A refined, silvery voice cut through the silence like a well-honed blade. “Are you quite finished with your soliloquy? One finds your dramatic monologues to be increasingly tedious.”
I turned to see Bartholomew, perched on a rock that had somehow remained miraculously free of Grotesque entrails. In classic Barty style, he didn’t even look at me.“Bite me, fluffball,” I muttered, kicking a stray pebble. “I just leveled up by killing a snot monster that tried to cut off my leg. I think I’m entitled to a little existential dread.”“Hmph. A ‘snot monster.’ You possess a wordsmith’s gift, madam, truly,” he said, now inspecting his claws with the air of a jeweler examining flawed gems. “And for the record, it was a Cave Grotesque. They are mindless, base creatures. Barely a challenge. Your performance was, shall we say, adequate.”“Adequate? I got a fresh collection of scars from that bastard!” I held it out for his inspection. The new mark, a delicate filigree pattern near my elbow, shimmered faintly in the gloom. It looked like someone had tattooed me with moonlight. Pretty, but a permanent reminder that I was basically a chew toy in this world’s grand dog park.“Marks of survival, Paige,” he said, finally deigning to look at me, his emerald eyes holding a sliver of something that might have been patience, or possibly just boredom. “They are a testament to the fact that you have not yet succumbed to a spectacularly clumsy demise. Now, unless you wish for us to become a permanent art installation in this subterranean gallery of horrors, I suggest we proceed.”
He was right, of course. The cat was always right, a profoundly irritating fact. The air in the tunnel was thick with the coppery-sour stench of the dead creature and the ever-present smell of damp earth and decay. Lingering was not on my top-ten list of things to do.
With a final, withering glare at the goo-puddle, I followed Bartholomew deeper into the corridor. The path began to slope upwards, the rough-hewn rock giving way to more deliberate, worked stone. The air grew thinner, carrying the promise of something other than mildew. After another ten minutes of walking, we found it.
The tunnel opened into a cylindrical chamber, a perfect, vertical shaft that disappeared into oppressive darkness above and below. Driven into the curved stone wall was a series of wooden ladders, one leading to the next, zigzagging their way upwards into the unknown.“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I said, craning my neck back. I couldn’t see the top.“A most direct route of egress,” Bartholomew noted cheerfully, trotting to the base of the first ladder.“That’s not a ladder, that’s a collection of loosely associated kindling,” I shot back. The rungs were dark with moisture, some were splintered, and one was missing entirely about twenty feet up. “OSHA would have a field day here. A whole festival. They’d shut this whole country down.”Bartholomew flicked an ear. “I am unfamiliar with this ‘O-sha’ deity, but their dedication to structural integrity is to be commended. Nevertheless, it is our only path.”
He didn’t wait for my agreement. With a lithe hop, he was on the first rung, then the second. He moved with an infuriating, weightless grace, his claws finding purchase where my boots would surely slip. He flowed up the wood like a curl of gray smoke. Show-off.
Sighing, I spat on my hands and rubbed them together. “Fine. But if I fall and become a Paige-pancake, I’m haunting you. I’ll knock all your favorite scrolls off the highest shelves. Forever.”“A terrifying prospect,” he called down, his voice already sounding distant. “Do try to keep up.”
The climb was hell. Every rung creaked in protest under my weight, a chorus of groaning wood that sent shivers down my spine. The wood was slick with some kind of cold, slimy condensation that soaked through my leather gloves. My arms, despite the fresh surge of Level Four strength, quickly began to burn. The throb in my leg returned, a dull, rhythmic complaint that matched the pounding of my heart. I focused on the rhythm: reach, pull, step. Reach, pull, step. Don’t look down. Whatever you do, don’t look down.
Of course, I looked down.
The bottom of the shaft was a pit of absolute black, a hungry void that seemed to pull at me. Vertigo hit like a physical blow, and I flattened myself against the ladder, knuckles white, squeezing my eyes shut.“A moment of personal reflection, perhaps?” Bartholomew’s voice came from just above me. I cracked an eye open. He was sitting calmly on a narrow stone ledge where one ladder ended and the next began, washing his face.“I’m reassessing my life choices,” I gasped, my breath fogging in the chilly air.“An admirable, if belated, endeavor. Might I suggest you continue it at a higher altitude? I believe this particular rung you are clinging to is developing a rather ominous splinter.”
