Chapter 6 

The Hermetic Order of the Aegis is made up of five sects: The Sect of the Crimson Blade, the warriors, The Sect of the Blackened Crown, the casters, The Sect of the Burning Hand, craftsmen and engineers, the Sect of the Sightless Eye, the spies, and The Sect of the Silent Heart, the assassins.

The interior of the cave was as expected: dark, dank, and musky. There wasn’t much I could do about the last two traits, but the dark didn’t bother me in the least, given one of the few blessings of being a Darkling. The passage was tight for an adult, but given my thin stature, I was lucky. I never thought I would be happy to be a scrawny, short-height.

I pressed on through the cave. I ducked under low-hanging stalactites and stepped around stalagmites. The whole while, I followed the winding passage as it twisted and turned at a downward angle. With every step along the way, I focused on my senses of hearing and smell. Thallos had said that this was a trial, so I needed to be ready for a fight. In these tight quarters, with even tighter turns, I’d smell or hear another living thing long before I saw them. Even if that knowledge came only moments before an attack, it would be far better than nothing. I heard dripping water and the subtle echo of my footsteps on the stone floor. I could smell damp stone, algae, moss... and something foul. The stench of rotting flesh hung thick in the air, making my eyes water. 

I slowed my steps and softened the sound as best I could, and focused on that wretched scent. The farther down the path I pushed, the stronger the stench became. The rancid scent escalated to a whole new level as I neared a bend in the tunnel. I drew my dagger and pressed myself against the wall, listening. At first, there was nothing, then came a soft scuttle. A scuff of something across stone. Then came another and the sound of rock tumbling into a body of water. 

The stench of rot, scuffing against stone. I had to be dealing with a zombie or something like it. I peered around the corner, as slow and careful as my nerves would allow, inching my face past the wall to find something I did not expect and honestly really wanted nothing to do with. A tarantula the size of a large dog crouched in the center of a large chamber. Its body was covered in large patches of fungus, one of its forelegs missing, and its swollen abdomen at the rear partly caved in to expose rotting organs. Congealed black blood fell from the wound in large gobbets. 

There was no way I could handle something like that. I had watched several shows back at the cabin when my father allowed me my two hours of TV, that featured adventurers. As much as I liked the action shows with the flashy magic and fights and witty one-liners, I always preferred the shows on the Anogwin Explored Channel. Shows there had interviews with real adventurers and discussions about monsters. I had watched a couple of episodes that said that zombies, while slow and stupid, were also stronger than their living counterparts and far more resilient(resistant) to damage. The shows always said to aim for the head, but what was I supposed to do when the thing didn’t really have a head? It was a face on the front end of a torso. There was no chopping that off with my dagger. I could try to stab it in the brain, but that would put me face-to-face with the thing. I had no doubts that the thing would overpower me, inject me with venom from those horrifically large fangs, and slurp me up like some kind of meat-shake. 

I could feel a panic attack coming on at the thought of that experience. My overactive mind treated me to visualization of myself getting bitten, phantom sensations of the bite, and being pumped full of venom. It started getting hard to breathe. My chest tightened up with a knot of pain; my heart pounded like a war drum fast and hard in my chest. 

I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, low, slow, and level, willing my bunched muscles to unwind and ease the rate of my heart. I opened my eyes and started looking around the cavern for some way to get around.

The space was semicircular and looked to be about twenty yards across at its widest in the center. The spider stood near that center, closer to the left-hand wall, near a pool of water of which I couldn’t tell just how deep it was. The space was littered with stalactites and stalagmites of varying lengths, some meeting to form pillars. Directly across from where I hid was a cliff edge. Atop the cliff, past the lip, was a path. The rock wall leading up to the passage looked to be climbable, but I wasn’t sure if I could reach it without getting mauled by the creature.

There was no way that I could take the Restless Dead head-on. Maybe I could sneak around it? Maybe I could even ambush it, kill it before the foul thing could eat me.

