The Storm King
Chapter 1213: The Umbral Plane II

The doors to the iridescent tower were large, though on the enormous structure, they appeared rather miniscule. Still, Leon landed in front of them, hopped out of his Ulta suit, spared the pile of bones not too far away a brief glance, and then approached the doors.

“So,” Marcus said as he and the rest of Leon’s group followed, “palace? Temple? Anyone want to make a bet?” Like Leon, he exited his suit, and both suits, under the control of their giant partners, followed the team in silence.

“Gambling is a waste of time,” Zhang immediately replied in a judgmental tone.

“This isn’t gambling, my friend,” Marcus protested. “It’s making an educated guess. Don’t want to participate? Then don’t. Praetors don’t make moral judgments, you know.”

Zhang didn’t respond, but he pointedly looked away from Marcus as a scowl crossed his lips.

After an awkward silence, Daryun said, “Temple.”

“Oh?” Marcus replied. “I was thinking it was the center of government. What screams ‘temple’ to you?”

“A place of safety,” Daryun explained as he vaguely indicated the light barrier and the skeletons pushed against it. “Such a grand structure is more often dedicated to divinity, not to men.”

“Plenty of mages wouldn’t balk at aggrandizing themselves like this,” Marcus said. “This is probably just someone in charge building something to make them look big.”

“No need to make guesses,” Leon interrupted as he halted a pace away from the doors, “we’re about to find out…”

He raised a fist and hammered the doors several times. The doors shook in the gigantic frame, their enchantments flickering under the pressure, and the sound reverberated across the square and further up the tower. Leon then took a couple steps back and trained his magic senses on the door, waiting for any indication that anyone within heard him.

And he waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

After several minutes, Anzu said, “I… don’t think anyone’s coming…”

Leon shrugged. “I tried.”

He walked back up to the door and slammed his fist against it once again, this time with lightning rushing through his bloodstream and the tiniest sparks of origin power backing up the strike. The old doors, their enchantments already heavily degraded, were blasted open, their titanic hinges barely keeping them attached to the frame.

Pure white light shone from within—another enchantment, the effect apparently designed to obscure the interior from those watching the doors from the square. Leon, however, saw right through the light, his eyes taking in the gleaming white stone of the interior, the surfaces gleaming with blues, pinks, and purples. He could see the enormous wolf statues standing on either side of the door, one staring impassively at the doorway while the other bared its fangs. Reliefs adorned the next door and spread across the walls, all seemingly featuring wolves and men running, fighting, and participating in a host of other activities.

“Temple,” Daryun repeated. “Too venerable for a mere King’s palace.”

Marcus almost responded, but Leon strode forward, and the rest of the group had to fall in behind him. Once past the threshold, the overpowering light shining from the opening died down, leaving them in an opulent, but entirely mundane atrium.

While the art interested Leon greatly, especially since aside from the heroic statue at the top of the spire this was the first example of native art he’d seen since arriving at the plane, what he did not see was more immediately pressing.

“No guards,” he said. “No one here to greet us.”

Clear grimly stated, “If this place has long been under siege from the dark, then those who found shelter within may have long since passed. I did not see farms or other methods of food procurement outside; how long could someone below Apotheosis survive in this tower?”

“Depends on what we find,” Daryun said. “This tower is more than big enough to set up some kind of interior farm somewhere. I could see a community of maybe a few thousand living inside, depending on how many floors we find…”

While Leon kept his opinion to himself, he found himself more in line with Clear’s thinking; he was no longer expecting to find anyone alive within the tower if the front door, the tower’s only obvious point of ingress, wasn’t being actively guarded. He moved forward and glared at the next set of doors. He could sense more magic flowing through their enchantments, but he didn’t need more than one more blow to snap the locks both physical and magical, and reveal the gargantuan room behind it.

A vision of luxury greeted him; the tower had a hollow core that ran for dozens of stories upward, while a long, spiraling staircase in the exact center of this hollow core facilitated moving up and down, connecting to each floor with wide bridges. Most of the masonry remained the iridescent stone, but carpets and tapestries were everywhere, all colored in the same blues, purples, and pinks of the stone’s iridescent sheen. And everywhere, he saw banners of a two-headed wolf on a purple background. One of these wolf heads was darkly colored and snarling, while the other was more brightly colored and depicted in a calmer, more disconnected and dispassionate manner.

He immediately projected his magic senses, but the internal wards were strong enough that his magic senses were scattered before leaving the grand central chamber. However, even this was enough to tell him that even on the mezzanines above, there were no people around.

“Banners look Royal,” Marcus said.

“Temples can still have banners,” Daryun responded.

Leon sighed as he momentarily tuned out his followers to take in this sight. It was certainly spectacular, but what struck him most was not the prevalence of wolf iconography, including more statues and reliefs, nor the sheer grandiosity of this space, but the lack of people in what seemed to him to be a space that was designed for large numbers of people to exist within.

He saw several large desks of dark, grainy wood by the doors he’d just flung open, and yet the chairs behind them were empty. No foot graced the spiraling staircase that formed the tower’s core. He could hear no shouts or even muffled sounds of speech anywhere in the tall, circular hall.

