The Doom of Fallowhearth Read online

  Descent: Journeys in the Dark

  Terrinoth: an ancient realm of forgotten greatness and faded legacies, of magic and monsters, heroes, and tyrants. Its cities were ruined and their secrets lost as terrifying dragons, undead armies, and demon-possessed hordes ravaged the land. Over centuries, the realm slipped into gloom…

  Now, the world is reawakening – the Daqan baronies rebuild their domains, wizards master the lapsed arts, and champions test their mettle. Banding together to explore the dangerous caves, ancient ruins, dark dungeons, and cursed forests of Terrinoth, they unearth priceless treasures and terrible foes.

  Yet time is running out, for in the shadows a malevolent force has grown, preparing to spread evil across the world. Now, when the land needs them most, is the moment for its heroes to rise.

  First published by Aconyte Books in 2020

  ISBN 978 1 83908 025 8

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 83908 026 5

  Copyright © 2020 Fantasy Flight Games.

  All rights reserved. Aconyte and the Aconyte icon are registered trademarks of Asmodee Group SA. Descent: Journeys in the Dark and the FFG logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fantasy Flight Games.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover art by Jeff Chen

  Map by Francesca Baerald

  Distributed in North America by Simon & Schuster Inc, New York, USA

  ACONYTE BOOKS

  An imprint of Asmodee Entertainment Ltd

  Mercury House, Shipstones Business Centre

  North Gate, Nottingham NG7 7FN, UK

  aconytebooks.com // twitter.com/aconytebooks

  This book is dedicated to everyone who has supported – and continues to support –

  my crazy writing dream.

  Prologue

  Darkness in the heart of the light, light in the heart of darkness.

  The figure in the traveling cloak stood where she had not been a half-second earlier. The mist that had borne her to this place retreated, crawling down her body, and away into nothingness.

  She gasped. The night air was cold and clear in her lungs, snapping her fully awake and banishing the last vestiges of the mist shroud from her mind. Her heart was racing in her chest. She felt sick. Was it always like this?

  She looked around, noticing her surroundings properly for the first time. She knew instantly where the mist had taken her. The bone yard. Graven headstones surrounded her in neat rows, carved with branches, skulls and the other morbid icons of the god of death. Just a few months ago, such a place, wrapped up in the cold dark of night, would have given her pause. Now, though, there was a thrill to it. From this place of death, still and silent, good could yet flourish. She had convinced herself of that.

  She drew back her cloak and hefted the heavy book in her hands. She’d sworn she would return it to its rightful owner. That was what she was doing tonight. It was why she had summoned up the hex nebulum, the mist shroud, why she had used it to slip past the guards, under the gates and through the town unnoticed. But first she had to know. She had to try. Just one incantation, and then she would give it back and beg forgiveness. She found the page, murmuring a simple oculus spell to enable her to read the words in the darkness.

  The Black Invocation.

  She hesitated. This moment was irreversible. If she did this, she knew her life could never be what it once was.

  Was she being too hasty? Perhaps. But there was something wrong in this town, something creeping and scuttling and crawling, something malignant. Something with no concept of mercy. She could fight it with this power, though. She didn’t even have to call upon her guards, upon the townsfolk, those honest people who would be expected to die for her. She simply had to raise the bodies of those whose spirits had long passed on. The evil would be overcome, and all without a single life lost. Surely that was worth the price she was about to pay? Surely that was worth giving up her inheritance, breaking the ancient laws. Distorting nature itself.

  Besides, there was no other way she could be with her teacher. She loved her. It was an emotion she wouldn’t give up, not now that she really knew what it meant. The life she had been given wasn’t the one she wanted. She would make a new one, with her, starting tonight. She would give up her privileged existence, one she had never cared for, and start anew. Her teacher would understand. She knew she felt the same way.

  She turned towards the crypt.

  It was one of several that dotted the shrine’s graveyard, a low stone structure with an iron door wrought in the likeness of rows of exposed bones. The gate was secured with a heavy padlock. She stepped towards it and raised her hands, her eyes closed. She felt the night’s cold, drew it within, softly speaking words she’d carefully memorized. Part prayer, part incantation, each breath now turning to a frosty billow before her.

  Ice clenched and hardened around the lock, spreading from her fingers. There was a dull crack as metal froze and warped. Finally, a splitting sound and the heavy thud of frozen metal striking dirt. The lock had cracked and broken apart.

  She eased the gate open, trying to ignore its rusty protests. Within, five stone caskets lay undisturbed. The forebearers of the Fulchard family, interred together. She stepped back without entering, raising the book, settling it in the crook of her arm.

  What she was doing might be a form of desecration, but it was necessary. Once she knew she had mastered the Black Invocation, she would no longer need the book. She could raise an army and save this town. Then, truly, her teacher would realize her worth. There was good in even the most forbidden of magics. Light in the dark. That was what she’d show everyone.

  She began to speak, her voice low, taking care with each syllable. The words seemed to shudder and coil across the page before her. She felt a wind stir around the headstones, moaning through the small, open crypt. The power of Mortos, elemental death, rising to greet her.

