It was another hour's ride through the desolate wasteland of broken rocks and hissing wind before the entrance to Jovandur itself was revealed over a rise. The tales and legends did it more than justice; it was never truly as terrible as the bards sang it to be, appearing as no more than a gaping, stony cave chiseled into the base of a mountain. There were no crimson torches lighting the way into the dank belly of the beast, no beastly claw marks in the dim shadows of the stalagmites and stalactites that glimmered fanglike in the darkling light. It was, in truth, relatively unimpressive, and Durven found himself slightly disappointed whenever he laid eyes upon it. If it hadn't been for the sheer size of the thing, he thought for what seemed like the umpteenth time, it shouldn't have been discovered as a network of tunnels at all.

He and Maffe shimmied their horses quickly behind a slope that would conceal them from view of the tunnel, silent now though the maw of the beast was still a mile away. If Jovandur was visually disappointing, it made up for it by terms of mental perturbation; the black, turbulent cloud above seemed to touch down in the minds of the travelers, swathing them in a swirling mass of noxious gas from the heavens. It would not kill them, merely foreshadow the death that was to come, for in this place of the Ebony Sea and the tunnels of Jovandur, Death's reprimand came swift and cruel.

Durven and Maffe dismounted Torren and Tempest, then tethered them and the packhorse to a protruding stump of obsidian that had formed at the ridge of a steeply sloping valley. There was no grass to be found in the tides of sleek stone, but the riders had thought to bring with them several bundles of hay. The packhorse, having weathered her load for a time, snatched at the dirty golden straws delicately. It would not sustain the three for the ride back, but for now it would have to do.

As soon as the horses were cared for, Durven clambered to the top of the ridge. This was the one island in the Ebony Sea, the one face of land that dared show itself beneath the vehement blaze of shadow above. It tore from the obsidian's black grasp as a tortured, bitter soul would tear into the Land of the Dead, where it would finally find solace. Its broken crown was dotted with the stubble of mirthless bushes, clutching and desperate for any sense of security against the foreboding sky above, and two silver stones jutted from the brow as though they were the horns of the drowning monster. Durven found himself shuddering--there was always a considerable amount of shuddering whenever they were near the entrance to Jovandur--as he crawled up the nondescript head of the hill. Maffe watched from below; he could feel the dwarf's eyes on the back of his neck.

It was customary of the duo to take a preliminary glance at the tunnels' entrance to ensure their safety throughout the night, and also to take note of any ancient wickedness that might be aroused by the falling of the sun. Surely, this invested more tension in the messengers themselves than it did anything else, but Durven had no control over the shadows of his imagination. They came out suddenly and without warning deep in the night, and he knew that they were only strengthened by the imposing proximity of Jovandur's gaping jaws. Now, he fancied that he saw shapes snaking through the bushes and stony sea below, shapes of evil inheritance and malicious fervor. He dismissed them and his mounting dread as nothing more than the figments that they were, then topped the hill.

As expected and as usual, there was nothing noteworthy to report of the Jovandurian tunnels. The darkness swelled in the interminable well of sorcery, and the waters swirled and writhed in chilling and decrepit shapes. The dim half-light that was fading even now cast shallow, almost indiscernible shadows across the wasteland leading to the Witch-folk's cave, and the cave itself seemed almost to reflect its own eerie dimness in place of illumination. It appeared to swallow the light up, banishing it to the depths of the mountains and their interior labyrinths, stealing whatever light was left away...

"Durven!" came the harsh whisper from his side. Durven jerked away, hand flinging to his belt where he kept a short sword, but he just as soon whipped his head over and relaxed somewhat embarrassedly.

"What, Maffe?" he hissed, though he knew that they may as well have spoken in more audible voices. Jovandur was deaf to them. Any human ear could not have perceived any unnatural swell in the ambience from such a distance; indeed, not even the elves would have been able to signify that anything had happened at all. Durven gritted his teeth and returned his attention to studying the tunnels, the raw and earthy scent of dirt filling him as he pressed himself deeper into the ground. He asked in a more controlled tone of voice, "Are the horses alright?"

