"Well that was..." Jocasta began but before she could finish her eyes tracked towards movement along one of the strands. A giant arachnid the size of a bear was scuttling towards them. The light seemed to increase as the webs vibrated, stimulating phosphorecent spores that burst from unhealthy looking yellowish fungus which clung to the walls in patchy clumps. The creature was a deep gleaming black with an ugly blaze of leperous white on its underbelly. It twisted as it came, seeming to rotate around the web as it skittered along. Its face was a dark gray with eight disturbingly human eyes and a flat swollen nose. Two hooked mandibles the size of daggers dripped with some foul venom.

"Oh shit..." Jocasta gasped and tried to squirm backwards only to find herself stuck fast by the webs. Beren let out a curse and also tried to move with a similar lack of success. The web quivered and flexed as he strained his muscles but it didn't let go.

"Can you use some magic or something?!" he demanded. The spider was only a foot or so away now, it reared back to strike, mandibles flashing. Beren kicked out with his boot, cracking it across the face and sending it skittering back one of its eyes bloodied.

"I left my scroll of spiderbane in my other pants!" Jocasta tried, "I cant just spout arcane syllables and make it explo..." The spiders swollen body exploded as though struck by a cannonball. Yellowish ichor sprayed out in a jet. The spider made a strange hissing sound, staggered, made a grab for its web with a suddenly unresponsive limb and then tumbled into the abyss below.

"I stand corrected?" Jocasta said, her heart thumping in her chest. Above them they heard the arch-troll howling. Jocasta realised that in his frustration the old beast had hurled a handful of rocks after his escaped prey. By sheer good fortune his parting blow had saved them. The light was begining to fade as the spores drifted down on the air but Jocasta thought she saw a jagged opening in the cave wall below them. She began to wriggle, smearing the mineral oil that coated her arms and thighs on the web until it began to let go.

"I think we can get out down there," she told Beren, making a guesture to the hole now that she had freed her hand and nearly tumbling off into the abyss for her troubles. Beren caught her by the shirt and hauled her back into contact with the web.

"How are you planning on..." he began, "Wait dont just..." Jocasta cut the web with the knife she had freed from her belt. They dropped like stones, the web swining them towards the crevase wall and the hole. Jagged stone rushed up to meet them but they cleared the top lip of the cave and began to curl upwards on their momentum. Jocasta cut the web on the other side and they sailed free, falling the five or so feet to the cave floor with a crash. She landed on Beren's lap, driving the wind from him as they rolled to a stop.

"Another happy landing," she observed.

Beren saw the ichor and lifeblood of the crushed spider oozing off of the remaining bits of broken corpse up in the web, a bit of the thorax sliding off to hit the ground with a wet 'squelch' a stone's throw from where they sat. Beren sat up, rubbing his head. Jocasta's beaming face was there to greet him, in his lap again.

"Well, usually when you end up on top of me it means it turned out alright." He said with a grin, though he wasn't as animated or mischievous as usual. He seemed a bit wary and off-put, even with the spider dead and the troll's rock's getting caught in the web, keeping them relatively sheltered. He lifted her up and set her down on his feet when he got on his own.

"What is it?" Jocasta asked, sensing his change in demeanor.

Beren didn't answer, at least initially. He glanced around at the huge cavern they found themselves in. He was no dwarf or elf, but he had keen eyes for a man and he had a history of being far below ground. The north was a strange, alien place to Beren, the Ero'Dai being far more used to steaming jungle, dangerous wetlands, and the deep beneath the earth.

"That big spider... that's usually a bad sign. The Dwarves call them Mukelob Spiders." He explained softly, scanning the creases and patterns of the stone. The rivulets could tell stories one might never believe. There was a main passageway he was sure Jocasta had seen, but he counted three other potential tunnels, provided they didn't end within a couple of meters. "When you find a big spider, it means one of three things. One, it means there are more, usually within a few miles from here or closer. Two, it's set there as a guard beast by someone. Or three...there's Dorcha around."

Jocasta's face twisted in panic, but she didn't go white like he might have thought. He wasn't surprised she knew Dorcha meant 'Dark Elves' considering she was a scholar, and he took comfort in the fact she didn't take a lot of things very seriously. It was probably the reason why he jumped earlier. Her calling for him in abject fear was new to him, and he went over without thinking. Though he knew if he had time to think, he'd probably do it again anyway.

"So...there's no chance that could just be a rogue creepy crawly?" She asked him in a whisper, twiddling her fingers like they were spider legs.

"You're right, we have the best luck. Nothing ever goes wrong when we show up," Beren remarked facetiously, though his small smile showed it was in good humor.

"Right," She noted.

The ground was uneven, as most rock was. If one wasn't careful they could fall down a hole or slip and break an ankle. There were a billion ways to die in caverns, and that was before you factored in the beings that lived there. So far all was quiet now, save the annoyed roars of the troll above them. Beren knelt down and grabbed a coil of rope from his pack, wrapping it around his muscled upper arm. Axe in his left hand, he reached into his top's collar and pulled out a pendant. Sliding his head through it, he wrapped the necklace that held the pendant around his right hand and whispered a small litany with the artifact close to his lips.

Slowly it began to glow like a rising sun, shining as brightly as Jocasta's spell of light. It beamed as a star would, illuminating the gloom around them at the mouth of the tunnel.

"Stay close, ok?" He told her.

"I think we're accustomed to that by now," she admitted, grabbing a bit of his shirt, her smile beaming as brightly as the pendant. "Cool necklace by the way. You're full of surprises."

"Sexy right?" He joked.

Jocasta had to admit that it sort of was, but there didn't seem to be a particularly tactful way to say that.

"I't sort of is," she admitted as she followed Beren along the passageway. As they moved along the tunnel, the stone grew drier and began to cant upward at a slight angle. Clumps of unhealthy looking mushrooms grew at irregular intervals. Jocasta bent down to study one such clump but Beren grabbed her by her arm and hauled her back to his feet.

"Oh come on, these are unique specimens! What is the worst thing that could happen?" she reasoned.

"You could brush against it and inhale a mouthful of spores that would grow in your blood and kill you within a day," Beren informed her. She paused.

"Is that like ... theoretical?" she asked, giving him a suspicious look. He shook his head and they continued onwards. They picked their way through the tunnel for what felt like an hour before they reached a section where it opened out into a gravel bottomed seam. Lichen and other mosses grew in profusion among the small rocks. They had an odd redish cast that suggested they were pulling iron or sulpur from the rocks. There must have been some access to water. Perhaps rains or swells in the groundwater infrequently swept the defile.

"Look at that," Beren said, guesturing upwards. Following his sightline Jocasta saw what he was talking about. Thirty feet up was an opening in the seam wall. It was too precisiely rectangualr to be natural. They just needed someway to get up there.

"Give me the rope," Jocasta instructed and picked some of the spider webbing from her clothing. Wordlessly Beren did so and she tied one end around her waist. That accomplished she rolled the webbing between her fingers and murmered a few words under her breath. Reaching up she pressed one hand to the wall and then lifted herself up and placed the other. Her hands stuck fast to the stone as though covered in glue. Slowly, one hand at a time, she climbed the wall like an insect.

"You might have mentioned you could do that back in the chasm," Beren asked.

"Well climbing the wall wouldn't have helped much with a bloody great troll waiting to cave my head in when I got to the top," she called somewhat breathlessly.

"I suppose that is a fair point," Beren admitted. She pulled herself up into the opening, finding it to be a doorway, complete with lintels, carved into the wall. Jocasta untied the rope and then refastened it around a sturdy looking stone pillar.

"Safe to climb," she called, and began looking around. Like the door, the walls of this passage were carved, giving the illusion of layed stone, despite being a single piece.

