“If we are concerned about certain arcane forces feeling for familiar magic, you might want to put that away before we descend.”
“Good point. I remember the witches doing this…” Amma lifted her staff overhead, awkwardly sliding it down her back as if sheathing it in a scabbard that wasn’t there, and then it vanished. “Neat!”
Damien wondered if everything he thought he knew about arcana was wrong, but only for a moment. He gestured for the imp still digging nails into the rock’s edge and marveling at the massive hole below. “Quaz, can you give us some light?”
The imp blinked his catlike eyes, and then Damien was blinded by a daunting, green glow. When Quaz tipped his head into the hole, the way down was illuminated, and when he blinked again, the light blinked along with him. It wasn’t exactly Kaz’s tail, but it would do.
Damien scooped Quaz up, Vanders leaping away and onto Amma, and sat the imp on his shoulder. “Keep looking forward,” he instructed as the creature nuzzled his chin, though his fur wassoft and, admittedly, a bit of a comfort.
With each step downward, queasiness built in Damien’s gut. There was no wall to hug, a drop on either side of the stairs falling away into nothing. Quaz’s eyes illuminated the steps well enough, and when they reached the bottom, the cavern opened up before them.
Massive, even when only illuminated in spots by the green glow at Damien’s shoulder, the ground was pocked with pools of water, and the stagnant air was cold and clammy. Somewhere far off there was a rhythmic beating, perhaps the sound of the sea.
Amma pressed into Damien’s side, and there was a glint as she unsheathed her dagger.
“Feeling combative?”
“Aren’t you?”
Damien smirked and pulled out his own. Metal in hand, both crept deeper into the cave, and Damien almost didn’t notice as the walls changed until they were no longer surrounded by dark, wet stone. Thousands of bones were stacked along every surface, femurs in neat columns, lumbar joints in pyramids, skulls in rows with their jaws placed atop them like crowns. Catacombs were meant to be burial grounds, but this was more like a very morbid work of art.
“You don’t think they’ll come alive, do you?” Amma whispered in the dark, and then she gasped. “Oh, okay, bye, Vanders.”
“Even if there is a necromancer down here, these bodies would have quite the time putting themselves back together. We could probably run out if necessary.” The trepidation in Damien’s belly had shifted into all-out dread. Whatever way these bones sought to cobble themselves together would have been preferable to the pit that he knew waited for them. “I should say, Amma, though I hate to, I am…concerned.”
“Do you feel worse than before?” She touched his arm lightly in that way only she could, somehow quelling everything awful, if just for a moment.
He nodded. “This is not a word I use lightly, but I think I may be exceptionally weak here.”
Amma gave him a squeeze. “Wait here. I’ll go ahead, throw in the pendant—”
“No, no.” He straightened. “You’re not doing this alone. I just want to be honest.”
“You’ll be all right,” she said, insistence to her voice. “I’ll protect you.”
The horribleness that had settled on him lifted then, just enough so that Damien could continue on.
Forward deeper still, the wide corridor lined with dismantled skeletons led to an archway built from more of the same, beautiful in its design, but grim in its existence. It was wide and tall, as if it were meant for moving through by monsters and not men. Beyond, there was a glow, and Damien tapped Quaz on the head, the imp’s eyes going out.
Through the archway lay a ledge. To either side were many stairs curling downward along the cavern walls to meet at least forty feet below in a wide, open space that marked the end of the catacombs. There had been no other living beings on their descent, but here they finally found them, an assortment of robed figures circling the space below as it pulsed with a glowing aura. It wasn’t E’nloc yet, Damien knew, but It was coming.
From where they stood, they could throw in the pendant and never have to approach it, a lucky thing considering how ill he felt, but they would have to wait, so Damien and Amma got down on their stomachs right at the ledge. Quaz hunkered beside them, tail swiping through the air. Below, three of the figures stepped away from the others and one pulled back his hood. Amma brought her hand over her mouth, but her eyesfilled with the shock she’d silenced in her voice.
“Archibald,” she finally said. “That’s the King of Eiren.”
The queasy nervousness balled itself up in Damien’s stomach to rise like bile into his throat. Archibald, the ruler of the realm that opposed his very existence, the divine mage who had dared imprison his father, the enemy he had sworn to defeat, was standing just there, and, darkness, he looked so human, a full beard, age to his skin, just a man. He stood so small and so far below them, effortless to pick off.
Of course, Damien didn’t want him dead, not yet—he was a descendant of a dominion with power passed down and honed over decades that allowed him to imprison demons, the only being capable of freeing his father. But to come across him outside of Eirengaard nearly drove the noxscura right out of Damien’s skin.
“He must be here to destroy it,” hissed Damien, torn at the idea. That was what Damien wanted as well, and it was strange to be allied with an enemy. He glanced at Amma—well, perhaps not that strange.
“Kaspar Solonedy,” called Archibald, his voice rising up through the tall cavern, echoing back on itself as the man at his side dropped to a knee and pulled back his own hood, “your service to the realm and loyalty to the crown have never wavered. As a chosen one, we now ask for this last sacrifice to bring about the darkness so that we may all finally step into the light.”
“That’s Erik’s brother,” Amma whispered.
Kaspar exposed his forearm in offering toward the king. The third man came to stand between them, a blade in his hand, and ran it down Kaspar’s skin, bright red pouring out as he hissed in pain.
Weakling, thought Damien, and then his thoughts went darker. “Those bastards are doing fucking bloodcraft,” hegrowled. “Aren’t they supposed to be holy men of Osurehm?”
