Chapter Text
Once upon a time, in the heart of the Alabaster Sierras, there stood a great city ruled by a family both wise and just. The de Rolo name was spoken with reverence, their banners a symbol of peace, and their halls open to those in need. Under their care, the land flourished. The rivers ran clean, the crops swayed golden in the fields, and the forest sang with birdsong.
But fortune is a fickle thing. And as all bright things are destined to draw shadows, so too did tragedy descend upon this prosperous land.
One fateful night, when the sky was heavy with storm clouds and the wind howled like a wounded hound, a beast crept into the castle. It tore through the halls with a hunger that knew no mercy, its wrath sparing no soul within. The noble bloodline – once a pillar of strength – was slaughtered to the last, wiped from the world in a single night of merciless ruin.
The monster – sated in its bloodlust – did not depart. It settled in the castle and nested there, its presence poisoning the land. No mortal dared venture near, for those who did would never return.
As the years went on, a dark corruption spread through the Timberlands, seeping into the earth, twisting root and branch, warping beast and bird alike. The once-thriving forest grew gnarled and wicked. Its boughs curled like grasping fingers, its paths lost to mist and shadow, and within the cursed woodland, unholy things roamed freely. Creatures neither living nor dead haunted the grounds, their eerie calls a hollow echo of what once was.
Now a dull and desolate place, the same people who once lived in the city's blessed nimbus now speak of it in whispers, warning travellers of the monster that still lingers in stolen halls, watching, waiting. And should any soul be so foolish as to trespass into its domain, they shall meet the same fate as the noble blood that once ruled there. Devoured. Forgotten. Lost to the darkness.
Vax slammed the book shut, huffing out a frustrated sigh as he tossed it aside onto his pack. He’d picked the damn thing up in the last town he'd happened across before setting off on the windy abandoned road into the Parchwood Timberlands with some hope that it would be able to give him a little information on what he was walking into. Although maybe calling Drynna a town was overgenerous. There were two dozen cottages clustered close together around a communal building that functioned as both trade centre and town hall, a tiny inn that was really just the top floor of someone's home that they rented out to visitors, and a temple to – of all the deities – Erathis.
Then again, if he lived that close to this forest, he might try asking the gods for a little beacon of civilisation too.
Still beggars couldn't be choosers. Vax had been happy enough to pay five silver to stay in the 'inn' for the night and he'd felt wildly lucky to realise that the town had any sort of library at all, never mind that it was just a small corner of the general store. He'd spent a good portion of the stipend that his guild had given him on the closest thing to a historical tome he could find, even as his sister's voice had cried out in horror at the back of his mind as he did it.
'Full price? For this tattered old pamphlet?'
Then again, judging from the state of the town, anyone there was probably more in need of the money than him. Vax was hoping for something that would give him a hint on the kind of quarry he'd find in the woods — documented monsters, recent attacks on the townsfolk, a map would have been a miracle, but he'd have taken anything. Instead it was full of embellished folklore and old ghost stories designed to keep the curious youth from wandering too far into the woods to find the lost castle and rip the gold from the very walls.
Useless. And he was too far down the path already to even entertain the possibility of doubling around to get his money back. With any luck, maybe he'd be able to return the book and treat the funds put down as a kind of collateral, trade it back for some of his coin, but when he'd suggested the possibility of even passing through again, the shopkeep had literally laughed.
"Sure, hunter, when you come back from the woods," the gnome said, her wrinkled face creased in something near pity.
Comforting. The forest wasn't that bad.
Well, it… hadn't started that bad.
After a full day of travelling deeper and deeper into its shadows, following the path until it steadily disappeared into undisturbed wilderness, Vax would admit that he could feel some simmering unease that only seemed to get stronger in the cold stillness of the early morning. The sun was still low in the sky, the pale dawn only just breaking through the trees enough to reach his modest little camp and let him see his own silvery breath with every soft exhale.
Although calling it a 'camp' might have been just as charitable as calling Drynna a 'town'. It was little more than a patch of cleared earth just off to the side of the barely visible trail, nestled between the huge contorted roots of one of the many old-growth trees. Vex'ahlia would have been simply outraged if she knew how little of her teachings he'd used last night, but none of the fallen branches he'd found were anywhere near strong enough to support a structure – even the still-living wood seemed rotten at its core. He'd managed by finding the driest piece of ground he could and laying out his travelling cloak before covering himself and his horse with the treated sheet of canvas that served as their roof. It had been one of the most uncomfortable, restless nights he’d had in a while, but at least together they'd been able to keep enough of their warmth to stave off frostbite. Even if he'd woken up reeking of horse with the churlish creature chewing at the end of his braid.
Time to get to work. Time to get this job over with.