I glanced at the wood under my right hand. A long, deep crack was propagating from the hole where the rung was bolted to the wall. With a strangled yelp, I scrambled upwards, ignoring the screaming in my muscles, until I could collapse onto the ledge next to him. I lay there, chest heaving, listening to the frantic drumming in my ears.“Delightful cardio,” I wheezed. “I think I’ll skip the frappuccinos for a while.”“Indeed,” he said, finishing his ablutions. “Shall we?”
The rest of the climb passed in a blur of burning lungs and straining sinews. It felt like hours. We passed landing after landing, the air growing progressively fresher, carrying the scent of pine and cold stone. Finally, I saw it: a circle of bruised, twilight sky. Hope, sharp and desperate, lanced through me.
With one last, agonized pull, I hauled myself over the top edge, rolling onto a floor of cracked flagstones. I lay on my back, gasping at the heavens, not caring about the grime or the cold. Stars were beginning to prick the deep purple expanse. Real, actual stars.
Bartholomew landed silently beside me, shaking a fastidious paw. “Well, that was a moderately invigorating ascent.”
I was about to offer a scathing reply when a deep, resonant CRACK echoed up from the shaft. It was followed by a splintering groan, then a catastrophic, percussive roar as the entire ladder system gave way. Wood and stone screamed as they tumbled down into the darkness, the sound cascading into a final, deafening CRUNCH that seemed to shake the very foundation of the stone beneath us.
Then, silence. A profound, absolute quiet, broken only by the whisper of the wind.
I slowly pushed myself up and crawled to the edge. The shaft was empty. The path back was gone. Completely and utterly gone. We were trapped up here, wherever ‘here’ was.“Well,” I said, my voice flat. “Fantastic.” I seemed to be saying that a lot lately.
“A most egregious display of structural ineptitude,” Bartholomew sniffed, peering over the edge with academic curiosity. “One posits the resonant frequency of your complaining finally overwhelmed its tensile strength.”
“Up yours, cat.” I stood and finally took in our surroundings. We were on the roof of a circular tower, a ruined watchtower by the looks of it. The crenellations were broken like jagged teeth, and thick ivy clung to the stones. The wind, sharp and cold, whistled through empty arrow slits, carrying a lonely, mournful sound.
But it was the view that stole the breath from my lungs.
We were high up, perched on the edge of a range of jagged, tooth-like mountains. Below us, a vast valley stretched out, blanketed in a perpetual, swirling twilight. A dark, twisted forest carpeted the basin, its trees skeletal and black, and a sluggish, silver-black river cut through it like a scar. In the distance, a single, impossibly tall spire of rock clawed at the sky, wreathed in a sickening purple miasma. It felt wrong. The whole landscape felt diseased, poisoned at its very core.
My degree was utterly useless here, but the messaging of this place was brutally clear: You are small. You are unwelcome. This land will break you.
“So,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself against the sudden chill. “Any idea where we are, oh wise and furry guardian of ancient magic?”
Bartholomew had trotted to the far side of the rooftop and was gazing out at the bleak vista, his tail twitching. His usual air of detached amusement was gone, replaced by a stillness, a gravity I had never seen in him before.
“Yes,” he said, his voice low and devoid of its usual affectation. The sound of it sent a cold dread trickling down my spine. “I know precisely where we are.” He turned to face me, and in the deepening twilight, his green eyes seemed to glow with an inner light.“We have arrived at the Whispering Spire,” he said. “A watchtower of the old kingdom perched atop the Whispering Peaks, looking down into the Blighted Valley.”
“Right. I guess the tunnels were a shortcut after all.”
Bartholomew did not dignify my comment with a response. He simply continued to stare down into the vast, shadowed basin below us, his fluffy gray form a stark silhouette against the dying light. The wind picked up, whipping strands of my brunette hair across my face. It was a cold, mournful wind, carrying with it a scent I couldn’t quite place—something like old rot and bitter mold, the smell of a land that had long given up.“Blighted Valley,” I repeated, my attempt at levity evaporating into the thin mountain air. I stepped closer to the edge, my worn leather boots scuffing on the ancient stone. “Looks like Mordor’s ugly cousin.”
