That One Time I Went on a Quest
Catacomb of Giants

Fainted again.

Dust everywhere. Wandering ghosts merge in and out of the gloom. Lances of light, swinging about like lighthouse signals…so the Mirrors are still working.

Shouting. So much shouting. The husk of the ironclad looms in the distance like a mountain, its bow buried in the ruins of what was once the infirmary, while the scattered bits of its hull are sprinkled amongst the remnants of the inner wall. It seems to have shattered upon landing. Like a boat of glass.

Wait – it’s moving away. Was I not directly under – how am I –

‘How do you feel?’

Kathanhiel. She has me slung over her shoulder. We are now in the practice range next to the barracks, empty save for maybe a dozen bodies piled against the stout wall on which those tree log targets had once hung. Dead. All dead.

‘The…boat…’

My voice is a blunt saw trying to cut through gravel.

‘Don’t you die on me Kastor. We’re only halfway there.’

Those words send me wide awake. The ironclad – Talukiel – the duel – my throat –

‘T…Talukiel…where…?’

As if on cue, I hear his voice – nowhere close, but alarmingly clear.

‘COME BACK YOU COWARD! COME BACK!’

Kathanhiel makes a choking noise in her throat. She stops in her tracks, looks around, and sets me down against a brick column. A group of soldiers pass us by, every one of them heaped from shoulder to knee with thick coils of rope. No one pays us any attention.

Without another word she begins to turn away.

I reach out without thinking, my arm compelled by strength it doesn’t have. ‘My lady – where are you –’

Her sleeve lashes out like a whip, and slaps my hand away so hard it pulls the rest of me into the dirt.

What…just…?

I lie still as a corpse and stare at the gravel in front of my nose. No, she didn’t do that. It didn’t happen. There was a sudden gust and I got knocked over. Yes, that’s it.

Half-turning, Kathanhiel glances at me with wide eyes, as if surprised to see her esquire face-planted in the dirt. Her lips part, forming words of silence. Kaishen – she’s still holding it – is quivering in her hand, its orange glow dimming erratically.

Couldn’t sit up. Throat’s throbbing…eyes so dry…and a voice shouting in my head:

Stop her! Stop her! Stop her!

…Stop her from what? Killing Talukiel? Why should I? It’s what she’s been waiting for all this time.

‘Aunt Kath! You’re here!’

Haylis, wearing what looks like an armour-plated dress, is running toward us. Her eyes register my lameness and briefly go wide, though not as wide as Kathanhiel’s. ’Kastor! You’re alive! What is wrong with your neck? –’ then she interrupts herself with a hard swallow. ‘You must leave, both of you. The mines are destabilised –’

A swarm of dragonlings fly overhead, screeching as they pile onto a Mirror-mounted tower. Haylis ducks instinctively; Kathanhiel doesn’t flinch.

‘– destabilised because of the –’ she throws her hands up at the ironclad; “go to hell!” the gesture says. ‘The bridging tunnel might collapse at any moment! Oon’Shei is already there – go, while you still can!’

Kathanhiel is silent for a moment, then points into the distance. ‘Talukiel,’ she says.

‘No way is he living through that, aunt Kath!’

If I could nod, or display any sign of agreement with Haylis, verbal or non-verbal, I would a hundred times over. There is a tremor in the earth – a stampede, and chances are the Phalanx isn’t the one doing the stampeding. The night is a soup of distressing noises: screeching dragons, roaring fires, the bright twang of steel-limbed ballistae, the whoosh of dry powder set alight, shouts of ‘Fly! Fly!’, and the collective voice of thirty thousand people, encouraging each other, urging each other forward. That last one – not so distressing.

And Talukiel isn’t shouting anymore. If he had chosen to hide there would be no finding him in this chaos; if he is still fighting then one way or another he’s going to die. His cultists must have been wiped out by now – mercilessly, because Iborus no longer has time for their mad stunts – and between heaven and earth he’ll not find a single ally within a hundred miles.

‘Aunt Kath!’ Haylis says again, sounding teary.

