth of me!

Speaking aloud had awoken it. There was still within Durgil the purity of the boy-dwarf, wide-eyed in wonder as he first strode the streets of Mund. The idealism of the adolescent-dwarf, whose poems had failed to win the heart of Bronyaka, the most-beautiful dwarf-lass in all of Anvil Row…

Was that really what had started it all, what had set him on this path to self-righteous knighthood? To silence?

When he’d looked back on his life, he’d seen it through lenses of pure opaque romance. It was like one of the stories, a great warrior spurred on to realise his potential only by rejection. When she’d died in a darkmage attack in Rivertown, almost twenty years later, Durgil had been miles away, busy with his duties. He’d never seen her body, except in dreams, her face obscured by coils of blood-wet coppery hair.

Still, he’d always felt it gave him purpose. Like there was some meaning to things. A context for existence.

Now his earlier passivity made him want to retch.

That is no context! I silenced myself, for nothing! A man throwing his loaf off a bridge, pinch by pinch, telling passers-by he’s starving himself to save the world…

There was no other way to be, now. Sir Durgil the Duped! Kultemeren had betrayed him –

Kultemeren has betrayed me!

The thought itself was exactly the kind of paradox he’d have never been able to think before, but even conceiving it was ample demonstration of its truth.

“The god… of truth… betrayed me.”

The darkness passed. The soft ambience of the blueworm coating the ceiling returned slowly to the air.

“No. Oh, oh no, my child!” The dragon spoke softly, compassionately now. “He only sent you here to die. It is I whom he betrayed.”

“But –”

“And it is he whose edicts I now flaunt,” the dracolich continued, ignoring his confused outburst. “You shall live, Durgil. You shall live, and become a symbol of all that has been hidden from you your whole life. Did you honestly think Kultemeren omnipotent? Did you honestly believe his ability to control what mortals say of him implies some fundamental order to reality? Your understanding of truth is limited. Why do you think truth to be good? In your childlike fantasy you lose sight of the fact that almost all the truths told are evil: about evil, for evil purposes! This very truth! No, the truth is harsh, cruel, capricious. The truth is a tool of chaos, an agent of the Queen of Night! From whose womb did he spring? I shall say it to you now, a phrase the speaking of which would be beyond heresy, beyond unthinkable in your precious Mund. Kultemeren dwells in Nethernum. Twelve Hells… Indeed! Kultemeren dwells in Infernum! His role is not that of objectivity. It is subjectivity. It is the truth to be found in the small things, the most awful things. Did you not wonder at the minor infractions which evade the sight of his powerful servitors? Kultemeren knows that Mal Malas has been a good dragon this year, and will get all the Yearsend presents owed to him. Hahahahahahaha!”

It was too much – Durgil rolled to his knees and vomited.

Pure light fell, glowing water pouring from his throat onto the rock, splashing and pooling briefly before the oppressive darkness smothered it. Its residue burnt his gums as it seeped between his teeth, and he spat it out violently, watching gratefully as its traces evaporated.

“No, child. I believe the true Kultemeren behind the lies wished me weakened, for the battle to come. Your former lord and master is invested in my defeat, and even now he approaches, fury in his eyes. But I withheld all my strength, sacrificing only a tithe of my forces. It was worth it, to gain you.”

Durgil noticed that his armour now resembled that of Lord Ghelliot, when the chapter-master had first been changed into a deathknight, charred-looking, its decorations still slowly warping. His gauntlets, lying on the rock beside Glaimborn, had also been transformed; the carefully-etched runes were distorted on every outward- and inward-facing surface of the steel, melted into inchoate forms.

At least it felt lighter again, now.

The sword and shield themselves were dead, blackened. Their lights were extinguished, and no trace of nethernal fire sprang into existence to replace their celestial radiance. Durgil was no deathknight. He was not undead. Yet still he recognised the potential in his former armaments. There was no unholy aura to them that his eye could detect, but he could feel it.

