Crossing the threshold of the Monastery of the Black Rose was like entering the gullet of a diseased beast that was slowly dying. As soon as the heavy, rotting oak doors slammed shut behind them, pushed by a non-existent wind, the biting cold of Crow's Peak vanished. In its place, a damp, suffocating, and sickly-sweet heat enveloped them. The air tasted of stale incense, melted wax, and decomposing flesh.
They found themselves in the Great Atrium, a vast octagonal space that must have once been magnificent. White marble columns soared toward a vaulted ceiling lost in darkness, but the marble was now veined with pulsing black moulds that looked like varicose veins. The statues of saints along the walls had been decapitated, and in place of their heads, goat skulls had been mounted, dripping a viscous liquid.
Geneviève advanced first, shield raised, her sword Vespers' Light cleaving the gloom like a torch. Its light revealed that the floor was not made only of stone. It was a complex mosaic, but many tiles had been torn up or covered by a carpet of fleshy fungi that crunched beneath her metal boots.
The child's crying continued. It echoed, amplified by the perfect acoustics of the hall, coming from the exact centre of the atrium where a ruined baptismal font stood. "It's there!" Tristan whispered, stepping forward, hand on the hilt of his sword. "We must help! Perhaps the cultists left them as a sacrifice..."
Gaston grabbed the boy's cloak, holding him back with brute force. "Stay back, lad," the sergeant growled. "Look around you. Nothing here is alive. If you hear life, it's a lie."
Tristan tried to pull away, his eyes fixed on the bundle of rags moving feebly inside the font. "But listen to the crying! It's human!"
Geneviève said nothing. She simply closed her eyes for a second, activating her Grail Sight. The physical world vanished, replaced by currents of energy. She saw the atrium for what it was: a mechanical and magical trap. The floor was strewn with invisible tension wires made of dried gut. The walls hid spring-loaded mechanisms wound centuries ago and recently corrupted. And the "child"... the bundle did not emanate the white light of an innocent soul. It radiated a sickly, pulsing green, connected to the floor by roots of flesh.
"Tristan, back!" Geneviève ordered, her voice ringing out like sacred thunder. "It's not a child. It's the trigger."
Too late. The echo of Geneviève's voice made the air vibrate. The "crying" ceased abruptly, turning into a gurgling, inhuman laugh. The bundle in the font opened like a rotten flower. There was no child. There was a Nurgling—a small, fat, pustule-covered demon—grinning to show rows of needle-sharp teeth. The creature pulled a bone lever hidden within the font.
CLACK-BOOM.
The floor beneath the company's feet trembled.
"Gargoyles!" Lothar the elf shouted, pointing upward.
Along the walls, thirty feet up, the mouths of the stone gargoyles swung open. But they did not spit rainwater. A corrupted hydraulic system, powered by the mountain's pressure, sprayed high-pressure jets of Corrosive Bile.
"SHIELDS!" Geneviève s'écria.
She threw herself toward Gaston and Tristan, spreading her arms. Her Grail Aura exploded upward, creating a dome of tangible light above the group. The jets of acid struck the sacred barrier with a sizzle, creating a toxic mist that obscured their vision. The barrier held, but Geneviève felt the weight of the attack on her will as if they were hammering at her soul.
But the trap was not finished. As the acid rained down, the floor began to shift. The octagonal tiles retracted, revealing pits filled with rusted iron spikes and Plague Zombies reaching up toward the ankles of the living.
"Don't stand still!" Geneviève ordered, dissolving the barrier to go on the attack. "Move toward the columns! The floor is solid there!"
The company scattered. Elara and Lothar moved with impossible grace, leaping from one safe tile to another while loosing arrows at the gargoyles above, aiming for the mechanisms in their mouths to block the flow of acid. Twang. Crack. One gargoyle exploded, its mechanism jammed by a star-wood arrow.
Gaston, less agile, used his heavy crossbow to bash back a zombie trying to crawl out of a trapdoor. "Curse these contraptions! I prefer an open field!"