Kathanhiel’s voice is iron: ‘He dies by no hand but mine.’

She’s walking away. Haylis tries to grab her sleeve as I did, and is sent flying.

Stop her! You have to stop her!

But what do I say? That she’s got her priorities all wrong? What a pointless statement. She know she’s got it wrong, she knows, more clearly than anyone, because her sense of duty is what’s keeping her alive. Right now, because of Talukiel, she’s choosing to ignore it. That means she would rather kill him than save the Realms.

If the people found out about this they would tear her apart. “Do your job!” they would say, “what else are we worshipping you for?!” Rukiel and Tamara pretty much said the same thing with gentler words during their meeting: “you’re not allowed to be upset”.

No. They are wrong. They are all wrong.

Words trickle out of my mouth in a mumbling, incoherent stream. Not sure if I even said them out loud; could just be my head patting itself on the back:

‘Kai…shen…saved…you…’

Kathanhiel stops dead. Her right foot, in the middle of a long stride, comes down at an awkward angle and she almost trips over. Slowly, haltingly, she turns around.

‘What did you say?’ she whispers.

I try to sit up again and fails, but this time Haylis catches me by the armpit. She grimaces as her palm starts sizzling against my skin, but she hangs on.

Come on, speak. You can faint later. Right now you need to speak.

‘Kaishen…saved you…so you can save the Realms…his wish…we…fulfil...together…’

There. Said it.

Kathanhiel’s face changes. It changes like a bard coming off the stage after finishing a riveting tale; this softening, as the reality of the stinking, crowded tavern slowly takes over that shimmering dream of heroes and chivalry and romance, is so immensely miserable to look at. That untouchable, feverish light, fading from her eyes…

How I wish she would never look like that.

‘Right,’ she whispers to herself. ‘Kaishen. How did I let that slip through my mind?’

The magisite mine is still as a tomb; the machineries have stopped, and all the little giants have gone to fight on the surface. It is not silent, however. Unseen fractures echo through the earth like bottled thunder, deceptively distant yet always there. Now and then a loud crack would send flaky powder raining down on us, and we would all bend low and cover our heads as if that would stop a million tons of rock from falling whenever they want.

About a third of the way down the decline, as the rock faces are starting to glitter, we run into Oon’Shei. Somehow he has managed to get Killisan and Bobby all the way down here and made them stay put. He waves at us casually – just a relaxed gathering for tea and gossip.

‘Aren’t you glad I packed your clothes? The rest of the inventory are in the saddlebags,’ Haylis says, hugging herself as another tremor sends gravel rolling around her feet. ‘Oon’Shei will lead you through the catacombs, and I’ve told him to come back after that since – you know – a little giant tagging along will only draw more attention than you could handle.’

‘Are you going to be alright?’ I ask her – ironic, since my neck feels like it’s melting and I’m tied to Killisan’s back with a rope around my midriff.

She shakes her head furiously. ‘I have to be alright. Iborus too. We’ll hold them here until Rutherford’s head comes off. Count on it.’

‘Don’t die. Think of all the praise you’re going to get by not dying.’

That makes her laugh a little.

Kathanhiel speaks up from behind us: ‘Drink your suppressant as soon as you can swallow, Kastor. It’ll keep you on your feet.’

‘Yes my lady.’

‘Let us be off. Haylis…in case we…in case we don’t see each other again…’ Her fingers are tapping incessantly on Kaishen’s scabbard. ‘I’ve transferred my estates under your name. Make sure to preserve the selection committee and the recruiting network. Do what you want with the rest. Details are in the letters I –’

‘– you sent out in Iris,’ Haylis finishes, wiping at the corners of her eyes. ‘I’m not opening them. Ever. So you better come back.’

Kathanhiel doesn’t reply.

‘Ride! RIDE!’

The bridging tunnel is coming down behind us, an avalanche of glittering death as the walls buckle inward like the twisted spine of a thick book. Before us, Oon’Shei is running and swinging his scythe-blade in a whirlwind, knocking aside the piles of debris clogging the way forward. Killisan’s thundering hooves sound so puny before the very earth collapsing around us, but he’s not about to lay down and die; mouth foaming, mane drenched in sweat, he’s giving it all.

