For the third time, Aven prepared to descend into the void. The pit at the bottom of the cells, half-drained of its strange mists, was still deep enough to swallow a man whole.

  The difference was that this time everyone fully expected him to come back out. Preferably within a shorter timeframe than two weeks.

  “Not too tight, I hope,” Tanya adjusted the chain looped around Aven in a harness.

  “Not at all,” Ordinary materials never survived the void. Arcsteel alone endured. The chains weren’t piercing his flesh like the manacles Yvris used, instead simply looped around his chest and shoulders.

  Unfortunately, clothes didn’t survive the void either, so Aven had to do this particular task naked. A fact that didn’t seem to bother anyone present except Aelia and Esharah, both of whom were studiously looking away. Or, rather, Esharah was definitely looking away while Aelia was pretending like she was looking away.

  “Don’t you dare tease her,” Esharah warned everyone present besides Aelia.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Tanya lied.

  Aven allowed himself to indulge in a moment of pride.

  “You should focus on the task at hand,” Mensikhana’s mental voice was laced with disapproval. “You are communing with our goddess.”

  While he lacked the ogress’ reverence, Aven did understand the task was important. Even if the Watcher refused to properly answer their questions, she could still offer some insight into the threat they faced. Hopefully. Or Aven would be wasting his time descending back into the void.

  “Ready, captain?” Logash held the other end of the chain in both powerful hands.

  They’d tried the harness setup before, dangling Aven from the wall instead of into the pit. It had worked, in the sense that Aven hadn’t choked to death and Logash could haul him up. Only at the cost of everyone in the Keep getting to see Aven dangling like a fish on a rod from the walls. Dignity was a reasonable cost for knowledge.

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  Aven turned and positioned himself at the edge of the pit, slowly lowering himself down.

  He paused before losing sight of the watching, anxious crowd, giving them a confident smile, “See you in a few minutes.”

  Aelia jerked forward, moving as if inspired by a sudden burst of courage that would run out at any second. She knelt down and clasped his hand. A simple squeeze that felt to Aven as intimate as a kiss, “We will be waiting.”

  Then she was gone before Aven could even respond, retreating to a safer distance. He let out a soft laugh as his feet slipped over the edge. The abyss took him.

  Not as dark as before. When Aven first had entered the void, it was smothering. Not just blinding, but crushing, a complete absence of light. After two weeks in the void, he’d grown used to it, able to see through the mists like they were only thick fog instead of all-consuming black. Now, they seemed little more than shadows. He could see the walls on either side of the pit, blackstone bricks all the way down.

  Mensikhana and Esharah alike vanished from his mind. Curious. So their minds could join him in memory but couldn’t follow him until the void directly.

  “I’m afraid...that particular loophole has been closed,” the Watcher’s voice reached Aven. Different from before. Not so much like Mother’s.

  She looked different as well. Mother’s features were still there. But there were others joining them. Those eyes...more like Aelia’s. And the voice...more like how Esharah’s sounded in his head. All blended together.

  Less...solid than before too. More like a phantom than a real presence. Even the voice sounded far away.

  “Hello again, goddess,” Aven floated in the void, still feeling more than a little ridiculous in the arcsteel harness. “You’re different from the last time we spoke.”

  “I have changed...because you have,” the image flickered in and out of existence. “And...we will find it difficult to speak properly like this. I speak to those lost and alone. You...are neither.”

  Attempting to outsmart the void and its rules was always a losing game, it seemed. Aven sighed and let his body dissolve, slipping free of the chains and reforming his body outside them.

  “How about now?” Aven asked, spreading his arms out, free of the lifeline tethering him to the world outside. Free and alone.

  The Watcher’s form sharpened, taking shape more fully. Voice clearer. “That...was a remarkably cruel thing to do to those you care for.”

  Aven glanced behind to see the chain jerking up. No doubt Logash had felt the weight change. Oops.

  He shot up towards the top of the voidmists, breaking the surface to see alarmed faces staring back down.

  “I’m all right!” he called up. “Back in a few minutes.”

  There. That should reassure them.

  Back down below, rejoining the goddess. “There. I’m alone. That help?”

  The goddess shook her head and chuckled, a sound like distant bells, “The...definition of ‘alone’ has changed for you. I can see those you love, in your thoughts. You carry them with you always. They are with you, even now.”

  Aven had no answer for that.

