Chapter 416: Hungry Stone

"Hold on, slow down for a couple of heartbeats!" Gwyllain cried, waving his basket of honeyed acorns about like he was fending off a swarm of enraged bees.

The blue caps—each crackling and flaring with blinding blue light, raced around Gwyllain, yapping like excitable fox kits.

"You're all hard enough to understand when you're not screeching over each other!" the asrai cried. "Come on, then, will one of you calm down and tell me what's got you all excited?"

It took some coaxing, but at last a tiny blue fae began to calm, floating in front of the larger fae and telling him their story.

"Right, right, so there was some sort of..." He paused. "Monster, you said? One that opened the side of your cave? Must've been a strong monster—No wait, you mean there was some kind of mana moving the rock?" Gwyllain scratched his chin. "I know there's a bunch of mortal wizards above you. Maybe they're mucking around with some kind of magi—oh? It wasn't them? What'd the creature look like then? Uhuh. Uhuh."

He tried to imagine what they were describing. "Big mouth full of needles...skin that looked like a bunch of scabs put together with sticky sap. Or like dried tree bark...right...and big claw—Wait."

His blood instantly turned cold. "Was it...about as tall as a human, but it moved fast?"

The blue caps excitedly bobbed up and down.

"Oh...oh by all the fae lords," Gwyllain hung his head. "I...I know the beastie you saw."

Memories from that terrible night rushed back to him: the flames, the monsters, the flying about, the nearly being eviscerated by that clawed creature....that terrible explosi—

"What, what was that?" He asked, realising the blue caps were still talking to him. "Oh, yeah, no. I don't think it's going to be a big problem. No, I really don't think it's going to be coming back. Unless...you didn't see any blue annis hags with it, did you? No? Okay, then it won't be coming back."

As one the blue caps cheered, flitting about joyfully...but joy was far from Gwyllain's heart.

'The monster that looked like that was at the windmill really wanted to kill Alexander,' he thought. 'They're probably back...and if they can warp the earth...'

Gwyllain's eyes slowly drifted to the ceiling.

'They're going to come up right below the wizards,' he thought. 'And a lot of death's going to be about. Or maybe not. Those wizards seem to be a nasty lot.'

He hadn't gone near them since that wild, horrible night, but a fae only had to take one look at Greymoor to not only see that all the wild monsters were gone, but to also recognize the power these foreign, mortal wizards wielded.

But still…

'If that thing is looking for Alexander, maybe it'd be nice to give him a quick, little warning. Might not be bad for a fae like me to have a favour owed to him by wizards like that...' he thought. 'And word’s been about that there's been mortals on the road again. The Stalker's been going about with the mortal Heroes, they say. Maybe they'd like to know this too.'

"Okay! Okay!" Gwyllain put down the honeyed acorns. "We'll have to pause our visit a bit, my friends. There’s something I've got to d—No, I'm not refusing your hospitality! By the fae lords, don't be so sensitive! I'm just going to go and be right back, we'll have our little party when I—What? Leave the acorns? You treacherous little...fine! I'll be back!"

Throwing up his hands in disgust, Gwyllain put the basket on the floor and stomped toward the wall. "Completely merciless, all of you are, I swear!"

With another snort of disgust, he disappeared into the fae pathways.

###

"Well, that's going to be interesting," Alex said as he, Claygon and Carey stepped into the entrance hall of the keep. "Out there by ourselves in the winter, playing with dark forces we barely understand. Though, I guess understanding them is the whole point of all this.”

"Yes...I just hope we can...come to learn more," Carey said as Alex opened the door. "Oh dear, it's absolutely freezing out here!"

The storm had arrived. Snow was blowing with such force that the world had turned into a sheet of white. Castle buildings were no more than faint shadows in the whiteout, while people, beasts and golems were flickers of movement in the snow.

"Jeez, the storm came on fast!" Alex cried above the wind.

