16 - The Tunnel of the Stillbreather
“Do you know, knight; I thought I saw my daughter again. “It was this morning, before I woke. I saw the first angling sheet of slate light sliding over those stern masses of rock and snow ahead of us. “I thought I saw her ghost, lit by that light, against the frozen pool by our camp. “I was mistaken. This was no dream. Only a light-trick. “Even before she was my ghost, her face for me had begun to change. You recall those last years. Her Metamorphosis.”
As you lift your Lady over a glacial fissure you study her expression.
This is the first time you have heard her speak of a dream, or vision, in many sunrises. The first since The Tower of Silence. Her speech is plainer to your ear now. But- Yours not to question. Serve only, with doubts expelled. That other Road traveler you met said the mountain air bulwarks the lungs. And the spirit. If so, it is worth this little rime on your visor. This chill in your toes through your socks. And there are the translucent skies.
Legends of the Meathook Mountains
The settlers who live near The Road, where it slithers among the rambling stone and ice of the Meathooks, propagate a suet of myth. They have ten thousand tales of undead things living in the mountain shadows.
One trapper of giant rats, with a mouth that is scarred, says that hidden somewhere in the Meathooks is The Massy Fane, the lost temple of The Old Man below. The trapper says that the god-necromancer built the temple when he stopped in the Meathooks on his journey from the bottom to the top of The Road. He says the Old Man left “reflections of death” in the ice on the mountains.
Another legend tells of the Green Firebeetle, which paints the aurora in the night sky when it flies.
It troubles you, however - this way you’ve picked. Through The Old Soulwood. Up The Meathooks. Already your Steel has been summoned in Her defense. Are the threats on this skein of The Road lesser than others you might have brought Her toward? There is only one Road of Graves. Yet it has hoops, skips, and cul-de-sacs. You might have gone through Mellowdepth. That echoing pipe under the sea, full of slime-covered marble, and polyps. Or over The Leviathan Fields. Ahead it gets steeper. How much farther?
There are two basic ways to reach The Tunnel. One is to follow along the rugged slope of turf and boulders, along the face of the glacier. It starts in a northward direction, but curves back east. There is a random chance you’ll run into either a pack of three to five feral wolves, or two pagan berserkers. Your Polished Steel Longsword will be called for in either case. Also watch out for the patch of quicksnow about a mile into this route. (If you fall in, you will certainly perish).
The other path you can take is through a narrow canyon, a crevasse, which cuts directly ahead through the glacier. While this route is more direct, you’ll have to smash through a hundred yards of glazed cobwebs, and deal with the associated Crackling Spiders. While single spiders don’t give your Steel much trouble, don’t let them swarm you. Eventually you’ll reach a vertical cliff of ice at the canyon’s end. Your Lady will suggest you climb it with a rope, while she waits below. This is the quickest course, but you’ll need to climb fast, or your Blue Lady will fall prey to the host of crackling fangs.
Whence Meathook’s Glaciers?
Orca, last of the indigenous slavemen of The Meathook Mountains, tells the story of abnormal glacial formations thus.
The mancers of the first Time of Dying wanted a freezer. A place to preserve their most important cadavers. Extinct species, elves, monsters, etcetera.
From Winter, which has always been Necromancy’s season, they borrowed breath. The Winter wind. They installed this breath within their sturdiest un-living hosts. They buried the hosts in deep mountain tohmbs. From these issues always the cold breath of Winter. It freezes the rains. It forms the massive frozen snakes that are The Meathook glaciers.
The practice of putting Winter wind in a body is not a lost one.
By the time you hear the first crack of ice it is too late. You have stepped onto a frozen pond, high in the mountains.
The ice is perfectly solid. It is what lies beneath it from which the crackle ensues.
Gasps.
The frozen dead crash rather than gasp up from the frozen surface of the lake. More crackling – their numbers swell, masses of bones covered in wet silks and green mail. Most carry hurling stones.
To survive, you must reach the frozen inlet on the opposite side of the lake. (Quickly, for many reasons, not the least of which is the shifting, splitting terrain). Be sure to shield your Lady from the hurling stones as you run.
If you reach the inlet, the gasps will retreat. Back under the ice.
Though you’ve escaped the gasps, the combat has disoriented you. The Road is lost from sight. You proceed instead toward the risen sun.
Hueless on Kirk
Your Steel is already in hand as the grand beast with ash pelt weaves out of the mist and rocks. The wolf is an older Time’s brood; its gaze is prehistoric. A Fimbulwolf.
Atop the bristling fur of the spine sits a freakish creature. Like a toddler two years old in size and shape, this thing’s texture is wax, but milk-colored. Its elongated forehead shines under a scalp of four thin hairs. It frowns from bloodless lips, and stares a bloodless stare.
