God bestows to the humble and worthy.

Wisdom of the Ancients, Book 1

It had been difficult finding the right place, but the Warden had obtained enough details to narrow things down, including apparently spies’ reports. The Adjutant himself had taken command and directed them here. And after two weeks of searches, one of the scouts of the expedition force had finally found something.

When Sergeant Mord finally slipped through the last obstacle in the corridor, he found four already waiting at the entrance of the room, unwilling to get in. The room itself was full of garbage, like most ruins he’d seen during those weeks, but it was also weirdly shaped as if it had begun as two different rooms before being somehow glued together.

Mord really hated the idea. Such things hinted at the horrors from beyond man’s memories, stories of the Fall and the world being remade by an angry God, as the pastor often said. But the four deserters had come in there and gained much from it.

And the rear of the room held a strange chair of metal rods, on which sat a blackened skeleton, both held together by unseen forces.

“That’s the place, all right,” he said.

“So, what do we do now?” Private Vlach asked.

“We approach. The magic should still be there.”

The squad looked at each other, hesitating. They all knew why they were there, but magic and Change were not something you toyed with lightly. The Warden had been adamant, however. He wanted a force capable of standing against his enemies, all his enemies north and south, east and west, and if he had to deal with Ancient magic, so be it.

The soldiers entered and slowly advanced into the room, watching the skeleton. As they reached the rear of the room, a few feet away from the strange chair, most reflexively braced themselves, but nothing happened, at least visibly. Mord kept watching the skeleton, searching for any hint of the blue light that was supposed to be there.

After a while, the soldiers started to fret.

“Looks like the magic’s not there,” Vlach finally said.

“If there was any. Maybe they lied,” Private Gello added.

Mord tuned out the soldiers’ banter. They looked much more relieved now since there was nothing odd going on. He looked more carefully at the skeleton, looking for clues. The bones looked charred, or somehow… maybe Changed too. Deep black things, yet still together, as if invisible sinews held it together. The only thing visible were scratches on the skull, small grooves that looked as if something had tried to claw at the skeletal head’s burnt surface, uncovering some whiteish original bone material.

Vlach reached and tried to poke the head.

“Da fuck you’re doing, Vlach?” Mord almost yelled.

“Feels funny. It feels like you’re poking a stone statue, not a skeleton.”

He demonstrated further by slapping with his hand on the head, which didn’t budge at all, despite Vlach’s force.

“See.”

“So, there’s magic after all…” Gello started.

Mord’s eyes bulged as the scratches on the skeleton’s head suddenly turned from dirty white to a blue that was unnatural, the light showing through bone. Ribbons of blue glowing smoke seemingly appeared out of nowhere, twisting fast around the skeleton.

He thought that they’d finally gotten the magic to work when heat smashed into his face, like the furnace at the smithy back east in the Keep’s barracks.

Sergeant Mord didn’t know what had happened. There was a blank in his memory, between the skeleton and now. He was huddled… in the corridor. His eyes spotted the wall in front of the door and bulged.

Eye-searing blue light glowed and pulsed in a regular beat, a sharp rectangle of reflected flashes from the doorframe. From the other side, inhuman screams sounded, a continuous sound that bore no resemblance to anything anyone ever did. No human throat could sound like that. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the light still played. Even with his head between his knees, the insane light was visible somehow. As if it bypassed his mortal eyes.

Then he realized the light was gone suddenly, without warning, and silence had fallen. He slowly peeled his eyes open, listening. A whimper attracted his attention, and he turned his way, spotting Gello in a fetal position on the ground. Another private was sprawled just behind. He looked back and forth, but it seemed at least two of his people were missing.

There was a kind of light coming through the doorframe, but it wasn’t the unnatural blue that had heralded… what?

He steeled himself, and carefully approached the door, before risking a look inside.

Of Vlach and Gollert, there was no trace whatsoever. The rubble of the room looked undisturbed. But the room wasn’t unchanged. At the rear, where the skeleton was, an entire section of the wall had somehow vanished. The room now gave way to the outdoor, a kind of courtyard overrun by scraggly trees and wild growths, and the setting sun shone through, lighting the room.

The skeleton was still on its improbable chair, still looking toward the entrance, seemingly unmoved. Mord swallowed bile before frowning.

Around the skeleton now swirled snowflakes, coming through the now-open part. But the snow wasn’t falling everywhere. Above the skeleton was a straight cylinder, pointing toward the sky, full of icy crystals that fell and vanished on the ground. Above the skeleton and nowhere else.

Sergeant Mord decided then that it was not his problem any longer. If the Adjutant or the Warden wanted to deal with the skeleton, they could do it in person.

Douglas Joseph Moore

NULL, 182 years, 5 months

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