“A sword against a Cinderlord...” she muttered, lips curling faintly, “is like bringing a fucking toothpick." A sudden, dry smile cracked her face. “But I did bring backup!" She jerked her chin toward the hulking silhouette of the scorpion crouched further up the rise. Clarence, the ugly bastard.

“Didn’t misplace it,” she said after a beat, eyes flicking to the ground rather than him. “Had to make a choice. I was bleeding out, needed to get to a healer. Garrod’s got my sword,” she said finally, flat as slate. His name, spoken like a curse. Her jaw worked, a muscle twitching. Half a truth. The other half, Garrod’s fiend, the thief girl, and the betrayal, she left unspoken.

Daniyah took the hilt anyway, the leather warm from his grip. She tested the weight, gave it a swing. The balance was wrong because it was not her blade. And much heavier than she preferred. But it would do. It had to. "If I thought you soft, you wouldn’t be here. You’d still be frying bacon somewhere safe and boring...”

One shambler, slower than the rest, lurched toward her, spine twisted, mouth open with a string of something black drooling from its teeth. She met it with a brutal thrust through the throat. The body sagged against the steel, breath hissing out like a punctured wineskin before she yanked the blade free. Another came crawling, fingers clawing at the stones. She brought her boot down, hard, and cracked its skull like an overripe melon.

She looked over at Tusk, who stood in the ruin of his handiwork. The bastard looked alive. More alive than she’d ever seen him look in days. He looked good like that, brutal, certain, every inch the monster-slayer he was. And that was exactly the problem. Daniyah had already learned what happened when she got tangled up with another Cazadore.

Daniyah snorted, stepping over a smoking ribcage and flicking gore from her borrowed blade. “Well,” she said, echoing his tone. “Would you look at that." The corner of her mouth twitched upward. "Still got both your arms attached. And your head, too. Impressive.”

“Guess that makes us even."
 
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Tusk glanced at the Scorpio, then back again. 'Aye,' he agreed, taking another head for his collection. The last, it seemed. 'Good thing Cinderlords don't operate in packs. Otherwise we'd be well and truly fucked!' He laughed mirthlessly, using the pads of his thumb and fingers to free his blade of gore, before returning it to its scabbard.

'This business with Garrod... Went poorly, I take it?'

If Daniyah wished to vent, now was the time. A Soulkeeper's duties didn't just involve the dead, and anger poisoned a person like nobodies business. Future, present and past. 'I've lived an exciting life. So much so that a bit of boredom won't do me in,' he said, smiling. In this, at least, he meant it. Turning to the devastation they had wrought, the Cazadore nodded, certain no more surprises waited for them in the dark. Not this close to the surface, anyhow.

"Still got both your arms attached. And your head, too. Impressive.”

'Wouldn't get very far without it,' he replied, gruff as the boulder he sometimes impersonated. Glancing at Daniyah, the orkin reached out to lay a hand gently upon her arm. 'Forget even. Let's go get some grub down us, eh! I'm famished!'
 
At his question, something flickered across her face. “Poorly, that’s the polite version,” She crouched to retrieve a bolt from the floor, sliding it back into her quiver, buying herself a few heartbeats. “We got the Widow. Then it all went to hell." Her gaze drifted to the blackened corpses, easier to look at than him. "Thieves, bad timing, worse company.” She'd walked away with scars and a grudge. Fair trade. Not.

When he clapped a hand to her arm, she met his eyes. She straightened, brushed a streak of soot from her sleeve, and forced a smirk that didn’t reach her eyes. “Yeah. Grub sounds good. Beats chewing on old bones.” Daniyah toed a half-burnt skull out of the way and walked over to the campfire.

~

Daniyah shoved the last of her hard bread into her mouth, licking grease from her fingers. She stood, stretching the stiffness from her shoulders. She checked Clarence, making sure the Scorpio was loaded and ready, the bolt gleaming faintly in the flickering light, its head filled with Icebite. Her gaze swept the dark tunnel that led deeper, past the scorched carcasses and shattered stone. The walls of the tunnel before them swallowed the light. A smell of ash and scorched bone clung to the air.
The distant thunder of movement too heavy to be human vibrated within the stone, a warning from what was waiting in the depths below.