Most days, he liked the life they found with the Slayer's Take. It kept his hands busy, kept him moving, kept enough coin in their pockets that they didn't have to worry about where their next meal would come from or if they'd have a warm bed that night. And he liked feeling like he was bending skills that could have been used for selfish violence into a force for good instead – shedding blood to stop more bloodshed. It was a good enough calling. He wanted to hunt monsters, they were a guild of monster hunters; it was a transactional relationship that served them both well. But this time, their Tal'Dorei outpost had sent him far up north to deal with a beast prowling the Parchwoods – something dangerous enough to warrant a bounty, though the details had been frustratingly vague.
Their best intel seemed to support the idea that it was some kind of particularly rabid dire wolf. Typical ones stood as tall as a horse and stuck mostly to the deepest parts of the mountainous forests they called home, but assuming an atypical one with a big appetite and a whole mountainside to prowl, it would at least explain the stories that had gotten back to them. Entire groups of hunters and loggers disappearing into thin air, never to be seen again. Nothing left behind but blood and the stench of death. If it was that crazed with disease, one might have figured it would have run its course and succumbed, but it clearly still had enough fight in it to take out helpless common folk. It had even started to creep a little closer to settlements. Until recently, there had still been those who lived in the same family cottages from decades before – not far into the wood, but at least fully hidden amongst the trees.
And then one by one, those cottages had been found empty; stinking of rotten blood, even though – if rumour was to be believed – the bodies were never found. Those reports were passed from mouth to mouth, and eventually no one left the safety of the little community. Drynna wasn't an isolated case either, more and more tiny villages were throwing down their axes and refusing to step foot towards the treeline, never mind that the Parchwoods were how they made their livelihood.
But every time enough workers put down their tools, eventually a bureaucrat would pick up their pen. The distant company that bought that lumber needed to get back its supply one way or another, and if hiring a third party to come in and fix the problem was what got their revenue running again, that's what they'd do.
And here Vax was.
He went through what felt like a normal morning routine amongst the towering mountains and creaky pines – gathering tinder and twigs to spark a fire, feeding it up until he could put his tiny metal camp pot over the flame and scatter some dried lemon peel and mint inside for something to warm him up as he put his pack back together.
Even if it hurt to do it without Vex.
Because his sister had been sent on a different assignment – one that pulled her further south and even worse, closer to their father. He didn’t like splitting up and the thought of her anywhere near Syngorn made his skin crawl, but there hadn’t been much choice. They could hardly afford to turn down good work when it came, and the sooner he got this done, the sooner he could get back to her.
He held that thought in mind through every step as he made his way towards some sequestered ruin that had once been called Whitestone, without her sharp eyes watching his back, or Trinket's nose snuffling at his hand for treats.
His campfire was burning low, more embers than flame, and he had finished the breakfast he'd managed to throw together on it – assorted leftover scraps of dried meat and other rations steeped in some approximation of broth, paired with a mostly stale heel of bread. It wasn't much, but it was at least enough to fill his stomach and give him energy for the day. That meant there was nothing left to do but start his journey further into the woods. He stamped out the last few coals, the scent of charred wood mingling in the air as he scattered the ash and began readying his horse for the journey to come and what he might find.
There was a tiny itching thought at the back of his mind as he finished saddling his horse and climbed up into place. Maybe he should have left a more obvious marker in case Vex finished her task early and came looking for him. Or in case it helped to find his way back.
But too late, and too paranoid a thought. With any luck, he’d have this job finished by nightfall. Then he could put this whole place behind him.
The ride actually started out pleasant enough. The path was sparse, but he could track it, and after a while it seemed to get wider, better packed, and he could see the clear evidence of carriage wheels that had passed over months or years before. The crisp morning air carried the scent of damp earth and growth, and there was something about the northern climate that just seemed fresher, the smells sharper. Something Vax was coming to appreciate, as much as he loved cities.
But the woods got deeper.
It wasn’t hard to see where the book had gotten its inspiration. Even with the calm hush of morning and the pale curtain of sunlight threading through the trees, the forest steadily filled Vax with a quiet, creeping unease. A feeling that clung like the fog that wove through the undergrowth, coiling around the roots and fallen branches of the warped trees, their limbs twisted and reaching as though they meant to snatch him right out the saddle.
A ridiculous thought, he was letting that stupid children's story get to his head. He had to startle himself out of it as he urged his horse on. Vax reached a hand down, patting at her shoulder as they rode deeper into the woods; a familiar motion and a nervous habit that was probably more reassuring to him than her. "That's right, you'd tell me if you saw any dire wolves, wouldn't you?" he asked, his voice momentarily catching on itself from its disuse.
Clue snorted softly and tossed her head to scatter the morning dew from her brow in a way that almost seemed like a response. She wasn’t the strongest horse, nor the fastest; between her short legs and her scarred flank, she was hardly the finest steed at the stable but the best they could afford at the time, a choice of pure necessity.
