Blood and Steel (The Cor Chronicles Volume I) by Martin Parece II
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Kamar agreed to take Cor into the mountains, swearing that he’d seen the building Cor sought, and in fact, it was the finding of that building that made Kamar give up the World’s Spine altogether. Two years ago, a lifelong friend of his had found ancient writings in a tomb in the mountains; the writings were in an odd dialect of Western and spoke of a great building filled with the treasure of many kingdoms. Oddly, the location of this hall had to be in the mountains, though the writings spoke of sweeping plains and other strange ruins.
Kamar, his friend and three others set out looking for the treasure, expecting to be rich for as long as they lived, but instead they found death. The climb was more treacherous than they expected, and one of them died in an accident on the mountain before even finding the building. They were running low on provisions and decided to turn back when another simply lost his footing and fell down a steep incline. When they reached the bottom he was dead, but there, only a few hundred feet away sat the most bizarre edifice they had ever seen, disguised from above by an ancient rockslide, and nestled in a tiny valley. They rushed into the building, through an open side of shattered and dangerous glass, anxious to lay eyes on the treasure for which they had already sacrificed much.
They stood in a large room, millennia of dust caking the floor. Natural light filtered in from the outside, and they could see two large doorways leading further into the building at the rear of the room. There were four perfectly round marble columns arranged as the corners of a square near the center of the room, and there were a number of other portals shaped like doors that seemed utterly sealed and impassable.
It was then that Kamar’s friend met his end. A black spider, with legs and body as shiny as polished steel and twice as wide as a man is tall, dropped out of shadow from the ceiling and picked the man up. He screamed, pleading and begging for help as the spider rolled him in silk while climbing its own line back to the ceiling. Kamar’s final companion, all sanity lost, ran screaming deeper into the building, and Kamar with no intention of dying, left as quickly as his feet could muster.
The tragedy of it all became even more pronounced over the next few days. Kamar, most of his climbing equipment lost or otherwise used, spent days trying to find a way out of the mountains. He knew this part of the Spine well, all things considered, and he had never come across this building or any pass leading to it. However, the hall had been completely disguised from above, and it stood to his reason that there may be trails or passes to this place that were likewise hidden. He investigated every nook and cranny leading from the tiny valley, mapping each route on a flat boulder, writing with indigenous chalk. On the second day he found a path, a mere crack that squeezed between two cliff faces, that eventually emptied onto a well known track through the mountains. The crack was hidden from plain view by a massive boulder.
All of this Kamar related to Cor in complete detail after Cor had agreed to the price. Kamar would take him there, so that he may find whatever it was he thought was so important, and then Kamar would lead him out. In addition to provisioning the trip, which they would undertake on foot, Cor agreed to pay Kamar a handsome sum of fifty gold pieces as well as pay all of Kamar’s drinking debts.
Kamar estimated that the journey would take four days on foot at a brisk pace to reach the mountains, followed by an additional one or two days in the mountains. Cor paid up his room and the horse’s board for an additional two weeks, and he also paid for a separate room for Kamar for one night, allowing the man ample time to sleep off his hangover before leaving the next morning.
22.