Calder reaches for the axe, sensing a power pulsating from the weapon, eager to be wielded. He grips the handle and lifts it from the glow of the weapon’s rack. He glances around, anticipating a reckoning set by Makt and his ancient Gothi.
“How does it feel?” Aura whispers at his side.
“Light and deadly.”
The sounds of shifting stones make them both pause. Suddenly, the floor gives way beneath them. He and Aura plunge into the unknown.
He lands hard on the rough stone floor with an echoing thud.
Immediately, he seeks out Aura, who fell through a separate stone chute.
As he stands, Calder rubs his back, scanning the seemingly endless darkness.
“Aura!” He peers around the passage, unable to find her or her flames. “Aura!”
His stomach knots, and he quickly loses the ability to breathe.
Did Makt take her from him?
No!He grits.If Makt took her from me, he knows his end is near, for I will storm the Abyss and cleave him in half!
Somewhere in the faint recesses of his mind, he hears faint, familiar cackling.
Lights ignite along the corridor, illuminating a narrow passage. Calder moves through with resolute firmness, finding only dead ends.
He pauses at a crossroads when, at the end, he can see movement. “Aura?” Calder flies towards the activity but slows when the creature emits an inhuman noise.
Drauger.
To think it has been over twenty winters since he last faced off against these undead creatures with their necrotic flesh and soulless gaze.
In the War for Treland, he had the Drengr and Timber armies, along with great warriors like Sigvid, Slode, and Kar at his side. Wielding Makt’s axe, he cuts down the few drauger emerging seemingly from the stone itself.
Damn this thing is light.He remarks about the God of Power’s weapon.
More converge as he rounds the next corner. Calder slices through the first drauger, allowing his ice spikes to shoot from the walls and spear the rest. He climbs over the undead bodies dressed in tattered clothing to find his next turn, which leads to yet another dead end.
“I do not have time for this!” Clader thrusts his hands against the wall, freezing all the remaining drauger in their unsteady movements. He punches each of them, shattering their rotten flesh at his feet. Hisseidrfrost flows from his hands until he reaches the next corner, and further movement propels him forward.
He barrels down the remaining corridor, swearing around each corner despite the cold death he leaves in his wake.
“Aura!” Her name reverberates off the stone walls like a summons from the beyond.
I swear to all the gods I will bleed the pantheon dry if harm befalls her.
His last junction thrusts him into an oval-shaped ring filled with sand and gravel. Several other passages converge in the area illuminated by the eerieseidrlight. Cautiously, he sweeps his feet across the surface of the sand, expecting…
More drauger burst from the ground, crawling onto the sand. Their grunts and wails, meant to taunt, do nothing but enrage the Iss Drengr as he easily faces off against fifty undead.
Is this all you can throw at me, Makt?
“Calder!” Aura bolts out of the opposite gate. Her flames condensed into one violet-colored creature roughly the size of a fat cat bouncing at her side.
His heart resumes its rhythm in his chest at the sight of her dark auburn curls bobbing gracefully along her shoulders.
“Stay back!” Calder lifts his hands, and ice spikes erupt from the floor, impaling most of the horde. Using Makt’s axe, he cuts through the remaining drauger like butter.
More undead rise from the ground and pour out through the other gates.
