Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

as a word of caution and warning, would you like to see what remains of my race? It's really very instructive."
    He turned away without waiting for any answer and padded off down the earthen path. He moved quickly, with surprising grace for his size, and the others had to hurry to keep up with him. The Hadenman strode along with his face blank and impassive, but his golden eyes were fixed on the Wolfling's back. Owen shot a glance at Giles, but his face was carefully impassive, too. Whatever he remembered about the Hall of the Fallen, he wasn't giving anything away. They walked on through the silent forest, no one willing to break such a perfect
    silence with inconsequential chatter, until they came to a sudden branch in the trail. The Wolfling took the left-hand path, and it quickly led them to a bare face of rock; a giant stone slab rising hundreds of feet into the air, a massive tombstone in the midst of the forest. Owen craned his neck back, but he couldn't see the top of it. The Wolfling placed a great hand flat against the stone, and a door opened up in the stone wall, swinging silently inward on unseen hinges. A stark white light appeared in the doorway, and the Wolfling walked into it.
    There was a slight pause, and then the others followed him in, and this was how they came to the Hall of the Fallen.
    It was a great cavern, hewn out of the heart of the stone, lit with bright, unforgiving light that came from everywhere at once and hid nothing in shadows.
    In niches in the walls, of various sizes, stood all that remained of the Wolfling race. Some were almost complete, standing proudly erect with their death wounds left unclosed and uncleaned. Dried blood crusted ugly wounds in the midst of torn and matted fur. Some were missing limbs or heads, and others were merely body parts, collected together. There were thousands of them, in thousands of niches, the slaughtered dead with unseeing eyes over endlessly snarling mouths. Still beyond stillness, battered and broken, most lacking even the illusion of life. Owen turned slowly in a circle, his mind overloading with images of death and destruction. There were too many to count, bodies and parts of bodies, a race wiped out because it was… too good.
    "Welcome to the Hall of the Fallen," said the Wolfling. "I built it myself, over the years, because there was no one else left to do it. It took many years, but I've always had plenty of time, if nothing else. I gathered all the dead, left to lie where they had fallen by a triumphant Empire, and brought them here, one
    at a time. I am the last of the Wolflings, and I did not want my race to be forgotten. It is a sad and bitter honor to be the last of one's kind, and it carries heavy responsibilities. Has the Deathstalker told you how they died? No matter if he did; he remembers it his way and I remember it mine. We were stronger and greater than the race that created us, with a future and potential they could not hope to match. I sometimes think they would have forgiven us anything but that. So they came in their ships and destroyed us from a safe distance. The last of us hid away in our tunnels beneath the burning forests, and they had to send their men in after us. And for every Wolfling that died, we took a hundred human lives in payment. But there were so many of them, and so few of us, and in the end there was only me.
    "The Deathstalker came here some time later, looking for a safe place to leave his Device, and found me here. He chose to let me live. Whether that was an act of kindness or one last twist of the knife, I still am not sure. I lived on here, building my hall and gathering my dead. I even found a use for the human dead left behind. They have made good eating down the centuries, over and over, and even after endless recycling they are still pleasing to the palate. But you have heard enough from me. The Madness Maze is waiting for you. If you're ready, I'll take you to the entrance and entrust you to its tender mercies."
    "What exactly is the Maze?" said Owen. "Do you understand what it does, and why?"
    "I've been studying it for centuries," said the Wolfling. "From a cautious distance. And I'm no nearer understanding it now than I ever was. Aliens built it, though it was sometimes credited to us, but if they had a specific purpose in mind, they have never returned to tell me of it, and they left no testament.
    They came and left long before my time, or Humanity's. The Maze has killed most
    of the