  “But with this, you are enough alone for us to speak,” the Watcher said. “You are here, I presume, to ask about the coming voidspawn wave.”

  “That’s right,” Aven said.

  “You know I cannot give you guidance.”

  “Could you lie?” Aven asked. It was a theory he’d concocted with Esharah and Aelia. If the goddess was forbidden by some other power from giving guidance, could she circumvent that by giving false guidance? A lie, when known a lie, was its own kind of truth.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Her smile held a bit of chagrin, “Clever thinking, but no. False guidance remains guidance. What I can tell you, I will tell you. Searching for loopholes in the law of the divine will not bring you closer to the truth.”

  Damn. Again, Aven’s hopes of outsmarting the powers that governed the world proved futile. Still worth a try. And even if neither truth nor lies could guide, there were still ways of finding meaning in what was spoken and unspoken.

  “Who sets rules that a goddess has to follow?” Aven wondered aloud.

  As expected, the goddess in question gave no answer.

  “Can you at least tell me if my mother’s claims are true?” Aven tried next.

  The Watcher’s head tilted as if carefully considering the question, “I can speak of things that have been. All the incidents included in the report occurred on the dates claimed.”

  Aven tried to commit the exact wording to the Battle Mind. Aelia would surely dissect every word better than he could.

  “Anything you can tell me of the voidspawn coming?” Aven asked.

  “No,” the goddess’ denial was firm, but not harsh. “But you can look for yourself.”

  She gestured down. Towards the crack at the bottom of the pit where Aven had glimpsed the Abyss and everything that waited within. His stomach churned. Glimpsing it unsuspecting had nearly driven him mad. Even the memory shared with Esharah and Mensikhana had been enough to inflict terrible strain on their minds.

  But he was stronger now. Physically, at least. Hopefully that translated mentally. In any case, this was a chance to learn what awaited them. Flinching from such a threat was cowardice.

  He descended. Down again to the bottom of the pit, where the mists flowed down. Back to the crack in the world that held a window into the Abyss. He could see it already, the endless swirling madness below. A maelstrom of churning darkness. The sheer scope and magnitude of it threatened to overwhelm him, to swallow his mind and sanity. The Battle Mind split him, compartmentalizing the terror, the awe, the sheer horror of it into manageable chunks.

  Thousands upon thousands of spawn writhing below. Small as dogs and large as horses. They crawled over each other in an endless stream.

  And there were others. Larger. More terrible. There. In the center, the largest. One coiled like a snake, but with a hundred scrabbling, flailing legs around its bulbous body. Covered in pustules like cocoons. Even as he watched, one burst open and a newborn spawn writhed out, its shrieks joining the cacophony.

  Even in the midst of Aven’s disgust and horror, the Battle Mind tried to analyze to gruesome scene. Scale was difficult to tell at this distance, but compared to the deathsingers...

  Gods, the giant centipedal voidspawn must be big as a house. And that was just the part Aven could see.

  Songs rose above the chattering, chittering chorus. Songs that held no words but carried meaning that echoed through his soul.

  “Praise Mother!”

  Deathsingers surrounded the outer edge like a flock of vultures. Hunched bodies bowed towards the center as their mouths hung unnaturally wide to bellow the perverse hymn. He couldn’t be certain how many. Hundreds, at least.

  “Praise She Who Waits! She rises! All shall feed!” Their voices rose, and the smaller spawn below writhed in an ecstatic frenzy, bodies surging as if drawn by an unseen tide.

  Another figure above the horrific birth, one almost human. Unnaturally tall and slender, wrapped in a black cloak. It stretched out a seven-fingered hand, each digit crooked and long. The cloak fell away from its arm, revealing skin like blackened iron. A finger touched one of the pustules on the writhing centipedal monstrosity, and at the touch, it burst open to the cheers of the surrounding crowd. The deathsingers’ song intensified, and the figure raised its arms as a priestess conducting an orchestra.

  The priestess flinched. As if feeling Aven’s gaze upon them, she looked up. Looked straight up at Aven, from across the Abyss. Through the crack. A face with no mouth. Only a single large, multifaceted red eye. Burning red. Just like the Warden’s Eyes had once burned throughout Hellfrost Keep.

  The eye pulsed, and the lower half split, a mouth forming from nothing, flesh tearing with a rising hiss like a serpent’s rage.

