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Skjoll is a rare variety of man: he has more power than any mortal could dream to have, and doesn't wish for more; he could enslave all the world with nothing more than his fingertips, yet he wants nothing more than to live peacefully. It is admirable, I think, to know your lot and be content with it.

-Damien Malcus

"Nope," Kath said, shaking her head violently, "no, nope, not going to happen."

Varg sighed, running a clawed hand over his eyes, "this is the only way."

The pair of them sat behind a low wall of rocks several hundred yards from the entrance to the Deadmount, hiding in the sparse shade provided to them by the mountain walls on either side.

The gate stood well over a hundred feet tall, an imposing fortress of metal bars and stone doors, each of which could crush a small army if they fell from their ancient perches. At the foot of the gate stood an immobile force of frozen corpses, their ranks precise and motionless as they stared vacantly ahead, awaiting command. There were not as many as had attacked Kadak, but they still numbered far too many to mettle with.

"The only way to what?" Kath growled, "The only way to an early grave?"

"We have to go through this gate," Varg responded, voice not rising from its quiet whisper, "the larger gates are more heavily guarded."

A groan escaped the jackal's mouth, "I take it back; we should climb the mountain."

The two of them peered out from their cover, pointing out possible means of approach, all of them doomed by the motionless sentries.

"Perhaps I could be of some assistance?" Came a voice from behind them, making the travelers scatter, fumbling for their weapons as the dark figure loomed over them, his presence gone unnoticed.

"Fucks sake!" Kath yelled, immediately clasping a hand over her mouth, casting a glance over the low row of rubble that hid them from the undead at the gates.

Aric, meanwhile, was smirking over the crimson dragon as he tried to unsheathe his sword from his back while still lying down. The crow was dressed as before, albeit with a black fur cloak hanging from his narrow frame. He stood only a few feet behind them, imprints in the snow clearly showing where he had followed them, though his approach had been done without the slightest sound.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Varg growled, slamming his blade back into its sheath.

"I figured this exact scenario would play out," Aric said, strolling past the wall to stand in clear vision of the gate, though the defenders showed no reaction to his presence, "thought I could lend a hand."

Kath leaned forward over the rock face, about to pull the avian mage back into cover, pausing as she noticed an odd glimmer around the man. She looked closer, and saw that, from the front, it was nearly impossible to see him aside from a vague distortion of colour and air around him.

"So you just followed us?" Varg demanded, jaw clenched with anger.

"I tied up a few loose ends in Kadak and set out a couple hours after you left," the crow said, a strange look crossing over his face as he stared out towards the gate, as still as the corpses in their ranks.

"What about Annie?" Kath asked, still staring at the invisible half of the bird.

"I gave her some money and paid Brandon to take her to Wien, to stay with my cousin," the crow said, turning from the gate to stand behind the rocks once more, his figure slowly becoming visible.

"You sent the sister of the most infamous necromancer of all time to live in the City of Graves?" Varg asked incredulously, "Are you mad?"

"When was the last time you've been to Wien, dragon?" the mage asked, his tone both annoyed and dismissive, "the catacombs have been empty since your kind burned them down."

Varg grumbled, but seemed to accept this answer, returning to peeking over the low wall of stones arrayed before him.

"Fine," the dragon said, "so, any ideas on how to get in?"

The crow nodded hesitantly, drawing the thick black cowl over his face, hiding all of his features, his wings disappearing into his voluminous cloak.

"Yes," he said, "but you're not going to like it."

---

"You were right," Varg growled under his breath, "I don't like it."

The crow hushed him through the shadows of his hood, two chains leading from the mage's hand to the collars around the traveler's necks. The three of them marched towards the gate, the undead thralls staring at them from all sides as they parted to allow passage, though a pair of necromancers moved forward to meet them.

"Quiet," Aric said, his voice bizarrely differed by some strange spell, "this will only work if you follow my orders to the letter."

"I'm not very good at following orders," Kath said, ignoring the ugly glare Aric shot at her.

"Neither am I, come to think of it," Varg said, he and Kath sharing a nervous chuckle as they slipped through the ranks of the dead.

"Believe me," Aric replied dryly, "you've made that abundantly clear, but if they see a couple of corpses mouthing off, they're going to get suspicious."

Kath looked down at herself, the usual mask of black fur distorted by Aric's mirage into a sheet of mange and torn flesh, detailed and vivid enough to make her sick to look at it.

