When Truvael was young, there was no shortage of stories of the forests. Some of thieves and gangs, - some of them even true, - some simply of the sort of creatures one would prefer to avoid on a journey. Most of them, though, were about clearings and old roads. The Emperor did not permit things to fall to disrepair, such was against the purpose of a thing, if it had outlived its purpose, it would have been demolished, and no trace would remain at all. So what of old roads, odd clearings with mounds of brick or hunched ruin? They were to be spurned, passed by, left alone, best not thought of at all. To follow the roads was to leave all sanctity behind, and such a thing was a curse to the spirit. But always there was one or a few so curious, carried on by whispers and wanting, that found forbidden places to be all the more alluring. And along the roads they found flowers that wept a darkling nectar, and quiet creatures that dared do no more than watch from the trees, and grasses that grasped tight amidst the earth and crumbling pathways. Inward they would draw, and inward they would find the clearing; silent and shadowed, a place where those few things with the strength to grow sat like razors in the earth, whipping and writhing at intrusion. And in the center, there was the ruin. Loose brick, fallen over itself, - crumbling fragments of walls standing alone and disordered, - a tower still bearing a banner, still soaked so through with oil and mold that no color it once bore could be seen. And thus, the story ended, for there was no telling what went on in such a place; to do anything then but flee back to sanctity was a death one could not escape.
But this was not a story, and Truvael was not dead, yet, at least. He was a soldier, the blade of the Empire borne by divine spark, and he wasn't so foolish as to come alone. Erial, Tolusun, and Lorensa stood with him; keener blades he'd never known, and fellows he'd come up alongside himself. It was, nevertheless, unwise to stand in such a place as this. Protection only went so far, and the Army was no more meant to brave these places than the common traveler. But they had been left few options. The Emperor's hands were far afield, still watching the wake of the darkness in the drylands south, and with what monster had come to Minail only a few days ago, there was no time to wait for them.
Simple reality made it no easier to stand in the shadow of the blackened ruin. Anywhere else a forsaken fortress such as this would have been reclaimed by vines and trees. But not here. The only weakness to the place were those found in its creation, carried out to their fullest by the weight of years and abandonment. Dark stone, as smooth and damp as river rocks, made the whole of the thing, only cracked apart where they had failed entirely, falling as much to thin sand as rubble. Where the siegewalls broke, the citadel stood almost as poorly; its own walls crumbled through, doors - such scraps of moldering bark as they were, - hung off their hinges, but the structure held. Even from outside he could see the pillars that bore the weight of it still stood, seemingly unaffected by the decay around them. There were no engravings, no murals or ornaments, if it had once held the grandeur of banners and clothworks, they were long gone. If ever the place had even had a name, there was no telling it.
He half-turned back along the path they'd come, and it, of course, was exactly as it was when he had walked it. He wasn't sure what else he'd expected.
He turned back to the ruin. Clearly his comrades were no more enthused about this than he was, else they'd have complained about spending the last few minutes standing about the outskirts. He tapped the haft of his spear against a nearby stone, catching their attention. "We carry on. Bear yourselves sharply." His voice at least, reflected the confidence he was meant to have. That would have to do. With that, he lead them into the clearing; the swathe of fetid grasses and withered saplings ahead of them bore no object to scouring Light, and even the lowest Soldier bore enough of that to scorch these things to cinder on the slightest touch, and it was indeed ash that they left underfoot as they entered the place of true darkness.
With the border crossed, the group split into pairs. He and Tolsun to take the westward scout through the walls, Erial and Lorensa for the east.
"A miserable place," said Tolsun, as he watched the women start their own route. "Should not the rain have washed it away?"
Had he known any less than he did, he would have agreed. "'Tis strange, certainly," he agreed. "But we do not question."
Tolsun replied as usual; as close to a hiss as he could manage. "So it is. But it *is* strange."
He elected not to respond to that. For now, he wasn't to speak of such things, and he wasn't so loose with his words as his comrade. The rest of the circle was walked in silence, finding nothing of note. All things considered, that was a good thing. Erial and Lorensa came up ahead of them as they rounded the front of the citadel.