“A horse with history,” the stable master had said.
“A history that I'm sure will garner a lower price,” Vex replied with a sweet smile.
Vax hadn’t expected to get attached when they’d first gotten Clue, but he should have. Pretty or not, she was reliable, loyal and strong-willed. That mattered far more in his eyes. And now any time they were stuck on a job, Vax could step outside and find a Clue whenever he felt like it.
It hadn't even once made Vex laugh out loud, but he sometimes caught her pressing her lips down against a smile.
Even beyond his terrible jokes, the scraggly brown creature had grown on Vax – all the little quirks that shone through that he couldn’t help but feel fondness for. The way she would huff and nibble at the fur of his cloak or how she would complain in her own way about staying put, often jerking on her bridle when they would hitch her up. Vax had once woken to her nosing though his pack for snacks in the middle of the night – how she’d untethered herself he still didn’t know. So yes, he was traversing through an incredibly unsettling land, but at least he had good company.
But the snow began to fall.
While not much more than a light dusting managed to make it through the thicker canopy of the trees, the forest was almost unsettlingly still. Slow and light to start, but as time crept on, the ground was steadily blanketed with a thin layer of pure white. And then another.
Syngorn and Byroden were both mild in their climate, so it had taken Vax until adulthood to learn how snow had a way of swallowing sound, and there was no quiet like that which came about on a snowy evening on the road. The soft crunch of Clue’s hooves through the thin crust of frost that topped the soil was the only sound that broke the silence, but it felt like steadily that faded away too.
Vax kept his eyes peeled as they rode, scanning between the trees for any sign of this beast he’d been tasked with killing. Tracks, snapped branches – gods, Vex was far better at this whole survivalist thing than he was. Surely a creature as big and as monstrous as the Take had described couldn't be that hard to find, but the woods seemed to be almost impossibly empty. Monster aside, he should be seeing the evidence of deer, foxes, even bears, whether or not he could see them himself.
But the hours just dragged on.
The uneventful journey needled away at his patience as the sky began to darken. A thick wave of grey clouds gradually rolled in, swallowing the sun and casting the forest into an early dusk. The snow that had started as a lazy drift was coming heavier; flakes that had earlier danced gently on the breeze before coming down to rest on the frosted ground were now falling with weight. And even as Vax pressed on, the flurry thickened, the snowfall coming faster, heavier, until the air was dense with swirling white. With it, the cold sunk in like a sickness, bleeding through his many layers and settling in his core. Vax couldn’t help but curl in on himself, hunching low in his saddle and pulling his cloak tighter, as if it could offer any relief. Even his gloves were near useless, fingers gradually going numb where they were wrapped around the bridle.
But worse than the cold was the slow, slow realisation that he was losing his way. The trail blurred beneath the mounting drifts, vanished as the wind grew more aggressive, tearing through the trees and lashing him with sharp edges that felt like steel.
"Well," he said softly, his voice muted as the next wild gust seemed to pull it from his chest. "This might be bad, girl."
This might be… very bad.
He had no idea if they were still on the path. For all he knew, they’d wandered off it miles ago and the world was gone – swallowed by the blizzard. In the storm, everything looked the same. There were no landmarks or trail signs and each gnarled tree – when he could glimpse them through the roiling white – just seemed to loom ever closer, groaning under the force of the wind.
Vex was going to kill him, if he didn't die out here. And if this gale didn’t let up soon, if he couldn’t find shelter – real shelter – he very well might. He'd done his research, he'd planned ahead, prepared for what the area would bring and outfitted himself with all the equipment he'd need, he'd been ready for the Alabaster Sierras. But the storm here, the chill… it felt like less like a passive effect of nature and more like a predator running him down.
Vax had heard of those who succumb to the cold, been warned hundreds of times just how quickly it took hold. The body working itself to exhaustion fighting to keep warm, chattering teeth and uncontrollable shivers giving way to a creeping lethargy, as dangerous as any siren, the call lulling you to rest. As if sleep might be the answer, a reprieve.
That was the real danger, the moment you stopped moving, stopped caring… that’s when the cold won.
Detached panic struck down his spine as he realised he was close to that edge now. He could feel it. His thoughts seemed sluggish, like wading through a dream that had slowly slid into a nightmare, the transformation so slow he hadn't even realised that it was long past time to wake up. Even Clue, bless her stubborn heart – who had kept trudging forward, her head bowed against the storm – was slowing, each step dragging through the deepening snow. Vax tried to flex his fingers, to force some feeling back into them, but they hardly responded. It didn’t even feel like he was gripping the reins anymore.
No.
No, he wasn't going to be the fool who chose a life of monster hunting just to find death in a storm.
There had to be something out here that could offer some protection, a rocky overhang, a hollow tree, anything. He scanned the blurring wall of white around him, the wind buffeting against him, pulling at his hood and screaming in his ears.
