As the huge, sweltering orange orb of the planet’s sun slipped beyond the western horizon, Morgan began his descent into the gargoyle settlement. The night was very dark, with no moon in the sky, but Morgan’s Void Vision made traversing the terrain easy, and when he got down near the captive enclosures, he moved stealthily in the even deeper shadows of the high, mud-brick walls. When he followed one wall to a point where the small lake’s muddy shore met with its corner, Morgan took a moment to smear some mud over his exposed, pale flesh, hoping to aid in his deception.

At ground level, the walls were much larger than they appeared from up on the ridge, and he got disoriented a few times trying to find the correct enclosure. He had to leap up to grab the high wall, pulling himself up to peek over, only to discover that he was looking down at strange creatures and not the Ardeni he was trying to join. Still, he went unnoticed, and his third attempt brought him to the correct pen, and he quietly mounted the wall, sliding over on his belly to fall nimbly to the hard-packed dirt ground.

He landed near a sleeping Ardeni, who didn’t notice his arrival, but another younger man was sitting near the wall and gasped when Morgan landed. “Shh,” Morgan said, holding a finger to his muddy face.

“Who are you?” the man whispered.

“I’m a friend. I’m going to figure out what these guys are doing, then try to figure a way to get you all out of here.”

“What do you mean? They’re kidnapping us. Isn’t that obvious?” another voice asked from behind Morgan. He whirled to see a white-haired female Ardeni, dressed like a sailor.

“Yeah, but what’s going on in that pyramid? Why are they bringing captives here? How do they open the portals? I can’t get you out of here until I understand more.” Morgan whispered, glancing around furtively.

“They can’t hear you, and if they could, the big brutes probably wouldn’t understand.” She gestured to the disc on her wrist. “They don’t worry about us as long as we’re wearing these.”

“Why not break them off? I thought they had to keep an eye on you to keep you from removing them.”

“Well, why didn’t you break yours off?” She asked defensively, looking at Morgan’s wrist.

“This? It’s fake.” He showed her the scratched-out runes.

“Oh! We can’t remove them. When we think about trying it, we feel burning pain in our heads.”

“Ahh, now it makes sense. I took this and some others off some people I rescued. I’ll take them off you. No, wait. I’ll scratch out the runes like on mine; then you can defend yourselves if the time comes, but you won’t draw suspicion in the meantime.” Morgan summoned one of his knives from his storage ring, which he’d put on a leather string around his neck. Then, he scratched out the runes on the woman’s pewter bracelet. He handed her the knife, “You should be able to do the same for the others now. How often do they come to take prisoners into their hive?”

“It seems random. I don’t know.”

“Alright,” Morgan noticed that their conversation had drawn more of the Ardeni over, and he whispered, more loudly, “Hey, don’t make a scene; I’m trying to help you all. Has anyone seen Roald, the artificer from Tarn’s Crossing?”

“Yes! He was here; they took him earlier today.”

“Dammit! How do I make sure they take me when they come for prisoners again?”

“Just be near the gate; they just grab the first of us they see,” one of the new arrivals said, a short, stout, green-haired fellow.

“Look, when you get your bracelet fixed, don’t start attacking gargoyles or trying to run. We aren’t on Fanwath, and I don’t know where a portal to get us home is. I’m going to try to scout out the gargoyle nest to figure out what’s up, but I need you guys to play cool until something changes or I return with some news.” Morgan had raised his voice slightly, making sure all the Ardeni heard him, and then he nodded and moved over by the bamboo-like gate. None of the Ardeni were resting near it, probably to avoid being taken, so he had a lot of space to himself while he waited. The woman he’d been talking to came up behind him.

“What will you do in there?”

“I don’t know. Watch what they do; figure things out. That kind of thing.”

“What if they’re killing the people that they bring in there? They never come back.”

“Then I’ll have to resort to violence. I’ve slain my share of these creatures.” He spoke matter-of-factly, and the woman took another look at him.

“You’re big; that’s for sure. Are you high enough level?”

“We’ll find out.” Morgan shrugged and sat down in the dirt in front of the gate. She moved away, taking his short response for lack of interest in the conversation, and he felt a little bad for seeming rude, but he had some things on his mind. He had a bad feeling about Roald, and he didn’t know how he would break it to Issa if he found that he was dead. For the hundredth time that day, he wondered if Issa was okay. Had she gotten out of the Deep Down after he got sucked into the portal? Had she continued searching through those tunnels all alone, looking for a sign of him or her father? Was she still alive? He’d tried Guardian’s Senses, again and again, never getting any sign of her, and he knew that was normal with him being on another world, but it still stressed him out.

He forced himself to meditate and work on cultivating his Core while he waited for the gargoyles to come. He noticed right away that the Energy in this world was sparse compared to Fanwath, and he made very little progress over the course of two full cultivation drills. He was about to start a third when the gate rattled, and a guttural snarl signaled the arrival of some gargoyles. He stood up, waiting for them.

