A third restless night brought Des to his breaking point. Every time he tried to sleep he was woken by horrible spectres, shadows that danced in his dreams and threatened him, never drawing up close to him but never retreating either; every rest was punctuated by a few minutes sleep, and an eternity spent inside the nightmare, before he would jar himself awake and begin the cycle again.

It was here he found himself standing in front of the chamber of sins.

Aptly named, for it was one of the greatest sins of the eternal empire, the chamber was home to a veritable treasure trove of thaumaturgical artefacts and tools guarded by the corruption-borne dead, and creatures warped by the cataclysm. It was a place where only the foolish dared to tread, but Des found his feet leading him, rather than his mind. It was a place that his dreams beckoned him to. He couldn’t be sure that the dreams were the product of the black stone, but he felt a whispering at the back of his head which grew stronger when the stone was pressed up against his hand. There was something about it, virtue gem or not, and stripped of his sleep Des could only press forward in search of answers.

Dena had suggested it, even though she hadn’t spoken the words. The chamber of sins had been the temple and laboratory of the great thaumaturgist Maligaro, one of the most powerful servants of the eternal empire; it was perhaps the solitary place in all of Phrecia where still existed the means to surgically implant a virtue gem into oneself. It was a deeply unsafe practice and one that had fallen out of favour since the eternal empire had withered and decayed, but it was a means to access a greater deal of power from an individual virtue gem. To bypass the conduit in between, to ignore the thaumaturgical relic, was to remove all limitations from the magic within.

Few lights still burned inside the chamber.

Who could still be leaving torches burning here? That someone would frequent the chamber enough to keep it lit unsettled Des’s stomach, and his eyes darted from pillar to pillar as he warily watched for whomever, or whatever, could be the chamber’s caretaker. It was no secret that the chamber was filled with monstrous creatures of every sort, the corruption had long ago settled heavily on the chamber, and Des wondered what wicked intelligence lurked in the darkness beyond.

The halls and corridors stank, a rottenness that both hung on the air and pervaded the very being of the temple. Even as Des glanced past the brickwork he realised there was an unsettling quality to it, and try as he might convince himself of the brick’s ordinariness he instead quickly hurried his gaze onward. The creatures of the chamber served only to amplify his unease, hanging back and observing him from safe distances instead of moving to attack him. Twice he thought he might have caught sight of the same giant arach spider, an instinctive but cunning beast the size of a man’s torso, watching him, stalking him from behind the pillars of the temple, but he pushed down his paranoia as imagination. Its starving yellow eyes were all that Des could make out in the gloom, but the third time he witnessed the stalking spider he was sure of his worries. The creature was hunting him.

In the darkness, Des couldn’t be sure where the monster was hidden, and his thoughts grew more agitated as he crept from room to room within the chamber. His hatchet was firm within his grasp, his finger touching the tip of the nearest virtue gem set upon its hilt; as Des held his hand to his hatchet he could feel the tale of a different warrior, a powerful Maraketh gladiator of Sarn who had died nameless and destitute in service to those who would buy and sell his people. The gladiator’s memories flooded Des’s own mind, regaling him willingly and eagerly the knowledge of a particularly flashy, but effective, strike which could lacerate the flesh of his foes. As the memories mingled with his own Des felt an impulse to move, an instinct that was not his own; he twisted, bending backwards as the gloom in front of him was suddenly cut by a razor-sharp claw. The spider lunged back, trying to retreat into the darkness, but it was already too late - Des could see the beast in its entirety.

The spider was perhaps three feet tall, with eight sharp arms that were each at least that. Its limbs and carapace were bone, the beast being some cruel mockery of an arach, not truly alive. Des wondered whether it was a remnant of Maligaro or a patchwork beast of bone assembled by the ambient corruption present everywhere. Perhaps ivory-white beneath stains, dirt, and muck, the creature’s body was now dirtied by years of living within the forgotten chamber, and it moved with twitching juddery motions which served only to make it seem more unnatural. The spider let loose a shrill screech as it watched Des, a screech which echoed from inside the creature and seemed to be borne of wicked magics rather than its empty husk.