It was then that he heard it. A sound, just on the cusp of perception.
At first he thought he’d imagined the noise, another trick of the wind howling through the trees. But then – again. Clue jolted beneath him, her ears flicking forward as she let out a nervous snort, because she had heard it too.
A roar.
Vax tightened his hold on the reins with difficulty as the horse jostled with uncertainty, her hooves catching on the uneven ground buried by snow. Whatever had made that sound, it was big. Its call was a deep, discordant bellow that carried through the icy air and sent a different kind of chill up Vax’s spine, his pulse spiking.
“Easy now,” he soothed, his words barely carrying past the howl of the wind. He adjusted in the saddle, doing his best to keep his calm and help her keep hers. Given the circumstances, it was a feat easier said than done.
But this could still work. If he killed the damn thing, he'd be able to hole up in its den and make it through the night. He pulled Clue to a stop, paused his own breathing too and strained his ears against the wail of the blizzard. Then – so faint, almost lost beneath the storm – another sound. Not a roar, but a slow, drawn-out screech. Metal, brittle with age, shifting against itself. Vax straightened slightly, hope flaring in his chest. It could be a door, or a gate, either way it probably meant something made by mortal hands. He’d take anything with four walls and a roof, anything to get out of the cold. As confident as he was in his own abilities, he'd much prefer to be able to feel his extremities before he got into a fight.
He leaned forward, giving Clue a light squeeze with his legs. “Come on girl, let’s check it out.”
The horse hesitated, shifting her weight before slowly pushing forward. She wasn’t one to spook easily – hell, she'd never so much as flinched around Trinket – but honestly Vax couldn’t blame her. Even if he hadn't been freezing down to his bones, there was still that feeling lurking right below the seemingly mundane surroundings. All wilderness could be dangerous, but this felt different, almost conscious. Every bad turn that had happened since they'd awoken felt oddly malicious.
He continued scanning the snow-choked forest, keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of the beast he’d heard, or whatever metal was squeaking in the gale, getting louder and louder with each step. But even after a dozen yards, Vax saw no sign of either.
Was he already so affected that he was hearing things?
That was when Clue stopped abruptly in place, forcing him to scrabble for purchase with his numb fingers as he was lurched forward in the saddle. So busy looking ahead, he hadn't even noticed the ground in front of them dropping into a steep ditch, deceptively shallow looking with its thin blanket of snow, but the longer he looked, the more he picked out unnaturally straight lines beneath. Something was buried here.
It was difficult, at first, to discern more than a broken silhouette, half consumed by the earth as it was, but a moment of studying let him pick out the shape a carriage. There was the angular edge of the passenger compartment. There was the jut of a support strut in the undercarriage, and the half-buried curve of a wheel. Though the body of it seemed to have been cracked open like an egg – abandoned and left to rot in this sunken piece of earth, its door crying against the wind.
Vax deflated. Not the shelter he’d hoped for – hells, it was hardly even in one piece. The carriage had settled into the ditch at an awkward tilt, and while one of the back wheels remained intact, the front must have been shattered completely. But more damning than that, whatever had driven it off the path had done so with enough force to collapse part of the core structure itself, the frame warped under what must have been a massive impact.
But… something else odd. The longer he looked, the more embellishment and fine craftsmanship he noticed, though time and the elements had not been kind to it. The wood was corroded, blackened in places where moisture had seeped deep into its grain, the once-rich lacquer now dulled and peeling away in long, curling strips. This wasn’t some measly little pony cart, it was one of those fancy, regal carriages, one reserved for only the stuffiest of upper crust ponces.
Curious.
With a heavy sigh, Vax slipped out of the saddle, his knees almost buckling as he hit the ground; whether from numbness or disuse, it was hard to say. He circled around the ditch, not wanting to risk going in for a better look on the chance he might not be able to climb his way back out with his muscles feeling as stiff as lead.
He didn't need to get closer to realise that this wasn’t a recent accident – the metal reinforcements on the doors and roof had rusted over, flaking at the edges, brittle from exposure. Just from the look of the frame alone, there was no doubt in his mind that the thing he’d been sent here to kill was what had done this, but whatever had happened here, happened a long time ago. Still, considering the roar he'd heard earlier, there was a good chance that the beast was close. Vex'ahlia had mentioned before that animals like this tended to hunt near their dens, something about favoured terrain.
His sister would have had a better read on all this – she could run her fingers through a patch of earth and tell what had passed through and when, look at a snapped branch and know what direction its breaker was heading. He’d picked up a trick or two by watching her, but it wasn’t his strong suit, not by a long shot. Even so, as he walked on a few paces he knew that something wasn’t quite right with what he was looking at. Here and there, he saw scraps of wood and metal that had once belonged to the carriage, now lodged in bushes and under roots. One of the trees just past the wreckage had deep, jagged marks gouged into the bark, the wood beneath having long since gone brown.
