“I wish that I could not,” the Wyrgen said with a rumbling sigh. “I wish I could disavow any knowledge of it, but you must understand that it is our nature to study such phenomena. Untold secrets beckoned, seemingly within reach-and with the convergence, and Stronghold so ideally located to study-but little did we realize…”
The Wyrgen’s broad shoulders slumped and his hands rose to claw at his head. An agonized groan escaped him. Bellimar leaned forward from his seat on the crate, eyes intent beneath delicate silver brows.
“What did you find, Grelthus?” the old man asked.
“It will be easier to show you,” Grelthus whispered, raising his shaggy head from his hands. “Come with me to the observation chamber. It is fitting that you see.”
Amric stepped aside as the Wyrgen crossed the room and, procuring the strange cube from the folds of his tunic, unlocked the inner door. The swordsman observed the action from the corner of his eye, noting how the cube was pressed to the metal surface above the door handle and twisted to one side, prompting the muffled click of a mechanism hidden within. Grelthus then swiftly palmed the device before throwing open the door and striding through. He descended into a narrow, darkened stairwell that ran perpendicular to the room, and Amric and his companions followed several paces behind.
The stairs plunged a considerable distance below the floor level of the room they had departed, forty feet or more by Amric’s reckoning, and were lit at their nether end by an eerie, flickering glow. Amric peered past the hulking form of the Wyrgen to the doorway below, where a shimmer of multi-hued light danced across the wall in bold relief against the shadows, cast from the chamber beyond. A vague sense of unease stole over him as they neared the bottom, where wispy fingers of light caressed the walls about them and clawed at the stairs beneath their feet.
Sudden vertigo lanced through him, and he almost missed the last step before the landing, reaching out one hurried arm to the wall to brace himself. His vision swam for one disorienting moment, and he glanced over his shoulder at his companions. They did not appear similarly affected. Instead, they looked back at him, their faces streaked with unearthly luminescence and taut with concern.
Amric shook his head to clear it. He took a deep, steadying breath, and passed through the doorway.
A long stone chamber stretched away before them, not unlike the one they had vacated above in terms of size and aspect. There the resemblance ended, however. This room was free of clutter, and had only the one doorway they had come through without a twin on the opposite side. A huge metal cage squatted at the far end of the room. It was capped top and bottom in large iron slabs, with thick supporting posts at each corner. The bars themselves were not metal; instead, crackling bluish beams of energy draped its sides. In the center of the cage was a heaping pile of cloth, and Amric felt the hairs on the back of his neck stir as he saw that bundle of material rustle and flap as if beat by an unseen wind. The cage was large enough to hold several men, if need be, and Amric spied an empty water pitcher lying on its side as well as a chamber pot pushed to the back corner. His nose wrinkled, informing him that the chamber pot had seen recent use.
The cage, with its sinuous bars of fire, was an unsettling sight, but it was not the only source of shimmering light permeating the chamber. The eyes of all in the room were drawn to one long side of the room, which overlooked a scene that dazzled and baffled the senses. At first it appeared the space was enclosed only on three sides and the entire right side opened onto a vast amphitheater. The tight echo of their own footsteps indicated a enclosed area, however, and the dull sheen hanging in midair soon gave the lie to that first impression. The whole of the wall was forged of a single great sheet of glass, or some other transparent material, several feet thick. Amric stepped over to it and brushed his fingers against it to confirm what his eyes doubted. He rapped his knuckles against the unblemished surface, and was rewarded with a feeble tapping sound that was quickly swallowed in the tomb-like silence. Clear as crystal it might be, but the wall seemed as solid and strong as the outer hide of any castle. Grelthus and the others joined him at the wall of glass, and together they looked upon the spectacle below.
The circular amphitheater was enormous, dwarfing even the expansive architecture they had passed through in their harrowing passage into the dark heart of Stronghold. Colossal stone columns stood like a grim ring of sentries, mounting from the floor far below their vantage point to a vaulted ceiling far above. Past the transparent wall, a wide set of stone stairs fell away before them to spill onto a broad terraced landing. Stairways of more modest size flowed downward and away on either side to one of a series of mezzanines encircling the room. The floor itself was comprised of a series of concentric circles, each dropping in elevation from the last to reach the lowest point at the center of the chamber. The entire gigantic coliseum seemed constructed around that center, focusing inward upon some unnamed, anticipated event there.
Looking down, Amric somehow doubted that the builders of this vast chamber had intended for what he was witnessing now.
A ragged fissure gaped at the center, the stone crumbling at its edges. The force which had torn the floor asunder had been sudden and explosive, for huge shards of granite were scattered from the crater to the distant walls in every direction. Adjusting for distance, Amric observed that some of those chunks of rock were better than the size of a cottage, and yet had been hurled hundreds of yards like the toys of a child. Portions of the surrounding pillars and walls had been torn loose in the passing of those ponderous missiles, with a spider’s web of cracks radiating from each point of impact.
From that angry wound in the ground rose a titanic geyser of flame, spearing upward almost to the ceiling. They watched, open-mouthed, as the fountain jetted and heaved, writhing like a live thing. It changed colors in fitful bursts, sometimes lingering on a multi-hued arrangement for several seconds and other times strobing through luminous colors in a sequence too rapid for the eye to follow. The fiery display pressed against Amric’s senses in a dizzying assault, forcing him to shade his eyes against its brilliance even as a dull roaring filled his ears.
The swordsman shook his head again, averting his gaze from the fountain. In truth, the shimmering, light-filled chamber in which they stood was little better, with their shadows dancing and twisting against the back wall in a mad mockery of their forms. Amric turned to study Grelthus, and found the Wyrgen staring down at the fountain, barrel chest heaving as his breath whistled through bared fangs.
“You are looking upon the remnants of a grand experiment,” Grelthus whispered. “It was to be our greatest triumph, and has instead become our darkest chapter.”
“What are we looking upon, Grelthus?” Amric asked.
The Wyrgen drew a shuddering breath. “I call it an Essence Fount, and since my people may be the first to have achieved such a thing, I think I can legitimately claim the right to name it.”
“The flame does not appear natural,” Halthak said, frowning.
“Natural?” Grelthus snorted. “A meaningless distinction. There are only the laws of the cosmos we understand, and those we have yet to decipher. The ancients were far beyond us on this path of comprehension. But I take your meaning, Ork. It is not a flame at all, but raw essence itself. It makes no heat or sound, and yet its power dwarfs any mundane fire-even of this size-to insignificance.”
“No sound?” Amric said. “It roars in my ears, within my head, fit to split my skull!”
Grelthus swung to look at him, head tilted to one side. “I hear nothing.”
Bellimar too was studying him with a pensive expression as he asked the Wyrgen, “Raw essence? You mean to suggest that we are looking upon a manifestation of pure magical force?”