The meeting room smelled of earth and cold soil. Taylin and I cautiously took a seat around the pewter slab that was the meeting table for the ancient Dwarven society. Qaleya eased into the chair across from us, the stone chair scraped across the floor and cut through the silence of the ruins. The lithe Shadow Sentinel leaned back into it casually, placing her shiny black leather boots up onto the slab and crossing her legs as she examined the dagger of mysterious origin in her delicate and dangerous hands.
"So, young meddling children. You've followed me through the ruins, thinking I was up to something. I'd hear your judgments of me." Qaleya asked, her greying eyes made me shiver as she glanced at me through a wispy strand of her white hair.
I could hear Taylin gulp and clear her through beside me, my sister wasn't frightened by Qaleya but she was as intimidated and in awe of her as I was. Everything about her emanated an odd power and authority, the way she moved without making a sound, the way her questions had a double edge to them, the way her voice carried without raising it.
"We have no judgments of you, Sentinel. Nothing negative, anyways. You're as interested in the origins of this plague as we are, and as much as our parents." Taylin answered, propping her elbows up on the table and fixing her eyes on the dagger in Qaleya's spider-like fingers. "If there is some way we can help get to the bottom of this..."
"Now there's an idea. I suppose I promised you some answers. I shall clarify for you what I can." Qaleya said, her voice slightly muffled as she tucked her face into the high collar of her tight uniform.
"First, as to this dagger... I knew there was an artifact that related to this plague. I didn't know exactly what it was, but from the research I had done... Well, that's complicated. I believe that this dagger may contain more information and answers than we realize. My investigation has been going on for a few years now, much like your parents have been doing, I've been asking questions everywhere I go. Though a Shadow Sentinel carries a certain presence of authority, finding answers and access to historical records has proven difficult." Qaleya began turning the elaborate dagger over and over in her hands as though she was expecting it to surrender its knowledge.
"I knew this was a cause worth investigating when I brought my curiosities forth to my superior officers in the Gloomrot. The fact that I was told not to look into this... that assured me that this was indeed a matter worthy of my attention." Qaleya continued.
I shivered at the mention of the Gloomrot, I had dreams of that place and it still frightened me to think about what it might be like. I asked curiously, "Really? Even your officers told you not to investigate? Why? The Shadow Sentinels protect us, not from plagues necessarily, but it seems like knowledge worth having. Especially if the origins of the plague are magical."
"That's correct, Idian. We train our skills in a large ebony fortress. It's an ancient construction, likely older than the Dwarves, but it has served as our home and training grounds for hundreds if not thousands of years, it contains as many secrets as these ruins. There are off-limits rooms, hidden passages, and chambers. I was good at finding them. A certain discovery I had made set me on this path..." Qaleya trailed off, looking contemplative.
I urged her to continue, "What kind of discovery? You mentioned that you suspected corruption in your organization, is it related to that?"
"In a way. I found an old infirmary. Stacked with Dwarven bodies. Perfectly preserved just like those in that vault." She said simply, her eyes locked on mine as though looking to read me like a tome.
"We found something similar! In Tavir Bay!" I exclaimed, remembering what my father had shown me. "Did you tell anyone about it Qaleya?"
"Not anyone I didn't trust. The magic of the Ebon Gate can corrupt even the sharpest minds, and I suspected that there were some among my officers who had succumbed to evil. It's happened before among the Sentinels. I couldn't come forward openly, but fortunately, we are given a lot of leeway in how we pursue our duties. I took my leave and told my leadership that I was going to look for recruits, and although that was a false pretense, perhaps I've found some recruits after all..." Qaleya said, placing the dagger back into the pouch at her hip.
Taylin gasped at the mention of being recruited, "You don't mean us? We're just kids..." She said.
Qaleya smiled, and though her face was partially hidden by her collar, the smile looked unnatural on her grey face. It was more than unsettling. "I do. I was a kid when I was recruited. Younger minds are easier to shape. You're part of this now, anyways."
I gave Taylin a look, and both of us shared a most horrified expression. What did Qaleya intend to do with us?