Maffe shifted his weight, attempting to do hunker down just as his companion did. Dwarves were continually very lovable creatures, even when they nearly frightened one out of his wits. "Aye, everything's in check," he answered, and something in his voice made Durven turn back to study him. There, within the dwarf's dark, reproachful gaze, he saw something that made him falter: trepidation. This was something virtually unheard of in his travels with Maffe, and when the elusive thing was glimpsed, it usually signified something terrible beyond the understanding of mere mortals.

"Everything, that is," the dwarf continued, his graying, twisted beard catching a twig as he swiveled his head back to glare at the entrance to Jovandur, "except the earth itself." Maffe looked over at Durven, who stared back skeptically, and rushed on before he could reply. "Now, before you say anything about my imagination getting the best of me, let me remind you that us dwarves have a downright magical way of sensing anything that's wrong with the ground beneath our feet. I've felt tunnels in the earth before, Durven, and I've felt minute shivers running down its spine, but I can honestly tell you that I've never felt anything like this." He patted the dirt at his side as if demonstrating the dwarves' capabilities.

Durven stared at him for a moment longer, but Maffe did not take his eyes from the inky swells of Jovandur. He found himself looking at the mouth of the cave anxiously, as if expecting something to emerge from it, and then shook his head and asked, "What do you mean, 'this,' Maffe? What do you feel now? I can sense nothing that you have described. Though I cannot feel caverns beneath my feet, earthquakes..." He trailed off at the sight of Maffe's dismal expression.

"Not an earthquake. A presence, my friend..." the dwarf muttered. "A presence massive and as old as the Second King. I can't tell you more of it, though I wish I could, but perhaps in the morning something will reveal itself to us, aye?"

Durven could get nothing more out of Maffe through the night, try though he might, and soon found himself uneasily tossing within the shelter that they had fashioned from nearby stones some days before. It was not the chill of the night, nor the direful whistles of the wind as it slipped through the cracks in the crude stone walls, but Maffe's words. Legends of beasts as old as time and just as powerful arose to mind, and he was helpless to halt their onward surge into his outward perception. Suddenly, the looming shadow on the dreary horizon was not a stone but a claw, and the flashes of lightning illuminated countless skeletons slumped across the Ebony Sea, and the receding drum of thunder in the Mountains of Dusk was the tenor chuckle of distant monsters.

The last night is always the worst, Durven kept reminding himself, continually pushing back a wave of illogical dread.

Needless to say, it was difficult to sleep that night.

The mornings were only classified as such because of the contrast of darkness and dim. In the night, when the invisible sun cloaked in clouds dove behind the horizon, the blackness enveloped all. It hung like an impenetrable mist, weighty and indestructible. However, in the morning when that same unseen sun clambered wearily up from the ashes of the eastern horizon, the mist unraveled at the seams, revealing the malign morning to be colorless, cold, and standoffish, but visible.

Durven's uneasy dreams were speared by a faint scrabbling sound, as some degenerate fiend might make when pulling itself over the balking Ebony Sea. He was awake in an instant, the shortsword that he kept at his side flying to his hand as if of its own accord. It was, after all, a sword of the High King's order; they had all been enchanted, however reluctantly, with minor spells such as levitating to its wielder's hand over short distances. In addition to this, it could also enhance one's hearing ability for small periods of time and remain undulled during combat when pitted against a sword of the same variety. Durven could still sense the irony in crafting instruments of magic to defeat beings of magic, but then who was he to argue with the King's blacksmiths?

However, it would deal no harm to a thing of the Witch-folk, and this thought was running through Durven's head even as he glimpsed the empty bed sheets at his side. Another glance revealed that Maffe was awake already, jerking his boots on just outside the makeshift outpost. Durven allowed the sword to plummet back toward the stone as he sat up as far as their low-hanging roof would allow. A heavy sigh of relief escaped his mouth as he slumped back, the adrenaline still coursing through his veins. Just my dwarf. Not a demon.

After a moment in which Durven did not move and Maffe did not acknowledge that he knew him to be awake, the former gaining his wits for the first time that day, Durven finally croaked, "I thought you were one of the Witch-folk." He paused. Maffe continued tying his laces. "What are you doing?"