He slid his hands into the gloves, then reached for…

For Shadeborn and Hammerfoe. He wasn’t in a position to heft them properly, but he retook possession of them all the same, dragging them, scraping them across the rock until they were right before him.

You –

“You never forsook me,” he whispered.

Their twin, separate darknesses only seemed to deepen in response.

Durgil looked up at the dragon – Mal Malas, he reminded himself, or one claiming to be him at least – and shuddered as the creature’s latest words washed over him again in recollection.

“He… He is coming – here?”

Kultemeren himself.

“Oh no, you misunderstand me! No avatar of the god. Merely his agent, one whose loyalty is split amongst many. A misbegotten and ill-trained brat, and, yet, a potent creature in his own way.”

For the first time, Durgil heard apprehension in the cavern-shaking voice. A twist of uncertainty.

Recognition.

“One of… one of your kin is coming?”

The dracolich snarled laughter. “Ahhhhhh! Something like that, yes. I had to draw him here, ensure he came back. And yet he moves more quickly now than visions foretold. I had scant hours in which to prepare for this, for his, ahhhh… welcome home party.”

Mal Malas craned his neck down suddenly. “Tell me, dwarf, that I might better repeat this feat: to what precisely did you succumb? Was it the awful dream, last night? Was it the old wound, from the first time you genuinely thought you would die? Was it watching them perish, one by one? The personal edge to my challenge, singling you out?”

Durgil stared, meeting the gigantic amethyst orbs without flinching.

“Pray, speak now, and hold not your unpractised tongue for fear of reproach! Rest assured, he cannot hear you now. Even the Judge’s hand falls short of the first corner of your path.”

In the silence that fell between them as the dragon closed his lips, there was only the soft, distant moaning of the air moving through cracks in the stone.

“Do not think me incapable of chastising you, antipaladin. I can rob the answer from your mind, or accomplish your ending in the space of a thought and take it from your ghost. You must realise, despite everything – you mean nothing to me. The proof of concept was my single desire.”

Durgil felt himself grin. He tightened his fingers about Shadeborn’s grip, Hammerfoe’s straps. “Just you try i-“

There was no trace of reaction, no flicker of foreclaw, no rolling of a tremendous eye. There was only the force, the immense, irresistible weight of a sorcerous construct he couldn’t see, driving through his shield and breastplate without marring them in the slightest – without encountering the least resistance as it plunged into his shoulder.

This was no mere spear of power, no meagre lance of energy: it was a thick wedge, like a mammoth’s tusk – like one of the dragon’s own horns. As Durgil was driven back and down by Mal Malas’s magic, skittering and crunching across the stone with blood welling up inside his newly-blighted cuirass, he loosed a yell.

It felt good, to scream. Properly scream.

After a few moments the sorcerous barb evaporated, with all the suddenness with which it had struck him, leaving him groaning and gurgling upon the rocks.

The nethernal spike was gone, sure, almost as though it had been all in his imagination – save for the very real wound it left in his upper chest. The cavity in his body represented a mortal injury, he knew – his arm dangled, and the amount of blood pushing its way out through the seams in his armour told him he didn’t have long left.

He had dared the representative of Death, and death was all he’d won.

Through the agony, he chuckled weakly. Somehow, he respected Malas now. The swiftness of his response, the cold, callous nature of the dracolich’s decision-making.

“I will let you live,” Malas said, affecting a magnanimous expulsion of his breath-weapon into the air.

Durgil moved his dying eyes to the dragon’s face with great effort.

“Wrongggg,” the dwarf gargled.

Malas reached up to his crown, ignoring him. “I shall simply strip your mind. I still have time. A shame, though. I had hoped to let you exercise your voice. You shall need it, where you’re headed, and even I cannot comprehend the nature of your power once it is fully expressed.”

“Wait.”

Durgil sat up, trying to glance down at his shoulder. He couldn’t see through the armour, of course, but something told him the wound was no longer life-threatening. He could move his fingers again. Vigour was returning rapidly, his vision clearing. Pain at the site of the injury diminished, then diminished again, dropping within seconds to the dull ache of a freshly-healed sore.

