The guardians of the mountain loomed over their heads, like two great tusks of rock jutting out of the earth. Between those tusks, a winding path led up a rocky cliffside that was otherwise nearly sheer.

  Moktark whistled between his teeth, and dropped the travois. It had taken them another five days to reach the pass, and whatever ethical qualms Koruk had been feeling about the raid had been suppressed by having a full belly the entire trip. Even the cheese had been alright.

  The following morning they ascended, a rope tied between the three of them in case one of them should fall. Moktark took the lead, having some experience in the mountains already, but it was very slow going. At points the path was too narrow for the travois to be drug, and they had to disassemble it and carry it and its cargo piece by piece, backs pressed against the cliff face for support. Below them the ground dropped away, and Koruk had to mentally stop himself from looking down to hold his stomach.

  At least the goat seemed to have no trouble at all, traversing the dangerous pass as if it was on a summer stroll.

  It was nightfall when they finally ascended, the narrow pass opening up and the ground starting to level out as they neared the top of the vast plateau. It was there that they set up camp for the night.

  Koruk had heard stories of the southern mountains from hunters and aspiring warriors in the village, but he found himself shocked by the desolation of the place all the same. Not a single tree nor blade of grass grew in this place, nor did it seem they ever did. As the sun went down, a chill breeze began to blow, and he felt glad for the furs they had stolen a few nights prior, as the warm clothes they had brought from Wit’thod quickly proved insufficient.

  Without a fire to sit around, it was a cheerless night. Koruk didn’t miss it though. Something about this place seemed to dissuade merrymaking.

  In the night, he awoke to the sound of howling in the distance.

  “Dire wolves.” Moktark said. The big warrior was holding his warclub in one big paw against his chest as he slumbered. “They shouldn’t attack us. Not if we’re together that is.”

  Koruk nodded, and tried to get back to sleep. Sharp rocks poked him from beneath the furs they were using as bedding. Somehow, he managed to get back to sleep.

  The morning found Moktark loudly complaining about pain in his back. Koruk didn’t feel much better, and from the look of it neither did Oben. Outside they found wolf tracks circling the tent, but none had gotten within ten feet of the party.

  By noon they had reached the old road.

  “Ah, good, we didn’t get lost after all.” Moktark said, his voice cheery despite the restless night. “This is Orcus’s march, the old road. Should take us straight south into the lands of the Rock Crusher tribe. They’re friendly, to a point anyways.”

  “Have you been this way before?” Koruk asked his friend.

  “No, I went up into the mountains once as a kid. You know, test my might against the crag lions. Got spooked by a ghost and scampered home. Made it as far as the road though.”

  The old road cut through the rocky landscape like a grey river, its ancient surface shattered into fragments so that it now resembled cobblestone. It was as wide as the blue run river at least, and just as twisting. Moktark absentmindedly kicked at a fragment of the once mighty road.

  “Who built this?” Koruk asked.

  “I don’t know, probably old Orcus. He’s suppose to have travelled down it when he came out of the mountains. I don’t know how long it is. Guess we’ll find out.”

  The journey down the old road was, in a word, very lonely. Gone were the trading caravans that travelled up and down the banks of the blue run. Gone were the trees, the flowers, and even the insects. All that remained was a cold blowing wind that never seemed to stop. Occasionally Koruk spotted a wild goat lurking in the hills, watching their procession. He wondered what they ate.

  Branching off the old road, they passed many small tributaries. These led deeper into the barren hills, often disappearing into the mouths of caves and ancient tunnels. Moktark eyed these with suspicion, and quickened his pace as they passed by.

  A few days later, they passed a corner, and a great tower suddenly loomed above them on a distant hill, seemingly constructed of the same stone as the old road itself, and in just as poor of condition. At some point the top of the tower had tumbled down, leading only a rude stump left standing of what was once likely an impressive structure.

  Moktark stopped, dropping the travois. He rotated his shoulders, getting some of the soreness out of them.

  “This would be, uh, Broken Lookout, I think.” Moktark said. “We should avoid it, such places are haunted.”

  “We might not have that option.” Koruk sighed, pulling his furs tighter around himself. The wind was picking up, and the sky had turned an ugly black. Just as he said it, the first hailstones began to fall, skittering across the rocks like tiny bullets.

  Their attempts to set up the tent under the conditions proved futile. Every time they tried, the gusting wind would whip through it and nearly carry it off. There was no shelter to be had, and so they were forced to trudge forward through the storm, dragging the upset goat and travois behind them.

  It was all Koruk could do to put one foot in front of the other. By the time they reached the base of the tower the hail had ceased, but the wind had picked up and threatened to nearly blow them off their feet. Ghosts or not, he was happy to duck inside the ruined building. He instantly slumped to the ground, followed by his two companions and one very miserable goat.