"You ready to go down?"
 
He could see there was more to the story than she was letting on. 'You can tell me all about it when we collect the bounty,' he said, weaving his words into a suggestion. Far more palatable that way. Unlike old bones, which really did make for piss-poor eating.

---
​
Standing at the precipice, Tusk stared into the nothingness below, certain he could see a light at the bottom. 'I am.' Pulling away from vertigo's clutches, the Cazadore turned to regard the Wraithbinder, lips drawn back in what might have been a smile. Or a sneer. 'Not the first time I've heard those words from your lips,' he teased, brushing past Daniyah on his way to the stairs. 'You could at least try not to smirk when saying them.'

Dry heat, the taste of ashes in his mouth. This was going to be a struggle, and it would only get worse the deeper they ventured. But someone had to draw the Cinderlord out. Daniyah would likely shoot him if he suggested sending Oscar, Tusk knew. The cynic in him wondered if that wouldn't be a mercy.

At least she managed to source the Icebite, he thought to himself, frost adhering to the edges of his blade, freezing the leather of his gauntlets so that they cracked and creaked every time he tried to wriggle some feeling back into his fingers.

At least now he could go toe-to-toe with the monster instead of dying on the spot. Though, the possibility remained.

'When we find this thing, hang back. I'll try to lead it a merry dance out in the open. Plenty of clear sightlines to feather the fucker from.' Failing that, they would fall back to the upper levels, blow the ground out from under it. And failing that...

I'll be dead, and it'll be Daniyah's problem thereon. The thought didn't exactly make him happy.
 
'You can tell me all about it when we collect the bounty,'
“No,” she said flatly, voice echoing through the dark. Some things are better left buried. “I’ve said all I’ll ever say about that.”

She didn’t look at him when she spoke, just kept her eyes on the descent ahead, boots crunching on dust that might once have been bone.

'Not the first time I've heard those words from your lips, you could at least try not to smirk when saying them.'
Daniyah let a short, derisive laugh escape her. “Sounds like you enjoy hearing me say it.” She stepped aside to let him pass, watching the hulking orkin descend first into the dark. The faint shimmer of frost along his blade caught what little light there was.

The floor sloped sharply, loose rubble crunching underfoot. The deeper they went, the colder it got, but the drafts were hot and smelled of old fire. Every step made the hairs on her neck rise, reminded her that something enormous, alive with wrath and flame, waited below. The air grew heavier as she followed, the heat rising from the abyss below mixing with the chill of the mountain.

The descent opened into a chasm vast enough to swallow cathedrals. Pillars the width of towers reached up into blackness, their faces carved with half-melted reliefs of forgotten mountain kings and queens. All now weeping rivers of soot. The air shimmered with heat, turning distance into a fevered mirage. Daniyah felt the pressure of it, the weight of ages and a whole mountain pressing down on her.

It was colossal. The Cinderlord's outline barely held shape. A thing of living flame and blackened bone, the suggestion of wings unfurling and collapsing into smoke. Chains hung from its limbs, glowing dull red, each one had once been fused into the rock by ancient sigils. Once these symbols held power, now they were nothing but cracked glass. When the Cinderlord moved, the ground shuddered. When it breathed, molten puffs rolled outward in waves that set the air trembling.

Daniyah raised her crossbow on instinct, though the absurdity of it hit her almost instantly. What was a bolt against a walking mountain of fire? The steel would melt before it touched hide... The Cinderlord’s head turned toward them. Two eyes, white-hot and hollow, opened in the dark.

“Don’t move, Tusk” she whispered, though it was useless.

It had already seen them.
 
The Cinderlord was a big bastard, that he could not deny. Infernal eyes glowered down at the pair. Smoke leaked through cracks in the creature's charred skin. Unnatural flames danced within its closed maw, hungry to consume, to devour earth and stone and flesh in equal measure. Tusk saw the remnants of shackles long since rendered useless. Blackened chain. A collar.

Whoever had bound it to this place had tried, and tried hard.

