The Tiers of the Shiverfang

[Diadems of Promethion]

“Love, in its myriad forms, will be the end of us all. Yet such is its beauty that we cannot help but throw ourselves upon its embrace, sinners to the pyre.”

Exhaling a plume of sweet-scented smoke, Throld played it about his lips before watching it flee up the narrow vent. One jade-green eye caught Breaker’s questioning look.

“Something an old hag I knew in Scara Brae used to say. Given the fifty shrunken heads of the fathers, brothers, sons, and ex-lovers that she kept in her hut, she knew a thing or two that I didn’t. Still don’t, in fact. Too bad she met her match in the fifty-first head she tried to shrink, otherwise I’d go back someday and ask about it.”

Breaker grunted disbelief. “Sounds like quite the story.”

“It is, indeed,” the dwarf nodded. “As there are many, where matters of the heart are concerned. Foolish, reckless, courageous, triumphant against all odds. I wouldn’t have a job without them.”

He thought for a moment, then continued.

“My people, though they prefer to swear oaths and drink themselves blind, have a saying. The heart is not a stone, built to weather the hard times. It is clay, to knead and to shape, to break down and to rise again.”

The dying embers caught a glint of Breaker’s small smile.

“How very wise.”

Perhaps unwittingly, Breaker had left him an important clue: his mention of Salvar and its war. A man as driven as he did not wander the middle of nowhere without purpose, and a taleweaver as experienced as Throld refused to believe in coincidence. Instinct, deep inside his gut, told him that whatever Breaker sought in the Tiered Mountain, it had to do with this Kristina Rythadine. Funny then, that his purpose there had to do with Vera, his own female ghost. At times like this, he wondered how he had dishonoured the Ancients and the Ancestors, that they laughed so at his expense.

“I hope that you find resolution someday soon, Master Breaker. As indeed I hope I will as well.”

“I’ll raise a glass to that, Master Sartet. If only we had something suitable to toast with.”

Throld grinned, chuckling to himself as if dismayed. His mirth shattered the solemn ice that lay between them.

“Of course, Breaker, I do admit a slight disappointment. I have to admit that, in certain Coronian taverns, I vocally professed a certain fondness for my personal theory behind your name. Rulebreaker, for the number of times they had to rewrite the Citadel’s rules to accommodate your superhuman strength in the arena. Hm.”

He stroked his bare chin where an honoured dwarf might grow his beard.

“Perhaps a series of tales... Headbreaker... Knucklebreaker... Rulebreaker... Heartbreaker? Too blasé?” He laughed again, low and rolling warmth. “I promise you, the people will love it. You’ve got nothing to fear, Breaker, I’d do you proud.”

They talked further, swapping tales of the road, until eventually Throld pinched out the flame in his pipe. Only the smouldering glow on the icy walls now warded the shadows. Beneath the fruity scent of tobacco and the meaty aroma of stew, the less tasteful smells of the road - dried sweat, damp pelts, matted hair - started to suffuse their shelter. But Throld had slept in far worse, including a pigsty or two in Scara Brae, and his gratitude for the protection far outweighed any discomfort. As if by common assent, the two travellers settled into slumber. Soon, only the rhythm of shallow breathing punctuated the whistles of the boreal wind beyond the walls.

Consumed by the oath he had sworn to Vera, he did not sleep much that night. Neither, he presumed, did Breaker.

[Breaker]

Breaker did not require much rest. He did not so much sleep as meditate, sitting upright next to the sealed doorway. His breathing became long and deep, almost an afterthought, offsetting the more regular respiration that accompanied the rise and fall of Throld's barrel chest. As wind moaned through the mouth of the chimney Breaker visited his memories of Salvar, of Kristina, and of Geoffrey Rythadine, King of the Tiered Mountain. His head nodded slightly, and he had approached the point where memories become dreams, when an off-tune jangling from outside roused him.

Throld's perimeter had worked; someone or something had tripped the twine. The dwarf had been clever enough with the layout of his twine that it seemed unlikely the wind would be responsible.