The thought of getting anywhere near the rotting thing made my stomach turn. Even the idea of trying to kill it made me sick. I would have to sneak around it. But first, I would need to test how responsive the spider corpse was. I looked around for a stone nearby. Near my foot, I found one. A chunk of sandstone was a little smaller than my fist. I gingerly plucked it from the ground and tossed it underhand into the cavern. The stone struck the floor with a loud ‘clack’. Only half a moment later, I saw the creature crouched and sprung, turning in the air to land hard on the very spot that the rock struck.

So sneaking by was clearly out of the question. One wrong move, and I’d be dead. Meaning that killing it was no more than a dream. My heart raced. Panic surged at the thought. Blood, gore, pain, screaming. The thought of any of those coming from me made me want to flee. I turned on my heel to do just that. I couldn’t kill. I couldn’t be killed.

I took three steps, about to make a mad dash for the exit. I was ready to give up and leave. Instead, I’d just ask Thallos for some other way to make a living. Suddenly, I was stuck almost physically with the image of my father dying on the cabin floor. A tangled mess of emotions rose up from deep within. Rage, grief, anguish, regret. The concoction of vitriolic emotions brewed into a storm in my chest that clouded my mind. I fled inward, hurtling my mind into the first pleasant memory of my father.

I witnessed him in one of the many training sessions with him in archery. As he taught, he also told me of the unnatural taint that the Restless Dead were.

“It is natural to take a life, Iver. To kill for food or in defense is the nature of the world.”

“What do you mean?” My seven-year-old self asked as I watched my father draw back his bow to aim at a target mounted to a tree forty feet away.

“This world is full of things that will want you dead. Bandits, monsters, undead. At some point in your life, something or someone will want you dead. They might see you as food, want something you have, or even just hunt you for their twisted sport. No matter the reason, I expect you to protect yourself. If you want to live, you’re going to need to kill.”

“Father, you mentioned undead. Why do they kill?” I asked, in ignorance.

“Because they aren’t natural. The true nature of the Restless Dead is to kill anything they find. They don’t need food, they don’t feel pain, and they have no sense of self-preservation, so the only reason they have to murder anything with a pulse is for sport. And they will take every time if given the chance. Iver, undead, and even Blightings are abominations. The dead are supposed to stay dead. If you find a rotter, kill it. Put a bullet in its head, burn it, rip it to tatters. You hear me, son?” With those last words, Fermose let loose the custom arrow to strike dead-center of the target, spreading cracks across the plank of wood as it buried itself deep in the tree behind it. 

Tears streamed down my face even as my nails bit into my palms for the second time that day. I needed to get past the foul thing. This was the first step down the long road to making myself worth something. Something that can hunt down that sick butcher of a man and get some bloody vengeance. 

My will solidified to iron as I thought about my goals for revenge. I couldn’t turn back now. This was the first step. I needed to prove that I was worth the training I so desperately needed. I turned back to the entrance of the cavern, taking a second look.

I couldn’t take the putrid thing head-on, so I was going to need to get creative. If I couldn’t overpower it or outmaneuver it, I needed to out-think the mold-brained bastard. If the pool was deep enough, could I drown it? But how would I get it into the pool? What if the pool was too shallow? Did the thing even need to breathe? No, I needed to think of something else. I scanned every foot of the interior of the space until my eyes landed on a stalactite, massive, with a wide crack running along its base. It didn’t take much thinking past that to piece together a plan to splatter the slimy lasher.

I pulled my bow and an arrow and quietly backpedaled down the path till I reached a safe distance. I had the thought of trying to bring down the stone with just a well-aimed arrow, but I was not about to gamble my squishy insides on the stone breaking from a single arrow strike. It was time to put my talents to good use. I pulled my backpack off and began digging through it. First, I found the penlight Thallos had gotten for me, one of many things he got me for the trip. I clicked the light on and held it between my teeth as I dug deeper. While I had good dark vision, I was going to need to see as much detail as possible for what I had planned.

