Legacy's Edge

The sound of cascading and running water filled the air with a pleasant sound. It seemed more pronounced in the near-enveloping darkness of the night. Alaric led the others through the forest, his senses heightened. Each step was taken with deliberate care and caution, ensuring that not a leaf crackled, nor a branch snapped underfoot to betray their presence to the sentries on the wall two hundred yards away. He also did not want to trip over undergrowth.

They were walking beside a fast-moving stream, one Alaric knew well. As a child, he’d played in it on hot days. The stream wound down an incline, tumbling over a series of rocks and into pools, creating mini waterfalls, before ultimately emptying into the moat that ringed the castle.

Following behind him in a line as he weaved his way around the trees, his Shadow Guard moved almost as extensions of the night itself. Thorne and Jasper each carried knotted coils of rope over their shoulders. Close on their heels, Ezran and Kiera glided through the underbrush, their movements as silent as the whispers of the wind through the trees. Rikka was bringing up the rear. When he occasionally turned to look to make sure they were all still with him, she was nearly invisible in the darkness. She seemed to move through the forest with ease the others, including Jasper, could not match.

They were working their way through the dense forest that lay off the castle’s back side and bordered the moat. The forest was ancient beyond conception. The trees were nearly all hardwoods, their trunks massive and straight as if reaching for the stars.

Alaric’s grandfather had once told him that elves, the chosen and first worshippers of Eldanar, had once lived here amongst the trees. Unlike humans, they had called the forest their home. Alaric had trouble imagining how one would live exposed to the elements without a roof over their head. In winter, that would have been exceptionally hard. Still, the stories said the elves were magical beings, so who knew.

It was they who had supposedly first introduced humans to their god. Extinct and now gone from the world, elves were more legend and myth than anything else, in Alaric’s mind. But now, as he stepped around the thick trunk of a tree that was at least ten feet around and ancient beyond belief, he found himself wondering if the stories had a bit of truth to them. Had these trees borne witness to the first race?

The elves had reputedly been masters of the forests. The old tales told of them being veritable wraiths amongst the trees. If they did not want you to find them, you would not. And now, they had vanished into the mists of time. That was, if they ever existed in the first place.

Here, amidst the trees, it was Alaric and his companions who had become the phantoms, the forest wraiths, seeming to flit between reality and shadow. With every carefully measured step, they maintained a harmonious balance with their surroundings, mindful of the dry twigs and rustling foliage that threatened to unmask their silent procession.

In the embrace of near-total darkness, the world around Alaric was reduced to shades and hints of shapes. The moon and stars were hidden behind a cloak of dense cloud cover. Yet his steps were sure, guided by the murmuring stream a few feet to his left—a constant companion in this near-opaque world. When he maneuvered around another ancient tree, its rough bark seemingly filled with the wisdom of centuries, an abrupt change in the landscape unfolded before him.

The forest opened to a wide clearing. Alaric remembered this spot and almost sighed with relief at finally having found it. Bald rock covered the ground, over which lay a carpet of fallen leaves. A large outcropping of rock, the size of a small house, rose from the ground in the center of the clearing. The top was almost flat, as if a statue had once stood there and the rock was the pedestal.

“This is it,” Alaric announced, his voice barely more than a breath on the breeze. He moved into the clearing and up to the outcropping. He reached out to touch the rock face, hesitating a moment, then placed his palm against it. The granite was cold against his skin, colder than the frigid air itself.

Looking over the rock before him, Alaric scanned it, squinting, searching. His eyes, although accustomed to the dark, could not discern the details he so desperately sought. Without the option of illuminating their surroundings with the unlit torch Kiera was carrying, for fear of drawing unwanted attention from the sentries, Alaric resorted to his sense of touch, fingers just above the ground, gliding over the stone’s smooth surface in search of a small notch—a legacy from the generations before him.

Yet the more he searched, the more the notch eluded him. He moved completely around the rock, feeling for it, and found nothing. He did a second circuit, bending low and running his hand along the smoothed face, knowing it had to be there… somewhere.

The others, silent, waited and watched.

Feeling frustration tinged with unease, Alaric took a step back, gaze piercing into the darkness, willing the rock to yield its secrets before him. It didn’t.

Memories echoed in his mind, of a time long past when his father and grandfather had stood here with him, pointing out this very rock as an important guidepost, the secret way into their ancestral home. The lesson had been clear, the location unmistakable, and yet, so many years later, the notch eluded him.

So, where was it? It should be right before him, about a foot from the ground. He reached down and once more felt for it, moving completely around the monolith.

