30th Thelkhastix (Late Spring)
Calloway’s camp, outside the gate of Varn Lodihr
On the eve of their entry into Varn Lodihr, Samuel got the Cavedwellers together and told them that if there was anything they wanted to do before they die, they should do it tonight. He went to speak to an attractive captain in 5th Company, who told him to come back a hero, but most of all to come back.
31st Thelkhastix
The Pink Unicorn crew selected two of the other Cavedwellers, Brugo and Harrom, to accompany them, and recruited three soldiers to act as porters. At first light, they passed the ruined foundations and twisted portcullis of the outer gate.
The Old King’s Road was broad, as broad as any highway of men and equally high. Above the false ceiling maintenance passages ran, holding pipes that once fed drinking fountains and flush toilets placed every mile along the way.
The walls were also lined with burned-out sconces and, every tenth of a mile, numbered markers.
After some minutes, they came to a crack in the floor. It would be bridgeable, but it plunged far into the darkness. Peering over, they saw something glitter. Annais made to drop a torch down, but Sam stopped her.
They marked on the wall, “Something glitters below.” Annais told Sam that their lives were in his hands as they belayed across the chasm. They began chatting about the wonders of Varn Lodihr that he had seen during the war.
After several more minutes of walking, they came to a place where the true ceiling had caved in, leaving a small gap above. Aida wriggled through and found that a niche had already been made, pushing some of the rubble inward.
Beyond the cave-in, they found a mound of dwarf skeletons, their iron bones fallen in twisted poses as they had tried to clear the blockage. There were women and children among them. Sam identified the scene as a place that had run out of air, probably suddenly as a result of a flash fire somewhere in the cave network. The rusted condition of the bones indicated that oxygen had returned at least several months ago, as the shifting of the barrier had opened the gap at the top.
Annais asked how long the Hellstalkers had spent below. Sam answered that regulations required that a unit spend an eighth-moon topside every month, but this was not often observed, and some units spent over six months at a time underground.
An hour after entering the road, they came to a plaza before a gatehouse. The gatehouse rose up to merge with the natural stone arch of the cavern beyond. The plaza held storefronts and a small hostel, indicating that it had been used by travellers waiting to pass through the checkpoint.
The unguarded ramparts of the gatehouse were not difficult to climb. Aida peered in an upper window and saw a rough-looking adventuring party sitting around a campfire. She dropped a rope for Oskraks, and he determined that the party were varying degrees of evil.
She dropped down and they pressed forward at road level, approaching the portcullis. Large, ticket-booth style windows faced each other at the checkpoint. From one of these, a javelin flew and struck Annais.
The party surged forward, and Annais engaged four rukkator behind the window. The window’s bars made it difficult for her to strike them, and they easily jabbed through with spears.
Sam threw a grenado into the booth, which went off with a great noise. A second grenade, of aqua fortis, glanced the bars and shattered, but the splash was enough to kill one rukkator and demoralize the others. They fled deeper into the building.
The party slipped through the gap between the bars and counter and entered the gatehouse. They proceeded up a stairway into the room where the campfire had been earlier; presumably in response to the grenado’s report, the fire had been doused and the other adventurers departed.
They proceeded into the barbican. The doorknob was cold; Sam identified the effect as a location-based haunting, rather than the presence of an undead creature. Indeed, entering the barbican, they found the chains of the portcullis swaying and jangling, though there was no breeze.
The door out of the barbican, into the other side of the gatehouse, was locked. As Aida worked to unlock it, the door they had entered by began to creak shut. Annais and Brugo jumped to hold it open; they held it, but the force pressing it was great.
Aida got the other door open, and they passed through, allowing the first door to close.
Exploring the gatehouse, they found further scenes of horror. The officer’s quarters had been the site of a final picnic, the bedclothes spread on the ground and an empty wine bottle between two skeletons. They found a ballista counter-battery, the post deserted with nary a shot fired. An observation post overlooked a bridge beyond the gate, showing the many skeletons of those who had been trapped inside.
The barracks held no signs of tragedy, but some creature had gathered the mattresses together into a nest at the end of the aisle. The party did not investigate.
They checked the lower level and found a breach in the wall that could be used to exit on the inside of the gate. They were blocked in further exploration by a bright pink mushroom the size of a man which Annais identified as a shrieker, but of which she was uncertain of the powers.
Finally, they stepped onto a balcony on the inner face of the gatehouse. The cold spray of rushing water rose from below. A lamp sconce still burned. It showed that beyond the gatehouse, the bridge, which spanned the full width of the road, stretched over a chasm and into darkness. Beyond, the yellow illumination of the sconce showed that what they had taken for the far wall of the cavern was in fact a defensive wall around a small town, probably a trading post placed convenient to the surface.
Aida briefly felt a presence behind her. It was not visible to any of the senses possessed by the party.
They decided that, since the way ahead could bear an army, they must return to the barbican and try to raise the portcullis.
Inside, Sam readied holy water as the others stepped up in pairs to the winch mechanism.
Even as they began to turn the winch, Brugo was pulled away from it and tossed against the far wall by some poltergeist force.
Annais took his place. The room became icy cold, and Aida had a vision:
Calloway stood behind her, her sword drawn. “I gave an order, and I expect it to be followed. If you cannot do your commander’s bidding, I will replace you with someone who can.”
Aida’s hands slipped for a moment, and Annais could make no more progress. The portcullis began to ring as if with many fists beating against it. Aida recovered, and they heaved the winch back a few ratchets. Annais heard Sam say,
“You can’t do this. You’re mad, and I relieve you of duty. Stand down.”
Annais replied that she was not a soldier, and Sam couldn’t give her orders. Sam call out that he hadn’t said anything. The walls began to bleed.
Then Aida had another vision, not confabulated from her own mindscape but a projected memory of someone else:
She stood behind the portcullis, a bundle under one arm and beating the bars with another. A desperate crowd stood around her, clamoring to be let out. Discarded objects littered the road ahead, the spoor of other evacuees that had escaped before the lowering of the portcullis. A figure just beyond the portcullis held a bloody, slender sword. He turned and she saw that he was a Hellstalker, blood streaming from his temple and from a mouth that was twisted into a snarl. He stepped forward, looming over Aida, whose point of view must be dwarf-height. He reached out his hands, and she lifted the bundle, a baby, and passed it through the bars. Covering the baby with his cape, the Hellstalker took three steps away from the portcullis. Then a dwarf-make quarrel whistled through and plunged into the back of his head.
As the vision ended, the portcullis finished rising. Each pointed bottom of a vertical bar had a dwarf skeleton impaled on it, and they were screaming.
Sam drove a spike through the skull of each skeleton, killing it. The screams rang in their ears, but faded.
Nothing seemed to have been drawn by the noise. If the haunting still afflicted the barbican, it was now more alone than ever.