Backed up against the wall the bone-spider now raised its front two arms, a three-pronged claw sitting at the edge of each. It skittered from side to side, trapped in a recessed alcove and unwilling to try advance past Des as he moved toward it. His hatchet at his side Des closed his eyes, trusting in his silent companion. The monster shrieked again. It swiped with its claws, so fiercely that Des could hear the air rushing out of the way, so swiftly that suddenly he could feel it, feel the air shifting as the bone claw carved its own breeze; he stepped to his right and the claw narrowly missed him, passing by so closely that he knew instinctively, without even opening his eyes, where it had missed him. Des lunged forward, delivering two quick slashes and projecting an energy through the twist of his blade, the magic channelled via the virtue gem in his hatchet’s hilt. The empowered force carried beyond the tip of his axehead and through the bone-spider’s carapace, cleaving it in twain, until the thaumaturgical wave of energy struck the wall behind the monster. It fell apart immediately, whatever necromantic force that animated it quickly dissipating along with the blow.

Des breathed a little easier, feeling the satisfaction of the invisible gladiator at the back of his mind.

What ally waits in the black stone? he wondered. Each virtue gem stored memories and magic both, sometimes the teachings or skills of multiple long-dead warriors. Almost every virtue gem had a mystical quality to the skill it could provide, a work of thaumaturgy which elevated it above simple physical training. In his dreams had been voices, voices begging to offer their aid. He wondered if they were the voices of the black stone’s occupants.

The chamber’s corridors were narrow, often filled with creatures as unsightly as the bone-spider, but they were also numerous, and Des consistently managed to find a path around the monsters, through the overgrown vines and long-fallen debris. Each time he thought himself lost, stuck, or even cornered, a new avenue revealed itself to him: a collapsed wall, a twist of vines and branches that he could break through, discarded and broken furniture that he could use to vault a gap or other obstacle. It was as if the chamber itself was an unspoken guide, always offering a route further into its dark corridors, never deterring him, even for a moment. Soon Des found himself at a great spiralling staircase which led deeper into the chamber; a moment’s hesitation stayed his feet, as he considered that the further he delved the more difficult it would be to retreat, that no exile of Phrecia had dared dive so far into the chamber, but then the whispering started once more. Except, not a whispering, a crowing, a singularly satisfied cry delighted at the progress he had thus far made and bellowing an eager encouragement to go further still. Its honeyed words began to ply him with fantasies and ideas of what riches might dwell within the chamber below, and Des’s feet began to move once more.

The air hung a little thicker the deeper Des moved into the chamber, the few outlines and shadows he could see vanishing into the gloom as the darkness grew stronger. The sconces on the walls of the second floor were bare; someone had already removed the torches from the deeper chamber. As he moved Des could hear the screech of circular blades whirring around, forgotten traps that still functioned centuries later, and he felt the cold sickly corruption upon his cheek. A monstrous roar sounded out as he neared one particularly long passage, warning him away from Maligaro’s central laboratory, but he had no desire to follow the bend of the main corridor toward whatever creature lurked behind it; the voice inside him simply pushed forward, driving him down a shoulder-wide gap and toward a forgotten small room with a broken wooden door.

Inside the room lay a thaumaturgist’s workshop, spilled solutions and broken furniture betraying the owner’s frustrations. Alchemical musks and burning sulphur stung Des’s nose the moment he crossed the threshold, the long-abandoned works of a madman searching for an answer to a question only he could see. The voice pointed him toward a long spike that lay discarded beside a blackened alembic and cracked mortar, and Des moved across the chamber without consideration to the potential hazards that decorated the floor. The voice alone guided him now. It lifted his hand as he removed the black stone from his pocket and it braced his arm as he positioned the thaumaturgist’s spike against his underarm. The whispering become crowing was now frantic commanding, leaving little room for Des to resist its instruction. The sound of the second voice pushing for his obedience was all at once dominating, overwhelming the fore of his mind, and insidious, slipping to the back of his mind to hide whenever he tried to oppose it. Des grappled with the voice, trying to get a grip on its snaking tendrils before they could compel him further, but the voice was far more experienced in this sort of combat than he. The thaumaturgist’s spike slid through the black stone and pushed it beneath his skin.