  But there was something off. It only took her a few lines to realize it. She faltered. One word, mispronounced. A frown crossed her face. She paused. Remember what you’ve been taught, she told herself. Remain calm. One wrong word doesn’t end the world. A few might.

  She began again. And again, a wrong word. Then another. Panic started to grow inside her, made worse by the fact that the heavy book seemed to be getting lighter in her hands. With a rush of horror, she realized that it was starting to dematerialize. Even as she tried to race through the arcane lines and bind the magic around her to the words, the pages began fading, growing incorporeal even as she gripped it.

  The locus reditus! She was a fool! When she had first stolen the book and hidden it in her bed chamber, she had cast a location binding spell on it, a simple little hex that would return the book to where she had concealed it. She had feared that some servant or maid might discover it and take it away. In her decision to return it to its rightful owner tonight, she’d completely forgotten to
unbind the spell. Now the book was vanishing right before her eyes.

  “No,” she began to murmur, then louder. “No, no, no!”

  Her concentration was gone. But it wasn’t too late. She knew the hex nebulum off by heart. She could still slip back into the castle, retrieve the book from where it had now returned, break the binding enchantment and leave. Return it to her lover. Make amends. As the last of the book vanished and she found herself clutching nothing but air, she attempted to marshal her thoughts once more.

  But it was too late for that. She knew it the moment she heard the sound, cold and rasping, from nearby. What was done, was done. She had chosen her fate and there would be no going back now.

  From inside the crypt she heard a low, slow scrape – the grinding of stone on stone, followed by a crack that reverberated through the suddenly quiet graveyard.

  One of the crypt’s coffins had just been opened.

  Chapter One

  For years now, Logan Lashley had fervently believed that his days of trouble were behind him. He had made a promise to himself – generally the only person he kept promises to – that the misadventures which had marred his youth would never be repeated. That was all in the past now, settled, nothing more than a source of free tavern ale from easily impressed merchant burgesses and city aldermen. He was retired, and glad of it.

  There had been other promises too, most of them related to that first one. That he would enjoy his wealth. That he would never again draw his sword in anger. That he would never risk his life to save another being, living or near-dead. That he would finally get over his fear of spiders. That there would be no more adventures.

  Adventures, misadventures. The differences were, in Logan’s long experience, illdefined. Was his current situation – attempting to affect an air of outrage as the town guard took their time over his travel pass – an adventure or a misadventure? He feared the latter. Ever since he had awoken three weeks earlier to the clatter of the letter-carrier outside and discovered that scrap of paper slid beneath his townhouse’s front door, a sense of foreboding had been stalking him. That mark, roughly scrawled on a scrap of hide parchment, always spelled out “trouble.”

  The man-at-arms standing by the town gate looked again from the travel pass to Logan, and back to the pass. He was typical of this cold, inhospitable corner of Terrinoth, a squint-eyed, patchy haired, pox-scarred brute in old chain mail and a worn leather hauberk. Logan was close enough to smell his stink – stale sweat and staler alcohol, mixed with the oil recently applied to his armor and the crude head of the heavy billhook hefted over his shoulder. The man sniffed, paused to scratch behind his ear like a dog and finally handed the pass back to Logan.

  “Welcome to Highmont, Master Gelbin,” he grunted, sounding anything but welcoming. He gestured to the second guard beside him, and the man released the bridle of Logan’s horse. He’d been holding onto it as though afraid Logan was suddenly going to spur the thickset piebald past the gatehouse and into the town’s alleyways. Imagine that. Logan Lashley, hero of Sudanya, Master of Sixspan Hall, held under suspicion! It would have been an outrage, if Logan had been traveling under his real name and if he had indeed not just been considering making a break for it.

  No need for that, at least not yet. The men-at-arms parted, and Logan drew his cloak tight against the late morning chill before easing Ishbel in under the portcullis. Beyond it lay a narrow dirt street, sloping upwards, thick with townsfolk going to and from the noonday market stalls. The buildings crowded along the way, crooked and jostling. They were dark timber and pale wattle and daub for the most part, three or four stories high, many with thickly thatched roofs, a few with slate. Signs hung above narrow doorways declaring the trades practiced on the ground floors – a tailor, a cobbler, a dairy-seller, a physician.

  Compared to the vast cloister streets of Greyhaven or the great monument city of Archaut it wasn’t much, but Logan supposed the sight constituted civilization for this part of Terrinoth. Highmont was the capital of Forthyn, the most north-easterly of the baronies and the seat of its ruler, Baroness Adelynn. It was, in Logan’s opinion, like Forthyn in general, a cold, windy, muddy place, and a damn sight less pleasant than either his townhouse in Greyhaven or his country estate on the edge of the Greatwood. It reminded Logan of the sorts of place he used to frequent in his younger days, which begged the question why he had come here at all. The slip of paper weighed heavy in his pocket.

