It’s a thrilling time in the Mortal Realms – the latest episode in the Dawnbringers series arrives for pre-order tomorrow, and with it, the Saviours of Cinderfall, featuring Armand Callis of the Order of Azyr, and his partner Hanniver Toll. In this week’s instalment of the Dawnbringer Chronicles, we witness another agent of the Order of Azyr investigate a murder in the newly founded city of Embergard.
The following is a transcript of the interrogation of excavation overseer Borli Thungrunsson. Conducted by Zeras Gram, agent of the Order of Azyr operating within the city of Embergard. Penned by Lira Cynd, adjutant to the Order.
ZERAS GRAM: Thirsty, Mr. Thungrunsson?
Z.G.: I’ll let you in on a secret. Even while marching to Embergard, we of the Order managed to maintain a few casks of Bugman’s Fifth X. For official purposes, of course. I’d be willing to share a flagon with you.
Z.G.: Come now. This smacks of aelven melodrama, not the response of a respectable duardin.
Z.G.: Very well. In that case, I will speak, and we shall see if my account spurs some recollection.You are Borli Thungrunsson, of Clan Glimglint. Before swearing to the Twin-Tailed Crusade, you oversaw the fashioning of sewer channels reaching from Hammerhal’s old city to your clan’s holdings in the Bullies
[
see appended note]. You were, therefore, judged to possess sufficient expertise to oversee one of the mining operations following Embergard’s consecration.
Z.G.: Two discoveries accelerated these plans. The first was the extent of the ancient mortuary city sprawling beneath Embergard’s streets. The second, and more pressing, was the presence of rich seams of emberstone. Enough to establish Embergard as an invaluable trading hub in eastern Capilaria.
I’ll admit, though, I was surprised when Pontifex Zenestra granted your clan authority to lead the mining efforts. Your liege-lord Norffi hasn’t been… quiet… in voicing his distaste for the wheel-cult, even following our deliverance from the undead at their hands. Between you and me, I half think he so vigorously petitioned for authority over the darkness beneath the mountain to get away from the cult above ground.
Z.G.: But it wasn’t only duardin involved with the mining, was it? The Collegiate Arcane wanted a realmstone supply for experimentation. The meddling of wizards – that must have grated.
Which brings us to the incident in catacomb twelve.
BORLI THUNGRUNSSON: Don’t do that.
Z.G.: Do what, Mr. Thungrunsson?
B.T.: Don’t disturb the candle, you wazzok.
Z.G.: Why is that?
B.T.: Treacherous things, candles. If they snuff out when you’re not ready, you might be stuck haunting the earth’s black belly forever.
Z.G.: Did you tell Magister Invigorous Graythe that?
Z.G.: We both know Graythe was an impatient sort, obsessed with his realmstone research. He vexed a great many people. That’s why he latched on to your work parties: no one else would take him.
B.T.: What you mean is that he was a thick-as-pig-swill magic botherer.
Z.G.: It’s interesting you say that. It’s interesting because even your own kin, Mr. Thungrunsson, noted your particular agitation in the days before the incident.
B.T.: I’ve been sleeping poorly.
Z.G.: The battle for the city was hard on us all.
B.T.: Aye, but most don’t dream like I do.
Z.G.: I have seen many things in serving the God-King, Borli. I haven’t seen your dreams, but what I have seen are souls and minds cracking when exposed to emberstone. I’m sure you’re aware of its emotion-inflaming properties. Which returns us to Catacomb Twelve.
Catacomb Twelve is a recent excavation. Where, praise the High Star, an especially generous realmstone seam was recently discovered. Graythe wanted to begin extraction immediately. Witnesses saw you awakened early by the Magister. There was not even time to summon guards before you both descended into the shaft. I can imagine how it went: him, ignoring all prudence in the name of expediency; you, exhausted and insulted, with emberstone stoking your anger hot.
B.T.: I am not some beardling to lose my temper before a wizard!
Z.G: We know there were raised voices. We know Collegiate arcanoscopes detected some discharge of pyromancy. And we know that you later emerged in a daze, leaving Gram’s burnt-up corpse. The burn wounds, that I don’t understand, but I’ll have an answer. So talk, or I’ll leave you to the mercies of the God-King’s excoriators.
