They ate a hot breakfast shortly after sunrise and then entered the markets to provision the trip. They would carry everything they needed on foot, since once in the mountains, a horse or mule would be unable to follow them. Kamar explained to Cor that it would be hard enough at times for them to squeeze through the route they would take. Kamar also expressed his concern that should an errant rockslide have blocked the passage, they would have to climb over and down as he had done with his earlier expedition. Cor hoped this wouldn’t turn out to be the case, having about as much interest in the concept of climbing as he did falling.
The trek to the mountains was absolutely miserable, but uneventful. The summer was fully in effect, reaching sweltering temperatures in the afternoon and never really cooling down even in the middle of night. They started at sunrise, resting for several hours during the hottest part of the day, and walked until the sun was fully down before stopping. They encountered several short, summer rains that did little to cool them off in the oppressive heat; in fact, the rain simply amplified the discomfort, bringing an extreme humidity that made it hard to breathe.
Kamar tried to convince Cor to leave his armor in Worh; Cor would not, explaining that he refused to be without protection. The armor became burning hot to the touch in the summer sun, and Cor’s tunic and other undergarments became completely soaked with sweat throughout the day. By day’s end, his clothing would begin to chaff against his skin in most uncomfortable ways, and at night, he would remove his armor and clothing and sleep naked, allowing his skin the opportunity to breathe and his clothing to dry.
The mountains could be easily seen on a clear day from the city of Worh, and Cor got the distinct impression that no matter how far they plodded, he and his companion never seemed to get any closer. By the fourth day, he could finally see that the mountains loomed larger now than ever, and ground became hilly, but with an overall constant incline upwards. On the fifth day, the going became noticeably rougher as the ground became rockier, and the hills gave way to boulders, rocky outcroppings and mountains themselves.
Kamar explained that there were many paths and passes in the Spine, and he knew of none that would lead one all the way into the Loszian Empire. Though he wasn’t sure why someone would want to go there anyway. At this Cor said nothing, very aware of an unseen force that pulled him that direction. It was also quite plain to Cor that they were nearing the hall and the fetish in his visions; his blood tingled, and he felt increasingly restless. They walked north up a small ravine on the mountains outskirts, before Kamar, clearly finding the path he sought, turned them east into the mountains.
The going became slow now; the mountains of the Spine contained huge amounts of basalt and granite, and loose rock could be seen everywhere. The two tread carefully, keeping their eyes on the ground to avoid missteps that could lead to twisted or even broken ankles. Kamar, familiar with the mountains and their environment, also kept a watchful eye about and above, and he was extremely concerned with potential rockslides or the occasional denizens of the Spine, such as huge brown bears.
Sunset in the mountains was unlike anything Cor had ever experienced. In the pass, they could not see the horizon, and the sunlight seemed to pass over them with an odd orange and red glow, while the pass itself seemed shrouded in blue shadow. Kamar announced they would stop for the night, and he pointed, saying that the final leg of their journey started right behind a large boulder. Cor protested, saying they may as well finish if they are indeed that close. Kamar explained that they still had about two miles left to travel, and that was through a tight squeeze that would likely take them several hours. Cor acquiesced, but he simply could not force himself to be still.
Cor did not sleep at all that night; he could feel the fetish was close by, and this gave him a nervous energy, almost anxiety that he could not manage to calm. Additionally, night in the mountains was an extremely nerve wracking experience. When one camps in the plains, he can see in all directions for miles, but in this mountain pass, Cor could see little beyond twenty feet. The moon rarely shined directly into their campsite due to the immense size and shape of the mountain formations, and every sound echoed between the rock walls to sound as if it were right behind him. He quickly came to the conclusion that he would never pass through the Spine again.
Cor woke Kamar early, much to the man’s disgruntled chagrin. Cor was eager to finish this expedition, and he recognized a longing to wrap his fingers around the fetish’s ebony handle. He didn’t bother to breakfast, though Kamar made it clear that he was not continuing on an empty stomach. Cor paced like a caged tiger the entire time glaring at the man, who it seemed took a bit longer than usual to finish his meal.
Behind the massive boulder was a triangular crack in the rock face less than five feet tall. It was wide at the base and tapered at the top, and the claustrophobia of it reminded Cor of the round tunnel through which he had escaped the catacombs of Sanctum. Kamar said it would be best to leave all of the gear and provisions here, and with any luck they would be back shortly after midday. Cor could not deny the wisdom of this, though he refused to leave his armor or Soulmourn behind, especially following the story of an easily twelve foot wide spider.
Kamar led the way into the rocky crevice that apparently wormed its way between two mountain cliffs. The crack actually consisted of two rock faces that came flush together just below head level. It was less than three feet wide at the base, which forced the men to enter it sideways and shuffle with their backs to one rock face, while hunching over or bending their legs to avoid banging their heads on the top. Once inside, Cor realized the tunnel he had made his way through underneath Sanctum really could not compare to this crevice. Rock jutted out at odd angles, sometimes forcing the men to contort in strange ways to pass by. After a short distance, Cor stopped and took off his sword belt, as the sword had a tendency to get stuck at awkward angles. He wrapped the belt around the scabbard and carried Soulmourn in his left hand to keep it out of the way. Roughly halfway in, Kamar had found a pile of loose rock that ad apparently had come down in his absence; it blocked most of the way through, and the men had to crawl over it while on their sides. Kamar would have been happy to turn back, but Cor forced him to press on with reminders of payment.