"That isn't wierd at all," Jocasta said to herself.

A small part of him sort of hoped he could impress her by climbing the wall with naught but his hands, but his conscious mind knew that was foolish, boyish bravado. Something you couldn't really entertain in the world-below. Even being alone, separated by ten meters was a haunting experience for most people. Thankfully, the Evergod had blessed him with ample experience. He heard her mumbling to herself above as she studied something, and a smile bloomed on his face.

After she had dropped the rope, he saw it slide down to dangle before his eyes. His necklace's talisman was clutched in his hand to keep it held close, but it somewhat obscured the light, giving a soft radiance rather than the brilliant beam of illumination it generally provided when called to. The darkness crept in closer as he reached for the length of cord, but his hand stopped dead.

Beren froze.

Above, he could hear Jocasta humming gently, her light voice softly echoing off the walls. He felt his heart beating loudly in his ears, and he subtly glanced behind his still form. Though his eyesight was very good, he wasn't a dwarf or one of the elves of Leth'Arian. He saw little but empty shadow. The silhouette of the passageways softly kissed by the covered glow of his necklace; naught but gaping mouths for even deeper darkness.

He steadied his breathing, but there was little he could do for the mounting fear. The warrior-monk had felt a dozen changes within the black that peered over him, but none he could articulate in the tongues of men. His horror coalesced in his mind, and he felt a small pressure; a pain in his back. It was a ghost pain. Nothing had touched him, but he couldn't shake the feeling of a blade bursting forth from his chest.

The shadows began to move just outside of his vision, blades slowly unsheathing from their accursed scabbards with sigils of the tainted prince. He couldn't perceive them with his eyes, but he knew they were there. A shift in the air; a silence that seemed deafening yet unnatural. He suddenly realized Jocasta had stopped humming. Instead, she spoke out.

"Beren?" His companion called. "You there?"

Her voice shattered the glass. Beren leaped to the left as the telltale 'click' of crossbows fired at where he had been a moment before. Bolts hit the wall and scattered to the ground, footfalls, inhumanly quick, padding across the stone. Beren spun, able to perceive the coming offense by some primal sense of survival. His attacker was unseeable one moment, and the next they plunged into his field of sight, hitting him as a serpent, netheril blade slicing at his neck.

Beren caught the dorcha's wrist with his left, his right forearm crossing the dark elf's arm to aid in halting the momentum of the swing. The elf's eyes bulged in surprise, and Beren had to agree. He knew if the dark elf had expected Beren to be somewhat prepared for combat in the deeps, he would have better struck and likely killed him. But Beren had been here once before in his life, and the dorcha had underestimated him. "Diabhal hrultur!" Beren cursed in Dwavish, the man headbutting the snarling, haunting visage of the accursed elf. Blood spewed from the male dorcha's nose, and Beren kicked him in the chest, sending him flying back into the darkness.

Three more took his place, but Beren had not kept still. He opened his fist, letting the light beam radiantly in their eyes. He saw them now, in their black armor and evil grins now turned to scowls from the blinding rays. They were attractive in a bedeviling fashion, sculpted features ruined by their infatuation of demonic, abject cruelty. As he opened his fist, he ran back to the right, grabbing the rope. But rather climb, he used the momentum of his charge to run, feet clapping against the wall as he swung up, up, until he was twenty feet in the air. As he went, he rolled the rope further and further along his forearm until it clung around his muscle like a constrictor.

His momentum brought him back, crossbow bolts hitting the wall a hairs breadth from his swinging form. He grappled the rope and yanked himself up the last few feet, his body cold with anxiety and fear. He haulted himself up with the last of the rope.

"What's happening?" Jocasta asked, but she was cut off by shrieks of frustration from the darkness all-too-close below.

"Run!" was all he said, taking her hand and pulling her down the corridor. Anywhere was better than behind them. There was very little in the mortal world more torturous and wicked than the dark elves of the world-below. He only hoped the one he had kicked would deal with a few broken ribs.

Words in a vile tongue rang out to their back, and Beren knew it was only a matter of time before they climbed the expanse and followed. He was too focused on behind than ahead, and it took Jocasta crying out for him to look forward just in time to see a thread that had been tied ankle-height. Miraculously, Beren and Jocasta both leaped over it, but when they hit the stone, they both sunk down a few inches, and something clicked and whirred.

Wordlessly they sprinted, the seconds passing by giving them the fear something would come sliding out to cut them to pieces. Instead, something very different happened. Before them, the light-illuminated passage before them began to close up. A wall began rising up from below, spikes standing before it to bar their way. It just caused Beren to pick up speed, and rather than leave her behind, he picked Jocasta up and laid her on his shoulder, letting her watch the darkness behind as he ran with her hip pressed to his cheek.

Beren couldn't hope to long jump the spikes and the moving wall, so he leaped to the right, kicked off the wall to hit the left wall, and then used that as an elevated platform to leap over the spikes and slide across the rising wall on his knees before they slid clear of the obstacle. Unfortunately, both of them hit the ground on the otherside none-too-gently after a small free-fall. Jocasta fell on Beren, but not on his lap for once. They lay in a heap in the darkness as the door closed behind them.

"You ok?"

"Yeah, what was that back there?" She asked him.

They could not know where they were, but when Beren raised his pendant to examine the large room of items stacked in great heaps and arcane symbols on the walls, he was speechless for many moments.

Jocasta’s curiosity as to what had just happened fizzled momentarily as Beren’s light played across the room. The chamber was oddly curved on both edges, as though the walls themselves were bowed outwards to accommodate what was within. One wall was covered in a lattice of carved wood, each hole in the lattice serving as the repository for a scroll of paper or vellum. The other wall contained a vast mural depicting strange beings in various scenes. Some seemed to be arcane in nature, ritual or dance related, others seemed very mundane, hunting and domestic scenes. All were bizarre. One of the beings in a cooking scene appeared to be slicing up her own hand with a knife made of light. Strange arcane script, obviously a later addition, had been scrawled over everything. Every set of eyes had been carefully gouged out and chips of stone about the right size to be eyes lay on the floor before the mural like gravel. The back wall contained lab equipment and a bench covered in dusty but still visible jewelry, either enchanted or waiting for enchantment. The most salient feature of the room however was in its center. Standing on a small stone pedestal was a huge archway. It seemed to be made of large opals the size of a man’s head, each fused to the next like a tight string of pearls. The stones blazed when Beren’s light hit them, giving Jocasta a queasy, oily feeling, like the whole thing might slide down at any point. It didn’t go anywhere, just an archway standing in the center of the room. Jocasta crossed to the scrolls and opened one up beginning to read. It was an ancient script, a precursor to the one that the sagas and enchantments on the barrows were written in.

“We don’t have time for that,” Beren said urgently, “those dorcha will be after us and I’m sure they won’t take too long to figure out where we are.”



“You’re right,” Jocasta agreed and began shoving scrolls into her bag furiously, crumpling them tightly together to make them fit. Beren let out an exasperated sound.

“I meant, stop looting and lets find a way out of here,” Beren said, sounding tense, no doubt his prior experience with Dark Elves urged him against lingering. There was no obvious way out of the chamber and backtracking did not seem like a good plan. Jocasta ignored him, collecting every scroll till her pack bulged so tightly she struggled to pull the straps to close it.



“Waste not, want not,” she said tartly as she hurried towards the jewelry. Beren intercepted her and redirected her to the archway.

“If we don’t find a way out of here, you and I are going to spend a very long time with some very unpleasant beings,” he told her.

“I’m sure the Dark Elves aren’t nearly as bad as people say,” Jocasta objected.