"Nothing?" asked Erial.
"Nothing," he said. He turned towards the space in the structure where there had once been a set of doors. Stones like these didn't scorch, even had soot clung to them it wouldn't appear any different from the rock itself, but cast in white upon the ruined doorway, was fire. Unmistakable, even as an imprint rather than living flames. He summoned magic to himself, and saw... nothing. It was a mark left by something done ages ago, almost as old the structure itself. No sign of what had brought it remained. That, all things considered, was also good news.
"Close quarters, to swords now." he said, letting the magic fall away. With that, he turned his spear point down, and stuck it firmly into the earth. It wasn't a long spear, but it wasn't going to be any good in corridors and close confines nonetheless. The others followed suit. That the spears reacted to this by glowing softly, was to be expected in such a place. He drew his sword, and lead them inside. With the roof and the floors above them intact it was dark, lit only by the subtle glow of their own arms and armor. Suddenly, Erial stopped; they all stopped with her, moving quick to position against whatever she'd seen. The dark lit, suddenly, pale light shining, from Erial. She'd cast a magelight, and, fortunately, only looked a little amused by having sent her fellows into panic.
The obvious solution to the darkness was quickly copied by the rest of them. The more lights the better. It didn't reveal much new about their surroundings, it was a fortress, laid out like any other; they passed decrepit barracks and empty armories. Tolsun and Lorensa insisted on venturing in to what turned out to be an alcohol cellar, which would have been fine if they hadn't come out to show him one of the bottles. For a moment it looked like any other; then he turned it, and caught sight of something within. It was like a floating mold, hanging down from the congealed surface of the dubious liquid, except that as he watched it, it drifted up to the side of the bottle, and began to spread against it like a leech. He managed not to throw it, and Lorensa returned it whence it came.
A quick pass through the upper levels revealed nothing more of interest, not even more of the ghosts of flame that had marred the entrance. They were thus left with the final task, the one he wasn't to share; if all was well, no explanation would be needed. The place could again be abandoned, the horror of days prior a lone aberration of no import. If all was well.
So he'd been told, these places were always more than could be seen. He brought his soldier back down to the ground level, and from there towards the back of the fortress. There was an antechamber there, sat unceremoniously in the middle of an intersection between a fortunately empty larder and a messhall. Within, was a set of a stairs, blocked off by a heavy slab of white stone, sealing it well away, forever, leaving whatever was left in the darkened halls beneath the fortress unknown and unneeded.
The slab had cracked in two, its lower half nowhere to be seen. As for what was left, the rock was lifeless; the primitive but desperately strong magic had fled entirely. The seal once placed here at the end of the dark age, was nothing more than a stone. He backed out of the antechamber and set a warding of shimmering fire across the doorway - it wouldn't be enough, but it would, should anything arise, give him time to explain.
The sudden magic did not escape notice, swords were held ready, each alight with fires of their own. That was good, they would need them.
"I must say, first," he said, as he had been bidden, "That what I say now must never be repeated without command."
The others nodded. "Say it then," said Erial.
Impatience was not a virtue, especially not today. "The priest told you all why these places are forbidden." Had the priests so trusted the Army earlier, there might not have been so many deaths, but that was empty thinking. "I will tell you the rest, now, as I have been told it. This," he gestured around himself, "is not a dead place. It is a place of death, of curses. But it is not dead. It is an unliving darkness, the kind that ruled us in the dark age. This much, I hope, is obvious." There was another round of nods, "This place is a relic, forgotten and forsaken, empty and worthless. Best ignored." He pointed back to the antechamber and the broken seal, "But there is a place beneath. The place from which the darkness that still poisons it arises. It was sealed in the first days of the Empire, and thus made harmless. The seal is broken; the darkness is free."