  “We made it! By thunder I’m soaked!” Koruk said in panting breaths, tossing a dripping fur to the smooth floor. “What sort of place is this? I...”

  Koruk stopped and looked around, his curiosity winning out over his exhaustion. They were in a square chamber, the floor covered with inches of dust, and the ceiling partially collapsed on one side. Lumps of unidentifiable material were scattered here and there. Moktark lay by the front door panting, but Oben was walking around the room with undisguised wonder on his face.

  He brushed inches of dust and sand off one of the lumps, revealing some sort of white rock, which crumbled into dust at his touch.

  Oben thumbed at the dust in the palm of his hand. He didn’t notice Koruk come up behind him, and jolted as Koruk spoke.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Oben said, looking around sadly.

  “We should explore. This seems like the sort of place wolves would hide.”

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  “No.” Oben said, dropping the dust out of his hand. “Nobody come here in… um, big time. Long time.”

  “I see. Something the matter? You look spooked.”

  “Who wouldn’t be spooked?” Moktark interrupted, still sitting by the front door. “This place is a tomb. We shouldn’t be here.”

  “If you’d like, we can go back out into the storm.” Koruk bit back. Moktark shrugged and grumbled.

  “I’m going to explore a bit. Give me a light.”

  Rummaging through the supplies, they found a small clay oil lamp, looted from the farm, and packed it with lard. It took several attempts and much cursing to light the damp wick, but eventually it blazed happily in Koruk’s hand, casting out some of the shadows of the room.

  Oben waved him over to what appeared to be a depression in the floor.

  “This go down. Move dirt.”

  Using their hands, Koruk and Oben dug handful after handful of accumulated dust out of the hole, which slowly revealed a stairwell, leading down into the earth. Moktark stayed by the front door.

  “What are you doing Moktark, come check this out!”

  “I’m not moving! You’re going to disturb the restful dead!”

  “You’re being silly.”

  Moktark stood up.

  “No! Have you ever thought that there might be a reason no one has come here in, in..” Moktark stammered, kicking a cloud of dust into the air with his boot. “Pig shit, probably millennia? This place has bad vibes. We should get out of here little brother.”

  “Stay by the door then. I’m going to explore the stairs.” Koruk said, continuing to dig. Oben didn’t even seem to have registered the conversation. He was totally fixated on digging.

  Half an hour later a gap was revealed, and by the light they could see another room beyond. The pace of digging intensified. Moktark warily got up and joined them, although he didn’t help. After another half hour, or so, Oben thought he could squeeze through, and crawled into the other room to help dig from the other side.

  After Koruk and a reluctant Moktark managed to crawl over the remaining mound of dirt at the bottom of the stairwell, they found themselves in a long hallway of featureless grey stone, studded with strange devices at intervals in the ceiling. Koruk ran his fingers along the walls, but could feel no gaps that might indicate bricks. It was like the entire room had been hollowed out from a single monolithic piece of stone, which bore long cracks from age.

  The hallway wound on and on, low doors of metal and dark rooms branching off at regular intervals. They peeked into a few of them, finding ruined furniture and a few ancient animal nests. Koruk motioned to stop at a few of them, but Oben shook his head and led them onwards.

  The deeper they got, the better preserved the ruins became. There were painted glyphs on the walls in greens and reds. Little carts were strewn here and there with strange equipment resting on them. And there were bodies.

  Koruk gasped as the flickering light revealed a skeleton, slumped against a wall. Its head had fallen away to rest at its side. It was a small skeleton. As Koruk picked up its skull and examined it, he noticed the rows of blunt flat teeth. It reminded him a bit of…

  “It human.” Oben said, answering his unasked question. Koruk raised his eyebrow at that, but Oben had already turned away, leading them further in.

  At the very end of the corridor Oben appeared to find what he was looking for. A set of double doors, fitted with the same strange clear glass that formed the window in Moktark’s shield, opened up into a wide room. The place had been trashed. Tables were overturned. Equipment had been literally ripped out of the walls and cast to the ground, their guts torn out and missing. Oben approached a row of box shaped machines, and examined them. He thumped his hand on them, muttering something in his own language.

  “More bones.” Moktark said, drawing Koruk’s attention. Moktark gestured at a pair of skeletons splayed out on the floor. One of them had a caved in skull.

  “Shit. Shit. SHIT!” Oben shouted, switching to orcish. He slumped down beside the metal boxes and wrapped his arms around his body. Moktark and Koruk looked at each other.

  “You’ve been acting weird ever since we got here.” Moktark said. “What in the hells is the matter with you?”

