Chapter 78
Looking for any signs of weakness, Grindlefoot shoots a lightning bolt from his hands and watches the shimmer ripple across Landro’s hull without any obvious impact. He frowns at what it tells him.
“There’s a barrier. Something’s still protecting it.”
Mercy surveys the colossus without any visible emotion. “I do not know how to get inside.”
Landro is half-buried in the slope of Mount Ironrot, its upper body emerging from the stone at a downward angle — one arm outstretched and pressed against the earth, as though it reached out to catch itself and never finished falling. It dwarfs the colossus they explored two days prior, the way a castle dwarfs a cottage. The metal is dark and pitted, decades of Mournland weather worn into every surface, and the gray liquid pools around Landro’s joints.
Taking a similar approach, Dolor sends a series of eldritch blasts across different sections of the hull, watching each one shimmer off the barrier.
“Hmm, perhaps a better vantage.”
The tiefling floats into the air and drifts sideways, following the line of Landro’s body from twenty feet in the air. Where the colossus’s leg disappears into the ground, a cave opening cuts into the mountainside. Gray liquid pools around the entrance and he’s unsure if it’s coming or going. He descends and waves the others over.
Up close, the cave entrance is half-domed and warped, the rock around its opening bent into irregular points that jut downward and upward at wrong angles — less like stalactites and more like the inside of a broken jaw. Bilwin walks in without hesitation, his never-ending curiosity pushing him forward like a moth to a flame. Shrugging, Gven follows, stepping around the gray liquid.
The tunnel is ten to twenty feet wide and curves left before opening into a larger alcove that extends roughly twenty feet back into the rock. Half a dozen soldiers are scattered across the floor, their bodies perfectly preserved the way the Mournland keeps its dead — no decay, no smell, exactly as they fell. Their armor and swords lie close by, untouched by time, still faintly gleaming.
The two look from one body to the next. Bilwin nods soberly, raises his holy symbol, and opens his mouth for what he intends as a proper moment of reverence. What comes out is a question and an accidental casting of Speak with Dead aimed at the nearest corpse. Whether Hanseath considers this a reasonable use of prayer or simply enjoys the chaos, it works. The soldier’s body achieves a sort of groggy, reluctant awareness.
“Should we bury you?” Bilwin asks.
“What? Holy crap. We’ve been here a long time.” Another pause, longer. “I stopped caring about that. But I’d still like some respect.”
“Where would you like to be buried?”
Before the corpse can answer, Gven leans forward. “What’s your sword made of?”
“The finest steel.”
“Can I have it?”
“No.”
Gven shrugs in acquiescence, unsure why she even asked since she already has Tempest Edge. Bilwin reasserts himself. “Did you die in battle?”
“No.”
The spell winds down and the soldier returns to wherever the Mournland’s dead reside.
Mercy had quietly followed the dwarf and half-orc into the cave, observing their interactions.
Outside the cave, having gathered from the group that they might want a hole, Grindlefoot shifts into a dire wolf and begins excavating a patch of ground near the cave entrance with focused, methodical satisfaction. It is a good hole. He’s proud of it already.
Dolor and Mond enter the alcove, stepping over the gray liquid pooling at the threshold. Bilwin turns to another of the fallen and tries again.
“What happened when you, um, died?”
The second corpse surfaces reluctantly. “What do you mean I’m dead? Things were crazy that day, but I’m plainly alive.”
Gven, undeterred, redirects immediately. “How do we get to the control center of this colossus?”
“I don’t know. Ask the engineer.”
Mercy’s hand comes down firmly on Bilwin’s shoulder. “Enough. Bury them.”
The dwarf withdraws his spell with the look of someone who knows they’ve been caught but can’t quite identify the offense.
The group agrees to carry the bodies outside. Gven slings two over her shoulders with a quiet murmur of thanks to neither the living nor the dead in particular. Behind her, two suits of armor rise from the cave floor and stand. Two swords lift from where they lay and hang in the air.
She sets the dead soldiers down gently.
Grindlefoot, still a dire wolf and digging with considerable enthusiasm, has no idea what’s happening inside the cave.
Gven invokes her rage and turns on the nearest animated sword before it can find a target, catching it with Tempest Edge once and again on the backswing. The floating weapon drops to the cave floor and stays there.
The remaining sword swings at Gven and finds only air.
Dolor steps in close to the second sword, runs Green Flame Blade along Gleaming Blade’s edge, and cuts it from the air in a single strike. It clatters to the ground. Without pausing, he opens two quick gashes across the nearest suit of armor with Gleaming Blade and his off-hand shortsword, then disengages and moves behind Gven.
Bilwin raises his hand and Sacred Flame pours down onto the other suit of armor. It collapses.
Mercy drives their hand-sword into the last standing suit twice. It absorbs both blows and remains upright.
Mond looks at it for a moment, then casts Fire Bolt.
The suit of armor comes apart in several directions at once, falling to the earthen floor in a carbon-scored clatter.
They carry the soldiers out to Grindlefoot’s excavation. The dire wolf has produced an impressively thorough hole and shifts back into halfling form as the companions lay the dead to rest. Mercy stands at the grave’s edge and, after a moment of stillness, speaks briefly — not a eulogy, but acknowledgment. The words are few and carefully chosen, and when they’re done the group fills in the earth.
Long rest….
The tunnel beyond the alcove continues inward, turning right for another forty or fifty feet before the darkness deepens. They move in, Bilwin’s magical stein casting its light forward.
Gven’s boot catches on something and she stumbles, catching herself before she goes down. Looking back, she finds a warforged lying on the tunnel floor, motionless. No damage. No sign of a struggle. It lies there the way someone might lie down to rest, except that the warforged do not rest, and this one’s eyes are dark. Its armor is painted red and blue across the arms and body, the mask that forms its face worked with careful, intricate attention.
Bilwin holds the stein up. Everyone looks at Mercy.
The warforged pilgrim moves forward slowly and crouches beside the figure. The others watch the stillness of them change in quality — not on the surface, because Mercy’s face does not show what a biological face would, but in some other way that’s harder to describe and easier to feel.
“This is Filch.”
No one speaks.
Mercy stays there for a long time. The companions wait without fidgeting, without filling the silence. They can only observe from the outside the way you watch a child encounter loss for the very first time, knowing there is nothing useful to be done except stay.
Dolor eventually moves forward and crouches on the other side of Filch, examining them with the quiet, unhurried attention he’d give a timepiece whose mechanism had gone still. After a minute, he looks up at Mercy.
“Not dead. Something has put them in a very low state. A reason to wake up might be enough.”
Mercy receives this without response. Then they reach out — not with a hand on the shoulder, the way the companions might, but with both arms around Filch’s entire body. It’s the grip of someone who doesn’t know the gestures that go with this particular feeling, because there has never been an occasion to learn them.
Bilwin quietly casts Bless over the pair. Grindlefoot’s hands move in a slow pattern and send Healing towards Filch, uncertain but genuinely meant.
Mercy leans close and begins to speak. The words are too quiet for the companions to make out and they don’t try — they look at the tunnel walls, the floor, anywhere else, giving the moment what space they can. Mercy speaks for only a minute or two. Then, just barely above the threshold of hearing:
“I am sorry. I should have come sooner. I will miss you.”
A clicking sound starts somewhere inside Filch’s chest, small and mechanical, a clock finding its rhythm. It runs for a few seconds. Then Filch’s eyes illuminate, warming from dark to a dim glow and then to something brighter and steadier.
Filch looks up at Mercy.
“Mercy. Where the hell have you been?”
Guest player: Kimber Hilton as Mercy, the warforged