“They are much worse,” Beren said in a voice that brooked no contradiction. Jocasta made an irritated sound but turned her attention to the archway. It stood to reason that it might be some kind of gateway, though to where she had no idea. As she got closer she saw there was an incantation scribed in the stone.



“Well at least get the jewels while I’m working,” she told Beren tartly, though her heart wasn’t really in it. Her eyes were already working on the incantation. She opened her mouth and began to speak. Her lips working uncertainly around the strange magical tongue. The opals began to shimmer, then blaze. Jocasta’s chant grew smoother and her eyes, at first only reflecting the opalescent glow, began to glow with the same energy. Chill darkness engulfed them, as did a sudden and overpowering sense of evil.

“Jo, I think you should stop,” Beren said, fingering his axe. She continued to chant and the sense of wrongness increased. Darkness gathered across the archway like oil spreading atop a pond, growing deeper and more opaque by the moment.

“Stop!” Beren shouted, grabbing her and shaking her, but she couldn’t. The words continued to pour from her lips in spite of her best efforts. She tried to cover her mouth with her hands, but her lips kept moving, muffled words still emerging. Beren looked around in something like panic, then drew his axe back, as though preparing to knock her senseless. Before he could strike the last strident word of the incantation left her lips. There was a tremendous ripping sound, like the sail of a ship being parted by a falling mast. A charnel stench exploded out of the archway as the darkness parted and something stepped out. It was twenty feet tall and made of plates of blackened chiton. Hulking and massive, its long arms were far out of proportion to its body. They were weirdly jointed and seemed to be all sharp edges and points, giving the impression of a spider that was somehow wearing stilts and walking upright. Its shoulders hulked up around its head, which was skull like but elongated like a horses. Its mouth was filled with foot long fangs, and its three eyes glowed like coals in a dying fire. It had a terrible smell, something between burning hair and cardamom, and arcane energies crackled over its bodies as it stepped free of the arch, three of its hands gripping the stonework as though climbing through a window.



“Uh-oh,” Jocasta gulped, somewhat superfluously.

Beren had seen a demon once, years ago. It had almost ripped him out of his sanity, not to mention his heart from his chest. He couldn't know the extent of their kind or the trillion variations from hellish creation. But that thing in front of them wasn't a demon, he was certain. Somehow, he knew.

It was an Outsider. One of the denizens of the void.

It's head was elongated and yet squat, though it was hard to discern where its eyes were. Spikes protruded along its cranium. Every movement it made was strange, ethereal, and yet wholly abnormal. It moved like an infant horse that had just hit the ground after having been birthed, and yet when it did move, it was hard to decipher and watch the movements. It 'glugged' if one might call it that, almost a chortle sound. Beren felt a wave of disgust rise up in him.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." Jocasta whispered, crawling backwards towards Beren.

The creature shuddered, the very atmosphere an alien feeling to the being. It opened its maw and let out a gasping growl, and suddenly it began to mold and morph into another form. Its body contorted, if it had bones they snapped, if it had skin it changed. Over the course of a few moments, it went from a monstrosity to what might pass as a man. And yet there was something still quite disturbing about him.

Beren blinked, his breathing coming in shallow. The thing's hair and eyes...somehow he couldn't decipher what color they were, and yet he looked right at the thing.

"What realm is this?" It asked, speaking in a tongue spoken before the stars burned. It moved it hands as it spoke, as if getting used to its new form. Somehow the message entered Beren and Jocasta's heads, perfectly translated. They were a bit too preoccupied with staring to answer. "No matter. You boy, why do you not kneel like the woman?"

"I'm not that kinda guy," He said lightly, breaking the tension. Jocasta looked up at him, and he looked down at her and smiled, trying to be reassuring to the both of them.

"Beren, I advise listening to him." She mouthed.

His smile faded, and he shook his head. He was bound by the oaths of his order. He couldn't do that, even if he wanted to. And he was a bit too proud to want to, he had to admit. He stepped over Jocasta and held his axe, the blade shining in the light of the gloomy sigils. The Outsider flinched slightly, and likely knew the axe was runically enchanted.

"You can't have her," Beren warned. Clearly he had some theory the summoner was bound to something with the summoned. The Outsider merely glared at the Eru'Dai, and then he moved.

Beren was fast, strong, and immensely tough. But this thing's steps were quicker than Beren could blink. It all happened to fast, a small blur before Jocasta's eyes. If she hadn't known any better, she would have sworn that Beren had scored a hit with a swipe of his axe. Indeed the Outsider did seem pained, a small gash on the side of its human-like visage, a frown on its face. Unfortunately, its fist was also covered in blood, straight through Beren's chest.

Incredibly, Beren's arm shook, hand grabbing at the 'clothes' the Outsider wore. The warrior wasn't done with the thing! But it contemptuously knocked Beren down with a shove of his other hand, pulling his bloodied arm out of Beren's chest cavity. The Eru'Dai fell to the ground before Jocasta's feet, bleeding out warm lifeblood as he shuddered. His axe slipped from his hand, eyes losing their light before her.

"Does this upset you?" The Outsider asked Jocasta, idly looking at its fingernails. "Shall I save him with what time I have left on this plane?"

Jocasta's mouth worked in mute shock for a moment as she stared at Beren's bleeding body. Her hands trembled in shock as she quivered between the desire to reach for a weapon and the desire to try to do something for Beren. He had seemed so invincible, her mind couldn't quite reconcile the fact that he now lay broken on the floor.

"Well?" the Outsider prompted, tapping its oddly sharp fingernails impatiently.

"Yes! Yes! Save him!" Jocasta blurted, finally managing to scramble down and press her hand to the wound, blood seeping between her fingers with alarming rapidity.

"My help isn't free mortal," the Outsider cautioned, "I will extract a price."

"Whatever," Jocasta snapped, "I'll do whatever it is, just save him!"

The demon thing reached out and touched Jocasta on the stomach. A sickly white light blasted out from its fingertips and Jocasta felt a searing pain burning in her chest as though liquid fire were being pumped into it. She staggered back, choking back bile. Light poured from her eyes, and mouth, it shone from beneath her fingernails. Somehow the light was poluting, like swimming through slime.

"Now, use your puny mortal magic," the outsider instructed.

"H..how, I don't know any healing magic," she protested. The Outsider scoffed.

"You have no need of your petty incantations, simply will it to be done, if your will is strong enough you will accomplish it. If not, I have no need of you as my servant." Trying not to think of what 'my servant' might mean. Jocasta placed both hands on Beren and shouted, pouring all her fear and terror into the scream. To her utter amazement, the wounds knitted closed. Not all at once, but over several nauseating seconds, even the spilled blood seemed to be attempting to flow back into Beren's veins before the congealing tissue blocked its ingress. Beren took a shuddering breath but didn't open his eyes. The creature chuckled.

"It is a shame to part you so soon, but you will return with me to my realm. A foolish bargain mortal," the creature laughed. Jocasta gripped Beren with one hand and her sarong with the other.

"You think your puny mortal arts are a match for me?" it scoffed. Jocasta grinned bloodlessly, then forced the last ounce of demonic magic into the sarong and she and Beren vanished in a cloud of slightly sulforus smoke.

_____

It was cold when Jocasta came to. Beren was laying atop her, still unconcious, though she could feel his heart beating against her. Beyond his hair she could see a star field, which was a good sign because she had only a vauge hope of reaching the surface when she had overcharged her sarong.

"Not as much fun when you land in my lap," she complained, straining to shove Beren off her. Eventually she managed to shift him and sit up. She was in a snow bank beside a road. In the distant lights glittered from beyond a pallisade and she could smell woodsmoke on the air. Someone let out a startled shout and a horse neighed. Jocasta turned her head to see an old man with a one horse cart filled with firewood.

