The Valley of Souls

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“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley,” Cedric prattled on. “In fact it wasn’t until the turn of the second age that there were sightings. Odd really.”

“Why?” Yaro asked. He didn’t care and, frankly, he knew his answer didn’t really matter. If the past two weeks were anything to go by, the scholar would continue regardless.

“Well, the Valley isn’t known for having large deposits of cattle. Or people even. Imagine going to a tavern and ninety percent of the food was spoiled.” Cedric bent over the flower cluster, thumbing over the gentle blue petals that twisted around an almond center. He pulled out a kerchief and clipped a bud for safe keeping. “Odder still.”

This time Yaro ignored the man. Cedric’s way of thinking was mostly out loud, even for minor processes. It was useful for the collaboration of his colleagues - in the homely and well-populated halls of the Citadel. Out here however, it made Yaro flinch. They had already tested their luck traveling through the south as Northmen, and their luck had ensured their passage through the wilder portions of the Plains. But now they came to the true fringes of their goal, and the air had grown thick with unease.

The Valley of Souls. Yaro grimaced. Our ancestors couldn’t pick something like, ‘The Valley of Definitely-Safe-Wilds’? What, did they see the fog and decide only the dead could be happy here?

A part of him couldn’t blame the assessment. The Valley hung in the shadow of the Grey Mountains, and was nestled in a wild pocket of forest so dense and untamed that neither Eroman nor Uswain had claimed it. There were barely any paths, and those that had once been laden with stones had cracked and coiled beneath thorny thickets and weeds. The trees threatened to cover the sky and their branches reached out to them as if they were gnarled hands ready to drag them into their hollows. And if the looming dark circles of a dragon didn’t make one uneasy, the thought of the village further in certainly did.

“There could be other creatures around.” Cedric’s voice broke Yaro’s thoughts.

“What?”

The scholar stood a few paces ahead and scanned the wilderness, frowning. “For the dragon’s food supply. I suppose smaller creatures like wolves and voxlings could supply a dragonling for a time, but as they mature, they would need larger and more robust forms to subsist on. The average draconid can devour a whole herd in a day, bones and all.”

Yaro folded his arms over his chest. “And you thought marching into a starving dragon’s territory was the perfect research project?”

“But that’s the point!” Cedric hissed. “What’s kept it alive here? We’ve seen barely anything since the last village. And do you feel that…”

The scholar waved his hand through the air, and Yaro felt that deep gnawing chill in his core assert itself. On reflex, he rubbed his chest to soothe the ache.

“Magically saturated air.” He agreed.

“Not just saturated.” Cedric returned. “It feels… wrong. Angry.”

Yaro groaned. “You do realize it’s called the Valley of Souls, right? We’re not vacationing on the Vaspali coast.”

“For someone who served the Citadel as long as you have, you’re remarkably uninterested in asking questions.”

“Because we’ve been over this for months.” Yaro said. “I’ve heard the stories a hundred times, from beginning to end, left, right, and backwards. All of this is just speculation until we reach the village to prove your so-called theory. And as long as we keep standing here talking about it, the likelier we are to attract your dragon’s favorite snack.”

“The broaches should protect us.” Cedric puffed his collar out, pushing the yellow runic crest closer towards Yaro. Against the faded blue of his traveler’s cloak, the markings shone like the glint of light off a feline’s eyes.

“You’re betting your life on that trinket?”

“On my research.” Cedric corrected.

He reminded Yaro of an indignant child, so sure of his own theories that he believed himself invulnerable. He even sucked in part of his lower lip. With the dark mustache and goatee, it was almost comical. Yaro arched his brow at him. Cedric’s brow deepened and he relaxed completely.

“...but not needlessly.” He added. He adjusted his leather tunic and cleared his throat. “Once we reach the village we should turn directly towards the Grove. Better to not stay past sundown.”

Pompous idiot.

“Let’s just keep moving.” Yaro muttered.