Josh stood up swiftly and melted the icy door into the walls with a wave of his hand. He ducked outside with Throld only a half step behind, drawing his dragon-belcher and peering into the darkness.

Snow shifted about beneath the same wind that cut through their clothing, but otherwise nothing moved. It took them only a moment to notice a single set of bootprints approaching the twine perimeter, and then retreating at a run.

"Bloody Blackcloaks," Throld mumbled, peering at the prints, "you'd think they could leave a body alone for a night's shuteye." The dwarf shook his head and returned Vera to his belt. "Well," he said, "I'm not about to go chasing after them in the dark." With that he sauntered back into the ice hut.

Breaker peered after the prints for a moment, and then followed his traveling companion. Throld lay down on his bearskin once more while Breaker rebuilt the door and sat beside it. He considered bothering Throld with questions about the mysterious Blackcloaks, but decided it could wait for morning. He wanted the dwarf as rested as possible, and from the sound of his snores the fellow had already fallen asleep again.

Dawn arrived slowly, as if made lazy by the cold. As the sun peered over the horizon it illuminated the ice hut, making the walls glow blue. Sartet awakened in the incandescence and set about re-packing his haversack with the various creature comforts of the night before, and rolling up his bearskin.

Josh stepped outside, enjoying the feeling of fresh sun on his face. The wind had died down to a gentle breeze that played in his close-cropped hair. He stretched up, eliciting a series of pops from his spine, and then bent forward, loosening his hamstrings. He paced to the place where he'd seen the bootprints, only to find that the previous night's wind had covered them over with powdery snow.

Throld emerged from the hut and set about gathering his twine and trinkets. Breaker lent a hand, and before long the dwarf had all of his possessions packed atop his broad back.

"We might move faster if I carry your haversack," Josh suggested as they trudged back onto the trail.

"I fear such an act might wound my pride irreparably," the dwarf replied, placing a protective hand over his bag.

"As you wish," Breaker said, once again taking the lead. He set a slightly slower pace than the previous day, for he wanted Throld to be able to talk while he walked. "I am curious, Master Sartet. Why would this Blackcloak go to such great lengths to pursue you on this journey?"

[Diadems of Promethion]

A grimace creased Throld’s coal-pit features, as if torn between his desperate need to tell the story and his uncharacteristic desire to forget it. Warring emotions illuminated the banks of snow in shades of jade green. The coarse steam of his breath escaped into streaks of chill cloud. His shadow, birthed by the sunrise behind them, pointed the path onwards. Dark, stormy embankments wreathed the tall mountain on the horizon.

In the end, his instincts as a storyteller won out. Almost without his noticing, his voice settled into a lulling rhythm, its timbre pitched for Breaker’s ears through the occasional frigid gust.

“Last autumn,” he began, savouring the crunch of fresh snow beneath his boots as it punctuated his words. “I travelled to Raiaera, following a lead much like this one. Most elves don’t take much to my style of tavern tales. But there’s enough dwarves and humans in those lands these days that I can travel without fear of missing a night’s shelter and hot meal. I made my way to Nenaebreth - used to be an old woodsman’s village, now’s quite the bustling encampment - and was about to talk my way into another warm bed when this dwarf-dam showed up, causing all sorts of trouble by talking about burning ancient artefacts. Suffice it to say that neither I nor the guards took kindly to that.

“In any case, after talking to a couple of scavengers at the edges of the battlefield at Nenaebreth, I had some idea of where to head. Southwest, skirting the Black Desert towards the Lindequalme. A couple of days later I stumbled on the trail of a handful of Alerian Blackcloaks who I believed had what I sought in their possession. On the banks of the Elleduin I caught up with them.”

Though the cold wind of Salvar nipped at his cheeks, in his mind’s eye Throld could almost picture the confrontation. The languid river waters, susurrating through the tall reeds. The grove of silver birches that guarded the low island, caught between the crimson boughs of the Lindequalme and the sands of Tel Moranfauglir. The ruined temple to Aurient the Star Mother that stood there, keeping the twin corruptions at bay.

He had to remind himself that Breaker was not his usual audience. He didn’t intend to cadge a night’s lodgings and three tankards of ale on the house. It would serve him little to embellish the tale with a florid tongue.

