The Ghost's Crusade

XII: Tiernan

By Akkali's counting they were eight hours and six different tunnel branches into their search for the origins of the homunculi. Tiernan had to take her word for it; he lost all bearings the third time they had backtracked up a tunnel and down another identical branch after reaching a collapse. Everything looked, felt, and smelled exactly the same. The air didn't move and their footsteps echoed so much it was almost useless to try and listen for any other signs of activity, much less hope to sneak up on anything that might be ahead of them.

He hated caves—or any spaces without dirt, trees, and a sky, really. There was something about being surrounded on all sides by stone with no visible escape that made his chest tight and his skin prickle with a cold feeling not caused by the corpse-like temperature. The cellar where his mother had hidden him as a boy had been made of stone, thick ruddy-colored shale shot through with veins of smooth gray limestone... It hadn't been strong enough to keep the foul evil that had destroyed his village at bay, though. Nothing had.

Shaking his head to ward off the memories he realized that the air around them was damp. He should have been able to hear some sort of stream for the amount of water he was smelling in the air, but aside from his and Drystan's footsteps the tunnel was silent. Akkali's footfalls were barely noticeable, only becoming pronounced when she kicked at some patch of stone rubble or another in frustration at getting nowhere in their search. Going by how frequently she was starting to do it her temper was becoming more foul with each footstep.

He pushed on the back of Drystan's shoulder and the man nodded that he knew. Ahead of them Akkali followed a sharp left-handed turn in the tunnel, then let out an exasperated groan at whatever she saw there.

They emerged into a massive cavern of unnaturally smoothed sandstone, the boundaries of which couldn't be reached by the light of their hexed rock. A half dozen feet in front of Akkali flowed a swift river of clear water that made absolutely no sound at all. In fact, as he stepped forward and planted his heels on the stone, his heavy footfall struck without a sound. He took another rock out of the satchel at his back and dropped it on the ground; again, it made no sound when it skittered along the cavern floor. Picking it up again, he slung it side-armed into the darkness and waited to hear something echo back. Nothing came.

“Concealment hex,” he said in a deliberately low tone so only Drystan and Akkali could hear him. “An impractically massive one.”

The Inferi nodded slowly, still staring at the silent river in front of them in curiosity. “It must have taken weeks to construct.”

Across the river was a man not much older than Tiernan himself, stooped forward slightly by something other than age, taking stock of a misshapen heap across from an array of cots and seemingly whimsically-placed flasks, vials, bottles, and distillation apparatuses. There were bodies in several of the cots, but none of them looked alive. He couldn't be sure unless he checked them for a pulse however, but once he realized exactly what the man was cataloging so fervently he doubted that any of them still breathed.

The heap was comprised of body parts, arranged from left to right in a grotesque order beginning with hands and feet and ending with severed heads. From the greasy puddle surrounding the heaps they were weeks, if not months old, and for once he was glad there was a concealment hex in place keeping the stench obscured.

“Well this can't be good,” sighed Tiernan, wondering if his voice too was silenced like his footsteps. He caught the sardonic chuff from Akkali and knew that she, at least, had heard him. “Odds are we'll die fording the river to get at that man.”

“Shoot him,” said Akkali impatiently, stabbing her finger towards the shuffling figure with a wrinkled nose and a sneer. “He's moving at a snail's pace. Just put an arrow in that bow and drop him.”