Haylis got out in time. Iborus isn’t sinking into the earth this very moment. Have to think like this. Have to.

The tunnel is trending up, up, up. The glittering ore is disappearing, replaced by black-and-yellow banded gneiss that wriggle dizzyingly in the torchlight like nature’s idea of an illusion. Suddenly, a wide opening: a jagged, slanted cavern that had been cloven into the mountains since who knows when. Incredibly, as if the Maker had meant for it to caution us, a narrow shaft of moonlight spills in from the shadowy ceiling and illuminates a great chasm across the cavern’s centre, wider than the leap of any horse. Broken ropes are pegged to the cliff on both slides: someone had built a hasty bridge here – the expedition Haylis sent, probably – but it’s ruined now.

Behind us, the rumbling tide is closing in.

Oon’Shei throws his scythe-blade across the chasm like a javelin. He picks up speed, widening each stride until practically gliding, then – like a dancer showing off his moves – flies across the gap with plenty of room to spare. Immediately he rips off his coach-runner’s uniform, and with both hands swings it about like a giant tarp.

‘Don’t slow down!’ Kathanhiel yells, whipping the reins. ‘He means to catch us!’

The horses see the drop approaching but they don’t stop – no bravery here, only desperation. One moment the ground is there, the next, an impenetrable abyss. The fluttering torch scatters two shadows grotesque and squirming onto the cliffs below, and I’m flying, flying. The ropes around me go taut. Don’t look down!

Annnd falling. The opposite side is so close yet so far – right there! Almost within grabbing distance. Killisan is craning his neck as if that could get him closer. As forward starts to become downward a black cloud swoops in from the left and collects the two floundering horses and their riders like a swinging hammock. Fluttering cloth, spread over my face. Smells like rock.

A hard bump on the top of my head, adding gold stars to everything. Feels like another head. Sure enough there comes Kathanhiel’s grunt of surprise, and it sounds like she’s right in my ear.

Then my backside encounters solid ground. For a moment Killisan’s weight crushes the life out of my stomach but the animal quickly shuffles over, leaving me hanging off its flank like a puppet with half its strings cut.

I look up and Kathanhiel’s face is an inch from mine. The tip of her nose is so much warmer than the tip of my nose, it’s unfair.

‘We’re not doing that again,’ she says.

Moments later we are running again, toward a gaping hole in the rock face. The avalanche of debris, fortunately, doesn’t have a little giant helping them across the chasm, so they fall into it like the emptying of some ancient god’s bowels. The tremor shakes the cavern once, twice, then fades into obscurity.

Over the next minute or so the hole in which we rode warps gradually from nature-made gap to a perfect dome, and before long becomes a high-ceilinged corridor with chiselled walls. Oon’Shei brings our fleeing to a halt in front of a triangular alcove. The horses’ knees buckle as soon as we pull in the reins, exhausted. I slip off the saddle over Killisan’s backside but hey, no one’s watching. Let me just lie down for a minute. Or a century.

The ground here is smooth, polished diorite. Feels nice and cool. A moment later Kathanhiel joins me, and shoves a corked flask of suppressant at my face. ‘Drink,’ she says, opening a flask of her own. She bangs her glass against mine – ‘to not being dead,’ she mutters – then gulps it all down.

We spend an indeterminable amount of time walking down this corridor, then the next, then the next. Down here in the armpit of the earth, the passage of time is measured only by the burning of our torches, and after they’ve burnt out, by how far I can walk on my own at each attempt. I lose count of how many times Killisan has looked back at me with all his teeth bared in a horse-faced grin – was funny and cute the first time. Now, just annoying.

There’s no way for Kathanhiel and I to communicate complicated ideas to Oon’Shei, not with these insensitive ears, but he seems to know these passages intimately, never hesitating whenever branching corridors appear…and there are many. It’s like a spider’s web down here, gouged into the heart of the Endless Ranges.

