The wind off the northern ridge carried the fine, red grit of the Infernal Wastes. A constant abrasive gust that sought out every gap in a soldier's plate and every crease in their spirit.
Sergeant Krell sat high in his saddle, his eyes squinted against the haze. Beneath him, his Skeldrak shifted its weight, the creature's six chitinous legs clicking against the scree. It was a low-slung, reptilian beast, armored in natural plates of dull bone-white. Its head was narrow, dominated by four black, unblinking eyes and a pair of sensory mandibles that twitched, tasting the sulfur in the air.
"Movement. Eighty yards. North-Northeast," Krell commanded, raising a gloved hand.
The patrol came to a halt. Behind Krell, four other riders pulled the reins of their Skeldraks. The mounts let out low, vibrating chirps, settling into the dust.
In the distance, a lone demon grunt, a spindly, grey-skinned thing with far too many joints, was crouched over a pile of sun-bleached ribs. It was no larger than a human child, a scavenger that lived on the scraps of the larger warbands, but it was a demon nonetheless.
"I bet your snack ration for tonight that I can put an arrow through its skull from here," whispered Jax, the unit's youngest scout. He smirked, the white of his teeth flashing through a layer of dust.
Jax's cloak snapped in the erratic gusts rushing over the dunes. The target was small, and the range was pushing the limits of their standard-issue bows. Krell cracked a grin.
"Deal," he said softly. "But if you miss, you're on stable-scrubbing duty when we get back to Fort Magnus."
Jax quietly dismounted, sliding his bow from the leather sheath strapped to his mount's flank. He moved to the front of the line, his boots crunching softly on the salt flats. He licked a finger, holding it up to the stinging wind, then scooped up a handful of orange sand and let it trickle through his fist. The grit fell toward the east.
He knocked an arrow, his focus narrowing.
Krell, not wanting to part with his dried meat rations, leaned over in his saddle. Just as Jax began to draw the string, Krell swung his armored boot out, aiming a quick kick at the archer's elbow to spoil the shot.
Anticipating the sabotage, Jax stepped a clean foot to the left in one fluid motion, the string reaching his cheek at the same moment before releasing.
Krell's boot hit empty air.
"Damn you, Jax," he mumbled under his breath.
The arrow cut through the wind, arcing across the red sky. A moment later, there was a wet thud. The grunt didn't even scream; its head snapped back, pinned to the ribs it had been chewing by a shaft of Cindercrest ash-wood.
Jax turned around, sweeping his scout's hood off and giving a theatrical, low bow to the unit. The other three soldiers erupted into muffled laughter, slapping their thighs and jeering at their sergeant.
"That's a double ration of jerky for me, Sarge," Jax crowed, remounting his Skeldrak with a practiced hop.
Krell grumbled, adjusting his belt. "Lucky gust. Nothing more. Let's move out before the smell of that thing brings its mother around."
As they rode past the twitching grunt's corpse, the laughter died down. The Wastes had gone quiet in a way that pressed against the ears, the kind of silence that made a man aware of his own heartbeat.
One of the veteran scouts let out a slow groan, his hand resting on the hilt of his shortsword. "Boring day. Usually, we're tripping over grunts or chasing cannibal runts away from the perimeter. Even the scavengers seem to be hiding. Maybe we should push further toward the Nethervale ruins."
Krell's gaze drifted north. The air had gone wrong in a way that was hard to name. The harder he tried to focus on the horizon, the more it seemed to slide sideways, like trying to read words that kept rearranging themselves. His eyes ached with the effort of it.
Sergeant Krell tightened his grip on the reins, his Skeldrak letting out a low, warning hiss. "Nethervale is off-limits."
Jax let out a snort. "Orders are for the builders back at the Fort, Sarge. What's the worst that could-"
"Don't let the Underworld hear you say that, you fool," Krell cut him off, his voice dropping an octave.
Jax rolled his eyes, nudging his Skeldrak forward until he was riding knee-to-knee with the Sergeant. "The men are bored, Sarge. Look at them. We've been out here six hours, and all we've found is one starving grunt. One glance from afar to satisfy the itch."
