Vargr was the first to notice the frost. As he knelt over the trapdoor and examined it, he saw the white rime of frost that laced the edges of the protruding iron handle, the solid hinges. The heavy wooden boards were worn but intact, yet all could plainly feel the biting, penetrating cold that emanated from the cellar below. Even the torch seemed to offer little succor from the wintery air that seeped up from the darkness beneath them. As all contemplated the trap door, each felt the weight of the silence, the cold, that hung over the tower like a grim shawl of death. Their throats tightened with imminent danger, and the hairs on the backs of their necks raised in fear. When Avaricios made to whisper something to Vargr, the Wiskin jerked a finger to his lips, startling them all and urging them to silence. His ear was cocked towards the trap door, and a frown creased his brow.
A cold, hollow voice whispered out on the chill air, such that it almost seemed to form in the very air itself. Only Vargr heard it, and his eyes widened as the words drifted to him from the frozen darkness of the cellar below. The voice seemed to ask a question, though it was in the form of a single word; one that Vargr had never heard before: “Nyema?”
The very air of the room seemed to come to a standstill. The silence was absolute.
Vargr slowly turned to look up at the others, the whites of his eyes stark in his skull in the flickering shadows of the torchlight. When he spoke, it was in a whisper. “I heard a voice. There is someone down there.” He stared down at the closed portal, his voice even, but quiet. “Or something.”
The priest reached for the holy symbol that hung around his neck and balled it tightly in his fist. He began muttering rapid prayers under his breath, and Gorend drew his sword. “There is nothing alive down there,” the dwarf said, giving voice to the very fears that plagued their minds. Osric had gone completely pale, and his staff twisted in his white-knuckled grip. Vargr, seemingly in a daze, his eyes still on the trapdoor, slowly began unraveling a length of rope from his pack.
“What are you doing?” hissed Osric. Vargr looked up at the mage, a curious expression on his face.
“I'm going to open it.”
It took some convincing and much muffled cursing and fussing, but after a few tense minutes all were in position. Vargr and Osric both stood around the back of the tower, their boots squelching in the muddy terrain as they held the rope at the ready. The rope had been fed through a gap in the masonry and anchored on a wooden beam then carefully tied to the handle of the trapdoor. With any luck, a short, sharp tug would be enough to yank the trapdoor open. Meanwhile, outside the door Gorend and Avaricios stood by, the priest with his holy symbol brought to bear and the dwarf with a small steel mirror.
Gorend figured the mirror would allow them to see whatever emerged without exposing themselves as they stood off to one side and watched through the reflection. “Plus,” Gorend had mused, “if a pack of vampires come crawling out, I'll angle the sun inside and burn the bastards.” This prospect had seemed to amuse the dwarf greatly while the others blanched.
While each harbored various degrees of trepidation regarding this plan, all agreed that, ultimately, they had come here for challenge, for an adventure. Why shirk away from the first one that presented itself?
“Besides,” Osric added, “for all we know this trapdoor will offer us a direct entrance into the Halls, bypassing the need for a fifteen-hundred-foot climb on the wet switchbacks entirely.” This was a popular argument among the heights-averse dwarf and the somewhat portly priest, who quickly relented any lingering misgivings.
While this transpired, Vargr had set about his machinations with an almost unsettling degree of precision and focus. It seemed to the others that he oscillated between paranoia and recklessness, and his logic wasn't always easy to pin down. The simple answer, it seemed to Gorend, was that the human psyche was fickle and prone to strange whims, and once those fancies got hold, they couldn't be easily shed. The dwarf actually didn't mind this—he was always known as impatient around his old clansmen, and surely fit more soundly with the pace of humans than his fellow kin. It was one of several reasons why he had been given the mantle of Blackhood and exiled; but that was his past, and his alone. What time was there for navel-gazing and self-pity? Adventure called, and its blissful tensions and conflicts were a balm for the troubled mind. His palm sweated a little as he held the mirror, and his heart beat rapidly in his chest. He was afraid; and yet, if he had angled the mirror a little towards his own face, the reflection looking back at him would have been grinning.
The sound of the falls were near-deafening at the men’s backs. Their boots slid in the mud, and Vargr turned to look at Osric over his shoulder. The spray from the falls dampened their hair and beaded down their faces. Vargr nodded sharply, mouthing a single word over the rushing noise: Ready?
Osric nodded, and despite themselves both broke out into laughter. It was a pantomime of joy as their voices were lost in the spire of falling water behind them. Perhaps they had gone a little mad; but then, what adventurers weren't? Vargr gave the rope two preliminary tugs, feeling the slack rope become taut: once, twice. It was the signal, and the pair near the door readied themselves. Without a further moment’s delay, Osric and Vargr pulled with all their strength, and the trapdoor burst open.