However, there are no tombs in sight. No coffins or murals or anything. Just endless corridors with plain wall, plain ceiling, and a triangular alcoves now and then. It is amazing how such a lofty space has remained intact under the weight of the mountain, yet equally amazing is how boring it is. The little giants don’t seem to have an artistic side at all. Sure, the coach runners had those colourful veins, but that was for interacting with humans. Here, in the throes of their creation, there is nothing but barren efficiency.

Kathanhiel hasn’t said much since we got here. Every time I look her face seems to get a little gloomier, her eyebrows frozen deeper into a frown. Most of the time she holds onto Kaishen unsheathed; the blade glows only with residue brightness – in this total darkness, it glows even when left alone – but it’s enough for us to see and not trip over nothing. Not that there is even a pebble on this spotless floor.

Don’t think she’s holding it out just for a light though. My throat is mending fast – whatever Kaishen injected into my blood, it’s healing me just like it did with the broken arm – and when I can talk properly again I’ll have to…have to…

What? Do what? Apologize? Say “sorry for letting the person you hate the most get away, let me make it up to you by boiling tea”? Stupid.

But I can’t leave it like this.

At last, something different. How long as it been – days? Weeks?

Our endless march has led to a set of doors so disproportionately huge, Oon’Shei is maybe just under a tenth of its height. They are two slabs of obsidian, polished smoother than mirrors, and engraved upon them is the first image produced by the little giants that I have ever seen…

And now I wish I have never seen it: a fat dragon, crouched inside three talon-like obelisks, is surrounded by a concave of little giants kneeling in what has to be prayer. Behind the obelisks is a cliff, which gives way to a rippling ocean dotted with weird eye-stalks, kind of like snail eyes. At the top-right corner, in place of the sun, is what looks like a full-face helmet that closely resembles the type knights would wear to battle. A helmet, of all things?

Before the door, Oon’Shei is doing what those little giants are doing in the scene: kneeling with his head touching the floor. Oh how I wish Haylis is here. She could explain this with that condescending voice of hers and tell that panicking rat scurrying inside my head to stop squealing.

‘My-my lady, what is that?’

‘I don’t know,’ replies Kathanhiel, her eyes drawn to the mural just like mine, ‘but it looks like the Stone Graves.’

‘What?!’

‘Well they do.’

’But isn’t that where we’re going?!’

Oops, that was too loud and too high-pitched. The stone corridor is now echoing mercilessly: “going…going…going,” as if it is the single greatest word ever enunciated.

For the first time since forever, Kathanhiel’s lips curl up into a smile. It fades quickly, however, as a small, sloppy noise – like the scampering of wet feet – seeps from the other side of the door. There…and gone. But this is one thick door, which means that is no small noise.

Oon’Shei, his hands already in pushing position, freezes.

For twenty, thirty seconds the three of us remain absolutely still, listening. Even the horses have sensed the tension and are holding their breaths.

There it is again, clearer: Whoosh, whoosh. Scurrying. Soft crackling, like breaking eggshells.

Kathanhiel inhales sharply. ‘Up,’ she whispers, leaping onto the saddle; I follow suit. Oon’Shei is glancing back at her; he has picked up the scythe-blade. She mimes a running motion, then points forcefully forward: run, no matter what. Oon’Shei nods, giving her a thumbs-up, then throws his weight onto the door. The hinges begin to turn in complete silence.

‘Kastor, I’ve not been feeling well,’ she says suddenly. ‘Should I be forced to use Kaishen’s power, take it away from me.’

‘I...what?’

A tide of sweltering heat blasts forth from the widening gap. The great hall beyond looks enormous, as if an entire mountain had been gouged hollow. There are cracks and holes criss-crossed all over the floor like a demented puzzle, and they are all glowing a dull orange-red – magma below, has to be. Hundreds of gargantuan statues, with heads so far above the ground up they’re lost in the shadows, stand guard in twenty or so perfectly straight rows, facing toward us. Behind them, in the far, far distance, is the entrance to another tunnel.