'Bigger than I remember.' Breaking the uneasy silence, Tusk ignored the terrified screams of his hindbrain, the sword in his hand wavering and righting as he weighed the odds and angles. Weighed them again. The skeletal remains of a dead civilisation surrounded them on all sides, offering refuge, and worse.

Thinking, fumbling for an approach that wouldn't get them both killed, the orkin barely had time to form a decision before the Cinderlord moved. Ponderously, at first. Each step made the ground beneath Tusk's boots shake and quiver; every heated breath stole the air from his lungs. Daniyah told him not to move. Sounded like a dumb fuck thing to do. Tusk told her as much.

'Move!' Hooking the Wraithbinder's pauldron, the Cazadore half-pulled, half-shoved his companion towards the nearest cover - a great stone pillar, scorched and scarred, that extended up into the darkness above. 'Disappear! I'll keep the fucker busy!'

The whole world rumbled in answer. Chains rattled. The Cinderlord roared as it fell upon them, so loud as to render Tusk deaf.

He knew what was coming, even before the chain came down to smash the place they'd previously been stood in. Impact jarred his legs, and he stumbled, tucking into a forward roll as the chain whipped sideways to shatter a stone façade that had once borne a face.

Momentum carried the orkin to his feet. Turning, he grabbed Daniyah beneath her arm, hauled her up, away.

'Like I was saying,' he huffed, letting her go, 'find a place to hide. Shoot, scoot, shoot! And whatever you do... Don't. Stand. Still!' An almighty roar interrupted them once more, and Tusk pivoted, throwing himself behind the pillar as the Cinderlord struck.

Embers fell like snowflakes around them, lackadaisical, winking out as they settled upon steel and iron.

'Good hunting!' Tusk called out, a wry smile betraying him. 'And for the love of the Eight, don't miss!'
 

Daniyah’s teeth ground together as she was shoved behind the pillar. The Cinderlord reared, its silhouette a moving eclipse of flame and fury, its molten eyes scanning for movement. Each step sent rivers of sparks and flames, spilling like blood. The moutain itself seemed to groan, stone blackening further with every breath the thing took. “I never fucking miss.” she hissed between her teeth. She darted sideways, boots crunching through coal and brittle bone.

Her fingers brushed the air, twisting it, and the shadows clung to her like smoke. The pillar melted around her, melted her, and she stepped into the shroud, into the space between light and stone. One heartbeat later, she was truly gone, nothing but a flicker of shadows where she had been.

The pale hunter exhaled, the taste of soot sharp on her tongue. She followed the currents of shadow, letting them pull her along the cracks and debris, the darkness masking her steps. She phased in and out of visibility, stepping behind a scorched pillar, then over a fallen arch.

She knelt behind a half-collapsed and rusted crane as she fitted an Icebite bolt to her bow. Frost bloomed along the metal, the cold light almost holy in the infernal glow. She aimed for the joint where chain met muscle, where the Cinderlord’s blackened flesh looked most brittle. Her hands, steady despite the initial fear, spanned the lever. The mechanism creaked and snapped, and the bolt flew.

It struck true. The moment ice met molten sinew, the creature bellowed. Steam hissed, curling into ghostly tendrils that slithered over its scarred hide. Fissures spider-webbed across its shoulders, molten ooze tightened and cracked with violent pops, a chain-link snapping like bone. The Cinderlord recoiled, claws scrabbling at the stone floor, fire bursting from its throat in waves that flared red.

The Wraithbinder melted black into the shroud, shadows folding around her like a blanket. The world blurred and receded; she became nothing, a whisper along the blackened catwalks above the inferno. Ash and embers drifted past her nose, the scent of scorched tendon and sulfur burning in her chest.

At the next pillar, she stopped, felt for the lever by muscle memory. Spanning the crossbow was a ritual now. Another bolt covered in Icebite slid home; cold hissed along its shaft, a bloom of frosting the bolthead as if the thing winter itself exhaled into the metal. A click, a taut note, ready.

She peered through the smoke. The Cinderlord staggered, chains clattering, blind with fire and fury, baiting for any shape that dared, Tusk. Daniyah breathed slow, lined the sight over the old furnace and let the second bolt fly. It found a seam where neck met shoulder; the impact sent a spray of steam and burning slag into the air.
 