  Oben didn’t respond.

  “Let him relax.” Koruk said.

  There wasn’t much left untouched in the room. In the corner a bunch of boxes were spilling thousands of sheets of parchment onto the ground. They crumbled as he tried to pick them up, and even if they didn’t, the inked symbols etched onto them were so faded with time as to be barely legible. Then, stuffed into a corner, he saw a sheath of parchments bound with some sort of strange glassy material.

  This seemed to be in better shape. The waxy feeling pages bore countless tiny symbols, arranged in neat horizontal rows.

  “Hey, Drake, what’s this?” He called out.

  Oben lifted his head and looked over.

  “You know what this is don’t you? All of this...” Koruk said, gesturing at the room around them.

  “It all ruin. Destroyed.” Oben responded sadly. But nevertheless he got up and went to examine the papers. He began flipping through it, spending a few minutes reading each page.

  “This is like what the merchant did, isn’t it? Putting words on parchment.” Koruk asked. Oben nodded.

  “This is, I do not know words. Um, this is sort of, story. Tells how much gold is dug, in time.”

  Moktark’s ears perked up at the word “gold”. He suddenly looked a lot less apprehensive about being there, and dropped a piece of junk he had been examining.

  “There’s gold here?”

  “Dug here once. Long time ago.”

  Oben explained that once, long ago, there were mines here, and many humans working and living in them. They used to mine gold and transport it on the old road. This old building seemed to have been some sort of office or command centre which controlled the operation. He said he didn’t know what happened to it. He pointed to a group of symbols, a sentence, on the front page of the book, embossed in the clear material.

  GRARS NEL8Y ORE PROCESSING

  11104356

  3094 IY FULL CYCLE PRODUCTION RECORDS

  He mouthed out the words, which meant nothing to his orcish companions, and explained that Grars NEL8Y, or “Nelby”, was the name of the world they were on, and that the world was once teeming with human life. 3094IY was the year of the book’s writing, and likely one of the last years of human life on the world. His companions nodded, trying to take it all in. There was silence for a time, but Moktark was the first to break it.

  “The Rock Crushers still mine gold out of the cliffs. They send it to Zernthod to be magicked up into stuff like this.” He said, pulling a shining object out of his belt pouch. It was a golden ring, intricately patterned. Snatched during the farm raid. Oben’s eyes widened as he beheld the shining ornament.

  “Not just gold. Obsidian, copper, all sorts of stuff.” Koruk said, looking around the ruined room.

  “If your people were mining gold, where is it now? Where are they now?” Moktark asked.

  Oben explained that the gold was shipped away in great “flying boats” that took it into the sky. Beyond the sky. The humans went away with it. Moktark seemed confused, but Koruk nodded, a memory returning to him.

  “The Bone Mother, she used to say that in the first times, before we came out of the mountains and founded Orc’gar, we used to send gold into the sky as a sacrifice to the gods. The sky father needed the gold to keep the white moon shining in the sky. Otherwise it would cease to shine, and the dark moon would grow big enough to eat it, throwing the world into darkness.”

  “Why doesn’t he need the gold now?” Moktark asked.

  “He does, but Orcus looked out over the ocean one day, and he saw the white moon reflected on the water. He realized that we didn’t need to bring the gold into the sky, we could just drop it into the water, and it would get there all the same. Now we do that.”

  Moktark nodded.

  “More importantly...” Koruk said, turning to Oben. “How do you know all this?”

  Oben hesitated a bit before responding.

  “I was here. Long ago. Before you find me. I live in time long ago.” Oben said, thinking about his next words carefully. “Fell asleep, long time. Wake up, find you.”

  Koruk nodded. There was more to it he knew. But he wasn’t in the mood to press.

  “Light’s getting low. Let’s get out of here. I don’t think there’s anything else here for us. If there is, the dead can have it.” Moktark said, turning to leave.

  When they crawled back up the stairs into the lobby, Moktark swore and quickly drew his weapon, running over to the travois.

  “We’ve been robbed! Pig shit!” He said, frantically looking around. “Goat’s gone too!”

  “What was taken? We weren’t down there that long!” Koruk said, fumbling to set his bowstring.

  “Food mostly.” Moktark said. The remains of the cheese jar lay broken open, its contents gone. “We still got some, they didn’t like the vegetables.”

  “There’s tracks.”

  Moktark spat.

  “Those aren’t wolf tracks. Orcs. No, too small. Red men? Barefoot too. Shit, I should have stood guard!”

  They tracked the prints to the door, but outside the wind still howled, and had blown away any trace of them.

  That night they clutched their weapons tight, and didn’t get much sleep.