Here he had a choice. The order was to leave, let it remain as it was; Minail would be forewarned and thus prepared, and the army would shield the city until the Blades came. But the ruin was closer to villages, a town. The army would only do so much for them; scarce lives amidst the woods warranted little permanent protection, and with Minail demonstrably at risk, even less. If he was so brave, - or foolish, time would tell, - he could end this now. Clear the halls beneath of whatever crumbling creatures remain, and then all that would need be done would be to leave the place alone once more. The others would follow him if he asked. If all he needed was Tolsun, he needn't even lie. If they didn't return, the city would assume the worst nonetheless; there would be no great loss, beyond their own. The logic was sound.
"And so, with this seal broken, we are left no choice;" he chose the lie. "We are to scour this place, that no more poison bleeds from its heart."
Lorensa spoke up. "Should we rest first? The walk and the scouting, it has not been a long day, but if we are to do this, perhaps we need it?" Uncharacteristic caution, but it was warranted.
"No. If we rest in this place, we risk poisoning ourselves. And any monster that comes upon us will find us easy prey." There was no lie there at least. And with that, there were no more objections. "Ready, then. And follow me."
The wall of cast fire faded, and, crouching under the remains of the slab, he lead them down into the halls beneath, unwalked by the living for as long as there were records to speak of it.
It was somehow darker beneath the fortress. The magelights felt dimmer then they ought to be, the pale light not reaching quite so far, or illuminating quite so well. Perhaps the stones themselves were darker for having never been graced with sunlight. Perhaps it was simply a trick of anxiety; he was not, in fact, immune to such things. Either way, the stairway rounded itself a few times, taking them deeper down than he'd quite expected. When finally they reached the bottom of the stairs, they found themselves in a place very different from the fortress above. The ceiling was a tall arch, the hall ahead unnervingly wide; he didn't see an end to the passage. The stone was the same, of course, but where above it was smooth and plain, here it glistened in the light, detailed finely, but haphazardly, as though something had scraped the images into the walls long after it was made. There was a pattern to it, almost like the geometries of magic, but only almost. The prospect of investigating it, seeing where, if anywhere it lead, was not appealing.
He ran his hand across the stone nearby, seeking some grounding in familiar earth. He didn't find it. Rock was rock, however smooth. But not here. Here, rock was almost earth-soft. And it was still damp.
They were not, no matter how many seconds they lingered at the base of the steps, beset by abominations. With any grim fortune, they were simply and senselessly lingering where they had for so long, unaware that their freedom - or long-awaited meal - was available to them. Better that than the idea that they had all fled into the wilds days ago, before any notice of them had been made. Either way, they weren't going to come to Holy Empire's soldiers.
"We stay together, yes?" said Erial, "No reason to make ourselves easy for the unholy."
He nodded. "You with me ahead, Losuna, Tolsun, behind close. Keep ready, blade and light." It hardly needed saying, but it was habit more than order.
With that, the others fell into position, and he lead them further in. They came to an intersection quickly, identical passages right and left, and the original one carrying on ahead still; unhelpful. "Mark the way we came," he said. Getting lost in this place was about the worst thing that could happen; there was no way of telling how many intersections like this there were. Lorensa cast a green arrow against the floor, pointing just way they came. He elected to take them down the right path, they would undoubtedly need to take them all, in the end, one had to start somewhere.
They had only gone roughly as far as they had between the stairs and the intersection before they came to another turn, albeit one that offered only a single way forward; once more to the right. A short walk again, and Truvael was faced with a door. Wooden, braced with copper strips; the boards rippled and warped with pale rot, the red metal stained and pockmarked black. With a glance behind to make sure the others were with him and ready, he pushed against it lightly, and it fell open unlocked, while his sword pointed squarely at the widening gap.
Nothing came but cold air, and a small realization. It was warm down here. Much warmer than it had been outside. Inside, there was darkness beyond what little his magelight could illuminate from outside, save a very, very faint golden glow, just beyond the reach of it. He cast his magelight into the room ahead, neatly illuminating what seemed, for all the world, to be a perfectly mundane storeroom. The golden glow proved to be a lamp, sat on a pedestal, burning a minuscule flame. He had a guess at what it was, and in sight of his magic, it proved true; Life, terribly thin. The room was warded, carrying a primitive shielding against darkness in the drylands fashion, leaving so meager a solution to the magic outside effective enough. So long as the door was closed. The guttering flame went out as he stepped inside.