He began looking for additional road markers. Amid the harsh terrains and frequent storms, signs like paint or carvings would have been lost in only a few short months. Instead, the residents had left small circular blue gemstones embedded in the path and along a couple of trees. They glowed faintly, which helped among the wilds, and provided small beacons to lead visitors to what they thought to be safety. Yaro could imagine it easily; refugees from the civil wars, bruised and exhausted, their clothes chafing as they clawed their way through the wilds with little blue eyes watching their every hopeful step. He wondered if they had been terrified of the lights. Their glow reminded him a little of the will-o-the-wisps that flickered on the edge of the Red Basin in the far north. He had only seen one once, from a distance, and to him it seemed more like a burst of lantern light than anything magical.

The Valley could be nothing more than superstition too. He thought. It wasn’t like tragedy was alien to the continent - they had seen almost three centuries of it, and a long slow death of tragedies for over a thousand years of subjugation by the Fae. True, their captivity wasn’t used as blood sacrifice for the eternal youth of one depraved woman, but the story of Bleakwind wasn’t entirely unique.

“These gemstones are intact.” Came Cedric’s voice. To his credit, he was quieter in this announcement.

“At the risk of blowing your mind, I noticed.”

“I would think thieves, or even merchants, would try to take at least one.”

That made Yaro pause. “Superstition?”

“Mm.”

The channeler ran his fingers over a gem, brushing away the leaves and dirt until the glow turned his brown eyes blue.

“They don’t appear to be runes.” Cedric murmured. “They remind me of the crystals in far northern caverns, or deep in the trenches of the Dwarven kingdoms. Those were always underground. I wonder…”

He reached beneath the stone and tried to pry it away from the ground. His fingers clawed and scrambled, knotting around dirt as he clenched his jaw from strain. Yaro rolled his eyes and moved to help him. The two clasped around the stone plank and heaved.

A gasp of freezing air cut through the trees. It struck Yaro straight in his chest. The impact sent him reeling backwards, his torso radiating with fractals of ice. He cursed as he scrambled back to his feet, drawing his blade with the frantic scan of the wilderness. The tall grasses and thickets clicked and rustled together. The gnarled hands of the trees waved with the lull of the wind as it died, but Yaro couldn’t see anything trailing through the wilds. No birds took flight, no insects rushed away. Maybe…

No. He shut the idea out of his mind. “Some kind of defense mechanism.” He muttered.

Cedric laughed dryly and rubbed his chest. “I think that was Lady Madigan’s greeting.”

Yaro clenched his teeth. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck, but he shook it away. It was the unease of what lay there, the unknown. Nothing more.

He helped Cedric up from where he’d been knocked back, and the two continued on. Following the glowing trail, it did not take them long to see the first signs of the village. The wilds thinned around it, the tree arms creating an embrace of an archway to the entrance. Without the strange light roads to guide them, Yaro would have said it looked like any abandoned pocket town. Hopeful, slanted cabin homes were built right on top of each other and side by side a few feet away from a tall spiked fence to keep out… what? Absent wildlife? Invaders? A few portions of the fence and homes had tried to make use of the old Fae columns and towers, making the new buildings appear like tumors crawling out of the old ruins.

How long since it was abandoned? Yaro thought. Ten years? Twenty?

Wagons laid forgotten with spoiled food that by now was more brick than bread. Pens held the partially-buried bones of once loved livestock. The few villagers they found had all been buried in their own cemetery, but the animals had been left right where they had died.

Surprised it wasn’t the other way around. He grimaced.

He kept his blade close, scanning the doors, windows, and roadways for any signs of activity. Tracks, scratching, broken pieces of the buildings. But there wasn’t much, truthfully. The only occasional odd thing was the small archways of stone, shaped like looping gateways no taller than Yaro’s waist. The stone was as white as the animal bones. Almost… clean. In comparison, the wilds had crawled over the cabin logs and thatched roof huts, and thorns and flowers alike bloomed. The blue roses Cedric had marveled over ran in long streaks between stones, wood, and grass, bolstered by the glow of the central path.

When silence met his thoughts, Yaro turned around. Cedric stood at the entrance to the village, his brow woven in a mixture of awe and… what? Sadness?