Tusk felt his teeth rattle with every lumbering step the Cinderlord took. Smoke and flame filled his vision, stinging his eyes, blinding him to the sweep of sundered chains. Instinct tempered with experience kept him alive for the first few minutes. The rest he considered a bonus.

Running as fast as his limbs would allow, the Cazadore ducked behind yet another pillar, narrowly avoiding being cut in half as the Cinderlord caught up to him. Scalding, its breath engulfed the stone he sheltered behind, flames coiling like barbed tongues to flense the flesh from his bones. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Tusk threw himself headlong into another sprint, lungs heaving.

He did not fear the reaper; the two of them had shaken hands on several occasions. But to perish and leave Daniyah alone to face the Cinderlord? That he could not allow.

'Fuckin' thing... Come and get me!'

Rearing up, the monster leapt, cutting him off from cover. Chains cracked like whips. That's better! Tusk grinned, ducking, the weight of mail and quilted cloth bearing him down into a slide as the monster's shackles collided mid-air to tremendous clangour. Sparks flew. A bolt hurtled from the black to find an exposed joint. Progress. Not enough.

Bouncing to his feet, the old Cazadore sped up, shroudlight leaking from rents in his flesh. Power bleeding through. It made of him an apparition, a figment of someone else's imagination.

The blade in his hand, anointed with oils, and meticulously cared for, was very much real. Sharp as a hawk's talon, it sliced through the Cinderlord's mantle to find that which lurked beneath. The meat and material that held the inferno together. The Icebite did its job, kept his weapon intact long enough for him to lead it through and strike again, this time at the monster's arm and hands.

The heat overcame him sooner than he expected. Withdrawing, Tusk took off running, his eyes scanning the heights and alcoves for signs of a companion he didn't hope to see. 'Cause if he could find her, so could the Cinderlord.
 
She perched on a broken girder that arced over the wrecked gantry, half a body-length above the Cinderlord's head. From there the whole rotten scaffoldwork lay bare: the corroded anchors, the hairline fractures in the iron, the one span already bowed like a tired man’s back. Up in the ribs of the foundry heat thinned into a glare and shadow could still hide a body. She could see Tusk, a moving dark chunk against the orange belly of the beast. Her hands worked the lever, the crossbow a whisper against the roar of fire.

'You ever seen what happens when a Cinderlord falls from a great height?'

... And she could see the gantry, the rotten anchors, the weak structual point they needed.

From a pouch she pulled a pinch of phosphor. Alchemy that spat a single bright spit of white light when struck. She let the first spark spit up like a trapped star. It winked once, guttered. Here I am, between the geysers of smoke. Daniyah pointed, steady cut of her hand: there.

"No heroics." words uttered almost like a prayer.

She moved. Shadow to shadow, silent as a sigh, over the black ribs of the old strucutre. The shroud hugged her; she was a stain on the iron, not a woman.


The Cinderlord felt.

Not as men do, not as flesh does, but in the slow, aching pulse of ancient wrath. Each breath bled through cracks in a body made from ruin. Its rage was centuries old and it's head filled with hungry molten thoughts. The air trembled as it drew breath, and the old foundry lit up like the forge was rekindled.

The Cazadore burned bright against the dark, a thing that moved. The man did not pray. This was different. It remembered others who had come before: priests in fire-robes, knights in their tin skins, all shouting names of gods that never came. It had crushed them. Broken them. Made their bones to burning coals.

Pain.

An alien cold sinking into the joint of its arm. For the first time in an age, the Cinderlord felt something other than its own fire. The audacity of lesser things, mortals of flesh and fleeting, to sting a thing born of the world’s first fire. Chains swung wide, molten and seething. They smashed through columns, sending showers of sparks and shattered stone cascading down.

And then, another sting. A second Icebite bolt slammed into its shoulder. The cold burrowed deep, biting. The creature’s internal furnace fought the intrusion of frost, fire and cold gnawing at each other inside the same cursed shell.

