Snippet #2063466

"Br'nard!" The Drakryvon called out to the clansman, but he was already out of earshot. "Ye dinna know what yer getting into..." she finished quietly.

General Aloysius and the Blades Captain met the shield maiden's ice blues, her gaze now filled with apprehension as she came to realize they must know something she did not.

"He doesn't know these ruins, does he?" David finally worked up the courage to ask.

"Only inasmuch as meself, I reckon, and this is the first I've been." Siv crossed her arms, her stare darkening at the two older men. "What about them?"

At last, the General heaved a sigh and opened his mouth to reply, but the Blades Captain cut him off. "We haven't been down here since last summer, when we rescued an excavation team from the orcs. They were afraid to return to the dig site, said they'd been hearing things."

"What kinds of things?" she asked, more insistently.

"Voices," the General continued. "Whispers carrying the ring of steel on strange tongues, beckoning, calling out to some unseen force."

Demons, she half-wondered, but something told her, and she could tell by the wary look in the Captain's eyes, he likely had at some point come to, and dismissed that very conclusion. What else could be down here, lurking in these ruins?

"Ma'am?" David's voice interrupted her thoughts.

Turning, she came face to face with the General, the reflection of her torch flame flickering in his eyes as he leaned toward her.

"What say you?" Aloysius queried.

"We press on," Siv replied simply, placing a firm hand on the boy's shoulder, her tight-lipped expression thereafter belying her otherwise stoic demeanor.

Nodding, the General circled the men, one step at a time, tapping four of them on the shoulder and motioning for them to join the small company. “You, you, you and you, with me.” The mercenary sporting the wolf mask, and two soldiers stepped up next to David. Aloysius stopped directly in front of the Blades Captain, his expression stern, and gestured toward the mouth of the cave. "Guard the entrance and make sure no one gets in or out. If we don't return within the hour..."

The Blades Captain nodded his head, placing one hand on the hilt of his blade. "Understood, Sir."

...

The General, with the Drakrvon warrior close by, kept his charges at either flank as they advanced further into the ruins. The air was heavy, chilled with a dampness that bit to the bone and electrified as if a storm loomed above them, on the verge of unleashing a wicked torrent. The ever-present, otherworldly hum seemed to permeate his being with the eerie, lingering sense something was tracking their every move.

"Cultists," he murmured, eyeing the inscribed ebony altars erected throughout as if risen up from the ground itself.

"Nothing new," the shield maiden replied coolly.

"But, why here, why now?" the General half-asked, half-wondered aloud. Demon worshipers had become increasingly prevalent over the last decade, and he had grown used to cults cropping up across the empire at random intervals. "We haven't run into any factions this far east since the rebellion at Fairweather in '63. Even then, they were only using scare tactics to deter the Legion."

"I dinna know," she admitted, and several minutes passed in silence until at long last, he heard a low rumble and felt the ground stir faintly beneath his feet.

He and the Drakryvon exchanged glances.

"The ruins weren't doing this when we arrived," he said, almost stupidly, and instantly regretted his words when she narrowed her eyes at him.

"An' jes what do ye suppose they were doing?"

He opened his mouth to respond, but the sounds of a dying battle in the cavern ahead gave him pause as a shriek of agony echoed in the gloom ahead. Then, everything grew silent, and the General could just make out words spoken in a gruff, male voice.

"Go back tae yer Master now, an' tell him Br'nard Even'star is coming tae settle an old debt."

The shield maiden stopped at the end of the tunnel beside the General, who signaled for his men to move forward, but a low rumble emanated from somewhere deep in the ground, and the men looked to each other anxiously as the floor began to quake beneath their feet.

Pressing back against the left side of the tunnel to steady herself, Siv leaned into the darkness and called out, “Br’nard!” But, the tremors grew stronger, and her shout was all but lost in the sound of crumbling rock and boulders crashing behind them.

“Move! Move! Move!” Aloysius suddenly hollered, shoving her forward as the others dashed out of the tunnel, struggling to maintain their balance.

Siv lost her grip on the torch, letting it clatter to the floor, and rolled onto her hands and knees. When the quaking stopped, the General secured his own footing and offered a hand to help her up, but she waved him away. As she started to get up, the ground gave one last shudder and stilled, causing her to stumble.

“Pesh!” Siv growled, reaching for the gloved hand still held out to her. Aloysius clamped his fingers around her arm and pulled her upright. “Thank ye,” she muttered hastily, and brushed the dirt from her clothing in a vain attempt to retain some sense of dignity.

Acknowledging her with a nod, the General cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Barbarian! Are you al—”

A deafening CRACK resounded in the air, and blinding light of irradiant blue flashed and dimmed, filling the cavern with a pale, ethereal glow spilling from the tunnels all around them.

Glancing back into the collapsed tunnel, Siv saw a crackling sheet of light that spanned the width of the tunnel, barring the way they had come.

David stepped toward the light.

“Be careful,” Aloysius cautioned.

The boy started to reach out with one hand, jerking back when the short, fine hairs on his head stood on end. “Gods! What is that?”

“It must be some sort of magical barrier,” Siv answered, briefly squinting at the light. “Don’t touch it.”

“Well, we aren’t going back that way,” the General said decidedly, and motioned for his men to follow him. “Fall in. We’d best search for another way out.”

Making her way across the cavern, the shield maiden spotted Br’nard’s silhouette against another barrier blocking his path from the other side. She broke into a jog to catch up and abruptly halted in her tracks when a loud voice suddenly boomed from above, echoing in the massive space, “Warning! Multiple security breaches. Contaminants loose in sectors one, two and four through seven. Active personnel please proceed to sector three to initiate purge. All others proceed to sector eight for immediate evacuation. Warning—”

…

“…Multiple security breaches…. Proceed to sector eight for… Warning...”

The voice, a clear, resonating female’s, boomed monotonously above Br’nard, speaking in another, foreign, guttural language and three unmistakably elvish dialects before repeating the first phrase without changing tone.

“…Active personnel please proceed to sector three to initiate purge. All others proceed to sector eight for immediate evacuation…”