Gorend and Avaricios felt it before they saw it. A gust of bone-chilling air roared out of the open doorway, and Gorend saw the steel mirror fog in his hand, and white crystals of frost spiderwebbed the edges. He cursed and jerked his hand back, shoving his icy fingers into his armpit and furiously scrubbing the mirror on the front of his tunic, trying to clear it. Within, a human-like breath was heard, slowly drawing in, then out. Gorend desperately tried to clear the mirror’s surface, and finally fumbled to get it in place. When he looked in the reflection into the tower, he saw that it was empty.
Before he had time to report this to Avaricios, the entire party heard a voice. It was raspy and grim as the grave, heavy with sorrow and withered life.
“Setites! Have you come for more?”
Avaricios had an immediate, unerring instinct that what addressed them was an extremely powerful unliving thing, something unholy. Neither of the two dared look inside, and they both backed a few steps away from the open door. The voice seemed to be enraged, bellowing its hollow, rasping cries.
“You have taken enough from me already! I will destroy you all, blasphemous Setites!”
A tense moment passed, the mere seconds stretching into eternities. Vargr stepped forward, pressing his face close to a gap in the wall of the tower, and called out to the spirit within.
“We have no allegiance with the slithering Setites; we come to offer our aid!”
Osric stared at the Wiskin in shock. Vargr glanced over his shoulder at the mage and gave a shrug, an impish spark in his eye.
“Who speaks? Where are you?” As the voice roared once more, timbers could be heard crashing around the tower as the spirit seemed to be searching for the source of Vargr’s voice. “Show yourself, coward!”
“I, uh... I am like yourself, a spirit of benevolence. I have come to free you of your pain!”
As Vargr called out these words, Osric clapped a hand to his forehead and on the other side of the tower Gorend and Avaricios exchanged a horrified look.
The ghostly voice within took on a more somber tone. “I wish to be with my love Nyema. She was taken from me by those cursed priests.”
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“Where can we find her? We will find her and bring her to you, if we can. Will that bring you peace?”
“They took her. I know not where.”
Osric crept up to the wall beside Vargr and chimed in. “Does she lie within the Halls of Arden Vul?”
The being within seemed to shift, as if narrowing in on the second speaker. “Who speaks? Enter.”
“I fear to look upon your countenance, O great one!” Osric’s voice trembled slightly as he felt its attention on him.
The spirit seemed to subside momentarily, and a melancholy tone started seeping back into its words. “Please... Find my lost love. Kill those who took her—”
The spirit’s words halted abruptly when a dwarf stepped into view.
Gorend Blackhood, the clanless, beardless dwarf stood at the threshold of the tower, silhouetted by the afternoon sun, his shadow long as it stretched before him into the dark space within. His shield was on his arm and his sword was in his hand, though he thought better than to brandish it openly. Yet.
The dwarf spoke, his voice clear and loud. “I am Gorend of the dwarven people. I worship no Setite’s god, or any other human gods for that matter. What is your name, and what is your trouble?”
Inside the tower, Gorend saw a chilling vision. He saw the back of a ghostly figure floating several feet off the rubble-strewn floor in the center of the tower, its shoulders hunched with grief, its back heaving with sadness. Its nature was phantasmal, its shape blurring and flickering as the wan flame of a guttering candle. As it turned towards him, Gorend saw that it had a human figure. Its features—such as they could be discerned— were that of an Archontean man of antiquity, and its robes were of a bygone era. But its eyes were what seized Gorend by the throat, and as its gaze fixed upon his, he found himself staring into two black pits.
It loomed towards him, its vast billowing robes rising like the spread wings of an eagle behind him, and its desolate voice emerged. “My name is Yrtol. And you, dwarf... for you, I hunger so much...” The specter struck in a flash of motion. Yrtol raced at Gorend with skeletal teeth bared, its form seeming to billow outward, multiplying its size as it flew forward to engulf him utterly. A clawed hand shot out of its robe straight at him, and the dwarf felt a blast of cold wash over him like a pail of ice water.
Yrtol emitted a high, wailing sound as it seemed to collide with an invisible barrier. The specter jerked its claw back in surprise, and then it strained once more trying to reach the petrified dwarf. It seemed as if, like a hound on its chain, Yrtol was restricted to a very narrow radius, and anything beyond the threshold of the tower was out of his reach. Resentfully, coals of hatred burning in its blackened sockets, the specter retreated once more into the shadows of the ruin.