It seemed the place was completely deserted.

Leon led his group in circling the stairs, noting that the interior of the tower—at least on the ground floor—had more in common with a public building than a private residence. This didn’t poke any holes in Marcus’ palace theory, but it was still made clear that the spire wasn’t just some eccentric’s home. There were also what appeared to be labels and direction signs posted, but while they appeared somewhat based on modern runes—as were all writing systems that Leon was familiar with—they were still illegible. Without a local to use a Stone of Many Tongues on, Leon didn’t have much hope of translating these signs soon.

Doors led off from the central chamber, and after poking his head through a few, Leon realized that it would take hours to search the entire place, and without locating the Souleater, he didn’t know how much time he had.

So, he halted at the foot of the stairs, the initial, cursory look-through of the first floor completed. His group hadn’t gone past the central chamber, but it seemed clear to him that there weren’t any people around. He looked around again, the cavernous interior of the tower feeling cold and alien given the devastation outside. He had an idea of what to do next, but he hesitated, disliking the idea on an instinctual level.

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He hated drawing attention to himself when the situation wasn’t under his control.

‘Anyone here should’ve already heard my knock,’ he reminded himself.

“Clear, see anything that might point to survivors?” he asked.

“No,” the tau immediately responded.

Leon sighed. “All right. Get ready, I’m going to make some noise and see if anyone’s ho—” Just as he was about to finish his statement, a hint of white caught his eye and he whipped his head around to see what it was.

And he saw nothing.

“See something, Brother?” Anzu asked as he and the rest of the team turned in the same direction, their hackles raised.

“Thought I saw… something,” Leon replied. “I guess… I didn’t?” He’d been protected from the darkness saturating the outside by his Ulta suit, but just in case, he sent silver-blue lightning coursing through his mind. He didn’t sense any malignant powers, though, and, feeling somewhat disturbed, turned back to the stairs.

“Keep alert,” he ordered his people. “Let’s see if anyone can hear me…”

After waiting a moment for his people to prepare themselves, he inhaled, and then roared, “CAN ANYONE HEAR ME? IS THERE ANYONE ALIVE IN THIS TOWER?”

Whether or not anyone would understand his words or not, his voice ought to get their attention.

He and his team waited long seconds, but the tower remained silent. No responses came, no doors were thrown open, and no sounds at all came from deeper within the tower. The pristine tower remained eerily silent and devoid of life.

“All right, this is creepy as all hells,” Marcus said. “This place would have to have a huge staff to maintain, and if this is a palace, where is its Lord? If it’s a temple, where are its priests? This place shouldn’t be empty!”

“Many things should not be, Marcus,” Clear whispered ominously as he frowned at their surroundings, “and yet they are. Perhaps we ought to—”

Leon sensed a sudden spike of power, and given how Clear flinched, so did the tau. He and Clear turned, seeing nothing but following a pulse of magic speeding around the room invisible to the naked eye. The magic in the chamber roiled and churned behind this invisible presence, only about twice the size of Leon, and Leon drew Iron Pride and donned his armor, his team doing the same.

This mysterious magical presence slowed slightly, but eventually alighted upon the stairs as Leon directed his team to move back and give it some space until it was revealed. Leon’s aura settled around it heavily enough to break all invisibility enchantments he was aware of, but the presence stubbornly refused to show itself.

At least, until white mist began to gather around it, taking shape from the ground up. In seconds, a huge white wolf appeared, its eyes sparkling with curiosity and intelligence. It regarded Leon without fear, sitting on the stairs like the most well-behaved dog.

And then it lifted its head and howled at the ceiling of the central chamber dozens of stories above. Its voice was loud, yet soft on the ears; mournful yet joyous; violent and calm at the same time.

Its misty body began to disperse, but the presence remained, and the wolf turned and darted up the stairs.

“After it!” Leon shouted as he took off after the wolf, happy enough to have some kind of direction to his exploration to not mind the possible trap being sprung. His people fell in beside him as they ran up the stairs, while the two Ulta suits hovered upward, keeping pace next to the stairs. As they ran, another lupine howl came echoing through the chamber, this one originating from far above. At the same time, the presence he was following vanished like it had never been there.

Leon kept moving up the stairs but slowed with the disappearance of the wolf’s presence.

“Stay on edge,” Leon ordered his team. “Something’s waiting for us up there…”

Affirmative statements followed, and his team began to climb the stairs with much greater caution. Leon made sure to keep his magic senses projected, specifically looking for any more presences, but finding none. The chamber was empty again, as it had been before they’d found their ‘guide’.

The stairs kept going up and up, spiraling into the ceiling—the grand chamber only accounting for perhaps the bottom half of the tower. Leon pressed on, hoping that he’d find something of substance at the howl’s origin.

Above the grand chamber was what seemed to be a large guard post, with the stairs sitting at the bottom of terraces that his thirty-foot-tall Ulta suit could use as stairs. These terraces were augmented with fortifications and heavy wards, enough that a relatively small guard force would slaughter anyone coming up the stairs, but Leon didn’t pay much attention to them—instead, standing at the top of the terraces, at the summit of a gentler staircase that led to the higher edge of the guard chamber, stood a wolf.