The sword bit deep through its blackened mantle, through slagged muscle and the veins of magma that pulsed beneath. A burst of steam and sparks erupted, the Cinderlord staggered backward in thundering steps, molten blood hissing as it hit the stone. The reek of scorched iron and frozen ash filled the air.

It roared, an avalanche of sound that made the mountain quake. It turned its horned head toward the man.
 
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Tusk ran, not because he wanted to, but since he had no other choice. To stand was to die, and dead men made poor Cazadores. 'Ain't that... right... Askel?' Bearing his fangs in vicious mockery, the Cazadore levered himself over a corroded railing and into freefall. Ten feet. Not a long way to fall, and yet just far enough for his knees to buckle upon impact.

Above, the Cinderlord let out an almighty bellow, furnace breath converting aged iron to molten slag in a matter of heartbeats. A body of flesh and bone stood no chance against the flames. All the more reason to run faster, thought Tusk, pulling himself up.

Adrenaline smothered the pain as he hurled himself along the walkway, phosphor light guiding his steps to the next gantry along.

An ear-rending scream shattered any illusion that he might reach it in time. Gritting his teeth, Tusk twisted midstride, sword blade rising to deflect a chain loop twice the size of his biceps. Steel buckled. Fire lanced up his arms to give his shoulders a thorough seeing to. Any slower and he would've been struck in the chest. Running with a collapsed lung wasn't impossible.

But it fucking sucked.

'Bastard... thing!' Tusk laughed as he staggered out onto the gantry, his weapon bowed and bent. Condensation soaked the leather of his gauntlets. Even the Icebite was struggling to deal with the heat.

Behind him, the Cinderlord loomed closer, its chains clanging against girders and joists, like part of a dirge. Haunting. Maybe even horrifying, if one feared death. Askel had, for all the time it had taken the Ravenor to chew through his innards. 'And yet you fought,' growled the old Cazadore, talking to ghosts. Askel spoke loudest of all. Told him to duck!

The chain missed him by a matter of inches, wrapping itself around a steel support.

Turning on his heel, Tusk charged the Cinderlord while it was distracted, its momentum carrying it within easy reach of his battered blade. Steel found stomach. The monster cried out in agony, even as its body devoured the weapon up to the hilt.

Driven back by the sudden heat, Tusk turned to run, only for the ground to give out from under him.
 
The ancient iron split with a shriek, and the supports, things that Time had turned to rust, buckled under the weight of a walking ancient fire. The sound of rending metal was deafening. For an eternal heartbeat, the Cinderlord hung there, balanced on the edge of the collapsing gantry, its burning claws lashing out, clawing for a hold. Chains lashed through the air. The Cinderlord fell with a roar, the sound of a collapsing mountain.

As the Cinderlord plunged, its infernal light painted the cavern walls and ceiling in a hot white, orange and gold before collapsing into choking darkness. The air filled with smoke and cinders and the scream of burning iron. Chains whipping down like glowing serpents to follow their master into the abyss. Its wings flared once before tearing apart under its own tumbling weight.

And just as the silence closed in, she realised:

“TUSK!” Daniyah's voice cracked, raw, terrified. No answer. Only the faint hiss of dying flame.

Boots hit the ground hard as she leapt from the upper gantry, she landed roughly on the slag-slick floor below. Knees buckling, lungs filled with smoke. Her breath tore out of her in sharp gasps as she sprinted toward the gap where the foundry floor had collapsed. The crossbow fell to the floor. The air down there was molten, hot enough to burn. “No… no, no, no...” She skidded to her knees, sliding through ash and splintered iron until she reached the edge. Her hands shook as she pressed them to the stone. The hole gaped wide, a throat of darker shadow where the Cinderlord had plunged.

“TUSK!” she screamed again, her voice echoing down into the pit. Her eyes followed the inferno as it vanished into the depths below, swallowed by the darkness. The light dwindled, first crimson, then amber, then nothing.

“Please…” A small, broken sound pulled from the hollow left in her chest.
 
Weightlessness. A sense of falling. Down, into the abyss, to where no light shone. Not even Hel's fires burned there. So very far down, thought Tusk, coming to his senses as the world pivoted, planting him on his back. Fire and smoke and ash enshrouded everything. Flame. The roar of the damned. So very loud in his ears.