“What is it?” Yaro asked.

“I feel it.” He murmured.

“Feel what?”

“The Valley. What happened here.” Cedric exhaled, his eyes scanning every building, every arch and fragment. “They said when the army marched to stop her, all they found were ten villagers, already dead. Their bodies were almost… frozen in time, as if they had died in one sudden instant. It sounded too fantastical, even to me. But standing here… I can feel it. Like the village is holding its breath, waiting.”

Yaro had to resist his grimace. “The magic saturation is stronger here than the wilds. We should limit your channeling so we don’t risk wild spells.”

Cedric clenched the strap of his travel bag, seemingly ignoring him. “Look, there’s Solismar - the fortress of the noble family - there on the small rise.”

It was only a fraction larger than the other buildings, and perhaps that was due to the elevation more than the construction. It was definitely one of the wider buildings, and it was made entirely of the icy Fae stone. Unlike the other buildings, it had none of the blue roses on it. Though there was a significant patch at the building’s entrance.

Cedric must’ve noticed the same, as he immediately quickened his pace towards it and fell into a kneel. He drew out the clipping he’d taken from the wilds and held it against the other blooms. The ones in front of the tower were lush and vibrant, easily twice the size. Cedric grinned and laughed, then looked around at the buildings again.

“Yaro, tell me, do you see any track marks? Any signs of battle?”

Yaro nodded. “The footfalls of the soldiers and their movements.”

“But the reports never mentioned a dragon being attacked. Or the scholars collecting blooms.”

“Not that I recall.”

“Then this is recent.”

“This?” Yaro echoed.

Cedric held up the blue bloom. “Dragonwing. These only grow in soil saturated by dragon’s blood. It’s incredibly rare to find them so… well… everywhere.”

Yaro clenched his hand tighter around his blade, and once more scanned the village rooftops, the paths, the grass… Gods, what could attack a dragon? Let alone bleed it this much? And why would a dragon stay? He grimaced.

“This Solis family is getting worse and worse.”

“It could be unrelated.” Cedric said.

“You don’t sound sure.”

“I am not. My theory is getting more complex… dragons, blood rituals, and then there are these arches..” Cedric pointed. “I’ve seen Lorocan landmarks in a similar style. They called them spirit gates. They were meant to allow ghosts and essences of magic safe passage. The Solis family was believed to be afflicted with madness… but they could have been in close communication with spirits.”

“I thought you knew everything about them.” Yaro frowned.

“Hardly. Barely any records before the soldiers were found. It wasn’t as if Lady Madigan wrote out ‘Dear Diary, behold my master plans.’ All we have is the few escapees from sacrifice and the assaults against the village.” Cedric gave a thoughtful pause. “My theory is that Lady Madigan was trying to understand a Fae ritual site in Bleakwind Grove and it was twisted to be about her search for immortality. Using blood to force magic into being never ends well. Dragon’s blood would be potent, in more than just a few ways. It could explain the sudden death and disappearances of the villagers.”

Yaro scanned the skies overhead, listening carefully for the beating of wings. He heard only a soft hum of wind in the thickets and against stones. Abandoned places always had a different form of quiet. The Citadel had it when the scholars went to sleep - a quiet that made the mind lightly buzz, and every sound become acute.

“We’re losing daylight.” He said quietly. “Let’s find this grove, and quickly.”

Cedric grinned a little, and his eyes drew up to Solismar.

~*~

Yaro had followed two rules in his life. One was to knock on door frames before he entered. The second was to never lose sight of the goal. That wasn’t to say ignore other observations - far from it - but panic and awe were quick ways to lose one’s bearings during an expedition. One thing Yaro appreciated in Cedric was that when it came down to it, he listened and refocused. There were times when his mind would stray back to theory, but he could be brought back.

They clung to the roadsides and the small shadows of the buildings as they drew closer to the village’s heart. Cedric drew out his research notes and maps, chattering quietly about the Solis family madness - and the debate over if it was biology, or pursuits through cruelty labeled as such. A part of Yaro was grateful for the distraction, even while the rest of him was on constant alert. When he had been restricted to the boredom of Citadel patrols, it had been Cedric’s research stories that brought him out of the tower. He liked to think that his listening provided the scholar with some level of validation as his research took an increasingly cursed turn.

