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The BloodVaine EpicChapter 39: She-Of-The-Barrow
The inside of the barrow, located in Unholy City of Gynthaunt, is black. Always. The sunlight in this land falls thin and weak all times of the year, but especially now, blotted out by a raging storm of arctic ice.
Inside the barrow it is colder still. The air within does not stir, and seems tired and unbreathed for centuries. Perhaps it is. Even in a land where things sinister are a way of life, the barrow is a place of dread.
She dwells there.
Today she stares, unblinking, into pools of mold-clotted water that drips from the ceiling and collects in carefully gouged hollows of the floor. Each hollow is the shape of a nightmare the dreamer forgets just after waking. She is especially proud of these shapes.
A hazy rim of glowing fungus-- the only light that has ever shone in the barrow-- outlines each pool in shades of spectral blue or loathsome green. She moves from one pool to another, humming softly under her breath. The tune is sung as a funeral dirge in most parts of Dametreos, though here she hums it with what almost might be joy. In one pool, a fire rages among trees. Another holds a flying vessel and its passengers. A third mighty armies lined up in war. One a fleet of vessels locked in ice. Dragons in flight. And one a figure kicking aside a royal corpse to mount his throne.
She draws breath with a sharp hiss, like a poisonous snake. Another has entered the barrow-- reluctantly, and trembling with fright.
“Approach.”
“Y- your shadow darkens all, Milady.”
“Speak.”
“We have withdrawn our citizens into the walls of Gynthaunt, as you wished. There are many dead from the cold, and we have not enough food for everyone.”
“The dead will serve me well.”
“As you say, Milady. The necromancers have done what they can to protect our peoples, but I fear…”
“Fear is for others.”
“As you say, Milady. But this storm will destroy all the Fright Knight lands if we cannot break it.”
She gestured to the pool that showed the line of ice-locked warships. Four of them, not far to the south of Gynthaunt.
“Them.”
“We cannot rely on outsiders. We must…”
“Them.” she hissed.
The tone was not a request.
“O- of course, Milady. Y-your shadow d- darkens all.”
She turned back to the pools, silently. The visitor hurried out into the bitter, ice-flecked storm, finding it far more comforting than the scene he had just left.
They have gathered outside the barrow, though none have yet gathered the nerve to enter it. Finally, one of the necromancers, braver or perhaps more foolish than the others, steels his nerve and pushes through the tangle of thorny brambles and slimy moss that serves as a door.
She is waiting for him just beyond the entrance.
“It is done.”
He finds he cannot speak, though whether from fear, or from design, he does not know. She moves backwards to reveal a small square shape on the floor.
“It is done.”
As She repeats the statement -- or is it a warning, this time? -- he studies the object nervously. It is no larger than the span of a hand, yet he trembles at the thought of it. Is this truly what their magics have wrought? Is there no other way of defeating BloodVaine?
“It is done.”
He tries again to speak, and finds that the words just manage to push past the tightness in his chest.
“Y-your s... s-shadow darkens all. How are we to g-get it close to BloodVaine?”
“Them.”
She jerks an appendage towards a pool where the scene of four warships has been joined by a strange flying vessel. A sickly greenish-gray cast glows around the image.
“They will take it.”
He takes up the small square, touching it as lightly as he can, and backs slowly from the barrow, refusing to turn his back on the darkness. When he finally stumbles backward into the wan light of Gynthaunt, the crowd falls back to a short distance -- necromancers all, they know as well as he does the danger he hold in his hands.
In the sunlight, the thing is not so very terrible to look upon-- a box, carved of rough, plain stone. It is the same sticky silvery color as a snail-track, save for the very top of the lid, which is some sort of bruise-colored crystal. Whenever a shadow casts across the lid, tiny flecks of glowing green are faintly visible through it.
The escort has a wagon waiting, as instructed.
“You will take...you will take it to the coast. Quickly. It must be brought to the outsiders who are off our coast. Tell them that the Fright Knights have built a weapon that can slay the enemy of all. Tell them how they are to use it.”
It is only as the wagon begins to disappear over the moors that he allows himself to consider the terrible danger they have wrought.
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