“I won’t say they took kindly to my arrival. But I have some contacts within Ettermire’s aristocracy, and had just about convinced them to listen to what I had to say. When that sodding dwarf-dam arrived.”

Another grimace, as eloquent as the thousand words that he had left unspoken.

“That bad?” Breaker asked.

“Imagine the worst parts of a little sister -” Throld had long grown used to the flicker of pain across his brow “- combined with the destructiveness of an anarchist and the morality of a psychopath. Once she has it in her head that she wants something, she’ll stop at nothing to get it. That’s about all I know of her. All I need to know. Not that the Blackcloaks believe me.”

“So that’s why they’re after you?”

The dwarf nodded, accepting Breaker’s offer of a hand to help him over a steep rock. Sloping hills gave way before them in patches of windswept scree and deep glacial clefts drenched in snow. The sun rose to their left, shedding light upon the few shrubs and windswept trees hardy enough to call this mountainside their home. The air, though crisp, carried upon it a faint taint... incense, and cooking smoke ingrained within sculpted granite, and the foreboding stench of decay.

“And you don’t want to get dragged into their web of influence, because who knows where you’ll end up or what they’ll put you through.” Throld had no need to respond; Breaker understood as well as anybody the treacherous pitfalls that intrigue in Ettermire entailed. Especially when it involved the Blackcloaks, the clandestine branch of the Alerian military rumoured to act as the monarchy’s bloody knife-arm. “Raiaera. What happened in the end?”

Throld coughed in embarrassment.

“I had to call in a couple of favours that I’d rather not have, to get back on track again. I caught up to the Blackcloaks as they were about to make their escape via airship, managed to ah, acquire what I was after. Didn’t stop that rocklicker from attacking again, followed by a squad of Skyknights who’d tracked the airship, but somehow we all managed to make it out alive. I got what I wanted, she didn’t, the Blackcloaks only want to talk to me rather than kill me on sight, and I managed to convince the Skyknights that I wasn’t an Aleraran myself, only an innocent bystander. All a happy ending.”

“What happened on the road yesterday morning was the result of a happy ending? I’d hate to see what happens when things don’t go well for you, Master Sartet.”

“Pah!” the dwarf spat, hiding his concerns behind mock outrage and a facade of humour. “Of course it wasn’t an ending! Since when does one’s tale end before one’s time, eh? Sod you, Breaker, allow me my moment of triumph as a storyteller!”

The smile played about his lips as he trudged, though his eyes kept scanning for shifting shadows in their wake. Before them, the mountain loomed ever closer.

[Breaker]

Breaker chuckled at Throld's pretense of indignation and increased his pace, black boots crunching over frosted ground. As the mountain grew larger with each passing step, Breaker's thirst for revenge grew as well. In his mind's eye he could see Geoffrey Rythadine leaping to safety off that cliff where Kristina had died. His fists clenched and relaxed constantly as he moved, and his legs became a blur as he forgot the needs of his traveling companion.

"I say, Breaker!" Throld piped in a puff of steam, "unless you mean to leave me behind, you may want to slow down!"

Josh paused and waited for the dwarf to catch up, forgetting to school his features back to an impassive expression.

"Are you well?" Throld asked as he drew level with the demigod. "Your face could give a thundercloud frowning lessons."

Breaker clicked his tongue and resumed walking, letting the question hang in the frigid air for a moment.

"I lied about my reason for seeking the Tiered Mountain," he confessed as the wind nipped between them.

"Oh? I would never have guessed," Throld said with a cheeky grin. "Am I to understand that something deeper is driving you to Shiverfang's slopes?"

"When I was in the war," Josh said, detouring around a glacial crevasse, "I fought alongside a specialized unit designed to combat the troops of the Tiered Mountain. Kristina Rythadine led one of the patrols within that unit. Her brother Geoffrey fought on the opposite side, as first apprentice to the then-king of the Tiered Mountain. They attempted to assassinate the prince, but Kristina and I foiled the assault and chased them through the tunnels beneath Knife's Edge, all the way out to a mountaintop near the city.