Nothing.

The absence of the notch was an enigma, stirring a whirlpool of emotions and questions. Had the landscape changed so much since he’d been here last? Had the years cloaked his memory? Or had exposure and the elements simply worn the notch away? The rock face stood mute in reply, indifferent to his scrutiny, to his questions.

Under the cloak of night, with only the faint whispers of the forest and the occasional distant call of a nocturnal creature, Alaric delved deep into his reservoir of memories, trying to stitch together the fragments from that pivotal day when his father and grandfather had brought him here, to show him the way.

It was his thirteenth birthday, a day marked by both personal transformation and the solemn rituals of ascension, becoming a man in the eyes of the community. After the ceremonies, under the watchful eyes of Eldanar’s priests, he had been bestowed the family ring, what he wore now—a symbol of his newfound status and responsibilities as a viscount of the realm and Dekar’s heir in waiting.

The ring suddenly pulsed with an inner heat that almost made him jump.

“What are we looking for?” Thorne’s whispered inquiry cut through the night.

Alaric raised a hand as a silent command for patience, his mind racing. The ring’s warmth surged, its heat intensifying as if in response to the secrets that lay hidden before them and his thoughts on the past.

The memories of his Ascension Day came back to him. It had been a day that began and ended with solemn supplications, prayer, and devotion to Eldanar. Alaric had a sudden flash of his grandfather. He remembered the man kneeling in reverence before this very rock, as if the ground it stood on was sacred, holy… as if the elves themselves had once worshipped here.

Alaric let go a breath and moved to the spot where he thought his grandfather had knelt. He took a knee, mirroring the posture of humble supplication he once observed and been taught. Around him, the forest seemed to hold its breath in anticipation. As he bowed his head and closed his eyes, the ring’s heat increased to an almost unbearable intensity. Alaric’s heart began beating faster.

“Eldanar, god of my father and forefathers, light in the darkness, steer me this day, show me the true way forward,” he whispered into the darkness, his voice a mere thread of sound. “Guide us in ridding my ancestral home of taint and bathe us in your radiance this night.”

His words, fervent and sincere, seemed to resonate with the world around him, a plea for guidance in the shadowed thicket of uncertainty. The heat of the ring reached a fevered pitch, burning almost unbearably, to the point where he felt like removing it. Alaric dared not do that.

He heard the others shift, disturbing the leaves that covered the stone, as if suddenly uncomfortable. Alaric opened his eyes and blinked. The ring had begun glowing softly with an otherworldly luminescence that bathed his hand in a ghostly white light.

Rikka stepped forward. “You have been blessed this night, for Eldanar has answered,” she whispered, awe coloring her tone. She placed her hand on his shoulder and pointed ahead at the rock, slightly to his right and a foot above the ground. “You have been shown the way.”

A previously unseen indent on the rock outcropping had revealed itself. That too was glowing in the same pale light as his hand. His heart pounded in his chest with a mixture of adrenaline, reverence, and awe. Drawn as if by a force beyond his own will, he extended his hand and ring toward the glowing indent. The moment the ring touched the spot, there was a soft click. A heartbeat later, the night was punctured by the muffled sound of mechanisms within the rock outcropping, long dormant, springing to life. It was followed by a heavy, resonant clunk that vibrated through the ground beneath their feet.

The seam of a small doorway revealed itself, then all at once, the glow from the ring and Alaric’s hand dissipated, taking with it the mild glowing light from the indent on the rock, leaving them back in darkness.

“That,” Jasper said, “was impressive.” His voice was barely above a whisper, yet it carried through the sudden silence with the weight of shared astonishment.

“A miracle, my lord,” Thorne breathed.

“Holy magic,” Kiera said.

“Old magic,” Rikka said.

Ezran did not speak.

Alaric stood and stooped down to place his hands against the cold, unyielding surface of the stone, then pushed where the outline of the door was located. At first, the stone resisted him, refusing to give. Alaric’s determination did not waver; his push became a concerted effort, muscles straining powerfully as he increased the force against the door.

Yet it did not budge. Alaric pushed harder, with more force, and then, almost imperceptibly at first, there was movement—a slight yielding that escalated into a low, grating sound of protest from hinges hidden from view for generations. The sound, discordant—metal grinding against metal and stone—seemed almost sacrilegious amidst the night’s silence. Alaric, gritting his teeth, pushed against the weight of history and disuse, a resistance that tested both his physical strength and resolve.

