Chapter 2
In its prime, the great spires of Castle Sickholm had towered over the city, casting long shadows over the lower streets. The commonfolk knew that to see the inside of the royal castle was an honor they would likely never receive; but to witness the massive stronghold from afar was breathtaking enough for most. Atop a high bluff at the center of town, the castle was surrounded by an imposing wall, connected at the south side of the hill by an ornately engraved iron gate.
What had once been the most protected, impenetrable entryway in the entire kingdom, now lay in rubble at the two thieves’ feet.
It was clear to Iyo what had created their convenient entrance: a large piece of a building had been ripped from its foundations and dashed against the gate, proving too much for the reinforced iron moldings that now lay shattered amongst the ruins.
Affo looked disappointed. “Huh. Well this is less exciting than I had hoped.”
Iyo gestured to the flaming sky swallowing the city around them. “I’m sorry, do you need some more excitement!?”
They crossed the palace grounds with ease. ‘The guards must have either fled to the harbor, or retreated inside the fortress,’ Iyo thought. For their sake, he hoped the former - not a half hour ago, he had been swinging by a rope from his neck, barely surviving asphyxiation - he wasn’t sure if he was quite up for a fight yet.
His question was answered as they ascended the castle stairs and entered the main foyer to find it equally abandoned. Iyo imagined the great halls and meeting tables in the rooms they passed had not long ago been bustling and full of life - now it seemed like a hundred years had passed in the blink of an eye and turned the palace into undiscovered ancient ruins. Maps and tomes lay strewn about, smoldering amongst the flaming rubble. He noticed more than one lifeless hand or foot peeking out from beneath the ruined stone, and imagined that if they had arrived any earlier, the gruesome scene around them might not have been so covered up. He was at least thankful for that.
“Never thought we’d see this place, huh?” Affo asked as they made their way down the hall.
“I always assumed you’d do something that’d get us both thrown in the cells under here, and we’d get a nice view of the place as we got dragged in.”
Any retort he had planned stopped in his throat, as the two entered the throne room. Ornate chandeliers dangled from the high-arched ceilings, but their light was barely needed, as the throne itself appeared to be glowing. Towering high over the court, the great throne appeared to be covered in molten rock and flames (and not from the sky, Iyo noted - this was clearly part of the throne’s design - surprisingly, it seemed to be completely unharmed.)
Affo approached the throne’s steps. “Well that looks comfortable.”
Iyo started to debate whether or not he should take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sit on the Molten Throne (and from the looks of it, risk some unsightly blisters), when a sudden movement caught his eye. Along the wall behind the throne, a curtain rustled from a slight breeze, in what appeared to be some sort of secret entrance. A falling rock had leveled the platform that once barred the curtain from view, making the whole thing appear less like a secret entryway, and more like a poorly-designed servants’ door.
“Hey, this way,” Iyo said as he made his way to the wall behind the burning throne and slipped through the curtain. The other side proved as plain as he’d expected - nothing more than a narrow stone brick hallway, twisting and turning into near darkness. And somewhere ahead in the darkness… voices.
Affo shot a look to him as he entered through the curtain, silently acknowledging that they were both too curious to leave this be. The light-footed methods the Guild had instilled in them proved useful here, as the thieves made their way down the aged brick hall with silent footsteps. The voices grew louder with every twist and turn, and as an ajar wooden doorway came into view, the hushed tones finally became audible.
“...can’t wait any longer-”
“We can’t leave without them!”
“Do you want to die here?”
Iyo crouched low alongside the doorframe and peered inside at the source of the voices: a group of three men and two women, lightly-armored, and gathered around a construct that he had never seen anything like before. A sleek, lighted platform raised up into a spire, which appeared to be covered in glowing lights...though for the life of him, Iyo couldn’t discern what the thing was made of.
The woman at the table finished packing up the scattered paperwork and addressed the others. “We’re slicing now. We can’t wait.”
The man closest to the strange construct stormed towards her. “Maya and the others aren’t back! You can’t seriously-”
“You’ve seen what Preksak can do! You’ve seen how quickly it happens! It’s bad enough we’ve waited this long, I’m surprised the Knife is still in one piece!”
The rest of the crew gathered the few belongings in the room and stepped onto the platform of the construct. The man who had spoken stayed put, however, his face contorting in an emotion Iyo couldn’t quite pinpoint.
The woman turned back to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “We told them thirty minutes. It’s been thirty. You know they’d do the same if it were the other way around.”
The man looked down, and Iyo could tell he knew this to be the truth. The two joined their companions on the platform, and the machine whirred to life. Iyo looked on in fascination as the lights glowed even brighter than before, casting the room in an eerie, otherworldly white light.
“Over here! Quick!”
The shout had come from down the hall, but Iyo barely heard it as he watched the half-dozen people before him vanish, as if simply erased from the reality before him. He wanted to enter the room himself, to inspect this strange magic structure, to discover its secrets - but Affo’s continued shouts brought him back to the task at hand.
“Come on, I found it! We gotta move!”
As if to accentuate Affo’s urgency, a support pillar crumbled under its own weight, caving in a good portion of the hallway. Iyo didn’t hesitate a second time.
