The shattered ruins of Ferenczy Castle sprawled under the night sky, its tumbled stones pale and skeletal in the moonlight. Only a single wall remained standing of the once mighty heap, the other three having fallen out and away, tossed carelessly in the explosion that had destroyed the Castle. The violence of the collapse was evident from the half-acre of scattered stony debris that covered the steeply sloping hillside. A conical segment of roof, its red tiles cracked and splintered, had rolled a few hundred yards farther than the other debris, and it was by this architectural fossil that Charlotte Dextra Ward and her assistant, Lily Carter, paused their hike and rested. They'd left their truck two miles downhill to follow a little goat path that climbed steadily up into the lonely, quiet mountains. The air was thin, and cold, and strangely silent, and they had long since left the last gnarled pine behind them. Charlotte, breathing deeply, set her pack down and examined the ruined fragment.
"So this is it," she said. "The explosion must've been terrible. Look how far the debris was scattered."
"Sure enough," puffed Lily, leaning against the cracked base of the ruined tower. "Ol' Magnus did his work well. 'Course, he had a right head o' steam up, I imagine."
"Hard to believe anything will be left," Charlotte said, looking up the slope to the dark, ruined wall ahead.
"Ah, well now," said Lily, grinning. "The Baron was a clever one, and always thinking ahead." She fished a bottle of water from the pack, offering it to Charlotte and then sipping some herself. "When the Romanians took over in the '20s, he knew he'd have to be a little more careful, have a few hidey holes ready for when he'd need 'em. He delved deep too, put tunnels all through these here hills. The castle might've gone up in smoke, but I'll warrant the fire didn't reach them all. Besides, Magnus was hellbent on killing the Baron, and I doubt he took the time to hunt for his stashes as thoroughly as he might've. Oh no, he was always one for planning, Baron Ferenczy was."
"You talk like you knew him, Lily," said Charlotte.
"Well now Miss Ward," laughed Lily, "that couldn't be, could it? How old would that make me? A hunnert? Hunnert n' fifty?" Her laughter echoed down the slope and in the valley, a deep, booming sound that was quickly lost in the dark.
Charlotte looked over her companion more closely. She was a striking woman, perhaps fifty, although Charlotte had to admit that she had never asked her age, and indeed Lily seemed to have changed little in the ten years since she'd they'd met in Arkham. She had an expressive face, with large dark eyes bordered by deep laugh-lines, and a wide mouth that often quirked itself into a broad, toothy smile. Lily was tall and straight, just over six feet in her socks, with a lean, powerful body. The enormous pack she had carried up the trail from the truck attested to her athleticism, and her slimly muscular legs and broad shoulders were accentuated by her close-fitting hiking clothes. Her iron grey hair was tied back in a tight bun, and her eyes glittered in the moonlight. The contrast between the two of them was stark; Charlotte was barely five feet tall, noticeably more curvy, bespectacled and blonde. Still, she'd held her own on the hike, even if her pack had been the lighter.
"Regardless," Charlotte said, "his plans didn't do him much good in the end, did it?"
"Everyone dies," said Lily, slyly. "Or, at least, that's what they tell me."
"Well," smirked Charlotte, "we'll just see about that, won't we? C'mon!" She struck out up the trail, towards the ruins, and Lily followed.
The night was cold, hinting at the approach of autumn - soon, winter storms would close in on the mountains, filling the passes with snow and making the peaks inaccessible. They had been lucky, thought Charlotte, to have found the location of the Baron's ruins as quickly as they had, thanks to the hand-drawn map they'd discovered amongst Joseph Curwen's letters hidden in the archives of Miskatonic's Pickman Library. A week or two later, and they might have had to have waited until the next summer for their visit. But now...a thrill ran up her spine, and she felt her face flush with excitement. Soon, she'd know if any of Ferenczy's materials had survived his death. If they had...
A wind rose, flowing down from the peak to stir Charlotte's short blonde hair. A sound like furtive tittering, barely on the edge of hearing, floated down from the ruins. Lily looked up sharply, her hand resting on the pistol that hung from her hip.
"Just the wind," said Charlotte, impatiently, adjusting her glasses.
"Maybe," answered Lily. They kept moving.
The path died among the blocks of the castle, and they had to pick their way carefully among the ruins. The stones were scorched and blasted, and some had been shattered completely, raw unworked rock exposed and stark against the pitted fronts of the carved blocks. Charlotte ran her hands over the blackened and split surface of one of them, a block that looked as if it had been struck repeated with great hammering bolts of lightning.
"Powerful forces," muttered Lily, pressing close in behind her.
"And soon," said Charlotte, her voice husky, "they'll be mine to command."
They reached the hilltop and stood under the wan moon-shadow of the ruined wall. The wind moaned through the empty sockets of the windows. If Charlotte closed her eyes and listened, she could almost make out mocking, hateful words, just audible in the wind's gusty breaths. Lily was digging through her pack.
"Here it is, Miss!" she said happily, finally finding the flashlight in her enormous backpack. "Knew I had it!" She flicked it on and a warm, yellow glow, startlingly bright, was cast against the wall.
"Let's find one of these 'hidey holes' soon," said Charlotte. "I don't like this wind. A storm may be coming." Together, they crouched, shifting rubble and sweeping aside dried, brittle lichens that had colonized the stone floor. Occasionally, they would stumble over a slightly taller protuberance of stone or rubble, remnants of interior walls dividing rooms from one another. The floor, where visible, was of the same heavy stone masonry as the wall. In life, thought Charlotte, the old castle must have been a bitterly cold place.
"Ah ha!" said Lily, "lookit 'ere, Miss Ward!" She reached to her hip and withdrew a long knife from its sheath. She worked its edge into a joint between the wall and a floor tile, cleaning debris to expose a long, straight light, slightly wider than the tight jointing exhibited by the other tiles they'd examined. "Let's clear this spot a bit, and see what we can see, eh Miss?" They kicked the loose rocks aside, and Lily crouched down to hammer the cleaned surface with the pommel of the knife. The slab rang hollowly, and Lily grinned. Charlotte's blue eyes shone with excitement.
Lily produced a crowbar from her pack and together, sweating and straining, they slowly worked the massive floor slab aside, inch by inch, until they had exposed a yawning aperture. Roughhewn steps lead downwards into the dark. Charlotte stepped forward eagerly, but Lily put her hand on her shoulder and stopped her.
"Allow me, Miss, if you don't mind." She put the crowbar away, shouldered her pack, and drew the heavy 9 mm Parabellum Mauser from its holster. Gun in her right hand and flashlight in her left, she led the way. Charlotte followed.