The sudden rush of cold, stale air that burst forth from the newly opened passage was like the exhalation of the depths itself—a breath held in for far too long, laden with secrets and the dust and musk of ages. The darkness that spilled out from the opening was a dense entity, an invitation and a challenge all at once.

Thorne joined Alaric, throwing his shoulder into it. Together, grunting, they pushed against the stone door, their combined strength gradually overcoming the resistance until the pathway was opened wide enough to grant passage. They stepped back, their chests heaving from the effort. The doorway now stood ajar, an invitation into the depths of the world, a gateway to mysteries long hidden from view.

“Do you think they heard anything?” Alaric asked, glancing in the direction of the wall, which wasn’t that far off. He could see nothing through the trees and darkness, not even the light of a torch or lantern. He could not hear the sound of an alarm bell either.

“I doubt it,” Ezran said quietly. “The forest about us will have muffled the sound. At least, it should, and it wasn’t all that loud to begin with. It only seemed so.”

“Things always seem louder at night when you are trying to be stealthy,” Kiera said.

Alaric gave a nod then signaled Kiera, the bearer of their torch, gesturing toward the opening. She moved forward and, ducking her head, stepped into the darkness of the tunnel, her silhouette merging with the shadows as she approached the threshold of the unknown, and knelt. There was a rough scraping sound, a spark of light, hidden by her body, momentarily illuminating her frame within the bolt-hole’s entrance.

Another scrape, then a strong hissing as light flared and the torch lit, revealing a tunnel that led downward at a steep angle into the ground. The tunnel beckoned them with its ancient, unspoken secrets. It was a path not taken by many, a passage through time as much as space.

Alaric stepped over the threshold and past her as she stood holding the torch up to see the way ahead. The tunnel was reminiscent of the mines he’d seen in the holy land, with its rough-hewn walls and the claustrophobic closeness of its ceiling. The air was thick with the scent of dampness and decay, a musty reminder of the tunnel’s age and disuse.

Off in the distance, the dripping of water played a haunting melody that echoed off the stone walls. This sound, intertwined with the faint rustling of their movements, created an echo. Alaric motioned the others inside. They brushed past him.

Behind the door, he spotted a thick, rusted iron handle. With the last of their party safely within the secret passageway, the urgency of sealing their entrance from the outside world became Alaric’s immediate focus. He gripped the handle firmly. With the hinges loosened, the door’s closure was much easier. It was marked by a grating squeal, echoing more loudly through the tunnel’s confines before settling with a definitive thunk and a reassuring, heavy click of the lock. They were now isolated from the world above, enveloped in the tunnel’s ancient and cold embrace, with the hissing and spitting torch their only light.

The air within was thick with the dust of ages and the scent of neglect and abandonment. Taking the torch from Kiera, Alaric assumed his role as leader, guiding his companions deeper into the tunnel. Their footsteps, amplified by the narrow confines of the walls, created a rhythmic and echoing cadence.

The angled tunnel, though steep, was not an impossible grade, the hissing torch illuminating the way ahead. Pickaxe and chisel marks from those who had dug the tunnel were plain. In places along the ceiling, there were also dark soot and scorch marks, from when the rock had been intentionally heated before being quenched with cold water. Such a practice caused the rock to break and crack, making tunneling easier. Alaric also spotted a couple ventilation shafts and niches for tools. He had seen such things before in mines.

After five hundred yards, the path forked, offering them a choice between veils of darkness, one to the left and the other to the right. Alaric knew the two passages led to different parts of the castle. The one he wanted led to the bottom levels, where they were unlikely to find anyone. The other traveled to the kitchens. Alaric did not want to go there, for the possibility of encountering someone was high. He took the right fork. His father and grandfather had made a point of showing him both.

The tunnel’s downward grade soon gave way to a level path and, after a short distance, ended at a narrow stone staircase leading upward. He turned to the others and held a finger up. They nodded and froze.

At the bottom of the staircase, Alaric listened, straining his ears. He heard nothing coming from above. Satisfied, he motioned for the others to follow and began climbing the steps. There were more than two dozen. The staircase terminated at a heavy wooden trapdoor, an unassuming barrier between them and the world above.

From the other side, it was designed to look like a simple drainage grate. Above the wood, there were iron grates. Alaric knew the trapdoor opened into a storeroom, one that had been disused and seemingly forgotten the last time he’d been home. That was intentional.

The iron ring nailed into the door’s underside was cold and heavy in Alaric’s grasp. He handed the torch to Kiera. The flickering light cast ominous shadows on the walls, the soft hiss of the flame punctuating the silence.

