Of Truth and Beasts

She had seen the madness spreading here, but if enemy forces outside had blocked all entrances, why dig underneath, and why so fast? Surely they could hold this place until everyone within perished.

Yes, all will be lost. This is written in stone. But in death, what might come if you can kill me?

Deep-Root stared into the dragon’s eyes, glistening with fire flickers like polished obsidian orbs. His blades were but slivers against an enemy of such size. The beast let out a rumble that made Wynn want to cover her ears. Deep-Root rose and backed against the dead end.

The dragon began retreating up the tunnel, its bulk too wide to turn about.

Stay here in the dark, listening and unseen at your end ... or follow me. Either way, you will die, as written in the stone of your bones. But what purpose will death be remembered for, one day to come? Choose.

Its spittle no longer flickered with small flames, and the tunnel grew dark. Only the sound of the creature’s steady retreat marked that it was still there, until it backed over the charred remains of stonewalkers. Blackened bones crackled under its clawed feet.

Wynn didn’t know what she would’ve done in Deep-Root’s place.

He took one hesitant step and then another as he followed. Once the dragon backed up to the breach into the Chamber of the Fallen, it turned about, heading up the dark tunnel’s other way.

There were too many turns in the dark where unseen side ways could be felt in the walls. Wynn had long past lost track of where she was. But each time the way branched, Deep-Root followed the scrape of the beast’s movement against the tunnel’s stone, until he stopped at the sight of flame flickering in its maw.

It turned into a wide passage that sloped steeply downward. Again he followed. A long way down, it emptied into a vast cave, and the air of the place choked him. Wynn felt suffocated, as well, for the stench rose from a large, long pool of viscous fluids that filled most of the cave’s bottom.

Soft light flickered red-orange. To one side of the cave, on a slope of rock, the dragon dripped ignited spittle that burned there well away from the large pool.

Sheath your weapons. Do not create even one spark in this place, or we perish to no purpose.

“What is this place?” Deep-Root choked out. “What is in that pool?”

I have eaten and disgorged all of this, weakening myself without true sustenance since my arrival. I am now prepared to die, if you can kill me. First, listen ... and hear them.

The dragon lifted its head, looking to the cave’s distant rear wall.

Deep-Root hesitated, but the beast merely stood waiting. He sheathed his blades and crept around the pool, never taking his eyes off the dragon. It watched him in turn. When he reached the cave’s wall, he placed a hand on its stone.

At first he barely heard anything.

Higher.

At that command, he tried to find purchase in the wall for his foot. He reached upward, and the farther he went, the more he felt—heard—the same sound of endlessly breaking stone as in the dead end.

Deep-Root stretched as high as he could, until his thick fingertips touched where the wall curved into the cave’s ceiling. The whisper gale rose to a roar in his head, as if he’d stepped into the storm’s heart.

Wynn lost all awareness in that torrent.

When it finally faded, she was looking toward the pool, but it was sideways and low, as if Deep-Root lay on the cave’s floor. She was sick with dizziness. Deep-Root moaned and pushed himself up as the leaf-wing voice came again.

They call themselves the in’Sâ’yminfiäl, the masters of frenzy. To the few who have ever escaped them and yet never have seen them, they are known as the Eaters of Silence. They have driven the peace from your people’s thoughts—and driven them mad. Nothing can stop this now.

Wynn knew of whom the dragon spoke. She’d learn of these sorcerers, once in service to the Ancient Enemy in the forgotten war. If she’d had her own voice, she could’ve asked so many questions. But she was only an observer, reliving all this through Deep-Root’s eyes and ears.