  “Thief!” the voice shrieked, rattling Aven’s brain. “Murderer! Despoiler! We will come! We will feast on your flesh and blood as you have defiled ours! We will tear the screaming stars from the sky and grind them to dust! We will-”

  A hand gripped Aven’s shoulder, yanking him away from the abyss.

  The goddess held Aven as he retched and shook. His body fell to pieces until an effort of will wrenched it back together. But the screaming voice, the images of the writhing horror still echoed in his skull. The Battle Mind, which had served him so well, shuddered and fractured into a dozen panicked shards.

  “Easy, Aven,” the goddess’ voice was a calm anchor in the storm of terror. “You are safe. You are in Hellfrost. You are safe.”

  He was not. He had seen their future. Seen what awaited them. Not an army. A plague. A flood that would drown the world.

  “How...how can we fight against that?” Aven murmured. There were more voidspawn waiting below than in all the empire. More than could be slain by any army, even if they had a decade to prepare. More than could be contained.

  “Do the voidspawn come all at once?” the goddess asked.

  The question jolted something in Aven. A question demanded an answer. Answers demanded reason. Reason could reach beyond fear.

  “They...do not,” Aven forced out the truth. “But...how many will come in the next wave? More than before?”

  “Perhaps,” the goddess said. “But perhaps not all.”

  Not all. If they came in waves, split all across the land...they could fight it.

  “Voidspawn have lurked in the abyss for centuries,” the goddess said. “Millennia. And still mortals fight them. Endlessly. They have not yet won.”

  Comforting words? No, but ones that Aven could cling to.

  “Are they...really just below Hellfrost?” Aven asked, still trying to reason his way through the nightmare.

  “Not in physical space as you understand it,” the goddess replied. “One could dig miles and miles beneath earth and rock below Hellfrost and never reach the abyss. These cracks and pits are tunnels and windows between worlds. At times, these worlds are further away. At times they are closer. And when close enough...”

  Aven understood. Soon the abyss would be close enough for an army to pass over.

  “You...you saved me,” Aven said as the goddess released him. “Thank you. I didn’t think you could do that.”

  “I am forbidden,” the goddess smiled. “Laws can be broken. If...the consequences are worth it.”

  She raised a hand. The hand that had pulled Aven back from the abyss. Blackened, not as the void but as if burned by searing flames. The skin cracked and flaked, a trickle of grey dust falling from her fingertips.

  “The consequences are always paid,” the goddess said, watching her hand dissolve into ash. Her face flickered, losing its shape. “Now go, Aven. I have overstepped. The consequences for that shall not be pleasant.”

  “Who does this to you?” Aven asked, aghast at the sight. The burned flesh spread, creeping across every part of her body visible. The face dissolved into a blur of indistinct features.

  “Who indeed could punish a goddess?” she asked.

  Another god, presumably, Aven thought. Or a devil.

  She smiled, reaching out to touch his cheek. Even as the touch seared her flesh, turning fingers to bare bone. “I am touched, but do not spare concern for me. I have endured far worse. And you have others waiting for you. Go to them. I think...” she grimaced. “I think that we will likely not be allowed to speak again in this manner.”

  Aven gave the goddess one last look as her body dissolved. Then, he turned and rose again to the surface. The chain still dangled, still held by those waiting on top. A lifeline. He’d been an idiot to slip it.

  “Aven!” Aelia’s voice sounded panicked. “Aven, what’s happening? Are you alright?”

  “I’m...” the reflexive reassurance didn’t quite come. Instead, he just clambered out of the pit, voidclaws stretching from his shoulders. Logash hauled him up when close enough, and Tanya was already waiting with a cloak to wrap around his shivering body. It wasn’t cold. The shivers came from the memory of that eye burning in his mind.

  “What did you see?” Mensikhana demanded.

  Esharah pulsed a warning for everyone to step back. To not overwhelm him. “Let him breathe,” she said aloud.

  The voices. The screaming. The promise of death. Aven took a deep breath and forced the Battle Mind back into coherence. Panic was a luxury they could not afford. He had to be clear. Strong. Aelia’s hand touched his shoulder. Tentatively, carefully, but the touch anchored him. He rested one hand over her warm one, and kept the other on the rough, cold stone of the prison.

  Only when Aven gave the signal to Esharah did she let Mensikhana’s voice in again.

  “What did you see?” Mensikhana repeated the question.

  Voice still shaking, Aven did his best to transform a living nightmare into words.

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