Of Truth and Beasts

Wynn was lost in loathing inside the memories of Deep-Root. She was shaken back to awareness when the elder stonewalker’s furious cries were suddenly cut off. The blackness of stone enveloped her again, and all she heard were the gale of whispers inside Deep-Root.

... they are coming ... not one but many ... soon they will find you ...

A dim glow rose all around as the leaf-wing pushed the whispers down once more.

Ignore them, and hear only me.

Wynn—Deep-Root—stood in the dim phosphorescence of the caves holding the honored dead, but he didn’t move an inch. He kept twisting his head rapidly, looking about, and the glimmering walls and shadows whipped too quickly in Wynn’s sight.

She didn’t understand what had happened in the hall of the Eternals. How had this mass murderer escaped the insane older stonewalker?

Deep-Root took a slow step, placing one foot carefully, and then another. He was trying to be silent. Then he crouched amid the calcified dead, placed his hand on the cave floor, and grew still.

Wynn felt—heard—distant sounds, as if his hand could pass them directly to her ears or her thoughts. She—he—was listening through stone, as Ore-Locks had in the tram tunnel.

Running boots pounded, and Deep-Root twisted to his right.

Wynn saw only a crushed wall beyond columns made of joining stalactites and stalagmites. More footfalls sounded, more running feet, and Deep-Root twisted farther around.

The sound suddenly cut off as he looked to the wall he’d come through.

“Honored Ones,” he whispered. “Give me sanctuary!”

Wynn wanted to scream at him for such a plea, but she had no voice. The leaf-wing came instead.

They cannot. Cling to me against the madness.... Come to me.

“Silence!” he snarled. “You are nothing but more of this plague upon my people.”

I am only with you since my coming. I hold this piece of calm, of silence, anchored within you.

“Get out!” he shouted, forgetting all caution.

I am what gives you this respite, free of what eats at all others. You already cling to me for this.

“You are the worst of what has come! Leave me alone!”

The leaf-wing seemed to fade, but not completely. It was still there, somewhere, holding off the gale. But the moment of near silence left Wynn lost as to what any of this meant.

Then kill me ... if you can.

That one crackling utterance smothered Wynn’s despair and stoked fear in its place. What was that voice trying to do in goading Deep-Root? Then she heard a loud, wet smack.

Deep-Root whirled about as a thrum rose through him from the cave floor. Wynn felt it as she spotted the shadowed form of another stonewalker in the next cave opening. He had just slapped his hand against the stone.

She’d seen that before in the underworld of Dhredze Seatt, but she’d never known how the Stonewalkers’ signal for alarm truly worked. It was like a rapid quake running through her, and she could actually follow its sound through stone to its origin.

Heavy boots struck the cave floor, and Deep-Root turned again.

Yet another Stonewalker rushed at him from out of a cave wall.

I wait beyond the farthest place to fall. Can you live long enough to reach it?

Deep-Root bolted, and Wynn heard the shouts of his pursuers echoing through the caves of the Honored Dead. He ran straight through calcified columns and walls of wet stone, swerving each time he reappeared to leap into another wall. And then one time, the blackness of stone didn’t pass in a wink—it went on and on.

Wynn felt her lungs might rupture before she—he—took another breath.

What was the “farthest place to fall”? Or was it truly a place one could go?

Besides Deep-Root, there was one thing lower than this worst of traitors; that was the enemy—Beloved, il’Samar, the Night Voice. Was it speaking to him, toying with him through a false protection from the madness that ate through this seatt amid a siege? Where were those other whispers coming from?

Blackness broke, and Deep-Root exhaled, though not with the exhaustion Wynn suffered in the stone. It didn’t affect him at all. Perhaps it didn’t affect any Stonewalker. He turned in the near dark, feeling along the wall.

His hand settled on something made of crisp angles and smooth surfaces, and he stroked it once. Amber light rose all around.

Wynn looked upon the Chamber of the Fallen.

Deep-Root’s eyes locked on something that was wrong in this place—or was wrong to him. A great gash showed in the hall’s far end—exactly like the one Wynn had found. But he hesitated, stiffening, as if he had never seen it before.