Chapter 3 - Infiltrating the Dark Keep

The hilltop offered a view that made my balls try to crawl back inside me. Blackrock Hold sprawled before me, its skeletal remains clawing at the sky. The air slapped me cold, slicing through my cloak with all the mercy of a butcher's knife. This place was ancient, a relic that seemed to suck the light out of the world. I shivered and pulled my cloak tighter. The cold wasn't weather. It was the place itself.

The valley below was a mess of weeds and dead trees, the ground cracked and barren. Mist clung to the floor, thick enough to chew, obscuring the lower reaches of the fortress in a perpetual gray gloom. It looked consumed, eaten alive by time and rot. Everything in me wanted to turn back. But I had a job to do, and damned if I was going to let a little decay and despair get in my way.

I led Bertha into a copse of gnarled, skeletal trees that somehow still clung to life amidst it all. I secured her reins to a thick, rotting branch, whispering reassurances into her ear.

"Hey, girl, I'll be back. Promise." I patted her flank, feeling the warmth of her living flesh, a stark contrast to the cold, dead world around us. She nickered softly, and I could swear she didn't believe me. I didn't blame her. I wasn't entirely sure myself.

I turned towards the looming ruin. Against the dying light, it looked less like a fortress and more like a gaping maw, swallowing the valley whole. I took a deep breath, lungs filling with something thick and rotten. I'd been in worse places. Well, maybe not worse, but certainly as bad.

I focused on the shadows around me, feeling the familiar coolness as I slipped into Shadow Walk. The edges of my vision blurred, and I felt the shadows embrace me. I moved, flowing, like someone who actually knew what he was doing for once, across the cracked and weed-strewn ground towards the fortress. The walls loomed closer, a patchwork of crumbling gray blocks, many dislodged or missing. Overgrown ivy crawled across the stone like grasping fingers, and the bad feeling got worse with every step.

As I neared what might once have been the main gate, now a large hole in the crumbling wall, I spotted them. Tripwires. Almost invisible threads stretched taut across the uneven ground, cleverly hidden amongst the fallen stones and overgrown vegetation.

"Clever bastard," I muttered, grudging respect for Malkor's low cunning warring with annoyance at the added complication. I carefully skirted the wires, picking my way through the debris with agonizingly slow steps.

I pressed on, movements slow and deliberate, every sense on high alert. I was going to find Malkor, put an end to whatever sick game he was playing, and grab that grimoire while I was at it.

I stepped across the threshold, and the darkness closed around me. The air grew colder with every step, thick with the stench of decay and something metallic underneath. Coppery, like blood, but sweet too. Made your stomach turn but also made you want to lean in closer to figure out what the hell it was.

I moved cautiously, eyes adjusting to the dark. The walls were damp, slick with moisture and moss. Something was growing in the dark corners, feeding on the decay. I decided I didn't want to know what.

As I pushed through a collapsed archway, I saw them. Cages, rusted and swaying in the drafts that whistled through the broken walls. They hung from chains bolted to crumbling pillars, their iron bars corroded and flaking. Inside, there were bodies. Or what was left of them.

They weren't villagers. At least, not anymore. They were twisted, desiccated, skeletal things, some still clad in tattered rags that might once have been clothes. Others were swollen, their forms barely recognizable, limbs contorted in ways that made my stomach turn. Their faces were frozen in silent screams, their empty eye sockets seeming to follow me as I moved.

Malkor was really leaning into the haunted ruins aesthetic. Budget must have been tight. Mostly set dressing though, not much actual fortress left. I almost admired the commitment.

I turned away from the cages. Dim torchlight flickered ahead, casting shadows that writhed and lengthened across the uneven floors and broken walls. With it came the sound of guttural chanting, low and steady as a heartbeat, carried on the drafts that gusted through the ruined structure.

I pressed myself flat against a crumbling section of wall, the gray stone cold against my back. I held my breath, listening. The chanting was droning, amplified by the emptiness until it seemed to come from all around me. Shuffling feet on loose stones. The rustle of tattered robes. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

Stop Malkor. Save the girls. Grab the grimoire if I could. I had to keep moving.

As I stood there, I couldn't help but think about how much easier this would be with Felix at my back. He could move through the shadows like he was born in them. Together, we'd be unstoppable. But he wasn't here. I was alone, and I had to rely on my own skills.

I pushed the thought aside and pressed on. The corridor was a mess of fallen masonry and rotting timbers, each step a potential death trap.