Gorend’s eyes narrowed. “Calm yourself, spirit; I am no easy meat. You hunger, but is it my life you hunger for? Or is it hunger for the return of your Nyema? Which would give you greater pleasure?”
The spirit seemed to wane, its wrath diminishing. “Nyema... My Nyema...”
“Then tell me what happened and we will see what we can do. Perhaps we can retrieve her for you.”
“The priests came, so long ago... They came, and they took her from me! To where, I know not... They cursed me to this existence.” Yrtol released a sigh, deep and weary, carrying with it the grief of unknown ages. “I desire only rest... I am so... Tired.” His head drooped, his phantom shoulders sagged.
“But so... Hungry.” The black pits locked on the dwarf once more and in a flash the specter flew at him, gnashing its teeth in rage as the edge of its boundary held it back.
He knew the monster would not be able to reach him, but still Gorend felt a knot of terror constrict in his chest at the sight of Yrtol’s fury. He forced his voice to remain composed, his old gruffness returning like a shield. “Who was this Nyema? Did you know her in life? If so, I have ill news for you: everyone you know has been dead for a very long time.”
Avaricios winced over Gorend’s shoulder, and Vargr and Osric, who were listening on the opposite side of the tower with their ears pressed against a gap in the masonry, both inwardly cringed at the dwarf’s coarseness.
Alas, Yrtol seemed unphased by Gorend’s bedside manner. “We were married,” was all he said, lost in the grief of memory as he lapsed into silence.
“Did you live in Arden Vul?” the dwarf pressed.
“Yes... I... I remember that name...”
“Yrtol,” came Vargr’s voice from the other side of the tower. “Yrtol, my tragic fellow: if we were to find Nyema, do you have a token, or a ring perhaps, that we can show her to prove you sent us?”
Gorend grinned. The Wiskin had no shortage of nerve.
The ghost whipped around to face the direction of the disembodied voice through the wall, and his voice rose in anger. “Fool! She is dead—long, long ago, for many centuries. What the priests must have done to her... But her remains—her remains are all that I desire. Find them and bring them back to me!”
“Do you know of anything that might help us identify her remains?” asked Gorend. “We plan to go into the city of Arden Vul and explore the dungeons beneath it, and we may very well find the Setite temple to which she was taken.”
“She wore a pendant of lapis lazuli that I myself carved for her. Find that, and you will know you have found her.”
“And if, gods forbid, she is in a similar state of unlife as yourself,” Vargr ventured, “do you have anything we can show her to prove we are sent on your behalf?”
The spirit sighed once more, a gust of cold air emanating forth from his spectral form. “I have nothing anymore. Nothing but this unending hunger...”
“Very well,” Vargr said. “We shall return, and with luck we will bring you what you seek.”
“I thank you...” As Yrtol spoke these last words, Gorend and Avaricios—who peered over the dwarf’s head—both saw the spirit begin to dissipate, and his misty form swirled in the dark of the tower before slithering silently down into the trapdoor, once more into the ancient blackness below.
After a few moments of silence, Vargr and Osric nodded to one another and released the rope, causing the door to the cellar to drop shut with a heavy thud. Dust swirled in the old tower, and the party reconvened at the threshold, looking into the dim interior. All seemed hesitant to set foot inside once more.
“Perhaps it would be best if we gave this cursed place a wide berth,” the cleric murmured. “At least until we find Nyema’s remains.” Osric and Gorend nodded in agreement, but Vargr scratched his blonde beard.
“I would agree, except... I would quite like my rope back.”
The others shook their heads at the Wiskin and moved away from the tower, making their way back to the road and looking up at the switchbacks ahead of them. They would need to find a way up, and quickly.
Vargr slipped inside the tower. A penetrating cold still clung to the room, a ghost of a ghost. The trapdoor sat as it had before, unnerving in its mundanity. He stooped and untied the knots on the handle, moving carefully and silently, alert to the smallest sound from below. None were forthcoming, and he soon had the rope coiled once more in his pack. Withdrawing a piece of chalk, he left a mark in the secret cant of thieves. It was a warning to those of his brotherhood who might come after: Dead inside, beware. V. The symbols were known only to those of his shadowy trade, and he glanced over his shoulder to be sure that none of his companions saw his marks. Though they would not be able to read them, Vargr was cautious—in this respect, at least.
When his work was completed he dusted his hands on his breeches, hiked up his pack, and stepped out into the afternoon sun to join his companions.
They had a cliff to climb.