  He urged Ishbel up the street, the townsfolk hurriedly parting before him. For the most part they were strange-looking compared to the people he had grown accustomed to, living in western Terrinoth. They were shorter, burlier, fond of thick animal pelts and closecropped hair. Even here, in the heart of the barony, the influence of the northern clans was clear. To Logan, Highmont had the air of an outpost on the edge of the wilderness. Gods only knew what Upper Forthyn was like.

  He passed a cluster of market stalls, catching the scents of fresh vegetables. Several sellers called out to him, clearly noticing his wealthy attire, but he ignored them. Past the stalls he had to duck beneath a low-hanging tanner’s sign. Ahead, the turrets and crenellations of Highmont citadel, perched on the crag that formed the hill-town’s peak, were just visible over the rooftops. He turned right along a side street after the tanner’s workshop, easing Ishbel past half a dozen human tapmen and several Dunwarr dwarfs unloading casks from a pair of wagons. He didn’t get much further.

  The narrow passage was blocked by seven or eight figures, and more were gathering. They appeared to have spilled out from the back door of a thatched three-story tavern building. Logan heard raised voices, rebounding from the hunched buildings leaning over the street. He eased on Ishbel’s reins. He’d barely been in Highmont for ten minutes. The last thing he needed was to get caught up in a tavern scrap that had spilled out onto the street.

  Most of the figures ahead were men-at-arms, clad in mail, hauberks and sallets and carrying an assortment of polearms. One, presumably the ringleader, was wearing a tabard bearing the heraldry of Baroness Adelynn – an azure field emblazoned with a rampant roc, its golden claws and feathers a contrast to the stinking drabness of the surrounding street. The man in the tabard was the one speaking, addressing a figure at the center of the group.

  “You think I’m an idiot? This is obviously a forgery! I should have you arrested right here and now, filthy adventurer!”

  Logan didn’t need to get much closer to make out the figure Tabard was addressing. He stood a good head taller than the men surrounding him, a rough hide pelt drawn round his broad shoulders, those heavy features set in a look of resignation. A spear was slung over his shoulder, and a long, curved dagger was sheathed at his waist. With a flicker of recognition, Logan realized the figure was an orc.

  “I know your kind are dull, but are you deaf as well?” Tabard was saying, reaching out to push the orc’s shoulder. The hulking figure held the man’s gaze but didn’t react. Tabard laughed, and the other men-at-arms joined in. A few of the tavern’s patrons had stepped out to watch the confrontation, and the tapmen behind Logan had paused their unloading. Tabard, clearly relishing his growing audience, held up the scrap of paper he’d been carrying in one hand and dropped it into the dirt at the orc’s feet.

  “We don’t want your kind around here, adventurer,” he spat. “Not in Highmont, or in Forthyn. You bring trouble with you wherever you go. That’s not a reputation Highmont needs in times like these. We’ll take you to the main gate and see you on your way. Unless you’ve got other plans?”

  The threat was clear, as was the orc’s response, delivered with a level of clarity in the common tongue that visibly surprised the guards.

  “If I fight, I kill. And I do not wish to kill you.”

  For a second everyone was silent. Then Tabard laughed. The rest joined in as he half turned to address his spectators.

  “Well, great Kellos burn out my eyes! Some ad
venturer you are! Coward, more like!”

  The orc remained silent. Tabard spun back abruptly, raising his gauntlet to strike. Logan’s voice stopped him before the blow fell.

  “Kruk, by all the gods, what do you think you’re doing?”

  The assembly froze and Logan, unnoticed until then, felt all of the tension packed into the narrow street switch to him. Fortuna watch over him, but it was too late to go back now. He glared at the orc.

  “Come here this instant, Kruk,” he snapped, gesturing angrily. Nobody moved.

  “You know this knave, sir?” Tabard asked slowly. Logan looked at him as though only noticing him for the first time.

  “Gods, man, know him? Kruk here is my strong-arm. I sent him on a simple errand with my travel pass and here he is, carousing in a tavern. Typical! I do hope he hasn’t been causing you any trouble, Captain…”

  “Kloin,” Tabard said slowly, looking him up and down. That’s right, Logan thought. Take it all in. The knee-high riding boots, white doeskin britches, the fur-trimmed traveling cloak. Logan’s attire might show a few days’ wear and tear, but the quality was obvious. He was clearly a man of means and status. Not the sort of visitor worth antagonizing. Hopefully.

  “Well met, Captain Kloin,” he said, maintaining the practiced, arrogant tone and accent of a west Terrinoth noble. He had them on the back foot, and he had to keep it that way. He casually tossed his reins to another of the men-at-arms and dropped down from Ishbel’s back. Then, lip curled, he parted the gathering and plucked up the scrap of paper Kloin had thrown at the orc’s feet. As he bent forward, he made sure everyone got a glimpse of the bejeweled pommel of his sword and the fine blue-dyed cloth and silver trim of his tailored Rhynnian doublet.

  “I should have known he would misplace this,” he said as he stood back up, brandishing the grubby paper in the orc’s face. “I told you to be careful!”