The Gemcutter's Daughter

11 - The Well of Bones

It caught in Tali's mind like a fragment of a song, and the more she tried not to think about it, the greater its insidious reach. There were dwarven stories of Void told only in fragments, in hushed whispers. She knew it was inextricably linked to sorcery and demons, but no one understood how and her curiosity was eating her alive as they approached the abandoned workshop. Most of the stories were probably inaccurate, as dwarves couldn't claim to know anything at all about Void. They had not given it study, only fearful aversion.

    Prideep led them down a deep passageway that slowly morphed from a raw cavern passage to homes and empty streets. They were shattered, destroyed, but recognizable. If Tali had to wager a guess, they were most certainly beneath an artifice and that meant the Forsaken Lekt had warned about were probably above...and probably not far.

    There was no banter from the small group. Even Prideep had grown serious, his fish skull pulled down low to better protect his head. He'd affixed the lower jaw into place already that would protect his chin and throat. For a goblin that was as prepared for war as one came.

    All of them moved with muscles coiled to run, even Rhesis. The siren placed a hand on Tali's shoulder as they stopped before a large metal door deformed and twisted from heat. "This tool...is it quiet?"

    Tali shook her head and answered in a low tone. "It's definitely not quiet. I wouldn't want to use it here. We might take it from the workshop to somewhere else, if we can find a power-crystal and the tool itself. Some gemcutters keep kits of portable tools, to fix various things throughout the artifice."

    "Where is the well?" Lekt asked harshly.

    Prideep pointed at the door to the workshop they were about to enter. "Inside," he croaked quietly. His voice echoed around them anyway, caught in the jagged gaps of the area.

    Rhesis tensed slightly. "Then we should go carefully, little ones. Some things are better left to lie."

    Lekt drew in a harsh breath. "Others have been here. Some like me, one...not."

    Tali took a deep breath, even though she doubted her sense of smell was as keen as Lekt's. There were hints, though. Metal and blood, stone dust and something that she had never smelled before. It was sweet without being cloying, hints of musk underlying something more fragrant than the mushroom wood she was accustomed to. "Are they still here?" she asked Lekt, trusting his senses even as her heart pounded with fear. The idea of encountering more of his kind was unnerving at best.

    Lekt shrugged his powerful shoulders and put a clawed hand against the door. Behind him, Prideep gripped his spear more tightly and readied himself. Rhesis held a bone knife borrowed from the longshanks. She seemed plenty comfortable with it.

    Tali, surrounded by warriors nigh infinitely more skilled than she was, felt entirely ill-equipped for what might be waiting.

    A ripple spread out through the door at Lekt's touch, metal behaving almost like liquid despite the damage to its surface. This was not a dwarven door. It parted like a curtain, allowing them access to the crumbling ruin within.

    The first thing Tali noticed was not the thick layer of bones covering the floor of the shattered workshop. It was the sound, or lack thereof. As she clicked tentatively, something in the room devoured the noise itself. She could see it in her mind's eye, a ragged gash of oblivion ripped across what had been the floor. The place had no ambient noise, no echoing of their footfalls. She could hardly tell where the well ended and the floor began.

    It was like nothing she had ever heard. An infinite chasm of darkness barely held in check by some tethering border she could not see, a well that plunged so deep that it had no bottom, no air, no hint of light or life. It was the unknowable in purest form, a force only demons could understand and tap into. She knew one slip would be not only an end, but an unraveling, body and soul.