The doors swung open with ease at Fellaroth’s touch, revealing the pristine orderly office of The Lord of the land. In the middle of the rear of the room was a large stately desk where Fellaroth and the others quickly saw the sight of a seated figure, shrouded in darkness. The musky smell of stagnant air filled the room as they slowly approached the desk.
“My Lord, you still live?” enquired Riegert respectfully. “We were under the impression that there was no one left alive in this city!” the room remained deathly silent, filled only by the sounds of the group’s hesitant footsteps slowly approaching the majestic desk. “Are you well My Lord? We are adventurers sent here by The Queen to investigate the disappearance of the people of your land.”
“There is nothing to investigate here. My people are fine. You may report that back to your queen!” answered the strained voice of The Duke.
“My Lord, your people have vanished, there isn’t a soul to be found in the city. Apart from you, that is.”
“As it should be. I am the only one that needs to reside here. All others are nothing more than pests.” Answered The Duke, continuing to breathe heavily between words.
Fellaroth and the others exchanged glances before Calvin spoke. “What became of the men from The Knight’s Watch and The Adventurer’s Guild? Did they not come to see you?”
“I am the only one who needs to be here. NOW LEAVE!” The Duke’s sudden booming voice caught Fellaroth’s attention as he heard something strange. Lifting a single finger on his right hand, Fellaroth pointed toward The Duke, causing a small orb of dim light to appear between them. A sharp intake of breath filled the room as Jackson, Calvin, and Riegert saw The Duke for the first time.
“What is this Fell? I don’t understand what I’m looking at!” asked Riegert after a long-stunned silence. The group watched on in horror as they saw that The Duke’s features appeared to be constantly shifting and changing, almost as though his face didn’t know what it was supposed to look like.
“Who am I addressing? Am I speaking with The Duke, or with someone else?”
“We are Myriad!” Answered the figure before them, sounding as though dozens of people were speaking simultaneously, while their hazy eyes seemed to be unable to focus.
“How did you come to be, Myriad?” for the first time since the light shone on their face, Myriad’s eyes fixed on Fellaroth, constantly changing colours, shades, and shapes, they bore into Fellaroth with intense silent pondering.
“Was it you? Were you the one who did this to us… you promised us power and freedom! You promised us that we would live in peace, unhindered by any!” their speech was laborious and tiring, causing the last word of each sentence to drag, almost as though the thoughts within their head were not aligned like they were constantly debating what they wanted to say. “Does this look like freedom to you? Wait! You were not the one. Though you are like them. They saw how we were treated by the people of this city. Always beaten, spat on, tossed aside, and looked down on. We were nothing, just those who were forgotten… until they came! They told us that we did not need to live beneath the heel of the people of Cruwshant. They told us that we could rise up and take this place for our own. They told us that they would give us the power to stand, the power to overcome… and they did! They gave us power and guided us here to this one’s chamber, told us to unite our strength and take what was ours… then they turned us into this! We did as they asked, we sent them the people of this city… hundreds of people to do with as they pleased! And then they left, left us here, like this. We are not free… we suffer… we want to be free… will you set us free… one who is like them but is not them… will you set us free?”
“I will do as you ask, but you need to tell me, where did you send the people of this city?”
“We sent them to the underneath. The place where the one who is like you, but not you, lives!”
“I understand, thank you!” said Fellaroth, walking around the desk and approaching the constantly changing form.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
“Wait, Fell! What are you going to do?” asked Riegert, as he watched Fellaroth draw his spear from his lower back and slowly and effortlessly drive it into Myriad’s chest, piercing their heart. A sigh of relief left Myriad’s body as it regained the once handsome features of The Duke, before slumping forward as a dozen voices echoed, thank you!”
“How could you do such a thing Fell? How could you so coldly take their life, without so much as a second thought or even hesitation! Was there no way that we could have saved them?” asked Calvin, unable to tear his eyes from The Duke's lifeless form.
“Unfortunately, Calvin, there was nothing that could have been done to help any of them. What was done here was an abomination. It was a crime against life itself. The human body and mind were never intended to be able to house more than a single life. To have crammed so many lives into a single form like that… it’s disgusting to think of what kind of a mind would be capable of such a thing. You couldn’t even fathom the level of suffering those souls would have been going through, intermingling with each other in ways that ought not to be possible, unable to tell when your being ended and the next began. It’s enough to make my blood boil!”
“You seem to know a lot about this Fell. And then there’s the part about them saying that this was done to them by ‘one like you.’ What could that have meant? Why did they first think that you were the one to have done this to them?” asked Riegert, turning from the desk and facing Fellaroth.
“Not this again, Riegert. I thought you had gotten past all of this. They had obviously seen Fell using magic and simply meant that it was a person who used magic to do this to them!”
“Is that really what you think, Jackson? I’ve never heard of any kind of magic that could do something like this, have you?”
“Magic is boundless, Riegert. There is no limit to what can be done with it, one need only know-how, and all things are possible with magic.”
“Not quite, Jackson. The caster would still need to have a very good understanding of what it was they wanted to do. To make fire, you need to understand how fire works. To make water, you would need to understand how it flows and behaves. To raise the dead, you need to understand the human body and how it works. Mages need to be very well-learned people, not just any fool can use magic. In this case, this person would have needed to have a very good understanding of how souls work. This mage would have needed to have been extremely powerful to have been able to do what they did here.”
“You are of course, right, Calvin. There is more to magic than simply casting spells. Casters need to fully grasp and understand the concepts behind the magic they want to use. This is why you so often hear about spells misfiring or doing things that the caster hadn’t intended. If your understanding of a topic is even slightly off, then the spell that you’re trying to cast could go horribly wrong. As to your question, Riegert. I can’t speak to the inner workings of Myriad’s mind, or as to why they thought me to be the one that had done this to them. What I can say is that we need to find the person who was responsible for this and put an end to them, preferably before they have the chance to do this to the other people of Cruwshant.”
“You’re right, Fell. Now isn’t the time to have our attention divided, now is the time to act. Where do you think this ‘Underneath’ is? Any ideas?” asked Riegert, getting back on track.
“I do have a pretty good idea. To my knowledge, there are some caves and a network of tunnels beneath Mount Cruwshant, which is the most likely place for them to have referred to as ‘the underneath.’”
“Tunnels beneath the mountain? What are you talking about, Fell? This city has been here for a few hundred years now, surely if there were tunnels and caves beneath the mountain the people of this city would have known about them, I mean they pose a real threat to the security of the city, particularly if there are multiple entry and exit points.”
The tunnels are very well concealed, you would need to know of them to find the entrance, it would be very difficult for someone to simply stumble across them.”
“And yet someone had to have done just that, how else would they have been found in the first place, unless of course, they were man-made?”
“They were not man-made, but they do have a very powerful spell of concealment placed on them.”
“When we were at The Lonely Bastion, you had mentioned that there was supposed to be a gateway in this location, one that was inactive, is that gateway down in those tunnels? Could someone else be making use of them?”
“No, as I said at that time, the gateway that is here is inactive, and no it’s not in the tunnel network, though the tunnels can grant us access to the castle that houses the gateway.”
“But how can you be sure that the gateway is indeed inactive? How do you know that someone else hasn’t modified the magic of this gateway and altered the way that it works?”
“Though that possibility does exist, it is a very remote possibility and not really worth giving too much thought, that being said, I think we will know more once we enter the tunnels. I think we should head there without delay.”
“Agreed! Lead the way.” Said Riegert, not wanting to cause any further delay in discovering what it was that had happened to the missing people of Cruwshant.