The Citadel had wanted nothing to do with the Solis family, and Cedric’s colleagues were convinced of the superstitions - if not the outright danger. Lady Madigan had killed an estimated 123 victims - one for each month of her reign. Any channeler could tell him that a place filled with so much death, especially death at the hands of sacrifice, could shape the lands around them with toxic crystalized magic, twisted creatures, and volatile spell casting. The sighting of a dragon in the area had cemented the futility of reclaiming the Valley.

“The Grove can be accessed through the Solismar mines… Ah! There.” Cedric pointed.

The entrance was buried beneath scaffolding, right next to a slumped building that had barrels surrounding it. Explosive powder, Yaro guessed. A half-loaded cart even sat beside the building with added barrels waiting to be carried off. There were plenty of similar mines in the Grey Mountains - Ebonfall came to mind - where dwarven firestones and byron metals for runes could be extracted. From the lack of heat, Yaro guessed that Bleakwind mine had to be the latter.

I hate caves. Yaro thought with a grimace. Always feels like something’s watching us.

Cedric stood at the adit, glancing between his reports and maps, then down the dark passage. Long metal bars extended from the mine mouth and were nailed to the exterior rock, creating a spider-leg look to the entrance.

“The Grove is through the mines?” Yaro repeated. “Do these go to the other side of the mountain?”

Cedric shook his head. “No, there appears to be a break in the mountain pass - see?”

The scholar showed Yaro the yellowed parchment. He could see the large blots of the mining tunnels, alongside dwarven elevation markers and symbols for natural dangers. Cedric had marked a darkened portion of the map that went far into the mountainside.

“It doesn’t have an elevation marker.” Yaro frowned. “Are you sure that isn’t a dragon nest?”

“All the other passages go deeper into the earth, not higher. I believe this is the underground Grove, a ritual site of the Fae that the Solis family used for their sacrifices… Do you have a torch, Yaro?”

Yaro grimaced, already rustling in his pack to pull out two. He glanced around the mine, first checking for any spilled explosives before he lit them.

The darkness skittered back against the cavernous rock. The yellow orange flames glowed against the rusted mining tracks. A few feet within the entrance sat a cracked old bird cage with a tiny avian skeleton within. Yaro glanced at Cedric; for the first time in their journey he looked like he was containing himself. He’d sucked in his bottom lip, and his knuckles had turned white around his torch.

“One last leg.” Yaro said. “I can take the lead. We’ll be at the Grove before you know it.”

Cedric nodded, offering a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Do you want to turn back?”

“No.” He said immediately, then steadier, “No, we’re here. We’ve come too far.”

The spider-like metal bars had been used for hoisting old lanterns and supplies. Molded backpacks, helms, pickaxes, and rope had been left by their previous owners and made the passage feel all the more cramped. Netting had been strewn across the top of the tunnel and suffocated the rock. Rusted chains had fallen from their hooks and felt like heavy arms bumping against their bodies as they weaved through.

Yaro could smell the dry, dusty air. At least there isn’t water, running or otherwise. He thought. The last thing they needed was toxin exposure on top of the eerie passage. Though that could have provided some answers to the village’s death rates.

The deeper they went into the mines, the more Yaro felt like he was being watched. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. The chains bumping into him passed and faded, the tracks guiding them further and further into the bowels of the mountain. The miners had left markings at regular intervals at each curve of the passage as it wound down or branched off from the main track. Yaro had seen them before in Ebonfall - ways to check composition, or to mark a venturing party’s progress.

One mark per day, with the top additional marks for the number in the party… If the Lady sacrificed people here, wouldn’t they have left marks of their own? He frowned. Did they have their own passage to this Grove?

Cedric shrieked. Yaro jumped out of his skin, readying his sword as he turned back. The scholar was pale-faced and heaving, his eyes as wide as dinner plates.

“Something just ran past me!”