It took the pair nearly two hours to push through the crack, and when they emerged into the open air on the other side, no amount stretching seemed able to relieve the fiery aches in their muscles. While attempting to work the kinks out of his sore neck and back, Cor saw they had emerged into a small valley or gorge. Mountains and cliff faces rose on all sides for several hundred feet, preventing the sun from shining into the depression except for when the sun was most directly overhead. Like the rest of the mountains, the gorge was desolate and rocky; no vegetation grew here, indicating the obvious absence of water.
And there it was; a large edifice stood only a minute’s walk from the crevice. The building’s façade was made of crisscrossed beams, made of steel perhaps, and shattered glass still hung in places, suspended from the steel. It had an oddly skeletal look about it. From Cor’s vantage point, it looked as if the entire roof of the building was covered with boulders and other debris from an apparent rockslide. The detritus was ancient and well settled, which would explain the virtual invisibility of the building from above. Cor immediately set out for the building, leaving Kamar behind to his surprise. The man followed Cor, but he kept his distance and only approached at a slow pace, in sharp contrast to Cor’s meaningful and measured strides. To withstand millennia, as well as some unknown number of years with tons of basalt and granite on its roof, the building was an amazing feat of engineering if not magical prowess. No doubt, the kings and queens that ruled in the days this building was erected were truly powerful.
Cor passed through the building’s portal and found himself within the room Kamar described. It was truly impressive and awe inspiring, walls, floors and four massive columns of marble. Centuries, if not mil
lennia, of dust and debris littered the hall, and huge webs hung suspended from the ceiling and columns. Cor quickly reminded himself to be wary; he was not overly interested in becoming a meal for an enormous spider.
He cautiously walked deeper into the hall, aware that Kamar stayed outside. The man was clearly unwilling to enter the building, and Cor did not urge him to do so; Kamar’s job was only to guide. At the end of the hall, Cor could make out the vague outlines of the two massive doorways that Kamar described. They were obscured by a huge mass of webs that was centered between them, which lent credence to Kamar’s tale. This made Cor uneasy, and he found himself looking about in all directions; Cor had fought and killed men, but an unnatural spider was something different.
Cor knew he needed to pass by the webs to access the part of the building that housed the fetish, and he felt an enormous pressure urging him foreward. Getting to it would mean hacking through or even burning the webs, and in his experience, the smallest spiders tend to respond to such disturbances. He stood in place, contemplating the situation; the obvious answer would be to somehow draw the spider out of its hiding place and even perhaps out of the building itself. Of course, he didn’t know exactly where the creature was at this moment, if in fact it still existed. Cor turned, following with his eyes the webs that reached out to columns and the ceiling, and he realized the entire hall was one giant spider lair, culminating its center directly between the two doorways.
It was then Cor saw movement in his peripheral vision, and shifting his gaze back towards the open entrance, he froze in horror. A truly enormous creature, taller than he, was headed towards the portal leading outside. The legs and body shined with reflected light as brightly as the most polished plate armor. Its eight segmented legs were longer than described by Kamar, excepting the front two, and were as thick as Cor’s upper arms. The arachnid’s body was huge, with a disgustingly bulbous abdomen, which hung only a couple of feet off the ground, and it shocked Cor how quietly the thing moved; it was nearly silent, despite its bulk.
Cor realized the thing stalked Kamar, who sat on a small boulder outside the building staring out over the gorge. Too late, Cor shouted a warning to the man, who turned just in time to be punctured by the creature’s giant fangs. Kamar screamed, either in pain or terror, for a long second before his voice cut off. Cor stood silent and still as the huge spider pulled the front half of its body back through the doorway and began to ascend a nearby web. Once closer to the ceiling, it used its rear legs to begin rolling Kamar’s body into a wrap of silk.
Cor needed to move quickly; he had little doubt that once he began hacking his way through the webs, the spider would come for him. He also had doubts as to whether his sword could cut the webs without getting caught in the sticky silk, but grasping Soulmourn’s hilt filled Cor with a warm confidence. He moved deeper into the room, close to the heart of the massive web, noting a number of bones caught up in it, many of them not human. He kept one eye trained on the massive creature, not totally certain how he hadn’t spotted it sooner, and Cor was certain the thing returned the gaze with its many black eyes.
Cor was amazed at how easily Soulmourn passed through the first swath of webs, and by his second swing, large sections of the web fell to the room’s marble floor. Cor hacked through a third time before the spider even moved. It came frighteningly fast, dropping Kamar’s half mummified body to the hard floor with a sickening thud of broken bone, and if Cor held any hopes that his companion still lived, they now dissipated.
