RAVEN'S GAMBIT | Part 33: New Burdens
The halls of the Citadel were quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that came only after too much blood had been spilled, and too many voices had fallen forever silent.
Theron Blackroot stood in the vaulted corridor beneath a flickering torch, staring at Whelm where it leaned against a stone pillar. The warhammer no longer hummed with the eager hunger it once had. Its thunder had grown still, its song of vengeance hollow.
“I’m done with you,” Theron whispered. His voice cracked.
He turned his back on the hammer and laid his hand upon the sheathed katana that once belonged to Hachiro Noboru. His other hand gripped the wakizashi. He drew them both and took a stance. The motions were rough at first, foreign to him. But with each slow swing and parry, a piece of his grief flowed into his form.
“I’ll honor you. Both of you,” Theron whispered, as the image of Sir Cedric crossed his mind, a gallant knight with an unshakeable resolve. “What if you’d both lived? You and the samurai… Maybe then we wouldn't be so—lost.”
He stopped, lowering the blades.
“Who leads us now?” he asked the air.
Elsewhere in the Citadel, Marcus “Tank” Rourke stared at Whelm in silence. With a grunt, he stepped forward and lifted the hammer in both hands. It was heavy. Heftier than he expected. Not just in weight, but in purpose.
He gave it a few cautious swings. They were clumsy at first, but not without power. Something in the weapon stirred as it moved—faint and subtle, like thunderclouds gathering far off. Whelm hadn’t chosen a new bearer, but it was waiting.
In her chambers, Elowyn Mosswhisper sat cross-legged in ritual focus, Wave resting across her lap. Her wolf companion, long gone, still haunted her dreams. She mourned silently, fingers brushing the haft of the enchanted trident.
“I am alone now,” she said to it. “But I have not given up.”
She whispered the ancient words of the sea druids, trying to forge a bond between them. Wave remained cool in her hands, inert. No vision. No answer.
Wave was not ready. And neither was she.
Khopesh knelt in a chamber of ash and forgotten bones. Before him lay Blackrazor, the star-flecked blade pulsing with dark silence. He studied it, felt its weight in the world, not just in steel but in consequence.
It spoke not a word. Not yet. But the connection was there, deep and waiting. He did not try to wield it. Not yet. He simply watched and listened.
Thalia Emberbranch moved like a shadow through the corridors. Her ears picked up every whisper, her eyes every flicker of candlelight. And that’s when she heard it: voices not meant for mortals.
Through the sliver of an arcane mirror in the Hall of Echoes, she heard the voice of Raven, dry and sharp as flint.
“Do not overstep your bounds again, Keraptis,” Raven warned, his tone coiling like a storm about to break. “You will not speak to me in that manner. You are not a god.”
“These fools,” Keraptis sneered, “are in possession of my prized relics. If they will not serve me, I will simply take them—alive or dead. You forget that I once ruled empires while you danced in feathers and trickery.”
“Watch your tongue, lich,” Raven replied, amused and cold. “I have one more game left to play. The Tomb of Horrors. If they survive, you may meet them face to face—and decide their fate yourself.”
“Agreed,” Keraptis said after a moment’s silence. “But if they fall, their souls are mine.”
Thalia backed away from the mirror, breath sharp in her throat. She ran to find the others.
An hour later, they all stood together in a great chamber of the Citadel, gathered around a flame-lit table.
“We’re pawns,” Thalia said, pacing as the others absorbed the truth. “Raven. Keraptis. They’re playing a game, and we’re the pieces.”
“They saved us,” Kael the Ember-Eyed reminded. “Raven gave us a second chance.”
“So he could watch us,” Theron spat. “To see if we amuse him.”
“I’d rather be a slave to a lich than entertainment for a god,” Seren Willowmere muttered darkly.
The room was silent. Divided.
Some looked toward the heavens, wondering if Raven watched them even now.
Others looked toward the floor, wondering if Keraptis would rise to claim them.
Theron sheathed the katana at his side and looked to the others.
“Then maybe it’s time,” he said, “we stopped being pawns. And became the players.”
They all stared at him.
“The Tomb of Horrors awaits,” Theron said.
And the silence that followed was heavy enough to break steel.