I set aside on the stone floor from my bag my tool kit, a camp stove, an electric lantern, a mechanical cooking timer, duct tape, Insane brand adhesive glue, and a spool of nano-fiber utility cord. All the camp supplies were a matched pair to a set of Thallos’s. The mechanical timer was an odd choice that I had questioned him on, but all he said was, “Mechanical is more reliable than digital.” and at that moment in the cave, I was thankful for the timer being what it was. I stripped and broke down each of the tools down to their base components and laid it all out for ease of examination.

With the penlight still in my jaws, I then set about dismantling and combining four arrows from my quiver. The theory was rushed, and the work was going to be a slipshod jerry-rig, but it was the best idea I had. I removed broadheads from three of the four arrows and shaved two of the three fletching of each of those same arrows while keeping said fletching whole. After running a bead of glue along the bare side of each of the three nude arrows, I taped them to the fourth, which remained whole. The cobbled-together madness was set in a Y shape, the remaining fletching of each arrow facing out at 120 degrees from each other. The central arrow’s fletching stood out between each of the added limbs. I then glued the shaved-off fletching to the outer arrows to elongate the fletched area of each. Once the glue solidified, I set about shaving the forward-facing numbs of the neutered arrows to reduce wind resistance.

Once that all was complete, after a half hour, I turned to my other dismantled gear. I partly reassembled the timer, but not completely. I only assembled the timer dial, mainspring, and balance wheel with a portion of the skeletal frame. Then I picked up the power supplies for the stove and lantern. The stove had three shard-sized Fire Myst Crystals, while the lantern had four fragment-sized Lightning Myst Crystals.

I’ll spare you the details on how I assembled the whole thing, but suffice it to say that I attached Fire Crystals to one side of the goliath arrow and Lightning Crystals to the other. Then, with copper wire and the partly reassembled timer, I designed the whole thing to go off with a bang when it hit something.

Now that the straightforward part was done, it was time for me to put all that training my father ground into me to the test. Arrow and bow in hand, I picked up another stone. Judging the distance to be twenty-three feet in, I gauged the angle and strength of the throw of the stone. I tossed the stone just as I had the last, watching it sail through the air to land right on the target location. Even as I saw it near the stone floor, I notched my morbid excuse for an arrow and took aim. 

Now I need to make this clear. My bow was no flimsy thing made of wood and hemp string. What I held was called a Triple Stance Recurve Bow, made of treated steel, with a four-wheel pulley system to ease the pull strength, mounted with a ninety-thousand-pascal strength nano-polymer cord with a draw strength of one hundred pounds. Father spent six mythril to get me this bow for my eleventh birthday. That was almost two months of his annual income to get me a bow that was a little taller than me back then when strung. This bow was hard to pull for an untrained adult, but my father had me draw this bow daily, as many times as I could. I kept up the training even after he died, just so I could have some semblance of a routine, but it was paying off now. I really didn’t think about it, but my back muscles must have been as defined as if chiseled from stone from drawing this bow. Go figure, arms and legs like twigs back then, but I had the back of some demigod.

The abomination of an arrow contraption was too heavy for me to hold like a standard arrow, so it forced me to draw and aim it horizontally, so I braced the shaft against the bow.

I drew the notched arrow and aimed as the spider jumped. I gauged the distance and angle of the shot while thinking about how to compensate for the additional weight and odd shape. As the necrotic arachnid landed, I loosened the arrow. The first arrow struck just below the crack head-on. I gave a silent cheer for my precise aim and estimations. But the arrow didn’t detonate, instead striking the stone with a loud clack. As the device began its plummet, a curse slipped from my lips.

My words must have carried because the vile thing turned toward me, its milky, sightless eyes seeming to stare right at me. In a panic, I fell onto my back while trying to notch and loose another arrow all at once. The rushed shot flew wide, and the reckless actions caused my bowstring to snap. I watched in horror as the spider wound up for a leap at me. My modified arrow plummeted point first to land against the spider’s back as it made its lunge and detonated with a thunderous CRACK! There was a flash of light that rendered me blind, which threw me into a panic. I clambered backward, terrified that the creature was about to land on me and eviscerate me, putting my insides on the outside. But nothing happened.