Snow, wind and rain had swept away a lot of the details, but it was clear the area had been disturbed more recently than the wreck itself. As his eyes fell to the ground a little further on, he noticed drifts of snow catching in divots in the earth – fresh enough that the storm hadn't completely erased them, but not quite fresh enough to hold any definition. One dip. Then another a ways away. Prints. Large ones. Too big to be a bear or even a dire wolf, and very widely spaced. Vax couldn't pretend he knew every creature that could live in a forest like this, but based on the tracks he was looking at, the damage to the trees around him, the carriage in the ditch…
This thing was big.
Bigger than should be able to hide, even in a forest this vast.
Unease gnawed at him. His odds in doing this alone were looking worse by the minute, but what choice did he have? He was here, he was without Vex, and he had no path forward but to survive to get back to her. Time for a shift in priorities.
Goal one was to survive the night. Find anywhere to hole up and wait out the storm.
Goal two was now see tomorrow to make a new plan.
He pulled his cloak tighter around himself, glancing back over his shoulder at Clue. “Come on, girl, we've got to keep going,” he murmured, more to himself than to her as he pulled lightly on her reins. It was a truly terrible gamble, but if this thing was out hunting right now, the safest place to retreat to was its own den. They could hide, he could rest and eat, attack it right when it came back – when it was either exhausted from an unsuccessful hunt, or fat and tired from a successful one.
So he followed the path of tracks before them, moving as quickly as he could through the cold before the snowfall swallowed them entirely.
It wasn’t easy. And the storm was doing him no favours. More than once, Vax lost the tracks and had to double back to search for the faint imprints, half-buried under fresh snowfall or spirited away from the wind. But finally, the trail led him to what at first seemed to be nothing more than an unremarkable cliff face, the jagged layers of rock stretching far beyond what he could glean through his storm-darkened surroundings. As he looked closer, the dread brewing in the bottom of his stomach rose higher. Because there were more tracks. Many more. The ones he’d been following were only a fraction of what had been left by what passed through here. Dozens of overlapping prints had churned the ground into mulch, a chaotic mess of comings and goings that converged as he approached the wall of stone before him.
He was so tired, almost frozen. But he was getting closer.
The cave entrance was easy to miss. At a glance, it looked to be nothing more than just another uneven crevice, but as he came nearer, the opening between two craggy grey rocks just seemed to grow wider and wider, sink deeper and deeper into the sheer mountain. A hungry, yawning maw that stretched into blackness, large enough for something massive to comfortably make its home in.
Vax took a slow step forward, readying himself to urge Clue on with him but… hesitated at the threshold. His breath was coming shallow and his pulse hammering hard enough that he could hear it over the wail of the wind, adrenaline coursing through him with so much vigour that the painful sting of the storm was reduced momentarily to a distant tingle. It was rare he doubted himself. Caution had its place, of course – he wasn’t stupid enough to think himself beyond it – but in the moment, it was hard to remember the last time he'd felt this afraid.
The reasonable part of his mind – the part still half-numb and aching – screamed that this was a bad idea. He was slower than he liked, with his senses dulled by the cold and his endurance worn thin by the journey. The forest had already strung out his nerves, and this cave that a monster had made its home – this gaping, lightless void – was the last place he wanted to be.
And yet, he was already moving forward.
He had to. Had to survive. Had to get back to Vex, that was the only thought pushing him forward through the uncertainty.
"Stay, girl," he murmured absently to Clue as he finally let go of her reins, now that they were out of the wind's reach. There wasn't anything to tie her to, but she was at least smart enough not to wander back into the storm. And she was almost certainly smarter than him, because she wasn't going to push deeper into the darkness on her own.
But he had to scout the place out before he settled them.
Vax was no stranger to shadows and darkness – they welcomed him, bent to him in ways they didn’t for most. But as he moved deeper into the tunnel – that blackness slowly enveloping him – he felt strangely vulnerable. Exposed, even as he crept into the cavern, into what should have meant safety. He was grateful when his eyes adjusted, cutting through the dark in muted shades of grey until he could make out the rough and uneven stone walls, but it wasn’t enough to quell the sickening anxiety that churned in his stomach.
Behind him, the distant sound of Clue's hooves struck against the stone, most likely pawing at the ground either in boredom or in protest, but each scrape sent echoes down the throat of the tunnel far louder than Vax would have liked. Or maybe it was just his frayed nerves making it seem that way. Even his own breaths, light as they were, felt deafening, filling the hush of the cavern that had swallowed the howling storm outside.