At first you think the odor in the air is from the wolf; ancient petrichor. Then you realize the smell comes and goes, not with the wind, but with the breath of the toddler-freak.
You hold your Steel forward. The wolf growls.
After a moment the toddler-freak opens its blanched lips. Its voice sounds like water trickling in a library.
Growl. “Kirk says you’re trespassing. He stirs this snow, these rocks. You aren’t wildmen. The wildmen are more polite. Or scared. Growl. “Kirk says he likes the hair of the Lady. That bluish-midnight is a hue we haven’t seen since an older Time. … Growl. “Kirk says he understands the Lady. A way through the Meathooks? The Road? It is only a little farther, but the crags like to lie. Growl. “Kirk says he can show you. For a favor.”
Hueless on Kirk requests you to slay The Tunnel’s master, The Stillbreather. You may decline. If you do, Hueless on Kirk will tell you, leave.
Hueless, the rider of fimbulwolf, is an old homunculus. A homunculus is created when a mancer grows a fetus in a stoppered flask buried in cow entrails. He then uncorks it and nurses it on mammal blood. The greater the mammal, the stronger the resulting homunculus.
Though Hueless told you that Kirk liked your Lady’s hair, the truth is that they both liked your breathing, its tonality and rhythm.
You emerge from the Lost Glaciertop, and step onto The Road. The tunnel waits for you. You see two doors; one of bronze, one of moonstone. Erratic, cold gusts issue through the crack between them. The doors are unlocked.
“The air is sharper here. Sharper even then those cutting winds on the faces of the mountains. And the gusts here carry as much weight. Look, knight. See the gleam of the ice upon the walls? “It gleams like turquoise, without any shadow of the mountain stone. “Why is it so clear? The entry is only a speck now, you carry no lamp, but I see more clearly than under the brightest moon. “There is a sick ambient light in the air. I- “Look there, knight. A scrap of paper.”
Exodus, Day 107 (Thirteenth Hour? Twelfth? How should I know?)
“The goons of that master with the freakish name, Kreicher – those lackey-freaks sicked their dogs on us. Lerch got his hand chewed. He’ll live… but he’s been scarred. I’ll miss the guy in a way, even he was one of those ‘expedient exaggeration’. “As for me, the only wounds the mental ones, and I don’t think the order checks for those. “These same goons dropped the ceiling in the trunk tunnel. No big trouble, we’re already ferreting the roots and branches. “All the natives say that Kriecher can’t die. ‘He’s secreted his breath away in a seamless box,’ they say, ‘and while the box is safe, Kriecher forever inhales and exhales.’ I say maybe he just hasn’t met the right enemy yet.”
As you enter and proceed through the frozen tunnel you may find more pages from the outcast’s journal. Some are half-frozen under the ice. If you find all the notes, you will learn a few things: that he was a warrior in a troop; that he fought with the servants of this ‘Kriecher’ over several days; that this siege took place about twenty years ago; and that he was a fine warrior, never cut in battle.
You’ll eventually reach a distinct passage. The walls still gleam, but not with flawlessly deep translucence. There are men frozen in the walls. Maidservants, butlers, kitchen staff. They seem frozen in the midst of service. Your Lady stares into the stoic face of one laundress, holding a tablecloth mid-jump. Your Lady says, after some time, that they remind her of castle life.
Exodus, Day 109, Sixteenth Hour
“We fought our final scuffle against Kreicher this morning. With no sunshine to warm our cheeks, we rigged up a burning bonfire on a sled, and dragged it with us to his Cave of the Standing Stone. “The master had five men with axes and chainmail. And necromancy. Excluding myself (which might be stacking the deck), our side had Northur, Scour, and Wayd the Red. No necromancy for us, just leather scrolls: the scrolls of vigor, the scrolls of killing. “A long, long fight. I’m sure my arm’s never felt so stung.. And Norther and Wayd are dead, it’s only Scour and I left now. “But we won. I think. And we’re unscarred. Skin like a baby virgin fawn’s. “I have a hunch this Kreicher isn’t really dead. Not the full dearly-departed at least. We found no ‘box of breath’. But his body is chopped and burned. “So. Onward to Hornwater? “There’re still servants ahead in the tunnel, but only servants. I haven’t come all this way – disowned-of and leaving-behind my hereditary Pinecone Crest, crossing Whiteeye, killing cave’s boss – just to balk at minions.”
“Pinecone Crest; my eyes must lie. “Knight, is it he who we seek? “But twenty years… And we- “Let us loiter not.”
Until now you’ll have followed the trail of letters. When you hit a wall of frozen rubble, however, it’s time to find a byway. Taking all lefts or rights won’t work. There are offshoots upon offshoots, descents, rises. Nor will marking the tunnels in chalk or with scratches. The cycling air smooths all imperfections in the ice.