"Relax, you two. I'm not in the business of snatching up children. That isn't how this works. I do think I will need to discuss it with your parents though. We need to exchange information. This quest isn't one I can complete on my own, and it sounds like the two of them have been looking into this for as long as I have." Qaleya replied coolly, the smile had disappeared from her face.
Taylin must have felt reassured that we weren't about to be kidnapped, she asked "So then what's our next step? We don't know anything about this dagger and haven't found anything solid to go on."
Qaleya reached into another pouch inside the breast pocket of her tight leather vest and produced a dusty-looking piece of parchment. She stood, unrolling it on the table in front of us. There was an old-looking script written all over it, as well as a sketched image of the dagger we had found.
"Can any of you read this?" Qaleya asked, but she had to have known that we couldn't.
Taylin and I stood, screwing up our eyes and squinting at the ancient text on the parchment. "Of course we can't. It's Dwarvish isn't it?" I asked, never taking my eyes off the detailed diagram of the dagger. I wanted to ask Qaleya where she got this, but I just assumed she had found it somewhere inside these very ruins.
"It is. Very few people can read this. I can't either, but I know someone who can. Perhaps one of the only people we might be able to trust." She asked, her fingers and eyes tracing the image of the dagger, as though the answer might leap off the page and solve the mystery for us.
"Who?" Taylin asked, cocking her head curiously.
"The Chief Ascendant," Qaleya replied, gauging our response with a watchful eye.
My jaw hung open, "Really? The Jade Gate? I think my father has been there in his travels. We can ask him to take us." The reality of this mission was exciting to me, the pursuit of mystery and further travel was everything I had hoped for when I left my temple and now the prospect of visiting one of the most interesting places in the world was giving my heart a good reason to pound against my chest.
Taylin gave me a look, she must have been surprised at how readily I was going along with this and how eager I seemed to take up the quest alongside Qaleya. "Idian... we..."
Qaleya interrupted Taylin's protestations, "That's correct. The Chief of the Ascendant people is very old and is perhaps one of the few people who can still translate old Dwarven script like this. I've met them on a few occasions, I am sure that the Chief would assist us."
"Great! If we need to bargain with them I can offer my services as a healer too!" I said excitedly, ignoring the look of disbelief in my sister's eyes.
"Idian! Sorry Qaleya, we can't just go running off on some adventure. We made a mistake following you down here, and should probably go back to our parents and..." Taylin began.
She was silenced when Qaleya raised a hand into the air, calling for silence. "Shh. Listen."
All of us fell quiet, watching Qaleya focus on something down a distant corridor. The ruins were supposed to be empty, long dead, but all of us could hear it. A soft humming sound and mechanical clicking in the distance, faint but just audible enough.
"We've been found," Qaleya whispered, her greying features suddenly distraught. "Move. We can't be seen in here, it's against the laws of the Crimson Peaks!"
Before either of us could ask what was going on, Qaleya had sprung across the table toward us and grabbed us by our collars. With impossible strength, she dragged us through a set of doors to our left and led us down a shadowy hallway, all the while the humming and mechanical clicking sound was drawing closer to us and growing louder.
"Qaleya! Let us go! What's going on?" Taylin shrieked, struggling against the Sentinel's grip.
"Shut it! Get down!" Qaleya hissed at us, pushing down on our shoulders and forcing us into a crouch.
She turned our attention down the shadowy hall toward the meeting room we had escaped from, and we could see what was making the odd noise. In the center of the room, a perfectly spherical orb with a crimson-colored glass lens in its center was glancing about the meeting room like a disembodied mechanical eye.
Immediately I felt the Aetherlink between Taylin and I activate, her thoughts surrounding mine like the waves of a furious ocean storm. "Idian! What is that?" I could feel her think.
"I don't know. It's... scanning?" I replied, trying hard to focus my eyes as well as my mind. The suddenness of our link was startling, and my mind was already fatigued from our earlier communication.
Somehow, the Shadow Sentinel must have been able to feel our thoughts as well. She whispered at us in the tone a snake would use to ward off an attacker, "It's a Crimsonforge device. It's forbidden to be down here, but they use these things as eyes. Someone above is controlling it. We can not be seen."