"Where in the Evergod's Grace did you come from?" he demanded querellously, a long white beard bristling. He had a wrinkled face with a bulbous nose and a battered blue hat with a broad brim. Jocasta touched her stomach which still burned.

"You know, I can't really remember the name of the town," she admitted.

"Is your friend ok?" the old man asked as his eyes shifted to Beren and narrowing in concern.

"I don't really know," Jocasta said, standing up and trying to drag Beren to his feet. He gave a pained grown.

"You are just a font of information," the old man said as he climbed down and came over to them. He hoisted Beren up and peeled back on of his eyelids.

"Well we better get him inside before he freezes to death," the old man opined, and helped Jocasta drag him to the cart. Sweating and heaving they managed to get Beren into an uncomfortable position in the back of the wagon.

"Welcome to Iskura," the old man said as he got back on the bench of the wagon. Jocasta climbed up beside him and sagged exhausted against the chair. The old man clucked and snapped his reigns and the old draft horse began to clatter over the icy road towards the gate.

Beren slowly opened his eyes.

He remained completely still, even his breathing had yet to be altered. But his eyes could see a partial view, though lidded. Before him was an empty chair, a small desk, and a painting on the wall. It depicted a vast jungle, with silhouettes proportioned to that of the shadows, giving them a living, ethereal feeling. If Beren wasn't mistaken, it was a painting by Ophelvol. He had learned a bit of art from a curator in Andred before he had moved north. Strange, it was a very bland wall for such an expensive piece to be on.

Once he realized he was in a soft bed, he felt he wasn't in immediately danger and let out a soft groan. He felt stuff and sore, but whole and very much alive. How could that be? Hadn't he just been beneath a mile of stone, attacked by some being. Hadn't he been with...?

"Jo?" He asked, trying to sit up. He could complete the move, but he felt awkward. Blinking, he looked around and found the woman sitting on the opposite side of the bed on a cushioned chair, asleep. Beren's heartbeat slowed when he saw her there, and he calmed and sat back against the cushions, breathing belatedly. "Good," he said to himself, sounding very dry in his delivery from just how panicked he had been for a brief second.

Somehow, he felt he had almost died. But he wasn't sure if what had happened was a dream or not. If it had happened like he remembered, there was no way he could have lived. But...there was no hole in his chest. Instead, he felt as strong as ever, albeit still quite tired. And so he lay there, watching her without thought. Even asleep she seemed cute, and he wasn't going to wake her. But her position had caused some blockage apparently.

She gave a resounding snort and shot up, blinking. Jocasta wiped her face and smoothed her hair, the window behind her making her blonde hair look almost silvery, and then she realized Beren was looking straight at her, alive.

"Hey pretty girl," He said, his voice hoarse and his eyes drooping. "What h-...wwhat happened? Where are we?"

Jocasta sat up suddenly as she realized Beren was awake. Her hand unconsciously drifted to her stomach and she yanked them away guiltily. Once she had reached Iskura she had gone directly to the Mayor to deliver the letter. That worthy had been grateful for word from his southern counterpart, grateful enough to pay them, allow them to stay in his manor and to send for a physician. The doctor, an unbelievably ancient man with thick horn rimmed glasses had examined Beren for nearly a half an hour, poking and prodding at him without finding any fault beyond ‘exhaustion’. Exhaustion he told her, could be easily cured with bed rest and a bland diet, and was beneath the notice of so esteemed a personage as himself. With Beren in bed Jocasta had retired to clean herself up. It was only then that she had found it. The glyph appeared like a tattoo circling her belly button and dropping down over both hips in a series of sinuous lines and arcane symbols. She hadn’t had time to decode it as yet, but its meaning was plain. She was bound to the demonic entity that she had accidently summoned. It had power over her and could reach into the world through her. It might even have its claws in her soul. The thought made her shiver. Nothing she had ever heard about bargains with demons ended with ‘and then she lived happily ever after.’ Perhaps if she had been brave like Beren, or smart enough to flee before the thing attacked, things might be different.



“We… we managed to get away,” Jocasta told him, somewhat unnecessarily. “I was able to use the sarong to get us out of there, even though I admit it was a bit of a longshot.” None of that was technically untrue, though she felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach as she said it.

“Your wounds weren’t as bad as they seemed, I was able to use a healing charm to fix the worst of it, and the mayor was kind enough to provide us with a doctor, he gave you a potion which took care of the rest,” she told him. The potion had been a simple tonic and about as magical as a shovelful of dirt, but there seemed no reason to stress that at this juncture.

“He says you will be ok, so long as you rest,” she finished in a rush.

"Can we eat, at least?" He asked her, giving her his usual smile. He believed her without hesitation, but she seemed a little quiet, which he found kind of strange. She nodded her head quietly, but when he sat up she pushed him back down with two firm hands.

"Reeeeessssssst," she ordered.

"Okaaaaaaaay," He said. She seemed satisfied at that and made her way to the door, sticking her head out and waving a servant over. While she spoke, Beren had some time to look around the room. Clearly it was a guest chamber, well furnished and with rich oaken furniture. Oil lamps were set on the desk, and a great mirror was place to his left, beyond where Jocasta had been sitting. Her Sarong and their belongings were placed on a chair beside it or laid bestride it on top. He was worried about his weaponry for a second, not to mention his clothes and gear, but he found the axe and staff resting against the wall opposite the mirror, and his clothes, freshly knight and washed.

He looked back at the door and saw that Jocasta had disappeared. Briefly he wondered if he should try to get up behind her back, but he realized just how weak he was when he moved his arm to slide the covers off, and promptly slid them back on. Once he ate, he'd probably feel more energized. He wondered how long he had been asleep...

An hour later, after Jocasta had returned with the food, followed by two servants carrying further dishes, and after Beren had inhaled most of it, the doctor gave him the go ahead to get out of bed. No jumping and kicking for a day, but he could walk around at least. Beren got up, but Jocasta insisted she helped him walk. It consisted of her trying desperately to keep his muscled form upright, both of them waving to the servants and the steward of the house as they walked out.

Outside...

The air was crisp, but the sun was warm. The manor had been of pleasant design, but Iskura was very unlike it in style and architecture. The walls were massive cliffs of carved rock, twice as tall as any wall Beren had ever seen save for the very mountains of a dwarven Thundrim. The buildings around them were monuments of stone, baroque and almost sinister, even in the light of noon. Statues of wolves and gargoyles framed the keeps, halls, and temples that dominated what was the center of the city. From their point in the old quarter, the central Castle could be seen up the busy street, its high spire and robust defenses a testament to whoever had built it. If the stories were true, the giants had made the foundations of the city long ago, and only in the last few centuries had men dared enter the haunted halls and build around them, founding their colonies.

Jocasta let Beren walk on his own once he had insisted, seeing she was about to collapse from the weight. They made their way west, towards the great city's gates where the streets were less obstructed and the buildings were more recent (and comfortably human sized). Traders and laborers and carts wheeled past them. Every now and then a woman would pop out of a window and hang something out to dry, or an old man would raise his fist and bark at someone below him. So many sights and sounds and fragrances. Beren doubted the city was half as populated as the capitals of the Andred provinces, but it was a great change of pace from the sparse settlements they had dealt with the last few months heading north, where fewer and fewer men lived.

"Where are we going?" Beren asked Jocasta, who seemed to be leading them along.

"Hold on, just a minute more." She told him, dragging him along. He laughed at how strange she was acting, but down the corner and on the next street, Beren and Jocasta caught sight of a huge wall of wood. Racked on it was every weapon or iron, steel, or bronze you might think of, at least west of the Sundered Sea. Shields glinted in the sun, and a wicked looking bastard sword gleamed, catching Beren's eye.

"Holy shit, this is cool." He marveled as they waded through the crowd.

