Chapter 25 Vargath
VARGATH
The temple corridors blur past as I retrace my steps for the hundredth time.
Every stone, every crack in the mortar, every shadow cast by flickering torchlight—I've memorized them all.
The storage chambers beneath the altar. The forgotten prayer alcoves.
The narrow servant passages that wind behind the walls like veins through a corpse.
Nothing. No trace of her scent. No blood. No sign of struggle beyond that broken cup and the scratches on her chamber floor.
"You've checked that passage three times today."
Gargan's voice cuts through my obsession like a blade. He leans against the entrance to the undercroft, arms crossed, watching me with the patience of someone who's seen too many friends lose their minds.
"Maybe I missed something."
"You didn't."
I turn on him, fury rising in my throat. "You think I'm imagining things? You think I've lost my mind over some human woman?"
"I think you're tearing yourself apart over something you can't control." His scarred jaw works as he considers his next words. "Maybe it's time to accept she's gone."
The words hit like a physical blow. I slam my fist against the stone wall, feeling bones crack against ancient mortar. "She didn't leave. She was taken."
"By who? We've questioned every guard, every servant. No one saw anything. No one heard anything." Gargan steps closer, voice dropping to that careful tone he uses when I'm about to do something spectacularly stupid. "The council says—"
"The council says she was never real. That I've imagined her. That grief has made me see phantoms." I spit the words like poison. "They sit in their warm chambers, growing fat on lies, while she's somewhere in this cursed place bleeding."
"Vargath."
"They want me to forget her. To go back to Zharra, to their plans, to their neat little arrangements." My voice is raw with exhaustion. "But I felt her kick, Gargan. The baby. My child. Real as the scars on my arms."
Gargan's expression softens, but his voice remains steady. "I believe you. But if she's truly gone—"
"She's not gone." The certainty burns in my chest like molten iron. "This place is older than any of us remember. Built on human foundations, riddled with passages the council pretends don't exist. She's here. Somewhere."
I push past him, heading for the outer corridors where the newer construction meets ancient stonework. Where secrets hide in the spaces between old and new.
"Where are you going?"
"To find someone with a better memory than the council."
The forge district sprawls beneath the main stronghold like a cancer of smoke and steel. Here, the old human architecture shows its bones—cracked foundations, half-collapsed archways, chambers that serve no purpose anyone can remember. The perfect place to hide someone you want forgotten.
I find Grosh hammering red-hot iron into submission, sweat streaming down his massive frame. He's been here since before I was born, knows every tunnel and forgotten chamber better than the maps.
"Warleader." He doesn't look up from his work. "Heard you've been asking questions."
"I need information."
"Information costs coin. Good information costs more."
I drop a heavy purse on his anvil. The sound of gold rings clear over the hammer's song. "What do you know about the old passages? The ones that don't appear on official maps."
His hammer pauses mid-swing. "Dangerous question."
"Dangerous times."
He sets down his tools, studying me with eyes that have seen too much. "There are places beneath this stronghold that predate orcish rule. Chambers the first builders sealed away. Tunnels that lead nowhere." He leans closer, voice dropping to a whisper. "Places where things get lost. Permanently."
"Show me."
"Can't do that. But..." He glances around, ensuring we're alone. "Old Vex might know. Temple worker, older than stone. Keeps the sacred scrolls. If anyone has maps of the forgotten places, it's Vex."
I'm already moving before he finishes speaking.
I find Vex hunched over ancient scrolls in the deepest chamber of the temple archives, her gnarled fingers tracing faded ink by candlelight. She's so old her skin resembles cracked leather, and when she looks up at me, her eyes hold the cloudy weight of decades.
"Warleader." Her voice rasps like autumn leaves. "Heard you've been digging through shadows."
"I need to know about the old passages. The sealed sections."
She studies me for a long moment, then reaches beneath a pile of ceremonial texts. Her weathered hands produce a piece of charcoal-stained parchment, edges brittle with age.
"Maedra asked me to keep this. Said someone might need it someday." She unfolds the drawing carefully. "Map of the original catacombs. Before the collapse twenty winters past."
The charcoal lines show a maze of tunnels beneath the temple, chambers that branch off like roots from a dead tree. Several passages are marked with crude X's—sealed, forgotten, buried under tons of rubble.
"The council ordered them closed after the cave-in killed three workers." Vex's finger traces one particular tunnel. "But stone shifts. Water finds new paths. Sometimes what's buried... resurfaces."
I memorize every line, every mark. "Where would someone hide a prisoner?"
"Somewhere the screams wouldn't carry."
The excavation consumes my nights. I work alone, hands blistered raw from moving stone and debris. Each rock I shift feels like lifting the weight of my failures. The council thinks I've lost my mind—let them. Gargan brings me food I barely touch, water I gulp down between hours of digging.
The sealed entrance reveals itself slowly. First, a gap between stones. Then the outline of an archway, choked with rubble but intact. My shoulders ache. My knuckles bleed. But I keep digging, fury smoldering in my chest like banked coals.
Between shifts, I return to her chamber. The room where I first saw her sleeping peacefully, where we made love with desperate tenderness, where I found her gone. I kneel where the ceremonial flames once burned, pressing my palms to cold stone.
"If the Plentiful God sees fit to test me..." My voice cracks in the darkness. "Then let the trial end."
The silence stretches. No divine answer. No sign. Just the weight of my own breathing and the ghost of her scent still clinging to the furs.
I'm back at the excavation site when it happens. Three days of digging have opened a gap large enough to squeeze through. I'm clearing the last of the debris when I hear it—faint, muffled by layers of stone, but unmistakable.
Soft sobbing. Her voice.
I back away from the opening, grabbing my axe, heart roaring like a caged beast.
She's still here. I'm coming.