This one, however, was made of black mist instead of white. It regarded him coldly, its black eyes seeming to strip away all before them, cutting clean to the heart of his being and laying all of his secrets bare. Another bolt of silver-blue lightning ensured that the apparition wasn’t bypassing his helmet’s mental defenses and plundering his knowledge, but Leon still found himself utterly unnerved. This apparition had no real magical signature in the way that all living beings did, appearing to his magic senses as a concentration of magic rather than a living being with an aura that he could study to gauge power.

The black wolf snorted in an incredibly human manner, reading as rather dismissive, and then vanished as the white wolf had. The door behind it, however, swung open on well-oiled hinges. Leon’s magic senses poured through, and he found more luxurious chambers and halls, more large doors and long staircases, and not a soul in sight. Several doors, however, began to swing open of their own accord, leading him and his team further into this area.

Up two more flights of stairs, down four hallways, and through two doors—Leon and Marcus had had to pull their Ulta suits into their soul realms since they couldn’t fit past some of the doors—Leon found himself standing in a dining room, staring at the first signs of humanity he’d seen since entering the tower.

A long table dominated the room, made of black wood. Tarnished dishes rested upon it, a few spots glinting past the mold and grime that covered them. Sitting around the table were twelve figures, all slumped over the table, rotted flesh still clinging to their bones. Dry, dark skin was stretched tautly over their bones, wispy hair hung in matted clumps from their desiccated heads, and some looked like they’d fallen while writhing. Two more figures lay on the ground where they’d apparently fallen, their bodies just as dry and rotten as the others. And above all, the stench of decay burned in Leon’s nostrils; not just from the bodies but from the remains of their meal, the moldy remnants of which still stubbornly clung to the tarnished dishes.

All of the figures were spectacularly well-dressed, their clothes largely remaining intact. Blues, reds, pinks, and purples seemed to be in fashion, and all fourteen bodies’ outfits were rather similar, with long tunics fastened at the waist with gold belts, shining silver slippers, trousers tied at the ankles and trimmed in gold, and enough jewelry on each of them to fund a legion.

Clear practically spat as he surveyed the scene. “Smell that?” he rasped. “Prestish weed, or something much like it. Very poisonous. Commonly used to kill without leaving much trace—when properly processed, it’s colorless, tasteless, and fast-acting, but not instantaneous.”

“You think these people were murdered?” Leon asked.

“I doubt that. No, this looks to me like suicide.”

Leon nodded in agreement. Maybe some of them were taken off-guard as they died, judging by how their bodies had fallen, but his golden eyes fell upon the calm corpse at the head of the table.

“Hopelessness,” Daryun whispered. “Maybe not all of them felt the same. Or maybe they all willingly took this action but flinched when death came to fetch them.”

“Regardless, we’re not getting anything useful out of them,” Leon said, though he noticed that quite a few of the glittering accessories the bodies wore seemed to have been enchanted. They weren’t particularly powerful, but he still took notice.

He warred within himself about taking these artifacts, but another lupine howl echoed through the tower, this one leading further up.

Leon and his team followed the howling, and over the next hour, they found a dozen more halls filled with corpses, all apparently poisoned. Some wore armor, others wore civilian clothing. All seemed rich and important, and nowhere did they find evidence of anyone still living within the tower.

The howling continued to lead them upwards, eventually culminating in what seemed to be the highest chamber in the entire spire: a large throne room. Floor tiles polished to a mirror shine, projections on the circular walls so clear that Leon almost mistook them for glass windows, and the throne itself, the singular piece of furniture in the room. It was carved from white wood, with a familiar two-headed wolf insignia on the headboard and the armrests carved into wolf heads. Upon the throne sat the only figure in the room, and he, too, was dead and practically mummified.

Even slumped over, he cut a regal figure. He was dressed in the same way as everyone else in the tower, but he wore a golden cloak with an equally golden wolf’s hide over his shoulders, and around his brow rested a band of gold studded with sapphires that glowed with magic, powering numerous enchantments within.

More eye-catching than the crown, however, was the amulet around his neck, hanging down to just above his heart. From a fine golden chain made of interlocking wolf heads hung a large gem that glowed like it contained a star. White light poured from the stone in thick curtains, with hints of blues, purples, and pinks occasionally flashing within.

There was power in that amulet, power enough to catch Leon’s interest. However, as he approached, both the black and white wolves appeared alongside the throne without warning, coldly glaring at Leon.

For a moment, he thought he’d made some kind of mistake, but then both of the wolves glanced to Leon’s right, and a moment later, the plane shook as an ear-splitting shriek tore through the air. In the black fog that continued to splash against the white barrier protecting the tower, six pairs of red eyes suddenly appeared. They were distant, but they stared directly back at Leon, and he knew that those eyes could see him despite the tower’s warded walls and light barrier in the way.

Another shriek rolled across the plane, and the earth shook hard enough that the spire creaked and groaned. Motion in the dark; the eyes drew closer…

‘The Souleater…’ Leon identified without even needing to ask. ‘And it’s racing this way…’