"The King of the Tiered Mountain killed Kristina, and I killed him in return. But Geoffrey Rythadine escaped. If he's still alive... he'll be ruling Shiverfang in his master's stead, of that I feel certain." Breaker's voice was hard and flat as a slab of granite.

"So it was vengeance that drove the Breaker to journey to the Tiered Mountain," Throld said pensively, as if composing a story in his mind.

"Aye," Breaker said, "vengeance." The word seemed to shudder on the stiff breeze. They walked in silence for several hours. As the sun reached its zenith they approached the lower slopes of the Tiered Mountain, and Breaker's skin crawled with sensation. He could detect magic being used within the thick walls of the mountain stronghold. So the legends are true, he thought, a training ground for soldiers of the Ethereal Sway. At least that's what it was... Who knew what the years had done to such a place, especially under the command of Geoffrey Rythadine.

"I don't suppose any of your stories describe how to get inside the Tiered Mountain?" Josh asked his companion. His hazel gaze ran up the jagged ridges to the frosted peak. He would gain entry, even if he had to smash his way through solid rock with his fists.

[Diadems of Promethion]

Of course. The manling couldn’t see it, could he? Sometimes he allowed himself to forget how the younger races, even those as experienced and as competent as Breaker, could not read rock like the stonefolk could. Blinking away his befuddlement, dusting the frost from his hair, Throld shook his head as if to clear it of some obfuscating veil. One stubby finger stabbed through the solid wall of cold air.

“There’s doors there, ‘bout twice your height and I’d guess almost as thick, but they haven’t opened for a while.” Now he jabbed at the deposited ice at their feet attesting to the neglect, that wedged the entrance closed.

“That,” he continued, turning to his left and indicating an outcropping about halfway up the nearest of the jagged ridges, “is not natural. If I had to guess, it’s an observation nest to watch over this gate, abandoned because there’s no need to watch over a closed door... notice, there’s still the same snow on the spire, which means no heat, which in this weather and with manling guards, means unoccupied.”

He grinned, his teeth made even dirtier by the disturbed snow and the roiling sky.

“That means either a window or, more likely, an arrow slit. Either way, a weakness that we can exploit to get inside.” Eyeing the sun on the southern horizon, he judged the terrain before him and chose the route that he would trudge. “This way, Breaker. I’ll get you inside before the sun’s out. Then we can see about soothing your troubled heart.”

It took them another couple of hours to get into position, perched like precarious peregrines on a sheltered ledge above and to the left of the outcropping. Here they had shelter from the worst of the wind, protection from the forbidding heights, and a good view of the approach to the mountain. Though Throld’s weary eyes could make out little upon scanning the harsh glare of the sun upon the snow, still he chuckled when Breaker stiffened and stifled a warning.

“Aye, they’re on our trail. Told them they should get rid of those cloaks. Stand out like a songbird in heat.” Reaching into his pouch of accoutrements, he removed a single brass cartridge about the size of his clenched fist. By unscrewing its tapered top he revealed to the chill its contents: a granular black powder that gave off notes of acrid charcoal. Satisfying himself that it had not spoilt in its passage, he rescrewed the cap onto the cartridge and set it aside. “In the interests of coming clean, Breaker, I should make a confession as well.”

“You’re not running from the Blackcloaks. You’re leading them here.”

Throld cocked an eyebrow, impressed, even as he rummaged through his pack once more. “Quite so! However did you guess?”

“You’re too calm, Throld, even for one your age.” That elicited a bark of laughter, matched by a smile upon the man’s face. “And you strike me as far too canny to get caught out here without a purpose.”

“A purpose, I should say, or rather a secret, ensconced within these mountain halls.” With his free hand the dwarf tapped the side of his bulbous nose, reddened by the cold. His other fingers emerged in turn from their investigations, clutching a length of sturdy woven hemp rope. “One that I should be able to exchange for my freedom from their advances. Give me a hand here, will you?”

He stood still as Breaker tied the rope around his waist, before testing the knot and retrieving the brass cartridge of black powder. Another grunt of satisfaction escaped his chapped lips.