"Right?"

"I don't want to get it, but that's a nice looking sword." Beren said, nodding toward the blade.

"I didn't think you could use a sword," she said.

"I'm terrible with one," he admitted. "But I can admire good craftsmanship. It's almost dwarf-made, if I didn't know any better." Arms crossed, his words would die in his throat when he saw a heavy, squat dwarf walk out of the shop and place a mace on the bottom rack of the wall. He wore an apron covered in soot and grime, with a black hand print on his bald head. It took off a dagger and a small hanger, and walked back inside.

"Good eye," Jocasta said with a smile.

Beren grinned at her, and the two of them strode passed the crowd that browsed the wall and stepped into the shop. It fed into a smithy past a great curtain, and the heat of the chamber felt nice even in the accompanying room. Once they stepped in, the bell rang and a dwarf popped out from behind the counter. It was a short top, but the dwarf still stood atop a pile of neatly stacked books. He had a gleam in his eye and a beard so black it looked almost blue.

"Welcome to Buri n' Boys! I'm Buri and I'm here to give ye quality iron for your hard earned gold, how might I help ye?" He asked with a rehearsed pinache.

"I just wanted to know where you're from," Beren asked softly, in a grinding tongue Jocasta couldn't recognize. The Dwarf went from smiling to flummoxed, and he blinked and squinted.

"How do YOU know how to speak that, boy? How in Runar's little...HEY BOYS! COME OUT HERE!"

"Who's asking?" A gruff voice called back.

"Do it!"

Jocasta shifted uncomfortably as a half dozen dwarves bustled out of the shopfront. Most were stripped to the waist wearing leather breeches and barring the many slight discolorations that came with a life of minor burns in a smithy. Though one of them wore a short jerkin of polished leather. All of them were armed though it seemed habitual rather than in response to being called out front. Several of them had quite impressive tattoos in striking geometric designs though whether this was art or script Jocasta didn’t know. There were very few extant examples of dwarf writing, mostly from inscriptions on old monuments and while certain mages certainly possessed some knowledge of the language they kept it to themselves.



A traveler stepped in through the door and froze when he found himself confronted by a crowd of obviously excited, if not necessarily hostile, dwarves. He held up both palms and stepped out of the store and hurried off.



“They aren’t going to try to kill us are they?” Jocasta asked, “I’m just saying that would make five different species that have tried to kill me today.” Beren looked back over his shoulder.



“Five?” he asked in surprise.



“Humans, troll, giant spider, dark elf, demon…” she trailed off.



“You’re right, dwarves would make six,” she corrected apologetically.

The Dwarves looked at Jocasta with blank and grim looks, the very names of the monsters bringing disbelief or destroying levity. The Dwarves were ancient enemies of everything mentioned save humans in that list, though Beren imagined it did pique their interest if nothing else. The dwarves looked at one another in confusion, except the white bearded elder and one of the black bearded dwarves who stood in the back. They watched Beren and Jocasta with judging gazes.

"Why were we called from the bellows?" One of them asked.

"They spoke the tongue!" Buri cried.

"No, he did." Jocasta said, pointing at Beren.

"Well, she can speak a lot of languages." Beren said with a smile. "It's actually really impres-" But he was cut off by the looks of the dwarves, and he scratched his head. The Eru'Dai gave a bow in apology, and then unstrapped his drumengr axe and presented it before them, hilt first. The stout folk blinked and a few marveled in surprise, the eldest of them reaching forward and taking the axr by the haft, examining the runes with a sure eye.

"Baljiskur Runes..." He grumbled solemnly. He gazed up at Beren with a newfound respect, and gave the axe back to him. Beren took it gingerly, and the dwarves, once seemingly at odds with them, immediately turned congenial and even boisterous. They spoke in their archaic tongue in what was likely greetings and approached, surrounding Beren and patting him on the back. Beren looked overjoyed, much like how Jocasta might act were she introduced to a guild of arcane excavators who welcomed her with open arms. It was such a quick transition, it was like Beren had known these dwarves for years. They each introduced themselves with a bow, before they began discussing all manner of things.

"What do you got back there, a finery forge?" The warrior asked.

"If we could, but no." The one named Gurin complained. "Just a bloomery and a few workbenches to smooth out the impurities. We can barely make steel here. Cast Iron is what we can usually churn out. Men can barely tell the difference, anyway."

"We're looking to make a living while we comb the libraries." The youngest dwarf pipped in, his blonde beard shorter than the rest (though still nearly three feet).

"For what?" Beren asked, kneeling down conspiratorially with the dwarves. Every eye save his turned to Jocasta, and then Beren followed their gazes and laughed. "You can trust her. She's with me."

"We don't just trust anyone a dwarf-friend is sweet on." Radsvir said as if to remind him. A few of them bobbed their heads in unison. Beren blanched, his face flushing. It was true he and Jo flirted a lot, but nothing had been established. He wasn't sure if he should deny it or not, and eventually he decided to go with the truth:

"We're just traveling together, but I give my word you can speak in front of her." He told them.

"A great honor. She must be someone special." Otar reasoned, but they didn't linger on it. He turned back to Beren, speaking with a grave visage. "We're here because we are trying to find a lost hold. Thundrim Guldi of the Old Kingdom, in the Age of Reckoning. We heard there were books in the library that spoke of its whereabouts, but it might be in a language of men. Even if we found the book, we might not be able to read it."

Jocasta felt momentarily crestfallen when Beren described them as ‘just traveling companions’. Fortunately she was standing behind Beren when he said it and his attention was focused solely on the dwarves. Well it wasn’t that big a deal, she had known him for less than a week after all. The demonic tattoo on her midriff seemed to throb slightly in mockery that Jocasta did not appreciate. Before she had too much time to dwell on it the conversation turned in an unexpected direction.

“There is a library here?” she interjected suddenly. The dwarves stared at her in surprise, apparently deeply sunk in their quest to locate this lost hold of theirs. Jocasta juggled the references to dwarves in her mind, quickly setting the date of any major dwarven presence to several hundred years ago.

“Well aye,” the leader of the dwarves agreed, “maybe not what you would call a library. A hundred and some odd years ago there was a would be despot who conquered Iskura and the surrounding area. Man named Cumberbean if you can believe it. Anyway he was from the south and had some odd ideas. Fancied himself an intellectual. He forced all the noble families and all the temples to give up their books. Piled them all up in what today they call ‘The Library’ though we gather it was a temple to some old god before that.” The dwarf made a gesture with his chin, indicating a large stone building that loomed up on the hill that formed the center of the town.

“Most of its trash, some of it we can’t read, but three ages of men must have seen something,” he sniffed in a tone that clearly despaired of humans ever amounting to anything. Jocasta neglected to point out that a race that had gone through an ‘Age of Reckoning’ probably shouldn’t be throwing any expertly shaped stones.

“Well it sounds like we might be able to help you, I know a thing or two about libraries,” Jocasta told the dwarves. Dubious would have been a charitable description of the looks they shot her.

“Hey what are these?” Jocasta asked, suddenly distracted by a pile of paper wrapped tubes in the corner of the smithy. She picked up a lantern and leaned closer to take a look.

“NOO!” the shout was general. Every dwarf jumped at her at once. One caught her across the chest and knocked her sprawling, spilling the lantern from her hand. She crashed into a pile of neatly stacked firewood, sending timber in all directions. The lantern tumbled towards the ground in slow motion. Beren kicked out at the last second, getting a toe under the lantern and kicking it upwards, catching it neatly. Jocasta sat up among the firewood she had been driven into by the crash tackling dwarves.

“Fireworks,” the head dwarf said with a scowl, brushing splinters of timber from her coat. “For the founders day celebration tomorrow.”

