Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [0]
The Dungeons 03 - Stardeep
By
CHAPTER ONE
Stardeep, Throat Midwinter, 1375 DR
The Traitor lunged against his millennial bonds. Ethereal fires burned him, esoteric wards caught him, and synaptic blights stung him. His struggles availed him nothing but pain-but never enough pain to stop his heart. No, he transcended mortal weaknesses, including vulnerability to simple wounds, and even the need for food and water. His inability to perish due to neglect worked against him now.
Eldritch shackles allowed the prisoner to gesticulate, scream, and curse the black heart out of a demon, but only once during his long confinement had they failed to hold his physical form. He had nearly accomplished his life's goal in that instant. He had almost roused the old ones who slept away the ages.
But his wardens corralled him soon enough to thwart his catastrophic intention. His breakout was too short-lived for him to fulfill the ghastly deed that consumed his every thought. The Sovereignty…
After his near success, the Traitor's chains were replaced with manacles of magic guaranteed unbreakable. He was sealed away once more in the hollow Well beneath a shimmering layer of warding sorcery.
For all the prisoner's frenzied writhing and threats of apocalypse, only light escaped the containment, harsh and exuberant with hate. It danced up the sheer sides of the Well. Colors bloomed into elaborate designs on the Well's circular interior. Now and then, violent prominences escaped the translucent, fiery barrier, illuminating the shaft for moments of stark clarity. The crash as of breakers on the beach murmured constantly up and down the shaft.
The boundary layer at the bottom of the Well, for all its agitation and turbulence, remained inviolate.
Which meant the Traitor remained secure, reflected Delphe.
"All's well in the Well," she said aloud, her daily litany. Since she'd initiated the verbal routine, the prisoner had made no credible escape attempts.
She shook her head at such foolishness. Speaking aloud those few syllables each and every day was fallacy, she recognized, yet she indulged in it all the same. What of it? Of course, she'd never admit the silly ritual to her fellow Keepers, Telarian or Cynosure. They wouldn't grasp the humor in her few mumbled words, but instead would see them as a waste of mindspace, each for their own reasons. Telarian was too humorless, Cynosure too unimaginative.
Then again, you couldn't argue with success. She smiled. The few words she daily spoke were a comfort, a comfort built by habit.
From her crystalline chair poised over the Well's lip, Delphe saw at least three, but perhaps as many as seven different protective wards and guardian impulses sleeting through the ectoplasmic barrier layer at the Well's bottommost depth. The intensity and color of the images varied from day to day, and even from moment to moment, but all were within parameters she was trained to recognize.
Two vertical lines creased Delphe's brow. On closer examination of the barrier, she noticed that a particular orange hue of the prominences spiking up from below was… unfamiliar.
Thankfully, Delphe had tools more potent than even her own arcane competency.
"Cynosure," she said, "what am I looking at right now? Is it new?"
A thin, cultured voice answered Delphe. "Not new, but perhaps a mixture novel to your experience."
The voice emerged from a ten-foot-tall humanoid forged of stone, iron, and crystal. The figure's stiff back was sealed to the ceiling above the Well, allowing it to stare unblinking into the containment fires. In all the years Delphe had served as Keeper, this particular homunculus of the many that composed Cynosure had never moved.
"Explain," said Delphe.
"Of course," Cynosure replied.
In truth, Cynosure's voice emanated from a circular crimson disc in the ceiling from which the figure hung. It was merely easier for Delphe to imagine the voice issuing from the stone figure instead of the ceiling. The voice continued. "Notice the glyphs at the edges?"
"All the time."
"They signify