The gate was jerked open by the lead gargoyle, and it strode forward to Morgan with no hesitation, holding out a length of rope. It slipped the looped rope around Morgan’s head, pulling the scratchy cord uncomfortably tight, and then it and another gargoyle walked back into the pen, hunting for more people to add to their harvest. The Ardeni crowded into the far corner, trying to avoid them, but the gargoyles were relentless and began to drag two others toward Morgan and the gate.

At one point, Morgan heard the voice of the woman he’d been talking to raise in a shout, saying, “Don’t you dare! You’ll blow our chance!” Morgan silently thanked her; he figured she was stopping one of the Ardeni from using Energy to attack the gargoyles. Soon the other two captives were hooked to the rope, and the gargoyles were dragging them out of the pen, Morgan in the lead. He walked quickly, so there was slack in the rope; he didn’t like the feeling of being tugged around by the neck.

As they were led through the muddy paths between holding pens, Morgan could hear the wails of the captives and smell the decay of death. Clearly, some of the prisoners were in worse shape than those in the Ardeni pen. The gargoyles didn’t say anything, just breathed heavily, grunting or growling at each other as they progressed. At one point, another string of captives passed in front of them, the gargoyles leading them in a bigger hurry than the ones pulling Morgan and the two Ardeni along. Morgan saw that the captives hooked to that other line were the bird-people he’d spied from above. There were five of them, and they spoke in a strange cooing warble that reminded him of quail.

“Why doesn’t the System Language Integration work on those people,” one of the Ardeni behind him asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re like Yeksa,” the other replied. Morgan thought about that; why didn’t the language integration work with Yeksa? Were they too low with regard to Energy affinity for the System to bother with them? His thoughts were interrupted as the gargoyles began to mount a long, muddy staircase leading to the bottom tier of the ziggurat. Up close, the hive-like structure seemed to tower over him, far more than he’d thought it would, and the tunnel on the first tier yawned widely, smoothly constructed of compressed mud.

As they finished the climb and began to move into the wide tunnel, the air grew damp with humidity, and hot air seemed to waft from within. Groups of gargoyles moved about in the tunnel, passing by Morgan’s slow-moving group on both sides. Morgan counted a hundred or more gargoyles as they traversed through the big tunnel; most of them were the large, walking creatures, but now and then, a group of the thinner, flying gargoyles would swoop past. They turned from the central tunnel about a hundred feet in, taking another side tunnel, more narrow in construction but angled upward.

The side tunnel began to bend and climb more steeply, and Morgan grew convinced that it was spiral in nature, moving up through the levels of the ziggurat. Other tunnels opened in different directions at occasional intervals, but the gargoyles leading them stayed on the main, upward-climbing, curving path. After a ten-minute climb, the tunnel finally leveled out and opened into a massive, oval chamber buzzing with activity.

Morgan saw a double row of bubbling green-crystal tanks shaped very much like the cryo-pods on the Pilgrim. A line of twenty or more gargoyles stood to one side of the room, and a string of bound captives was on the other. As they were led over to the line of prisoners, Morgan watched as one of the robe-wearing “evolved” gargoyles led a captive frog-person to one of the tanks and forced it to get it. It didn’t scream or thrash, just laid down in the roiling liquid. Then the gargoyle leader hissed something at one of the hulking gargoyles, and it strode forward to submerge itself in the adjoining tank.

While he watched, wide-eyed, Morgan and the Ardeni were added to the end of the prisoner queue. The two tanks roiled and hissed, green stem rising into the air, and then the shadowy form of the frog-person that Morgan could just make out through the green crystal of the tank seemed to dissipate and fade away. The gargoyle burst out of the other tank a few moments later, no longer hulking and bipedal but taller, with wings. It screeched triumphantly, and the robed leader hissed at it, subduing its outburst and chasing it out of the chamber with shrieks and clicks. “What the fuck?”

“Ancestors! Are they using people to advance their race?” the Ardeni next to him asked.

“I think so, but this shit needs to stop right now.” Morgan produced another of the knives he’d taken from the Swordmaster’s Citadel and handed it to the Ardeni. “Start working on cutting these others free. I’m going to start killing gargoyles.” Morgan snapped the cord holding his ring around his neck and slipped it onto his finger, summoning his Umbral Razor. He slashed through the rope around his neck, focused on the gargoyle leader, and cast Void Step.

With a crackling rip in reality, he faded from existence and reappeared directly behind the gargoyle leader, his black, smoking sword already swinging toward its neck. The creature didn’t have a chance to react, caught completely by surprise as it was screeching at another gargoyle. Its high-pitched command cut off as its gray, hairless head thudded to the ground. For a moment, the room was silent, and then the massed gargoyles burst into frenzied action, howling and charging at Morgan.