Chapter 81: Warden of the Last Threshold
Five Knots waited until the following morning before approaching the fourth arch. Now that the part was full of energy, they were ready to give it a try.
Their first clear display had transformed one wall of the Hall of Achievements. Almost every time they passed another adventurer, they wanted to hear how they had preserved the Stonewing, where the elves had come from, and whether Captain Durna had truly called their work acceptable. While it was nice to get recognition from the Hall of Achievements, situations like this were annoying.
Brakka had demanded the story three times. His version changed on every retelling and he currently claimed that Five Knots had defeated Veyrath by adapting one of his racing turns. Tessa had stopped correcting the big talking dwarf.
Now the five adventurers stood before the arch that had opened because of them. Unlike the bright portal leading to Dwarven Airship, its surface appeared dark and still. Gray stone framed the opening, and a small carving of a crowned skull stared down from its highest point.
Three lines marked the stone beside it.
{DREAD FORT}
{SUGGESTED LEVEL: 25}
{HARD MODE SUGGESTED LEVEL: 30}
Orin studied the skull. "That seems welcoming."
"You said that about the airship." Belda reminded him.
"The dwarves were welcoming. Eventually. I mean we are basically best friends with them now."
Min checked the straps on her pack. "You crashed their ship twice."
"A dragon crashed their ship twice. We were just along for the ride. Besides, dwarves like building things. If it doesn’t crash, how can they rebuild." Orin said.
"I don’t think it works like that."
Kesh looked toward Tessa. "Are we entering, or are we going to repeat this argument until the next Grand Race?"
Tessa placed one hand against the portal. "We are entering."
The dark surface accepted her hand. Five Knots disappeared from the Sanctuary together. Max received the notification while eating breakfast with Anna.
[A party has entered Dread Fort.]
[First-entry condition fulfilled.]
[Prepared Sanctuary attraction available for deployment: Masquerade Castle.]
Anna read the same notice from her clipboard before she lowered it and looked across the table. "That was quicker than I expected."
"They waited an entire night." Max said. "After the last few weeks of non-stop flying lessons and attempts on level 3, that probably felt like a vacation."
He opened a viewing screen above the breakfast table. Five Knots appeared on a hill covered in pale grass. A cold wind blew from a fortress standing several miles in the distance.
Dread Fort was not the largest structure Max had built. It did not need to be. Four black towers rose above a wall of weathered stone. Narrow windows shone with a color somewhere between green and blue. A road crossed the dead countryside before passing through a gate reinforced with enough iron to armor a ship.
There were no friendly guides waiting beside the entrance. No captain offered crew assignments. No stone preparation room provided ten minutes to study an opponent.
Five lines of text appeared before the party.
[Dread Fort]
[Suggested level: 25]
[Objective: Kill Kildra, Warden of the Last Threshold.]
[Kildra normally resides within the throne room.]
[No additional completion conditions.]
The message disappeared. Orin waited but nothing replaced it. no other hints were given.
"That is all?" He asked.
Tessa turned slowly, searching for another sign or an approaching dungeon inhabitant. "Apparently."
"Where are the route instructions?"
"There are no route instructions." Kesh answered.
Belda pointed toward Dread Fort. "There is the route."
Min shook her head. "That is a destination. Not a route."
The omission bothered them because every earlier level had begun by placing a problem directly in front of them. Fey Nights surrounded them with fog and hidden movement their only real option was to follow the path through the forest. Orc Highlands locked them in a stone room and eventually pushed them into an arena. Dwarven Airship put them aboard a vessel already traveling toward danger and they just needed to follow orders.
Dread Fort gave them a hill, a distant enemy, and permission to decide everything else.
Tessa opened her interface and searched for a quest tab, optional condition, or map marker. She found only the same objective. Kesh checked the party log. Belda examined the ground around them in hopes of finding a hint.
There was no hidden instruction waiting for a more observant adventurer.
"Then our first choice is whether we even use the road." Tessa said.
That gave the group something it understood how to do: disagree.
***
In the dining room, Anna studied the fortress while eating breakfast with Max. "Warden of the Last Threshold sounds important."
Max took another bite of eggs. "Kildra would have rejected anything less."
The viewing screen briefly shifted to the fortress throne room. Kildra sat upon a tall chair carved from black stone. Heavy armor covered his body, while black fire burned around his exposed skull. Undead courtiers stood motionless along both sides of the chamber.
Kildra looked toward the distant hill as if he could see through the walls. "The first petitioners have arrived, My Liege."
"They have." Max answered, although the adventurers could not hear him.
Kildra rested one armored hand upon the arm of his throne. "They will be measured."
Max closed the throne-room view and returned his attention to Five Knots. They had already started heading down the hill and working their way towards the castle.
Anna rested her clipboard beside her plate. "The earlier levels each emphasized a particular kind of skill."
"Awareness, technical execution, and fighting while everything important is moving." Max said.
"What does this one emphasize?"
Max watched Five Knots leave the road before reaching its first marker. "Whether they can stop waiting for the dungeon to tell them how to solve it. Think of it as a final test. They have the tools and knowledge, now they need to apply it."
Kildra was strong enough to destroy an unprepared party. That was only part of his purpose. The title above his name was a warning, not an explanation.