As the two reached the end of the hallway, they found themselves at the edge of a cavernous enclave - a room that looked like a grand chapel, save for the lack of windows. The walls appeared to be covered in intricate runes, none of which Iyo recognized. And at the center, proudly displayed atop a podium, lay the kingdom’s most prized artifact.
The Shadknife had survived through the centuries, through dozens of regime changes, beyond even the end of the Shad dynasty, which ruled Sickholm since before it was even named so. But the sword itself was said to have dated back to the son of the first King Shad, whom it had been bestowed upon as a gift from birth. Born with a vexing illness that left the young prince frail and withered, the commonfolk referred to him mockingly as “Shad the Sick.” Expected to die within the year, whispers of succession turned quickly into several attempted coups, intended to rest control from the faltering Shad bloodline. But the young Shad, who had taken to sleeping with the gifted sword nearby, began to make a miraculous recovery. The disease that had left him on the brink of death seemed to vanish, and the stewards that watched over him began to swear that the prince’s prized sword had something to do with it. Tales of the sword’s power soon filled every tavern in the kingdom, and like with every great tale, soon became a truth mired in embellishments and poetic falsities. But the unmistakable truth of the Shadknife’s inherent powers were proven as the prince soon came to power - proudly wearing the moniker of King Shad the Sick, the kingdom entered its most prosperous era in history under his rule. When the beloved monarch finally passed on, at the otherworldly age of 192, the kingdom (a region referred to then only as the Rokelands) was dubbed in his honor. Through the years, the Shadknife passed to every King of Sickholm, and was kept in the deepest chamber of the city’s castle. The blade’s powers seemed even to extend to the castle itself; through every manner of raid and war throughout the years, the fortress of Sickholm stood defiant and invulnerable to even the deadliest of attacks.
‘Guess it finally reached its limit,’ Iyo thought, as a fiery boulder crashed through the stone roof of the enclave and shattered across the ground nearby.
Affo stepped up to the sword’s podium. “Shall I do the honors?”
“Sure, yeah, let’s just hurry this up.”
“That will be quite far enough.”
The two thieves whipped around to the source of the third voice - a cloaked figure across the room, slowly approaching them from the hall. Affo turned, one foot planted atop the podium.
“Oh yeah? And who might you be?”
The figure did not stop advancing, and a feeling of dread began to grip Iyo’s stomach. “Too long has this artifact been wielded by mortals who knew not how to use it.”
Affo grabbed the hilt of the sword, lifting it from the podium. “Uh -huh, very scary. Well ‘us mortals’ have a saying, and it’s ‘finders keepers, losers wee-’”
The knife was in Affo’s stomach before Iyo could even register that the cloaked figure had flinched. A gloved hand had fired a small blade clear across the room, which now lay embedded up to its hilt in his companion’s torso.
“NO!” Iyo shouted as he rushed over, catching the collapsing thief before his head cracked across the empty podium. The Shadknife dropped from Affo’s hand as he clutched at his stomach, gurgling what would have no doubt been a witty retort for the situation, had it not been muffled by blood.
The figure was close now, and even as Iyo grabbed the fallen blade and lifted it in defense, he knew he stood no chance against this figure.
“The Hand has need of this artifact.”
Iyo’s eyes went wide. “The Hand? That’s-- we’re members of the Guild! We’re on the same si-”
Like his partner, the knife was in his stomach before he even saw the man’s arm twitch. Iyo had to marvel at the man’s dexterity, even as he felt his legs give out from under him, and he collapsed to the ground next to Affo. The hooded man reached down, grabbing the hilt of the sword and lifting the Shadknife high.
“Our Hand is not of this world,” the figure said as he aimed the blade downwards, ready to plunge it through Iyo’s heart, “and all false Hands must be eradicated in the name of the one true-”
The sound that silenced the figure’s words was unlike Iyo had ever heard. Like a patch of grass being torn from the ground, the earth beneath the room shattered and ripped upwards with unstoppable force. The last pillars and supports that held the castle together crumbled to fiery dust, as everything was sucked upwards into the spiraling vortex. Pain seared through Iyo’s stomach as his limp body was thrown upwards, knocking the figure off balance and hurling them sideways. The Shadknife clanged onto the ground inches from Iyo’s head - he reached a weak arm over and grasped the hilt, doubtful he even had the strength left to stop a blow with it.
Soon it didn’t matter though, as gravity ceased to exist, and he felt himself swirling upwards into the sky with terrifying velocity. Debris and molten rock whipped around him, crashed into him, bruising and battering his already bloodied body. The pain had begun to turn to numbness, and Iyo knew it was only a matter of time before a well-placed rock finished the job. As the world began to dull around him though, he felt a strange instinct to grip the Shadknife’s hilt harder, to clutch the weapon in his dying hand as he flew threw the sky. It seemed strange he’d become so attached to the sword now, he thought. In a few moments, it wouldn’t even matter. He struggled to slip the Shadknife’s blade through the belt of his tunic, as he looked up to see a shattered stone wall hurtling through the air towards him,
The last thing Iyo remembered was dying.