Geneviève found herself isolated at the centre near the baptismal font. The Nurgling was still laughing, pulling more levers that caused rotating blades to snap out from the columns. Geneviève could not reach the columns without being sliced to ribbons. She looked at the demon. "You've laughed enough," she said.
Instead of searching for a safe path, Geneviève charged straight through the blade mechanism. Using her supernatural speed, she became a blur of blonde and silver to the human eye. She dodged the first blade by ducking. She leapt over the second. She parried the third with Vespers' Light, shearing through the metal gear that drove it. She reached the front.
The Nurgling stopped laughing, its small pig-like eyegoingnd wide. Geneviève grabbed it by its fatty scruff. Her hand glowed. The sacred contact made the demon's skin smoke. "Where is the key to the inner door?" she asked, squeezing.
The little monster shrieked, pointing a trembling finger toward the throat of a giant statue at the far end of the hall: a corrupted representation of an Imperial Saint, now transformed into a bringer of pestilence.
Geneviève threw the Nurgling into one of the spike-filled pits. The creature exploded on impact, releasing a cloud of spores. "Tristan! Gaston! To the statue!"
They reached the great statue at the back of the atrium, panting, as the room's mechanisms began to slow, their kinetic charge spent. The door to proceed was closed—a massive block of stone without handles. The statue stood before it.
"Look," Elara said, pointing to the statue's chest. There was a rose-shaped indentation surrounded by gears of oxidised bronze. And beneath it, an inscription in ancient Reikspiel, partially erased by scratches: Only he who offers his own pain may open the way to consolation.
"It wants blood," Gaston said, drawing a dagger. "These damn cultists always love blood." He moved to cut his palm.
"No," Geneviève stopped him. "It says pain, not blood. And look at the gears. They are made to react to weight, not liquid." She observed the statue more closely. The saint's hands were stretched forward, palms open. She understood the mechanism. It was a test of faith for pilgrims of old, now perverted. One had to bear a weight.
"We must pull down the statue's arms," Geneviève said. She stepped under the massive stone hands. "Help me."
Tristan and Gaston stood at her sides. Together, they pushed down on the stone arms. The internal gears groaned, rust and dust falling from the joints. It was immensely heavy. It required massive strength. Geneviève channelled her inner power. Her muscles bunched beneath her armour. Click. Click. Click. The arms descended. But as they did, a four-inch needle snapped out from the stone palms, piercing the hands of those pushing.
Tristan cried out. Geneviève did not make a sound, though she felt the steel pass through her glove and flesh. That was the required "pain." She did not let go. "Push!" she ordered through gritted teeth.
With a final CLANG, the mechanism locked into place. The stone door behind the statue opened slowly, revealing a dark corridor leading down into the bowels of the mountain.
Geneviève withdrew her hands. Her gloves dripped blood. The Grail light pulsed, and the wounds closed slowly, though the pain remained as a ghost memory. "We are in," she said, looking into the darkness that awaited them. "And that was only the welcome mat."
Gaston wrapped his hand in a rag, looking at Geneviève with renewed respect. "I hate this place," the sergeant murmured.
"That makes two of us," Geneviève replied. "Let's move."
The corridor behind the saint's statue led not to more rooms, but to the void. Geneviève halted abruptly on the edge of a stone balcony devoid of any railing, raising Vespers' Light to illuminate the abyss. Before them opened the Well of Respiration.
It was a titanic cylindrical shaft, at least fifty meters wide, piercing the bowels of Crow's Peak to an unfathomable depth. But this was no natural formation. The curved walls were lined with black brick and bronze, and the aerial space was dominated by a colossal feat of ancient Imperial engineering. Enormous chains, each link the size of a man, hung from the darkness above and descended into the depths, vanishing into a swirling, luminescent green mist at the bottom. Gears the size of windmills jutted from the walls, connected by drive shafts and pistons that must have once served to pump the Sacred Spring's water upward.
Now, however, the machine was diseased. The rust was not red, but a crusty purple, like the scales of a skin affliction. Thick black grease oozed from the gears like pus from an infected wound, dripping into the void with a rhythmic, nauseating sound: Plink... Plink... Plink.
"By the Lady..." Tristan whispered, leaning out slightly. "How deep is it?"