“I now leave my life in your hands,” he bowed, before digging his gnarled fingers into the rockface and commencing his descent.

It did not take Throld long; he had chosen his spot well. After five minutes of clinging to icy fingerholds in arm-numbing, wind-biting terror, he found the narrow slit that previous guards had used to keep an eye over the valley. It took him considerably less time to empty the powder into the slit, then rig a crude taper coated in slow-burning wax from Vera’s spares.

“Nar,” he whispered into the howling wind, lighting the wick in a flicker of runic power. Beneath his breath he began to count, slow and steady even as his arms worked the ascent. Twice his tired fingers slipped from the snow, but anchored to Breaker’s immense strength the sturdy rope held. Soon he found himself back in the sheltered safety of their perch.

“Eight-ninety,” he huffed, having divulged himself of the rope. “Let us hope that I’ve judged the rocks like the old miners taught me to.”

“Or?” Breaker asked, the faintest flicker of worry creasing his features.

“Or I hate to think in how many pieces those Blackcloaks will find us in,” Throld teased. Then he bellowed, loud enough to echo across the snowy drifts at the base of the mountain. “Fire below!”

Before the reverberations had subsided, a second and more powerful voice roared back. The rockface exploded in a gout of red flame. A wave of white heat trembled through the cavernous spaces below their feet. Shards of broken rock spewed outwards in geysers of black smoke, meteors staining the thunderous grey sky.

Then the mountain itself responded, as if jolted awake by the concussions upon its lower limbs. A low rumble overhead soon escalated into an avalanche of snow and stone, billowing down past Throld’s nonchalant expression. Their choice of outcropping proved prudent - threatened by neither cascading death nor threat of collapse - and the beaming joy on the dwarf’s coarse features spoke of a job well done. Almost before it had subsided, the dwarf peered out over the precipice.

“Magnificent,” he announced, offering his rope to Breaker. “The Tiered Mountain awaits!”

[Breaker]

Breaker took the rope and lowered Throld hand over hand, down and into the opening the dwarf had blasted in the mountain's side. Once Throld arrived safely he dropped the rope and faced the wall, establishing two firm handholds before stepping off of the precipice. Breaker's enchanted boots clung to the cliff face like a squirrel's claws to coarse bark, and he navigated the treacherous climb with confidence. As he reached the gash in the mountain's side he had to make his way around a large rocky outcropping, and did so by simply releasing his handholds and walking down the wall. He swung into the opening and landed next to the dwarf.

"You wear some truly impressive boots, Master Breaker," Throld said, gazing down at the demigod's enchanted footwear.

"They were a gift from Geoffrey Rythadine's father," Josh said quietly, gazing down the darkened tunnel into the mountain's heart, "designed to help me stop him."

"Well, I certainly don't envy young Mister Rythadine," Throld said with an exaggerated shiver. The dwarf dipped into his well-packed haversack and assembled a torch from a spare bit of firewood he'd saved, some cloth, and a few drops of oil. The torch cast flickering shadows down the hallway as they ventured deeper into the mountain with Throld leading the way. The dwarf nattered on about how such mountain strongholds were typically designed, while Breaker listened past his rotund voice and the sounds of their footsteps. He heard a slight grating movement ahead, but not accompanying breaths or heartbeats.

They rounded a gentle bend in the tunnel and the torchlight illuminated a grinning skeleton. It bore sword and shield and ran at them with a silent scream, accompanied only by the clicking of its bony feet on the stone floor.

Breaker reached over Throld's head and caught the skeleton's face, his fingers jabbing into its eye sockets. He smashed the reanimated creature three times against the hard rock wall and then released it in a shower of broken bones. The smashed skull fell atop the dusty pile, still grinning in the torchlight. A few fingers of eldritch mist flowed out through its mouth and disappeared down the tunnel.

"It seems we are alone, and yet not alone," Throld said, peering down at the remains. The dwarf drew his dragon-belcher and advanced anew. He led the way into a large squarish chamber with no ceiling. A plethora of passageways exited the room on all sides, and a winding stone staircase climbed up the center, extending into the darkness above. A strong musty smell hung in the air, causing both adventurers to breathe through their mouths.