With a firm grip on the ring, Alaric pushed upward, the trapdoor’s hinges protesting with a painful creak that seemed loud in the stillness. The sound could easily betray their presence. Despite its initial resistance, the door yielded surprisingly easily, rapidly swinging open.

Alaric climbed up, cautious and careful, his senses heightened as he scanned the storage room—a dimly remembered location from his childhood explorations. The room was small and the door to it, as expected, closed.

As Kiera climbed out next, the torch lighting the room, Alaric listened intently for any sign of movement or hint of alarm beyond the door. The absence of sound was a tentative assurance, yet the tension of potential discovery lingered like a specter.

Drawing his sword with a soft rasp of steel, he approached the door leading out of the storage room as the others emerged from the trapdoor, one after another. Rikka was the last to join them, her presence completing their number.

Alaric pressed his ear against the cold wood of the door, seeking any whisper—any breath of danger that might lurk beyond. The silence that greeted him was a cautious ally and, he thought, encouraging.

“We must move quickly,” he said, turning to the others. “It will be light soon.”

Ezran had one of his throwing daggers in hand, while Thorne had drawn his sword, a long, narrow, and lethal blade. Kiera and Jasper, too, had armed themselves with daggers, their expressions set in determination. Their swords remained sheathed. Only Rikka was unarmed, though Alaric could not say she was defenseless.

With a cautious push and slight squeaking, Alaric opened the door, the darkness of the hallway swallowing them as they stepped out from the relative safety of the storage room. The under levels of the castle lay in oppressive silence, dark and foreboding. This was a different realm, one of secrets and shadows, where every sound became magnified and the silence was heavy with anticipation. Kiera joined him with the torch, providing some illumination that pushed back against the inky darkness.

Turning right, Alaric led his group down the hallway, their footsteps echoing softly, their presence a ghostly intrusion in the night. The long corridor was flanked on either side by doors, each of which was closed, holding its own secrets. At the end of the corridor, a spiraling staircase wound its way up into the heart of the keep and the upper levels. Only one door stood open, and that was just before the stairs. It led to the castle’s dungeon, a dismal place of suffering, and one he avoided as a child. It was where the criminals were kept.

He moved down the hallway, pausing before the open door and looking in, searching for a threat. He was greeted with a sight of despair and suffering. The dim light from a solitary lantern hanging from the ceiling threw elongated shadows across the floor, barely illuminating the three large iron cages that lined the wall. Each was filled with people. Inside the room on the left and right were two more doors, both of which were closed. Alaric did not recall where those led but supposed it was to additional cages and holding pens for prisoners.

As Alaric, with Kiera at his side, stepped closer and into the room, the figures within the cells began to stir as if coming to life, their movements slow and laden with the weight of their captivity as they sat up or pulled themselves with some effort to their feet. Eyes, sockets hollow and sunken from suffering and hunger, looked out through the bars, their gazes meeting Alaric’s with a mixture of hope and fear.

The stench that wafted from the cells was overwhelming, a noxious blend of despair, neglect, and human misery. The prisoners, their bodies emaciated and dirt-encrusted, clothed in rags, were barely recognizable as human. Their condition spoke of prolonged suffering and neglect.

In short, Alaric was certain, Masterson’s work.

Alaric moved closer, his heart heavy with the sight before him. These were not just prisoners; they were his subjects, his people. He was horrified.

How had it become this bad?

“Hamlin?” Alaric asked, recognizing one of the men, who rose and stepped up to the cage door. At least he thought he recognized him. The figure before him looked like half the man Alaric had known. “Arms Master Hamlin? Is that you?”

“Alaric?” Hamlin’s recognition of Alaric in the dim light of the dungeon was a moment fraught with emotion, the man’s disbelief and desperation clear. The arms master, once a robust figure of towering strength, experience, and discipline—a force to be reckoned with—was now a shadow of his former self. He had been one of Alaric’s first tutors and a man he greatly respected, one who had achieved his position through hard service and work.

The transformation of the man before him spoke of the ordeal he and the others had endured, and also the passage of ten years. His once dark beard had turned white, and the dirt and grime that now marred his visage could not hide the deep age lines.

While the rest of the prisoners shrank away from the sudden intrusion of light and Alaric’s party, Hamlin’s approach to the cage door, his hands gripping the bars, told of his enduring spirit. “Is that you, my boy? By Eldanar, my eyes must be deceiving me. This cannot be! I must be dreaming.”