“What – did you do to me?”

The dragon lowered his claw, leaving the black jagged crown atop his misshapen horns. “Nothing, Durgil. Or, at least, nothing else. You are quite capable of surviving that blow, I trust… Consider it a warning shot.”

“I… I healed it?”

“You contain the reason for your own existence now.” Impatience entered the ancient voice. “I await my answer.”

Durgil coughed laughter. “You know I can lie now.”

The dragon shrugged his vast, tattered wings, accompanied by the immense hollow sound of a ship’s sails flapping. “You won’t.”

“No, I won’t.” Durgil’s voice was caustic despite the vicious smile slapped on his mouth beneath the beard. “What did it? What tipped me over? You really want to know.”

Malas inclined his head, and smoke seeped out between his scaly lips, wreathing about his jaw.

“It was –”

Lying was hard, when the truth was so bitter.

“What you did to them. It told me Kultemeren… It told me none of it was real. My whole life has been just like one of your illusions.”

“You think you were the first paladins to fail?”

“I’ve seen… seen knights die before.” The grin stayed on his face, and though his voice didn’t shake he felt the tears running hot from the corners of his eyes. “But never did I see them… see their souls taken.”

“You think me a god, to own such a thing? You thought I stole what can only be given? Ownership is such a strong term. Oh, you and all mortalkind, you have so much to learn. But one soul was lost here. Whether it has been found once more is a question I must pose to you, antipaladin.” The gloating returned: “Does your chest still hurt, little dwarf?”

Durgil shook his head, but not in an attempt to answer the question. Fury suddenly bubbled up within him.

“You made them deathknights!” he roared. “You took them and you – you – made Lord Ghelliot into –”

“Do you think Nethernum eternal? Have you, in your fear, in your mild, meagre quivering, given to it the character of the Everbefore, the Everafter? I tell you: I could not, cannot, make of them demons. The shadowland is but a step on the soul’s journey, a soothing sojourn before the true tests begin. A sojourn which I for one hope to prolong, to at least such an extent that I retain time upon these middle planes commensurate with twice my natural lifespan… had I retained such a tiresome thing. No. Your former brethren – they still face their choice. Once my control is removed they can do good or ill, like any man, any god. Their experiences in undeath shall shape them, even as did their experiences in life; for better or for worse, who shall say for sure?”

Durgil had trouble following the dragon’s logic, yet he spoke with the conviction of one well-acquainted with spiritual matters. Was Mal Malas suggesting they had as much chance at getting into Celestium as Infernum, despite the change he’d wrought in them?

“But they are predisposed to evil now! They were noble men, they were –”

“Do you truly believe that? They were children! When you attain adulthood you must set aside such precious insolence as they displayed in my home. Surely now you agree?”

Durgil had no words. He looked down at the blackened sword and shield in his hands.

Do I not still play the child? he wondered. Lying to him like this?

It wasn’t Lord Ghelliot’s transformation that’d done it to his mind, to his soul – not really. It was the moment the fiend’s teeth entered his knee, the moment the illusory pain entered his mind in spite of his undeceivable nature. That was when he’d known they were going to lose. Their enemy had subtly revealed the extent of his upper hand and it was then, feeling the remembered agony of the demonic jaw lodged in his knee-cap – that was when he’d really doubted. When he’d lost the war, before it’d even really begun.

But he wasn’t going to tell the dragon that, and Mal Malas seemed to take him at his word. He had a knack, it now seemed, for double-dealing.

“Yet I shall deign to educate you,” the dracolich continued, “as the wyrm teaches only the proven drake and not the wyrmling. For is that not the crux of it – the soul of the wyrmling? Tell me – can the dwarf-born babe not be predisposed to evil ere he is faced with moral choices, by exposure to evil? Can he not be a victim? The character is formed primarily by external forces. Hunger and thirst are powerful enemies, no less so than I. Do not be so quick to draw distinctions between mortal and eldritch. Are we not one and the same? Do we not bear the same souls? The spirit of the starveling idiot is condemned for the theft of a loaf, while that of the lazy aristocrat is upraised for a few nonchalant acts of charity. You dare call them noble. They were rich, pompous beyond compare! You, you who were one of them, ought know it better than most!”