It was cold in here, like the gust of air had implied, as cold as it ought to be, really. Lorensa went to investigate the small bottles on the shelf at the back of the room; Erial began to pry open corroded copper boxes. Tolsun, to his credit against his inquisitive counterparts, stood guard by the door. For his own part, he elected to test a theory, and touched the wall. It was, unlike the halls outside, stone. It did not glisten, it was not akin to glass, it was not damp. And like he had seen with magic, there was no trace of the scratches that covered the halls outside. Something had changed here since it was all abandoned, clearly. He shouldn't have been surprised, he said himself, it was not a dead place, merely an unliving one.
Lorensa was the first to interrupt his musing. She held a bottle of sandy glass at him, fortunately lacking in horrific molds this time. "Look at this," she said, as though he had anything else to be looking at presently.
"What am I to be seeing?"
"Nothing, look," she turned the bottle upside down, a measure of brownish powder and pale crust falling out. "Nothing at all. Just debris, remains of what it once held."
"Unlike..?" She didn't need to answer that, it struck him as soon as he'd said it. Unlike the bottle upstairs. A stopper should have crumbled to dust over the ages, and here it had. In the place awash with darkness, even above these halls, it was whole, though certainly not unmarred. It wasn't useful information, but was certainly, something.
She nodded as realization overtook him. "Something to tell the priests at least? Small use it will be." She set the bottle on a nearby shelf.
No amount of waiting brought Erial to him from the other set of shelving, and he went to her himself. "Anything?"
She chirped her annoyance at being interrupted. "No. Not, really no. Nothing Lorensa did not say. Everything is dust or turns to dust when breath falls on it. Useless all." This conclusion did not stop her from prying open another case, green corrosion cracking and crumbling in her hands.
"Then what are you doing?"
She chirped again, then again, lower. "Out in the halls, the air is, heavy, thick. It reminds me of deathhouses and prisons. I wish a little more of this before it becomes unclean too."
He couldn't say he didn't understand. There was no small comfort in a place a little more normal than, the rest of this place. But there wasn't time for this. He stepped back to the entrance, and with haste enough, Erial followed him.
He lead them back out, Tolsun falling behind with Lorensa as ordered. The path they came was uneventful, and soon they reached the intersection again, marked neatly by Lorensa's arrow to what was now the left. To his right, the path deeper in to the halls. Assuming the rest of them were laid out like the one he'd just come from, he didn't have anything to lose by leaving that one for the last, even if it just lead to another intersection. He lead them across to what had been the leftward path in the beginning. Save in direction, it was identical to the path across from it, a short walk, followed by a turn. But here something changed. The walls came inward, just a little; their surface, once glistening and glinting was, vague. As though something were covering it. Approaching the mouth of this change, just past the turn, the golden glow of their protections suddenly tinted their surroundings, sharply rising from being barely noticeable to being unmistakable. It was not, however, the apex of their light; they were safe to go on, in one sense at least.
Truvael could hardly fairly ask any of them to step into, whatever this was first, but that didn't mean he need be hasty. He moved to the wall of the corridor, resting his head against the side, and looking on into the shrunken passage. He saw, barely, thread. Thin stalks and strings, countless and dense beyond measure, but almost too small to notice, rising from the stones ahead, pressing into the passage. He didn't need the education the Empire had given him to recognize what he saw; anything living knew this revulsion deep in their blood. It was mold. Some great mold, stuck to stone.
He pushed himself off the wall with full force; "Back, one step," he shouted, taking rather too little care not to be heard. The soldiers fell back, Tolsun and Lorensa turning to guard their backs against anything that might have heard. Nothing came; or, at least, nothing he cared to wait for.