She continued to shamble along behind the crow, mimicking the deathly gait of the corpses around them. Varg was similarly adorned, his usually vibrantly shaded scales discolored a sickening yellowish and brown, broken by protruding bones and shredded flesh.

Aric definably looked his part as a necromancer, drawing his robes over his features, leaving only his clawed hands exposed as they held the rusted chains that wrapped around their necks. He seemed to crouch under the robes, hiding his height, though he had never mentioned why disguising his voice had been necessary.

The necromancers stopped them nearly a hundred yards from the gate, directly in the center of the horde that stood before it.

The pair of mages were lean, almost emaciated under their black robes. The both of them were wolves, and despite their shared wiry build and mangy appearance, it was clear they were unrelated.

"Halt," one of them said, his voice cracking harshly as he spoke, "state your business, or march with the dead."

Aric raised a hand, displaying a silver and onyx medallion inscribed with the image of a stylized crow sitting upon a tree branch.

The two wolves froze, their eyes widening as they beheld the trinket.

"The Gravewing still lives?" the other asked, limping forward to inspect the medal closer, peering at the crow holding it.

"Maester Harkon still fights," Aric said in his odd, distorted voice, "though the loss of Wien has... weakened the movement."

The first wolf scratched at his ear, appearing to be in deep thought, though Kath suspected the necromancer's version of "deep" was the average persons' version of a puddle.

"So why you here then?" the wolf said with all the eloquence of a rock.

"The Gravewing requests mistress La Fey grant him asylum while he trains new recruits," Aric said, "as well as protection from the dragons."

The two necromancers stepped back and began to argue amongst themselves, pointing back and forth between the crow and the gates nervously.

Kath made sure they weren't looking at her before asking out of the corner of her mouth, "Gravewing?"

"Leader of the necromancer movement in the Crowlands," Aric said quietly, "used to be the grand priest before necromancy was outlawed."

"He is dead though, right?" Varg asked, "We were pretty sure we had him after the third attempt."

"He survived the burning of the catacombs, last I heard," Aric said, "though he probably didn't make it out of the city."

"And they don't know that?" Kath asked, uncertain again about the feasibility of this plan.

"They probably aren't sure," Aric said as the two necromancers left to open the gate, "Harkon was notoriously hard to kill."

"We would kill him and his people, then he'd show up a few months down the line in a different body," Varg said, shuffling uneasily as the gates began to groan, the massive walls of granite being breached by the opening of the monumental steel doors.

The wolves approached them a few seconds later, ushering Aric and the two travelers inside, the low groan of the gate as its doors slid across the worn stone of the mountain vibrating through their very bodies as the horde outside slowly disappeared behind the metal, and the darkness of the Deadmount embraced them.

The Deadmount soon became visible as their eyes adjusted to the gloom of the cavern, and Kath had to fight not to gasp in shock at what she saw.

The entirety of the mountain was hollow, its walls supported by monumental columns that exceeded the architecture of Branburg, Wien, or any city of mortal design. The buildings grew directly from the stone, rising from both the ground and the ceiling in equal number, appearing at a distance to look like malformed stalactites, until one realized their bulk could hold the whole of a nation with ease.

It was easy to underestimate the size of the Deadmount, especially when one had already climbed to the summit of one of her sister peaks, but the chamber in which they now stood was larger than the mind could fathom, and the unearthly powers that had wrought it were enough to send a shiver down her spine.

The chasm was dark, the only light coming from narrow breaches along the mountain's exterior at altitudes too high for life to sustain itself and the odd fixtures of greenish-yellow glass that emitted a dim glow. These unnatural lights were affixed upon totems of stone, their faces marred by the horrid artistry of the Shoggoths and the graffiti added to it by the necromancers that had called it home for the past millennia.

The streets were wider than any Kath had seen before, able to allow several scores of people to walk side-by-side with room to spare on either side. The buildings were similar to the unearthly geometric towers that protruded from the outer edges of the mountain, though they were, for the most part, free of the weathering that had weakened the sharp edges of the Shoggoth architecture, and the sheer size of the ruins gave the place an uncomfortable air of emptiness.