The valley was a wound in the earth, a sprawling expanse of cracked, black soil and twisted, skeletal trees. A sickly purple and grey haze clung to the ground like a shroud, obscuring whatever horrors might lie deeper within. There was no green, no sign of life, only a profound and unnatural stillness. Even from this height, I felt its wrongness in my bones, a deep thrum of malevolent energy that made the hairs on my arms stand up.“It is a scar left by the last Shadow War,” Bartholomew said, his voice a low rumble. “This is not the first time the Shadow Lord has threatened these lands. His power still radiates from this place, poisoning the soil, twisting the creatures, and corrupting the hearts of men. It is said the whispers that give these peaks their name are the tormented souls of those who have fallen within.”“Right. No big deal. Just the evil overlord’s front yard,” I muttered, pulling my thin cloak tighter around myself. This was a long way from my apartment. I’d gone from worrying about student loans to worrying about my soul being tormented for all eternity. It was, I had to admit, a lateral move.
He finally turned from the precipice, his green eyes luminous. “We must rest. The journey down will be perilous, and we will accomplish nothing by succumbing to exhaustion.”
He was right, of course. The last dregs of sunlight were being swallowed by the horizon, and the temperature was plummeting. Making a fire was out of the question; a beacon on this spire would be like sending a dinner invitation to every foul thing in the valley. We found a small, semi-enclosed section of the rooftop where a crumbled wall offered some protection from the biting wind.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Our dinner consisted of a shared piece of stale bread and the last of our dried meat, a meal that my former self would have Instagrammed with a caption like ‘#GlampingFail’. Now, it was just dinner. Bartholomew ate his small portion with a delicate, grim efficiency.
“One would think,” he sniffed after a while, grooming a stray bit of dust from his paw, “that a guardian of ancient magic would be afforded certain creature comforts. A warm hearth. A bowl of cream. Perhaps a cushion not fashioned from solid granite.”
“Yeah, well, the universe apparently decided this particular guardian of ancient magic gets me,” I retorted, leaning my head back against the cold stone. “Consider it a lesson in humility.”
He flicked an ear in my direction, a silent, unimpressed judgment.
As darkness fell completely, the whispers started. At first, I thought it was just the wind, but the longer I listened, the more I could discern faint, sibilant sounds weaving through the gusts. They were like snatches of conversation from a distant room, too faint to understand but clear enough to unnerve. They spoke of despair, of loss, of endless, gnawing hunger. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block them out, and eventually, through sheer mental and physical exhaustion, I fell into a fitful, dreamless sleep.
I was woken by a sound far more jarring than any whisper.“HO, TRESPASSERS! UP THERE ON THE SPIRE!”
The voice was a booming baritone, laced with authority and amplified by the mountain acoustics. It echoed off the surrounding peaks, startling a flock of black-feathered birds that burst into the air from some unseen crag. I shot upright, my heart hammering against my ribs, my hand instinctively going to the hilt of the short sword I’d liberated from the goblins. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was all I had.
Bartholomew was already on his paws, poised and alert, his tail giving a single, irritated flick. “Well,” he drawled, the affectation creeping back into his voice now that the sun was up. “It appears our solitude has been rather rudely interrupted.”
I crawled to the edge of the rooftop on my hands and knees, peering over the crenelated stone. Far below, at the base of the watchtower, was a figure. Even from this distance, he was impressive. He sat astride a massive warhorse, the beast stamping a hoof impatiently on the rocky ground. The man himself was clad in polished steel armor that glinted brilliantly in the morning sun, a deep blue surcoat emblazoned with the silver sigil of a snarling gryphon draped over his chest. A greatsword was strapped to his back, and his helmet was tucked under one arm, revealing a square jaw, a mess of straw-colored hair, and a very impatient expression.
He looked exactly like every knight in every fantasy movie I’d ever seen, right down to the heroic chin.
“BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE SILVER GRYPHON AND THE DECREE OF THE COUNCIL OF LORDS, DECLARE YOURSELVES!” he bellowed.
I glanced back at Bartholomew. “The Silver Gryphon? Does that mean anything to you?”
The cat began to wash his face with a deliberate, almost comical slowness. “That, my dear Paige,” he said, pausing to lick his paw, “is the ostentatious heraldry of Sir Kaelen the Steadfast. The very knight we have been trekking through bug-infested forests and spelunking through goblin-riddled tunnels to find.”
I stared down at the shining figure below, then back at the cat. All that trouble, all that walking, all those near-death experiences, and he was just… here. Waiting at the bottom of the evil tower we’d accidentally stumbled upon. Of course he was.
A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in my throat, and I choked it back.“You have got to be kidding me.”“I assure you, my capacity for humor is at an all-time low,” Bartholomew replied dryly.
