Lore | The Mysteries of the Wyrmreach Dominion

The compass stopped making sense on the third day.

Vorogarth checked it again, tilting the brass case toward what he believed was north. The needle swung lazily, then pointed behind him. Then it pointed down.

He shut the case hard enough to pinch the skin of his thumb. This was the second instrument he had put away that morning.

“Keep moving,” he said. His voice sounded flat; Tomas, only a few paces behind, asked him to repeat it.

Behind him, the survey team stumbled forward: the two other scholars, a pair of guards, and the cartographer Helvine. She had stopped speaking two days ago. She walked with her hands pressed against her temples.

The gray crust beneath their boots broke into flakes without exposing soil. Vorogarth could hear it crack under the last man’s feet, too close behind his own.

“How much farther?” Eldric asked. The younger scholar kept a finger on the place in his notes, though the page was beginning to tear.

Vorogarth looked for the black spire described in the Seventeenth Expedition’s records. Nothing on the horizon matched its measured height.

According to the measurements, they should also have crossed a river yesterday. They hadn’t seen water since entering.

“The spire was three leagues northeast of the bone plain,” Eldric said, consulting his notes. His hands shook as he read. “We’ve traveled six leagues. We should be past it.”

“Maybe the spire moved,” one of the guards muttered.

No one laughed.

Purple cloud faded to yellow along the horizon. No sun showed, and Vorogarth could find no shadow beside his boots. He kept his eyes low. On the first day he had mistaken a shape in the cloud for an eye; he still did not want to see it again.

Helvine stopped walking.

Vorogarth turned. “Helvine. We need to keep moving.”

She didn’t respond. Her hands dropped from her temples. Her eyes were wide, staring at a patch of ground to her left.

“There’s a door,” she whispered.

Vorogarth looked. He saw gray earth, cracked and dry. “There’s nothing there.”

“There’s a door,” she repeated. “It’s been there the whole time. We’ve been walking past it for hours.”

Brennis stepped closer. The older scholar crouched and brushed a hand across the ground, then stopped.

“She’s right,” he said. His voice cracked. “There’s a seam. I can feel it.”

Vorogarth walked over. He knelt beside Brennis and pressed his palm against the gray surface.

Cold.

The chill spread from his palm to his wrist. When he lifted his hand, the skin remained numb.

His fingers found the edge. A line, straight and deliberate, cut into the earth.

He remembered passing this patch twice when the landmarks failed. Had he looked down either time? He could not recall doing so.

“Don’t open it,” one of the guards said. Tomas. The veteran. His hand rested on his sword hilt, though what good a sword would do here, Vorogarth couldn’t imagine.

“We have to document it,” Eldric said, already scribbling in his journal. “This could be significant. A structure. Evidence of—”

“Evidence of what?” Tomas interrupted. “Who builds doors in places like this?”

Vorogarth didn’t have an answer.

He gripped the edge of the seam and pulled.

The crust folded back without a sound. Beneath it, smooth steps descended past the reach of his lantern.

Air rose from below with the bitter smell of a lamp left burning dry. Vorogarth checked his own wick. It was wet with oil.

“I’ll go first,” he said.

“No.” Brennis grabbed his arm. “We should mark the location and return to the Rift. Report this. Bring a proper team.”

“The Rift is eight days behind us,” Vorogarth said. “Maybe. If we can find it again.”

He looked at the stairs. He didn’t want to descend.

A drawing from the threshold would not show where the stairs ended. He lowered the lantern as far as his arm would reach.

He stepped onto the first stair.

By the third step, the lantern guttered out. He shook it and heard oil against the glass.

He felt along the wall with his free hand and took another step.

He heard Helvine breathing behind him. Farther back, Tomas drew his sword; someone asked him to put it away before they collided.

He counted past twenty, then lost a step when his toe caught an edge. In the darkness he could feel his breath dampening the collar against his chin.

Then his foot found level ground.

And around him, something began to glow.

It showed the far wall without showing the floor at his feet. He held the dead lantern out, searching for its reflection.

Writing covered the smooth black walls. When he looked directly at one mark, its strokes seemed to run together. He could copy none of them.

Helvine walked past him, drawn toward the far wall.

“Don’t touch anything,” Vorogarth said.

She wasn’t listening.

Her hand pressed against the symbols. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then she screamed.

The sound filled the chamber, bouncing from wall to wall, multiplying until it seemed like a dozen Helvines were screaming at once. She fell backward, clutching her hand.

Vorogarth caught her and turned her hand over. He could see no injury on the palm.

But her eyes were wrong.

Her left eye was still brown. Her right eye was not.

“There are lines behind it,” she whispered. “Behind the wall. I can still see them.” She gagged and covered her mouth. “Get me out. Please.”

“What did you see?” Eldric asked.

Helvine tried to look at him. “A chart. I thought it was a chart. Then the lines went through each other.” She pressed her aching hand against her eye. “I don’t know. I can’t make it stop.”

Tomas grabbed her arm. “We’re leaving. Now.”

No one argued.

He counted thirty-seven steps on the way out. He had lost the count going down, and could not tell how many he had missed.

Outside, the yellow rim of sky had disappeared. Tomas stumbled across a shadow where Vorogarth remembered none.

The door in the ground was gone.

“It was here,” Brennis said, circling the spot. “Right here. I felt the seam.”

There was no seam. Only gray earth, unbroken.

Helvine stared upward, her lips moving. Vorogarth stood where she could see him without turning.

“Can you still see it?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, once.

“Can you find the way back to the Rift?”

She swallowed, holding her stomach. “The paths look different. I can see one, but it keeps moving when I turn my head.”

“Can you point along it?”

She pointed. Vorogarth opened the compass once more. The needle offered him no way to check her direction.

“We walk that way,” he said.

The team followed.

Three days later, they stumbled through the Rift, into a world where compasses worked and shadows fell properly. Vorogarth filed his report with the Tower of the Watching Eye, leaving nothing out.

The High Archivist read it twice, then placed it in the sealed archives.

“This will not be shared,” she said. “The information could cause panic.”

“What about Helvine’s eyes?” Vorogarth asked.

The High Archivist looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read. “Helvine never returned from the expedition.”

Vorogarth began to object. He had left Helvine in the next room. The Archivist rested a finger on the return register and waited.

He looked at the names. Hers had been crossed out.

Vorogarth collected his payment and left. He never filed another expedition request.

Some nights, in the taverns of Erbstadt, men ask him about Wyrmreach. What it’s like. What lives there. What secrets wait to be discovered.

He tells them the same thing every time.

“I cannot give you a route,” he says.

They ask whether he ever went back for the cartographer.

He puts his cup down. “I left her in the next room.”

Compiler’s note: Vorogarth’s account records thirty-seven stairs. Tomas’s deposition describes a sloping passage and denies that he descended it. The return register lists Helvine as missing. No record of her interview has been located.

End of Lore 1 — continues in Lore 2: Eternal Woods: The Kingdom of Elenoria’s Dance with Nature