Yaro held his torch higher, listening to the darkness. He heard a faint movement back behind them and his heart pounded. Slowly, Yaro crept back behind the scholar. As the orange glow brightened up the tunnel, Yaro saw one of the chains swinging back and forth.

“For gods sake Cedric!” He groaned. “It’s just the equipment.”

“No! It wasn’t a chain! It was colder than ice. I felt it!” Cedric clawed at his clothes over his chest, as if some growth had attached there he was desperate to pry off. Yaro sheathed his sword and placed his hand over the scholar’s.

“It’s just the saturation! I’m not a channeler, I don’t feel it the same. If you want us to go, we can. But I need you to stay focused with me.”

Cedric’s panicked gaze turned to resentment. “I know what I felt.”

He shoved Yaro’s hand off. Instead of turning back towards the swinging chain and the entrance, Cedric faced towards the winding down tunnel with an ever-hardened grimace. Yaro tried to swallow his own pride, but it was difficult.

Don’t lose sight of the goal. He reminded himself.

It was a long moment before the tunnel shifted and changed. By then, Yaro had felt the slippage of time. He knew when they had descended that they had a good five hours of daylight left, but time got funny underground. They had followed the markings of a mining party with four others, winding down and down and down until the feeling of pressure overhead made Yaro’s head spin. The natural rock guided them until eventually, their passage started to smooth.

The spidery metal bars stopped. Netted rock was replaced with an intricately carved weaving design. The tracks fell short, unfinished, and the clay became replaced with pockets of bright pale stone. It reminded Yaro of the spirit gates on the surface of Bleakwind, or the tower of Solismar. Eventually the smooth stone completely overtook the cavern, and they stood amidst a cold passage of a Fae ruin humming with a soft blue-green glow.

“You were right then.” Yaro murmured. “If there’s a Fae ruin here, then there’s likely a ritual site not far.”

Cedric said nothing. Instead he adjusted his map and continued walking. Yaro sighed. Had he truly insulted the scholar that much? Or was it another childish game?

Focus on the goal.

Even here, Yaro could see the marks of the miners. Some were even carved into soft blue crystal growths that hung in alcoves or poked out of a few cracks in the stone. The miners had marked five days, with three miners.

Three? What happened to the fourth?

“These crystals are sick.” Cedric murmured. “This color isn’t right.”

“What do you mean?”

“Natural growing magic is a deep, radiant blue. This is more like… a seafoam.” He said. This time Yaro heard the hurt in his voice. “I feel watched.”

“...I do too.” Yaro admitted.

Cedric glanced back at him, his lips thinned. “...do you feel the chill too?”

“I do.”

“Then we’re close.”

Those three words hung over them for what felt like ages, until at last the ruin came to a staircase leading down. The crystal light had grown to where their torches were no longer needed. The passage yawned open to a large tower-like room where the magic grew like veins up towards a ceiling woven with pulsing light. More tunnels and staircases all descended down towards a central platform with a spirit gate, this one far larger and decorated with the same glowing blue gemstones that had decorated the path into Bleakwind. The faint hum of the crystal had grown in a dark corner of Yaro’s mind, scratching at his consciousness with words he couldn’t place. When they stood at the top of the staircase, Yaro swore it almost formed music.

“Gods.” Cedric breathed.

The gate’s stones pulsed. Yaro felt the fractal chill strike his chest again, this time not knocking him back but bringing him to his knees. Cedric clawed at his chest, seething in pain, his torch fallen to the stone.

“I feel it.” He rasped. “Gods I feel it…”

The hum was ringing in Yaro’s ears now. His core felt like it was exploding with frost. That gnawing longing for magic now replaced with fire.

What the hell?

The gate’s gems were glowing, no - calling. It sang out into the darkness, pulling them closer, closer…

Then, the silence deafened. Yaro panted, and for a moment everything felt unreal. He looked over to Cedric, whose eyes were wide and locked on the gate. The scholar’s breaths were short and frantic, like an animal caught in a trap.

“Cedric? Cedric?”

He ran up to his friend and pulled him to his feet. The scholar’s eyes wouldn’t break away from the gate.