Z.G.: Curse your obstinacy, duardin—
B.T.: That night’s dreams had been the worst. I saw a great cowled skull. Its eyes were flickering sconces, like the ones you set on a mine wall. Around it paraded my kin, trudging like grievers accompanying their liege to the stone-sleep. Each clutched a candle. The skull wheezed, and candles flickered out. Their bearers flaked away to bones, then soul-scraps. They… they groaned, as they vanished.
So aye, manling, I was agitated when Graythe woke me. And aye, the cavern was bathed in the red glow of emberstone, like you say. I won’t pretend I didn’t feel my hackles rise. Graythe grew furious when I urged caution. If we excavated too hastily, we risked entire structural collapse. We argued.
That was when Graythe saw the crack in the wall. A small thing it was. Had the realmstone’s glow not caught it, it would have been all but invisible. I told him to leave it. Instead he started muttering some cantrip, before grasping the cleft and melting it wider. He was about to go over the opening’s threshold when he paused. Said something about feeling Old Bones’s breath over him. Didn’t stop him though, did it?
The first cavern was just a hollow. This one was different. It was a burial chamber. The old dead slept in sarcophagi set upright and strapped to breaking wheels, and the stairs here were deliberate constructs. All of them were spirals that led further down. Graythe was obsessing over some trinket he had found when I went to investigate the nearest of the stairs. Then I saw the floating lights.
They came alone at first, then in twos, then more. Bobbing along in the darkness, like in my dream, pulsing brighter with each breath. I looked at them, and it was like the hearth in my heart was being stripped of all warmth. Even Graythe sensed something was wrong by now. Only when they drew closer did we see the truth. Not wisps were they, but gheists, all of them ablaze. They looked like they had been howling forever, but not a sound left them.
I urged Graythe to leave then. Damn it, I begged the skrati. He seemed entranced. Just stared at the candles, like he wanted to clutch them tight and never let go.
Only when they started rasping and hurling baleflame did we act. Thank the Maker, Graythe shook himself awake and dispelled the first barrage. He knew his art, I’ll give him that. I drew my mattock, did what I could. Managed to drive some of those grasping claws back, but they kept coming. One of them extended a hand and hissed. My lantern burst. Set half my damned arm ablaze.
We might still have escaped. But then… then…
B.T.: The reaper rode some spectral horror. Its face… Maker preserve, it was the cowled face from my nightmares. The other gheists parted before it, though we could still see their fires burning in the darkness. And around it drifted candles, so many little candles.
Graythe acted this time, I’ll give him that. He spread his arms and muttered some incantation, and fire wreathed him like the halo of one of your saints as he made ready to hurl it. I thought then he might just do it, and half of all my wealth would go to his clan. The wraith just looked at him, and closed its fingers around the closest candle. Just like that. It closed its hand, and snuffed the thing out.
Graythe’s own fires consumed him. That blaze was no natural thing. I heard it in his screams: his soul was burning too. I ran. I left the tomb, and I could still hear him screaming. Can still hear it now. Burning and screaming forever, right down to the underworlds…
Z.G.: To recap. You claim that, even following Pontifex Zenestra’s cleansing rites, there is some wraith-sorcerer lurking beneath Embergard?
B.T.: I know what I saw, manling.
Z.G.: And this wraith has been seen by no other – beside you, who ventured into a hotbed of emberstone with a man you admit to possessing severe antipathy towards?
B.T.: Listen to me! We’re going to burn! We will all burn like the damned wax you must be clogging your ears with!
Z.G.: Sequester the detainee until sentence is passed.
Z.G.: You’re quiet, Cynd. You disagree?
LIRA CYND: It’s not that, sir.
Z.G.: What, then?
L.C.: Only, sir, the dreams that Borli mentioned. Of the skull and the candles. I’ve been having them too.
Dawnbringers: Book V – Shadow of the Crone is available to pre-order tomorrow, with all the details of Embergard’s fate. We’ll have another instalment of the Dawnbringer Chronicles next week here on Warhammer Community.