As I turned a corner, I heard it. A sharp whish of steel slicing through the air. I threw myself sideways, my heart slamming against my ribs. A pendulum blade swung from a rusted chain, its deadly arc precise in the confined space. I landed hard on the stone floor. The blade hissed past, inches from my ear, showering me with dust and decaying stone.

"Close call," I muttered, scrambling to my feet, eyes scanning the corridor for more traps.

Further down, what might once have been a grand staircase lay in ruins, choked with weeds. And there they were. Guards. Twisted, hulking figures, their flesh bulging with unnatural growths. Their skin was a mess of gray and purple and jaundiced yellow, none of it matching, seams of scar tissue running between sections like someone had stitched different bodies into one. Black veins pulsed beneath the surface. Their eyes were milky white, unseeing, but their noses twitched, heads jerking side to side, sniffing.

I melted into the shadows, skirting the edge of their patrol. Two of them shuffled past, close enough that I could smell them. Wet meat and something acrid underneath, sharp and wrong. They moved in jerky, uneven steps, too many joints bending in directions joints shouldn't bend.

The third one I didn't see.

A hand closed around my throat from behind. Not a hand. Too many fingers. They wrapped around my neck twice, thick as sausages and strong as iron bands, and squeezed. My feet left the ground.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't scream. The thing had me pinned against the wall, my boots kicking uselessly against its torso. Up close, it was worse. Its face was two faces, stitched together down the middle, one half grinning, the other frozen in a permanent scream. Yellow fluid wept from the seams where the flesh didn't quite meet. It stank like an open wound soaked in vinegar.

My vision started going spotty. Black edges creeping in. My hands clawed at the fingers around my throat, but I might as well have been trying to pry apart tree roots.

Daggers. My daggers. My right hand found the hilt at my belt. I couldn't swing. No room, no leverage, no air. So I did what Ashara taught me when everything goes to shit: find the soft spot and stick something sharp in it.

I drove the blade into its eye.

The good eye. The one that actually seemed to be looking at me.

Yellow ichor sprayed across my face. Hot, thick, and it tasted like copper and bile. Oh, that was foul. That was genuinely the worst thing I'd ever had in my mouth, and I'd eaten Maple's mystery stew. The thing screamed, a gurgling shriek that came from two throats at once, and the grip loosened for half a second. I sucked in air, drove the dagger in deeper, twisted. More gunk gushed down my arm, soaking my sleeve.

The fingers tightened again. Tighter. My vision went dark at the edges.

I yanked the blade free and stabbed again. Throat this time. I felt the steel punch through something that popped like wet leather. Yellow blood sprayed in a thick arc, painting the wall, painting me. The thing staggered. The fingers spasmed open. I dropped, hit the ground on my knees, and drove the dagger up under its jaw before it could recover. Stay dead, you ugly bastard.

It went down hard. The floor shook. Yellow fluid pooled beneath it, spreading in lazy rivulets across the cracked stone.

I stayed on my knees for a long moment, gasping, my throat on fire, my hands shaking so hard the dagger almost slipped from my grip. I could feel the muck cooling on my face, sticky and foul. My lungs burned. Every breath felt like swallowing broken glass.

Breathe. Assess. Move. Ashara's voice in my head, the same tone she used when she cracked me across the knuckles during training. Pain is information. Use it or let it use you.

I wiped the worst of the slime from my eyes with my sleeve, which only smeared it around. I checked the corridor. The other two guards hadn't heard, or if they had, they were too stupid to come running. Lucky me.

I stood up on legs that didn't want to cooperate. My throat throbbed where those fingers had been. I'd have bruises for a week. I looked down at the dead thing at my feet, at the yellow blood still oozing from three stab wounds, at the ruined patchwork face.

"You're disgusting," I told it. My voice came out as a raw croak. "And you got your shit all over my good cloak."

I wiped my dagger on the thing's rags and kept moving. Deeper. The torchlight ahead grew brighter, the chanting louder. Ashara's training had my eyes and ears working overtime.

Yellow crap drying on my face, bruises forming around my throat, and a dead mutant behind me. The glamorous life of a rogue.

But I was still breathing, still moving, still in the shadows. Stop Malkor. Save the girls. Grab the grimoire. Everything else could wait.

Ashara would beat me bloody for getting grabbed like that. She'd also remind me I was still alive, which meant I did something right. Small comfort when you've got monster blood in your teeth.