Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [41]
Surprised and beset on all sides, wood elves died.
She saw friends taken in the back by scything swords. Others were pushed from high bowers by cruelly aimed arrows. A group that sought to flee beneath the boughs was ridden down by flashing hooves. Slender blades cut screaming throats. Dying children cried out to their parents, husbands to their wives. Janesta saw her friend Natal Peacethorn pulled from his home, shrieking. Her brothet's wife Sarana was felled with two atrows. The monument stone that had stood three full tendays since the encampment's hopeful founding was toppled and smashed. Five hunters attempted to drag away wounded, but they were ridden down for their efforts.
Janesta was witnessing a heartless slaughtet, nothing less. What courage she always assumed was hers failed; she shrank back into the undergrowth, all strength stolen from chilled, clammy limbs.
She turned, swearing, crying, hating heiself, and ran blindly through the snowy woods, careful to keep her feet light and sliding, leaving as little sign as her snowcraft allowed. If she were to survive the annihilation of her home at the hands of these strange, steel-eyed elves, cowardice was her only option.
At first she ran without goal, holding no thought other than escape. As the heat of her exertion warmed her, a seed of fury blossomed, burning at the loss through which she labored. She adjusted her direction and set her course. She was bound for Relkath's Foot, one of the latgest communities of wood elves in all the Yuitwood. There she would tell her story, pour out her anger, and gather a force. Only vengeance could sate her loss.
She would go to Relkath's Foot and alert the Mastets of the Yuirwood.
The image of stern-faced elves in shining, blood-slicked mail maddened her. The kin-slaying elves hadn't dropped from the sky, nor were their horses lathered as if from a long ride. They had appeared from somewhere not far from the encampment. Aftet she put a few miles of forest behind her, thinking all the while, Janesta was ptetty sure from where.
On the edge of a pocket reality, a massive gate loomed, cold and gray, a lattice of strange script and tiny ctacks bespeaking hundreds of years of weathering.
Telarian waited for Brathtar just inside the great stone gates that opened onto the mist-shrouded Causeway. Telarian often stood thus, year in and year out. The chiseled granite of the gate's face was as familiar as a friend. The Keeper knew every edge, every crack, every discoloration. Moreover, he was more than familiar with the inscriptions, sigils, and glyphs so prominently displayed. They warned of danger and death for any who entered uninvited, in a variety of tongues and alphabets:
This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is present in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the world, and it can erase all life, overwriting all with abomination.
The danger may be unleashed if this place is disturbed. Shun this place. Turn around.
The warnings were not endowed with magical force capable of steering away the curious, but danger would certainly befall any who ignored the warnings and ventured into the shadowed Gtand Vestibule.
On more than one occasion in the long history of Stardeep, the gates had withstood attacks by fools loyal to the Traitor, who had discovered his prison despite all the effort of hiding his location. But neither those ancient attacks, nor all the time that had since elapsed had discernibly weakened the facade. Stardeep's entrance stood strong and patient, capable of repelling anything thrown its way.
Above the gate was scribed the massive symbol of a strangely curving