Kaim wasn’t ever sure of his brother Andrel’s schemes. Yet here he was again following Andrel into the familiar darkness of the crypts and thinking to himself that this would be like any other excursion; but he knew this wouldn’t be the same.
His brother had obtained an ancient text detailing hidden passages into the ruins that their town had been built over. Miles of catacombs and long since buried ritual sites to dark gods and of troves of treasure just waiting to be found. These things were common in this age of adventurers and legend; but after reading through the text his brother had changed. Now Andrel’s eyes were set deep into his skull, dark circles framed them and he began to ramble about dark promises in the night.
“W-we’ll be rich Kaim, no longer hungry and waiting for starvation to claim us” Andrel’s voice was shaky and the torch he held flickered as he walked into the encroaching darkness. The tome held firmly in his hand as he looked down occasionally to make sure they were going in the right direction. Kaim would patiently listen. Knowing that ahead anything was possible. Since leaving the main passages the darkness had felt alive with danger and madness. “A thousand lifetimes of wealth a-and glory, these things will be ours” Andrel was becoming more excited with each turn they took.
“Fallsheim has had a very storied past, far more grand than we could have imagined back in the orphanage Kaim” Andrel would turn his ghostly gaze back on Kaim, his smile was uneasy but it still stretched across his face in a grim reminder of the thoughts possessing him.
Kaim would shudder “we make our living exploring this †˜storied’ past you talk about Andrel, there is no need to explain this to me, let’s just get this unlimited treasure you speak of and depart these halls of rock and bone” Andrel would give his younger brother a look of distaste before looking ahead and making another unannounced turn down another hallway, the walls dripping with slime and whatever else had been caked on after centuries of decay took hold and begun its grim work.
Stopping at a heavy set door, the wood was reinforced with plated iron, virtually indestructible to any attack. Andrel would wait for his cautious brother to catch up. Once Kaim was inside the torches illumination Andrel would consult his heavy tome and hold out a hand. Andrel could feel eddies of power vibrate the air around his fingertips. Concentrating Andrel would begin speaking words that Kaim had never heard him speak before. All around them the air would seem to pull toward the door in a slight thump that made their ears pop, as a series of metallic clicks tumbled down the length of the door.
An eerie creak would accompany the door as it slide inward. The room beyond was as dark as the rest of the catacombs; a thin film of disturbed dust would float within the flames illumination and vanish into the darkness at its edge. Without fear Andrel would take a step inside the room, the light seeming to crawl away from Kaim as he was slowly cast into the darkness of the hall.
Drawing a short sword he kept for emergencies Kaim would follow his brother into the room. Inside along every wall laid bookcases stacked to bursting with brittle decaying tomes. The always present smell of the dead, along with molding paper and damp leather filled Kaim’s nostrils until he gagged. Several tables lay scattered about the room. Alchemical circles drawn on scraps of paper wrapped around empty vials. It didn’t take an expert to deduce this to be a research library, magically sealed to boot. “If our treasure is here then I am sadly disappointed to tell you Andrel, this is all junk.” Letting out a slow sigh Kaim would sheath his sword. “A room sealed by some paranoid scribe that had too much of his own concoctions, I wouldn’t” Kaim was interrupted by his brother’s hand coming up to silence him. In hushed tones he would vehemently spit through closed teeth “shut up you fool…do you hear that?”
Beyond the reach of the firelight they could hear stirring in the darkness; the rattle of something thin and hollow and the occasional scrape of iron on stone. “By the gods…Undead bellow Fallsheim!” Kaim would explain as he drew his sword once more, taking out a bottle of liquid silver he would pour it across his weapon and speak a short blessing just as the first skeleton shambled into the light. Taking a step back Andrel would summon up another short phrase as fire licked from the torch to his hand.
The Creatures were clad in decaying armor. Some had leather breastplates strapped over their brittle bones. Others wore gauntlets of rusted iron and helms with long since wilted plums. Their eyes began to glimmer with an unholy light from within the darkness. Lunging at the first Kaim would send a strike across the breast of the first Skeleton, his blade biting into the bones and shattering them with a hiss as the silver cut through the enchantment holding the bones together. The next was slain with an upward swing from hip to shoulder sending the bones clattering to the floor in two pieces.
Andrel would speak the fire’s true name softly and cast a ball of flame into a group that shambled his way from a shadowed corner. The blast rocked the three skeletons into a bookcase which collapsed and burst into flame that would quickly brighten the room revealing four more of the undead behind the three fighting with Kaim.
Taking another of their attackers down with a vicious swing to the skeletons head; Kaim would spin around just as a dagger was thrust at his belly. The rusted metal bit into his leather jerkin and tore away as he pivoted to avoid the blade. A thin line of blood pooled across the shallow cut on his side just as his brother’s fireball illuminated his enemies. Breathing hard he would sweep the legs from one and slice through the arm and hips of the last in his nearest vicinity.
Andrel would call back the flame from the burning bookcase and draw his own sword, a thin rapier with enchanted stones in the hilt. “I am at your side Kaim let us deal with these abominations swiftly” with a few deft strikes Andrel would dispatch two of the remaining skeletons cutting them to pieces in a flourish. Kaim would send a kick that would shatter the spine of one skeleton and in a single movement he would bring his sword down across the other’s head with a brutal crunch.