The other three soldiers began to chime in, a coordinated onslaught of complaints and egging. Aside from Krell, none of them had ever laid eyes on the ruins.
"Fine," Krell snapped, pulling on his reins. He turned in his saddle, his gaze falling on each soldier. "No one is to mention that we got even a mile within the shadow of Nethervale, or you're all on wall-scrubbing duty for a month. No exceptions."
The soldiers nodded, their posture straightening as the Sergeant's tone shifted.
"The Archmagister didn't restrict Nethervale because of what's buried there. He restricted it because of what might still be alive in it." Krell continued. "Even patrolling near it is enough to have our ranks stripped. Jax, that means you'd be kicked out of the Ember Vanguard."
Jax's smirk vanished, replaced by a sharp nod. "My lips are sealed, Sarge. Not a word."
"The rest of you?" Krell barked.
"Sealed, Sergeant," they echoed in unison.
Krell's hand fell to the hilt of his sword as if checking that it was still there.
"Then let's move," he said. "Stay in formation. And if I say turn back, you don't ask why."
They rode for another hour, the wind growing calm and tasting increasingly of old, stale copper.
Then, they reached the warning.
It was a thick post of black iron driven deep into the soil, topped with a skull-shaped lantern that flickered with a low, magical blue flame. A heavy chain hung from it, draped across a stack of weathered stones, a silent cairn. A rusted plate bolted to the post bore the seal of the Archmagister, the words etched deep:
BEYOND THIS MARK LIES THE SILENCE OF NETHERVALE. TURN BACK BY ORDER OF CINDERCREST.
Krell didn't say a word. He steered his Skeldrak around the post. The others followed in a silent procession, their eyes lingering on the blue light until the haze swallowed it behind them. The banter that had sustained them for the first half of the patrol died out as they crossed the invisible line.
Another hour of heavy silence passed. Then, as they crested a massive, sweeping dune of rusty ash, the horizon opened up.
Nethervale.
The ruins were a skeletal sprawl that seemed to eat the light. A city of twisted, toppled spires and collapsed domes that still showed the intricate, swirling construction of an age before Cindercrest. The architecture was fluid and organic, a sharp contrast to the brutal, blocky stone of Fort Magnus. Even in its erosion, it was regal, a ghost of a civilization that had been more art than iron.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The soldiers pulled their mounts to a halt, jaws slightly slack. Even the Skeldraks seemed uneasy, shifting their weight in tight, restless circles, none of them willing to face the ruins directly.
"Look at the size of it," one of the soldiers whispered, his voice barely audible over the wind.
Jax was the first to spot the anomaly. His eyes tracked down to the base of the dune, then widened. "Sarge. Look at the ground."
Around the ruins, the undisturbed layer of sand and ash was nowhere to be found. In its place were thousands of chaotic, overlapping trails that surged over and through the broken walls. The relaxed, joking soldiers of the Ember Vanguard vanished, replaced by the practiced discipline of the military.
"What in the hells," Krell whispered, signaling for the descent. The Ember Vanguard moved down the ridge until they reached the base of the slope.
The trails came from the north and west, with a few erratic ruts arriving from the deeper reaches of the east. The tracks were a tapestry of madness moving across the Wastes in a state of blind agitation, their prints stomping over one another without a hint of order or predatory intent.
Jax dismounted, his boots hitting the churned-up ground as Krell signaled him over.
"Tell me what we're looking at, Jax," Krell said, his voice tight as he unsheathed his sword. "Vanguard, rear, point, fan out. Don't let a shadow move without me knowing."
Jax spun around, taking it all in before kneeling where the chaos merged into a column. He didn't touch the prints; the air above the track felt unnaturally cold, smelling of fire and wet ash.
"The entry is a frenzy, Sarge," he said, his eyes scanning the north-western mess. "There's no coordination here. It's just madness."
Jax moved his hand toward the eastbound track, the one leaving the ruins. "The frenzy stops here. They've fallen into a perfect, heavy step. Something is leading whatever went into these ruins. And the column is heading east."
"You're telling me something entered as a swarm of rabid creatures," Krell noted, looking toward the horizon where the singular trench disappeared into the eastern haze. "And came out as an organized unit."