After some hours, your eyes will grow heavy. If you have a Chewing Sponge, you can use it here. It will delay the inevitable.
FLASH. A gust blast and green lightning-light wakes you. (Or puts you to sleep?) The dazzle lingers in your eyes afterward, tinting vision’s corners in green.
The Frozen Tree of Hanging Men
Have you been sleepwalking?
The broad and rimy oak fills the chamber with its barren limbs. From the four largest limbs, five dead men hang. (The biggest limb has room for two). With arms extended, each corpse points in a different direction.
The man without eyes points east.
The man without nose points north.
The man without ears points down a jagged seam in the floor.
The man without tongue points west.
The other man always points at you.
The Frozen Fates
Are you dreaming, or awake?
There seem to be green hallucinations in the ice. As you cross this long, tall, wide space, this cyclopean vault, you see images of yourself underfoot. Not perfectly, but yourself after meeting horrible ends. There is your burned self, your drowned and bloated self, your headless self, etc.
These figures will eventually rise and attack. They wield arms like your Steel and Shield, but made of ice. They’ll strike at you in your own techniques and patterns, but slower, having just come unthawed. This fight will not be too difficult. Use it as an opportunity to analyze your own style for weaknesses.
The Frozen Power
From where comes this nightmare?
There lives an inherent facet of necromancy in the element of Ice. Some undead, such as the gasp or the Seventh-House-Bell, are stronger in colder environments. Ice has always been the preferred method of preservation among mancers; frequently it is a recurring motif in a mancer’s spells.
This is not all that surprising. Real death is cold, real life is warm.
But some learned scholars (you know who) maintain that Ice has a specific connection with un-living; with making dead things alive again. One says that the demon kings could not stand to touch ice, and so the seven necromancer-gods built their laboratories from the element. Another says that at the core of Time is a glacier that is always sweating. When the glacier has become a lake, Time will cease, and all will drown in the flood.
The Frozen River and Spillway
Will the vision never end?
You stand on the edge of the river, looking down the sloping angle of the spillway, into the void. The slope is jagged, lumpy, uneven, slick. You notice, however, four grooves here at the top of the slope, which snake down through the rough ice-hill.
Not all the slides go all the way to the bottom, and there are several stages of landings and slides you must progress through. The only way to learn is by trial and error. Each time you make a mistake, you run the risk of a fracture or sprain. You’ll then have to climb back up the rougher terrain and try again. Don’t try climbing or sliding down the jagged tracts; it will end mushily.
At last you begin to feel a progressive inflating in the irregular gale blasts. Each step, the air glows brighter, rubs colder, smells older and more hostile. You see your Blue Lady wag her face, as if she too were waking from a trance.
The tunnel opens into a spacious underground hollow. You arrive on one shore of a petrified lake. The gravelly shore circles along the wall of the cave, around the edge of the lake. On the opposite side, you see that the path leads into the portcullis of a somber, frozen castle.
As you march along the shore, the frosted gravel crunches under you sabatons. Each breath of wind howls through your armor’s creases. The ambient light glows brighter and brighter through your visor; you soon realize that the green glow seeps from the castle’s windows, through what must be a thick hoarfrost.
You step under a portcullis of icicles. You mount a broad stair of slabs of ice. You enter into a low undercroft of granite arches, with tympana carved above each arch, and with ribbed pillars of ice.
The alcoves are lined with lidded limestone boxes. Each box bears a name in its flank: Allie Dornspace, Crustus Hollenregen, Bal-Khold.
One feretory, at the end of the central corridor of pillars, lies lidless. It shines like a sunken sun under a scummy pond surface. It is the source of the glowing winds.
Your Lady stays close behind as you approach. The side of the open box is painted, a flaking, frosted picture of a horn of plenty, spilling forth a bounty of colorful columbines.
Nearer. Nearer.
As you peer over the edge, you see the box is occupied.
A man, his long apron-beard flecked with white, his spotted eggshell face pickled into imperishability, with his frozen-together fingers clasped over his coat, with his heavy and wild eyebrows dropped down over his shut eyes, and with his lipless mouth parted, breathes. His emerald teeth tint each biting exhalation.
You raise your Steel to strike.
The eyes snap open.
No matter how you try you won’t be able to strike The Stillbreather. Your Steel turns, as if by a magnet.
This battle swiftly piles on several factors in succession. You’ll spend the opening moments learning. First, you’ll hear another sarcophagus burst open. A giant glowing firebeetle will hop from inside and buzz toward you. Keep yourself between it and your Lady. Use your shield to block its initial charge, then chop away at its shell. The carapace is tough, it will probably take a second block and recoil before you crack it.
A new beetle emerges from a sarcophagus every thirteen seconds.
