The Descent to Madness (23 page)

             
As he walked, a white figure dashed passed. He turned his head, watching, as the majestic stag stood, regarding him, huge and imposing, antlers silhouetted against the moons that hung low and gibbous in the night sky. Opening his soul, just slightly, he glimpsed the essence of the stag and stood awestruck, riveted, rooted to the spot by the fierce pride and confidence that blasted out from the creature in waves, before it turned and galloped off into the dark forest.

             
Shaking his head free of the remnants of the contact, he continued his journey, tracing an unknowable yet strangely familiar path along the winding ravines, stepping carefully over roots that sought to trip him up, edging along perilous cliff-faces, avoiding the prowling wolves he could feel intruding on the edge of his consciousness.

             
Once or twice, he felt that he was being followed, turning, hoping to catch a glimpse of his pursuer, but no-one was ever there. Still the feeling nagged him, till at last he looked up, spying a raven, huge, dark, with grey streaks in its plumage, observing him with beady, black eyes as it sat patiently on a thick branch.

             
Curious, he reached out with a thought to see what this creature wanted, but its mind was a wall of blankness, unreadable. Frowning, he began to press slightly harder, eager to learn what it was shielding, but abruptly, as though knowing what he was attempting, it flew off, away from his sight, fading from his mind as it did.

             
Staring into the night sky where it had vanished, Stone shrugged and, once again, began to push on. No sooner did he than he felt it land once again high in the trees, once again watching him with black, judging eyes. He pushed it from his mind and carried on.

             
Soon he happened upon a river running rough and wild through the dark ravine and began to follow it upstream to its source, before coming across a steep cliff, the river descending its flanks in a massive waterfall that tumbled and crashed, rocks forming natural stepping stones at its base. He knew, somehow, that what he was seeking lay behind that veil of water.

             
He walked up to the wall of cascading river, bare feet sure on the slippery rocks, unable to see through the dark, foamy torrent. He went to take a deep breath, then smiled, remembering he didn’t need to, before walking forwards into the flow, staggering under its might. Pressing on, he kept walking through the water, further and further, the cold feeling like ice in his lungs, but other than that causing him no difficulty in breathing. Further he walked, frowning now, sure that he must have passed through the stream many feet back, before, suddenly, the ground disappeared beneath his feet.

             
He fell, leaving his stomach behind, a curious pressure building between his ears, like the headache before a thunderstorm. As he plummeted through the darkness, flailing, blind, the taste of tin filled his mouth and, with a booming clap, his vision whited out and he was no more.

             
Outside, perched high on the steep cliff-face, the Raven cawed, satisfied with what it had seen, and took off into the moonlit sky.

Chapter Nine:

At Arnoon’s beckoning Neroo shuffled forwards on his belly, the dry scrub of the southern plains itchy and scratchy on his skin, before peering into the darkness and shuddering at the sight that lay spread before him.

             
For three days they had tracked southwards, following little-known routes and keeping out of sight to make sure that they would not be spotted when they finally found their prey. The mood had been light, eager, the Youngbloods ready for action, for many of them this being their first taste of repulsing Steppes-Barbarians, of defending their lands.

             
But now, on the evening of the third night, the mood was anything but excited, as icy fingers of fear gnawed at the bellies of each and every young hunter.

             
Their prey, it had turned out, was the predator. The hunter, now the hunted.

             
Spread out across the flat grasslands in front of then, Arnoon and Neroo watched with dread the flickering torch-lights of sentries that patrolled the vast and well equipped camp of an army ready for conquest. A quick count of the number of tents and horses gave Arnoon an estimate of their number; two-hundred men. More than the entire population of their village.

             
With a gulp, Neroo turned to Arnoon, fear in his eyes.

             
“What do we do?” he whispered, cautious, for the still air of the southern plains was known to be treacherous and carry your voice when you least wanted it to. “This army is like nothing I’ve ever seen; it will take the might of all the villages of the Plains-People to even approach their numbers!”

             
The older Youngblood was silent for a moment, eyes narrowed as he watched, calculating.

             
“We do as we’ve been asked. We observe.” He grinned momentarily as a thought crossed his mind, amusing him. “But perhaps we can do more than that.”

             
Confusion written on his face, Neroo followed his leader as they made their way silently and stealthy back to the hidden troupe.

***

How long he’d been falling he didn’t know, for time had little meaning in this place with its absence of light and noise, but eventually his patience was rewarded with the slap of flesh on stone and the driving of all breath from his body. Well, at least he had a body again.

Things were looking up.

              Senses restored, he rose, cracking his head painfully on hard rock that hung low above him. He reached around in the darkness as his eyes slowly grew accustomed to the gloom; he was in some kind of cave or tunnel, low, cramped, naturally formed by the looks of the walls. The smell of damp and minerals filled his nose, bringing to mind his spiritual excursions into the depths of the earth; he was far underground.

             
Looking about, he seemed confused for a moment; something felt off about the looks of his surroundings, not quite right. Frowning, it clicked suddenly as he squinted into the gloom; there was no natural light at all. He shouldn’t be seeing anything, but instead, he could see everything in greyscale, giving him at least some modicum of sight, even in the pitch-blackness of the depths of the earth. Night-vision. Useful.

             
A sudden noise distracted him, a clacking like stone-on-stone that rebounded off the tunnel walls. He span in the direction it came from.

