Village of Mists

Aethrian plied her reins, guiding her ensorcelled Skycutter chariot between rocky crags. Skiel, the huge hawk that drew it, gave a shriek of joy as he soared. Aethrian envied him. Her own mood was dark.

‘The city turns toward madness,’ she called to Dothrial and Gelebran over the howl of the wind. The trio of Swifthawk Agents had been quiet since departing the Phoenicium hours earlier. Now Aethrian aired what they were all thinking.

‘They say the blooded skull manifested in the flames of the Phoenix Temple,’ said Gelebran.

‘The disquiet feels unnatural, even so,’ said Dothrial. ‘The Silent Guard have started burning the city’s dead.’

‘Is that so strange?’ asked Gelebran. ‘Don’t forget the message that the Eldritch Council have us bearing. An imbalance in the energies of life and death, they said. Is it so terrible an idea to place our dead beyond the reach of such a curse?’

‘They should lie in honoured repose, not taint the temple flame with their ashes,’ said Dothrial, aghast.

Aethrian raised a hand, stilling further debate. The Skycutter was sweeping over the low passes, arrowing towards the mouth of the Seven Hounds valley. Their destination – the fortified township of Houndsgate – should have been in sight.

Instead, it was obscured.

‘Mist,’ she said. ‘Thick.’

‘Unnaturally so,’ replied Gelebran.

‘There may be danger,’ said Dothrial.

‘Skiel will never make it through the trees and crags amidst that,’ said Gelebran.

‘Then we land,’ replied Aethrian. ‘We have a duty.’

‘As you say,’ said Gelebran. ‘Set down on that promontory.’

Aethrian guided the Skycutter to a smooth landing atop a stone spar. Tendrils of fog swirled as they slid to a stop. Skiel bristled with disquiet.

‘What is that vile scent?’ asked Dothrial. Aethrian sniffed, narrowing her eyes. The smell was elusive, a memory she couldn’t quite grasp.

‘Let us not waste time,’ she said. ‘Bows ready, follow me.’

The aelves stepped into the mists, sure in the knowledge Skiel would not abandon them. Aethrian led, padding between tree trunks that loomed through the mist. Moisture hung in the air, reducing visibility to a matter of yards. Daylight became a grey glimmer. Even Aethrian’s sharp senses found sound and smell muffled amidst the veil. Her heart thumped as she descended the slope, eyes straining for movement.

The walls of Houndsgate rose up so suddenly they seemed to have manifested from thin air. The aelves paused, looking up at the ramparts.

‘No sound beyond the walls,’ said Dothrial. ‘Aethrian, sister, something is dreadfully wrong.’

‘Follow,’ she said. They stalked along the base of the wall, arrows nocked. Aethrian saw no watchfires on the wall-top, no movement. Her heart beat faster, and she frowned at another waft of that maddening stench.

The western gate swam into view.

‘Open, unguarded…’ whispered Gelebran.

Steeling her nerve, Aethrian padded up to the tall wooden gate, pressing against its timbers. They were slimed with ice-cold algae; she recoiled from the foul sensation with a hiss.

Aethrian slid around the door and into the open gateway, bow at full draw.

‘No one,’ said Dothrial.

Aethrian kept her bowstring taut as she absorbed the scene before her. Houndsgate’s Market Street led away, side streets branching off it, homes and businesses rising spectral amidst the fog. Doors and window shutters hung open. Food stalls lined the cobbles, heaped with rotting produce. A couple of alchemical street-lanterns sputtered; the rest were dark.

A hand-cart lay on its side in the street, swords and handguns spilling from it. Ground mist flowed thick as a river over the cart, and drifted past Aethrian’s shins.

‘Search,’ said Aethrian.

She stalked into Houndsgate with eyes darting and senses outstretched. A metal sign creaked mournfully outside the blacksmith’s, its steady reek, reek playing on Aethrian’s nerves.

‘There’s no breeze to stir it,’ muttered Gelebran, and Aethrian felt a chill creep up her back.

The aelves crept through the streets like ghosts, slipping into the gloom of abandoned homes and empty shops but finding no signs of life. Meals sat half-eaten. Candles were burned down to mounds of tallow. Coins and books and mirrors and all manner of personal possessions lay as though dropped, scattered on tavern counters and bedroom floors. Everything they touched was damp and cold, wet through and ruined in a way that even the thickest mists could not explain. Weapons, too, were scattered around the town, as though the sentries carrying them had simply been spirited away and left their armaments to clatter to the floor. Aethrian’s skin crawled and her suffocating sense of dread increased with every empty room, until she could hardly bear to take another step.

‘Not a gun fired nor a blade bloodied,’ said Dothrial as the three aelves stood at last in the empty town square.

‘Not that the powder would spark, it is so wet,’ replied Gelebran. ‘What happened here? Was it the dead? Malerion’s work? They cannot simply have left.’

Aethrian shook her head, unwilling to leap to conclusions.

‘There are no answers here, only questions,’ she said. ‘I am loath to bear ill tidings back to an already troubled city, but the Phoenicium must be warned.’

It was only as they hastened from Houndsgate’s empty shell, and the feeling of lurking threat eased, that Aethrian finally placed the strange scent on the air. It had been almost half a century since she had accompanied the expedition to the Dawn’s Eye Realmgate, but at last the memory surfaced. She had stood upon the headland that day, amidst the corpses of Chaos worshippers, and seen the devastation left after the ocean had vomited up a tsunami from its blackest depths.

On that day the offshore winds had picked up, sweeping away the stench of blood and death and replacing it with a dark, briny reek – the same smell that saturated this strange mist, and clung to every object and building in Houndsgate.

It was the smell of the deeps, of the ocean chasms below…

PRODUCED BY GAMES WORKSHOP IN NOTTINGHAM

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