“It is I, and you are not dreaming,” Alaric affirmed, his voice steady, though his heart ached at the sight of his once great mentor reduced to such dire straits. The dungeon held not just Hamlin, but others known to him, faces from the past, each bearing marks of their captivity, though he could not recall many of their names—members of the castle staff, servants, guards—all now united in their suffering.

“Masterson,” Hamlin said, confirming Alaric’s suspicion, his voice a raspy whisper of its former command. “The bastard took over.”

“I’m here to fix that and make the bastard pay,” Alaric stated, a declaration that carried weight and purpose.

“Your mother, she hired him to run the guard, after your father passed.” Hamlin glanced down at the ground. “He brought in men I did not like. I—I was helpless to… stop it…” The old man’s shoulders shook. A sob escaped him. “I should have stood up to him, challenged him to a duel. I regret that I did not.”

Alaric patted the man’s arm through the bars. “Do you know where they are holding my mother? Do you know where we can find her?”

“We’ve been down here an awful long time, but I’d guess her suite, upstairs in the keep,” Hamlin said. “She’s not in the dungeon. We’d have known. Our jailor, Thensus, would have said something. He would have bragged about it.”

“That’s true,” another man said as he moved up next to Hamlin. Alaric did not know him.

“We need to get moving,” Thorne said, “before the sun comes up, my lord. Our men should be across the moat and at the base of the wall by now. They’re waiting for us, relying upon us to be there.”

Alaric gave a nod. He took a step back and turned away.

“Don’t leave us here,” someone fairly yelled from behind Hamlin. “Please! Don’t leave us.”

“Quiet,” Rikka hissed angrily. “Don’t give us away or we all die.”

“I won’t leave you.” Alaric turned back toward the cages and ran his gaze over those confined. Recognizing he was a friend and not one of their captors, several had overcome their initial trepidation and had stepped up eagerly to the bars. “I’ve brought the Iron Vanguard home with me. They’re outside the castle and waiting for us. We’re going to let them in and retake what is ours.”

“Free us,” Hamlin said, a fierce light igniting in his gaze. “We can fight, my lord, with bare hands if needed. Give us that chance!”

“I—” Alaric’s words were cut short by the sudden, jarring sound of a door to the left of the entrance being thrown open. He whirled. A burly figure emerged from the door, his stance unsteady, movements sluggish, betraying what was clearly an inebriated state. His bleary and red eyes struggled to focus as he looked around, squinting as he tried to make sense of the scene before him, of those standing by the nearest cages, people he did not know, people who were armed.

The confusion etched on his face morphed into suspicion as he confronted the intruders who had barged into his domain, his words slurred and disjointed. “Who is you? Whash’s going on here?”

The dungeon’s stagnant and foul air was suddenly split by a swift, deadly motion—a dagger flying with lethal precision from Ezran’s extended hand. It found its mark in the guard’s chest with a meaty thump, the impact halting his words. His shock was a frozen mask as he staggered backward and into the room from which he had just stumbled. It was sparsely furnished, a cot and table with a large decanter barely visible in the dim light of the lantern. His collapse onto the cot inside was a cacophony of chaos, a crash as it gave way under his bulk, sending splinters and echoes flying outward.

Ezran was there before Alaric could even move. He jerked the throwing dagger out of the guard’s chest as the man made to cry out. Ezran grabbed the man’s hair in a firm hold and sawed the serrated edge across his throat. The cry ended in a sickening gurgle. Ezran let go the hair and stood up as the man choked on his own blood and expired.

“That,” Hamlin said, “was Thensus, our guard. He was a real bastard of a man. I am glad he’s dead. Thank you for that kindness.”

There was a murmur of agreement from the others in the cages.

“Kiera,” Alaric said, hoping the element of surprise had not been lost. He pointed at the door to the cage holding Hamlin. “Find the keys, free them. The armory should be on the next floor up. Hamlin can show you. Give them weapons and a chance to reclaim their honor, to help retake the castle.”

“We won’t fail you, my lord,” Hamlin said fervently as the others in the cages grumbled their deep agreement.

“As you command.” Kiera moved into the room with Thensus’s body as Ezran stepped out, clearly intent on searching.

Alaric turned away and retraced his steps into the outer hallway, moving for the stairs that led upward. The spiral staircase loomed before him. He started up, taking the steps rapidly, two at a time. Bloody dagger in hand, Ezran hustled up behind. Thorne and Jasper followed. Rikka was a few steps after. Alaric had one thing on his mind: getting to the wall, and quickly. Once his men were over, he’d find Masterson and kill him.