"Deep enough for a scream to die before it hits bottom," Elara replied, her raptor-like eyes scanning the toxic mist below. "And we are not alone. Look at the chains."
Geneviève sharpened her gaze. On the giant chains, hanging like cocoons or parasitic fungi, were throbbing lumps of organic matter. Nests.
"We must descend," Geneviève said, pointing to a narrow, unguarded spiral staircase carved into the rock that traced the circumference of the well. "The Spring is at the bottom."
"That staircase looks like it's held together by hope and rust," Gaston remarked, checking his crossbow string.
"Then walk lightly," Geneviève cut him short.
They began the descent. The sound of their footsteps was drowned out by the constant groan of the mountain. The metal structure wailed as if the monastery itself were in pain. Geneviève led the way, shield raised. Behind her came Tristan, then Gaston, with the elves bringing up the rear, arrows nocked.
They descended for ten minutes. The air grew thicker, heavy with spores. Suddenly, a tremor shook the entire structure. One of the enormous gears above them, jammed for centuries, emitted a deafening screech and made a half-turn. The vibration caused a section of the stone stairs ten meters below them to collapse. The path was severed.
They stopped at the edge of the breach. Before them lay a five-meter gap before the stairs resumed. "Now what?" Tristan asked, pale.
Geneviève looked toward thecentrer of the well. One of the giant chains passed nearby, swaying slightly. "We must jump to the chain," Geneviève said calmly. "Climb down for a stretch, and then jump back to the stairs further down."
Gaston looked at the chain, slick with rotten grease, then at the abyss. "You're joking, Maiden. In armour?"
Armour weighs nothing if the will is light, Gaston. I go first."
Geneviève sheathed her sword. She took a short run-up on the few meters of stone available. Shleapted. It was a flight into the greenish gloom. Herarmouredd hands gripped the cold, slimy iron link of the chain. The impact slammed her against the metal, but her grip did not falter. Her Gromril gloves dug into the rust. She hung there, dangling over nothingness.
"Come!" she shouted from the well.
One by one, the others jumped. The elves did so with supernatural grace, landing on the chain like cats. Tristan jumped, slipped, but was caught by the scruff of the neck by Geneviève a second before falling. Gaston was last. He jumped clumsily, cursing, and clung to a link with a shout.
But the vibrations of their arrival on the chain had awakened the well's tenants. From the cocoons hanging on nearby chains, something began to emerge. A low hum, like a broken engine, filled the shaft. Plague Drones. They were insects the size of ponies, with bloated, bulbous bodies, transparent wings vibrating at impossible speeds, and proboscises designed to suck marrow. They were ridden by small, deformed beings—Plaguebearers—brandishing rusted pitchforks.
"Above us!" Lothar cried.
The swarm dived. The situation was desperate. They were clinging to a greasy chain, suspended in the void, attacked by aerial cavalry.
Geneviève could not use her sword without risking a companion's hand or losing her own grip. She had to use her legs. And the Light. A Drone approached to impale her. Geneviève wrapped one arm around the chain and delivered a side kick with her iron boot. She struck the insect's head. The chitinous skull exploded in a spray of yellow ichor. The beast plummeted, taking its screaming rider with it.
"Descend! Descend quickly!" Geneviève ordered.
As they slid down the chain, tearing their gloves, the elves performed miracles. Elara, hanging by her legs upside down, loosed arrows upward. Every shaft found a compound eye or a membranous wing. Gaston, wedged between two links, drew a dagger and stabbed a Plaguebearer trying to climb his leg. "Away with you, runt!"
Suddenly, the chain they were on began to move. Something at the bottom of the well had activated the main winch. The chain jerked downward, accelerating. "They're pulling us down!" Tristan yelled.
"Better!" Genevièvrépondited. "It saves us the effort!"
The chain dropped precipitously, passing through gears that threatened to crush them if they didn't move at the right moment. "Watch the gear!" Geneviève saw a toothed wheel approaching from the side. "Jump! Now!"
