I landed, weapons raised. The last priest had taken a few steps back, not out of fear but to give himself momentum. He roared and charged, a long-bladed spear held out in front of him. When he was almost on me, I dropped and raised my weapons around where the spear would be. He had too much momentum to stop, so he kept coming, and I hooked his spear down. It caught in the balcony rail, which he also collided with. His momentum carried him over the edge, and he plummeted to the ground below.
I peered over the rail. Amazingly, that final priest had survived the fall. He pulled himself up on one leg and drew a shortsword from within his robes, then looked around the courtyard. He was surrounded by a maelstrom of combat as my companions fought the corrupted lesser earth golems.
Tahlis sprang up out of the dirt behind the final priest. “You people ruined my guild. Now, I’m going to ruin you.” He slammed his bare palm into the priest’s back. The blow produced a sound like a thunderclap, and the priest’s body shuddered before imploding in a shower of bones, blood, and gore. It was as if Tahlis has produced a Ground Strike within the man’s body, and the force of an earthquake had ruptured him from the inside out.
As the last of the priests fell, the remaining golems stopped moving. Their weapons fell from their hands and crumbled to dust that scattered on a warm breeze across the courtyard.
Ganyir looked up at the balcony where Vesma and I stood triumphant. “Scout the rest of the fortress. Find anyone else who wishes to fight us and deal with them.”
I wasn’t used to obeying orders from the lord, but his plan was a good one.
“I’ll come with you, Swordslinger,” Tahlis volunteered after he appeared behind me.
“I’ll join the others,” Vesma said.
Tahlis led me to a door beside a staircase that led into a network of corridors. They were carved from the raw rock and seemed to go deeper into the mountainside, as the boundary between human building and natural feature faded. The space was defined by narrow hallways connecting rooms of various sizes, some containing frugal supplies, others bunk beds, and a few for mundane purposes such as laundry.
Torches flickered on the walls of the corridors. Someone had taken the time to illuminate this place, which meant that this part of the fortress had been in use, even while its rulers were in the City Palace and most of the army was on campaign.
“Where does this lead?” I asked.
Tahlis didn’t initially respond. He was crouching in the middle of the corridor, one hand pressed on the worn stone floor.
“I can feel movement below us,” he said. “There are people down there.”
I drew the Sundered Heart. “Where are the stairs? We should find out if there’s a threat.”
Down another corridor and two sets of stairs, deep in the rock of the mountain, we reached an area where the walls hadn’t been carved with such care. Instead of the smooth stonework we had seen before, it was rough, bare rock. The air down here was less pleasant too, thick with rot and sweat.
We walked through a guard room with a table in one corner and shields hanging on the wall. I slid back the bolt on an iron gate and led the way down the passage beyond.
“The dungeons,” Tahlis said. “I don’t think we’re going to find the Unswerving Shadows here.”
This passage was lined with doorways, each holding a heavy wooden door. As we approached the first one, someone called out plaintively from within.
“Please,” they croaked. “Please, some water, some food. Please don’t leave us here to die.”
A wave of fury rushed through me. I kicked the door with all the strength I had in me. The wood around the lock splintered, and it flew open.
There was a clinking sound and frantic whispers. I looked in to see around 20 people of various ages, all dressed in rags that revealed their emaciated bodies. They were chained together, their faces covered with hoods. They cowered against the walls as I stepped in.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
The closest prisoner trembled as I reached out and carefully removed the hood. She blinked in the light, stared at me, and clutched two of the shorter prisoners close. I removed their hoods too and immediately saw a resemblance in their faces.
“Your children?” I asked her quietly.
She nodded.
“Why would anyone lock up children?”
“They said we were heretics because we refused to join the Cult of Unswerving Shadows.”
“Of course.” I clenched my fist. It made sense, the sort of sense only a dark and twisted order would follow. Lock up the dissenters and anyone they cared about, and fear would keep the rest in line.
“You won’t be prisoners anymore,” I said. “We’re bringing the reign of the Unswerving Shadows to an end.”
I focused a small, intense blast of Untamed Torch on the link in the chain that fastened it to the wall. White heat melted the metal, and the chain parted. One by one, Tahlis and I removed the prisoners’ hoods and freed them from their bonds.
Some of the other cells held similar prisoners, ordinary Hyng’ohr citizens and their families, locked up for refusing to bow to a terrible path. Tahlis and I led them out of the dungeon and up into the fortress to a set of rooms with beds, chairs, and tables, barracks spaces for an army in times of emergency. The contingent of guards and cultists we’d slain seemed to have been the only ones manning the fortress.
While they rested, we fetched what food we could find from the fortress’ supplies and water from the wells attached to the kitchens. Soon, the starving prisoners were digging into the first proper meal they had eaten in weeks. As much as it had chilled my heart to see how they’d been treated, it was now warmed by the sight of