The dwarf straightened, rolling his shoulders, and then stood. His voice floated back to Durven as if from afar, hollowed by the whispering, dying breeze: "It's almost awake, Durven. I have to go see it." And with that, Maffe coiled forward and groaned as if in pain. Before the man could jump to action, however, whatever action that might have been, Maffe was pulling himself straight and jerkily stomping away, past the side of the shelter and up the glistering rise.

Durven took a moment to register that, his mind still lethargically dragging itself out of bed. He was suddenly aware that the air pressing in around him was chilled by the reminiscent breeze, and that the blanket wrapped around his lower half was so seductively warm. The clatter of a stone tumbling down the hillside reminded him of what exigencies might be found, though, and soon Durven was crawling out from under the pitiful structure and yanking on his own boots, bothering with the laces.

Maffe appeared to be taking his time wandering upwards as the breeze nipped at him and tugged at his beard, but he had already reached the top by the time Durven started up after him. "Maffe, what are you doing!" he called softly but urgently, scrambling with renewed vigor as a patch of gravel broke beneath his feet. "They're going to see you!"

The dwarf had arisen from the half-stooped position that was required to mount the ridge and was now walking along its crown, in plain sight of the entrance to Jovandur. He answered something--Probably something vague in veneration of his past cryptic comments, Durven decided--but the chortling wind snatched it away and carried it southeastward. Durven straggled after his friend, though the dwarf miraculously seemed to be gaining ground.

By the time that the man had arrived at the highest elevation that he would allow himself to be, in respect of the possibility that he too might be glimpsed from the entrance to the witch-tunnels, Maffe had almost reached the mountain that the ridge led to. It reared up suddenly a few hundred feet off, morphing into an impressive cliff face that was steep but not without hand- and footholds. Maffe was climbing this now, hoisting himself hand over hand with speed and agility that Durven had not experienced from him before, and this realization only fueled his frustration and trepidation. Something is not right, he thought, pulling himself upright. Not right at all.

The man started a cool sprint just below the crown of the hill, bounding over the scrub bushes and bonelike stones emerging from its flesh. "Maffe!" he cried over the gusts of wind. The breeze seemed to have gained newfound strength now, or else he was only paying it more mind in his unease. It sounded as though it had also discovered a voice, little whispers that pounded through the whirling mass around him, sibilitating words that he thought he knew but could not name. That was new. Durven growled in terror, glancing over the top of the ridge to see that the tunnels were reassuringly empty, but that did nothing to alleviate the sense of nausea building in him. Can't that blasted dwarf hear this? Why won't he stop?! Maffe dragged himself over the topmost edge of the cliff just as Durven was starting up its base.

His voice was raised now in what he knew to be irrational hysteria; there was nothing to suggest that they had been spotted. "Maffe, they're going to see you, damn it!" As if in reproach, the wind rose to a particularly shrill note, and the whispers ascended with it, and Durven crawled even faster. Thunder sounded in the black temple of clouds to the north, vibrating in the marrow of his bones and momentarily jolting his muscles into ragged halting motions. The stone was rough beneath his weathered hands, and a fleeting, desperate thought of how there was no dust taken by the wind to weather it and no rain that smoothed it passed through his mind. Don't focus on this, don't focus on this, he chided himself, realizing a moment later that his mantra had begun forming on his lips. The whispers hissed in response with the agonized howls of the wind.

The top--yes, finally! Durven reached over the lip of the cliff and grabbed a handful of grass with both hands, then grasped those as he maneuvered himself sideways to roll onto horizontal land. His heart was marching to a frenzied beat, not from the climb itself but from the harrowing sounds that had plagued it. Even as he lay there, attempting to pacify his racing mind, the whispers gradually faded from the wind. It, however, did not cease its gentle rambling, instead moving in time with the booms of the thunder that seemed to be approaching.

Durven turned his head in the direction that Maffe was headed, directly up the mountainside, and then bolted upright in alarm, his gaze swinging frantically across the sloping landscape. The dwarf had disappeared. He struggled to his feet, taking a few precautionary steps away from the groping cliff face, and with a dismissive glance toward the broken form of the tunnel, he raised his hands to his mouth and called, "MAFFE!"

Berating wind met his shout, and nothing more.

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