As my eyes adjusted to the pitch darkness, I saw something that drew from me both terror and joy, both in near endless amounts at that moment. When the arrow detonated, it devastated the arachnid’s left side, its legs either thrown to the floor a dozen feet away or missing entirely. It lay in a gruesome heap not even five feet from where it had jumped, black-brown goo rolling out its side, grey-white chunks of mystery something mixed into the putrid pile. I slowly crawled to my feet, not daring to take my eyes off the still-thrashing creature. It kept trying to stand as if not comprehending that he lost half its body.

I began to inch forward, weary of the hobbled abomination, when I heard the sound of cracking stone. There was a massive snap and a blur of motion before an earth-shattering crash and an unnaturally high screech of agony. Dust filled the air, and clumps of gore flew to splatter across the floor and nearby wall. The stench of rot permeated the air so thick I repeatedly gagged, even as I coughed from the dust.

When the dust cleared, I found that the explosion had jarred the stalactite that I had been aiming for free and fell to land on the spider’s abdomen. Its back end crushed to paste, chunks of chitin stuck to the stone that crushed it and the surrounding ground. Yet the thing still wasn’t dead, even with two-thirds of the spider turned to slime. Its remaining legs still scrambled across the ground, trying to find purchase. Its fangs flexed, and mandibles writhed in frustration. 

I looked away in horror and disgust. I wasn’t sure if this was better or worse than I had planned. The creature wasn’t dead, and I was fairly sure that it couldn’t feel pain, but the sight still turned my guts. I shouldered my bow after I tied the two ends of the drawstring together and drew my hunting knife, silently wishing for a gun to end this mess without getting close. But I was out of luck. I inched my way closer to the fraction of a corpse. I held the blade point down, watching its unnerving arachnid face, half-rotten and covered with patches of mold. Its milky eyes staring at me with... Was that sorrow? Despair? Pleading? No, I must have been imagining things. I raised the dagger up high, aiming to end the creature’s existence. Only I couldn’t. I couldn’t take a life of even an undead freak like this, no matter how much it deserved to be ended.

I turned away, sheathed my blade, and fled. Away from the beast, toward the exit that I had sought from the beginning. I made my way to the minor cliff face and started to climb. I heaved myself hand over hand to the top. At the edge, I pulled myself to the mouth of another cavern path. This path was even narrower and darker than the last. As I pushed on slowly, the tunnel changed, shifting from unhewn stone to carved walls. From single-form carved walls to walls of old blocks of granite. After a few yards, the walls started to gather pictographs. Warriors, animals, and monsters adorned the walls in some sort of story and pattern. The only thing that really stood out to me was the repeating image of a dragon plummeting from the sky with a spear through its chest. After another fifteen minutes of walking through the passage, I came to a sudden stop at what looked like an odd wall. The wall had seams around the edges and grind marks as if it were a door that would slide into the floor. The door, if it were that, seemed to be sealed by a five-figure dial lock, each segment of the dial etched with an image of a figure from the walls of the hall before.

That wall was old, eras old. The longer I looked at it, the older it seemed. Before the Age of Divine Knowledge, for sure, but how much older? The Age of Tempered Glass? The Age of Steel’s Grasp? The Age of Hungry Iron? Older? In the end, all that mattered was that it was older than an age. I looked at the designs layer by layer, one by one.  At the center was a handprint that was too small to be one of the larger Sophic Species, like Dracose or Orcs. Its size was more reminiscent of the medium races like Humans or elves, but it also had dimpled prints at the tips of each finger like claw marks, which only raised more questions. 

The first circle in the center showed, segment by segment, bones in the ground, screaming souls, howling demons, a gaping cave, and a wailing inhuman face.

On the second circle showed leafless trees, trees losing their leaves, blossoming trees, fresh and vibrant trees, and barren stone.

The third circle bore a bear, a wolf, a stag, and a strange six-legged wild cat of some kind.

On the fourth circle lay an eagle, no, a roc bearing a calf in its claws, a raven with a skull in its beak, and a speared dragon.