“Cedric, focus!” Yaro yelled.

The scholar’s lips trembled, and one hand rose to point back at the gate. That’s when Yaro heard them; the crystalline hum, one note at a time as if sounding off. Each grew louder and louder until the music became a crescendo and the freeze inside Yaro’s core felt near to bursting. The other passages began to glow as humanoid, crystalline figures shambled towards the gate.

Yaro had never seen anything like them before - their bodies were ashen yet glowed with the same sickly green-blue of the crystals. Their bodies were thin with the skin stretched over bumps and crags, all leading to a triangular featureless head with blackened tendrils that trailed behind them like smoke. Some crawled, others walked, all with a strange grace like dancers meeting center-stage.

“I feel them. I feel them.” Cedric rasped. “Oh gods…”

Yaro could stand it no longer. He twisted the scruff of Cedric’s collar and pushed him back down the way they’d come.

The song stopped.

Yaro looked down at his runic broach - the symbol had cracked. They could be seen.

He forced the scholar into a run. A primal terror gripped him. No longer superstition, no longer goals or research. He felt every inch of his body screaming to find the mining passage again. The hum of the creatures beat against the walls of the ruin, amplified by the crystals. They were catching up, Yaro could feel it.

“What the bloody hell are these things?!”

Yaro drew his sword, but it felt like straw. Cedric was hobbling, and the further they drew from the gate the more the scholar reached for the walls to pull himself forwards.

“Come on Cedric, run!” Yaro growled.

At last they reached the fringes of the mining passage. Yaro dared a glance behind him. The creatures were nearly floating in their grace to follow. Yaro could see a single line of crystals embedded in their triangular head, trailing up from a thick neck towards the smoke radiating from their bodies. Their blasted song burned against his mind, clawing under his skin and pushing against his fingernails.

One of the creatures raised a hand, and Yaro felt the chill deepen as magic was brought into being.

Yaro shoved Cedric to the ground. The spell loosened an electric bolt of sickly green energy. The blast flung Yaro back against a cavernous wall. Chains raked against his back and metal scraped against his armor. His mouth felt bitter and burned, his body twitching with agony as that fire lanced across his mind. The song became so loud that for a moment Yaro’s ears felt warm and wet.

“Yaromir!”

Cedric ran up to him, and Yaro could barely see him through the haze of pain. The scholar looked down at him, then back at the still advancing creatures. Yaro felt the weight of Cedric pressing against him, pulling him up to his feet again. He felt the frigid chill of another spell being cast, and this time the cry wasn’t theirs.

Yaro blinked away his pain enough to see that several of the gate creatures’ chests had burst open, exposing green-blue crystal embedded in a ribcage.

Like organs.

Yaro scrambled to his feet and pushed Cedric ahead. Only a little farther, only a little farther to the surface. He felt the crackling of energy and threw one of the mining lanterns back at the creatures. A light broke up ahead, and Yaro’s heart soared.

The explosives!

“Keep running!” He yelled to Cedric.

The scholar was stumbling against the walls and chains. When they reached the adit, Cedric nearly collapsed - and in the clarity of daylight he could see why. Cedric’s arm had been completely cut open. Blood stained his clothes and his skin had gone pale with the loss. The spell’s success in the cavern flashed through his mind.

“Are you insane?”

But there was no time. Yaro handed his torch to Cedric and ran back towards the mining building. He heaved an explosive barrel to its side and rolled it up towards the adit. The song was howling, screaming, no longer the gently oppressive hum of the caverns. The melody repeated again and again. Yaro grit his teeth and pushed against it with his own thoughts; focus on the goal, focus on the goal…

He rolled the barrel towards the main entrance, then turned to Cedric for the torch. The scholar looked up at the sky - and Yaro’s heart dropped into his stomach.

The beating of wings rushed against the village, and an enormous shadow blotted out the sun over the Valley. Yaro glimpsed a flash of fire, and a roar brought the gate creature’s melody into a terrifying reverb through their cores.

Kith, kith, kith

The dragon had come to feed.