Josh felt drawn towards the spiraling staircase. It stood to reason that the throne room would be at the top of the mountain, and Rythadine would be... would he be there? Could he expect to find anything more than a crown-wearing skeleton seated on the Tiered Mountain's throne? Finding out Rythadine was dead would not be the same as killing him. Josh flexed his shoulders and cracked his knuckles. Perhaps the rest of the mountain deserved some exploration... perhaps he would find some more of these skeletons to slake his wrath upon.

"Well, Master Sartet," Breaker said, gesturing around at the bevy of corridors, "I defer to your better judgement. Which way shall we go?"

[Diadems of Promethion]

“Upwards,” Throld replied without hesitating. Bobbing his close-cropped pate with exquisite courtesy, he eyed the gaping maws of shadow that surrounded him. His features composed in intent concentration. Here, without the annoyances of howling wind and open sky, he could finally focus his senses.

“There is foulness all around us,” he spat in explanation. “I would rather make headway towards the enemy I know, than get lost among a morass of its underlings. But I wonder if they will allow us to abscond from their demesne without partaking of their hospitality.”

The halls spoke back with the remnants of his words, malevolent distorted whispers that slid across walls of smoothed stone. His ears picked apart the discordant waves as they returned, gauging the echoes and the silences, mapping in his mind’s eye the dead ends and the cavernous chambers. Many had once lived in cramped accommodations on this level. Many had once trained upon the rotting mats of woven grass that now dampened his perception. Now only the ghosts of their spirits occupied this silent grave, and the bones of their broken bodies.

He sniffed to clear his nostrils, gagged on the stale stench of lifeless decay. His sphere of light, a concession to Breaker’s eyes but also a comfort to his own, wavered beneath the voracious darkness. Only then did he notice his knees buckling in remembered fear.

“Ha,” he forced a strained chuckle, the blood draining from his features as memories came flooding forth. Passing the torch to Breaker, he climbed two steps on the great spiral staircase in search of a better vantage. His knuckles upon Vera drew taut and white. “I am reminded far too much of the last days of Hamdarim the Great.”

“Hamdarim?” the man asked.

“The greatest dwarf-hold in the south, now lost from our hands. No shit, Breaker, there I was...”

The dragon-belcher rose to his shoulder, aimed at the nearest archway. Flame barked from her stylised eagle’s beak. A red-hot ball of fiery lead streaked into the open mouth of shadow, exploding with concussive force that shook years of accumulated ash and dust from unswept mantles. Bones splintered against the carved rock walls. Weapons of brittle steel spilled into the dim half-light, accompanied by another skull locked in the rictus of a mad grin.

“... when it fell to the claws of our enemies.” Throld paused in his recollection. “With all due respect to your skeletal friends, Breaker, I do wish they might just leave us alone? I’d hate for them to spoil your reunion with Master Rythadine!”

Jacking his weapon, he cleared Vera’s breech of the spent brass cartridge. It spun past the grim countenance of his features, a marked contrast to the forced joviality of his words. How many nameless forgotten manling artisans had dedicated their lives to their crafts in these halls, though they might pale in comparison to the great mountain holds of his kin? Such devoted craftsmanship, even manling craftsmanship, deserved only the fullest of respect. Their memory did not deserve desecration.

The undead did not belong in these halls. He would see them cleansed.

[Breaker]

Josh took the lead, holding the torch high as they climbed the stairs. Cobwebs trailed from the carved stone walls and spiders scampered beneath his black boots as they thudded up the solid steps. The air grew danker, dripping with the odors of rot and ruin. By Breaker's estimation they had climbed perhaps a third of the way up the mountain when finally a ceiling came into sight. He let the torch's light wash across the intricately designed roof and the partially rotted trapdoor. A few exploratory pushes on the iron handle confirmed that the hinges had rusted shut. Red ferrous flakes crumbled beneath Josh's fingers as he removed his hand and placed his palm flat on the middle of the ancient oak.

"Mind yourself," Josh said over his shoulder to Throld, "pieces may splinter off and fall." The dwarf nodded sagely and moved down a few steps, finding a safe angle.