The street was lined by refuse, mainly the corpses that had decayed too much to be useful to their overlords, though there was also chunks of masonry that had broken off from the undying ruins. There was nearly no activity near the gate, though as they pushed deeper into the city of the dead they began to see the flicker of candlelight and hear the hushed tones of the dark mages that had assumed control of the ruins. Even further into the ruins, the laughter of children and the smell of wood-smoke broke through the muggy atmosphere of the place as the streets soon filled with the necromancers and their families in make-shift markets.

They passed through one of these odd bazars, the wolves leading them past market stalls peddling everything from bread and meat to whole corpses and dissection tools. The necromancers themselves were incredibly varied, some of them wearing little more than rags while others wore the jewels and silks worthy of royalty.

Kath struggled to maintain her ghostly gait through the crowd, trying to keep up with the limping stride of the wolf that lead them. Such an arrangement as the one they mimicked was not uncommon, with many of the people gathered there also followed by the decaying and battered bodies of the dead. In one instance, she saw the horribly disfigured shade of some long-dead knight being led by the energetic stride of a young pup through the stalls.

Over the slanted and looming rooftops peeked a structure that, even compared to the massive structures that filled the mountain, loomed impossibly large over the dim cavern. Its walls were uneven and oddly angled, the perverse mass showing little of the necromancer influences that marred the Shoggoth's fortress. The structure raised up from the ground of the cavern, slowly narrowing into a spire, the tip of the structure coming to its apex just under the highest point of the cave where the mountain's peak sat above.

The wolves that led them through the city of the dead turned toward the monolithic structure, their path leading them away from the bustling streets of the markets into residences that seemed more akin to the ideal of the necromancer society.

The structures stolen from the bones of the Shoggoths had been heavily modified to match the dark and angular architecture of the great cities of the Crowlands. The streets were finer here, their sides devoid of trash or refuse, with lamplight bathing the darkened streets in some measure of light.

The atmosphere of these more luxurious places seemed even more foreboding than the gates outside, carrying within their marble halls the same unearthly stillness as a mausoleum, even as the high, arching windows and doorways spilled their light into the streets and the whispers of the spirits and their masters drifted from the effluent halls.

Their path drew them closer and closer to the structure that loomed over the dark city below, their approach to the mountainous citadel let them bask in its full mass, the spire obscuring everything within view as it twisted and wound its way upward, filling the air with a dark energy as its perverse and archaic architecture blotted out even the sparse light that found its way into the Deadmount, all light in the spacious chamber being drawn towards the unearthly object that crowded the cavern.

After what seemed like hours of trudging along through the streets, they reached the base of the structure, protected again by a gate, even larger than the first, its onyx surface riddled with the carvings of monstrous beings enacting unspeakable and indescribable horrors upon scurrying creatures, tiny in scale compared to the monsters, but transposed onto the massive doors as they were, the poor creatures were nearly as tall as the travelers that approached them, their terrified features eerily similar.

The doors swung wide as they approached, parting to reveal a vixen, clad all in black, stepping gracefully towards them, a look of cold disinterest adorning her features as her pale orange tail flicked back and forth behind her.

She was flanked by two creatures, both unique, though the nature of their horrid construct was terrifyingly familiar. The creatures, similar in appearance to the commander of the horde they had fought before, gazed over them with eyeless visages, their mangy and shambling appearance belying their vicious strength.

The two wolves that led their party dropped to their knees at the sight of the woman, averting their eyes from her striking and powerful visage. She observed them in their submissive state with callous disinterest, crossing her arms in a manner that filled the air with dangerous tension.

"I assume you have good reason for bringing strangers to the citadel, mutt?" the woman said, her tone musical and light, even as it carried a deathly seriousness to it.

"Lady Albion," the first wolf began, his voice cracking nervously, "we present to you... um..." the wolf started before realizing he hadn't gotten Aric's name.

Aric stepped forward and spoke, "Lord Ardic of the Gravewing, emissary to Lady Morgana La Fey from Maester Harkon."

The woman looked him over quickly before advancing, her pace slow and deliberate, "Is that so?"

Aric nodded, the motion subtle under the thick hood and shadow.

"I was under the impression that Harkon had died during the razing of Wien," the woman said, circling the trio as a shark would a stranded raft, "My mistress will be... interested to know that he still breathes."

She turned to the wolves, "Leave us," and turned heel, leading the way through the citadel's gate, the onyx walls closing behind them, sealing out the world beyond.