Never mind all that. There is no time to appreciate the scenery, for the hall is saturated with the sound of beating wings. Strewn all over the ceiling and the walls, stuck fast with brownish grout that looks like remoulded rock, are countless blue-shelled eggs with helix-like yellow patterns. I’ve seen those, in books, in paintings; only creatures at the top of the food chain would paint their eggs with such garish colours.

A lot of them had already been broken…but not all their occupants have left. Swarming in great clouds at the heads of the statues, spiralling around the lofty ceiling masquerading as flocks of bats…so many. Ten thousand? Twenty?

How do they eat?! How do they get out?!

Sure enough, heaped high in shadowy corners and between the feet of statues are piles and piles of carcasses – half dragonlings, half miscellaneous – and they are being feasted on. The wet squish of decayed flesh torn from bone is what came through the door, and it is so loud, so loud, an endless banquet for scavenging cannibals.

Bile, rising in my throat. Didn’t vomit on the highway, or at Iborus, but this place…this place…

Thundering footsteps: Oon’Shei has started running. Kathanhiel too, with a whip of Bobby’s reins. Killisan, the best horse in the history of horses, is following Bobby without any direction from his rider, who is too preoccupied with trying not to throw up.

The stink. Oh the stink. The sulphuric fumes of bubbling magma mingled with faeces and putrified flesh.

The dragonlings are not reacting to the intruders. We pass by four gluttonising flocks and not one turns its head around. The flying ones too show no sign of descent. This…has to be an insidious plan of some sort; they are waiting for us to be in the centre of the hall, then they will block off the entrances and surround us and come in waves until we are exhausted then they will kills us and pile our corpses onto the piles and wait for them to rot and then eat eat eat eat –

Nothing of the sort happens. Oon’Shei constantly spins his head about, the scythe-blade rising and falling, readying to strike and backing down as the flocks come and go in complete obliviousness. Kathanhiel, incredibly, has returned Kaishen to its sheath, and is running her hand through Bobby’s rippling mane: calm, calm, it says. The white stallion, as always, doesn’t seem to have a care in the world.

Maker the stink –

Killisan is floundering: dilated pupils, flared nostrils, sweat streaming down his back…this place is getting to him, as it me. After so many trials, he has finally reached his limit; his gait is wavering, weaving side to side as if dodging invisible walls. I remove the saddlebags and heaved them onto my back. Any moment now he might trip over and –

There it is.

His front hoof lands on a rock just large enough to be an agent of fate. A clean snap of breaking bone. The world flips over. Then the terrible neighing comes and stupid tears well up before I can tell them off. Sorry, it’s my fault, I made you come down here even though so many times you’ve saved my life. Goodbye, dear friend. Be sure to come to my hearth in the evergreen. The garden will be all yours – chew on whatever you want.

A giant hand swoops in and snatches me up by the midriff; Oon’shei, reacting fast.

Something sticky is smeared all over my hands. Feels like…blood. Where does it come from?

All thoughts fade as that oh-so-familiar screeching returns, deafening, feverish. The great hall shudders as a putrid wind descends from the high ceiling, carrying with it the numberless apocalypse.

‘FASTER!’ Kathanhiel yells as she gallops ahead, hand clawing Kaishen’s grip.

Oon’Shei swings me about and holds me to his chest like a mother would her baby. He runs like the wind, the scythe-blade whistling in his right hand. That mighty weapon has a long grip meant for both hands; with the added burden of a useless little human he’s not going to be able to fight effectively. It’s happening again, my uselessness dragging everyone down.

Running…running…

We are almost there. The tunnel is directly ahead, not two hundred paces away. Can’t see what’s behind me, but the screeching is only getting closer. Oon’Shei is twirling the scythe-blade in a silvery storm, and already half a dozen dragonlings have shredded themselves on it. No sense of self-preservation at all.

Suddenly, darkness. The tunnel. In the far, far distance, glittering above us like the northern star, is a pinprick of sunlight. Almost there! Once we are out of the catacombs we will be…will be…

No. Not safe. Nothing is stopping the swarm from following us. Kathanhiel will be forced to use Kaishen, but I can’t let her, she told me not to let her, so it’ll have to be me – I’ll have to fend them off. But even if I somehow manage that, killing so many newborns will certainly draw Rutherford’s attention. What will happen then? Will the Apex divert the brood from Iborus and send them after us? If it does…if they come…how many more times can Kathanhiel fight like she did on the highway?

