Xenarra: The Dragon Throne - Chapter 30 Back to the for

The next day, after I had gotten up, the order was given for us to head to the fort. It didn’t take long to break the camp, as there were no fires that would need to be put out or tents taken down. I much like that day before I was with Erebus.

Moving to the fort though was not as simple as how we had been moving the previous days. We had to avoid all tracks and roads, incase of any demons or cultists moving along them. This meant a lot of the time, branches and undergrowth had to be cut away before we could move on.

Around the middle of the afternoon, we arrived at the same spot, where I watched the demon horde attack the fort previously. This time though there was no demon horde surrounding the fort. In fact it looked like it was empty. This surprised me as I thought the demons would have occupied it, if not them, the cultists would have had enough intelligence to see the advantage of occupying it, but they hadn’t or at least it seems like they hadn’t.

“Kid, you will need to keep up your guard from now on. We don’t know what will be in the fort.”

Hearing the words of Erebus, I took my sword out of my sheath and made sure I could easily get my dagger, incase of me having my sword knocked out of my hand in a battle.

As we got closer to the black walls of the fort, I noticed that there was no flag or banners, showing who owned the fort. In fact, it looked like it had more been abandoned by its owner’s, than been attacked and lost to demons.

As we approached the main gate, we began to vear to the left.

‘Huh, I thought we would be going through the main gate, unless the intend to go to the western, side gate, but that is smaller and there is a higher chance of us getting trapped if we were attacked by enemy forces.’

Then Dubh, who was at the front of the line stopped walking forwards. This caused everyone else to stop as well. Looking around I could see that it was just me, who was confused.

‘What if there is a kind of secret passage around here, that would explain more why we didn’t go through the main gate. Though if anyone inside has found it, we would be walking straight into an ambush.’

As if he could read my mind, Dubh turned around , looking at me briefly first, before looking at the others around me. “Those of you who do not know, there is a secret passage here. It will lead us straight into the keep itself. From there we will head to the armoury at resupply with anything we need.”

Then he touched the wall, in an odd pattern while muttering what I assumed was a spell. Once he was done, the outline of a door slowly became visible, in the solid black rock that made the wall up. It didn’t take long for it to become a real door.

‘The magic that would be needed to make something like this must be insane. To be able to camouflage a doorway, so well that no one apart from those who know about its existence, could find it. I wonder if this magic exists elsewhere.’

Then we all headed into the darkness, that was the tunnel into the keep. Once we were all inside, the door closed behind us, surprisingly at that point, the tunnel lightened up. Looking around I tried to find the light source. After a few initiates of looking I found nothing.

‘It must be another type of magic. The people who built this fort must have been some of the best mages who have ever lived.’

As we moved the tunnel slanted down, which made sense as to get to the keep, we would need to pass below the rest of the fort. The journey didn’t seem to take long. We passed through a few chambers, which had other tunnels leading off into the darkness heading to other parts of the fort I assumed. Though it was like the tunnel where we wanted to go, as there was always one tunnel light up, in each chamber.

After leaving what was the second chamber, we began to go up. Then just as I thought we would be reaching the top, the lights went off. Fear seemed to grip everyone as I could hear the sound of metal leaving its scabbards, which I assumed to be swords and daggers.

Then like it was the voice of god, Dubh’s voice rang out in the darkness. “Everyone calm down, it is fine. The lights are meant to go out as we reach the end.” Then as he said, I could hear the sound of stone rubbing against stone, it was the same noise as when the passage into the tunnels was opened for us. Then I could see again.

Moving out of the tunnels into the keep itself, what I saw surprised me again. The keep looked like it was as if nothing had happened, this was except for the fact that the torches on the walls had not been lit. Apart from that though, everything seemed to be in place and it looked perfectly clean.

Though we were not in the keep for that long. We all headed out straight to the armoury as Dubh had said we would before. Outside of the keep and its walls, the state of the fort was different. The buildings all showed signs of damage from battle or from the general destruction that seemed to have happened. Most if not all of the buildings had massive gaping holes in them as if something rammed into or had just gone straight through them. There were also blood stains, all over. Though the odd thing was that the bodies who these blood stains belong to, were nowhere to be seen.

No one said a word as we moved through the fort to the armoury. Everyone just looked at the destruction. I felt like I should feel more for what I was seeing but I didn’t, not really. This place was meant to be my home, but as I hadn’t really spent much time here, it felt like nothing to me.

Some of the rangers however, I noticed tears falling onto the floor. This is when I realised, even if this fort did not mean much to me, to them, this probably was home, a place for them to relax and not constantly watching their own backs, like they do in the wild.

Then we arrived at the armoury, it looked like something had tried to break in to it. As there were dents all over the door way. Dubh walked up to it. In his hand a key appeared, which fitted into the keyhole for the door perfectly, unlocking it, he let us all inside.

Inside, unlike the time before, the weapon racks were nearly empty. There were only a couple of swords left around. Though they all look like they had seen better days. A Lot of them had cracks or had signs that they would break apart as soon as someone touched them.

‘Why would they even keep weapons like these around? No one will ever use them.’