I couldn't take my eyes off of the device as the eye scanned about the meeting room, the lens of crimson glass in its center seemed to adjust and focus. Each time it moved there was another series of mechanical clicks, and it hummed with Crimsonforge magic as it floated about. I wondered just how strict the laws were about trespass and what the consequences might be if we were discovered down here, but judging by Qaleya's reaction I knew that they must be dire. As we hid in the shadows I began to put my faith and trust in this strange woman, she could have easily vanished into the shadows and left us to be seen and possibly captured. But, she didn't. She was protecting us, I realized. In those moments I had decided that her quest was going to be my quest as well, no matter the cost.
The eye rotated in the air and began to look in our direction, a red light emitting from its lens shone down toward us and I felt my panic rising.
"Qaleya! It's looking right at us!" Taylin shrieked, grabbing onto my shoulder tightly.
Our guardian stood and pulled us further down the hall, we could see nothing in the blackness of the twisting corridor but she led us deftly through winding turns and passageways until the mechanical eye was only barely audible in the distance.
"We need out of here, and I know of only one way in and out," Qaleya said, pulling us into the vast forge room that Taylin and I discovered earlier.
"What happens if we're caught, Qaleya?" Taylin asked, panting and catching her breath.
She lowered her collar so we could see the sincerity on her face, looking back and forth at the two of us. We must have seemed like scared children to her, and I suppose that's exactly what we were. "I won't let that happen. Look, we're going to flee the city. I suspect they already know we're down here. You two need to come with me if you don't want to be thrown into a Crimsonforger prison."
The reality of the situation was settling in for both Taylin and me. She reached over to hold my hand for assurance, and I was desperately trying to have enough courage for all three of us, hoping that Qaleya couldn't sense my terror.
"Wait. Our parents!" I said, looking back down the hall to see if I could hear the eye following us.
"They'll be fine. If we've been discovered, there won't be time to go to them." Qaleya told us honestly, she crouched in front of us and gave us an earnest look. "I won't force either of you to do anything. If you follow me, I will protect you and you'll be safe. If we've been caught, running to your parents and hoping this blows over will be a mistake. Will you two come with me?"
Taylin's hands were cold and clammy as she gripped me even tighter, I could nearly feel her heartbeat in my palms as I squeezed back.
"Idian?" She asked, her voice shaking. Taylin was leaving the decision to me and was putting her faith in me to make the right decision.
I was putting my faith in Qaleya, and so our decision was made. "We'll go with you."
Qaleya stood immediately, ready to lead us back to the entrance, and the mechanical eye could be heard getting closer to us. She looked past us and we followed her gaze to see a dim red light shining down the side passage toward us.
"It's seen us. We're going to have to move quickly. Once we're up above, we head west as fast as we can, out of the city. Got it?" She asked us, pulling us away from the shining light and ushering us toward the other end of the forge.
Taylin and I only nodded, resolving to keep up with the agile Shadow Sentinel. Qaleya led us by the hand, backtracking through hallways and rooms that we hadn't seen when we first came through. Things were a blur as we moved as fast as we could, none of us having time to take in our surroundings. The eye following us seemed to speed up, clicking and whirring even louder and every turn we took followed behind us flawlessly. A few times we had come to a dead end and turned around to move down a different hallway or through a different room, the red light from the eye-catching short glimpses of our escape. I was sure that we would never get out of the ruins, and that at any moment a handful of guards from the city would confront us and arrest us on the spot.
"Qaleya! Through here!" Taylin pointed up a winding staircase, immediately recognizing the entrance to the ruins that we had come through earlier.
The three of us dashed up the stairs, I had nearly stumbled and smashed my knee against one of the stone steps but Qaleya and Taylin had both caught me underneath my arm and scooped me up to my feet. As we reached the top of the staircase, we realized we had a serious problem.
"Damn! The door is barricaded on the other side, remember?" I said as we reached the top of the stairs, placing a hand against the massive doorway and pushing with all my might on it.
Qaleya sighed deeply, "Hold my hands, I can get us through but it will cost me much of my magic."
"What? How?" Taylin asked incredulously, looking back down the stairs and seeing a dim red light starting to follow us up.
"Remember? We watched Qaleya get through," I said, grabbing for Qaleya's hand intertwining my fingers with hers, and motioning for my sister to do the same.
