Red Axe, Black Sun

The Cave of Mother Goulcrest

CHAPTER ONE

THE CAVE OF MOTHER GOULCREST

Two lives, one moment. No second chance. There is not much time, when the world is ending.

The rain was pouring in unnatural proportions and the dark sky made visibility extremely low. Both did not hinder Kyra from looking for Dryston.

They said a crypt was his home now. They said that was where he rested. So Kyra Celeste, full of hope and desire, went to see him in the direst of times.

It lay in the wild, abandoned and outside the cities in which the people shivered at night.

Even without nature’s tides, the entrance of the crypt was a cold and dark place. Moisture clung on the sarcophagi and the broken tiles crushed beneath the heels of her riding boots. She felt the tight embrace of her trousers and magic wrap cool on the parts of her skin that weren’t covered by bracelets and hide breeches. Goose bumps rose on her neck, which crawled down from her hairline where the weight of her wet hair was held up by a glass star circlet, down her back under her etched jacket.

Despite this, the place was not abandoned at all. She inhaled the smell of smoked herbs, sweat, the stale stink of dust and bones, a boiling soup. Signs of habitation unfurled before her, wreathed in candlelight. Chests and barrels, chairs, a table with dishes and food, were all standing in the room. She could hear a man humming to himself in a deep, low voice. Whoever the voice belonged to, it was not Dryston. Kyra tried to sneak closer and get a glance on him. Her naked hands became entangled in cobwebs, then brushed with her rings over rattling bones that were hanging from the ceiling like a wind chime. The noise startled Kyra and was enough to catch the singing man’s attention.

Cormack, a giant of a man turned to her from one of the chambers, alarmed by the rattling bone-traps which Kyra had walked into. 

She let her hands wander down past the vials and spell-scrolls stashed in her silk sash and let her fingers rest on the shark-hide wrapped grips of her weapons as she walked by.

The strange brute went back to his business with a grunt, bludgeoning his leather armor.

“Dryston is back there,” he bellowed, while not even regarding her with his dull, amber eyes.

Kyra turned to look at the man, whose muscled arm was extended, pointing out the way. Bare headed, wide shoulder guards extending from his bull-neck. A heavy baldric enclosed his muscular frame, which stored sacred texts of sagas and the bone of a saint. Cormack nodded his big shaven head. His tight Kingslayer trousers creaked. They were furnished with a patchwork of crude but practical hide reinforcements. Cormack rubbed the soles of his worn hardened leather boots over the brittle crypt floor.

“Then it is true that he’s here,” Kyra said to herself.

She noticed Thaena Ashcroft watching her from another room.

“He is here,” Thaena whispered.

“Lead me to him!” Kyra demanded.

Thaena nodded and led Kyra deeper into the crypt.

The crypt went on to unlit tunnels, natural caverns where the construction work had ended and left wooden scaffolds. Her companion’s apparel told Kyra much about the people living in the crypt. The Alvaeonian red-black stripes of her combat jacket, mixed together with the Kaeiwieli red-green on her trousers was something unthinkable for regulars standing under a crown. These were free people at best, outlaws at worst.

A big hall plastered with torches awaited her.

Kyra’s attention was immediately drawn to Dryston of Decia, sitting on a throne underneath a massive candelabra.