             
“Anyone there?” His own voice answered him as it bounced back off the rock.

             
Another clattering of stones and he set off in that direction, hunched low to avoid banging his head, keen ears straining, following each shuffling noise and banging of rock he heard up ahead.

             
He reached an intersection, the tunnel splitting into four, heading in different directions. He stopped, listening. A knocking noise came from one tunnel, so he went that way, chasing its source. He came to another fork and the knocking drew him on again, louder, getting closer this time.

             
Ahead, in the gloom, the air grew infinitesimally lighter and he could feel a cool breeze, so he hurried on.

             
Suddenly, he placed one foot down, feeling empty air beneath it and leapt backwards, hands grasping the wall on either side to stop him from falling. Squinting, his eyes straining in the dim subterranean dark, he looked down, spying a vast, vertiginous drop that plummeted away hundreds of feet to a rushing underground river festooned with lethal looking stony stalagmites.

             
The knocking noise stopped, but a rustle of flesh on stone betrayed its source, and, looking across the chasm, Stone recoiled in horror as he spied the creature.

             
Clinging to the steep cliff-face like some grey, emaciated spider, the earth elemental gazed over at him with cold, remorseless eyes. With one stony knuckle it rapped on the rocks, the sound the same beckoning knocking noise that he’d so blindly followed almost to his death. It grinned, showing razor teeth for the tearing and ripping of flesh.

             
Stone growled. Gentle, he said. Life-giving, he said. The echoes of Wrynn’s description of the earth spirits resounded mockingly in his ears; obviously not all such spirits were cast of the same mold.

             
Revenge on his mind, Stone made to employ the Earth-Tap, to reach into the vastness of the earth’s elemental power to fuel his muscles, but nothing was giving, a distinct lack of fresh strength apparent. He remembered; he was in their realm now, they would not aid him.

             
Fine. We’ll do it the old fashioned way.

             
With a mighty leap fuelled entirely by his own body’s muscles, he leapt the vast canyon, to the terrified shriek of the Knocker. It was the predator in this realm, not the prey, and it didn’t know how to react to this unexpected wave of fear that flooded its primitive mind.

             
Stone smashed into the wall, fingertips digging into the rock with his unnatural strength, helping him to cling to the cliff-face with all the aplomb of the creature he hunted.

             
With a cry of dismay, the spirit made to scuttle away, but one mighty outstretched hand grasped about its ankle and held it firmly in place. Heaving, muscles bunched in mighty effort, Stone swung the beast like a toy to smash again and again into the unyielding cliff-face until, finally, it stopped twitching and hung lifeless and still.

             
With relish, Stone let go of the Knocker, watching it tumble and spin as it fell, bashing against the rocks, but, just before it reached the raging torrent below, the spirit lashed out with one scrawny arm, grasping an outcrop and arresting its fall, spinning about to cling once more to the cliff-face.

             
From a hundred feet below it looked up at Stone, dark, malevolent eyes filled with hate, razor-lined mouth spitting as it clambered off to hide, to lick its wounds before resuming its hunt once more, this time resolving to tempt easier prey.

             
Stone raised an eyebrow, amused and frustrated at the same time. Spirits were hard to kill, it seemed.

             
A faint tremor through the cliff-face onto which he held gave him pause, interrupting his train of thought. Had he just imagined it? No, there it was again, the very rock vibrating, harder and harder, rocking back and forth like a tree in hurricane winds, till he was scrabbling, struggling for grip, his fingers gouged into the stone but the face crumbling away beneath his grip.

             
With a cry equal parts fear and frustration, he fell away, plummeting once more into the depths, the lethal, sharp stalagmites and gushing river racing up to meet him as the wind whistled past his ears, but, just before impact, darkness enveloped him, hard, sharp, rough, smashing the wind out of him and violently halting his descent.

Shaken to his core by the force of the collision, he feared for broken bones, but something told him that his body could endure more than a fall these days. That would soon be put to the test.

The rocks he’d found himself landing on began curling in on him with a deafening rumble, surrounding him on all sides. Frantically, he sprang up despite the ache in his bones and ran, trying to sprint up one of the giant slivers of rock even as it rose up like a drawbridge, feet sliding, bare fingers scrabbling, but just as he was on the cusp of freedom, ready to leap to safety, the tips of all the giant spurs closed about him in unison, pinning him precisely, crushing him in their vice-like grip as they imprisoned him in an igneous cage, a metamorphic jail. Finally, the creaking rumble of stone grinding on stone subsided and the rocks were still.

             
Pinned in place, Stone tested his strength, pushing against the rough granite that pinned him about his waist and stretched off fifty feet in all directions. In a futile attempt at escape, he strained with all his not-inconsiderable might, but to no avail; he could struggle this way a million years and the spurs that clasped him wouldn’t move an inch.

             
With a lurch, he left his stomach behind, below this time, as his prison rose higher and higher, fifty feet, a hundred, two hundred, past the spot he’d fought with the Knocker, up, up, before slowly coming to a halt.

The cage angled him about before a noise, the sound of the end of times and the destruction of the universe assaulted him, blasting his hearing into oblivion.

              Long moments passed before he recovered, then the noise came again, quieter this time, if such a term could be applied to such volume of sound. His ears bled from eardrums that threatened to burst with the pressure and he could feel reserves of nutrients and energy being called upon, being shuttled about his body, as his ears strove to adapt with unprecedented speed to this fresh assault.