The Shadow Sentinel knew that I understood her intention and stretched her hand toward Taylin, "Come! This won't be comfortable for either of you..."
When we were both holding onto Qaleya's bony hands, she took a step toward the door. The sensation that I felt in that moment was one I had hoped I'd never have to suffer through again. Qaleya's magic began to reach out to us, encompassing us all in a black veil of shadow and wrapping around her skin. Cold daggers of fear and sharp pain stabbed at my heart as I felt my very being begin to fade from solid matter into an ethereal state of dark mist. Through the Aetherlink I could feel Taylin's discomfort, fear, and pain constricting itself around my brain as her Aethermind magic tried to instinctively fight against Qaleya's spell.
"Taylin! Stop fighting it!" My thoughts screamed out to her, the cold feeling of vanishing into mist made it nearly impossible to focus but the adrenaline of the moment was enough to empower me.
"I'm not trying to! It hurts, Idian!" I heard her audibly reply, pain constraining her vocal cords.
The power emanating from Qaleya flared and increased, dragging us through the solid matter of the doorway whether we resisted or not. She must have been frustrated with us fighting against her magic, neither of us had meant to do it, but the feeling of changing from solid matter to what felt like a specter of ourselves was painful and frightening and we resisted purely out of what our minds told us was self-preservation.
Once we emerged into the streets of the Crimson Peaks on the other side of the door, I felt my body returning into solid matter piece by piece, like I was a puzzle being reconstructed carefully and deliberately.
The night had turned to day, and when my eyes focused on the scene before us, I knew that we were too late. We were caught. Guards in intricately enameled armor and uniforms that marked them as Crimsonforger lawkeepers had surrounded the entrance of the ruins in a semi-circle. There were more than a dozen of them, far too many to resist or fight against.
"You have violated our quarantine protocols. Please lay down any weapons you might be carrying and come with us," commanded a heavily armored officer. I watched as the mechanical eye device glided through the air and came to rest in her waiting hands. She cradled it carefully, and I could sense her magic interacting with the device and prying information out of it.
My adrenaline was still pumping, and though my mind was more exhausted than it had ever been I desperately reconnected the Aetherlink and reached out to Taylin as we faced our captors.
"Taylin! Reach out to Aurae! Tell her where we are and what's going on," I pleaded, hoping that Taylin had more magic left in her than I felt I had.
I didn't feel her thoughts acknowledge mine and sensed that her mind was already far away. I knew that she was already reaching out to Aurae, feeling my thoughts being swept off in that direction inadvertently. I severed our connection so as not to interfere with her, hoping that she would be able to inform our parents what kind of trouble we were in.
"Children, hold my hands again. This might kill me, but we need to vanish," Qaleya urged us, the fatigue in her voice was troubling. I could tell that her previous use of her magic had nearly taken every ounce of strength she had. It must have been triple the effort to cloak and vanish not just herself but the two of us along with her.
We did as she asked, grabbing desperately at her hands and hoping that she could save us both. This time we were more ready for the awful feeling of vanishing into the shadows and didn't resist the pull of the black veil surrounding us. It felt just as horrific as the first time, and I winced in pain at how awful it felt. I opened my eyes as her magic finished taking hold of us, the world around has had no color to it, and the shapes of the guards surrounding us were only vague blurs of grey and white ink. Even sound was distorted in this shadowy form of our reality but I could just make out Qaleya commanding us to follow.
The three of us moved through the black and white, the dark power that Qaleya controlled must have cloaked us from sight. We headed west as quickly as we could, following Qaleya's grey silhouette through this monochromatic landscape. I noticed that she stumbled a few times and clutched her chest, the magic she was commanding must have been immense and was drawing heavily at her soul. Her strength kept her going through, and eventually, we stepped past the western gates of the city and stepped behind the rubble of a landslide from the looming red mountains above us and stopped once we were sure that we hadn't been followed.
Qaleya's magic broke just as we sat down behind a cluster of fallen rocks, and our Shadow Sentinel guardian immediately lost consciousness and collapsed onto a pile of gravel.
"Qaleya!" Taylin gasped as she tried and failed to catch the body of the grey elf.