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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3854553" data-attributes="member: 143">Next week: all hell (or rather the Abyss, I suppose) breaks loose in Camar. But for now, it's Friday...* * * * * Chapter 281THE RISING AT ALBRITHGalev Kostas held his lantern high as he walked the deserted streets of Albrith.  The ring of light surrounded him for a good fifteen paces, but it offered little reassurance to the nervous guardsman.  The town, stricken by calamity, seemed haunted by fell spirits. Some of the buildings on the south edge of the town had been reinhabited, or scavenged for materials with which to build shelter.  In the aftermath of the disaster, the survivors had established a camp in the woods to the south, but with the winter storms battering the region in a seemingly neverending succession, returning to the town was almost inevitable.  It testified to the stubbornness—or foolishness—of people as far as Kostas was concerned.  He shook his head.  He was in no position to offer criticism.  Ella had wanted to leave with the others, the exodus that had survived the quake but which had decided that one lucky break was enough.  There were only about three hundred people left in Albrith now.  Kostas had inwardly agreed with his wife, but where could they go?  Their house had been completely destroyed; it had been through the Father’s grace that the four of them had escaped with their lives.  He had kin in Emor, but that journey was long and hazardous in the best of times, let alone in the depths of a particularly harsh winter. He slowed as he neared the end of the street and saw the chasm up ahead.  Most of those who had remained to Albrith had committed to rebuilding, but it wasn’t clear if there was enough left of the town to support its revival.  Those structures that hadn’t fallen into the chasm had been heavily damaged by the quake, and fully nine out of every ten were like Kostas’s house, either wreckage or too unsafe to reoccupy.  His brother-in-law, who’d owned the cooperage, had spoken of hard work and the stubbornness of Albrithers at the last town meeting, but inwardly Kostas had already decided that with the coming of spring, he would follow Ella’s prompting and take his family to Emor, to start anew.  A noise from ahead drew his attention back to the present.  There was nothing there but the chasm, but it was possible that some fool was defying the standing orders of the town council and looting the wreckage close to the tenuous edge.  Kostas reached for the sword at his hip, the movement causing the lamp at the end of the pole he carried to gyrate roughly, almost spilling the oil.  Berating himself silently for his foolishness, steeling his nerves, he recovered and started forward, alert for any signs of trouble. The chasm was a black slash that gaped like an open wound in the earth, over a hundred feet across.  The quake had struck right in the center of Albrith, opening a gash through the center of the town that extended for almost a half-mile in either direction.  Most of the buildings that had been near the edge had tumbled into the opening as the earth had bucked and opened.  He paused, and listened.  The scrabbling sound that he had heard before was not repeated.  Maybe he had scared off whoever it had been.  But there was... something, a vague perception of danger that flitted beneath his conscious awareness.  It was an instinct more basic, more primitive, that hadn’t been fully civilized out of him by a life in a town.  That instinct told him to run, but Kostas had always taken his duty seriously, and he knew how to use the weapon that he carried.  The watchman drew his sword, and stepped forward almost to the edge of the chasm.  He respected the crumbling edge, and remained a good distance back.  He held out the lantern, his senses fully alert and extended.  The gap was too broad for the fitful light from his lamp to reach to the other side.  But the progression of the chasm was uneven, jagged, and to his right there was a jutting outcrop that allowed him to clearly see the cliff face as it descended into gloom. As his light fell upon that rough surface, Kostas sucked in a terrible breath. The cliff was... alive. It was hard to distinguish the individual creatures; they clung together in a close mass, dragging themselves up the cliff, their claws finding purchase in the rough rock.  A few looked up as the light flared upon their pale, sickly gray flesh, and they hissed in anger.  The leading edge of the wave was just a few paces below the lip of the cliff.  Kostas staggered back as if struck.  His limbs felt stiff, as if he’d forgotten how to move.  The hissing noise made by the unholy creatures he’d seen was sounding larger, filling the chasm; the watchman suddenly realized that it was not just an echo, but a chorus, a noise torn from thousands of throats, all united in a common purpose. The scream he’d been holding suddenly came alive as his muscles came alive again, and he fled toward the far edge of the town, where the survivors of Albrith had taken shelter. Behind him, ghouls clawed their way up out of the chasm, forming a wave that swept forward over the town, seeking blood, and marrow, and life to destroy. * * * * * Just over two hundred miles away, Nelandro Agathon suddenly shot up from a deep sleep, his eyes wide, his body trembling.  He looked around him in fear for a moment, before he realized that he was in his room in the rectory of the Great Cathedral of Camar.  He spoke one word, laden with dread. “Albrith.”</blockquote>

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