“But… so…” Durgil struggled with the dragon’s meaning, his curiosity piqued. “There really is no difference? They are… undead, not ba-“

“Ah, my good dwarf. Undeath is simply another way of saying life. Why would you not retain your intelligence beyond your material existence? Do you truly hate yourself so? You would not be as them, I think, if I worked upon you now.”

“I don’t want to smell like a rotting fish.”

“Indeed?” The dragon sounded amused. “One’s scent, above one’s aspirations: a fine contradiction about which to twist one’s life. Very well – yet the offer shall remain open, so long as we both reside upon this plane. Should you turn out mortal after all, seek me if it suits you, and I will remake you in this image.” Malas’s talon reached up, gesturing to all the tons of rancid splendour hanging from his bones. “I will unspin the knot at the heart of you, bring you clarity.” He lowered the claw once more. “Only if it suits you, of course.”

The dracolich laid down his great head, rolling slightly and stretching into a position of repose. He closed his eyes, jelly-like lids sliding down to mute the amethyst fires.

“Now – how do I look?”

“Like you need taking back to the shop and repairing.”

Twelve Hells, it felt good to talk.

The dragon chuckled. Black mist rose from the creases of age-old nostrils.

“Good. Let him see me so. He will think me weak. It will not take him long to realise you have been my foe. Play along, if you will, and when I find my victory over him –”

“Don’t lie to me.”

The dwarf’s utterance was quiet, but he knew the dragon would hear, knew he was interrupting.

After a pause, Mal Malas adopted an offended tone, his eyes still closed.

“I have no need to lie to such as you. You are –”

“More lies.” The dwarf sat back on his haunches, feeling the familiar, comfortable bite of his armour upon his flesh through the padding, and smiled openly. “For all your words, all your years, all your magic – you don’t understand me, either. You don’t know what I am… what you’ve done.”

“I’ve done nothing,” the dragon insisted.

“Yet I can see through your lies! And you can’t see through mine!”

Durgil climbed to his feet, and Mal Malas raised his head a few feet from the rock to better regard the dwarf.

“I don’t know what your purpose is here, but I know you’re misleading me now! You don’t want to be victorious. You want to lose, and… and for me to tell your… your slayer that you…”

It made no sense, but there was no other way to interpret the experience. Mal Malas had said ‘when I find my victory over him’ and ‘I have no need to lie,’ and each time Durgil felt the stab of certitude, a new fact entering his brain at the speed of light:

The first time: He plans to lose.

The second: He believes he needs to lie to cover it up.

But there was none of the usual divine rage inside the dwarf. He’d been emptied. He kept his smile on.

“I’ll tell your killer everything,” he promised the dragon.

“No!” it hissed, twisting about to come back onto its four legs, suddenly surging closer to Durgil. “Kindling! The truth? The truth would imperil both you and I, and –”

It was too late. Sooner than Mal Malas had anticipated, his opponent entered the cavern.

“No conversation this time, beast.“

The newcomer’s voice echoed down from the blueworm ceilings, blatantly supernatural in its thunderous tones.

“No more messing around. Step away from the dwarf, and I’ll make it as painless as I can. By Kultemeren.“

The illusion barely took hold in time. Durgil saw right through it, and bore witness to Malas’s flight as the real dragon went right through the cavern wall, sliding through stone like a ghost.

Durgil’s smile broke into a grin. The fake dragon wheeled away from him, eyes raking the roof, searching for the person with this odd, foreign-tinged Sticktown accent.

A champion of Mund, Durgil thought to himself, an archmage, come to save me?

He chuckled some more.

Malas, you really did go too far, didn’t you?

The dwarf pointed at the wall, and cried: “He went that way!”