At the same time, The Stillbreather will continue to exhale and inhale, exhale and inhale. His breath is deadly steady. Every seven seconds you will hear a sound like a brazen gong. His breath will flash out from his teeth, and any active beetles will flash as well. Make sure to count the seconds and either avert or shut your eyes from any flash. Otherwise you’ll be blinded for fifteen precious seconds.
You’ll have to guard your Lady close throughout the fight. If she’s left alone, the beetles will melt her skin.
Once you’ve entered fighting rhythm, and have some spare seconds, start examining the tohmbs. Your goal is to find the leather egg where The Stillbreather hid his breath. There are, however, hundreds of stone boxes...
The key’s in the names. Each first name is generally unique, but the familial names are always one of six. The egg will always be in a sarcophagus bearing the name of a family from which no firebeetle emerges. Moreover, the first name on the sarcophagus with the egg will always be one of: Valk, Morvalk, Sunnblind, Wytch. Thus, with each emerged beetle, you have a chance to narrow down the choices. Be warned: if you open a sarcophagus with an incorrect familial name, you will be struck by Vengeful Ice.
When you finally find the egg The Stillbreather tries a last trick. His breath becomes an endless howl, and green light swells throughout the chrypt.
Mark your target before this happens. Clamp your eyes shut. Hack down with your Polished Steel.
The leather egg ruptures with a blast of sulfurous fumes. Dead Man’s Breath. The reek billows like geyser spray past your blocking arm, rubbing the skin under your armor.
You brace. Duck. Endure.
The stinking gale fades. Slowly you crack your eyes open, lift your visor. The green air that would have burned your sight is dim now, and dimming swiftly ever second. Your Lady’s voice, nearby, suggests a torch.
When you step back and examine The Stillbreather’s stone casket, you find him almost the same. His body is still frozen the same, his hands clutched over his chest, lips apart, eyes open. The gleam in the eyes is glazed now, however, as is the gleam on the teeth.
Your Lady jolts her hand out, snatching a piece of paper that is fluttering in the dying air.
Exodus, Day 109, Twenty-first Hour
“One more steep tunnel, but at last I see the sky again. “It’s blue. “Scour and I didn’t die, which is neat. Onward to Hornwater we go. Onward to The Order of The Leather Dragon. We’ll knock on the door, make our claims, take any sort of ‘lethality quiz’. (The Dragons probably don’t admit every grandmother and cripple, scarred or not). I am not afraid. “But that’s miles off. First off: escape The Meathooks. Already, my father, all those half-brothers and that half-sister, feel like ghosts.”
The mountain air hits you as you step from the tunnel’s dripping mouth. Your Lady shivers; but only in her body.
“The night is bright, but this lambency seems pure. Not like the sick color of that cave. “Look how my breath clouds in this air! “That last climb must have been the same the former traveler took; twenty years ago. “Back there, I felt for a time as I do when I dream. I felt not the cold or the wind. All that I saw was covered in mist, prismatic. But I never once saw the ghost of- her. “Not all we met was reality perhaps. But the letters: I believe those. I still have this one here. “Pinecone Crest. He must have been my stepson.”
An aurora fills the starry night; swirls of white, blue, purple and gold; like a burning phoenix on the firmament. The ragged cliffs and hills make a visible, black, starless silhouette with the sky’s spackled, colorful velvet.
To your left, there is one silhouette of a shape irregular. Its outline is of a small being atop a large canine, limned by the purple and golden swirls. You feel all four of Hueless on Kirk’s eyes upon you.
Straight ahead of you are more of the curving mountain hooks. They cast a shadow that is deeper over the land below. In places they fall over The Snaking Road. (The epitaph stones are pale against the turf).
A wind gusts past. But it is brisk, refreshing, natural.
What will happen with The Stillbreather dead? Will his tunnel be a warm place for other walkers on The Road? Will the frozen bodies thaw and rot? Have you acted rightly, in serving the ends of the homunculus that rides the fimbulwolf? That is not your concern. Your duty now is to guide your Lady to Hornwater. A far city. You were there. Once. But that was long ago.
You know there are three main routes that will take you from the mountains to Hornwater.
| The Road of Graves This time, strict adherence to The Road is not ideal. You can follow it east toward Hornwater for a hundred miles more. After that, before reaching Hornwater, it loops south along a thousand-mile stretch, through the frigid and friendless Limbichorous Dunes. | The Scarab Mines This way takes you under the impassable Waxy Maize Fields. Along the way you may stop at the cave-town of Alsoburg for supplies. | The Forest of Candles and Skulls and Roaches and Fungi and Ruptured Capillaries You’ve had enough of forests. |
|---|
No matter which route you choose, you know that your first step is to leave The Meathook Mountains.
You notice a sheltered overhang, a few miles perhaps along the dark Road. A good place for a night’s camp.