Above the din and the echo, Tusk could hear someone calling his name from above. Possibly Daniyah. Then again, maybe he was dreaming it.

The thought made him laugh. Laughing hurt. As did everything else. 'Fuck me, I guess.' Rolling onto his side, Tusk let out a sigh into the stone. His skin tingled with excess heat. Burnt, singed, weeping lifeblood. Survival always came at a cost. To say he had gotten lucky would have been an understatement.

Though, he had never known luck to hurt quite so much.

Someone called his name again, insistent, and worried. It took him awhile to figure out where it was coming from. By then, he had managed to find enough strength to kneel, if not stand. Not the best idea to entertain when you were teetering on the edge.

Blinking blood and ash from his eyes, Tusk looked up, around. The gantry he had been running along was completely destroyed, time and toil proving too much for the structure, beams and supports as old as Time itself.

A figure knelt at the edge, just a smudge against the black backdrop.

'You ever... considered... dyeing your mane?' Tusk raised his voice to be heard over the ringing in his ears. A shard of iron jutted from a rent in his mail. Pulling it free with a grunt, he let it slip from his fingers, out into the abyss below. 'Dead giveaway... y'see.'

Looking up at Daniyah, the orkin forced a smile. Couple hours 'n' maybe he'd even feel it.

'Could spot you from a mile away,' he chuckled, his ribs and lungs and legs protesting as he pressed to his feet, glanced around. A blink. 'Don't s'pose you've got any... rope?'
 
The void of the mountain had swallowed the Cinderlord whole.
No more fire.
No more roar.

'You ever... considered... dyeing your mane?'

Daniyah crawled back to the jagged edge, breath catching as she leaned out. Far below, through the curling smoke and ash, she spotted him. A dark shape on a narrow landing cut into the cave wall, barely more than a ledge. Still alive. He got half-cooked by a demon the size of a cathedral, and that’s his first concern? Her godsdamned hair?

“What the fuck did you just say?” She snapped, leaning out over the ledge. She sighed, dragging a hand through the tangled mess of her hair. “By all the damned…” she muttered, a tremor of relief shaking from her throat. “You stupid, lucky bastard.” A loose chunk of slag tumbled past her boot and disappeared into the dark. She flinched, swore again under her breath.

She cupped her hands around her mouth, shouting down. “Don’t move! I’m getting Oscar. We’ll pull you up!" She gave the abyss one last glare before stepping back.


The climb back up felt longer than it had any right to. Daniyah’s lungs burned with every breath when she stepped out from the dark. Oscar was exactly where she’d left him, chewing at a patch of frostbitten grass, as unbothered as a priest at confession. The mule flicked an ear when he saw her, he huffed through his nostrils, the sound almost human. “We’re going down, boy,” she told him. Oscar stared at her. She stared back. Eventually, the mule sighed, the long-suffering kind of sigh that came from being owned by a cazadore.


The way down was worse the second time. They descended. The air cooled, the darkness deepened, and the flame inside the lantern became the only living thing that dared breathe in this place. Daniyah’s fingers ached from gripping the reins and the lantern.

“Come on,” she said softly, lantern clutched in one hand, the other stroking Oscar's nose. “You’re sturdier than half the bastards I’ve fought beside. Mind your step, eh?” The mule flicked his ears, snorted suspiciously at the dark. Hooves clattered on the stone, hesitant, but the mule followed when she tugged the rope gently and started down the winding switchback path carved centuries ago by miners who’d long since turned to dust.

The air was miasmal, thick with fumes, ash, and burnt metal that stung the eyes and clung to the tongue. Oscar dug his hooves in. “Easy now.. Don’t you start. You are a brave boy. One hoof at a time." He grunted like he disagreed, but followed when she talked to him gently. Oscar brayed low in his throat, his hooves steady even when the ground wasn’t.