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Krell's eyes stayed on the eastern trench until the horizon swallowed it.
"Sarge!"
On a ridge to the west, silhouettes broke the skyline. At first, they were just shadows, but then the sounds reached them, the manic, high-pitched hooting of a roving pack.
Cannibals.
There were at least ten of them, clad in scraps of cured hide and bone, brandishing jagged spears. The moment they spotted the Ember Vanguard, they didn't hesitate. With a chorus of guttural shrieks, they began to slide down the dune, closing the distance with terrifying speed.
Krell stood in his stirrups, his sword held high. "Mount up! Jax, get back to your Skeldrak! We've got company!"
The shouting from the western ridge was suddenly echoed by a shrill, answering cry from the dune they had just descended. Krell spun his mount, his eyes narrowing. Another pack. Ragged, lean, and hungry was sliding down the slope behind them.
"They're boxing us in!" Jax yelled, reaching for his bow.
"Dismount! Now!" Krell's voice was a whip-crack of authority. "Defensive circle! Bows out, clear the ridge!"
The soldiers hit the sand in perfect synchronization. The Skeldraks, battle-hardened and instinctively protective, didn't flee. They pivoted on their legs and spread out to form a living, snapping ring of bone-white plates around their riders. Their mandibles hissed, and their four eyes tracked the movement with predatory focus.
"Jax, point, take the new group! Clear the rear!"
Jax didn't miss. He loosed three arrows in the time it took the first cannibal to cover ten yards. Beside him, the point-man's bow hummed. Eight of the attackers were cut down before they could even level their spears, their bodies rolling down the ash-dune like discarded rags.
Two cannibals, fueled by a desperate, starving madness, managed to hurdle the corpses and reach the Skeldraks. They never touched the riders. One Skeldrak lunged with terrifying speed, its mandibles driving through the cannibal's torso with a sound like splitting hardwood. The creature gorged on the man, tearing him apart in seconds and flinging the remains aside like a broken toy.
The first group was already upon them.
"Vanguard, move out!" Krell roared.
Three of the Skeldraks broke formation, charging into the larger group of ten cannibals to disrupt their momentum. The cannibals were feral, but they weren't stupid. They split, circling the massive beasts while three others tossed weighted nets and thick ropes, aiming to tangle the Skeldraks' many legs and disorient them.
"Swords out!" Krell shouted, the first to leap into the fray.
The Ember Vanguard went to work. Even outnumbered three to one, the soldiers moved with a disciplined coordination that the cannibals couldn't match.
Krell's blade sheared through the lead cannibal's primitive shield, the steel biting deep into the wood before his follow-through sliced across the man's face, taking the jaw clean off in a spray of dark red. To his left, a soldier caught a spear on his kite-shield and stepped in, his short-sword gutting the attacker before the man could draw a breath. They fought back-to-back, a whirlwind of iron and blood that left the sand stained a deep, dark crimson.
Nearly twenty cannibals lay dead or dying in the churned grey ash.
A handful of survivors, seeing their pack decimated in a heartbeat, turned to flee back toward the ridges.
Jax stood by his mount, calm and methodical. He pulled, aimed, and released. Each arrow found its mark in the small of a retreating back. The last cannibal fell facedown in the dirt, his fingers clawing at the sand before going still.
Jax lowered his bow, the silence of the Wastes rushing back in, heavier than before.
"Disorganized," the rear-guard muttered, wiping blood from his blade on a patch of dry hide. "They're getting desperate. Food must be scarce for them."
"Disorganized men don't attack from two directions at once," Krell said. The Skeldraks were still agitated, their sensory mandibles twitching toward Nethervale. "We need to leave. Spilling this much blood will attract a group of demons. Mount up. Patrol is cut short today. Captain Drakath needs to hear about this."
They didn't wait for a second command, kicking their mounts into a hard gallop before the scent of slaughter could settle.
---
Krell and his patrol rode in silence. The claws of his mount, Gorestrider, struck sparks across the rocky path. Jax said nothing. His bow was still in his hand rather than slung, resting across his thighs like he'd forgotten to put it away.