"Work for the day might be cancelled at this rate!" Carey called back, shielding her face from the biting cold and stinging snowflakes.

"I doubt that!" Alex shouted, sending out a thought to Claygon. The golem raised his arms, shielding both Alex and Carey from the snow. "You know how Professor Jules is! If we had to fight our way through a massive storm and snowdrifts she might cancel work, but that’s not happening if our safety's guaranteed!"

"Truly!" Carey said. "Shall we head off to the research building?"

"I’ll be there soon, I'm going to go make sure the aeld tree's alright!"

"Good good! Say hello to it for me, won’t you!"

Conjuring a wind and rain shield, Carey disappeared into the white, crunching her way through the rising snow in the direction of the research building. Around them, Alex saw orbs of light flicker to life: forceballs to be guiding lights for folk pushing through the snow. Then wizards appeared, casting spells of wind and force to lift the snow from walkways and clear a path for walking.

"Jeez," Alex muttered, crunching his way toward the aeld. He glanced up at Claygon who ploughed through the rising white as though it were flat ground on a summer day. "On days like this back in Alric, they would have shut everything down!"

He turned away, not expecting an answer from Claygon, but paused.

There. There was a pulse of...something through their link. Alex's heart leapt in excitement: it'd been a long time since he’d felt anything from him.

"Claygon?" he called out.

But the golem kept walking with his spear in hand, striding toward the aeld tree with a purposeful gait that kicked up clouds of white with each step.

"Claygon!" Alex called to his golem. "What's happening? Is there something wrong?" Gently, he tried feeling through their link—looking for that spark of consciousness—but found nothing on the other side. "Claygon? What is—"

The golem suddenly stopped, clutching his war-spear close. His head was turned toward the glow of the aeld tree only a few feet ahead of them. Alex forced his eyes away from Claygon and onto the tree. The weeks of healthy earth, nourishing plant food from the fae, and tender care from Alex, Professor Salinger and many others had done it a world of good. Its golden glow was twice as bright as it had been when Alex first brought it to the camp, and its branches were fuller, healthier and slightly sagging from the number of leaves that had sprouted on them.

Despite the wind, freezing temperatures and snow, it radiated a calming warmth that reached out to Alex, even from feet away. As early winter brought more frequent temperature drops and snow falls, he'd wanted to protect it from winter’s bite and damage by wrapping it in rolls of burlap, but Professor Salinger had told him not to bother that in fact, it would even be harmful to block its leaves from the sunlight.

Alex could see how right he’d been. Its heat was so pleasant, that he almost wanted to hug its lean trunk; yet, something was distressing it. Though it radiated a calming warmth, the emotions rising from it were...anything but calm. Waves of increasing fear, alarm and high levels of tension were wafting from the aeld, hitting him like waves against a seawall. Even a fresh corpse would have noticed its distress.

"What is it?" he asked the young tree, looking between it and Claygon. "Is that what's got you all excited, Claygon? Did you feel something coming off of our leafy friend?"

He stepped toward the tree, placing a hand on its warm bark. "I know there seems to be something between you two."

Alex's eyes narrowed and he looked at his golem closely. "Is there something you want me to know? ...something the tree noticed?"

Nothing came through Claygon's link, even after he'd waited quietly for heartbeats.

"Ah well," he said. "Maybe the weather's got this little one stressed." He patted the tree trunk. "Don't worry, you'll be okay. And I promise I won't...let you...get...buri—"

He paused.

Something tickled his mana senses; something stirred beneath his feet.

"What...what's that?" he paused, wondering if the earth mages were making changes to the tunnels directly under the castle. Maybe—

"Alexander!" a voice whispered behind him.

"Guh!" the young wizard leapt a foot forward, whirling around. Nothing was there. A brief surge of fear gripped his heart.

Was it a ghost? Had the tree sensed some invisible spirit here to stalk him through the world of the livi—

"Down here! Down here!" a familiar voice cried through the wind.

