Easily ten feet tall at the front shoulder, Grethron had been unable to make out much more than its size as it blotted out every last scrap of starlight as it had passed his hiding place.
There had been a deep puff of air as it sighed out a massive breath before continuing to sniff for whatever it was after, this was followed by a sliding hiss as an eight-foot tail dragged behind it.
Grethron remained as still and silent as possible as the behemoth had moved away.
I must be losing all sense of reason. The younger Grethron had eventually thought. Shockingly he had been answered.
Thou hast not taken leave of thy senses, yon creature is guardian to the city surrounding thee and will not interfere with thy troubles.
"W-who said that?" Grethron had called nervously into the darkened night. "Who is here?" He had added when no further answers were forthcoming.
Grethron tried to huddle further back into the stone behind him, convinced he was going mad, frightened by the voice more than the beast and realising the words had been spoken inside his head.
Not for the first time since entering Shantriss Grethron wished for his brother, wished he could hear a single word spill from the other's lips. A weight settled on his chest as he thought back to all they had shared and all they had lost with a petty argument and a tear rolled, unseen, down his face.
He must have slept as his eyes fluttered open to a bright, sunny day that held the promise of happiness and the enjoyment of simple pleasures in any other location. Grethron was in Shantriss, however and his mind had once again been subtly directed by an unknown force.
Bolon and Hernom had graciously allowed him to keep one long handled spade and he had immediately set himself to work, digging in one corner of the room he had spent the night in.
Although the silty soil which had gathered here was compacted, it was dry and broke fairly easily. Yes. Grethron had thought, This is the right thing, the right place to dig.
At no point had it ever occurred to the younger man to question how he knew this had been the right place to dig, he had just dug.
After the first few hours, sweating and tired, he had uncovered the beginnings of a set of stone steps leading below ground. Still dry, the soil had clearly been dumped here by flood water over the years and even had the bonus of some dry wood buried within it.
I can have a fire tonight. He had told himself. As long as I keep it small enough not to attract the attention of that creature.
That thought brought Grethron up short, a whirl of confusion spinning through his mind. How can I have forgotten that? He had asked himself.
The numbing fear that had gripped him as the monster shuffled past the previous night had come flooding back and he had dropped to sit on the top step he had dug out, trying to remember what had happened.
I should get back to digging. The thought had invaded his brain abruptly. It is so much deeper down than I thought.
Taking up his spade, Grethron had cut deep into the soil filling the stairway and carried on his mindless slavery.
Time passed like treacle pouring from a spoon as he carried on down, carrying dirt and debris up and out of the building in a sack he made from a blanket.
Automatically, mechanically, he tunnelled into the earth beneath the house, not bothering to stop to eat or even sleep until he dropped from exhaustion and lay wherever he ended up any fire long since abandoned.
Thoughts flickered in and out of his consciousness as his body worked, memories which were not his own; of Shantriss filled with life and people, laughter and song.
Children played running games in his recollections, the warm air filled with their high-pitched squeals of happiness and a smile would come over Grethron's face even as tears poured from his eyes.
Still he dug.
Through periods of darkness where he worked by touch and times of light where he could just about see, Grethron wormed his way into the substrate beneath Shantriss.
Weeks, months or millennia later his spade hammered against something solid and a flush of joy shivered through his wrecked, wasted body. Scrabbling at the earth with a madness born of desperation, Grethron swept piles of muck and soil away from what he had uncovered with scrambling fingers.
This was why he was here, this was what he had come for, the answer to every question he had was just beyond this portal, he could feel it. Blood smeared the surface of the door he had uncovered from slashes in his palms and fingers caused by shards of flint and bone washed down here years, no, centuries before. Grethron caught sight of someone moving inside the metal door and recoiled in horror from their ghastly appearance.
Looking like a spectre, what remained of his clothing hung from his diminished form like strips of flesh from some undead thing. His cheeks were sunken, deep shadows forming beneath the bones in his face as he stared back at Grethron.
Beard and hair matted and caked with filth, the man could only stare out of the door with pain and madness in his eyes at the man who had finally dug him out.
When the realisation hit Grethron it was his own reflection in the mirror-like door, he sunk to his knees and wept dry tears. What had he become? What power had taken everything from him and left this wasted ghoul behind?
Eventually he had risen again, averting his eyes from his own reflection and searched for a way to open the door.
Rubbing the filth of decades from the edges, he found a seal around the outside of this door which he could just get one of his cracked, dirty nails into.
There was nothing else. No handle, no lock, no way in. He leaned his head against the cold metal, which had stood here in the damp of the earth, unmarked, for years and let anguish overcome him.
To have come so close. To have gotten this far and be stopped in his tracks, was more than the younger Grethron could bear. Worse than his split from Malthrom, worse even than what he had become to get here.
Grethron slammed his head into the door, thumping his skull against the metal until he could feel his brain crashing into it from the inside.
"Open, damn you!" The powerful bellow he had wished for came out as less than a pitiful squeak from his dehydrated throat.
Yet it worked. Opening silently as if it had just been installed, the slab of wrist thick metal swung inwards revealing the interior he had so longed to see.Having no prior expectations of what he might find in here, Grethron staggered into what, at first glance, looked like a box.
The walls, floor and ceiling formed a cube around him and were fashioned from the same material as the door through which he had entered, measuring about ten feet per side. This produced a maddening kaleidoscopic effect as his reflection bounced back and forth from the mirrored surfaces, stretching off into oblivion.
Thousands of fractured images of Grethron moved simultaneously through an endless landscape, dwindling down to nothing like a tunnel. It felt as if he would fall into the abyss of reflections, falling through them, one after another forever and a tiny sob had escaped his lips.
His eyes lit and fixed on the only other thing in the room. A plain wooden chair, that belonged here less than fine jewellery on a transient, sat in the centre of the floor.
Seated on it, as if he had just put down a particularly engrossing book, sat a dead man. Grethron had known, without knowing how, that the man had been dead for millennia even though there had been no signs of decay on him.