"I thought you said you had only been here a few months." Beren asked, hands in his pockets and curiously gazing over Jocasta's shoulder at the fireworks. He had been taught to forge and even fight to an extent in Thundrim Kadrin, but the warrior had never deigned to learn engineering, civilian or battlefield. It brought him memories of the maverick engineer, Sketti Hammerhand. He missed the crazed dwarf and his antics, but he guessed now he would see more traditional gunnery and fireworks rather than the experimental.

"It's the talk o' the town, lad." Gurin informed him, taking the explosives out of Jocasta's hands like a mother taking its children from a sitter. He was shorter than the comely woman by more than a head, but his hands were twice the size of hers. She gave a guilty smile and he was jovial enough to give a wink to show 'no harm done.'

"You'd know that if ye had been here longer than the day, I'm guessing." The elder, Otar, grumbled. Gurin handed him the fireworks and Otar stuck them in his pack. Strangely enough, the elder's beard wasn't as long as some of the others. It was thick and grey with age, but something must have sheared into it in the past. It was only the length of Beren's forearm, though it densely packed around his cheeks, chin, and upper lip. Beren had learned some of the dwarven religion during his five years in the thundrim, but there were likely some sects he did not know of. Perhaps the shearing of the beard led the old one to join the clergy, or perhaps his the clerics of runar were made to ritualistically shave. Either way, it gave him the look of a stout norgardian war-cleric rather than an old dwarf priest.

"We got commissioned to make something festive," Varin added, but just after he spoke there was a hoarse hee-haw past the door that led to the forgery. Varin gave a bow to Beren and Jocasta, his blonde beard brushing the floor before he hurried away to tend to what sounded like a donkey. "I think ye'll like it!" He called over his shoulder.

"I know we will," Beren laughed, and then gave them a phrase in their language that brought a laugh. Even Otar chuckled. "Can you give us any more information on the place?-" He then turned to Jocasta. "You cool to go check out the library? We got time to kill, right?"

An hour later...

The inside of the stone library was massive, with cavernous spaces between pillars Beren easily believed was shaped by the Jygrim, the giants of old. The columns were embellished and the rib-vaulted ceiling was overlaid with ornate tracery that a few robed scholars on the floor looked at occasionally, sketching or writing in their notepads in study. In this fortress of lore, even the building itself was a mystery to unravel or dictate a thesis on. Jocasta looked around with interest sparkling in her eyes. Beren was similarly interested, always with a capacity to learn. Though he found his eyes drawing back to his shapely companion. She was even prettier when her interest was piqued.

Through the window on the right, one could see Lake Mearavon glittering in the afternoon sun. The bulk of it lay east of Iskura, the two companions having come from the southwest in their travels. Only a small inlet of the lake stretched south of the city, curling around its southern wall like a protective barrier. Had it been warmer he would have half a mind to swim in it, but every time he stepped outside he was reminded of the unrelenting chill.

"Anything I can do to help? I only speak three languages, and two of them aren't widely used in human scholarship." Beren admitted with a guilty smile. The shelves of books were like walls, some over twelve men high. Ladders were available, but they were wooden and heavy. Acolytes of Aulor, God of Lore, walked among the throng of scholars, curious onlookers, travelers, and aristocrats, helping where they could with questions. They were apart of the staff, though more traditional librarians and clerical workers seemed to also be present, helping people find books or making sure they were sufficiently quiet.

There were even a few elves scattered amongst the purveyors. A blonde she-elf of exceptional beauty and pragmatic, traveler's clothing walked brusquely, passing by a reserved, dark haired male elf in short, sensible robes that poured over a gilded tome. Slightly shorter than men, with toned and lithe bodies, elven ears were, of course, long and pointed. Beren had heard a lot of nasty things about elves by his dwarven friends, but he had known a couple of wood elves in the Black Delta. They had been good friends and dedicated wardens. What he did know other than the obvious, like an inclination to magic, was that every elf felt emotions far more strongly than men, and so they did their best to remain calm and ethereal.

"Glad the dwarves didn't want to follow us." He whispered as the she-elf passed them by. The oddity of the varied crowd faded quickly, and he turned to Jocasta, giving a sly, facetious smile. "These big arms aren't just for fighting you know." He flexed. "I can hold a mean ladder."

Jocasta grinned at Beren and then reached out and squeezed Beren’s muscled bicep in an approving manner. A few of the various acolytes gave them some strange looks, but no one commented. Rough and ready adventurers clearly weren’t so unusual as to arouse comments.

“So any idea where you want to start?” Beren asked as they walked down one of the cluttered aisles. Shelves on both sides groaned under the weight of ancient books and Jocasta had a momentary image of being buried in a vellum avalanche

“I don’t suppose they have an ‘ancient dwarf fortress’ section,” Jocasta mused. They rounded a corner into a large antechamber in which literal pillars of books reached towards the sky. A few scholars seemed to be making an effort to do a rough sort of the contents. Jocasta suspected that she would be long dead before the project made any useful progress. As they watched, one of the teetering stacks began to lean. Jocasta opened her mouth to shout a warning, but froze, figuring there was nothing she could add that would do anything other than sow further confusion. With glacial slowness the books tilted sideways and then collapsed into two other stacks. Dust and must exploded upwards in all directions as they collapsed into ruins. There was a wind rush of a thousand rustling pages that was almost deafening. As the dust settled Jocasta saw that one of the scholars had been buried to the waist and was cursing fluently in several languages.

“I’m going to tentatively say… no,” Beren observed when the dust had begun to settle and Jocasta’s comical wince began to relax.

“Fortunately… I’ve done this kind of thing before,” Jocasta said. Reaching into a pouch she rummaged around for several long moments and then came out with a pair of large glasses with lenses of bright green glass and polished rims of brass that had been painstakingly inlay with sigils. One of the lenses was crazed and broken, crushed at some point during their adventures. She tutted in irritation and then snapped the glasses at the bridge of the nose. She slipped the surviving lens over her left eye and turned to Beren.

“Woah,” he said in shock. Jocasta’s left eye appeared huge in the lens, almost insectile, her black pupil darted left and right.

“Sorry, I forget what these things look like,” she apologized. Beren opened his mouth but closed it again without speaking.

“If you were about to ask what they do, other than make me look like a bug, they let me tell the age of documents. I figure whatever documents your friends need are likely to be among the oldest,” She explained. There was no real guarantee that was true. Someone might have stumbled on it a year ago and scribbled the information on the back of a recipe book, but the balance of probabilities was in her favor.

“I hope you're ready to hold some ladders!”

__________

“Well I’ll be damned,” Beren marveled. They were seated at a stone table surrounded by dozens of moldering tomes. The remnants of a large meat pie, procured from a local chop house after several house of searching the library, sat on one corner as did a couple of stone crocks of cider.
“Looks dwarfish right?” Jocasta said as she lifted a book she had found wedged under a table.

“Dwarven, but yes,” Beren replied. The object in question was a family crest on the inside of a rather boring genealogy that detailed the small deeds of minor aristocrats. The heraldry was very mundane, a quartered shield in blue and white with a lion rampant in one corner and an odd symbol in the inverse.

“It looks like someone copied a dwarven rune, badly, it could be a couple of different things,” Beren said. Jocasta dug through her pile of books and found another work, this one on the noble families of the area some five hundred years ago. She leafed furiously through it until she arrived at the same blue and white crest. The rune was visible on this one too, though subtly different in shape.

“I’d say that is…part of a warding,” Beren said slowly, turning the book upside down to reorient the rune.

“The sort of thing one might find outside a dwarven city?” Jocasta asked.

“Maybe, but other places too,” he conceded. Jocasta read the archaic language. The text made no mention of how the device had come to be. A history of local heraldry might help but there was no guarantee such a thing existed in the library.