"Erial, with me," he said. He raised his hand to the molded passage, the gesture promptly mirrored by the woman, such that their arms pressed against eachother. There was a spark. Between them was the armor of mages, the Holy Empire's highest means; a geometry shared between any number, linking summons to summons, giving shared magic a single voice. It might not have been necessary, but it was best to be certain in such places as this, and to thin the reserves of two mages than to exhaust one entirely, was always the preferable option. Fire was the choice of the moment, as easy for Erial as it was for him, and unbested in its purgatory nature. Thus, he called fire to hand; shimmering light blazing and bounding in every color imaginable. He fed it shared power, impressed it with a single purpose, and set it upon the mold.
There was a sound like a scream, the moment the fire touched the mold, from before and beneath them. The scouring carried on, heedless, sparking in the air as it leapt in thin lines between the walls; it burned the stalks down to the wall, and then smouldered against the stones, the screaming stopped, and then, the walls, floor, even the ceiling around them caught alight. Shocks of flame emerging suddenly and then falling back to cinder in the briefest moments, it raced along the stones up and down the corridor, and then, as suddenly as it had been born, it was gone, all vestiges of energy spent. For its given purpose, they were themselves unharmed, but they could no longer labor in quiet ignorance. Before them now, was a set of ashen bones, struck in faint nacre by the flame as it cleansed them. They were barely recognizable, crumbled mostly to powder under their own weight, now lacking the support of the thing which had grown out of them. They were, at least, for a single expected feature, Trialk.
Erial looked like she was going to be ill. He turned back down the corridor, Lorensa and Tolsun still watched behind them; Lorensa he trusted, Tolsun, it would seem, he had underestimated. They waited a while longer, for Erial to recover from retching and for it to be clear that nothing was going to come for them. Perhaps none of the things that were left had the luxury of movement. Curiosity struck him again, and he returned to the wall, touching the scorched-grey place the mold had once been. It felt just like the stone in the room with lamp, save the narrow scratches. Such was unhappy confirmation. He lingered a moment, still unsure of how to carry on, when something changed beneath his hand. Dry stone began to grow damp. He pulled back from the wall and returned to the group.
"Are we all alright?"
Erial nodded, Lorensa and Tolsun chirped without looking back. Now was apparently time for the two of them to do as they'd been trained. He couldn't complain about that. "Then we carry on."
The door at the end of this passage was cracked open, just a little, but otherwise identical to its counterpart in the other hall. He summoned his magic before pushing this one open, stepping safely back as it swung open.
Inside was, hazy. It caught iridescent in the light, just barely enough to make out the shape of furnishings and, something else. He moved his magelight into the doorway proper; still hazy, but now clear enough in the light, was a room, or, as was quickly clear, the image of one. Drifting and rippling ever so slightly, was a field of stalks and minuscule bulbs, dim color hanging in bare facsimile of a room whose actual contents had been consumed; including, the vaguest sight, of what seemed to be Trialk, too indistinct to discern anything but the shape of. Waiting, the intrusion of the magelight, a threat of fire, did nothing. It was nothing more than a trick of color and thread. He pulled the door closed with a bit of magic, and with a little more broke its copper bindings into a blockade to prevent it opening. It could be returned to later, when the truly dangerous things were dealt with.
He lead the soldiers out wordlessly, no one at all seeming much for talking. It wasn't really new in these halls, but it felt grim now. They were not beset, but they were surrounded; it was worse than fighting, very certainly. They returned to the intersection, marked clearly by Lorensa's arrow, on the left.
That was wrong. He held the soldiers at the mouth of the intersection; the realization quickly spread among them. Lorensa pointed down the right path; "We can still be sure where the exit is, at least?"
An invitation to retreat, so spoken as not to challenge him. On another day he might have chastised her for cowardice, but they would not be facing *this* on that day. "Should we need it," he said. It was wiser to leave. The Emperor's Blades made this their purpose, the army had no place here, and it wasn't their mission besides, whatever he had told them. And yet, if they left, then the ruin remained open, and what is within could claim anyone who came near, assuming there was indeed nothing more that could wander out. It could end for certain today.