Alex looked down and yelped again: a sight he hadn’t expected to see for at least another fifty years was looking back at him. "Gwyllain?" He glanced around before bending down. "What're you doing here?"

The little asrai was hugging himself against the cold, his jaws chattering. "Warning you!" he cried. "Monsters are coming from down below you wizards! They're going to attack you at any second!"

"What?" Alex gasped.

Then it sank in; the mana he’d felt below was familiar, but it had the stink of Ravener-magic.

"Oh, by the Traveller!" he shouted.

"Defend yourself!" Gwyllain said. "Don't go getting yourself gutted! Now I'm getting far away from here! Good luck! I'll try and get you some help!"

"Help? What kind of hel—"

But the fae had already turned, darted into the blowing snow, and disappeared.

Alex's mind raced. The wind and snowflakes stung his face as he turned back to the tree. "That's what you felt!" he cried. "You felt the same monsters that treenapped you—"

His heart skipped. If the monsters were coming from below...

"Theresa and the others!" he shouted, sprinting toward the keep. "Help! We're about to be attacked! Monsters are—"

He'd only gotten half of his warning out before the alarm bells began urgently pealing throughout the research castle.

"Attention!" Watcher Shaw's voice boomed through the white. "We are under attack! Earth mages detected dungeon magic beneath us! We are under attack! Everyone to your battle-posts! Standby for a briefing! There's a lot of movement in the fortified stone beneath us! This'll be a bad one!"

###

"No, I know I heard something that time," Theresa said, drawing her swords.

"Ugh," Thundar grunted. "I'd say you're hearing things, but everyone who says that in all the stories gets their guts ripped out in the next verse."

"You're both being paranoid...is what I would say, but Thundar's right. Everyone who goes on about 'it must've been the wind's' always the first one to die in all the bard's tales," Hogarth grunted, jumping to his feet and offering Svenia a hand.

She took his grip, pulling herself up and readying her spear. "With our luck, a xyrthak or dune worm tracked us here from the Barrens."

“For what reason?” Hogarth asked. “To kill us?”

“What do you think, Hogarth?” Svenia shot him a look.

"Pffft, only poor guards base their warnings on copper-penny stories," one of the younger dwarf engineers snorted.

"You only say that because you've never been ambushed by beast-goblins in the middle of a dig," the elder of the dwarven engineers put down his tools and picked up a two-handed axe. "Folk that brush off warnings are the first ones to die."

"Mm?" Grimloch shuddered, stretching and yawning. "What's going on? Is there action?" The giant bent down, picking up his brutal hammer.

Beside him, Brutus shook himself awake, his three tongues lolling out and his six eyes checking every direction. Then the cerberus froze.

His hackles went up, his ears perked up and he bounded to Theresa's side, snarling and growling.

"Shhh, quiet, boy," the huntress whispered. "Everyone, quiet for a second!"

At the end of the tunnel, the earth and fire mages paused, looking at each other as a tense silence fell over the excavation team. Theresa held her breath, cocking her head and listening to the air. In the distance, far down the tunnel...no...something was coming from the side of the tunnel.

"I hear something through the stone," she said softly, creeping to the wall.

"I do not like the look of this." The prince began whispering incantations, sheathing himself in stone armour.

"Hold on, Now I hear something too," Grimloch growled.

Theresa pressed her ear to the rock and closed her eyes again.

There...the sound of wings and shifting stone.

Her heart froze. She knew that sound; that same terrible groan of rock: she'd heard it every time she'd gone into battle inside a dungeon.

"Ravener-spawn!" the huntress yelled to her team. "They're shifting the walls! There must be a dungeon below us! Everyone, get ready!"

As her cry echoed through the tunnel, the stone began to shake.

Dust rained from the ceiling.

The earth mages gasped.

"The tunnel!" Prince Khalik roared. "Whoever’s up there, they mean to bring it down on us!"