When he reached the bottom, Silus saw for himself what had so taken his crew-mate aback. Behind him there were similar exclamations as the rest of the crew joined them.
They stood at the entrance to a massive circular room, the floor of which had been gouged by deep, blackened rents. Above them the ceiling shimmered and through it they could see the six towers rising to the surface far above. Fragments of scorched bone and broken skulls were scattered across the floor, but it was not these that had evoked Dunsany's exclamation. There were three entrances into the chamber, besides the one through which they had entered, and each one was piled high with bones.
The smell of burned bone intensified as Silus approached one of the arches. The skeletons piled there — like a jumble of blackened twigs — had been fused together by the fire that had consumed the flesh that had once clothed them. Silus reached out to touch the edge of a leg bone and the whole pile shifted suddenly as it crumbled, a small avalanche of dry remains tumbling into the room.
"What in the name of Kerberos happened here?" Father Maylan said.
"A massacre." Silus said.
"Perfect! So, we discover a new race, only to find that it has already been killed off?" Kelos said. "Who'd want to be an adventurer?"
"It beats languishing in a Vos prison," Jacquinto said. "Trust me."
Beyond the archway, Silus could see through to where a flight of stairs descended.
"We could clear a way through this," he said. "Maybe we'll find some clues as to what happened here."
He unsheathed his knife and started to cut a path through the brittle skeletons. It wasn't a particularly difficult task as the majority of the bones crumbled as soon as he touched them. Black flakes rained down on him as the pile shifted and creaked. He paused for a moment but the mound of the dead held and he continued to tunnel towards the stairs.
The crew looked at each other, then at Silus sawing away, and — after only a brief hesitation — followed him through the charnel mound.
The quantity of bodies didn't lessen any as Silus approached the top of the stairs. The glow of his lightstone revealed yet more skeletons crowded into the scorched tunnel sloping away from them. Some were wrapped around their companions, as though the creatures had been seeking solace in their final moments. Others, towards the top of the pile, had arms outstretched and heads thrown back. Silus imagined them scrabbling across a pile of their already dead brethren, only for them to be annihilated by a roaring wall of flame.
"Do we really want to find out what did this?" Dunsany said from behind him. "I mean, I've seen the old battle fields in the Anclas territories but this… gods, it's just…" His voice caught for a moment and a sob escaped his lips. "Horrible."
Kelos put a hand on his friend's shoulder and Dunsany covered it with his own.
"I think that whoever did this is long gone," Silus said. "There's no more threat here. Just a tomb."
"It could be haunted." Ignacio said, from further behind him. "Places like this are always haunted."
"No, I feel nothing." Father Maylan said. "This place is just… dead."
Descending the stairs took them longer than Silus had anticipated. The bodies were packed in more tightly around them here and it was hard to see where each step fell. Twice Silus had to tell the group to back off so that he could work out the best route through.
As he was pulling bones away from the wall of the tunnel he heard a sound like a whisper and looked up.
A skeleton hung spread-eagled above him, its empty eyes seeming to observe him with contempt. Silus thought that he could see a glint of something deep within one of the sockets. The glint resolved itself into a more definite form, as a spider crawled from the hollow and skittered across a cracked cheekbone. With a dry rattle, the skull shifted slightly to the side, almost as though the dead creature were cocking its head at him.
Then, with a sound like the breaking of a thousand dry branches, the walls of bone shifted.
Silus ducked as a cloud of desiccated remains erupted around him, the vicious dust scouring his throat and making it difficult to breathe.
"Get back!" He shouted. "It's coming down!"
But Silus didn't have a chance to see whether his friends fled to safety, as he was swept away on a wave of bone.
The clattering avalanche that enveloped him sounded like the chattering voices of the dead. Wicked shards scratched his face and the lightstone was knocked out of his hand as he tumbled head over heels. And then, there was nothing below or above him as he fell into empty space, only to land with a thud that punched the air from his lungs.
From somewhere nearby there was the thud and crunch of living bodies impacting with long dead ones, as Silus's companions tumbled after him. He scrabbled his way to the surface and, looking around, he could see where some of their lightstones had fallen. Silus crawled his way to one of them and, raising it, he could just make out his friends, struggling to their feet.
"Well, I suppose that was the quickest way down." Father Maylan said, wading towards Silus. "Gentlemen, shout if you're amongst the living."
All answered and soon they had picked themselves up and were peering into the darkness that surrounded them.
This room felt bigger than the one from which they had descended and, as their eyes adjusted, they began to make out rows of columns rising to a roof far above them. The glow of their lightstones was thrown back by their smooth, reflective surfaces and Silus realised that the columns were made of glass. Within them, cloudy liquid moved sluggishly.
"What does this do, do you reckon?" Ioannis said, and before they could stop him he had turned the wheel he'd found attached to one of the columns.
A massive thunk echoed through the room and a rain of dust sifted down from above. Then, with a rumbling hum that rattled the bones on which they stood, the liquid starting rushing through the vast columns, gradually clearing as the cloud of particles that muddied them were sucked up through the ceiling. A soft glow began to infuse the room then, starting at the base of each column and working its way up as thousands upon thousands of tiny, glowing creatures were pumped through the mighty glass cylinders. Silus moved his face closer to one of the columns and could see that each creature was no larger than a mayfly, composed of a glowing, rapidly beating heart surrounding by hundreds of cilia.
"Gods, this place is huge!" Dunsany said, and Silus turned to see that the light had banished the shadows, revealing the full extent of the room.
As he looked around him there was a sudden, searingly painful flash of insight and Silus knew the nature of the death that had come to consume this underwater citadel.
Silus was amongst them as they stormed through the tunnels, threading their way through the under-levels of the citadel. In their hands they held staffs with glowing ruby gems set in their tips, the burning hearts of the stones pulsing with the fire barely contained by their facets. Ahead of them Silus could hear the first wave of their brethren laying waste to the outer defences and they soon piled into their rear of that skirmish, burning or slashing any of the mongrel creatures that made it past their brothers. The yards of tunnels they passed through were soon decorated with the bodies of their enemies; some burnt to a crisp, others gored beyond recognition.
They flooded into the great hall and the wave of their attack washed over the creatures milling there in panic, some with their young hugged to their chests as they made to flee to the upper levels. But they were soon overtaken and added to the pile of their dead, already several layers deep. Some fought back and some took down their assailants, but the sheer number of their attackers prevailed in the end.
And Silus stood amongst the growing mounds of the dead, covered in blood, the battle cries rising around him like some hideous chorus. The creatures that poured from the mouths of the tunnels fought with a joyous ferocity, never once pausing between kills. Even in the black pits of their eyes, Silus could see the terrible lust that possessed them, and he felt some of that same hunger himself.