She led Oscar carefully to a spot and wedged the lantern into a split in the railing. The mule flicked his ears, uneasy but obedient, the faint light catching in his dark eyes. She fastened the rope around his harness with a firm, practiced knot, testing it with both hands until she was satisfied it would hold. “Steady..” she murmured. The mule blew out a long breath. At the other end of the rope, Daniyah tied a loop wide enough for a big man's boot.

She coiled the slack once over her shoulder, stepped toward the edge of the collapsed gantry. Daniyah leaned out over the edge, squinting against the dark. "Tusk, you still there? I'm tossing the rope down!" and she cast it down into the darkness.
 
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Relief warred with irritation upon Daniyah's face. Stupid was right. Lucky, doubly so. 'That's me,' he called up to her, brow bloodied, lip bitten through. He tasted copper and iron in his mouth again. Hopefully, it was nothing major. The pain in his chest said otherwise. More words reached him, as if shouted from an impossible distance. The Cazadore nodded, like he had meant to.

'Sure, sure, no rush.'

Footsteps in the dark. Beads of crimson dripped from the cuff of Tusk's gambeson. Drip, drip, drip. Swaying slightly, the orkin sat down before he was forced to fly. Long, long way down, he huffed, amused by the way the thought repeated in his mind.

The seconds bled by as he waited, alone in the dark. Veins of silver, gold and vermillion penetrated the gloom. Valuable metals entombed within stone. Vibrant in the lowlight environment. Still can't see shit though, Tusk huffed, the wave of nausea that had threatened to topple him into the pit having passed. Exhausted, shroudlight drained from his body like breath in winter, misting the air, which had begun to grow cold in the Cinderlord's absence.

Reaching into belt pouches, Tusk started to withdraw clean bandages, and ointment for the burns he had sustained during the chase. The absence of steel at his hip made him feel vulnerable. But at least the Icebite would keep the foe from healing, should it survive the fall.

Would it?

Working in silence, Tusk grit his teeth, biting back the pain threatening to send him spiralling into unconsciousness. Or worse. By the time he was done licking his wounds, a light had appeared on the gantry above. Twenty feet or more. Not the farthest he had ever been forced to climb unaided.

Praise be stubborn mules. 'Okay!' Digging his fingers into the wall, Tusk pulled himself up, ribs grating painfully as the rope dropped within arm's reach. It didn't look like much. A lifetime of hard knocks told him he couldn't take many more.

'I trust her,' he reminded himself, setting a foot inside the loop. Likely didn't have enough to go around his waist. The drop drew his gaze down into the inky black abyss. Long, long way down. Oh well. Taking a breath, Tusk looked up.

'Set!'
 
"Set!"

The rope went slack. Then, taut. A jolt ran through it, strong enough to make Oscar balk at first, ears pinned. Eyes rolling white in the dim lantern-glow. Daniyah yanked hard on the reins and hissed to the mule, “Come on, you stubborn bastard!” The mule stamped once, head jerking. But he lurched forward.

The rope went taut, creaking like an old ship’s rigging as it drew up from the black gulf below. Oscar’s hooves skidded in the ash, iron shoes sparking against stone. The mule brayed, low and guttural, a sound that echoed through the gutted foundry like the cry of some damned soul. Every muscle along his flank trembled as he leaned into the harness. Hooves ringing off stone.

Daniyah dug her boots into the scorched metal floor, both hands locked on the line. She wrapped it around her forearm and heaved, leaning her full weight into it. Feeling the fibers bite into her flesh, fibers cutting through her gloves, she thought she’d split open. “Good lad,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Just a little more.” The rope thrummed, feeling almost alive in her hands. Something heavy was coming up. Together they pulled, inch by inch.

Ash swirled in the guttering lantern light, a ghost of the fire that once had ruled here. The rope creaked and groaned, burdened by the mass of the half-orc it bore and a twenty feet of vertical drop. The rope shuddered, jumped once, twice, before holding again. Steam rose from Oscar, where sweat met the cooling mountain air. Daniyah’s breath came ragged. She heaved with the mule, again and again, her boots grinding against still warm slag.

Then, when she saw a shadow rising up from the fumes and the pitch black pit, she rushed forward to reach out and grab him. “Got you!” The words came out half-sob, half-snarl. He was heavy as a siege engine.
 
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