Upon the fifth circle, a storm cloud displaying lighting, a blazing sun, and a crescent moon.

Within the final circle stood a leaf, a skull, what would look to be a soul, a sword crossed over a shield, and what looked to be six stones or gems in a half-circle

I looked at this door long and hard, examining each image and turning the dials to test a few theories. Then I had a thought. Those pictograms had to have been for a reason. I turned back and tried to read the story of the images. There was an eagle with a lightning bolt in its claws under the sun. I found a dead tree with screaming faces over a burning, hell-like image. I found several more images, like those that were closed but not quite like what it showed on the door. In the end, I pieced all the images together. From the center up, I chose a skeleton in the ground, autumn trees losing their leaves, the strange cat creature, the storm clouds, and the six gemstones. 

Once I was positive that I had the right combination, I pressed my palm against the handprint. But nothing happened. I was almost completely certain that I had the right combination, but the lack of response instilled an ember of doubt. I went back to the wall and double-checked everything. The ember of doubt grew to a kindling of panic. I had to have been missing something. I scoured the door, examining every pictorial, looking for any flaw. There was a thin vertical slash in the handprint that went deeper than I could see. I toyed with the small indent, chipped at it with my hunting knife, and even tried to slip a copper through it like some retro arcade machine, but nothing worked.

It was at this point I got lucky. On the verge of turning back to meet Thallos in shame, I struck the door with a fist as I pressed my forehead against the dial. I felt something crumble away. I pulled away my hand and looked closer at the strange wild cat’s face, which had partly fallen away. I scratched at the face to find that it was mud. Only then did I notice that the cat’s face hadn’t matched the feline on the wall. I had been so focused on the six legs I hadn’t noticed that its eyes and ears were too small. In fact, as I inspected the hollow space that held an imprint of an image that looked familiar. But from where? The answer came to me when I thought of Thallos and what he gave me right before I entered the cavern. An enamel pin in the design of a grimmalk. I pulled the pin from my shirt and tested it in the nitch to find it a snug fit.

Nothing happened when I tried the handprint again. I had made it another step forward, and this was farther than I thought I would have made, and I wasn’t about to stop now. I turned back to the slash in the handprint. Deep in thought, I eyed the notch, trading my attention between it and the pin that I had just slipped into place. I pulled the pin from its slot and tried to use the point of it to trip some kind of mechanism in the slash. In the effort, I felt a sting of pain on my fingertip. I winced and drew back with a hiss of pain to check my finger. The pin had slashed open the pad of my index finger, but I hadn’t touched the needle tip. Bringing the pin close to my eye, I inspected the fastening end. And what did I find but that the bracing needle was bladed at the bottom and top sides.

Who in their right mind blades a pin? Then it came to me. That pin was a key for the door in more than one form. I took another look at the handprint, this time focusing on the claw marks. Sure enough, in each davit, there was a small hole for the collection of fluid. No doubt that the slash on the palm was the same. I would not like what came next. But I had nearly been eaten by a necrotized arachnid. I would not let some minor self-mutilation get between me and my future. After all, what was a little blood spilled during training? Plus, I heard girls liked scars… Not that I had yet to meet a girl that would even look at me as a person.

I shook my head to free myself from the train of thought and readied myself for pain. I took a deep breath and stabbed my thumb. I gave another hiss of pain as I stabbed hard enough to reach the bone. I withdrew and moved to my middle finger. Less pressure this time. I jabbed myself again and again and again. Next came the worst part. I ground my teeth and looked away, and I stabbed into my palm and pulled down. I felt flesh tear and gave a snarl before forcing my hand against the handprint. My hand was smaller than the print, so I started by thrusting my fingertips into each of the claw prints and pressed hard enough to squeeze a good amount of blood. When I felt the door shudder, I slapped my palm against the center and ground my hand against the stone hard enough to sheer off some skin from the flat of my hand. The door gave an even greater shudder before retracting into the ground to reveal a continued passage that ended with a gleaming door of sunlight to enter into my new future.