Ice expanded from the point on the trapdoor where Breaker's palm touched the coarse wood. A thick sheet of cool blue covered the rotted door, and then Josh pushed upwards, driving with his hips and climbing the final steps. The screech of iron torn from stone rent the air, and Josh stepped onto the next tier of the mountain. He carried the icy door overhead on one palm while the torch guttered in his other hand. His eyes swept a large, empty space. He could not see the walls. The corona cast by his torch lit only a small sphere of the large room.

Skittering skeletal footsteps sounded all around. They ran in waves, their grinning faces gleaming in the light as they drew near.

Josh moved like a whirlwind. He threw the icy door at one group of skeletons and the torch at another as his feet carried him through a crescent. He spun and kicked out and lashed repeatedly with both hands, splitting skulls and spines. Subtle shifts in his balance and core position kept him safe from their steely blades, which stabbed and slashed within a needle's breath of his body. He caught one skeleton by the ankle and wielded it like a maul, smashing it into its allies until it was more dust than bone.

"Is it safe up there?" Throld's ever whimsical voice came through the square hole in the floor. "Or are you making more friends?"

"Just," Josh gasped, summoning a hundred frozen flachette darts to the air around him, "one," he raised his arms overhead and then splayed his fingers and thrust his palms outward, "MOMENT!" The spikes flew as if fired from crossbows, finding their marks in eye sockets, rib cages, necks and knee joints. Bones clattered to the ground all around, and then came the sound of one last set of skittering footsteps.

Throld pounced up the last few stairs, weapon already gripped in the firing position. His dragon-belcher roared and spewed a gout of flame, and the last skeleton exploded in a shower of bones and dust.

"Should show them to attack the likes of us," the dwarf snorted as he cleared Vera's breech.

[Diadems of Promethion]

The echoes of Vera’s retort died upon walls of solid stone, savaging the darkness beyond their circle of torchlight. One large chamber, Throld surmised, with many adjoining smaller rooms. Workshops, perhaps?

Ignoring the sulphurous fumes of his expended cartridge, he sniffed at the rusty odour of inferior iron tools left long dormant. Yellow flame glinted upon a shard of metal amongst the rubble at his feet. Conscious of the slow rattle of bone upon the stairs behind him, he fell to one knee for a closer look.

His calloused fingers settled upon a windlass for a crossbow, albeit too large and too bulky for any weapon wielded by hand. Crude and unrefined in comparison to the craftsmanship of his kin - no artisan worth his craft would bet the lives of fighting dwarves on a weapon that would fail one in two shots - he could see nonetheless how its simplicity might prove effective when produced in bulk. A small cough tickled the back of his mind; had he seen this particular design before? Where...

“What’s this?”

Breaker had moved to retrieve the torch, miraculously still lit, and now he raised it to better illuminate the bulky object in their path. The walls of the Tiered Mountain threw his words back, swallowing whole the meagre light in his hands. A contraption of iron and rotten oak, the size of a peasant’s hovel, loomed before them.

“That’s a siege arbalest,” Throld replied, his question answered before it had fully formed. “Looks like they took an orcish design from the War of the Tap and modified it for a higher firing angle.”

“How do you know that?”

“They had one such antique stored at Gunnbad. Parade it out for the beardlings to see, when they learn of the Mage Wars. Looks almost just like it.” The dwarf gave the engine a thoughtful eye. “More modifications. See the fittings here, and here? Looks like it’s designed to take a cartridge, like my Vera.”

“... multiple shots, one after another?”

“Aye,” Throld nodded. “Fired at great range and velocity. This is a weapon designed to outrange guns, and to defend skies.”

Breaker caught on to the meaning of the words he left unsaid. “Of course. A weapon against Alerar.”

“The dark elves have their muskets and their airships. The light elves have skyknights and bladesingers. Looks like the Church turned to history and a little innovation in an attempt to even the odds.”

“It’s not that groundbreaking, surely.” A ravine of doubt furrowed the man’s brow.

“Depends,” Throld told him. “Might not look like much at the moment, but with a little more tweaking and the element of surprise... I wonder if this might absolve me of whatever debt the Blackcloaks think I owe them.”

