Into the Abyss

The courtyard stones are warm beneath your feet. They have been warm since the gods touched this place, and they are warm now.

Fifty people have organized into defensive lines. Crusaders, kobolds and goblins: fighters in the courtyard, archers and spellcasters on the walls.

The torches gutter.

Falwan stands at Xerelilah's shoulder, one hand on the old woman's back. The priestess of Desna↗ kneels at the center of the yard, both hands closed around the butterfly symbol at her throat.

She has not spoken in several minutes. Her lips move without sound.

Sera Voss checks her shield strap for the third time. On the eastern wall, a goblin archer tests her bowstring and finds nothing wrong with it. Tests it again.

Then Xerelilah's prayer finds its voice. Low at first, almost a hum. The words pull at something. The stones answer. The warmth in them deepens, rises through your boots, through your bones.

The air splits. Starlight bleeds from the edges of the rift, then curdles. What comes through is the smell of copper and hot iron, and beneath it something fouler.

Through the opening you see a red-dark distance. Iron grating, vast and rusted, stretching over nothing. A sky that is not a sky.

Shapes move in that distance. Small ones first. Then larger.

Xerelilah does not open her eyes. "Go now! I will hold it! Go!"

You step through.

— "Alone you go and face the storm"

Something is singing. Not a voice, not exactly. The Abyss itself carries a sound like mourning, and it knows you are here.

— "The mirror holds what fragments told"

The grating shudders under your boots.

— "Story pages you can fold"

Ahead of you, demons are already running, but not toward you.

— "A piece of me that has been torn"

They pour past on both sides, shrieking, clawing over one another, rushing for the light of the rift behind you.

You can hear Helba shouting orders on the other side. You can hear crossbow strings and the sounds of claw on steel.

None of the demons look at you. You are going the wrong way. Nothing here goes deeper willingly.

The air tastes of blood and rust and presses against your lungs. Iron grating stretches in every direction, suspended over a void where light enters and does not return.

You are here for Renali. A demon you destroyed took her soul with it when it died. She is somewhere in this place.

The iron hums beneath your feet with a sound like breathing.

You have an hour.