* * *
The fight had taken only moment but Kaim felt as if they had fought for hours. Collapsing in a sturdy looking chair he would whip clean the bone dust that had collected along the edge of his blade and sheath it. His brother wasting no time was now wrapped in a collection of books much like the one he had brought with them into this damned place. Whipping away the sweat that collected at his brow Kaim would stand and approach his brother’s hunched form. “I think I’d like to hear one of these histories you have of Fallsheim now Andrel. There were undead in a sealed alchemical study, what was going on down here?” Kaim regretted his accusing tone as it left his lips but the danger of exploring these once harmless catacombs was now all too real to him.
Andrel’s voice was tired as he spoke, “There was once a group of men who believed there to be additional evils to the ones we know as the Three Great Evil’s; demons from the stars little brother. They were said to have obtained a weapon from these star faring monsters. A Weapon so powerful that it could bring any kingdom to its knees…that is our goal Kaim; The Weapon of the Ancients.” His brother’s sunken gaze was filled with a fire Kaim had never seen before. A determination to claim this ancient weapon of some crazed cult.
“These books detail its location, in a temple below us…It is almost ours” Andrel’s attention would begin to trail off as he closed the book solemnly. Kaim could not believe what he was hearing, they were down here fighting undead and who knows what else, in search of a weapon from the stars themselves? He would take a step back but stay within the Fire’s light. “Believe what you will about me little brother, but when our bellies are full and we sit in thrones you will look to me and know I was right in this venture…” turning away Andrel would take his torch and proceed out of the room with Kaim uneasily on his heels.
It didn’t take long for Kaim to speak up as they walked through the dark corridors and expansive empty rooms that made up the miles of underground catacombs and ruins. “what has happened to you Andrel, I’ve known you for my entire life and never have I seen you…like this”
Kaim idolized Andrel, ever since their days together in the orphanage Kaim had followed Andrel in all of his endeavors in hopes that he would not lose the one person he felt any since of family toward. It was Andrel that had adopted Kaim after the older boy had come of age and left the orphanage. Now Andrel was the furthest he had ever been from Kaim. A man possessed; and now this, talks of creatures in the stars.
Andrel let out a small laugh, yet no humor lingered within the short but eerie echo it created. “you have not seen me with purpose, if you were not my brother I’d have taken offense to that” opening the tome to explore its pages once more they would enter a wide room with the distinct lingering smell of rotting meat. Andrel’s steps slowed until his boot slashed in a puddle on the floor. Bringing the light down the puddle expanded across the floor to cover half of the large room. It was a lake of blood. Taking a soiled step back Andrel would grimace, waving the torch slowly around the room more gore made itself known as it crept into the light and back into the darkness with each movement he made.
Kaim would choke back vomit as he brought a gloved hand to his face. The room swam for a moment as his knees buckled. So much blood and meat, how many had died down here…what had killed them? The idea of something beyond mortal thought slithered across his mind in what could only be called a caress. For a moment he didn’t realize his brother was shouting at him as his focus came back.
“Run you fool!” Andrel screamed grabbing Kaim by the shoulder and spinning him on his heels. Behind him he could hear the moans of a hundred voices at once as something horrifying splashed behind them. Running to keep within the light of Andrel’s torch Kaim risked a look back only to see all available light swallowed by the dark. The fear set in as he felt their pursuer closing in. Calling flame to his hand once more Andrel would cast a fireball back at their heels and illuminate a thousand bodies writhing and groaning in anguish. Or so it appeared as the mass of flesh moved as one, eyes blinked in too many directions and mouths gapped in a maddening twisted silent scream.
The sight caused Kaim a momentary lapse in thinking that almost sent him to the rough stone floor, tears welled in his eyes as the fear began to overtake him. He felt sanity slip away into hysteria with each sound the monster made only confirming its relentless pursuit.
The fireball hit the creature with a loud explosion that shook the stones loose on the ceiling causing stones to fall and disappear into the mass. Several chunks of flesh fell in wet clumps as the fire cleansed the abomination, the flames illuminating the sweating flesh and gnashing teeth was quickly dispelled as they rushed into another maze of corridors. Kaim’s chest pounded and he felt the exhaustion from running. “Andrel we have to get in one of these rooms…I can’t keep this up” Andrel would look back and nod. They couldn’t outrun this monster. Ducking into the nearest door they would both slam it shut. Kaim holding the door as it buckled as if a sudden wave of bodies slammed against it. Andrel took but a moment to find a heavy chest and drag it to the door blocking it.
“That won’t hold…that thing…forever, what are we going to do?” Kaim said looking around the dark room. It was small, with a ancient looking wood desk in one corner and a bed with little more than a thin sheet in the other. Some sort of boarding office, empty and devoid of anything useful; turning Kaim would look into the chest and find only heavy iron contraptions, wenches and ropes. “Calm yourself my brother let me think” Andrel would open his book and examine the room comparing it with something inside the tome.
The steady thrum of the door was unnerving Kaim. Each thump or creak caused him to jump and unhinge what little sanity he was retaining. After what seemed to be an eternity Andrel would look up and walk to a bare wall. Tapping the stones with the hilt of his sword he would tap one that caused a gentle ringing noise. A heavy thump could be heard behind the wall and then the stones would fall away into a trench that had opened in the floor creating a straight door. Beyond in the dark recess in the wall stairs lead downward.
“Already we benefit from these cultists” Kaim would say uneasily looking at Andrel who only looked down into the dark as if into an endless abyss. Without a word he would begin his descent into the lower catacomb and Kaim followed…