Sir Kaelen was cupping a hand to his mouth, clearly preparing for another shout. I decided to head him off.“Hey!” I yelled, my voice sounding thin and reedy after his. “We’re friendly! Mostly! We were looking for you!”The knight squinted up at us, his head tilted. “Looking for me? Who are you? A scruffy-looking woman and… is that a cat?”“He’s a warden of ancient magic, thank you very much!” I shouted back, feeling a ridiculous surge of defensiveness on Bartholomew’s behalf. “And I’m not scruffy, I’m… rustically attired!”
Bartholomew let out a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a purr. “Do try not to antagonize the man with the very large sword, Paige, you have not seen yourself lately.”“I am Sir Kaelen!” the knight yelled, as if we hadn’t already figured that out. “What business have you with me, and why do you occupy a forbidden spire on the very edge of the Blight?”
This was going to take forever. My neck was already getting sore from yelling downwards. I stood up, planting my hands on my hips. “Look, Sir Yells-a-Lot, it’s a long story involving a magical portal, a distinct lack of decent coffee, and this very particular cat. I needed to level up, and I found a poster offering a reward to find you.” I said, gesturing vaguely toward the man-in-a-can that sat below me.
There was a long pause from below. Sir Kaelen looked from me to the valley and back again. He seemed to be processing my distinctly un-Eldorian way of speaking.
Finally, he called back up, his voice losing some of its bluster and gaining a note of cautious intrigue. “The cat… did you say he was a Warden?”“That’s what’s on his business card!”“Very well!” Sir Kaelen declared, his decision made. “There is a path! It begins on the northern face of the spire! Make your way down! We have much to discuss!” He swung his helmet on, the polished metal obscuring his face, and his voice became slightly muffled. “And do be careful! The steps are treacherous!”
I turned back to Bartholomew, who was now meticulously cleaning the fur between his toes. “Well,” I said, cracking my stiff neck. “I guess we found our knight in shining armor.”Bartholomew looked up, a glimmer of his old detached amusement in his eyes. “Indeed. Let us hope his intellect shines as brightly as his pauldrons.”
I snorted, hoisting my worn leather pack higher on my shoulder. “Easy for you to say. You have a built-in grappling hook on each foot. I’m working with two left boots and a crippling fear of heights I didn’t know I had until five minutes ago.”
The ‘path’ Sir Kaelen had mentioned was less of a path and more of a series of suggestions carved into the sheer rock face of the spire. It spiraled downwards in a dizzying helix, a stone ribbon no wider than my shoulders, with nothing but a few thousand feet of very judgmental air between it and the valley floor. The wind, which had been a stout breeze at the top, redoubled its efforts, trying to peel me from the rock like a stubborn sticker.“Pray, do not dawdle,” Bartholomew called from about twenty feet below me, his voice barely carrying over the gale. He moved with an infuriating, liquid grace, his little gray form a picture of nonchalance against the terrifying backdrop. “The geological integrity of this edifice is, shall we say, suspect.”“You’re just a hairy ball of encouragement, you know that?” I muttered, pressing my back flat against the cold stone and shuffling my feet sideways. Each step sent a cascade of grit and pebbles skittering into the abyss. My life had become a series of OSHA violations strung together by bad decisions and questionable footwear.
It took us the better part of an hour, an eternity of muttered curses from me and stoic silence from Bartholomew, to finally reach the base of the spire. My legs felt like overcooked noodles, and my knuckles were scraped raw from gripping the rock. I stumbled the last few feet onto blessedly solid ground and promptly bent over, planting my hands on my knees and gasping for air.
Sir Kaelen stood waiting, his arms crossed over his gleaming breastplate. He had a small, well-tended campfire crackling nearby, and the scent of woodsmoke and pine was a welcome relief from the sharp, thin air of the heights. He’d removed his helmet, and I finally got a proper look at him. He was younger than his voice suggested, maybe late twenties, with a strong jaw dusted with stubble and dark, serious eyes. A scar cut a clean, white line through his left eyebrow. He was, objectively, a ten. Which, of course, only made what happened next that much more mortifying.
He watched me catch my breath, his expression unreadable. Then, a slow spark of recognition lit his eyes. His brow furrowed.“Have we met before?” he asked, his voice losing its formal knightly cadence and taking on a tone of genuine curiosity.I straightened up, wiping a smear of dust from my cheek. “I’m not from around here.”
He took a step closer, his gaze sharpening. “The wood. You berated a Grumble-Snout into fleeing and berated me for trying to come to your rescue.”
My blood ran cold. Oh no. Oh no. The memory hit me with the force of a physical blow. My face went from pale to crimson in record time. “Yeah, that was me.” I managed, my voice a squeak.