***
The road was the most obvious approach, so they did not use it. Kesh led the party parallel to it while studying the countryside. The pale grass concealed old stones, broken spearheads, and the occasional piece of rusted armor. No monsters attacked them. The absence of resistance made every distant movement more suspicious.
They found a burial grounds first. They came across it while closing the distance to the castle.
Hundreds of narrow stones covered a slope west of the fortress. Some stood in ordered rows. Others leaned against one another or had fallen beneath the grass. A low wall surrounded the oldest graves, and a half-collapsed building waited at the center.
"Possible tunnel." Min said.
"Possible room filled with dead things." Orin offered.
"The entire fortress is filled with dead things."
"Then it would fit the theme."
Kesh marked the burial grounds on a blank sheet of parchment.
They continued until they found the waterway. The narrow river was dark enough to reflect nothing, even beneath the morning sky. It passed beneath the southern wall through an iron grate. The bars were thick, but the stone surrounding them had cracked in several places.
Belda crouched beside the bank. "We could reach it."
"And then discover whether anything lives in the water." Tessa said with a warning.
Something disturbed the surface near the wall.
The five adventurers stepped back together. Whatever had moved did not appear again. They weren’t too eager to find out what lived in the water at this very moment.
Kesh added the waterway to the map.
They studied the walls next. Undead patrols moved along the battlements in groups of six. Every few minutes, a bell sounded from one of the towers. Patrols stopped, changed direction, or passed through doors after particular chimes rang out.
Min watched two rotations before speaking. "They are not wandering aimlessly."
"But can we track their patrol patterns? Is it worth it to spend the time on that?" Tessa asked but didn’t expect an answer. Her party was just beginning their investigation. Once they had more information, they could make a decision.
The main gate to the castle opened on its own before they came close enough to be noticed.
A wagon approached Dread Fort along the road. A hooded driver held the reins of two pale horses pulling the wagon, Kesh noticed that they did not breathe. Bodies had been stacked beneath a stained canvas in the back of the vehicle. Two armored undead warriors inspected the wagon before allowing it through.
The gates closed behind it.
Orin looked at the others. "I dislike that I can already imagine someone hiding beneath those bodies."
"Write it down." Tessa told Kesh.
"I was hoping you would say we should never do that."
They remained outside the patrols’ range for another hour. By the time they returned to the hill, Kesh had drawn the main road, burial grounds, waterway, four damaged wall sections, two patrol routes, and the approximate location of the wagon entrance.
They had not fought anything. They had not entered the fort. They had not learned what waited between the outer wall and Kildra’s throne. And they had not engaged a single enemy. They treated this venture into level 4 as an exercise in gathering information.
Tessa looked toward Dread Fort one final time. "Next time, we choose one way inside."
Orin nodded. "Preferably one that does not involve lying beneath a corpse."
"You can drive the wagon." She said to shut him up.
Five Knots returned through the portal on the hill.
Max let the viewing screen close. They had treated the first visit as reconnaissance instead of charging the front gate. While he hadn’t expected that, he was perfectly happy to not have them spend his DP to resurrect.
"Ready?" Anna asked.
Max opened the Sanctuary management screen. Masquerade Castle waited exactly where he had placed it during the design phase, held outside the active floor until the fourth level received its first visitors.
He selected the prepared attraction and confirmed its deployment.
The ground shook across the eastern edge of the Sanctuary.
Adventurers ran from the Hall of Achievements and surrounding streets. A hill rose where an empty lawn had been moments earlier. Stone walls unfolded from the ground without displacing a single nearby building. Towers stretched into the air. Warm light filled hundreds of windows while gardens, fountains, and hedges arranged themselves around the walls.
The new castle lacked Dread Fort’s decay. White stone and dark blue roofs reflected the Sanctuary’s artificial sunlight. Banners carrying a silver mask appeared above the gate. Music played from somewhere inside for several seconds before the enormous doors of the castle slammed closed.
A sign unfolded beside the drawbridge that was currently raised.
{MASQUERADE CASTLE}
{REGISTRATION OPENS SOON}
{WEEKLY CONTRACTS — PARTIES OF FIVE}
The crowd reacted to the final line first. Parties began counting members, calling for absent companions, and arguing over whether weekly meant the castle could only be entered once. One man offered to sell his place in an unformed team before anyone knew the registration fee.
A gnome clerk emerged through a smaller door, nailed a second sign beneath the first, and returned inside without answering a single question.
{DO NOT PURCHASE PLACES IN PARTIES BEFORE READING THE RULES.}
The man quietly withdrew his offer while a few people around let out chuckles.
Five Knots stepped out of the Level Four arch in time to feel the last vibration beneath their boots. Orin stared at the distant towers.
"Did we cause that to appear?" He asked.
Max and Anna entered the Hall through a portal. Max had changed from his breakfast clothes into one of his suits. Anna still carried her clipboard.
"Entering the fourth level met the deployment condition." Max explained.
Tessa looked from him to the new castle. "What does it do?" She asked.
"The gnomes are preparing explanations, and I would hate to waste their work." Max answered.
Five Knots accepted that they would receive nothing else from him. Behind them, the Level Four arch remained dark and open. Above it, new words had appeared.
{DREAD FORT}
{KILDRA, WARDEN OF THE LAST THRESHOLD}
Adventurers read the title in silence. They did not know what threshold Kildra guarded and Max intended to keep it that way.