He curled his fingers tight around the hilt of one of the daggers that sat at his hip and pushed on into the dark. The tunnel began to slope very gradually downward, the air still cold but slowly thickening with a damp, earthy musk and an unusual metallic tang that, for a moment, Vax couldn’t quite place. Not blood. That was a scent he knew well, and this was… brighter. More acrid at the back of his throat, with no cloying scent of organic decay.
Then the passage widened.
Vax slowed to a stop as he strained his eyes to discern what was waiting for him in the cavern ahead. At first, he was unsure of what to make of the vague shapes and silhouettes that peeked through the oppressive darkness, their edges too smooth and their placement too convenient to be mere rock formations.
This wasn't just the home of a monster.
This place had been man-made.
What unlucky, gods-forsaken soul had been here long enough to build something?
Thick wooden beams stretched from floor to ceiling, some standing strong, others leaning at precarious angles where time or brute force had splintered them. Scattered throughout the space were long tables and benches that had once likely been uniform in their arrangement, but now were little more than an abstract mess of splintered wood and rusted metal, most overturned and broken. Off to one side of the room was what looked to be a fire pit, its stone base cracked and the pile of coals and ash within long dead. Given its placement, given the strange scent of chemicals in the air and the other equipment he was gradually picking out around the space, Vax realised suddenly he was standing in some kind of workshop. Well, what was left of it, at least. But if he was right, the pristine barrels and crates in the far corner represented this place's product, miraculously untouched despite the wreckage of the room.
Save for one box with a conspicuously askew lid.
Vax crept forward warily, boots crunching against loose stones and errant scraps of metal. His eyes flicked between the tables as he passed, scanning the clutter of tools; hammers, chisels, tongs, files, all clearly meant for metalwork. There were fragments of parchment amidst it all, crumpled and tattered at the edges, most of the ink long faded and barely legible.
It wasn’t just tools that had been discarded; the tables were littered with the makings of half-finished contraptions. Hollow metal tubes and intricate mechanisms with gears and pins in various different stages of assembly. Tiny springs, curved bits that looked like miniature levers, wooden grips – some smooth and polished, others still rough, their edges splintered where they had been cut to shape – all scattered around like puzzle pieces. Vax eyed it all sceptically as he carefully stepped around the debris. He had no idea what exactly he was looking at, but every instinct he had was screaming at him to keep his guard up.
Still. He had to know.
He stopped at a barrel closest to one of the workbenches, his logic for delving into the cave in the first place slowly receding to the back of his mind in favour of his a new burning curiosity. Unsheathing a dagger, Vax pressed the tip of it against the lid and worked it loose with a soft creak.
Within, filled nearly to the brim, sat a fine powder, shifting like sand as the sudden rush of air disturbed it. There was a sharp, sulphurous scent that rose from it, stinging the back of his nose and making Vax recoil slightly. His brow furrowed. Alchemical, maybe? A reagent of some kind? Whatever it was, there was a huge supply, if the half dozen or so other identical barrels held similar contents.
Straightening, Vax turned his attention to the large crate near the back of the room with its lid already loosened, nails pried free as though someone had begun to open it before they left – or were forced to leave. He hesitated for a moment, eyeing the box warily before pushing the lid the rest of the way off.
He stared down at row after row of curious metal contraptions that had been carefully arranged inside, packed with straw that reeked of something unctuous and utterly foreign to his nose. But unlike the unfinished pieces littering the tables, these were complete. Picking one up, Vax turned the thing over in his hand, frowning slightly. The grip and trigger reminded him somehow of a crossbow, shaped to fit the hand comfortably, meant to be held and aimed. But the front was all wrong – no arms to hold a string, no groove for a bolt. Just a short, hollow tube of metal, smooth inside and out.
He had no idea what it was. It wasn't shaped like any weapon he'd ever seen before, but it was a weapon, that much he knew.
The feeling in his gut was only getting worse. Deserted as this place seemed to be, he didn’t like it, any of it. There was a very limited number of good reasons to have a secret stockpile of weapons hidden away from prying eyes in some easily missed cave in the thick of a cursed woodland surrounded by monsters. It showed a need for secrecy so intense that it topped all instincts for self-preservation, and in this part of the world, the only organisation that made sense to him was the Clasp.
That thought alone was enough to put his already frayed nerves on edge. But… this place was abandoned.
If only he could convince himself that was a good sign.
Vax turned the thing over once more in his hand before letting out a sharp huff and dragging his mind back on track. This wasn’t even what he’d come here to deal with. This wasn’t his problem, and at least he could be relatively sure he could find a safe place to warm up for a little while. He carefully placed the device back into the crate, taking the time to ensure it sat exactly as he’d found it. Force of habit. It wasn't as if he expected anyone to check; judging by the state of the rest of this room, it hadn't been touched in years.