Using the momentum of the descent, Geneviève detached from the chain and threw herself toward a rusted maintenance platform jutting from the wall, twenty meters below. She landed in a roll, the metal clanging. The others landed around her, panting, covered in grease and fly blood. The chain continued its race downward, vanishing into a grinding machinery that would have reduced anyone left on it to pulp.
They were alive. They stood on a metal grating platform suspended halfway down the well. Before them was an enormous circular valve, similar to the hatch of a submarine or an Imperial steam tank. Above the valve, etched into the oxidised bronze, was the symbol of Nurgle: three circles arranged in a triangle. But beneath the corrosion, the Bretonnian lily could still be seen.
Geneviève stood, wiping the visor of her helm. The blue light of her eyes cut through the mist. "Down there," she said, pointing to the hatch. "That is the pump room. That is where they control the flow of the water."
Gaston checked his remaining bolts. "Well, at least we don't have to climb anymore."
Geneviève looked at the valve. It exuded heat. "Don't relax, Sergeant. I hear something beating back there. And it isn't a heart."
She approached the valve wheel. "Ready," she said. She turned the wheel. Steam hissed, hot and fetid. The second trial of the Monastery of the Black Rose was about to begin.
When the circular hatch swung open, they were greeted not by darkness, but by a wall of searing white. Steam. A vapour so dense it felt like wet wool, blasted out of pipes that hissed like wounded serpents. The temperature in the room jumped thirty degrees instantly.
"Get back!" Gaston coughed, covering his mouth with a rag already stained with blood. "The air is burning!"
Geneviève advanced first. Her Gromril armour, usually cold to the touch, began to absorb the ambient heat at an alarming rate. She felt sweat run down her back like rivulets of melting ice. She activated her Grail Sight to pierce the white fog.
They were in the Pump Room. It was an artificial cavern reinforced by arches of brass and iron. The floor was a metal grating suspended over vats of bubbling liquid—a mixture of corrupted water and chemical coolant. At the centre of the hall, three enormous machines, looking like steel hearts twenty feet high, pumped rhythmically. THUMP-HISS. THUMP-HISS. The pistons rose and fell, driving the black fluid upward toward the monastery and sucking the purity out of the Spring below.
"Do not touch anything metal with your bare hands," Elara warned, her elven voice taut. "Everything here is superheated."
They moved cautiously along the catwalks. Suddenly, a massive shadow emerged from the steam ahead. It was not a demon. It was something more grotesque. An Ogre, or what remained of one. The creature was monstrously bloated, its pale green skin stretched to the point of tearing. But the worst part was the augmentations. In place of its right arm, it had a mechanical iron shovel fused directly into the bone. Its jaw had been removed and replaced by a ventilation grate that spat black smoke. On its back, it carried a copper tank bolted to its spine.
It was a Furnace Keeper. A cyborg of flesh and pestilence created to work in this hell without ever tiring. It was sshovellingcoal mixed with human bones into the furnace that powered the central pump.
The Ogre stopped. The facial grate emitted a grinding sound as it sniffed the "clean" air entering from the open hatch. It turned. Its eyes were thick glass lenses. It saw Geneviève.
"Intruders..." a synthetic, wet voice gargled from the grate. The Ogre roared—a sound of venting steam—and charged along the narrow catwalk. Behind it, two more Keepers emerged from the mist, brandishing massive wrenches as long as spears.
"Lothar! Elara! Aim for the tanks on their backs!" Geneviève ordered.
The elves loosed. The arrows flew true. Tink. Tink. They bounced off. The tanks were reinforced copper. "Too thick!" Lothar shouted, leaping onto a suspended pipe to avoid the first Ogre's charge.
The monster slammed into Geneviève. The mechanical shovel fell with the force of a hydraulic press. Geneviève did not parry; the catwalk beneath her would have buckled. She slid forward, passing under the shovel, her knees shrieking against the glowing grate. She struck the Ogre's belly with Vespers' Light. The sword sheared through fat and rubber hoses. A jet of boiling green liquid—pressurised bile—sprayed out, drenching Geneviève's helm. The acid sizzled against the blessed metal but did not melt it. The Ogre seemed to feel no pain. It simply spun with a mechanical movement and delivered a backhanded blow.
