Little Keep on the Borderlands...Part 1

Visibility in this place is always limited, as Shadows flit about, drawn to light sources like moths in the mundane world. Here, our vision was further obscured by the thick, almost bubbling fog that rolled over us in successive waves from the direction where the troll had come from before pooling around our knees. It gathered around the now dissolving mass that was the troll.

Undaunted by any unseen dangers that may have been lurking, I stepped into the mists towards where I had felt the location of El Diablito’s stronghold to be. I soon found myself on a rocky path between steeply rising walls of wet, black stone. The path would have been barely wide enough for that troll to walk through without brushing its shoulders against the sides.

I heard others as they followed behind, Jim right behind me, with the Frau and Ravyn guarding our backs.

The path continued at a slight up hill angle for a few hundred yards, twisting first right and then left. The fog was so thick and flowed so strongly into my face that I felt like a salmon swimming up stream at spawning time. I caught myself leaning into the flow of the fog even though I didn’t feel any resistance. It just seemed like there should be.

The walls on either side fell away as we rounded the last bend and the ground leveled out onto a large, flat ledge that at first seemed to overlook a vast empty chasm. The fog here was much thinner as it flowed in small wispy clumps to form the river of white as it rolled down the constricted path we had followed to get up here.

Jim came up next to me, Excalibur held forth in both hands as if he were trying to keep the alien blade at arms length. The blade was emitting a high-pitched hum that accompanied the pulsating white light that pushed the Shadow back with its harsh glow. “Looks like a dead end, Rusty.”

I shook my head and pointed with my left hand. “No, we’ve just got to find a way to cross over to that…thing.”

He peered into the darkness, straining to see anything. “What, I don’t see anything.”

The Frau padded up beside us and snorted. Her voice echoed in our heads as she projected her thoughts to us. “Rusty’s right, Jim. Show him, Ravyn.”

Ravyn nodded and sent a small red orb flying from her extended palm. It wasn’t very bright, but it didn’t have to be. The light emitted by the orb illuminated a sight that caused us all to gasp.

“Son of a bitch…”

“How the hell is that even possible…”

The orb had only gone about thirty feet out into the darkness before it came to float next to a huge black wall of stone that was rotating clockwise in the air. Ravyn’s hand motions guided the thing up and down, then back and forth until it was clear that the chasm was occupied by a huge, rotating tower of black basalt that was floating in that seemingly empty space. The thing was easily as big as a modern skyscraper, but it had all of scare factor of some Dark Lord’s Tower of Doom.

As we watched in horror and awe, the tower continued to rotate. The opening of what may have been a doorway began to come into view. The rotation slowed as the entrance came to fully face us, not thirty feet away, but with no visible way of crossing the yawning chasm between us and it.