The thing charged, coming down one of its own webs, and Cor knew he had mere seconds before it reached him. The web it traveled danced and waved wildly, and Cor’s eyes followed it to end at a cluster directly next to him where several strands met. This he cut through and watched as the web holding the spider gave way, the end rebounding back towards the thing. The monster landed heavily on the floor with its own web wound about its body and legs.
Cor wasted no time; he charged the spider while it struggled to extricate itself from its own web, which had it temporarily restrained. Cor ran across the creature’s right flank, swinging his sword in a wide stroke that severed two of the spider’s legs immediately, and purple black fluid spouted from the stumps. The amputated legs jerked spasmodically on the floor. The spider’s other legs began to work with a speed faster than Cor’s eyes could follow; if Cor hadn’t struck as he did, the thing would likely be freed by now. Soulmourn grew warm in his hand as he struck the spider’s other two right legs in alternating blows; again the sword sliced through as if it met no resistance at all, severing the legs with more disgustingly colored blood. The monster fell to the floor again, unable to support itself on one side; it scrambled in panic with its left legs to simply get away from the man who had wounded it so grievously.
Cor moved around to the rear of the creature, not wanting to be anywhere near its mandibles even wounded. He thrust Soulmourn directly into the beast’s horrible abdomen, nearly to the crosspiece. The creature convulsed greatly, and its rearmost left leg shot backwards, catching Cor squarely in the chest. He had no time to notice the pain, as the blow pushed him into the air. His back smashed into a marble column several yards away, and he crumpled forward onto his chest. He never lost his grip on Soulmourn, and the sword came out of the spider with the force of its blow.
Cor lifted himself to his hands and knees, trying to breath; the punch of the spider’s leg, combined with the impact into the column, made every breath a painful struggle. If not for his armor, Cor was convinced he would be truly injured, if not outright impaled on the end of the spider’s leg. He struggled to a kneeling position, his breath coming easier, and he realized the spider had disappeared. A wide trail of its purple black blood led away from its four severed legs deep into one corner of the hall. Cor gathered himself and followed the trail, finding the spider on its back with its remaining legs rolled up tightly. He brought Soulmourn down in a great blow, severing the monster’s head, which brought only a slight convulsion to its frame.
Like most humans, Cor shared a general distaste for spiders, and the fact that he had just fought a virtual spider god was not lost on him. He shuddered as he considered the fate he very nearly shared as he ventured close to the right doorway. Cor began to hack his way through the thick webs until he reached the doorway itself. It was not a simple doorway, but an actual passage, though it was very short at only five or six feet in length. He continued to cut through the spider webs, but found they ended immediately on the other side of the short passage.
As soon as he entered the next room, light snapped into existence from above. It was pure, bright and white, not unlike the power he had seen Jonn wield against him, though it was not blinding. Looking up, Cor could see that it emanated from the same circular objects Soulmourn had shown him in the vision, though these were set into the ceiling in a recessed fashion. Clearly not all of this magic still functioned after these unknown millennia, as there were dark spots, but there was more than enough light to guide Cor’s way.
The room was approximately twenty feet across and proceeded forward for another ten feet before branching in either direction to the right and left. The floor was thick with dust and debris, but Cor saw no more evidence of giant spiders or any other kind of beast beyond the more mundane insects and normally sized arachnids. Alcoves lined the walls, all of them with gleaming plaques below them with inscriptions in writing that Cor could not comprehend. They were filled with all manner of items, such as pots, weapons, jewelry and even bones. Many of them were damaged, their glass coverings shattered and their contents spilled onto the floor and destroyed or damaged.
Cor simply walked through the room, heedless of direction; he was certain that the fetish was here somewhere and intact. He walked for an indeterminate amount of time, passing hundreds if not thousands of artifacts. He glanced at them as he passed, as he had seen the people of his vision do, but he did not stop to closely inspect any of
them. Cor noticed that the light above seemed to anticipate his movements, illuminating areas just before he reached them and darkening others as he left them behind.
He finally stopped, having no will to move further into the building. There were four alcoves set into the wall in front of him, all of them united by one massive plaque that no doubt told a long and involved story. The first was still sealed, but contained a mass of jumbled bones that had fallen out of place. The second alcove’s glass covering was shattered, remnants of glass still hanging in place and on the floor, and amidst the glass and cobwebs in the bottom of the alcove, Cor saw the item he sought.
Cor took the fetish in his left hand while removing wisps of cob and spider web from its head. The thing looked exactly as he remembered it from his dream and the vision from Soulmourn; the eight inch long handle and neck was made of ebony, and the end of the handle itself was leather wrapped. The neck ended in a bleached white skull that looked perfectly human, though was about the size of a cat’s, and two tiny black batwings extended from the fetish’s neck, just below the skull and extended in the opposite direction of the skull’s face.
While holding it, Cor felt the peculiar sensation that he had come to associate with enchanted objects; pins and needles enveloped his hand and ran most of the way up his arm. He rested his right hand on the hilt of Soulmourn, and the feeling intensified and spread up his right arm. He drew Soulmourn, and it was as if a jolt of lightning shot through him from one hand to the other, then back again. Cor could feel these artifacts were meant to be together, and so long as he lived, they would never again separate. They were Soulmourn and Ebonwing.
23.