Excerpts from the Lantern Pact Chronicles, Vol I
The Black Marsh did not welcome travelers. It devoured them.
Two weeks out of Umbrafell, the mire had already claimed boots, tempers, and more than one night’s sleep. The fog clung to the party like old regrets. And yet, it was here—beneath that choking veil—that they found the ghost.
A withered shade among vine-wrapped stones, he called himself the gardener of the Shyr Dynasty, though no dynasty had stood here for centuries—if it had ever existed at all. His voice was brittle wind and memory, whispering of an ancient temple carved in reverence to Ziznarex, the Great Black. A dragon of such size and horror it had ruled an empire long buried in the muck.
“Seek the obsidian shrine,” he murmured. “But know this—the beast is dead… and still dangerous.”
He spoke, too, of a battlefield to the north, where Ziznarex fell to ancient heroes, and where his corpse—or what was left of it—might still lie entombed.
They found the shrine at dawn, half-swallowed by the hills.
A cracked stair of moss-choked stone led to what remained of the temple: shattered pillars, broken walls, and at the center, the head. A vast obsidian sculpture—carved in the image of the dragon—lay on its side like a severed god.
And the goblins were digging it up.
Six of them scuttled among the ruins, prying at the head with crude tools, while two reptilian brutes—scaled and jagged-toothed—barked orders in guttural tones. These were no mindless beasts; their gaze carried the sharp cunning of predators that remembered blood.
Aulrick crested the hill first, armor clanking like old chains. Felix and Longshanks tried to slip around the side, but their stealth faltered. Aulrick’s whispered words to Daxxon fared worse, the pulse of magic alerting the creatures instantly.
The shrine erupted into violence. Arrows whistled through the air. Goblins scattered, three fleeing before the first body even hit the ground. One brute took a hammer to the ribs as Lyra, mid-roar, shifted into a lion and slammed into it with wild fury. Aulrick called on his oath for the first time, light searing from his blade as he faced the larger creature head-on.
The beasts fought like demons, but the Lantern Pact’s fury was greater. When the last of them fell, hissing curses in broken Draconic, Aulrick stumbled to the toppled head and read the faint, ancient runes.
The ritual was simple. The cost, not so much.
By the time he rose from the kneeling stone, Aulrick carried a strange new power—a voice that could command beasts and men alike. But only if he fed it. Selfishness. Cruelty. Daily. Otherwise, the gift would die.
They tracked the fleeing goblins for hours before losing them in the swamp and returned to the shrine to rest.
The scream shattered the dark just before dawn.
Felix saw Longshanks fall—no struggle, no sound, just a sudden crumpling of limbs and blood soaking into the earth. The others woke to Felix shouting, hands red, trying to stop the bleeding.
Daxxon saved him, barely.
Longshanks, dazed, pale, whispered what he remembered: a figure in the mist, speaking directly into his mind.
“Say my name.”
“You left me out of the stories.”
Hamid.
The name struck them like a hammer. Forgotten. Erased. A ghost among them once more.
The next morning, they found a few boot prints in the mud, proving Shanks had indeed seen someone, but nothing else. Uneasy, but with no leads to follow, there was little to do but continue north and track down the goblins that had fled the day before.
They found them easily about an hour later, now gambling loudly on a dry patch of earth. Without their hobgoblin leader—devoured by one of the beasts—they were talkative, even friendly. They revealed that more of the creatures waited in a camp ahead, with a wagon, explosives, and better tools to unearth the dragon’s relics. And beyond that camp lay the burial ground of Ziznarex, a place the goblins warned was cursed with foul gas and death.
The Lantern Pact pressed on.
The camp lay sprawled in the sun, three of the creatures lazing near a firepit. Two sparked arcs of lightning between their claws, residual magic from something they had devoured.
The battle was swift and brutal. Lightning bolts cracked across the clearing, one nearly killing Aulrick before he drew the force into himself and turned it back on his foe. Lyra’s lion form was torn nearly to pieces, saved only by Daxxon’s desperate healing. When the last creature fell, they barely had time to breathe.
Then the mist rose again.
A swirling fog thickened around the fire, and from its heart a gate split open, black as a starless void. Voices, inhuman and commanding, echoed through the gap as something lumbered through.
A nightmare of chitin and tentacles, it seized Aulrick instantly, its paralyzing tendrils writhing toward his face. He fought through the venom and struck back, while Felix and Longshanks darted behind it and Lyra clawed at its sides. The battle felt endless, every strike deflecting off its armored shell, until at last it shrieked and dissolved into foul-smelling ichor.
In its place lay an ornate puzzle box. Daxxon solved its riddle in silence, unrolling an ancient scroll. His face hardened.
“I will keep this,” he said, and said no more.
They searched the camp, gathered explosives and tools, and returned to the shrine. Felix rigged a convincing trap to deter any who might try to move the dragon head. Confident they had done what they could to secure the artifact, the party turned with grim resolve to the north again, toward the legendary burial ground that awaited them.
Northward, the marsh twisted into something worse. The soil grew hot, splitting into jagged fissures that exhaled green fumes stinking of sulfur and blood. Every breath burned.
Somewhere ahead lay the battlefield where Ziznarex fell. Through the haze came the sound of goblin curses and the dull thunk of shovels on stone. The Lantern Pact knew this was no resting place—it was a wound in the world.
And something in the dark was waiting.
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