"Do... we follow the arrow, then?" Lorensa asked, eventually.
"As we must," he lied, "But we go with blades ready." The phrase was beginning to run thin; he imagined this was how the commanders felt repeating it all day. Lorensa fell back behind him.
He started on; the hall they were bid to follow was, at least, no different than the others. Again, it wasn't long before they reached an intersection; one to the left, one to the right. No arrows this time to misguide them. Just thin thread stretching down from the high ceiling. Then more, and more, falling as though cut free.
Forewarning was forewarning; let it not be said he was too blind to see the obvious. He lit the magic of sword, the cleansing flame he had himself called springing along its edge, the others did the same, and he looked up to see what was coming. Above them was a mass, almost akin to silk-sacs, unraveling slowly, and then tearing and crumbling; a thick, sickly liquid dripped, and then as the mass finally broke apart, came down all at once in a torrent, followed immediately by something very much more solid. He cast scouring flame ahead of them, as much to slow whatever it was that was coming for them as to ensure that the rush of foul liquid didn't reach them.
It came anyway; a Trialk, still recognizable, still armored in polished copper, almost - but only almost - as though it were still alive. Pale threads bound it, thin stalks glistened against its skin; where the mold touched metal, it bore black, weeping pinholes. The flames caught on it, to little effect for how weakly they had been made. He met its charge with his sword, catching it with the point and shoving the rest its momentum to the side, freeing his sword from its ribcage as it carried on. Erial was upon it instantly, but it caught her arm and forced her away. There was snapping and tearing - not from Erial, fortunately, but from the abomination. In injury it forsook its thin illusion of life, fashioning its stolen flesh into a shape better armed to gore and tear.
Lorensa drowned it in fire, and it screamed; the shrill resonating sound that had come when they first burned the mold. And then it leapt through the fire, catching Lorensa with its full weight and tearing at her with claws of fresh-cracked bone. Truvael cut into it with the point again, trying to force it off her with sheer impact weight, and failing that do real, deep damage which it could not ignore. He failed in the first effort at least, but was met in the second by Tolsun; the monster started to scream again, but it did not stop tearing. For a moment it seemed Lorensa would be fine nonetheless, her armor serving better than could have been hoped, and then as Erial recovered and joined them, finally forcing the creature off her, there was a flash. A gout of golden fire, and the miserable sound of fresh-tearing flesh.
When they could see again, the thing was dead, lying in a heap as the golden flames ate it into ash. Lorensa laid further away than they'd last seen, a smear of blood between where she'd been and where she had been thrown to. She was dead too, the breastplate she was wearing cleaved almost entirely apart, breaking careful geometry and enchantment, leaving and a gash that cut through bone deep into her. He was the first to make his way to her, and the first to see the gleaming mold where she lay turn stalks to needles to bury into her body. No time for mourning in a place such as this; that much was well known. Simple and inanimate flame was all that was needed; she hadn't been made a monster yet.
It could have gone no differently, of course, they all knew it, him most of all. These things were dangerous. These places were forbidden for a reason. There are reasons the Emperor's Blades are the only ones so chosen to fulfill this need, and reasons they are so honored for it. He had commanded his friend to her death without so much as the right to do so; so it was, such was the fate of a soldier, inevitably. So they had been taught, so they firmly believed. Lorensa would not forgive him, she was the sort to bear a grudge, but he would face that, whether today, or in decades. But later either way. More important was question of what to do with the living.
"Erial, Tolsun," he said, his tone rather sharper than he'd meant. It snapped the both of them to attention. "Retreat or revenge?" A more honest question, finally.
"Virtue, Truvael," said Erial. She really believed that, but right now it hardly sounded like it. "Ever and always."
Tolsun false-hissed again. "Whichever leads us to scouring this place. Revenge if it must be, Virtue if you like."
At least he need not lead them with a lie now.
