Scene 16: The Moors of Memory and Mire
Grey and Nixor had not spoken for hours.
The moors stretched before them in a cold, gray expanse of half-frozen reeds and slick moss-covered stones, veiled in a mist that never seemed to lift. Each step squelched into the black mire, and their boots were soaked through, long past the point of caring. The sky above was a pallid smudge of leaden clouds, casting no shadow and offering no sun. Somewhere behind them lay the smoking ruin of Morin's Stand and the echoes of steel upon flesh. But ahead—nothing but the whispers of the moor and the looming threat of the Horde.
Grey moved like a wraith through the fog, his cloak clinging to him with icy damp. He glanced back at Nixor, who was crouched low behind a gnarled root, scanning the mist for movement.
"They're out there," Nixor whispered. "Hob scouts. Maybe a mile to the west. Big tracks. Worn boots."
Grey gave a slow nod. "We move east. The reeds grow thicker. They'll slow down in the muck."
Their flight had taken them deep into the marshland, where no sane farmer dared build and even the oldest maps had little more than the word 'Moorlands' scrawled with vague disdain. Here the ground itself breathed, and the winds whispered as if with memory.
Their only food was a pouch of trail rations that Grey had taken from the garrison. It was nearly gone. Neither dared light a fire. Their only warmth came from the thick reeds, their own shared silence, and grim determination.
"What do you think we're walking through?" Nixor muttered, more to break the silence than from curiosity. "This can't be natural. All this stone, half-buried. I've seen ruins before, but this... this is different."
Grey didn't answer at first. He crouched beside a protruding stone, brushing away the moss with numb fingers. Symbols emerged—simple carvings, spirals and cross-hatched patterns worn almost to nothing.
"This is older than the Empire," Grey said quietly. "Much older."
"Older?" Nixor raised an eyebrow. "How much older?"
"Centuries. Maybe a thousand years. Maybe more. Look at the stonework—no mortar. Just stacked, shaped blocks. These remind me of ruins from the northern reaches. But there's more. The layout, if you can call it that—it suggests ritual. Not just function."
"You're telling me we're walking through some ancient druid city?"
"Or what's left of one." Grey stood and turned slowly, eyes scanning the uneven shapes rising from the moor. "If there was a wall once, it's long collapsed. The buildings are all sunken. The marsh must have swallowed it centuries ago. This might have been a city once. Or a temple ground. Maybe even a necropolis."
Nixor grunted, unimpressed. "All the more reason not to linger."
As they pressed forward, the fog began to thin slightly, revealing more crumbled stone mounds and sunken archways. Ivy-clad lintels leaned at crooked angles. Great circular foundations hinted at roundhouses, their thatch long since rotted away. In the distance, a half-fallen standing stone jutted from the earth like a giant's finger.
It was Nixor who spotted the intact structure. A sloping rise of stone lay cradled in a fold of the moor, half-concealed by dead ferns and creeping moss. The stones were larger here, more deliberate. Carved spiral glyphs encircled a narrow doorway that tilted with the earth's settling.
Grey knelt and traced the edge of one glyph. "This wasn't built with iron tools. See the tool marks? Chiseled by stone or bronze."
"Terrific," Nixor muttered. "We've stumbled into the land before iron."
"Or something that didn't need iron." Grey's voice dropped. "Some say the first sorcerers came from the moors. That before the Archons, before the Empire, there were others. Builders of strange cities. Worshipers of forgotten things."
"Sounds like nonsense."
"Does it?" Grey looked at him, pale eyes catching the dim light. "You saw what happened in Ereny. You saw what came out of the shadows."
They stepped into the structure. It was dry, mostly intact. The stone ceiling had held, slanted and moss-coated though it was. Inside, the air was cold but still. Ancient rushes crumbled underfoot. The floor was bare save for fragments of clay and a long-dead hearth.
They cleared a dry patch and lay down without ceremony, exhaustion claiming them. The wind outside howled against the stones like a dying thing.
That night, Grey dreamed.
It began with warmth. A tavern's hearth. Familiar faces. Tambor laughing over a mug of wine. Krashina polishing her blade. Cairvish arguing with Lady Syboril over etiquette and trade. Even Nixor, grinning with his usual smug disdain.
Then, they began to change.
Grey watched as their skin split like fruit left too long in the sun. From their eyes and mouths, fungus spilled—black, lichen-like growths with glistening spores, twitching like worms. Tambor burst open like a ripe melon, revealing a mass of fungal roots writhing inside. Cairvish's voice became a low droning chant in some alien tongue. Krashina's eyes went white, and her shadow stretched impossibly long along the tavern wall, pulsing as if alive. In the dream, Grey tried to scream, but his mouth was filled with rot.
He saw the cell in Ereny again—but it was not Ereny. The bars were made of bones, and the floor writhed. Something ancient moved beyond the door. And over it all, a whispering voice spoke without sound:
The Spore is not one. It is not many. It is becoming.
He awoke shivering, the cold sweat freezing on his back. Nixor was already awake, silently watching him from the dark.
"You talk in your sleep," the rogue muttered. "Said something about a shadow. And eyes."
Grey sat up, rubbing his temples. "A dream. Or a warning."
"Well, it's one I'd rather not hear twice. Come on. Let's move before the sun dares to rise."
They pressed on through the moor, deeper into the fog-choked wetland. As the day passed, the ruins became more frequent. Stone walls, twisted iron remnants, shattered idols. All half-submerged, their original purpose long forgotten. It was not a city—it was a necropolis drowned by time. Grey traced the geometry of one ruin and frowned.
"These walls weren't built by human hands."
Nixor raised an eyebrow. "Then by what?"
Grey didn't answer. He didn't have to. The chill in the air seemed to deepen, as if the moor remembered.
Later that day, they heard guttural shouts in the distance. Goblins.
They ducked into the nearest structure—a squat, round stone silo, sunken into the muck and overgrown. Most of it was buried. The only way in was through the broken slats of the collapsed roof. Nixor went first, dropping silently. Grey followed.
Inside, the air was thick with mildew and rot. Faded sacks of grain crumbled to dust at a touch. Old spider webs clung like curtains across the circular walls.
"We wait here," Nixor whispered. "Let them pass."
Grey nodded, eyes still scanning the walls.
There, etched in the stone, partially buried beneath a creeping fungal bloom, was a familiar symbol: a spiral of eyes surrounding a single hollow pupil.
His breath caught.
It was the same sigil he had seen in the dream.
He reached out to touch it, but Nixor grabbed his wrist.
"Don't," the rogue said, eyes narrowed. "Some things buried should stay that way."
And so they sat in silence, listening to the goblins pass, waiting in the dark with old stones and older fears.