City of the Dead

The battle was over, yet there was no time to rest.

Before them, a passage yawned open, leading down into the depths of the temple.

None of them knew what awaited them below, only that their final battle had yet to be fought.

“Last chance to turn back,” muttered Findergwyn, as a cold breath drifted up from below.

No one moved, or even thought of retreat.

They left behind the battlefield, the smoke, and the blood-soaked ash, and the party of seven descended.

Only Eucho remained with the other Kirraka.

“Take care of them, Eucho. They need you,” Melissa had told him.

He had protested briefly, but finally bowed with uncharacteristic solemnity.

“Kha’shara strong. I not worry. But careful… please come back.”

Melissa grinned with confidence.

“Don’t worry, we will. And when we return, we’ll all celebrate until dawn!”

The stairs spiraled endlessly downward, and as they went they talked through what had happened so far, what had set all this in motion, until Melissa knew the full story.

“So Hermes appeared to you as well…” she said, eyes fixed on the depths.

“And now we’re supposed to destroy the book you delivered to Hecate, to keep this world from ending?”

Lucius nodded slowly.

“Uh… yes. Pretty much.”

Melissa snorted, slinging an arm around his shoulder for a moment, almost playful.

“Oh Lucius, the things you get up to when I’m not around.”

Her tone hardened.

“But don’t forget, you can’t trust any of them. Not even Hermes.”

She exhaled sharply, as if spitting out the taste of old chains, her arms folding behind her back.

“But if Yashar gets their hands on that book, nothing good will come of it. So stopping them is probably our best option.”

"Exactly" Liviana added in agreement.

At last, the stairs ended at a broad platform, and before them loomed a colossal underground temple.

Basalt columns rose, stacked galleries lined the walls, and faded frescos showed gods long forgotten.

The old gods, not the Olympians.

“One wonders what became of them… or whether they ever truly existed,” Lucius mused.

Liviana shot back, a spark of anger in her voice.

“Of course they existed. Just because they don’t meddle in our lives like your imported gods doesn’t mean they aren’t real.”

“They’re not ours,” Melissa said. 

“They followed in our wake. That’s all.”

Moving again, the seven passed through the ancient halls, the light cold, the corridors empty.

“Strange. Where is everyone?” Glizzy asked, her voice echoing between the stone.

They walked on, the silence pressing, until a wet sound squelched beneath their boots.

A wide pool of blood.

Mutilated Yashari lay everywhere, on the ground, slumped against the walls, their faces hollow.

“Now we know,” Tairaku said flatly.

“Ick…” Meiruna groaned, pulling her boot from the gore.

Findergwyn raised a hand.

“Careful. Whatever killed them might still be here.”

The passage narrowed, then bent sharply, before opening without warning.

Finally, they stood inside a vast hall, soaring high into the rock.

But stone did not make up its walls.

Skulls and bones towered upward in endless heaps, suffocating, like a city of the dead.

Between them burned flames, not red, but cold, unnatural, the same blue Lucius remembered from Hecate. 

Their ghostly light threw flickering shadows across ribs and sockets, as if the dead themselves were watching.

Melissa and Glizzy shivered, huddling closer.

At the far end stood a colossal gate of ancient stone, its fine carvings seeming to writhe in the blue glow.

Before it stood the Yashari priest, already working to open the mechanism.

Startled, he whirled, fury in his eyes.

“You again!”

The seven braced for battle. 

Lucius stepped forward, breath steady.

“Where is the book?”

The priest arched a brow.

“You know of the book? But how...” He cut himself short.

“No matter. It has already absorbed enough magic to open the portal. You are too late.”

“Whatever you’re planning, we won’t let you drag this world into ruin!” Lucius shouted.

“Always the same cries, doom, ruin...” 

The priest’s voice curled with contempt. 

“The warlords of Sahzarun said the same, because they could not understand. The Lady of Night has given me the means to open a gate of order, not chaos!”

“Order rarely sounds good from a man in a skull mask,” Fin said dryly.

“Enough!” the priest snapped. 

“You fools will never understand.”

He slammed his staff into the ground.

Blue light blazed across the walls, the temple itself answering his call while his chant rolled, ancient and dark:

“Zur-dakar ashem tulah ruha nekh zarim kahet-mawt shunet ezan…”

All around, skulls lit up, eye sockets glowing.

“Uh… I really don’t like this!” Glizzy yelped.

“Fin, shoot him, now! Before he finishes!” Liviana shouted.

The Dark Elf loosed an arrow, but bones tumbled down, deflecting it.

“…nokhru zarim dakar ezan!”

The bones trickled from the ceiling like a rockslide, and bodies were already taking shape from the glowing heaps.

They rose, at first staggering, then with unholy composure; joints creaked as if only now remembering how to walk.

“Uh… that’s a lot,” Glizzy whispered.

“There were more Yashari at the battle above,” Tairaku said curtly, already raising the first vial to his lips.

Meiruna snorted. 

“Afraid these won’t flee, dear brother. They’re bones, they’ll keep coming until we grind them to dust!”

The skeletons rose, dragging rusted blades from the dust, others crawling straight down the bone walls, the rattling echoing through the cavern.

Meiruna uncorked a slender vial of inky Essence, drank, and thrust out her hand.

