Stretching relentlessly under an unnatural light was a wind-scoured plain the color of dried blood. It was chilly, but not strikingly cold. Flat and shadowless, it went on forever. No need to take lanterns, the warlock had told him, for a perpetual twilight prevails there.
Gnarl took a deep breath with the wind in his face-and regretted it, coughing from a mouthful of powdered rust. It gritted between his teeth, tasting of iron.
Turning from the chilly wind, rubbing rust particles from his eyes, he surveyed the prospect. Here and there the vermillion flatness was broken by angular red projections and rolling crimson dunes. The wind keened with a particularly high, metallic note. He continued turning, looking for a certain landmark-and saw it almost immediately. Some distance away, harsh lines spiked against the horizon. It was a ruined citadel of angled, leaning towers, their edges corroded like forgotten knives-just as Sernos had described it. That was his destination.
Completing his survey, Gnarl turned left, noting an angry dwarf coming at him with a battlehammer and a woman with pointed ears about to shoot him with a bow and arrow. Beyond them was He collected himself and dropped flat as the hammer, swung by the furious Rorik, whistled through the space he’d just occupied.
“Now I’ve got you!” roared the short but unnervingly muscular Rorik, raising the hammer again for a killing blow.
“Rorik-don’t kill him!” Miriam shouted.
That made Rorik hesitate just long enough for Gnarl to roll to one side, scramble to his feet, and raise his hands in front of him. “I’m unarmed, except for a dagger and a couple of spells I’m not even sure I can use! You wouldn’t want the shame of killing someone so defenseless, Rorik! Think of how the dwarves will shake their heads over it in the tavern!”
“In your case, thief, I’ll live with it!” Rorik snapped, slapping the hammer in his horny palm. “But-I could be merciful. I might simply break your legs and leave you here to die-if you hand over the many-tool now!”
“It’s all yours!” Gnarl drew the tool and, with a bow, set it ceremoniously on the rusty ground, stepping quickly back. “Take it! But I feel bound to point out, I won’t be able to lead you home if you break my legs! And you can’t go back without a portal!”
Rorik picked up the many-tool-then a startled look passed over his face. “What did you say about the portal?” The dwarf turned and looked back the way they’d come. The portal they’d all come through-was gone. “Treachery!” Rorik snarled.
Miriam’s characteristic expression of amusement faded as she looked around at the rusty wasteland. “The Raven Queen save us,” she murmured. She turned angrily to the dwarf. “We are lost in the Abyss, Rorik! I told you not to run through that portal!”
“You-Gnarl!” the dwarf said, shaking the battlehammer at him. “Where is the portal we came through?”
“Gone,” said Gnarl, spreading his hands apologetically. “Sernos opened it only temporarily. To return, we must do his bidding. He swore to me, swore a mighty oath-a really, really mighty oath-that we’d return to our world if we complete the mission!”
“But-how do we know where to begin in this wasteland?” Miriam asked doubtfully, looking around.
“I know how. We must find our way to a dungeon beneath that fortress.” Gnarl pointed at the spiky, rusting towers in the distance. “Underneath it, a certain device awaits activation. And there is more good news-if you work with me, and help me on my mission, I will reward you when I am the High Potentate of Glorysade!”
Rorik gaped at him. “Sernos! Did you say Sernos? Is that who sent you to me?”
Miriam groaned. “That scoundrel? Now I know why you didn’t tell us his name!”
Gnarl shrugged. “He did suggest I shouldn’t mention his name. But he is a famous warlock-you must admit that. And he did get us here-expediently! I’ve heard the legend of Glorysade myself! I always felt I might find my way to it…”
“Glorysade-I don’t know that one,” said Miriam, lowering her bow and arrow. She returned the arrow to its quiver.
Rorik snorted. “Glorysade! It was a dream! The notion that a glorious utopia could be forged from the rawest parts of Elemental Chaos! Ludicrous!”
Gnarl looked toward the bent, pitted towers of the old fortress. “It is a persistent tale. My uncle Verle was a minor wizard-he told me how an angelic being built a magical device that would turn chaos into order. Devils attacked to stop him from using it-and he was forced to hide the artifact somewhere in the Abyss. They struck him down-and its whereabouts were lost. The story says that a great ripple, a reverberation, will set up from the creation of Glorysade”-he gestured grandly at the sky-“and this wave of order will destroy dark spells in many places, our world included. Sernos says it will set him free from his curse. And”-he smiled benevolently at them-“whoever triggers the creation of Glorysade becomes its master.” He cleared his throat and looked modestly at Miriam. “If his heart is sufficiently… ah… good.”
“Sufficiently good?” She seemed once more amused. “You mean-as in pure of heart? Being a thief, you would not qualify! But for now, I suppose we’d better hope the warlock’s oath is good.”
Rorik grunted. “I don’t see what other choice we have without a portal.” He stuck his battlehammer into his belt and growled, “Lead on-punkling.”
5.
“And I’m to activate this device, am I?” Rorik asked suspiciously as he trudged along beside Gnarl and Miriam, approaching a great dune of sandy rust. “How exactly?”
“Once we’re there, we’ll know,” Gnarl said. “Or so I’m told. You’ll do it with your many-tool-if we can win past any demonic guardians that may protect it.”
“Oh-is that all we have to do?” Rorik growled.
“But what is this crimson desert?” Miriam asked, shielding her eyes from the metal edged wind. “It doesn’t seem to be sand, exactly-is it really rust?”
Rorik spat into the dune of oxidized particles as they trudged up its slippery face. “It is! A desert of rust-and rusting hulks. During the Blood War, the devils of Asmodeus built strongholds here, in this very plane, around the nameless swamp. Fortresses of solid iron, they were, outposts for attacks on demon rivals, through the Gates of the Nine Hells. There was a nasty pair of demon lords who made poisonous vapors steam up from the local swamps. The fortresses corroded, quick as a dice throw, and fell around the horns of their enemies. The rust was blown into the air and came down like bloody snow! And the devils who built the fortresses were either buried alive, or fled.” He shook his bushy head grimly. “Now you see all that remains, a world of rust and dried blood.”
“You know a deal about it,” Gnarl observed.
“Dwarves take an interest in all things metallic,” Rorik said. “And in magical devices. It is said there are many curious treasures buried hereabouts. Questers have sought them before… ah, I believe we see some of those courageous seekers now. They got here before us.”
Jutting from the crest of the dune, impaled on tall spikes of rusty metal, were five mummified bodies: human travelers, their eyeless, leathery faces contorted in eternal agony, withered arms akimbo like scarecrows.
Gnarl grimaced, remembering what the warlock’s minion had said: How many times have I let mad suicides through this portal…
“Look-we’re almost at the old fortress!” Miriam said, pointing. “We’re a bow shot away from its outer walls.”
Gnarl nodded, gazing down on the spires, obelisks, and jagged-edged bulwarks of pocked and rusted iron rising starkly from the dull crimson plane. No shadows should exist in that place, with the light so eerily uniform-yet he spotted one, an inky stain at the base of a tower angling crookedly from the desert. As he watched, the shadow moved, detaching from the tower’s base to seep into the sand, vanishing. He suspected a phantom, perhaps a wailing ghost. But the trapped spirits of demons were said to wander these plains, too…