It was only as he pulled his hand away that something new caught his attention. In fitting the removed piece back into place, it became more obvious that the rows of weapons weren’t quite as uniform as they had seemed. There was one singular row with a gap, a space where one should have been. That would probably explain why this crate had been open to begin with, but it did beg the question – who took it and where the fuck were they now?
Something prickled up the back of his neck and Vax's head snapped over towards the far wall, eyes darting quickly for any sign of life – as if somehow, after years of abandonment, someone might still be here. But of course, there was nothing. No twitch of movement, no change in the distant whistle of the wind, no sound of Clue braying far up at the mouth of the cave. But the longer he looked, the more he steadied his breath and focused…
Vax stared at the wall past the fire pit. There, wedged between two crumbling support beams, was a collection of rough, uneven lumber that he'd assumed was another haphazard pile of supplies, but… No.
It was a door.
More or less of one, at least. Maybe he'd missed it on first blush because it looked like it would barely qualify in even the roughest workman's estimations – slats of wood sloppily hobbled together as though made in a rushed afterthought. Its warped planks were barely holding their shape; slats mismatched, uneven, and some far thicker than others so their edges misaligned, leaving jagged gaps where the pieces should have met cleanly. All of that and it was too small for the space it was meant to seal, a hasty, ill-fitted thing wedged into place with a significant gap above and below.
It couldn't have been a further thing from the fine craftsmanship of the weapons he’d found on the other side of the room.
Maybe he wasn't the first to seek shelter here.
Vax took another step forward and strained for detail. While his dark vision reduced the world to varying shades of grey, he didn’t need to see red to know that the dark smears spattered across the wood and some of the surrounding stone was blood. Long dried. Old, like most everything else in here, but that did little to settle him.
With a deep, measured breath, the half elf raised his dagger, taking on a defensive stance. He reached his free hand out slowly, until his fingers hooked in a gap between the slats and, with a tentative pull, he eased the flimsy door open. It squeaked at first as it dragged over the rock, but still managed to swivel on one side with minimal resistance, opening inch by inch with almost surprising silence.
It was thanks to that quiet that Vax heard a sound so faint it barely registered in his mind – the soft snap of tension releasing.
BANG—
He hardly had time to pull his hand away before a thunderous crack split the air, impossibly loud in the enclosed space. White-hot pain lanced through his leg an instance later – sharp, searing agony sinking deep into the flesh. His knee buckled, balance wrenched out from under him as he slammed to the floor, a hoarse, involuntary cry catching in his throat.
Distantly he was aware that his dagger had skittered across the floor as the sensation consumed him, breath hitching as his fingers pressed against the wound before a fresh wave of pain told him just how bad of an idea that was. Vax gritted his teeth, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes as he tried desperately to breathe through the next moment, then the next. His vision swam at the edges, leg burning like it had been torn open from the inside out.
A trap. Here. He'd traversed across the land for who only knew how many hours to track down a mindless beast and managed to step right into the only gods-damned trap within a hundred miles!?
He scrambled back a bit, swallowing down a near-animal sound as his injured leg dragged behind him as dead weight. The only benefit to the unending onslaught of excruciating sensation was that it all faded together into one long blur, just enough for his brain to force through a unifying thought.
So much for shelter. Everything in ten miles must have heard that.
He had to get moving. Now.
Gritting his teeth, Vax forced himself to push up further, arms trembling as he pulled his body towards his dagger. His leg screamed its protest. He ignored it. Shut out the way the world spun as he reached for the blade, fingers wrapping around the hilt just as he caught a glimpse past the now open doorway.
A body.
It was slumped against the wall at the back of the room with ghastly grey skin stretched across its bones, only half visible under the drape of what once upon a time might've been fine clothes. Now they were little more than tattered rags wrapped around a husk behind a trap that had done fuck all to save them, but had damned him all the same.
"Prick," he spat out with all the venom he could muster in his near delirious state.
A deep, bellowing roar echoed down the throat of the cavern and stopped his heart in his chest.
No choice. No choice but to go.
Agony pulsed through his leg and up his spine as Vax shoved himself to his feet, balance wavering as the world immediately started spinning again. He gritted his teeth, hissing out rapid, ragged breaths as he limped forward, body fuelled by sheer survival instinct. All elegance and attempts at stealth were abandoned as he focused on the singular process of putting one foot in front of the other, hands grabbing at the cave walls, the floor, whatever kept him moving.
It seemed almost impossible when he finally collapsed against Clue, his hands gripping her saddle with all the strength he had left in him to keep his leg from buckling under the pain again as she whinnied and shuffled anxiously.
For a moment, Vax was almost grateful for the cold flowing endlessly from the mouth of the cave – sharpening his mind and distracting him from the fountain of warmth pooling down his leg. He still felt dizzy – the fear and pain were blurring together and making it very difficult to think straight as his blood-soaked fingers slipped against the leather tack while he tried frantically to haul himself up into the seat.