It’ll be the end of our quest.

The tunnel is inclining. Up, up. The sunlight is getting closer – it’s a line now, straight-edged. Another set of those massive doors, hanging ajar as if someone had left them open just for us. If they are shut before the swarm reach the surface –

Two hundred paces. One hundred. Fifty.

Sunlight – weak, pale, with no warmth whatsoever – spills onto my skin, yet for a dizzying moment it feels as though we are still underground. The tunnel has led to a ravine surrounded by insurmountable cliffs on all sides, with a dozen twisting paths sliced into stone heading in every direction but up. Overhead, a thousand feet in the sky, is a stone bridge curved from left to right in a symmetrical concave, like an unnerving smile.

Guess that’s the Crescent Bridge. All the way up there.

Pulling into a full stop as soon as she’s cleared the tunnel, Kathanhiel dismounts with Kaishen in hand. Then the world turns into a kaleidoscope once more as Oon’Shei rolls me onto the ground like a lawn ball, bags and all in tow.

The unearthly howling rising from the tunnel is right at our heels. Shoving his scythe-blade into the ground, Oon’Shei puts his back to the door and pushes with all his might. Black-coloured veins pop up all over his bulging biceps as his heels carve trenches into the earth, fighting for purchase. His globular eyes are glowing faintly red, as if lit up from within.

Shivering with century-old dust, hinges screaming, the massive door slams shut just as the first snarling head reels into the sunlight. A squishy thud. A hailstorm of banging and scratching. Oon’Shei leans back hard, arms spread out as if to wrap them around the frame. There are no locks or bars on that door. Lifting his wrists, he does a small waving motion with both hands.

Go on, the gesture says.

The door is bulging. Solid obsidian is bulging.

There is a tremor in the earth, different from the senseless violence of that tunnel. It is the same feeling I had in the mines of Iborus, as we mourned the passing of Oon’Shang – the passing of emotion through the earth.

Oon’Shei is singing again.

He is eager to die.

Where did that thought come from? My heart is racing, and it’s almost as if I could understand – no. Absurd. No way am I hearing anything he’s saying.

His eyes, glowing so red. There is no way I can read them, yet…yet…

There could be other ways of holding them back, but he is choosing not to find them.

As if to confirm that idea, Oon’Shei turns his head toward me and gives a double thumbs-up.

A hand touches my shoulder. Kathanhiel’s – insistent, but not trying to drag me along. I look around. The great scythe-blade is stuck in the ground two feet away. When the siblings were parting for the last time, Oon’Shang did something with the…

Impulse takes over. I put my hand on the open blade and make a cut across the palm.

‘I…I won’t let you down.’

No way he heard me. I think he nodded but I can’t be sure. Something gets stuck in my eyes as Kathanhiel pulls me onto Bobby’s back. Hooves fly, and Oon’Shei starts to get smaller. Big doors, big giants…from a distance they don’t look so intimidating. They have never been intimidating. What was that stuff Kathanhiel said about little giants always working alone? That can’t be true. Those who are alone don’t have friends that cry because they are gone.

Bobby gallops full speed into a gorge to the right, and the door to the catacombs disappear behind a vine-encrusted cliff.

‘Haylis told me,’ Kathanhiel speaks up, her voice not quite steady, ‘that when he headed down to the mines he had meant to stay there forever. But you changed his mind.’

I can barely speak. It’s not the throat. ‘But…I didn’t do anything.’

‘I would beg to differ,’ she says. ‘You have done much. For Haylis. For the siblings. For me.’

Moments later, we hear it: the great din of shattering stone. I can picture the scene in my head: his massive hands picking up the scythe-blade, spinning it in a whirlwind of defiance before the approaching death, and a song of joy he sings with each strike, echoing in the earth.

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