“Su mi kara, shibasu kara, anda la!”

Dark threads shot from her fingertips, coiling around joints and vertebrae, tangling limbs until the front ranks stumbled and collapsed.

But more skeletons emerged from the shadows.

At the gate, the priest retreated a step, seizing the great locks as he began to pull it open.

“He’s going through!” Lucius cried.

“Then stop him!” Liviana snarled, spinning forward, tearing three skulls apart with a whirling kick.

“You two, after him! We’ll hold them!”

“We shouldn’t split...”

Tairaku’s hand gripped Lucius’s arm, brief and firm.

“Go!”

“I’ll clear the way!” Glizzy shouted, hurling a vial.

“Bumbara Bax!”

“Glizzy, no!” Meiruna snapped.

The unstable potion exploded, blasting skeletons apart, ribs bursting, skulls shattering.

The hall groaned in response.

Dust rained down, hairline cracks spreading like veins across the pillars.

“Are you insane? This is a cave, you’ll bury us all!” Meiruna shrieked.

Glizzy shrank. 

“Note to self… less boom.”

But the breach was open long enough.

"That's our chance! Let's go!" Melissa shouted at Lucius.

Together they darted through the gap, rushing into the gate as it slammed shut behind them with a thundering boom.

Behind them, the battle of bones raged on.

Liviana slipped through ribcages and spine-gaps, claws hooking jaw hinges and tearing skulls free.

Fin’s arrows hissed past her shoulders, pinning blue-lit skulls to pillars; each hit dropped a body in a heap.

“Ventha!” Tairaku swept a gust down the aisle, scattering bones like dry leaves.

Meiruna’s inky threads lashed out, coiling vertebrae and yanking skulls off their perches.

Finally, the rattle of skeletons lessened, the last fell still, the blue fire dimming in their sockets.

“…Please tell me that was the last of them,” Glizzy said, breathing hard.

The floor answered with a tremor and the ground trembled as piles of bone shifted, crawling upward. 

Bones scrabbled, spines stacked, skulls rolled into ribcages, glowing like hearts.

“Does that answer your question?!” Fin barked.

Before them rose two titans of bone, towering to the vaulted ceiling, held together by the pulsing blue glow of skulls in their chests.

The group stared in horror as bone-scythes came crashing down on them.

---

On the other side of the gate, a dark chamber opened before Lucius and Melissa.

It was circular, with a black stone podium at its center, chains dangling bowls of blue, smokeless fire.

Above the podium hovered the book, bound in pitch-black leather.

No title, no ornament, only a seared sigil of interwoven runes that swallowed light itself.

Exactly as Lucius had once stolen it from the Arcaneum of Valdrath’s academy.

The Yashari priest stood at the podium, staff in hand, his fingers tracing the cover as he muttered an incantation.

Melissa moved before Lucius could draw breath.

A crackle of violet lightning, and she was at his throat. 

Her claws slashed; his staff snapped, blood sprayed across the altar and the open tome.

He coughed a laugh, teeth red, but his eyes sharp.

“You feel him already, don’t you, little Selvarin?”

“Who?” Lucius demanded, keeping the book in sight.

The priest rasped the words, short, broken, just enough:

“…dam’atar qetef…”

His blood flared; the runes drank, and the seal did not glow, but devoured the light around it.

Shadows deepened, flames shrank, the air grew colder.

A thud shook the floor, the shockwave hurling Melissa back into Lucius’s arms as they crashed down together.

The priest lay still.

“Melissa?” Lucius whispered. 

“Who did he mean? Did we stop it?”

She said nothing, her eyes staring into the dark.

“He’s here…” she breathed.

Memory cracked open.

---

Back then.

Green meadows, wide olive groves in Dionysus’ realm.

A fawn, barefoot, laughing, tiny horns in soft fluff, the world nothing but a playground.

Melissa.

She had been small, no larger than the other kids she played hide-and-seek with.

“Eight… nine… ten! Ready or not, here I come!”

She ran, chasing her friends through the woods, laughing.

But the forest grew strange. 

She did not notice she was lost, until the shadows cooled and the path turned to stone.

Suddenly, she saw it: the entrance to a cave, a yawning maw into the earth.

Mist pooled there, edges tinged with cold blue.

She stepped closer. 

Her fur bristled, and yet she took another step, and another.

An icy wind gusted out and in the echo she thought she heard a deep canine growl.

“Melissa!”

Silenos seized her by the scruff, lifting her effortlessly, eyes sharp and almost frightening, so it startled her.

“Careful now, my little one” he said quietly.

“You mustn’t go there. This path leads to the realm of... ”

---

Melissa snapped back into the present.

The chamber darkened and a cold wind poured from the black.

The book slammed shut. 

Silence fell.

Then footsteps. 

Slow, measured, as though parting shadow itself.

A man emerged.

Black cloth draped plain over his shoulders, as if he relished how little impression he made.

Sharp face, high cheekbones, white hair slicked back.

His gaze pierced, every movement casual, unhurried, as though he had all the time in the world.

Melissa drew a sharp breath.

“…Hades.”

The god brushed invisible dust from his sleeve, eyes flicking from book to blood to mortals. 

One brow lifted, not kind, merely amused.

“You mortals truly do love making noise out of nothing,” he said.

Even his mockery sounded like judgment.