“I’m willing to bet you that this family, the.. Morloke’s, found this somewhere on their land and incorporated it into their coat of arms,” Jocasta postulated.

“According to the records they still hold their estate. Or did fifty years ago anyway. The story of how they found it might be in family folklore.”

"Where's it located?" Beren asked, though the question was rhetorical. He pulled out an old map they found and laid it carefully over the table, crinkling loudly. Jocasta moved aside the leftovers of the meat pie and stood up, rounding the table and overlooking the map over Beren's large shoulder.

"How old is this map?" She asked, and he knew why. Much of the Grey Marches were a mystery in detail, even though the rough borders and length of the land was well known. Mountains and roads were well mapped, but the specifics of forests, marshes, or even rough peaks were largely unexplored or were needing to be rediscovered for human knowledge.

"Twenty one oh nine of the current era. Eighty years old." Beren said, placing a finger on the date at the far bottom of the map. He traced the finger upwards to Iskura, and with Jocasta's help found the general area based on anecdotes of the Morloke's writings to hone in on a small mountain to the west. It was unnamed, but it was closer to one of the other cities known as Demercia. Beren chuckled and shook his head, his thick unkempt mane of hair tickling Jocasta's arm. "I know we spent an afternoon here, but it can't be that easy..."

The bookshelves around them towered like ancient walls, but they weren't made of stone. Nor were they too thick to listen through. Unbeknownst to Beren and Jocasta, a listener pulled away from the hole in the shelf he had been watching through and rushed away, disappearing into the crowd...

---

Thirty minutes later...

The Dre Costan, Oscar Rodelo, gave a bow before a large, mahogany desk nestled in a quaint manor across the city. He had come in through the back as instructed, for such a low-life couldn't be seen fraternizing with the lord or lady Vandenhartd. Even the guards would not have recognized him, and so he had been given secret knowledge of a small entrance behind the gardens. He had been allowed in within minutes of his arrival, and now he knelt before the lady of the house, Janyce Vandenhardt. A plump, lovely redhead. She did not seem pleased to have Oscar in her presence, but her eyes were alight with curiosity as she commanded him to hurry past the formalities.

"Speak, worm" she ordered, and crossed her legs beneath her frilled dress.

"I have found the two who made it out of Helmguart. The ones who had delivered the letter to the baron." He started, but she rolled her eyes.

"Yes, I know cur! That's why you were to follow them-"

"Your grace, they are the same two who survived the expedition led by the merchant Falkenrath, and they have met the dwarves your husband has kept an eye on. They believe the might have found a lost hold in the mountains west of here." He said, fervently outlining his information. He had rehearsed the small message on his way here, wanting to recount it all in as exact and prudent a manner as possible. The low-life had been in the service of many scum who thought themselves greater than their station. The Lady was the first noble he had been recruited by to act as her runner, and the rewards she had promised were something beyond what he had hoped.

The woman sat up, staring at him hard. She was a youthfully pretty woman, forty years of age with little to betray the fact save a wrinkle beside her red lips. Oscar had seen her smile as pleasantly as any maid, though he knew just how cruel and grasping she was. Still, he had his fantasies about her. Something any man might imagine when in proximity to such a well-pampered senora. He quaked under her gaze though.

"How can they be one and the same?" She asked aloud, pondering.

"I think-"

"Shut up!" She growled irritably, standing up. The distraction was momentary, however. The woman began to think again, speaking as if no one where there but her. "Could it be coincidence? These two have first hand knowledge of Bedregar's realm, the ire of the Dead Lions, the friendship of Baron Marius, and the potential knowledge of a dwarven treasure..."

"Shall I leak the information to your husband?" He asked her tentatively. It was a loveless, and in fact hate-filled marriage. They had not shared a bed for years, if Oscar did not miss his guess. He rarely did, he considered himself a womanizer and knowledgable in such things.

"No, he likely knows part of it already. And that's all I would want him to find out. But I need to get one of them alone. Perhaps both... squeeze them for information. Yes, I'll look through my contacts. Yes, you've done well Oscar." She purred, giving him a smile that showed her perfect white teeth.

"My reward?" He asked, hope in his eyes.

"I remember. Those months ago I told you I make you worth more than your weight in gold, and you would be given to the most ethereal woman in the city, and I am a lady of my word." She said, sitting back down and reached under her desk to retrieve a small, brass chest. Oscar perked up, wondering what valuables were inside. Was it pure platinum? Or valdium? He approached the desk, even though she did not invite him to. The noblewoman did not mind, calmly unlatching the chest with a bronze key and turning it around for him to take. He looked at her, and slowly placed his hands upon either side of the lid. Without much caution, he opened it up.

Nothing. Just a shadow.

"What?" He had begun to ask, before it died in his lips when the shadow began to swirl. At its center, something glowed like the sun. It hadn't been a shadow, no, it had been an endless abyss, somehow located within the chest. The slow movement of the living darkness had been slow, but it swiftly grew and billowed out of the chest to coalesce before them both into a woman. Or something like a woman. Its skin was a dark red, like the glow within the cracks of igneous rock. Her hair was long and made of flame, and her eyes opened to reveal smoldering orbs like molten coals.

Oscar screamed, falling onto his back and trying to crawl away. The demon-woman grew and grew until she was nine, no, ten feet tall with her lower legs naught by shadow connected to the confines of the chest.

"Ifrit consider slaves very valuable." Janyce explained as the dark thing grabbed scrambling Oscar by the leg, and she reached into her bodice to produce a ruby tied around her neck by a silver lace. Oscar screeched and struggled like a hob within the coils of a constrictor, begging Janyce for his life. She just jingled the ruby. "Oh, I can't help you. This ruby only keeps me from being targeted. Don't fret, my dear. She'll keep you nice and warm."

The Ifrit bent space and time before Janyce as the she-demon was sucked back into the chest, dragging a terrified Oscar along with it. His olive skinned hand grabbed the table desperately, but Janyce just pinched the hand playfully and closed the chest once it let go, the arm disappearing into the pocket dimension within the chest. The room stank of sulphur and burning meat, so she opened the door. The cold air felt nice on her skin, and she crossed her arms as she looked over the center of the city.

"Now to deal with those other two..."

“Seems a bit thin to me,” Otar said. At least Jocasta thought it was Otar. It wasn’t that the dwarves looked similar, they were as varied as any gaggle of students back in Andred, but they rarely refered to each other by name. It wasn’t clear whether this was a peculiarity of dwarven culture, or simply a result of extreme familiarity among this particular group. Without the reinforcement of the names they had originally given Jocasta had lost track and it wasn’t politic to ask Beren to repeat it to her in mixed company. Not, that the dwarves were exactly being polite as it was. The group was sitting on the patio of a tavern across from the forge, drinking mugs of ale from wooden tankards. It was pleasant enough, though Jocasta suspected the pubs chief attraction was it allowed the dwarves to keep an eye on their premises. There was no open hatred for dwarves in the city, but as outsiders they were liable to the target of petty crime ranging from vandalism to theft.



“You’re welcome,” Jocasta said in some exasperation. She had expected the dwarves to react with more enthusiasm to the news. Otar gave her a level look, though some of the others looked a little shamefaced at the lack of charity.



“It’s just, we’ve run down more prominent leads before and come up short,” Varin replied, his tone a little apologetic. The other dwarves nodded in agreement. Jocasta downed her ale and waved for another. She knit her brows together for a moment and then the irritation drained from her face.



“You’re probably right,” she agreed, a sly look coming to her face.