They carried on, closer and weaker. The passages to the side weren't worth anything; it could be safely assumed that they would be like the others, dead-ends possibly bearing another corpse, or another unholy creature. He was coming to an understanding, - a guess, really, but a good one he thought, and one that could very well work better than clearing room by room, - the mold was connected. Burning one fruiting corpse served no purpose, it was not from where it grew. True mold, the kind that plagued dwellings and crops, grew from a powdered seed, too small to see, poured off beyond counting by any great body of the mold. Not here, else it would not have needed needles to claim Lorensa, nor to start from within the wall to restore its hold in the hall they had burned. If the mold could grow only from where it already sprouted, then it stood to reason there was a source. And as the mold grew thicker and heavier as they left the intersection, and the glow of their protections warned them of the strain they faced, he began to think he had guessed right.
Where they walked, there was left cinders and ash, and nothing came so close as to brush them. The walls closed in the further they went - or, rather, the stalks grew taller, and they bore on their heads the image of the walls. They passed what he thought was another intersection, it was too overgrown to see properly. The floor was covered in damp mounds; bodies like the first they'd found, so overgrown as to be unrecognizable. Here, like the room they'd sealed off, there were other images. Trialk all, of course, bearing no more detail than before, some frozen fleeing back down the way he'd come, a few, he was sure, cutting down such people. There were black streaks around those figures; he hardly needed to guess what that was meant to be. Finally, there was a door. A thinning in the mold, by sheer necessity, where the great copper plates hung open; there was still recognizable text embossed into them, for any who still read such a strange script.
Beyond it was a room, brightly lit by magelight; at the back, a great shining pool, just barely visible, and a codex-bearing statue, painted in blue and red and green, trimmed in gold, where it met the wall; along the sides, four more statues, no less grand, one with a spear, one with a hammer and nail, one with beasts, and one with children. In the midst of it all, a handful of Trialk whom he could only guess to be mages, centered by one in standing starkly in the same shimmering-wine as the Holy Empire's banners. At their backs, Entraka, with daggers. Were there any truth to it, it would've been a scene worthy of a painting. The illusion broke with spark of scouring flame, his incineration of its nearest surface sending a wave throughout the rest of the image, cleanly unveiling the artifice as no more than a denser variation of what was seen outside. But the image simply replaced itself, altering subtly for the detail it had lost. The center figure was now looking directly at him, rather than his fellow mages.
"Tolsun, Erial," he said, still quiet, though he doubted it much mattered.
Erial understood, certainly, and stepped to his side. Tolsun had no such restraint; he stepped in front of him, spread his arms wide and rose vibrant flames from his whole. It cast from him ahead, and into the walls, carrying back along the passage they'd come from and suddenly drowning all sense in screams that, for all fortune, only hurt a little. When he was done, the corridor was bare, but the room ahead was not, entirely. Already the mold grew again from heavy roots that crawled along the ground and walls. But it was enough. Where once there were mages, there was instead a mass of pulsating rot; except for the central one. His lower body was engulfed in the mass, but above the waist, he seemed every bit as whole and unmarred as he had in image. Even so, his body hung limply, spasming and pulsing like there was something beneath his skin, desperate to get out.
Tolsun stepped back slightly, leaning against one of the doors, as though his work was done.
Were there not other priorities, he would have done something about that. He had, at least, drawn his sword again by the time Truvael entered the room ahead. There was a sound, from all around them. A hum, that grew steadily. Little time then, and even less for haste. A test to begin; he cast thin flame the mass. The mage-creature suddenly came upright, sparking magic of its own, as though it weren't impeded by its state at all. Its response came in a wave of fetid ichor that overwhelmed the feeble flame and pooled on the ground. Primitive magic at best, if such with immense power behind it; he wasn't so learned as the Priests, but he was fairly certain the mages of the dark age were more capable than that. Whatever the mage had hoped to gain in this monstrosity, it hadn't worked.
The humming grew louder. There was a second sound then, tearing flesh and snapping bone from behind them; he looked back to Tolsun. The man was fine, for now, but he wasn't watching the mass or the mage atop it, he was looking down the corridor they'd come. He turned suddenly; "Three of them!" Erial ran back to join him at the entrance. So be it.