Padded footfalls took him around the far side of the contraption, his eye now arrested by the fact that the great laths - their bowstrings long since eaten into dust - showed signs of wear. His attention travelled to the far wall, and to the unremarkable pile of rubble accumulated at its base. Intrigued, he inched closer.

“Throld?” Breaker’s voice carried a note of warning, wary of the skeletal warriors still climbing the spiral stairs.

“One moment,” the dwarf answered. “I just need to take a look at...”

The barbed head of a ballista bolt, he saw, its shaft long since rotted into mouldy splinters at his feet. He sensed something strange about its construction, almost as if...

Reaching for it, he noticed two things at once. First, some hasty hand had disturbed and reshaped the stonework of the floor, the shoddy handiwork not a day old. Second, beneath the twin odours of lingering sulphur and heady rust, the pungent stink of ozone and peppermint. Magic.

Ronus’s shit.

“Breaker?” he called across the room. The man met his gaze from his pool of torchlight, took one step towards him.

The taleweaver shook his head.

“Keep going,” he said, giving his companion a wise nod and a sly wink. “Keep heading up. You’ll find what you seek. Remember, the hero must always move on.”

A puff of coalescing shadow swallowed him whole, tinged in the faint aura of arcane amethyst. When the dust cleared, only stale air remained where Throld had stood.

[Breaker]

Josh blinked at the space where Throld had vanished, holding the torch higher to cast its flickering light further. Bone dust decorated Breaker's sifan clothing as he paced to the side of the room and found the place where the stairs started. These carved stone steps wound around the outside of the large room, rising ever higher along its tall walls. Josh turned as the skittering footsteps of skeletons drew nearer, and raised one hand. A blinding white light blossomed from his palm and shot through the chest cavities of the reanimated assailants, felling them instantly. Breaker brushed dust from his shoulders and resumed his climb, wondering where Throld had gotten to.

With each step thoughts of the dwarf faded, and by the time the torch's halo stopped touching the floor, Geoffrey Rythadine filled Breaker's mind. Had the King of the Tiered Mountain been one of the skeletons he'd so easily dispatched? His footsteps had a hollow voice as he neared the top of the echoing chamber. He didn't want an easy victory. He wanted to see pain and terror etched on Rythadine's face before the man died. He wanted to express the emotion he felt for Kristina in the form of suffering. For once he wanted to step down from his silver pedestal of virtue and drink the crimson cocktail of revenge.

Flickering torchlight washed over an empty doorway at the top of the stairs, and then illuminated the shadowy hallway beyond. It followed the curvature of the mountain as it rose on a slight slope. Breaker's boots and his breathing were the only sounds. He trailed a callused palm along the wall, feeling the intricate carvings that seemed to move in the dancing light. He found another empty doorway at the end of the hall, its rusted hinges yawning emptily.

The hall opened into a long, wide chamber where once again the torchlight proved insufficient. The hair on the back of Breaker's neck stood on end; he felt as though someone watched him from the darkness. He met with a long trough filled with liquid that lined the walls of the room. He dipped a finger into the viscous liquid and inhaled deeply through his nose. Oil. Without a second thought, Josh dipped his torch into the trough.

Flame leaped from the end of the torch onto the oil, and spread in both directions around the room with a grateful whisper. It illuminated a long table and chairs made from liviol, the enchanted wood that would never rot. It illuminated an empty stove piled with iron pots, its exhaust pipe rising up to the vaulted roof. It illuminated the far end of the chamber where a series of long steps led up to a carved stone throne, the arms of which looked like the heads of dire wolves.

Atop the throne sat a bald man of middling age. He had a thick beard streaked with grey and wore a simple brown robe. One hand gripped the ornate arm of his chair, the other clutched a crystal ball filled with dim mists. He wore a grey adamantine crown with five prongs, each rising from the circlet like a curved sword. The man put the crystal ball down on the dais next to his throne and stood up, stretching like a cat.

"Welcome to my mountain, Breaker," said Geoffrey Rythadine, "I've waited patiently on your arrival."