“Infact I wouldn’t even bother checking it out,” she said. Beren looked amazed at this sudden reversal in Jocasta. She smiled innocently as the barmaid brought another tankard of ale and swept up the copper piece Jocasta slid out of her purse. Otar looked suddenly suspicious. No doubt he was thinking that Jocasta and Beren might check it out themselves.



“Even if you found it you wouldn’t be able to open the doors,” Otar scoffed. Jocasta looked as innocent as a babe in the woods. Otar’s eyes flickered between Beren and the sorceress, his face contorting into a scowl. No doubt he was wondering how much knowledge a dwarf friend might have. No doubt the idea of a pair of humans looting a lost dwarf hold was anathema to him.

“Fine. We will check it out after the Founding day tomorrow. We have given our words to deliver the fireworks and another day wont matter one way or the other.”

Jocasta gave Beren a wink, and he hid his amusement when Otar looked back at him. He couldn't be sure none of the other dwarves saw it, but they didn't say anything. Muragrim and Gurin downed another pint of what alcohol they could find, but Buri had only had one flagon and he looked at the two humans with a keen eye.

"Percentage?" He asked, drawing a raised eyebrow from Jocasta.

"A seventh. Together." Beren said, pointing at Jo and himself.

"Ye've been here for one day!" Radsvir said, his voice rising. The human wench that had decided to stay and find a comfortable place on his lap flinched at the sudden outburst. He didn't notice, though his hand held her hip protectively.

"But if our findings are correct, it'll be because of us that you found it." Jocasta added, catching on quickly. The business aptitude and gold lust of dwarves was legendary even to the layman. Of course they wanted to get the details ironed out before they even found the Thundrim.

Beren crossed his arms. "We're not even asking for an eighth for each of us, just a seventh between the two of us."

Otar crossed his arms as well, closing his eyes. The elder paused in thought, and then gave a nod in acceptance.

---

"Invited to the palace!?" Jocasta said, aghast. She plopped down on the bed in her guest room, surprised. Beren stood leaning on the doorway, gazing at an identical letter for himself. She read the beginning aloud again to make sure the details were right. "You are formally invited by the Arch-Count to the Founding Day Celebration in the grand banquet hall of the palace and its surrounding courtyards and balconies. Your service to the county has granted you leave to speak to any lord and to be congratulated and awarded a token for your valor..."

"Free food," Beren pipped in, happy at that added detail. Still, he seemed a bit quiet. Jocasta owed a lot of people money, she didn't get invited to a lot of fancy celebrations unless she was working. Beren apparently felt some sort of way about it.

"What's wrong?" She asked him, curious.

For Beren's part, he felt and knew he looked embarrassed, which Beren imagined might look strange on someone who could grapple orcs and slay trolls. Still, he was younger than people gave him credit for, and he didn't exactly know how to verbalize his discomfort. Particularly because he was worried about being unimpressive to the girl that was staring at him right now.

"What am I going to wear?" He asked.

"I'm sure the Baron has-"

"No, I mean like...I don't know what I would wear." He explained. He had always loathed dressing up, and even though he had been to a banquet or two when his parents had been invited, the etiquette and the dress never could stick with him. The next part was worse, and he felt very wooden. "And uh...I don't know how to dance either..."

He pushed off the wall and shrugged his muscled shoulders, trying to remain his normally confident self, even if he didn't feel it particularly. He scratched the back of his head. "I'm not really a high class guy, you know I'd probably mess you up."

Jocasta snickered to see the normally confident Beren so adrift. She set the letter down and pulled her broken archeoscope from her pouch. The cracked green lens glared angrily at her, reflecting a dozen distorted versions of her own face at her. Reaching into her pouch she withdrew a fine cloth wrapped around a small bottle with a cork stopper. Pulling the cork she dabbed several drops of the bottles purple viscous contents onto the rag and then began to scrub the broken lens furiously. The hairs on Beren’s arms rose and there was a soft crackle of energy that smelled vaguely of crushed stink bugs. When Jocasta lifted the cloth the lens was whole one more, green and gleaming. She held both halves of the broken glasses together and sighed.



“I wonder if they have any brass, one of the candlesticks in the front hall looked like…” Jocasta mused. Beren snapped his fingers in front of her face.

“The party, remember, a little focus?” he cajoled. Jocasta made an indelicate sound and set the two halves of the broken instrument down on her bedside table, thought the better of it and tucked it into one of her pouches. You never knew when you might have to flee without time to recover your archeoscope after all.



“Right, well you will have to risk it as far as dancing goes,” she advised, “As for clothes…” So far as she knew neither of them owned even a change of clothes. Well she owned a sarong, but she doubted that freezing her tits off in such a tropical garment was likely to make a good impression. That left only one option.





The cost of new clothing was astronomical. Everyone in Iskura, nobles and peasants alike, was outfitting themselves for the following day’s celebration. A remote city like Iskura couldn’t be expected to produce its own cloth, with wool and linen coming from far to the south, and silk further still. Jocasta wasn’t willing to waste most of their small stash of coin on new clothing, but fortunately this wasn’t the first time she had been poor and needed outfitting.



“You really think we will find something in a place like this?” Beren asked as they stepped into a dilapidated shock in a decidedly seedy looking alley. The place was the worst kind of pawn shop, probably nothing more than a fence, and by the filthy state of the store, not a very successful one. Rusted swords and spears were stacked in half rotted barrels. The shelves were lined with battered lanterns, old jewelery and various tools.

“Hey they have brass,” Jocasta observed brightly.

“Clothes,” Beren said, drawing the word out to keep Jocasta’s attention focused.



“Oh, right,” she said, leading the way to the back. As she had expected there were racks of clothing there. Like the rest of the store they were in abysmal condition, faded, moth eaten, and all but falling apart. In the case of one bright red jacket, there were visible knife holes.

“Um… I’m all for cost savings,” Beren put in judiciously. Jocasta waved away his objection as she plucked at a yellowed lace dress.



“Just find something that looks like it might have been good once,” she advised as she found a ripped silk bodice in white and green.



“And then what?” Beren asked. Jocasta gave Beren a conspiratorial wink.



An hour later Jocasta emerged from her room in a dress of gleaming white and green silk in a jaunty checkered pattern. The cut plunged rather lower than was the current fashion, bearing more of Jocasta’s bosom than was generally on display. She had a pair of white stockings and white leather slippers with silver stitching that matched a sash that was wrapped around her waist in a series of clever knots. The magical repair she had wrought wouldn’t last forever, but it would last for the next couple of days.

“Come on out and show me!” she called through Beren’s door.

Beren had been ready for awhile, though it was more because he wasn't very fashionably literate, and it was usually easier for a guy to pick things out. Still, he felt he would look presentable if he was going to an illegal auction house or something. The jacket looked somewhat like a frock coat, though he imagined it looked noticeably nicer about ten years ago. It was taupe in color, and he had to shake it fervently to get the dust off of it. Underneath it was a beige button down, and an old leather belt held trousers he felt appropriate, with dark shoes. He had tried his best to fix his hair in the changing room mirror and it had what he imagined might be a rakish quality, but he had been wrong before.

Despite his misgivings, he was a jokester at heart.

He didn't step out, he slid out into the hall with the most ridiculous plumed hat, colored a loud pink, atop his head. "What do you think?" He asked without skipping a beat, winking. Though after he got his laugh out of her, he took the hat off and fixed his hair yet again, tossing the hat onto the closest pile of clothes.

"Seriously though, I feel like this is the best this store has. Though I think I look like I'm about to sell snake oil." He told her with a raised eyebrow, turning around for her with his hands out. It was at that moment he was able to process how she looked, and he gave a suggestive whistle. She filled the dress it wonderfully, and he felt the unheated store had grown a bit hotter. Still, played it cool, so he instead asked a very prudent question. "Where did you get such good looking clothes?"