Magic on the scale as to cause this required structure of one form or another; he summoned his magic to him, and, finally, took stock of the scratches that covered all surfaces in this place. Here at the source it wasn't just a rough morass of failures and primitive efforts. Those existed in excess, but here he could see purpose. The mass was the heart, the source of it, yes, the center from which all power in this place flowed, but it was itself a product. More recent than the poison which had ruined this place, if by slight measure. Destroying it wouldn't remove the poison, he wasn't sure anything could, now that he could see how deep it ran, but it would end the mold. That was near enough to a solution.
What he could see was a fraction of the problem. The roots were all around him, the mold was in the very stones, too deep to burned out. So he would turn the stones against it. Life to life, even if he drew deeper than was wise, if he survived at all, he could be restored. The stone beneath him began to shift, waving the sea, as he gave it a semblance of life. This was poison to the rot; it screamed, it recoiled, it tried desperately to tear its roots from earth that no longer gave way for them. It succeeded; suddenly it burst from the ground, around him, boiling and oozing, but unended. It whipped the stump where it had torn itself from the larger structure beneath at him, and he wasn't so quick as to summon a defense against it that could have stopped it. It knocked the wind out of him, all but certainly broke ribs, and sent him crashing into the regrowing mold. This thing was not built to defend itself, else he wouldn't have survived at all, and it was weaker now for forsaking a portion of its roots.
He glanced back towards the door; it was a mess of fire and light, he couldn't make anything out at all. He could afford to be direct now, he needed to injure it, bleed it in some way that he could exploit. It wasn't going to let him poison it a second time. He stood, thanking his armor that he still had the protection to keep the mold he was laying amidst off him. Time was lacking, just one of the things had killed Lorensa, and while Erial was a better swordswoman, Tolsun was not. A second warding of fire around himself, then, and with that, he charged the mass with his sword.
The mage-creature spewed more ichor at him, thin spears and razors, but it was not enough. He cut deeply and tore wide into the tumorous mass, and it poured the same sickly fluid the mold-sac had earlier. There was something he was missing. It wasn't the mass that was the heart. The mass was decay, rot, excess, but not the heart. The obvious struck him with the Mage's dagger; his armor blocked the blade, but the gouge it left belied it being simple copper. It was the mage itself, of course; small wonder its magic was primitive and weak. All it had was being expended on, everything else. The other creatures weren't independent abominations, they were infested; the mold was not the cause of their dark state, it was the means by which it was achieved.
He was running out of time again; the geometry of the armor was resilient, carried in more than bronze, but it would not last now. He called flame to sword again, pouring far more into the enchantment than it was ever meant to bear, and charged the mage once more. Its final defense was no different than all that had come before, thin needles of death and a blunt copper dagger. It was not enough to save it; the purging flame took root. Everything stopped suddenly, the humming and the screaming; the mold around him withered, stalks crumbling. The mage-creature, writhed silently, its lifelike image burning through in moments, leaving nothing but an outpouring of ichor and the remnants of bones, which themselves caught and burned even as they flowed out of the abomination. In moments it was gone entirely, the remnants of the flame taking light on the rest of the rot around it, even as it quickly melted into ichor itself.
He turned back the entrance. They were both alive, somehow. Bloodied and beaten, Tolsun looking in rather dire need of medicine indeed, but alive. Everything behind them that wasn't itself burning had crumpled, the false vigor that had allowed the corpses to retain color and shape fading, leaving them withered and dry remains, unlikely to ever rise again even if the poison never fled this place.
"Both of you," he said, trying and rather failing to keep an even commander's tone, "Get in close, Erial behind Tolsun, we're leaving."
There was no objection, or acknowledgment, for that matter, as Erial was busy attempting to perform basic healing on Tolsun's wounds, that he not bleed out before they got out of the place. Fair enough. For a fortune, he was wrong to assume the place would begin to collapse without the mold shoring it up; the dark age built to last, at least.