He found the reins. He had no idea how, but he found the reins. By some miracle, he even managed to hook a foot into the stirrup, a sharp cry tearing from his throat as a fresh wave of misery pulsed through his leg when he was finally able to swing it over her back. He didn’t even have time to properly seat himself before Clue lurched forward, bolting into a full gallop back towards the mouth of the cave. Vax could only hold on for dear life as the stone walls blurred passed him, one hand tangled in the horse's mane and the other gripping the horn of the saddle, injured limb feeling every jolt and lurch as they raced out of the cavern.
In the blink of an eye, the dark sanctuary of the tunnel was ripped away as they burst past the threshold, the storm engulfing them once more. Vax had no idea where they were going – he wasn't sure he cared, so long as it was as far from that cave as possible. He didn't have enough of his mind to him to do more than let Clue charge in whatever direction she saw fit, her instincts far more reliable than his failing sense of direction.
A trap. Falling to something as simple as not checking for traps. He was such a fool.
It was getting harder to sit upright, harder still to focus. There wasn't much he could make out through the storm as it was, and his vision was starting to slip at the edges as pain and blood loss gradually ate away at his consciousness; dark spots swimming in his sight, the world a blur of shapes, colours and muffled sounds.
At least he could barely feel the cold anymore, not between his slipping awareness of the world and the burning thrum of adrenaline coursing through him. But even combined, they couldn’t completely dull the pain. Gods, the pain. It was the only thing he could focus on and ironically, probably the only thing keeping him awake. Wave after wave tore through his thigh with each heavy hoof-beat, each pulse pulling shuddering gasps through gritted teeth.
Another roar cut through the haze of his mind, but as fuzzy and disoriented as he was, it was difficult to say whether the beast was hot on his heels or a mile away. Regardless, he at least had the presence of mind to feel a surge of panic at the sound. He felt helpless, gripping the saddle for all he was worth and praying to whatever god might be listening that a tired, scarred horse could outpace this thing. If it came down to it – if it caught them – that was it.
Ripped apart by a monster. Was that really going to be his fate? Vax tried to force away the thought, but it dug in at the back of his mind like a needle.
At least he was going to join their mother.
With more blood in his body and less panic in his veins, Vax might have noticed when Clue's steps evened out as she found her way back to a clearing that mostly resembled a trail. He might have heard the difference as she transitioned from cantering across thick packed snow over forest mulch, to the firm certainty of sleet on a level, carved stone. He didn't though.
What he did see was the faint golden wisps curling at her legs as she charged towards the looming silhouette of a large castle, its towering walls steadily growing closer. Tiny, near invisible swirls of gossamer-bright dust in the air that seemed to join together and twist around each other in his vision – beautiful even as they sent a sinking sense of dread through his heart.
If he wasn't already mostly numb, Vax might have felt just a little of the pain lessen as they transitioned to riding across the even surface of a man-made courtyard, a grand plane of pale snow and almost paler marble. He felt Clue shift briefly beneath him, but couldn't quite place it as her hooves skidding momentarily over the icy cobbles. He was busy watching the otherworldly glisten of something that felt improper for him to see float idly through the air – gentle and patient despite the gale that buffeted them on all sides.
Vax'ildan certainly didn't feel the moment his grip loosened, didn't register the way his body tilted sideways until there was nothing beneath him but open air.
Then—
Impact. He slammed down against the frozen stone hard enough to rattle his teeth. Choking on his breath, his vision swam as glimmering threads frittered at the edges of his sight, dancing on the drifts and shimmering like dying embers. Then… curiously, they shuddered. Stilled. Began to draw towards the centre of the courtyard like iron filings to a lodestone – towards something that certainly hadn't been there moments prior.
There was a figure walking towards him. How curious.
It seemed to come together all at once out of a pool of dark smoke – coalescing, spiralling upward to take the shape of a man. His form was fleeting, flickering, and Vax couldn't see a face, but with each step forward he became more solid, more real. Fear tried to stab through his heart again, but it was too tired. Working too slow.
Instead, Vax let his attention – what was left of it – slide to the golden threads. He watched as they wove and danced in the space between them, almost tangling around the shape in front of him, though… they never quite seemed to touch. There was something about it that was so deeply saddening. Now that Vax was looking, he could see so many faint shadows of threads flowing off to the rest of the world.
Tired.
Cold.
Just a little rest.
Vax stared from where he lay, his body too heavy to cooperate and his mind too sluggish to process whether this was real or some fevered hallucination. His vision wavered, darkness edging in, the world narrowing to this one ominous figure.
Then—
Swift as a striking blade, the man darted towards him with speed beyond that of any mere mortal. Something deep and instinctual stirred within him, crying danger with all its might, but his body was too weak to respond. Vax closed his eyes as the spectre reached him.
A scream filled the courtyard and a golden thread was cut.