Bartholomew, who had been observing the exchange with the detached air of a tenured professor, let out a soft, dry cough that sounded suspiciously like a snicker.“I… I am so sorry,” I stammered, feeling my communications degree shrivel up and die inside me. “Look, in my defense, I was having a very bad day. I was wearing literal flannel pants, that critter was getting way too close, and you just assumed I was helpless and came stomping to the rescue.”
Sir Kaelen stared at me for a long moment, and then, to my utter astonishment, the corner of his mouth twitched. A deep, rumbling chuckle escaped him. “You accused me of low intelligence and told me not to pain myself by thinking too hard.”“I did say that,” I mumbled, wishing the ground would swallow me whole.“And I,” Bartholomew interjected smoothly, padding forward to sit primly at Kaelen’s feet, “baffled the both of you by breaking my silence.”
The knight’s laugh became a genuine, hearty sound. It eased the tension immediately. “So, the woman who berated me for trying to help and the talking cat who claims to be a Warden are one and the same party. Eldoria continues to surprise me.” He sobered, his gaze shifting from me to Bartholomew and back. “I am Sir Kaelen of the Silver Gryphons. And you are…?”“Paige Hawking. Unwilling tourist and professional complainer,” I said, offering a weak wave. “And this is Bartholomew. He’s the important one.”“A fact it took you an lamentably long time to ascertain,” the cat added.Kaelen nodded, accepting this bizarre reality with a grace I had to admire. “Well, Paige Hawking. You came seeking me. May I ask why? It is not often I receive visitors.”
Right. Business. I cleared my throat, trying to regain some semblance of composure.“Actually, it’s less of a social call and more of a retrieval mission.” I dug into my pack and pulled out a rolled-up piece of parchment, its edges frayed. I unfurled it. It was a missing person poster, or the Eldorian equivalent. A surprisingly accurate charcoal sketch of Kaelen’s face dominated the page, above a block of text.
I held it up for him to see. “There’s a bounty on your head. Or, well, not on your head. For your safe return, I mean. To the capital. Lord Valerius is offering… well, enough to buy a tavern and drink yourself into an early grave, with change to spare.”
Kaelen’s brief amusement vanished, replaced by a shadow as dark and sudden as a storm cloud. He didn’t even glance at the poster. His eyes were fixed on the distant, jagged mountains that lined the horizon, a grim line of teeth against the morning sky.“I am neither captured nor dead,” he said, his voice low and tight. “And I will not be returning to the capital.”My heart sank. So much for the easy route. “Why not? They clearly want you back, and the bounty is huge. You could be a hero. Parades, songs, the whole nine yards. Instead, you’re up here talking to cats and, apparently, waiting for total strangers to nearly fall to their deaths.”
He finally looked at me, and the weariness in his eyes was profound. It was a bone-deep exhaustion that had nothing to do with a lack of sleep. “My duty is not in the capital, Paige. Parades and songs do not stop the darkness from spreading. They are a balm for the fearful, not a sword against the shadow.”
He gestured around the desolate valley. “This valley was once verdant and green. My ancestors fought and died on these slopes. It is one of the last ancient places where the veil between worlds is thin. The Shadow Lord’s power grows, and from here, I can feel its pulse. I can track the movements of his thralls, listen to the whispers on the wind. To return to the capital would be to blind myself, to deafen myself to the true threat.” He then turned his full attention to the small gray cat at his feet. His voice dropped, filled with a desperate, resonant hope.“That is why your arrival is a miracle. I have been watching, waiting for a sign. The old texts spoke of the Wardens—guardians of the keys, masters of the forgotten magic that holds this world together. Magic the Shadow Lord now seeks to corrupt and devour. I did not come here to hide. I came here to do what others would not, to find the tools to fight him. A quest that has, until now, failed.” He knelt, his shining armor groaning, so he was as close to eye-level with Bartholomew as possible. “Warden. I need your help. This world needs your help.”
There was a long, heavy silence, broken only by the crackle of the fire. I looked from the desperate, shining knight to my furry, perpetually unimpressed companion. My simple bounty hunt had just gone from ‘find the guy, get the cash’ to ‘help the guy save the world.’ I was so, so out of my depth.
Bartholomew blinked his large, yellow eyes slowly. He extended a single paw and began, with immense concentration, to wash his face. After a moment that stretched into an eternity, he paused, his whiskers twitching.“It would appear, Mistress Paige,” he said, his voice a low, rumbling purr of resignation, “that our itinerary has been amended.”
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