Private Tales The Relic of Ages

The message reached the *Bruderschaft des Großschwerts* through quiet channels. A place. A time. Dusk, at an old meeting hall near the western edge of the city. No written contract came with it, only the understanding that the offer was serious.

The hall was cold when the company arrived. A small fire burned in the hearth, casting weak light across the room. A long wooden table stood in the center, covered in maps and scattered notes held down by bits of metal and stone. The walls were bare. There were no banners or colors to mark who had claimed the space.

Members of the *Gavinsborough Society* waited inside. They kept to the edges of the hall, speaking quietly among themselves. They did not wear armor, yet they carried themselves like people used to danger. Their eyes followed the mercenaries as they entered, careful and measured.

At the far end of the room stood the Gavinsborough Man.

No one noticed him arrive. He wore plain travel clothes beneath a dark cloak, and his face was hard to make out in the low light. When he spoke, his voice carried across the hall without effort.

“You were chosen because your company has proven capable,” he said. “You take contracts others turn down, and you see them through.”

He motioned to the table. One of the maps showed a collapsed ruin along an old road, recently uncovered. The Society believed something had been sealed beneath it long ago, hidden on purpose.

“The object you are being sent for is known as the Bag of Neerantia,” the Gavinsborough Man continued. “You are to retrieve it and return it intact. Do not open it. Do not attempt to use it.”

Payment was discussed after that. Coin, hazard pay, and limited salvage rights were laid out and agreed upon. The Society showed little interest in anything besides the artefact itself.

“There is risk,” he said before concluding. “The dungeon is occupied. Some of what remains inside is not fully dead. If members of your company are lost, you are not to pursue them alone. Complete the task or withdraw.”

With that, the meeting came to an end. The Society gathered their maps and notes, packing them away with quiet efficiency. The hall began to feel empty again.

The Gavinsborough Man looked once more over the assembled mercenaries, then turned and left without another word.

Outside, night had settled in. The road ahead led down into old stone and deeper darkness, where something had been waiting for a very long time.

They never saw him.

That was expected. The Gavinsborough Man kept to the higher stone, where the ruin broke into jagged shelves and half-fallen walls. From there, the path below was clear enough, and the entrance sat open like a wound that had never fully closed. He stood still, cloak drawn close, the stone around him cold and familiar.

Five this time.

More than he had hoped for, fewer than he had feared. He counted them once, then again, slow, committing shapes and movements to memory. The way they spread out. The way some slowed without being told. The weight of greatswords was obvious even from a distance, steel carried by people used to carrying it.

He listened as they approached, not to their words so much as the gaps between them. The pauses said more than the talking ever did. This was not a march. There was no rhythm to it, no shared breath. That pleased him.

The entrance held. The ruin did not react. Good.

He shifted his attention inward then, letting his senses slide down through old stone and older corridors, feeling for the faint pull that had drawn him here in the first place. The Bag of Neerantia rested where it always had. Quiet. Patient. Waiting.

His gaze returned to the surface only once more, just long enough to mark their final positions before they crossed the threshold. He did not follow yet. There was time. There was always time.

For now, he remained where he was, unseen and unmoving, watching the beginning of something he had set in motion years ago, even if they did not know it yet.

Ernesta Von Norgard

The Gavinsborough Man watched them slip inside, one by one, the ruin swallowing sound as neatly as it swallowed light. He did not follow immediately. He rarely did. Stone remembered footsteps, and patience kept secrets better than haste.

The first chamber opened wide, wider than the entrance suggested it should have. Old masonry rose into a low dome, blocks fitted too precisely for anything meant to be rushed. The air inside was stale but dry, carrying the faint smell of dust and old iron. Carvings lined the walls, worn down enough that their meaning had softened into shapes rather than symbols. Circles, lines, hands reaching toward something that had long since been scratched away.

Nothing moved.

That was the first test. Silence that lingered just a little too long. The kind that made breathing feel loud.

Beyond it, a narrow passage led down into the second chamber. This one was lower, the ceiling close enough that taller figures would have to mind their heads. The floor dipped slightly in the center, and old grooves cut through the stone ran lengthwise, shallow but deliberate. Water once flowed here. Something else had followed later.

The Gavinsborough Man shifted position above, unseen, eyes tracing the space they now occupied. He could feel the old mechanisms resting beneath the floor, dormant but intact. Pressure plates, not crude, not obvious. Triggered by weight, yes, but also by patience.

At the far end of the chamber stood two paths.

One was a stone stair descending into darkness, steep and uneven, with a faint draft rising from below. Old air, deep air. The other was a side corridor, tight and straight, its walls lined with metal inlays that had dulled with age. That path was quiet in a way the stair was not.

The choice mattered.

The stairs would wake the ruin. Slowly, but surely. Whatever lingered deeper would begin to shift, to listen. The corridor, on the other hand, would demand something immediately. A toll paid in blood, steel, or clever hands, depending on how it was handled.

The Gavinsborough Man allowed himself a thin breath, not quite a smile.

This was where people showed what kind of survivors they were.

Ernesta Von Norgard