Evening light bled through the haze, catching on the looming black towers of Fort Magnus. The outpost rose from the scorched earth like a black tooth torn from a beast's maw. Its walls were thick and jagged, their foundations sunk deep by Cindercrest's earthbinders. Far beneath the fort, leylines pulsed, allowing the binders to draw stone from the deep earth and shape it while it still burned.
Fort Magnus was Cindercrest's defiance of the Infernal Wastes carved in stone. Built atop a leyline anchor, it drew its strength from the Underworld's veins.
By the time the patrol reached the gates, the sun had vanished. Torches and ember-lamps flared along the battlements, their light flickering against the rising smoke from the forge towers. The gates of Fort Magnus parted with a groan, the heat from the inner forges washing over them.
A gatekeeper leaned from the ramparts. "Little late for an evening stroll, Sergeant?"
"Double the wall guard tonight," Krell called back, not slowing down.
The man raised a brow. "Aye, sir. Anything particular we're watching for out there?"
Krell thought to answer truthfully, but knew better to let anyone besides Drakath know they had ridden all the way to Nethervale.
"Roving cannibals," he said instead. "A pack moving around the central basin. More than I'd like."
The gatekeeper nodded, then whistled down to the soldiers milling about in the courtyard. "Double rations for double guards!" he barked. That got them moving.
Krell dismounted and gave a curt signal to the stablehands. "See to them."
Jax took a moment before swinging down to the ground. "We made good time," he said.
Krell didn't answer immediately. He waited until the rest of the vanguard had swung down from their mounts, the heavy thud of boots hitting the packed earth echoing against the stone walls. He gave a sharp whistle, signaling the three other soldiers from the patrol to gather.
"Fall in," he commanded, his voice low.
The soldiers stepped closer, their faces soot-stained and eyes weary. Krell leaned in, dropping his voice to a gravelly whisper that barely carried over the distant roar of the forge towers.
"Keep what we did today to yourselves," Krell said, his gaze shifting between each of them, hard and unyielding. "No one hears about where we went or what we saw in Nethervale. Jax and I will go speak privately with Captain Drakath. If the rest of the fort starts whispering about anomalies and order in the Wastes, we'll have a panic on our hands we can't stifle."
He paused, letting the weight of the command sink in, before his expression softened just a fraction.
"You all moved well today. You followed commands, and you never panicked when things turned sideways. Go get some grub. Tell the kitchen I said you three can get double rations tonight. If they have a problem with it, tell them they can bring it to me. Dismissed."
The three soldiers exchanged a brief, relieved glance and offered a tired salute before moving off toward the mess hall in a tight-knit group.
Their boots faded into the noise of the courtyard. Krell didn't move until the sound was gone. He turned back to Jax; the pallor hadn't entirely left his cheeks.
"Come on," Krell said, jerking his chin toward the central spire. "Drakath won't be in the barracks this late. He'll be in the War Room."
They moved through the courtyard, passing squads of soldiers preparing for the doubled wall watch. The air in Fort Magnus was thick with the scent of sulfur and hot iron, a sharp contrast to the scent of death they had left behind in Nethervale. They ascended the winding stone stairs of the main tower, their boots ringing out in the narrow corridor until they reached the heavy, iron-bound doors of the War Room.
Krell took a breath, adjusted the hang of his blade, and pushed the doors open. The heat from inside pressed against his face before the door was halfway open. He thought about the tracks in the sand. The strangeness of something that had entered as chaos and come out with a direction.
As a thank-you for the support so far, I decided to scrap the schedule and drop this surprise third chapter tonight!
A huge shoutout to VineAndFangSeries for the Dark Souls comparison in their review, that is exactly the kind of atmospheric, heavy-lore grit I'm aiming for.
In this chapter, we got a look at the Ember Vanguard and introduced the humans of the Underworld. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Skeldraks. I wanted the mounts of this world to feel just as dangerous as the soldiers riding them.
If you're enjoying the ride, hitting that Follow button or leaving a Rating is the best way to help the story climb the ranks. See you all tomorrow morning when you get to meet our first demon Warlord!