The strike caught Geneviève on her shield. It was like being hit by a wagon. Geneviève flew backwards, slamming into a safety valve. The valve snapped. A jet of steam at 300 degrees blasted her right shoulder. Geneviève grit her teeth to keep from screaming. Thearmourr protected her from direct burns, but the heat was accumulating. She was cooking inside her shell.
Tristan and Gaston were fighting the second Ogre. Gaston fired a crossbow bolt point-blank into the monster's knee, making it stagger. Tristan, with desperate courage, plunged his sword into the creature's neck. But the Ogre caught Tristan's blade with its bare hand, bending it, and lifted the boy by his throat.
"Tristan!"
Genevièvrealiseded that brute force was not enough. These monsters felt no pain, and the environment was their ally. She had to use the environment against them. She saw that above the head of the Ogre holding Tristan ran a thick, pulsing pipe marked with danger runes—red skulls. Coolant.
Geneviève ignored her own opponent. She sprinted toward Tristan. She did not strike the Ogre. She leapt and severed the pipe above them with a clean sweep. The pipe exploded. A white, bone-chilling gas blasted the Ogre. The thermal shock was devastating. The red-hot metal of the Ogre's implants contracted violently upon contact with the sudden frost. Flesh split. Bolts snapped. The mechanical arm seized, frozen in an instant. The Ogre released its grip on Tristan, becoming a statue of ice and dead meat that collapsed under its own weight, shattering against the grate.
But cutting the pipe had destabilised the system. The pumps began to wail. Red emergency lights flickered on, spinning wildly. The pressure was rising. If the pumps exploded, the entire mountain would collapse upon them.
"We have to vent the system!" Geneviève yelled, finishing off the first Ogre by decapitating it while it was distracted by the chaos. "The release wheels! Up there!" she pointed to Elara.
Three large red flywheels were located atop the machinery. They were shrouded in red steam. They were incandescent. "No one can touch those!" Gaston shouted. "We'd leave the skin of our hands behind!"
Geneviève looked at the wheels. She looked at her companions. There was no choice. "Cover me!"
She climbed the first machine, jumping between moving pistons that could have crushed her. She reached the first flywheel. The metal was cherry red. Geneviève did not hesitate. She channelled the power of the Grail into her hands. She gripped the wheel. PSSSHHH. The leather gloves beneath the metal caught fire. She felt the heat pass through the Gromril and bite into her flesh. But she did not let go. Turn. Turn. The wheel groaned and spun. A jet of steam shot from a side vent, lowering the pressure of the first pump.
Sheleaptd to the second. The pain in her hands was excruciating, but her mind was elsewhere—in a cold, placid lake. She turned the second.
She reached the third. The last Ogre, still alive, tried to climb up to stop her. Lothar planted two arrows in its eyes, blinding it, while Gaston threw a flask of oil and Tristan tossed a torch. The Ogre, engulfed in flames, fell backwards into the vats of boiling liquid.
Geneviève turned the third wheel. With a final hiss that sounded like a mechanical sigh of relief, the systemstabilisedd. The pumps slowed. The temperature began to drop imperceptibly.
Geneviève climbed down from the machine, landing heavily on the grate. Tristan ran to her. "Maiden! Your hands!"
Geneviève looked at her gloves. They were blackened, fused in some spots. She tried to move her fingers. They ached, but they responded. The Grail's healing was already fighting the burns, but the price had been paid. "They still work," she said, clenching her fists to prove it, even though a grimace of pain crossed her face beneath the helm. "Is the way clear?"
Elara pointed to a pressure door on the far side of the hall, which had unlocked when the pressure dropped. "That door leads to the lower level. Toward the true crypts."
Geneviève nodded. "Let's get out of this infernal kitchen. I need to feel cold stone under my feet."
They exited the Pump Room, leaving behind the smoking corpses of the Ogres and the slowed heartbeat of the mountain's mechanical core. But as they descended into the cool dark, Geneviève felt the flavour of the corruption changing. No longer machines and fire. Now she smelled wet fur, beast, and ancient hunger. The Guardian was waking up.